A Miss Is as Good as a Mile

I lived for a not inconsiderable amount of my years outside the United States (the total percentage of my life lived like that gets smaller every day (that’s a math joke, btw)) and nearly all the Europeans I encountered were constantly bewildered and bemused at how lackadaisical we as Americans were, and are, about exercising the power of voting. 

Most (Western) European nations back in the day had balloting on Sundays and turnout of registered voters was about 80% and more. In Eastern Europe, balloting was held at a secret time and location but turnout was almost always 100% (that’s a geopolitical joke of sorts).

Far more of us can name all the members of the Kardashian Family and Friends than know who the nine members of the Supreme Court are. I just tripped myself up there with a mini-movie of Chief Justice Kanye announcing the expansion of the Fair Housing Act while Associate Justice, Kimster, breaks the internet with her dissent. I sometimes fear my reveries could be realities.

At last count the only people NOT seeking the Presidential nomination of a major party are you and I and I’ve heard a story that if you can get that felony off your record, you might still try. Good luck with that, by the way; quite frankly if it hadn’t been such an ugly sheep, no one would have called the cops.

Sadly, I am already predicting, the enthusiasm to BE a candidate will not translate well come the General Election after the party primaries, demolition derby debates and the swimsuit competition (yeah, I’m looking at you, Governor Christie) in terms of voter participation. It never does.

I don’t know if it’s our inherent cynicism (let’s face it, too often it really does seem to be a ‘choice of cancer or polio’) or our nearly terminal Attention Deficit Disorder that impacts our concentration on-LOOK! BIKES!- something as important as our nation’s tomorrow. Sorry about the bikes, but they were so shiny and had streamers on the handlebars.

This is an infinity of mirrors parlor trick story. On a slow news day, the folks we rely on to tell us what’s important in the world decide this (somehow) is. But instead of concentrating on the talents and abilities of those seeking our nation’s highest office (let that phrase and the image of Donald Trump roll around in your brain for a moment; yeah, makes me smile, too) that is a sidebar to a story about two young women who get their pictures taken with the candidates. You can read a LOT more about them here. 

No need to thank me for finding that for you and, of course, you are welcome. We may be stupid around here (yeah, I’m looking at you and those goofy glasses, Governor Perry) but we are always polite. Even when we say ‘no problem’ in response to others saying ‘thank you.’ 

Think of this kind of political near-involvement as a Grey Line Tour to Hitler’s Bunker during the Fall of Berlin while on speed. Not that I would know anything about that (that was a pharmaceutical joke). It’s a result not unlike what might happen if we sent Cynthia Plaster Caster to shoot a documentary on the College of Cardinals. In Saint Louis, of course. Where did you think I meant? 

-bill kenny

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Sometimes life imitates art-at other moments, it exceeds it in ways we could not possibly have ever imagined. I smiled, actually more like a grimace than a grin, the other day reading the newspaper (and social media) coverage of Chelsea Botanical Gardens and Mohegan Park. 

I don’t think anyone would confuse Norwich’s Wilderness Drive and Judd Road with Birnam near the castle at Dusinane, and yet, as it so happens, the woods are indeed moving. Or in this case being clear-cut. What remains unresolved, at least to me, is for what purpose, to what end, and for whose benefit any of this could be happening.

The Bulletin’s Adam Benson, I thought (and still do), did an admirable job in his coverage as this story unfolded from all the way back in late April and early May through to the present day. 

Re-reading the on-line comments posted in reaction to the first two stories (actually, there were NO reader comments on the April story) there was a very strong, reasoned and reasonable discussion building among and between various folks on the viability and feasibility of the entire project. 

However, sometimes our human nature being what it is when we can choose between ‘getting it right’ and ‘getting it right now’ we opt for the latter and worry not at all about the consequences of such a choice.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take any time at all for our variation of the Three Witches, gathered around the cauldron, to transform what should have been (but never was) a community-wide discussion which included as many interested residents as possible instead into “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” 

As follow-up stories were published, to include a report on comments offered at a City Council meeting that seemed to result in less, not more clarity of purpose and communication, which in turn precipitated letters to the editor and a lead editorial advocating accountability and transparency that seemed to get lost in the noise, an already contentious topic became for lack of a better term incendiary. 

What at times for over two-plus decades has seemed to be a less than well-articulated and even less well-understood plan for a significant tourist attraction has, maybe just for me, become a source of a lot of heat but surprisingly little light, in terms of progress and a path to success.

And I’m not sanguine that we’ll see a lot of improvement anytime soon as across the pages of various social media lines are drawn in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS which I’m told online is the same as shouting. 

All this time I just thought people were proud of their spelling ability. Live and learn, I guess. We are frequently in error but rarely in doubt and sometimes each of us is convinced we have The truth when all we really have is A truth. We should try harder to speak to, rather than yell at, one another.

-bill kenny

Better to Turn Off One Light

The more things change, the more they don't. What follows are musings from this time six years ago. I'm not happy to report there is NO update possible because NONE has happened. It's early when I go to work, not as early as when my brother Adam heads out, and by the time I do he's gotten most of the chickens fed and the cows milked, which works out well for me since my employment efforts are confined mostly to the mess the back ends make. 

At the foot of Washington Street, which is also a state highway whose number, even after all these years of living here, I cannot remember, right next to the church with a sign that once advised, "Life is Short, Pray Hard" at the intersection with the Sweeney Bridge, is a traffic signal that captures relationships in and with The Rose City. 

The light sits at the junction of a "T". Those coming down the hill who go right AND those coming up the hill who go left, all head in the same direction over the bridge onto what becomes Route 82 (I think). Maybe that's what happened to Norwich-everyone went for a drive and drove over the one-way bridge and never came back because they can't. The traffic signal is a beacon and often a vexation and, I suspect not for me alone, a cause for some head-shaking. 

No matter the hour, this traffic signal is on duty--no blinking light, red for us and yellow for the other folks. No pause and go-no roll on through and have a nice day. Nope, nada. It works 24/7 every day of the year. Once, during a truly awful snow storm it was a blinking light (red in both directions-that was very helpful, especially for those struggling to get up the hill) but only that one snowstorm. I wasn't sure what to make of the state snow plows NOT heeding the red blinking light as they blew right on through it, so I decided I imagined it (I'll bet you didn't know there's a difference between city snow and state snow.Yepper).

Again, as always, yesterday morning the traffic signal was red when I reached it. It's not on a sensor and if it's on a timer, it's more of a calendar than a clock, based on my experience. My red signal lasted five and a half minutes at four something in the morning (Yes, my life is that empty I timed it. In fairness, it's NOT always that long, so add inconsistency to the list of quirks.).

The part I find funny is at the time of day I'm there, it's not unusual to NOT see another vehicle for the entire timeI'm at the light. Yesterday was a bit weird when the walk/don't walk signal came on, and there were NO pedestrians. For a moment I thought I saw a barbecue, but that would have been quite a feat...so I'll imagine I thought I saw a 'puddy tat.'

Eventually (of course) the signal changed, otherwise I'd be trying to type this on a cell phone (and be cited for violating CT's hands-free law) and I had f-i-f-t-e-e-n seconds of green light (that amount of time is a constant; go figure). I've driven the street at all times of the day and every day of the week and it's not always like that so I have to wonder why, at oh-bright-early it can't be blinking. I'm counting on, eventually, the bulb(s) in the signal, mine (red) and the oncoming (green), just burning out and motorists can then drive happily ever after or until they reach the next intersection at the Laurel Hill Bridge. 
-bill kenny

Still An Imponderable.....

Last time I had an original idea it died of loneliness so this is a revisit to a somewhat familiar place to discover I know no more now than I did then. More and more we live in a word-less world. By that, I don't mean a silent one but rather, a world in which you can scrape by with pictures and symbols. I love looking at the tags in shirts--it's like a graduation from Semaphore University. There's no bleach, hang-dry only, wash in cold water, dolphin-free, dry-clean, only etcetera. 

I thought it reassuring that no matter where in the world you travel those symbols are the same until I realized it has a lot to do with the manufacturing process and that almost all the clothes we buy, no matter where in the world we live, are made in the same third-world sweat shops. That's more likely the reason why the care symbology at the collar is the same. Oh. 

I'm not going to hold a Geography Bee with Carmen Lauer and Matt San Diego on where our clothes are made, because I have no trouble finding my way around as nearly everyone, be it at home or at work, tells me where to go. And that's an unfair advantage even for television stars to overcome. 

What I am intrigued by is how our technology, not knowing where in the world we will use it, has created its own language to which we have universally adapted. Do you remember when you used to yell for 'Help!'. Our machines' clocks do the same thing, sort of, except they flash 12:00--we all know that means there's trouble at the mill and are now conditioned, when we see it, to look around for a cause. 

My smartphone does this weird little vamp when it's loading an application (I had to ask someone who knows about phones to describe that process so I could write it down here. I have so little idea of how the device works, when it doesn't work, someone else has to tell me as I cannot figure it out by myself). Maybe yours does the 'gimme a minute jitterbug', too.

It looks like a vertical bow-tie and then it starts to whirl and twirl in a clockwise direction. Someone told me it's NOT a bow-tie at all, it's supposed to be an hour glass. That actually makes more sense to me, since that would have something to do with time, which is what the device is wasting, and not neckwear, of which I have a closetful though I have no idea of its purpose (or didn't) even though most workdays I wear one. 

Every time I see the posters for the raffles, there's always the disclaimer at the bottom, 'duplicate prizes awarded in the event of ties' and I keep thinking, today's the day. Good fortune, here I am! Luck be a Lady tonight. And yet all I ever win is a dry-clean only dolphin two sizes too small, no bleach only.
-bill kenny

Across the River to the Jersey Side

Growing up in Jersey (what exit? Nine) my point of reference was alway New York and with apologies to the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten island, when I say New York, I mean Manhattan. It was and remains the City of Lights for generations of Jersey kids, north of Trenton.

But when you're closer to Philly than NYC, as you are when you grew up in Delran Township, being a Lady Scarlet Knight is a big deal unless/until you win Olympic Gold in your sport, twice, and then on the biggest stage in women's soccer, the Federation of International Football Associations' World Cup held in Canada in the summer of 2016, you take your squad on your back and win the championship practically by yourself, a trip to NYC is part of the Big Wave Drill as your nation celebrates you and your teammates as you roll through the Canyon of Heroes.

Before you applaud Carli Lloyd's luck, maybe you should see the pluck she showed in preparing every day for years to be ready for the moment and the exclamation point she placed on it less than a fortnight ago. I guess that old saying is true, "the harder I work, the luckier I get."

So Friday, Carli Lloyd got to head eighty-three miles North by Northeast to New York City to join the USWNT for a well-deserved victory lap. Meanwhile, the sky-is-falling-or-will-soon-be experts across the country and around the world are looking at the 2019 World Cup and sizing up projected rosters of opponents and fretting about that fourth star on the US Women's national jerseys.

Four of this year's 23 member squad came from the Jersey Side. And with all due respect to the fine programs in Sweden, Germany and Japan, I have it on good authority that "nothing else matters in this whole wide world, when you're in love with a Jersey Girl."
-bill kenny

Paved and also Extremely Warm

You probably never knew Mr. Roark. Had my luck been better, I, too, could say the same. He was the athletic director at Carteret Preparatory Academy for Boys in West Orange, New Jersey in 1970. He may have been the AD for the previous two centuries, based on the world-weariness with which he seemed to survive every day surrounded by hundreds of us little shirted and tied glow in the dark white preppie kids who thought the world was our oyster. I never knew his first name. He was so old he may have been born before first names were invented. 

I remember him really only for one, beyond devastating, put-down of our physically gifted (though intellectually somewhat diminished) football halfback offered as a performance critique on a very long bus ride back from Admiral Farragut Military Academy after we had had our collective buttocks not-so surgically removed by their football team, highlighted by an (ahem) ill-advised quick kick by this halfback that hit our quarterback full in the face, knocking him out cold on the field, and causing the ball to roll into our own end zone where the Farragut entire team, including the bench, cheerleaders and very possibly the scoreboard operator all pounced it on their way to a triple-digit victory. 

The only sound on the ride back on the Garden State Parkway was of the transmission gears shifting and we all sat forward on our seat cushions as Mr. Roark, a glutton for punishment if there ever was one (or maybe just someone trapped in a marriage he no longer liked who couldn’t afford a divorce), who traveled with every sports team to every away game, leaned into the aisle across from the halfback to offer the following (I remember it forty-five years later as if he had just said it): ‘if they put your brain in a mosquito’s a-s, it would roll around and make a noise like a BB in a boxcar.’

That’s the sound I heard a moment ago as I read this NBC news story and started shaking my head. The American Civil Liberties Union, everybody’s favorite punching bag when we yell at one another and pretend it’s a discussion, on exercising constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, is right in the thick of this one as they always are and as they were so long ago for even more egregious imbeciles who desired to exercise their right to be obnoxious in Skokie, Illinois. I suspect after a day in court representing their client, they scrub off with a metal brush under a chemical shower in the hopes of getting all of it off themselves.

I’m thinking the Klansmen’s ardor for highway clean-up will cool noticeably once they learn the color of the pavement they are seeking to patrol. Perhaps an arrangement can be made to allow them to clean the underside of the roadway. That way, their efforts shouldn’t disturb the flow of traffic and motorists can leave those left blinkers on all the way to the Florida Panhandle.

-bill kenny     

Sure Seemed Like a Good Idea

Have you ever seen those bags of candy in the grocer’s with the itty-bitty sized Snickers and Three Musketeers bars in them that some marketing genius wants me to consider “fun size?” That stuff always gets a big negatory headshake from me. 

To my way of thinking “fun size” should be REALLY BIG candy bars the size of a Honda Accord or a Chevy Spark (if you insist on “Buy American” not that you just did with that choice) not teeny-tiny candy bars. What a weird idea of fun.

I mention that because the Nabisco people have a serious contender in the category of Dubious Idea of the Year and it’s only July-Oreo Thins. I would have been perfectly willing to give somebody at the main office a Nobel Prize if the proposal had been to rename the Double Stuff Oreos, Oreos, and call these new things, Nearly Oreos. 

Here’s my concern: Oreo Thins are not intended to be twisted open so that we can eat the vanilla cream filling (or whatever synthetic approximation it really is and, no, don’t tell me I don’t want to know) nor are we supposed to dunk them in milk. What? NOT dunk them. What kind of an Oreo cookie is this?

Back in my day, an Oreo was two snacks in one: the vanilla cream filling and the two chocolate wafers as a sort of dessert on the dessert, for afterwards. They even had a how-to song! I will confess that my brother Adam’s birthday is something I don’t always remember; the Oreo Song I cannot ever forget. 

When did Oreo shaming become a thing and don’t tell me that this is NOT that because it is. Seriously. Why else would anyone (anywhere) try to tell me an Oreo with a lot of the filling removed should now be considered ‘sophisticated.’ Oh? Who eats Oreos to be sophisticated? Poppycock! They are fun to eat which is why they are the way they are and I am not alone in that belief.

And as it so happens cookie makers take note, things aren’t all that happy in Happy Valley either nor will they ever be- not when you provoke the wrath of the Nittany Lions, however briefly. So you just keep  cowering behind that “really super-duper swell new idea” drawing board you have there until you come up with something the folks in Dubuque can embrace. And Oreo Thins ain’t it.

-bill kenny