That Ain't What Scares Me Baby

I often wonder, in light of the journey so far, if he who travels fastest misses the entire point of the sojourn when he has no one with whom to share it. As someone who was very much, and for very long, unlovable, this is a day of major import and minor miracle for me all at the same all at the same time. I celebrate my fortieth Valentine's Day with the love of my life, Sigrid.

I looked at photos of my wife and me back when we were fab and she was, as she still is, absolutely beautiful to me. It took zero intelligence for me to fall in love with her at first sight and something far rarer than intelligence to help us stay in love all those years on. I do find myself looking at her, then and now, and wondering if she still sees me as I was or as I am now and if the latter, why does she stay?

We have, she and I, grown old together which causes me to smile as I had nothing nearly so grand in mind when I first saw her. And there are those who knew me back before the day who would be amazed that she kept me nailed to one place long enough for all those years to have become all these years, and to some degree, I echo their amazement. 

We share a life that isn't and will never be the one I thought I wanted when I believed things worked out the way we desired (if we only wanted something bad enough), but when I reach the end of every day, to include today, I look at her and at our two adult children, Patrick and Michelle, and know that I love, and am loved by, them and I can't complain about some settling of the contents during shipment. Happy Valentine's Day.
-bill kenny

Timeless or Just Out of Time?

This was originally called "Explains Geoffrey's Black Armband." I think it still does.

The Scandinavian people in my experience are some of the most polite, thoughtful and considerate fellow-travelers here on Spaceship Earth. Practically Canadian. And yet, as if to help prove that on any given Sunday any team can be—WHAT? Oh, that’s an NFL thing. Sorry. See? That apology is very Scandinavian, too, but over the weekend, this happened, and try as I might I can’t really suggest what I would/could/should have done.

When Sigrid and I lived in Germany we never passed up an opportunity to go to a zoo, and had the good fortune to have a world-class one in Frankfurt not that we didn’t ‘cheat’ and see other animals in other places when we weekended.

As you’ve read in the article, the scientific director of the Copenhagen Zoo received death threats over this chain of events which suggests a degree of passion I thought the Danes reserved only for Danish Dynamite, their national football club. Some things can NOT be unseen; that was one of them.

I concede that reading an account of this in the Grey Lady, The New York Times, may not be the ideal venue or medium because of the resolute striving to NOT take sides that is a hallmark of the paper (though I may ruin your enjoyment of pictures, accounts and descriptions when I tell you that many people don’t fully realize its editorials are usually on the front page). Despite that snarkiness I must also add it’s more Fair and Balanced asleep than Faux Gnus is when wide-awake (in my opinion).

Marius was born and died in captivity, confined for our amusement and entertainment I suppose. Perhaps this is not true for you, but strip away all the veneer of scientific inquiry; when I go to the zoo it’s not to observe the animals. I like looking at them and they make me smile, and laugh.

Actually, in terms of the latter, there’s a Mona monkey somewhere in NYC, I’m thinking the Central Park Zoo, who broke my powers of observation a really long time ago. And it (never figured out he or she) would have broken something else had it been able to reach me.

The article doesn’t make clear to me how Marius was selected (I’m thinking no rocks, paper or scissors were harmed in the making of the lions’ lunch) not that such information would change my disquiet about all of this.

I’m the kind of person who watches the National Geographic Channel and Animal Planet, right up until the moment the shark’s jaws snap shut on the seal, or the tiger catches the wildebeest or the crocodile plays Captain Hook with a zebra. At that very moment, I can’t click away fast enough or far enough.

Maybe I should carry the remote with me everywhere.
-bill kenny

A Penny for Your Thoughts

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday is still on my calendar for today.It's printed alongside the date as is "Administrative Professionals Day" on 21 April, but it has had less meaning for decades, since Congress passed the Monday Holidays Act and we rolled it into the other February birthday celebrating the Father of Our Country, George Washington (normally 22 February). 

That George spent more than half of his farewell address warning his countrymen about the dangers of political partisanship, I find, in light of where we are today, astounding. That Honest Abe used his Second Inaugural Address to offer "(w)ith malice toward none, with charity for all..." at a moment in our history where we most fervently hated one another (with a ferocity that would cost him his very life a little more than thirteen months later) causes me to wonder why we, you and me and all the lunatic loudmouths and bombastic blowhards on either side of the political fence, can't pipe down long enough to work together to get this cart we're all in out of the ditch we've maneuvered it into. 

To put it into perspective when Washington and Lincoln were presidents, people disagreed to the point they fired weapons at one another--and you've seen 'em, it took work to shoot at somebody. None of this cap bustin' stuff-serious mayhem was on the agenda. All this pouting and posturing we are up to on Sunday morning talk shows, the lawns of the White House and in the Halls of Congress makes my brain hurt and when we get all through sorting out who's to blame for all the wrongs and shortcomings, real and/or imagined, maybe we can devote a scintilla of that energy to fixing things. We certainly have a target-rich environment to choose from, don't we? 

With DNA testing the way it's working out, don't you suppose the day will come when we could, theoretically, work up political profiles of those enshrined in the Tomb of the Unknowns. And don't think somebody will try to make political hay out of it because you'll be sadly disappointed. It would make as much sense as turning immigration and open borders into a litmus test or reinventing what should be the right to accessible, affordable health care as a variant of the Great Loyalty Oath, but no matter. It's a fine line between pathetic and petard. Try drawing it for a while and then get real. And stop being so cranky with one while we're doing it.
-bill kenny

Suddenly the Seasons Become Rationed

We had a lot of snow around here earlier this week (better part of a foot and change), hours after we had had blue skies, soft breezes and temps in the upper fifties and early sixties (think: pre-Beatles).

Please don't tell me 'well, everyone in the Northeast had snow' because that doesn't do anything for my mountains of white stuff. And unless you're new here, by now you have to know this is all about me (and only occasionally anyone else).

My passionate dislike of snow hasn't lessened or decreased in any way as the calendar pages have continued to turn. As my family can attest, I actually become angry when it snows, as irrational as even I recognize that behavior to be.

Shoveling and maneuvering the snowblower on Thursday evening once the snow stopped, I flashed on a memory of perhaps when I was an only child, living in Belford, New Jersey and in the backyard playing after a snowfall in which the snow was so deep, it was over my head.

I had dug paths in our backyard that faced a wetland (I think it was, even if we didn't call it that yet) and remember Mom coming out the back door that was at the mud room with the washer and dryer yelling for me and I'd have to run the length of the path so she could see and hear me.

I made myself smile by realizing that winters are milder now than when I was a kid, but, of course, there seems to be less snow because I am taller (and older, and grayer and less intelligent but I compensate for that by being less tolerant of others) than when I was four.

When I was a kid, I didn't know anyone at all the age I am now. I'm not sure I am cut out to be a chronological pioneer, but as if on cue, another day begins and here I am.  
-bill kenny

Hi, Jean!

If perspiring were a superpower you'd see me wearing a damp cape everywhere. It may not seem like much of one, but perspiring is, I've come to accept, my superpower. I can break a sweat, just thinking about sweating and I've been this way since I was a child.

Actually, I perspire on the coldest of days (and did so most days for thirteen months while assigned to an airbase in Greenland in another life) or just standing still, in the shade, drinking a cool beverage. And, being honest, I don't just perspire, I sweat like some kind of a stevedore unloading a freighter in the noon-day sun.

I was the kid whose shirts were always ruined and for whom there was, and still is, little hope. To this day, I try every new underarm deodorant, roll-on or spray, in the hopes that 'this is the one.' It never is, of course. Talk about Sinbad and his seven voyages, for Pete's sake..

I saw something the other day where folks with similar problems use botox. Actually, they use it to treat hyperhidrosis (too bad it's not also a treatment for getting over yourself), and it's expensive and has a variety of side effects (aside from making you poorer). I use a roll-on, not a gel (I find them to be a little creepy but less messy than the white flaky roll-ons) that I think is a fragrance that's no longer being manufactured.

I've gone from using one with a scent resembling Desperado Under the Eaves to Anarchy, under my arms if not in the UK.
-bill kenny

Diamonds Are Nice, but Take My Advice

I understand why I'm seeing so many of a particular kind of product advertisement on television in recent days. I own a calendar, and unlike our new Secretary of Education, can do the math to get me to February 14th. 

I enjoy the TV commercials I'm watching for companionship services (I’m trying to avoid saying ‘meat market dating operations’) with my favorite one, perhaps because of my Catholic School upbringing, still being Christian Mingle. I don't understand why they shied away from a tag line like ‘The Lord Wants You to Get Your Freak On.’ I think that says ‘seal the deal for real’ in a way their audience can better understand.

There’s an ad for Zoosk I've seen that has something about “first it begins with like” which does a nice job of lowering the bar for expectations, and has probably done wonders for sales of smoke alarm batteries and dish towels, too (I suspect).

We’re a species cursed/blessed with a burning desire for a pairing and sharing with some oft-unspoken hope that Sweet Dreams Are Made of This to the point that in our search to avoid being alone with ourselves we welcome advice and relationship tips from any source, even if (as you’ll see in the clip) those undertaking such actions are not sanguine of a Happy Ending.     

I’m not sure what the first woman, “a loyal Cosmo reader since I was a child,” was doing with the magazine when she was a child (I hope NOT reading it for the articles), but as a guy who was the second of the two people in his (still) current relationship to realize he had found something special, I’m here to tell any and all women this close to Valentine’s Day that us guys are stunningly simple creatures who have little to no comprehension (and less appreciation) of context, pretext or subtext.

Whether you are still searching or desperately seeking, all the services and the glitzy magazines add up to nothing when eyes meet and smiles are shared. One lifetime or one night, the depth of passion is the same, it’s the degree of commitment that shifts.

-bill kenny

Further Thoughts, Farther Along

The front page photos last week in the newspaper about the work crews covering the windows in the Reid & Hughes building with plywood made me think of an old George Harrison lyric, "and my advice for those who die: declare the pennies on your eyes." 

I also recalled something I offered in this space almost exactly three years ago, neither prescient nor precocious (I am genetically incapable of either) but frighteningly familiar because so often so much of what we plan to do is what we have already done.

The Reid and Hughes Building was already dark when I arrived here in 1991. That empty, abandoned carcass of a memory for so many who grew up here and whose dreams have grown old here has stood silent and sullen, accusing every passer-by of betrayal and worse every day ever since.

In the last two-plus decades, any number of initiatives, all well-meant some more half-hearted and/or full-throated than others were launched in the hope of restoring the building but every effort seemed to just miss the mark. The successive disappointments made the next attempt that much harder until in recent years we basically gave up and abandoned the building in place.

Hiked down on Sunday to take this (and to shake my head)

Our well-meant intentions helped create a full-blown eyesore which all of us will see when and if the Rose of New England chooses to remove its rose-colored glasses and look inward with the same unforgiving gaze we reserve so often for outsiders. 

Make no mistake, we did this to ourselves and if we fail to agree on how to proceed, not just for Reid & Hughes, or just Chelsea but for all of Norwich, we are actually planning to fail.

If experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted, we have all the experience we'll ever need to rebuild the Chelsea District and the entire city. Energy and engagement along with a double dollop of hope are essential for any project but none of them, by themselves or together, is a plan and a plan is what has been conspicuous in its absence.

As those working at the Norwich Community Development Corporation (NCDC), the City of Norwich Planning Department, the Community Development Agency, together with volunteers on a dozen and more municipal agencies, boards and commissions know, a plan has specific, measurable, achievable, realistic targets (SMART). That is why SMART communities have plans and too many others have hope but little else. Sound familiar?

Planning involves candor. We need to be relentlessly honest with one another and to speak in clear, unambiguous language that doesn't need a decoder ring or subtitles. Where yes and no are clearly understood. Perhaps most importantly we need to agree that it's okay to disagree without becoming disagreeable. When to evaluate a proposal on its merits and not base our feelings about it on the person or group who sponsors it.

What does lost opportunity look like? Pretty much like this.

We should trust one another to create a collaboration that subordinates our individual best efforts in service of a higher communal ideal so we can more effectively and efficiently turn a specific proposal into a shared idea and adopt its implementation as our municipal goal.

We need to allow those tasked with the responsibility to evaluate the proposals to do so in an agenda-free environment using their knowledge and real world experiences to arrive at a recommendation for the City Council’s review.

We live in a world of data-driven decisions and there should be little room and less patience for soft words masking hard truths. Henry Ford who knew a little something about how to build things once offered: "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."
-bill kenny