Get Your Epitaph Right

I was teasing with an acquaintance (I have no friends) on how very similar, and sometimes too similar small towns everywhere are to one another. In many respects, regardless of politics or location, it's the same movie with a different cast. 

As a child growing up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the middle Sixties I was always fascinated to read how Washington's army during the Revolutionary War had slipped out of New York City, at the mouth of the Hudson River, under the cover of darkness but fought tooth and nail to hold on to New Brunswick, on the banks of the old Raritan River. 

New Brunswick, then, was like Norwich, New London, Plainfield, and a hundred other places you can think of is now. Varying degrees of plywood windows, people camping in entrances of long-gone enterprises, sidewalks rolled up after dark and a variety of other suburban ills, real and/or imagined. (back then, no opioid plague but lots of other secret sins and vices.)

The towns are mostly populated by those who chose (or were forced) to stay but didn't (and still don't) know how to stem the ebb of vitality and staunch the economic bleeding, and by the ghosts of those who departed, some faithfully and others with a faithless kiss. They have stories of past glories that we, who are not from here, have heard all the years we've lived here and no longer care about. Your Reid & Hughes building is my George Street Playhouse. No rights, no wrongs. Just us in this moment.

Economic development and national renewal, I suspect (actually I hope) will be major themes as the shouting and posturing for the Presidency grows louder as we near November, and that's well and good. We have become a nation of moochers and debtors, without thinking very much, much less twice about it. It's decades overdue that we start to think about how we pay for what we want and need (always two different words because they are two different notions), and I can only hope, that it's better late than never. 

One of the concerns I have when we look at the ruins of small towns so many call home, or here, is how we attempt to return to a point in the past that can never come again, and we make that idealized version of what once was into a definition of what we wish to be. When I returned to New Brunswick in 1991, getting off the turnpike on Exit Nine (knew you would ask) I saw a sign for a Hyatt House Hotel, I thought it was a joke. Nope. 

Where there had been a ghost town, there was now a downtown, full of shops and people. I had returned to my roots but I didn't recognize the tree. That didn't and doesn't make it 'bad', and for my children, who've never lived there, and for those whose children grew up there, it's all the town they've ever known. When the past keeps us from seeing a future, we need to shift the present.  

No one steps into the same river twice because both he/she and the river have changed. And while it's probably healthy to mourn what we miss, getting stuck in someone else's reverie will not help us get to where we want and need to be, either tomorrow or later today. Carpe Diem (Seize the Day) is only viable when you have a plan and a reason for what to do with the diem you've carped. 

A life without risk is safe, but not much of a life because a life without risk is a life without the joy of reward and who wants that? Innovation, Invigoration, and Invention all begin with "I"-that's probably not a coincidence, but a call to arms.
-bill kenny

Just Put Your Hand on the Screen

When we have the will and the inclination, we have the tools and technology to expand our world beyond our wildest imaginations. There is also the danger because we are humans with free will, to use those same tools to restrict and constrict the world as we see it or as we'd like it to be seen. The one-eyed monster found in living rooms from coast to coast and from McMansions through crack houses to mental wards can be a fulcrum from which we can move the world. Or it can be a cudgel to bludgeon those with whom we disagree into submission. 

There are no right answers on our fascination with and addiction to mainstream media just as there are no wrong answers as to which newspapers we read or what radio and television stations we watch for news and information. When the Founding Fathers, assisted by others, created the Bill of Rights (and this is a marvelous site), they could not have foreseen the world in which we now live. 

For them, freedom of speech, and within that, 'the press', was a matter of newspapers and broadsides (one sheet exhortations and excoriations on behalf of and in opposition to issues of Colonial America). The electric fires of today, burning out of control and consuming everything within reach could not be imagined nor controlled as it turns out, neither could their impact.

Now, when you touch that dial, you often have to do 'rock, paper, scissors' on where you turn and tune for news. Truisms are often truths, and perceptions of reality are frequently reality. Many people believe certain broadcast operators and cable providers are right or left of center (and those are some of the kinder names they're called) and cite numerous examples to support their positions. Meanwhile, the sum total of Americans who get their information on the world beyond their threshold from television (of any kind) continues to decline and the folks who manage the contents inside the video boxes insist they have no idea why.

TV news probably now does more persuasion and less informing because advocacy draws better ratings than reporting. Broadcasters and cable operators alike pander to audience 'segments' as long as those segments buy the products those broadcasts are sponsored by, from the advertisers who bought time because the broadcast's demographics could deliver certain groups in large numbers.....and round goes the gossip.

It's easy to 'hose the area' as electronic news gatherers call it when covering stories like immigration reform town hall meetings, HIV prevention rallies, TEA parties, LGBTQRST rallies, and what-have-you. And much of the time, proving we've come full circle, we're no longer actually watching events at all, but rather (now far more than) middle-aged white guys and all kinds of other people who are talking about events. Do you suppose Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington saw eye to eye on every aspect of what proved to be the American Revolution? Or perhaps they came to an agreement on the portions they shared and agreed to disagree, 'later', about the rest. Maybe we could try that again.

You must get as tired of reading it as I get of typing about it: the issues we face can't be captured in a seventy-second story with a ten-second stand-up location lock-out (TV speak for "in Bug Tussle, Oklahoma, I'm Edward R. Murrow."). They require our fullest attention, no matter our political beliefs (as a matter of fact, precisely because of our political beliefs). Not just Democrats or liberals require health care and not just Republicans or conservatives are taxed too much. And people who feel that way or who feel differently don't come from another dimension or drink their bath water (or any of the other insults we manufacture when we disagree with each other). 

The farther out into space you travel the more we all look alike down here. How about we agree to put the remotes down and nobody gets hurt? Step away from the cable box and keep the satellite dish where we can see it.
-bill kenny  

Songs for the Season

There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the Legion boys come 'round
She always stood her ground.

Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.

This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,
She couldn't be fooled by a company stool, she'd always organize the guys.
She always got her way when she struck for better pay.
She'd show her card to the National Guard
And this is what she'd say

You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

Now I'm a union man, amazed at what I am. 
I say what I think, that the company stinks. Yes, I'm a union man

When we meet in the local hall, I'll be voting with them all.
With a hell of a shout, it's "Out brothers, out!" and the rise of the factory's fall.

Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die. Until the day I die.

The union has made me wise to the lies of the company spies
And I don't get fooled by the factory rules 'cause I always read between the lines

And I always get my way if I strike for higher pay
When I show my card to the Scotland Yard and this is what I say:

Oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

Before the union did appear my life was half as clear
Now I've got the power to the working hour and every other day of the year

So though I'm a working man I can ruin the government's plan
And though I'm not hard, the sight of my card makes me some kind of superman

Oh, oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

Labor Day 2016. Robber Barons, Mega Banks and Wall Street ownership of the political process: too much; Working Poor, Subsistence Wages, Middle Class and Main Street: not enough. 
-bill kenny

Some Alternative Perspectives

Hazel Dickens

Phil Ochs

Sweet Honey in the Rock

-bill kenny 

You Can Stand Alone

"Patriotism," said George Bernard Shaw, "is your conviction this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." I tend to believe he might have offered that with his tongue firmly pressed against the inside of one of his cheeks, but it's just a short hop from that to "my country right or wrong," that's been making quite a comeback as reaction to Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand for the Star Spangled Banner before pre-season National Football League contests.

The "my country" quote disquiets me. Senator Stephen Decatur of Wisconsin, a man not known for tempered remarks, first said it. It's Carl Schurz's response I strive to uphold: "My country right or wrong; if right to be kept right, if wrong to be set right."

I don't know what you do when the National Anthem is played. We really only have about a minute alone with our thoughts. I tend to think about my Mom's brothers, Jim and John, who both served in the Army (John wounded in Korea before I was born) and my Dad's brothers, George and Jack. George was really Michael (I never understood it either) who was in the Army wave that retook Europe in World War II and Jack was in the Air Force during the Cold War.

Sometimes I think about those with whom I served who died: Jack P in Greenland who drowned on his way to the Ice Cap in the summer and Bruce S and Mike S who fell out of the sky in a helicopter filled with skydivers who all perished.

I think all of them, and each of us had and has a country in our heads and hearts when we see the flag and hear the national anthem and no two of us have or feel the same thing. But I'd hope you, actually all of us, see ourselves as more than just a piece of fabric and some words and a borrowed tune. Adlai Stevenson once offered, "Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

I am very grateful for what I have been given and for what I've convinced myself I have earned as an American. And having somehow lived four and sixty years in spaces and places across half this orb, I also recognize that my experience differs from yours and Kaepernick's.

Of course, some settling of contents occurs, our respective mileage varies and quite often the nine o'clock show is entirely different from the seven o'clock but we are all Americans even if we don't always see one another as All-American.

As our own Revolutionary Times were stirring, Samuel Johnson suggested "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels" and opinions about Kaepernick's action have helped reinforce one or more aspects of that observation. So much for the hope, desire and goal "with liberty and justice for all' with which we conclude our Pledge of Allegiance.

Instead we angrily argue about history, respect, and honor when a professional athlete says, "I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag." That a half-century on, we're still having the same discussions without any effort to create solutions only proves Mark Twain's point, "action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often."
- bill kenny 

Huh

I'm thinking as we start a three day weekend (except for me who took today off so I could have a four day one instead) that today is as good a time as any to expose and examine the Secrets of the Illuminati for some ideas about ------ LOOK BIKES!!!

Yeah. It happens to me and it happens to you, too. We start across a synapse with the best of intentions: I will construct a sentence about a specific topic and SHINY OBJECT ALERT! Or some such Florella.

Suddenly we're trapped in a non-sequitur or an intellectual cul de sac and have lost the train of thought from the locomotive right through to the conductor with the pocket watch. That reminds me of the time ---- SEE WHAT HAPPENS!!

Here. Read this, but just a bit at a time, maybe a paragraph or two, otherwise you'll forget that you're reading it in the first place. I started on it last year and then, suddenly....WHAT? DRY CLEANING BAGS FILLED WITH MARS GAS!

That was close, maybe a little too close.
Glad I wasn't doing any home repair work.
-bill kenny

Short Takes

I saw an adult male the other day with a Mohawk haircut, but the part that wasn't in the Mohawk was shaved to the naked scalp. He was wearing a three-piece suit that probably cost twice what my car is worth. I cannot imagine what he does for a living to be able to do what he does for a living. He wasn't a young guy, either. I'm not real good at guessing ages, or weight for that matter so that career as a Carney is out. 

Actually, he was closer to being my age and he looked as goofy as the guys with whom I didn't go to Woodstock together all look. You've seen them too; they have long hair, gray and frayed and wispy, in a ponytail. Nothing sticks it to the man like a Volvo station wagon, Teva sandals and the green 'we recycle' grocery bag while shopping for tofu and bean sprouts. Fight the Power!

Here's somebody I'd like the 'man' to stick it to. The auto-American cretin who compensates for his car's driver's side headlamp burned out by driving with his high beams on and not dimming them as you and he approach one another. Yeah, I remember what Driver Ed said: don't retaliate and turn yours on; it makes two blinded drivers but still.... My son gave me a great idea-I turn off all my lights which makes it a lot easier for Hi (no Lois) to see me behind the wheel as I visually suggest that he's my #1 special friend, but not in that way. 

I also don't know what to do about the driver who goes up a one-way street the wrong way (slowly because he certainly doesn't want to cause an accident) for a short distance, to pull into somebody's driveway, rather than go around the block. I love when he comes nose to nose with a car coming down the street the correct way and they glare at each other like Mr. Upstream Salmon has any comeback at all. Or that guy's cousin, the driver who backs up a one-way street the wrong way with the car flashers on, so I guess the backing up doesn't count as much. 

Speaking of counting, how many crumbs from the toaster tray do you suppose it takes to assemble an entire piece of bread, and can you toast that slice when you're done? And why, on my Facebook page, does it say "you must log in to see this page"? Don't they mean "you must log in to see the NEXT page" since I can see the log-in page just fine?

And help me out on this one. We are in the thick of the Presidential election campaigns. How long after the votes are counted this November will we continue to see bumper stickers for the folks who ran? And, yes, I'm still Feeling the Bern and have the window sticker to prove it. We should remember a ready razor blade can be our friend, if not always especially friendly to Occam.
-bill kenny