Mencken & McLuhan

We all know someone who is angry and unhappy about the US presidential selection process and the manner in which it’s unfolding (if no one else, me). That we have a year plus before we get to Hammersmith is of no solace at all. 

In light of the product thus far resulting from the process, I think we should be grateful we don’t have one of the Real Housewives from Wherever They Come From running neck and neck with somebody who won last week’s Survivor Challenge. 

And I probably shouldn’t have just expressed that fear. Come to think of it, where is that ‘Does a Bear Eat a Pope in the Woods’ guy? He’d make it a real party.

There’s a song offered in certain circumstances at German gasthouses, usually late in the evening when it’s been very thirsty. Or so I’m told, as I have no first-hand knowledge of the matter at all. And the song goes, “Wer soll das bezahlen? Wer hat das bestellt?” Who pays for that? Who ordered that?

The answer there as it is here, always, is we did. There’s no need to send in the clowns, let me adjust your squeaky nose while you check the pressure on my seltzer bottle. Ready, go!  

Without claiming to have found the gunmen on the grassy knoll, I'd suggest we started to wander and waver in terms of our less than faithful relationship to facts and items of importance the night in the latter 90's when we tuned into the national séance that was AC and OJ driving the Bronco into our collective consciousness. 

From then on, and most especially after the murderous catastrophe of 9/11 we were afraid of everything, most especially to be left alone with our thoughts and felt compelled to have the noise, I meant news, always on in the background, 'just in case something happens.' 

Except the care and feeding of these 24/7 news delivery cable beasts would prove to be challenging, a challenge maybe we could (should?) have seen but since the cable news pimps aim to grab folks for no more than about 11 minutes at a time, they contributed to, while benefiting from, the diminution and dilution of our attention spans. What? My point exactly. 

As Orwell's Big Brother discovered, if you tell us often enough we are at war with Oceania we'll agree with you when you tell us we've always been at war with Oceania. Thinking is hard, believing is easy.

Keep showing us Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and Miley Cyrus and since you have them on the 'news' they must be newsworthy, right? That whole walks like a duck and talks like a duck thing. There’s some kind of straight line from Perez Hilton to Edward R. Murrow. And yet there’s a shadow of a doubt when you think about it, so don’t think about it.

Most of us can name all the judges on America's Got Talent and American Idol- and not know ANY names on the Supreme Court. (What about that singing group with Diana Ross? Huh? How about partial credit for that answer?)

Instead of using our inventions as a window to see farther and further into the universe, we've created a mirror where our inner Narcissus can stare unendingly into our own eyes right here in the Republic of Me. And if our eyes don’t see as well as they once did, even as the wool is pulled over them yet again, it might be thanks to the toxic trail emanating from the electric fire in the corner of the room.

-bill kenny

Paging One of Neil Sedaka's Calendar Girls

More blasts from my personal past, back when I used to be good at this (LIES! I was never good at this). Too soon it's too late and smart enough is not yet. I was trying my hand at Rastafarian haiku, an obscure art form that no one who practices either of its primary disciplines is even aware of. Think of me as a ninja poet, mon. 

Good that I'm here now, but it would have been gooder early in the month. Did you know last Wednesday, the 5th, was National Underwear Day? I confess I did not know that and let's just gloss over the circumstances in which I don't explain how I found it out. Mainly because there are some parole stipulations that I sometimes see as mere suggestions and I'd rather not revisit those issues. At least not with witnesses. 

I currently have a New Yorker magazine cartoon desk calendar I always tell people my wife got me for Christmas-except she didn't. I bought it myself, but I was allowed to buy it only because I promised to not buy another Far Side or Dilbert one because those are my favorite desk calendars. 

Someday, Dilbert and his (my) two best buddies, Calvin and Hobbes, are going to move to the Far Side and then no one will ever care again what day of the week it is, me most especially. 

According to that calendar, last Monday (the 3rd) was also Picnic Day in Australia, Northern Territory (which could be Japan if you go head far enough North, 'recalculating'). This is why the Internet is so wonderful. You can find this stuff out in two clicks of a mouse tail unless you have an Apple. 

Around these parts, we'd just say 'day off' but other places get fancy and make it all special. "Picnic Day"-sounds like something Yogi and Boo-Boo should be trying to outwit Ranger Smith about. Except Jellystone is NOT part of the Northern Territory, though, again, depending on the map, Indonesia could be. 

My wall calendar, printed in India, also shared that last Monday was "Civic Holiday (Canada)" and I thought it was kind of lazy to not tell me which civic holiday until (you guessed it), I looked that up to discover it's actually called Civic Holiday even by people who drive Corollas. I love the admonition "so please don't work!" in the explanation. 

Sometimes, I think Canadians as a different race with their boots instead of trunks and their lovely manners and Celine Dion. If you close your eyes, slightly, while in Detroit and squint, you can almost see Windsor, Ontario, as a Northern Territory. That's sort of what William Hull did, but badly. 

We're nearing the end of intimate apparel week though you'll probably want to disrobe in the privacy of your own home unless my suggestion on Tumblr to make this #FullFrontalFriday catches on. 

Forty-one years ago this past Sunday, Gerald R. Ford became the 38th US President as Richard M. Nixon resigned. Ford proceeded to trip over his wife, Betty's, dressing gown just to stay in practice. She was wearing it at the time. 

And Sunday was also Philippines Book Lovers Day which is just a disturbing enough image for those of us with idle minds that I, for one, hope we're using the Roberts Rules of Order interpretation of Northern Territory. 
-bill kenny

With Apologies to Willie S....

My daughter, Michelle, and I took advantage of the glorious weather we had near the end of last week to stretch our bounds as well as our legs last Friday for our evening walk after dinner.

When I was a schoolchild this was the part of the summer I dreaded, after the first dog days and heat had passed, came the realization as temperatures turned "crisper" (a word my mom always used) that the sun was showing up a little later every morning and calling it a day a little earlier each evening.

That could only mean the return to school was around the corner. As a man of sixty-three, its meaning is a bit more somber now, I know, but despite the memories and the worries, I put my best forward as we started our walk from near Chelsea Parade, down Broadway to Union Street.

We discovered to our enjoyment that it was First Friday in downtown Norwich and we passed larger than normal groups, bordering on crews and nearing the size of crowds, on the sidewalks of Lower Broadway around the Norwich Arts Center at the Donald L. Oat Theater with, I'm guessing now, both the curious and the cognoscenti flowing through the doors to check out the new (and the new to them) artwork being offered.

We could hear someone busking near Franklin Square, just down from the Gallery at The Wauregan, also with a large crowd, as most of the gallery patrons merely nodded in acknowledgement of his efforts while he remained undeterred and undaunted by the race and roar of motorized traffic passing him on Main Street.

On Main Street was a hustle and bustle at Harp and Dragon and on the Upper Main portion, beyond the traffic barricades, was a lively pedestrian zone packed with people who were face painting or taking a brush and colors in hand to work on their own art while others were admiring the myriad of goods created with duct tape and still others enjoyed the memories and mysteries found on the sidewalk in front of and inside Encore Justified.

You could clearly hear the music of the Friday Night Acoustics at Howard Brown Park- it offered a perfect soundtrack to a marvelous movie

We made our way home by way of Franklin Street and pressed our noses nearly to the glass at These Guys Brewing Company at 78 Franklin Street watching as all hands were putting the finishing touches on what promises to be a terrific addition to Norwich (they open this Friday, with a full menu so come hungry)    

We had a great walk and a great time as we wandered "over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier, over park and over pale." Norwich in the Summer of 2015.
-bill kenny

This Metaphor Tastes Just Like Chicken

Not that many weeks ago during a visit to one of the members of the small army of health care professionals whose efforts keep me alive, we had a discussion on placing a frog in a pot of boiling water vice a pot at room temperature which is then heated.

My point, I believe, was that we are infinitely physically and morally adaptable and malleable and can come to accept as a way of life and 'how things have always been' situations and circumstances that only a short time earlier (in relative terms) we would have vociferously howled against in protest and opposition.

His concern, as someone whose English is excellent but for whom it is a second language was in dismantling the premise of the statement rather than its conclusion and before we knew we were talking about the actual temperature of boiling water, how large a pot and how deep in terms of its sidewalls and the age and strength (and leaping ability) of the frog.

Knowing how he feels about the Affordable Care Act, from his perspective as a provider vice mine as a consumer, when he submitted to my insurance carrier his claim for compensation for my visit and got stiffed, again, in terms of his remuneration, I expect I can guess whom he blamed. And never wondered why it seemed so much warmer than when he opened the practice that morning.
-bill kenny

With an Inside Pocket Full of Change and Memories

If you've stopped in here over the last nearly eight years (yeah, I know; imagine how old that feels on this side of the screen), you've long since realized my heart beats on the left side of my chest and my politics tends to more often than not follow my heart.

With that as prologue, you will not be surprised to learn I did not watch any of the two Republican Candidates for President Debates, either the Really Big Shoe, sorry Ed, that was on in prime time, or the one earlier for the candidates at the kiddie table, with the sippy cups and the drop cloth on the floor to facilitate easy clean-up. But it doesn't mean I cannot enjoy an informed and dispassionate report on aspects of life in the arena.

Ever since the Republicans in Congress in October of '13 gave me and my fellow federal employees some extra time off in a sword-fish fight with the President over the budget that was reduced to Moot Point, I've not had a lot of use for anyone who stands for any office from the Party of Lincoln (especially as many of its members think that's a reference to a luxury automobile of the Ford Motor Company).

Besides, the current crop of Republicans aren't like any of the ones I grew up with. There's no Bill Scranton, Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Percy, Everett Dirkson, Edward Brooke, Clifford Case or Peter Frelinghuysen or Millicent Fenwick (most of those folks wouldn't get an invite to the current "party").

My prejudice, and that is exactly what it is and I make NO apology for it, means "the other folks" (the Democrats) have extra pressure to seek out people for whom I could vote (and often fall very short of the mark as well).

I say it that way because I'm the kind of asshat who went to local elections in November of 2013 (and last year, too) and after ignoring all those on the ballot with (R) after their names discovered about two people on the entire ballot I could actually endorse. I'd brought a pocket novel, so I did some reading as I'd have otherwise been out of the polling place so fast I would have knocked myself down coming out going in.

With all due respect to the very sainted Thomas Paine, whom more than one of these representatives of the Crypto-Fascist wing of the Republican Party are so inordinately fond of quoting, these are the times that try a man's soul and also, seemingly allow for a thorough if uninformed discussion of a woman's reproductive rights without actually conceding that a woman has any rights in this area at all.

And nearly all of these discussions, these verbal and intellectual abominations, happen in the name of a Lord that, were S/He to meet any of these clowns as they got out of the car, wouldn't waste the seltzer it would take to drown them.

So far, I've concluded nearly all those seeking office seem to agree on is that anyone who doesn't worship as they do or have the same sexual preference as theirs or know the secret handshake that unlocks the political action committee dollars to abrogate and nullify the basic freedoms of speech and choice outlined in the Bill of Rights they wipe their butts with (when given the chance) will be unsuccessful in gaining my vote or even earning my respect.

You have been weighed and found wanting. Move along, little doggies.
-bill kenny

The Visitor

My father came to visit me at some point on Saturday. I'm not sure of the time as I was sleeping, though at the time of his visit, I wasn't sure I was. And my father is dead, for longer than my son, our oldest child, has been alive, to say nothing of his younger sister, our daughter, so I'm a little unsure about a lot more than just the hour on the clock of his visit.

In my dream if that was what I was having I was keenly aware that he was dead, and I'm very sure he, too, knew that as well but neither of us mentioned it, nor was I even slightly tempted when tested after some pretty serious provocations that my father might have insisted somewhat disingenuously were not intended as disparagements at all, unless 'a guilty conscience needs no accuser.'

Technical questions like how did he know where we lived and how did he know we were home weren't raised either in the course of the dream which, as I've sampled the literature may have lasted a mere moment but felt to me, the one having it, like unending hours.

I don't remember specifics in terms of words exchanged or topics of conversation but rather I recall the waking up and feelings of inadequacy and the sense of having him let him down that was so much of our actual lives together.

The sense of somberness and discouragement I carried with me for many hours Saturday morning after rising into the early afternoon where it was drowned out by the distractions of the day as it unfolded was sadly familiar as I felt that for so much of my growing up years.

The lie of 'it's for my own good' only covers so much bruising and so many scars when you say it to yourself as a kid with no power to refute or resist but a half century and more since you last said it, it helps not at all anymore.

I have no idea what triggered this visitation, if that's what it was, or what lesson aside from the profound disappointment I have been so far for him I was supposed to take away from the episode.

It won't discourage me from opening and welcoming whomever next knocks on my door, but it may have something to do with long I let them stay in my house, in my head or in my heart.
-bill kenny

Java Jive

Between the end of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Republican Presidential debate all happening earlier this week with all the "it's coming! It's Coming!" each event received across all platforms, I got lost on an important piece of sadness, of sorts, that I just caught up on.

I remember as a kid my mom and dad had a stove-coffee percolator. They had a shiny and quite fancy silver one, all electric, for when Gramma and Grampy for dinner at a holiday (they had six children as did my parents so I imagine they had quite a scheduling trick to fit in all their kids, and their kids, for meals and visits). 

We couldn’t ever immerse the electric coffee pot in the sink to clean it while the stove-top one looked like it had been around since the war of the babies. Mr. Coffee changed all that. Mr. Coffee changed everything.

As an adult, I grew up drinking mostly instant coffee though I was always tempted to emulate Walt Garrison and skip the spoon and cup, but didn’t. No one I knew had a Mr. Coffee-heqq, no one I knew could afford one.

The Mr. Coffee makers became as popular in their day and way as the Keurig machines are these days helped in no small part by Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio as their spokesperson. Until he died earlier this week, I wouldn’t have known who Vincent Marotta, Sr., was if I had found him at the bottom of a coffee cup.

But he was, for all intents and purposes, Mr. Coffee. It’s early as I type this and I try to limit myself to no more than three cups of coffee in a day, but this cup’s for you, sir, with the deepest of affection and most finely ground Arabica.       

-bill kenny