When the Beautiful Game Isn't

One of the best worst-kept secrets in all of sports is now no longer a secret: cheaters do prosper and when you’re an insider within the Federation of International Football Associations, FIFA, you’ll go broke buying wheelbarrows in which to take your cut home. 

But don’t take my word for it, form your own conclusion. Let me help. 

You may not think so based on its dearth of popularity on these shores, but professional football (what we here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs call “soccer”) is not only the world’s most popular sport, in terms of attendance, fan clubs and those who have been known to wager a fiver on a Cup outcome, it’s a HUGE business at the national and international level. 

When, in this case, you can be pocketing 150 million (with an “m”) dollars as the surcharge for your skullduggery, we are talking real money. And yeah, I recognize the presumption of innocence and am a huge fan-except maybe this time. 

There’s a lot we don’t know yet (and probably even more we’re going to wish we didn’t) by the time this passion play is over, but my favorite moment of Zen, so far, is how FIFA reacted to the arrests of their own top officials.  

I have the feeling that “pleased the investigation is being energetically pursued” doesn’t quite capture the actual essence of the true reaction of the folks who had silver bracelets on within the last 48 hours. 

It takes balls (inflated ones, Messrs. Brady and Kraft) to play the beautiful game but only moments to destroy generations of good will in order to better satisfy an insatiable greed some of its leading lights seem to have. 

-bill kenny

You Pay Attention Every Time Money Talks

What follows are in no way original thoughts but rather, observations I first offered six years ago; how strange they still seem so current.

It was Einstein who said, "(w)e cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." However, the last time I checked, he wasn’t seeking a seat on this fall’s City Council so I guess we can safely continue to ignore his advice.

Meanwhile we’re searching for who’s to blame for the municipal budget that’s shaping up but the culprit can be found in the nearest mirror. We should know better, we go through this every year and yet because we don’t do things differently in the preceding eleven and half months we get to this point in the fiscal calendar every year and are amazed. Actually and pardon my cynicism we’re always disappointed about the results we didn’t get from the work we didn’t do.

In the meantime, our alderpersons are watching the horizon for some sign, divine or otherwise, that a state budget will be or has been approved in Hartford and that such a budget will be of benefit to the City of Norwich. So far, no dice (in light of the Massachusetts casino threat, too soon?)

Cities and towns whose sole power to tax is restricted to property are busy measuring three (or more times) and cutting once all across the state as many, like Norwich, have requirements to have an approved budget for the next fiscal year by a date early next month.

They are nervous-a great deal of their budget depends on allocations from the state of Connecticut and, let's face it, no matter the state and no matter the town, if the choice comes down to a program or position in the Capital or one ‘someplace else,’ guess who's going to win? Color me surprised only as long as we can afford crayons.

Every year we all get a case of the heebie-jeebies and vow to 'fix' this 'broken system' and then suffer amnesia when the crisis passes. As a matter of fact, since it's so familiar and recurs so often, I'm not sure if 'crisis' is even an appropriate word to describe it. Semantics aside, what next?

For right now we’ll watch the TV news a bit closer, open our local daily newspapers to the "Capital Doings" section before we hit the sports page(, but after the comics) and muddle through with a strained, stoic smile as if we were under siege.

Better a horrible end, than horrors without end, I suppose, but this annual dance could end with very little effort, if we could all sit and work together throughout the year. After all, money talks. And some days you can't get a word in edgewise.

-bill kenny

Us and Them, Again

I'm always delighted by small children and infants though I often am annoyed at parents who don't keep better control of them in social environments. My wife and I were shopping the other day and I hadn't realized it was 'bring your mewling child to the store with you' day because I was up to my butt in unhappy, tiny, young people.

When that happens, I go with the flow and get cranky myself. Don't get me wrong-I'm not angry with the children. A newborn didn't decide to get in the car and drive to the mall. Mommy did. Or maybe daddy but based on what I saw yesterday, more than likely not, though mommy probably wishes she knew where daddy was.

I don't know when we became a country of the very young and the very old but having been the former and now being the latter let me tell you that all the other age groups, and food groups for that matter, had best start pulling their own weight.

We spend way too much money in these parts on diapers and Depends. We built this nation for our children-that's the deal every generation worked with the one that followed except now we sold our children and their children out for off shore bank accounts and left them with no skills, no jobs and no hope.

We're so busy blaming the New World Order and the changing times that we have no time to look in the mirror and look at ourselves. When Gandhi talked about being the change you want to see in the world, he wasn't talking about what you find under the couch cushions in the living room. He was talking about all of us to each of us, for everyone.

If being polite means being less than honest, maybe we should ask one another if that's too high a price to pay for comity. We owe each other the unvarnished truth in order to build the world we all want to live in. Hurt feelings are a luxury we most certainly can afford if they get us to where we need to be.
-bill kenny  

Take Heed of the Dream

Today is when we observe Memorial Day, another holiday we've moved to a Monday so we can have a three day weekend with plenty of time for a barbecue, a run to the beach and some laps at the Brickyard (okay turns out that was yesterday, but it's the thought that counts). 

If we work it right, we don't ever or even have to think of those with whom we grew up and with whom we went to school but who never, themselves, got to be old, or whose parents and grandparents, having survived the Depression battled fascism to its knees in a world wide war and their children and their children who have been engaged in a dozen "smallish" wars for the last half a century that all seem to cost lives.

Every town across the country has observances and we here in Norwich, Connecticut have three all of which you can easily participate in with the first, as is tradition at Memorial Park in Taftville, starting at 10, which this year honors the life and sacrifice of Army Corporal Fred Roessler who died in Trier, Germany, on January 8, 1919. 

Coming back across town to Little Plains Park, formed at the split between Broadway and Union Street, at 11 is a brief  remembrance service for the 26th Connecticut Regiment Volunteer Infantry many of whose members are interred in the Yantic Cemetery and whose memorial  in the pocket park honors their sacrifice in the Civil War at the Battle of Port Hudson.

You'll still have time to cheer on or to march in the parade organized by the Norwich Area Veterans Council that steps off 'sharply' at noon from The Cathedral of Saint Patrick and ends with a memorial ceremony at Chelsea Parade. 

On a day usually filled with backyard barbecues and family softball games the remembrances help us realize war is not an abstract geo-political game played out on a grand stage by dominant personalities-it is very local, extremely personal and heartbreakingly private. Those of our neighbors who choose military service have as many reasons for so doing as there are those who so serve. 

And while today we should mark the ultimate sacrifice of those who have served, we can also spare a thought or prayer for those who have survived as well. They bear scars, often invisible and painful, of their struggles that take a lifetime to heal.

We must never lose sight of all of those whose service makes us who we are and to whom we owe more than we can ever repay. They are a call to arms for each of us to be better than we are for ourselves, our children and our nation.
-bill kenny

Today and Tomorrow Made Possible Only by Yesterday's Sacrifices

I hate to be the one who clouds the sunshine of a three-day holiday weekend, but just think of it as part of the service. We're so used to each of our days rushing past us in a never-ending stream we sometimes forget others, elsewhere, sacrificed theirs so we could do whatever we choose with ours.

Even, and especially, when we choose to do nothing.

Sometimes words are not enough like this time.

Thank you to those who served and sacrificed your lives for ours.

I hope we prove to have been worthy.
-bill kenny

Let's Go Down to the Fairground

Let's go down to the fairground
Go down side by side
Let's remember what life was like
When life was a wild ride
Let's go down to the fairground
Before it's up and gone
Get your tight blue jeans out
And try to get 'em on

Let's go down to the fairground
Let's go down

We can watch the Carneys spin the cars
And make the young girls cry
They always seem to have bad skin
And one lazy eye
And one on them's on your money
And the others on the floor
They gotta keep their noses clean
And watch out for the law

Let's go down to the fairground
Let's go down

Check out that big black guy
Who works the Ferris wheel
He looks like he's been around
Let's ask him how it feels
Traveling around from town to town
With many a lesson learned
Putting up that giant wheel
Just to watch that damned thing turn

Let's go down to the fairground
Let's go down

See that girl in the tattered dress
Who runs the Octopus ride
She's no more than fourteen
And already one inside
And every tattoo that's tattood
Upon her hide
Tells the story of her life
A life of pain and pride
How her mother used her
And left her all alone
Her stepdaddy abused her
So she ran away from home
She set her sights on Hollywood
But winded up in Maine
Went the wrong direction
On a cargo train
But hey it ain't too bad now
She's movin' on at last
She forgot about tomorrow
And forgets about the past

Let's go down to the fairground
Let's go down

Let's go down to the fairground
Let's go down my dear
Watch those young tow-headed kids
Grin from ear to ear
Maybe the know something
That we forgot about
Our lives became so complex
We blocked the fun right out

Let's go down to the fairground
Let's go down

Well the girl who takes the tickets
For the ghost train around the back
Looks a lot like Courtney Love
You know a real class act
And I'll bet that that's her boyfriend
Who runs the Hoopla stand
Maybe he's a genius that no one understands
Maybe he's an inventor
Clever with his hands
Right now he's just small time
But he's got big plans
Or maybe he's just a shifty guy
That's got a violent streak
Maybe he's the one who murdered
That clown and and got away scott free

Let's go down to the fairground
Let's go down

Let's go down to the fairground
Before it's up and gone
Get your tight blue jeans out
And try to get 'em on
Get 'em on"
- Graham Parker, from Your Country, 2004

The Norwich Rotary Family Carnival is open today and tomorrow from noon until 11 PM and on Monday, Memorial Day, from noon until six. If you don't go, it's your own fault.
- bill kenny

A Walk to Clear My Head

I'm off through next Tuesday. If you have to work today, please don't think I'm rubbing it in when I tell you I was off yesterday as well. Okay, maybe a little bit.

This is a picture in some form you've seen before of the Indian Leap Historical District which is about a five minute walk from my house, not that there is a cause and effect relationship between those two things. But it wouldn't be so bad, perhaps, if there were. Just sayin'.

This is the view from a street I rarely walk on just below the Jail Hill Historic District (I don't know if it is historic, but I think someday it will be) over on School Street, just beyond Cedar Street. There may have been a school here a long time ago, hence the name. In honor of the occasion yesterday I called it Bill Boulevard (just don't tell the Public Works people who altered the street sign).

On my way back to our house, I stopped to admire this one on Church Street-and yes there is a church, so perhaps there's hope for School Street as well-it's a house I pass all the time but yesterday I thought it looked especially lovely so I grabbed a photo.

I'm not sure I'll take pictures today that I'll share with you but you will be the second person to know it if I do.
- bill kenny