Now How Much Would You Pay?

I don't keep regular hours or at least regular hours that many would recognize as such. I set my alarm for half past four in the morning and more often than not turn it off because I'm already up. I have some health stuff I do: as in take some meds, get some glucose levels, measure blood pressure (for those who always fear I could have a stroke, the good news, my doctor says, is that I'm a carrier), catch up on some interweb stuff and change to go to the gym.

It's not actually a gym, it's Planet Fitness which is a lot of machines I sort of know how to use and a lot of clanky weight lifting and toning machines about which I know nothing except to stay away, far away, from them and try not to let any of whatever it is they do get on me.

This is a week I do the treadmill. There is something horribly symbolic I'm sure about my being on a treadmill in a small town near the Connecticut coast at a little after four on a weekday morning, a life lesson begging to be learned but I am not going to take the bait on that. There a lot of people around the world who dream of a roof to live under, or a bowl of food to eat and potable water to drink so I run on the treadmill and listen to and watch CNN and CBS News in the headphones and on the overhead big screen televisions.

Down the line, there's Fox News and Lifetime television, a station of what seems to always be non-stop infomercials, local over the air TV stations and ESPN. Something for everyone, though I don't know who defined the something or quantified the everyone.

There's a lot of advertising for people to fix their back taxes at oh bright early and on more than one occasion in the last week, two different ads have run back to back for two different services. One, I forget which, reduced a couple's taxes from over $48,000 to under two hundred. I'm wondering how much mire than my share of that stealth bomber I paid for if that's what happens on a regular basis at the IRS.

George Foreman is on at the top of just about any hour on every station of TV I've ever seen while on the treadmill, but he's not peddling the grill but help for fellow-inventors, I guess because I'm supposed to pretend he invented the grill that bears his name. Or electricity. Or maybe it's the meat the electricity of the grill cooks. When I treadmill, I'm in the zone and details get lost in the churn.

Quite frankly the variety of stuff, sorry a better word doesn't occur to me at the moment, you can purchase by calling right now or going on line is only topped by the amount of that very same stuff you can get a second one of right now absolutely free, 'just pay a separate fee.'

I've trodden hundreds if not thousands of miles and heard that pitch a billion times and I still cannot figure it out. Something is either 'absolutely free' OR I have to buy it. Telling me it's the former, right after I do the latter, I'm pretty sure means I didn't get it for absolutely free, no matter how many times you tell me otherwise.

It goes for copper cookware, a battle lantern with LEDs that the person in the commercial puts through hell, but it still works every time, the diabetes hotline, knee braces, something better than a Neti pot and Mike Lindell's pillows you can 'warsh' he says (like Goofy says gawrsh to Mickey).

All of these items are far better than mere TwoFers because they're absolutely free right after I pay a separate fee. And I keep wondering how did 24-hour-a-day TV exist before all night gyms with clients feeling single and buying double of everything, after "just paying a separate fee."
-bill kenny       

Collect the Whole Set

I am the dishwasher in my house. My wife isn't always thrilled at that especially when it comes time to find the dishes and pots and pans, etc., that I have put away since I have almost no idea where any of the plates and silverware we have had, in some shape or form, for most of the nearly four decades we are married, are supposed to go.

Washing dishes allows me to attempt to think Great Thoughts (as opposed to mundane) since the actual activity itself requires very little frontal lobe involvement and interaction. Sometimes, I admit, it means I don't always get all the mashed potatoes off the blades of the watchamallit that makes them mashed in the first place but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs (which reminds me, I'm not really good with whisks either).

I can ponder what caused dinosaurs to die out, why the Yankees since close to Memorial Day have been awful, and why other animals don't make a big deal out of their opposable thumbs while washing, rinsing, draining, drying and putting away plates and silverware without any of the activities getting in one another's way. It's like a staycation without staying (I should have thought about that explanation when I was washing dishes; bet it would have come out better).

I get tripped up by my own sense of the universe in terms of numbers and implements. One of the reasons why I suspect I like washing dishes is that there aren't very many. I can recall no memories of joy associated with washing dishes when I was one of six kids growing up and we had actual machines that washed dishes. So this is one of those 'sacrifices' I make because there isn't one.

But, as I mentioned, I linger at the silverware tray wondering what's the number of forks and stuff and where are the ones that are missing, if they really are missing (see my remark earlier, above, about not being good at putting things away). We have six soup spoons, though I can recall no instances in my married life where people came to the house to share soup with me. It's good to know they could, I suppose, but better (for me) that they don't. And why six, and not eight?

Same things for plates and cups and saucers. Who comes up with these numbers? And, because I'm the one washing them, what do you do with the dish or cup, or plate with the chip in it? I cannot pretend that anyone else is responsible for the divot (no other word will suffice) in one of the soup bowls we bought at IKEA. I did that. And that bowl always stays at the bottom of the rotation.

If you just mouthed the words, "what rotation?" you do not have a place in my kitchen (which is probably already true based on how poorly I put things back) since plates, bowls, and saucers are used from the top down and placed back in the cabinet from the bottom up so that their use gets evened out.

DO NOT roll your eyes at me. I may, or may not, write my doctoral dissertation on the washing of dishes and the dissolution and disappearance of civility in our civic discourse if I ever have enough dirty dishes to wash in order to think it all the way through. Right now, it's a saucerful of secrets, no more and no less.
-bill kenny

Best Laid Plans

I had every intention of bending your eyes today by writing about how you should lend your ears tonight about how the Jay Dempsey Band kicks off the Rock the Docks concert series starting at six, weather permitting, at Howard T. Brown Park.

Not to worry. The Wednesday concerts will continue and be enjoyed into August, whether I write about them today or not (I'm not a rooster who thinks because he crows the sun comes up), but a news item that first showed up last Friday while we were all distracted getting ready for the Fourth of July holiday has made me miserable and you know what they say about misery and company. That would be you.

I'm sure you, too, saw Ryan Blessing's story, "State to Norwich Children: No More Summer School" last Friday and probably did a better job in reading it than I did, at least the first time around. I skimmed it and had moved on when my brain sort of asked my eyes, 'what did you read?' and went back to take a longer look, perhaps, I guess (in my defense) because the prospect of the Norwich Public Schools not having the money for The Summer Learning Academy just seemed so absurd. Except I've been mulling it over, and quite frankly stewing about it and now it's Wednesday, and it's not just absurd anymore, it's just asinine.   

We just marked the signing of the Declaration of Independence with Thomas Jefferson's words about "...certain unalienable Rights... Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (and) That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted." I tend to agree we form governments, regardless of the manner of actual governance, to do for us collectively what we lack the ability to do for ourselves as individuals.

And maybe I'm missing something, or maybe we all are when we elect/select those who represent us and our interests at all levels of government but the education of our children seems to me to be one of those basic services for which we created government. Except, again, in these parts. Instead, we seem to have created government that most closely resembles a self-licking ice cream that requires increased infusions of tax money to explain why less is accomplished. Let's stop this now.

Our two children are grown and gone, so my experience's 'best used by date' might be a problem for you, but the point won't be. Their first language was other than English when they started school here. They succeeded in both school and in life because of their own talents and efforts (not to mention an incredible genetic inheritance that includes a double-dollop of modesty) and in no small part from a remarkable public school system of programs and teachers who created an ecosystem that allowed them to grow into who they are today.

But in the decades since our children attended, programs have withered, been eliminated, improved out of existence (pick one) and funding is often more of a rumor, until last Friday when for The Summer Learning Academy it disappeared.

And rather than look at the causes of the financial instability and insolvency that forces decisions like this, and be inspired and incited to demand long term solutions which create real systemic change and reform, we idly and angrily wonder 'gee, what happens to our tax dollars' and continue doing what we've always done, growing angry when the result never varies or improves.

What is permitted is what will continue. If you want a better wherever it is you live, you need to make it yourself and join together with the rest of us right now.
-bill kenny

Close Enough to Call It a Decade

I first offered this nine years ago. But, as someone from Hibbing, Minnesota, said nearly a lifetime ago, I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now (your mileage, on the other hand, may vary). 

You already know it's the Fourth of July--the calendar told you that. And we Americans (how arrogant are we that we share this American continent with people from Canada and Mexico-not even mentioning the other American continent, but we are Americans and everyone else is, well, everyone else) can, I hope, find the time today to reflect on who we are and how we got here (the good parts. We beat one another up waaay too often the rest of the year on who has warts and where they are. Let's have a truce, okay?).

I consider myself a Jersey Guy--I wasn't born there, but we moved there when I was very small and I moved away (not realizing it was forever) back in 1975. Now, when I visit relatives--actually that's code for when I visit my brother, Adam (he went from being my 'baby' brother to 'youngest' brother until I finally realized birth order is now difference without distinction) and his wife. I'm aware 'this is not my Here' (because I've felt that everywhere I've been my whole life.). 

Adam's much more a Renaissance Man than I in terms of interests and knowledge whereas I know what I like (in your wardrobe) and that's about it. Quite some time ago he came up with striking figure of speech, snowglobe, to describe his piece of earth and by definition, all of our claims here (Frodo Lives! Just not around here). 

I think it's amazing and amusing, with the space of years and distance combined with the differences in growing up, how each of us came to be who we are, where we are and how similar the snowglobes we've made actually are. And, because if you've read me more than once, you know while you can take the boy out of Jersey, you can't take the Jersey out of the boy, you had to know I'd close quoting Joyce Kilmer. 

Or not. 
 
'Sandy, that waitress I was seeing has lost her desire for me. 
I spoke with her last night, she said she won't set herself on fire for me anymore.' 
And, altogether now, whether you're from Jersey or not:
'Sandy, the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight,
Forcin' a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July.'
-bill kenny

Praise We a Brat and His Furr-Ball Buddy

I don't say this lightly, I'm not well-known for my humor, but Bill Watterson's birthday which is this Wednesday, 5 July, should be a(nother) national holiday. Watterson, the genius responsible for the world's most wonderful comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, never failed to amuse and amaze on a daily basis for the ten years and six weeks he shared his creation with the world.

One of the nice things about being somewhat advanced in years, and slightly mentally encumbered, is not remembering if I cried when the comic strip came to an end, but I suspect I did. I had and still have, a large number of the C & H books, which were compilations of the daily strips.

At various times one and/or the other of our children, for reasons entirely their own, have borrowed and enjoyed them as much as I still do and (at least in theory) have returned them to where they found them. Just as their father, a role model in everything even vaguely connected to doing as I say and not as I do, has always returned (nearly) everything he has borrowed to its proper place.

That's actually an inside joke. When I wash the dishes, my wife gets to play 'Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?' with a surprising assortment of implements and kitchen objects, ranging from the mayonnaise knife through the plastic microwave splatter guard to the small chopping block, because her husband of nearly forty years just moved into the house they share and has no idea where she keeps any of these items.

Yeah, to some extent, I do resemble Calvin's Dad (mostly at the hairline), who, like Calvin's Mom never had a name in the comic strip. Calvin's classmate and occasional nemesis, sometime victim, and often object of unwanted attentions, Susie Derkins, went Calvin, himself, one better in that she not only had a first name, she had a last name as well.

You didn't need to know that Watterson had named his two characters for John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, two more disparate souls you would be hard-pressed to find anywhere, with or without Carmen's assistance. The comic strip is marvelous without ever even understanding the irony of their namesakes and their respective attempts to petition the Lord with prayer.

Me, I tread lightly on the subject because my own relationship with a Supreme Being has been, shall we say, somewhat uneven for a number of decades, but I'm fascinated when, while channel surfing, I come across any of the televangelists toiling in the video vineyards in His Name.

I didn't even know there was a GodTube but I'm not surprised. After all, why not and does it stream to a smartphone? If so, I guess my first prayer is for patience (and an aisle seat in the back). Praise the Lord and pass the extra couch cushions. After all, a progress boink is, in its own way, a revelation. Can I get an Amen?
-bill kenny

Roller Skates and Baseball Bats Are Summertime Things, Right?

This is one of these 'torn from the headlines' items that, as the pretend adult I am, I'm supposed to counsel 'don't try this at home, kids!' except...it happened at home and it was kids, albeit from a long time ago (but I saved it because I loved it). Aside from that, no resemblance to reality, implied or expressed is intended.

This is sort of the fault of my late friend, Bob H because he sent me the original item in the middle of a busy workday (of which I have many, as opposed to a productive work day of which I have very few) but I was so busy, I really didn't read it and it didn't sink in until more than a couple of days later. That guilt might be a reason why I hang on to it still, and the headline still makes me shudder: Teenagers mistakenly assault woman's sex partner after they mistook her screams of passion for cries. (I added the red for dramatic effect.) After reading the story you too will wonder why people despair for the next generation! 

I will very probably never meet Torrington Police Lt. Bruce Whiteley, but if anyone has Joe Friday down better, I'd sure like to meet them. In describing what had happened, this is his ENTIRE summation, "Swanson and Arnold had not been fighting." Yeah, once you've read the article, that conclusion just jumps out at you. 

I think the young Mr. Roger Swanson should be very grateful he hadn't planned on a day-night doubleheader. And whoever said 'safe at home' has certainly never been a gentleman caller of Ms. Melanie Arnold's.
-bill kenny

Huguenots, Hottentots and Forget Me Nots (Redux)

I think the days where you can crib a line from a Bruce Springsteen tune are beyond us, now. About five or so decades of releases, vinyl and come what may, and I think we've kind of got the catalog. Admittedly, my theft is more oblique than overt, but stolen is stolen unless it's Christmas in Germany. 

Before the Brave New World Order, my wife's mom used to send a care package from Offenbach near the end of November, the fourth Thursday in Germany being celebrated with a little less gusto there than how we do it around these parts that always seemed to include kinder schokolade (actually the big eggs with the amazing toys always requiring some assembly within), esel salami and Christmas stollen. 

Now with the world a 24/7 mall, we just go online and nine out of ten times the products we're buying with the familiar names are now made in China. It's how we like it, cheap. When it wears out or breaks, we buy another and forget in the old days that didn't happen so often or so fast. We work very hard to forget how to remember how things were and pretend they were always just as they are now. We've always been at war with Oceania or was it Eurasia? Sometimes I get confused but the next Two Minutes Hate will make it all clear. 

When you watch animals of the same species meet one another for the first time, they are usually tentative, sniffing and pawing and sniffing some more. We're not very much like that-whether it's someone new moving in (been on the movee side of that equation) to our neighborhood or just a wave of new people showing up where we hadn't thought they might be or even imagined they could be.

We're coming up on Independence Day which should be the standard against which we hold ourselves, as citizens of this country and as citizens of the world, everyday and not an excuse to buy 20% off at the Mall, buy a keg and have a barbecue with a grill that's crying like a fire in the sun. A hundred and fifty plus years ago we were still struggling with the aftermath of a fratricidal war that ended slavery in the USA, and have tried, fitfully, at times to move on with ourselves and our lives. 

In many ways who we are now is what we were then-as that war propelled us fully into the Industrial Age, whose Revolution had begun twenty years earlier, and helped move us towards a more open and larger engagement with the rest of the world until we had achieved Pax Americana, that started some eighty years after Appomattox.

Many have sacrificed much so that we can be who we are--and many are away from home today, far from home, in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, the Horn of Africa and South Korea because those who wish us ill don't take holidays and as a famous Chicagoan (no, not Ernie Banks) so eloquently explained decades ago, you get more with kind words and a gun than you do with kind words alone. 

Men and women in uniform, no matter their personal politics and feelings, would agree that growing faint when confronted by the evil in the world will not deter or distract it. It must be confronted or it will consume everyone and everything, including those who think fretting about our democracy is more noble than struggling to protect it. 

As you shop for this holiday weekend please spare a moment for all those, past, present and future, who make it possible. And I'll meet you further on up the road. 
-bill kenny