Read Him His Miranda Rights, Carmen

I guess we’re making headway on getting a handle on drugged and drunk driving. I say that without seeing any statistics of any kind from federal or regional law enforcement officials but have decided see this story as a ‘the glass is half-full’ tale, though we should be concerned a little about what liquid is in the glass. 

We’re only six months into the calendar year, but I’m thinking Logan Shaulis is already seriously in the lead for the Somerset County, Pennsylvania, “Man of the Year.” Hell, as someone who grow up in Somerset County, New Jersey (no relation), I’d vote for the guy.  

I don’t have the heart to tell him in that picture he has on FB, wearing the BDU blouse and the PFC rocker (Battle Dress Uniform/Private First Class), I can still see him (perhaps because this galaxy has a yellow sun so I have x-ray vision?). Maybe he needs to get his money back for the uniform top. 

Quite frankly, based on the reports of this encounter and the amount of perturbation it will create in his life for the immediate future and probably beyond, he might want to take that money and whatever he can get after pawning the BB pistol and invest it in legal services, or more road flares; depending on his priorities.
-bill kenny

Revisiting Accidental Heroes

I wrote this five years ago. No matter how much has changed, this is a subject I know I will never feel any differently about. Ever.

What had seemed like a beginning in the near daylight off the coast of Normandy in France, seventy-one years ago was actually the end, if you will, of the planning phase of Operation Overlord and years of planning from an embattled outpost, England, that had been left to fight on practically alone after the fall of France in June nearly four years earlier.

This time last week we were all talking about those 'who made the ultimate sacrifice' and 'who paid the ultimate price' and here we are today commemorating an event that marked the beginning of the end of the murderous darkness and mayhem into which first Europe and ultimately the entire world descended that resulted in the deaths of over sixty million people, marked the end of the British Empire, helped redraw the maps of Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East and redivided much of the world into communist and non-communist spheres of influence.

The personages and personalities we always associate with this event are enormous and epic and their fame is well-deserved, but I found an old clip, its source made me smile, that focused more, and more accurately, on the hundreds of thousands of men leading lives of quiet desperation, who did what they were trained to do, when they were trained to do it, and thought in nothing larger than one step increments.

They struggled and died by the tens of thousands wading ashore from the landing craft to the beach, getting off the beachhead to an embankment for cover, rejoining a unit and moving forward, a footfall at a time, until the trickle from the beach became a torrent and that torrent became a flood facing murderous opposition from men who in many respects were their twins, but were on the other side for reasons that had as much to do with accidents of geography and birth as with ideology and politics.

Back in 1984 I had an opportunity with Bob 'The Human Sachtler' Garvin to retrace the assault on Normandy with a US Army unit who took their history very seriously. Bus loads of us, all stationed in Germany, arrived in considerably more style and comfort than the advance party in 1944 to discover every, or seemingly every, bar in the city limits of Normandy is called 6 Juin. 

At the bar (whose name you can guess) across from the church where a US paratrooper's chute had gotten snagged in the steeple and John Steele supposedly died in a hail of bullets from a Wehrmacht defender, spotlights illuminated the church top and a parachute still billowed as a human replica dangled and twisted from the rigging. As it turned out, he didn't die but was captured by the Germans only to escape and rejoin his unit.

Army chopper pilots are tough, hard cases, but even they softened when we toured Pointe du hoc where the US Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion achieved the impossible and it was but one brief moment in a non-stop amazing story of heroism that went on for weeks that summer for twelve allied nations, 

The beaches of Normandy are quite beautiful, if you don't mind looking at the remnants of the Mulberry Harbors that the Allies needed to use to stage reinforcements and supplies prior to the final assault on the beaches themselves.

The seagulls and sandpipers run ahead of you, by just inches, often backwards staring up at you, the flightless sojourner, walking among the washing of the waves trying, and failing, to imagine the carnage and chaos that covered every inch of these beaches all those years ago.

Our final day there, we devoted to the Normandy American Cemetery, a beautifully sad or sadly beautiful island of peace and calm created to honor those who died for those whom they never met but whose lives were made possible by their sacrifice. 

Today, if only for a moment, think about those men and, in looking at the challenges you face in your life, resolve to make a difference as best as you can, in much the way that they did, alone and far from home and hearth on a beach half a world away.

-bill kenny

Bagel Seeds

I hadn’t realized this past Monday was “National Be Nice to Someone Day” so I’d like to offer a belated thank you to you who obviously have nothing better to do to with your time. Might not be what the organizers had in mind but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

Actually, checking the calendar, which I do usually too late in the game to do me any good, I was bemused (no other word comes to mind) to discover today is National Donut Day (jimmies included), and proving (sort of, I guess) that knowledge is power, because you, too, now know it, we could go to Dunkin’ Donuts and get a free donut.

The holiday is SO BIG it has a second date, November 5^th; I most certainly hope the Christmas People are paying attention-and would it kill the pony rides for birthdays guys to follow what I think is a truly excellent example?

There are other places besides DD with free donuts, to include these guys. I haven’t seen or heard anything about Starbucks’ planned observances though I tend to see them as more coffee than cruller in this situation. 

I’d hope perhaps like that Christmas Truce of 1914, today could be a day where corporate competition and hostilities are set aside if only for the time it takes to brush the crumbs from your shirt.

And, silliness aside, it would be nice to search out the folks who (wo) man those red kettles around those aforementioned holidays, and make a donation because as they can tell you, need knows no days off.  And if you’re watching your figure, today is your day because you’ll never gain weight from a doughnut hole.

-bill kenny

Draw this Dog

I suppose I should explain how we got here, except I don’t know anything about you. I’m here because I do this every day of the year and have for a very long time. 

I understand my motivation, but all I can judge you on is your behavior. Whatever brings you here, thanks-some days that is as good as it gets. You will have to decide if this is one of those some days or not.  

I mention all that as a disclaimer for this stuff today. I was thinking about an acquaintance, who, I was told, was a member of Mensa (there’s this for Womensa; you’re welcome).  

Because of how I’m wired, I imagined the test for Mensa membership being akin to that dog’s head on the back of those old matchbooks you were challenged to draw. The Mensa part was in explaining the breed and knowing its Latin name, like ‘poopsus everywhereibus’ or ‘licksibus like a carwasharum.’ Or something similar.

When I smoked tobacco cigarettes, which I did like a chimney at three packs a day for 23 years and then stopped cold-turkey, I had a Zippo lighter, but always carried a book of matches ‘just in case.’ Yeah, I’d have been better advised to have carried another set of lungs, but too soon old-too late smart. 

Despite having the matchbook, I was never able to successfully draw a correct conclusion much less the dog. I find it interesting when you go to the Art Instruction Schools’ website, they don’t mention the dog at all.

If you’re waiting for a life lesson, we passed your stop already. There’s not a whole lot more to this than what you’ve just waded through. Some days the moving finger, having writ moves on; other days, one digit stands stock-still at attention like a sentinel at his post.

-bill kenny    

Ribbons of Euphoria

Calling all “Somebodies!” We know who we are. We’re the ones who see trash on the sidewalk and think “somebody should pick that up,” or watch people at Howard Brown Park throw bread to the ducks and seagulls right in front of the “Do Not Feed” signs and feel “somebody should tell them to stop.”

Yep, somebody should do a lot of things-not just here in Norwich, of course-but everywhere, though right here at home is a pretty good start.

In case you hadn’t noticed, along with a lot of other stuff, we’re having a ‘somebody’ shortage. It mostly happens because we think we don’t have the money or the talent or the time to be that somebody who makes a difference when, in just a minute or with no more money than that we’d otherwise spend on a cup of coffee, we can join our talents with others like (and unlike) us and BECOME the difference. If each of us gave a little we’d soon have a whole lot of a whole lot.

No single drop of rain feels itself responsible for the flood that follows and that, roughly, is how “crowdfunding” works. A trickle of dollars for a project or a cause you believe in is transformed into a river of change, literally and figuratively.

I love crowdfunding and have supported local projects to include a vegetable garden at Kelly Middle School and the successful effort to stage “Benedict Arnold” at what is now the Chestnut Street Playhouse.

We have another opportunity to be somebody who helps Downtown Norwich, specifically 90 Main Street as the Bold as Love Guild whose Go Fund Me page asks, “Why Not, Norwich?”

The page explains far better than I ever could how their goal is to be a creative space in the heart of the city that will both entice and showcase artistic expression as well as spur innovative initiatives of the very type that were, and still are (they believe, and so should we), a hallmark of cities and towns across New England.  

90 Main Street is that empty multi-story red building next door to the municipal garage, just up the street from Encore Justified, practically across from NCDC.  As their introduction to the community they hope to join, you can get a sneak preview by visiting them this Friday as part of  Downtown Norwich First Friday activities.

It’s a chance to “help make something beautiful happen” and those don’t come along every day. I hope you’ll put your money where their dream is, I did. It’s an investment from which all of us will benefit.

After all, some dance in the rain while others get wet. Who are you?
-bill kenny  

Thoughts Meander like a Restless Wind

Weather is always a lot more frightening on television for me than it actually is in real life. Watching the American Southwest and Midwest get pummeled by every manner of awfulness in terms of meteorology (okay, no rain of blood or frogs, but just about everything else) made me appreciate the great weather (okay it was hot and very humid) we have had in these parts.

It looks like in the course of the next few days we're going to get enough rain to make up for our "rain deficit" which is probably like attention deficit, but I wasn't paying attention when the TV weatherman explained it, but NOTHING to rival what Houston, Texas and about a dozen states had to handle. For which I am most grateful.

Passed on the highways and by-ways over the weekend a lot of folks with convertibles in the top-down mode which is okay I suppose (it's a little braggy if you ask me, but no one did) except they were almost all wearing hats which, to me, is like having a raincoat on when you're in the shower.  If you're committed to going topless then go all the way, otherwise go home.

Sunday, on my back from work on Route 12 going through Ledyard and Preston I passed the pile of rubble of the Norwich State Hospital's Kettler Building which is about all that's left of a century's efforts at institutionalized mental hygiene and hospitalization. There are a lot of gruesome tales told about the Norwich State Hospital which sat on close to 500 acres on the banks of the Thames River, and most of them don't have happy endings.

There are some buildings still standing on the "Preston" side of the property possibly because they are architecturally valuable or historic and all the buildings within the Norwich City limits, recently privately purchased, are still there as well.

But a great deal of the "campus" is gone. When you back to that Abandoned America link and realize 80% of what you see there is now gone, you get a sense of the size and scope of the demolition project. But for me on Sunday looking at all the twisted metal and broken brick, I wonder what becomes of all of that.

Are we sure inanimate objects have no sense of self or feelings because if they do what does the sheet rock  hauled away and dumped I don't know where think happened to the doorways and windows it once lined.

And, the biggest question of all, what became of all those who were cared for in those buildings. Sometimes, it seems to me those who made the decision to tear it all down wasted not a moment on that consideration.
-bill kenny

Just a Fleeting Sense of that Rare Suspense

Today, the first of June, according to meteorologists, marks the beginning of the Atlantic Hurricane Season. I don’t know what your plans are, but I’m hoping to hit the Hallmark Store on the way home to get a card, weather permitting of course. 

Considering the havoc in recent weeks that’s been visited upon huge expanses of the Mid and South West, and the ever increasing severity of the drought across the Western States(not forgetting the pounding much of us, but more especially those in the Northeast, took this past winter), there’s something vaguely “Olden Days” about a weather pattern or condition being pinned to a point on a calendar.

Breathe easy. I’m not trying to make a stealth point about the impact and/or consequences of human behavior and global warming, though I do believe there’s a correlation, otherwise God/Mother Nature/the Universe simply hates us. You can make up your own mind, but buying futures in umbrella manufacturing companies may not be a bad idea. Y’know, help you put away a little nest egg for a rainy day (did you see what I did there? Pretty suave, eh).

It’s either amazing or amusing that we are the only species on this planet to create a measurement system for a concept we casually call time which slices and dices and amalgamates and aggregates every moment, waking and sleeping, into seconds, minutes and days, all components of something we call a week which cumulatively become a year, a decade, a century. 

Sometimes we get lost in the noise of counting and calculating and forget the point is living the life everything else measures.

-bill kenny