I Read the News Today

One of the dilemmas of these far-too modern times might be reduced to the simple question, "just because we can do a thing, should we?" It's timeless and has always haunted us. 

I'm sure Milli Vanilli would have faced it after Girl You Know It's True if they hadn't gotten tripped up by Rose Mary Woods' tape deck. (Alas, poor Maxell, I knew him well). Everything in moderation, to include moderation, is a wonderful thought to live by. Too bad too few do.

That said, I'm sure we could have had far more letters than just 26 in our alphabet but someone, someplace said 'two dozen plus two is just peachy' and spared us the turmoil of the Dano-Norwegian Alphabet, with its Ø also known as the "not an O letter," to say nothing of the Æ (and quite frankly the less said, the better).

So it's with some trepidation I read news reports of Twitter doubling the character count. I do appreciate the idea of testing the concept with a selected group of users before offering wide-scale deployment. I hope I can be forgiven for praying that NOT among the double capacity testers is someone who has caused me to wonder about his testes and their size especially in the last eight months. 

As Little Marco shared with us once upon a time and long ago, he already has tiny hands. Trying to type 280 characters could mean a tweet that denigrates Colin Kaepernick, while simultaneously insulting Senator John McCain, disparaging three governors and two (or more) foreign leaders and nominating Steve Bannon for a B'nai B'rith award all in one swell foop. 

All of which could cause, I hope,  something other than those itty-bitty hands to catch on fire.  

-bill kenny

How To Save a Life

I am reasonably aware that I am given to bouts of attempted humor and that I often type with my tongue pressed firmly against my cheek which means on a day where I am being serious I risk not being appreciated either for the effort or the alarm I'm trying to sound.

All I can do is hope today will be otherwise but that's on you; all I can do is try. Here goes: With all due respect to the stream of media stories on the arguments and concerns about health care going on right now in our nation's capital we have more than a plate full of concerns about health care and mortality right here in our own backyard. 

It was shortly after Labor Day when The Bulletin had a headline and a Ryan Blessing story that caught me up short, "19 Overdose Deaths in 2017 Has Norwich Officials Seeking Answers." 

Let's face it, we've been reading news stories and watching TV reports on the growing number of drug overdose and opioid deaths in our country for so long, it's hard to keep track of when the reports began. Even as the numbers grow alarmingly larger every year, still it seems to many of us to be a problem for someone else, somewhere else. 

Not anymore. We're not talking about a mysterious virus, automobile accidents, or even pianos (and other objects) falling out of windows and landing on people. We're talking about accidental suicides, and if one is considered a tragedy what should we call are so many? A trend? A disease? How about a plague?

Ryan's report mentions "The medical examiner’s office projects 1,078 accidental drug intoxication deaths in Connecticut for all of 2017, up from 917 last year and 357 in 2012. The office reports 539 such deaths from the start of the year through June."  Go back and look at the numbers in that sentence again and help me understand the numbers it mentions. 

A company with 1,078 employees would be one of the top five largest employers in this state, that same number, 1,078, is larger than the entire Lebanon School District. I would like to think if one or the other disappeared tomorrow we'd all notice, but I am the first to concede and confess that while I knew that 19 people here in Norwich had died of drug overdoses, it hadn't really registered with me. 

But in a city with just about 40,000 people, 19 deaths through June means most of us know someone in Norwich who has a friend or a family member whose life has been shattered by a drug overdose. Here, where we live, where we've brought up our families and made our homes. Here is where we are supposed to be safe from harm.

Drug and opioid overdoses is a nationwide issue that many are calling a national emergency requiring massive amounts of federal and state dollars to combat, but here, at home is where we can make a difference and where many public and private agencies are united in combating. 

Norwich's newest initiative is Norwich Unhooked, which also includes social media outreaches on Facebook, and Instagram. It's a coalition of human services, youth and family services, schools, law enforcement, faith based organizations, parents/caregivers, youth and young adults, healthcare providers and community support services intended to connect individuals and families with information, support, and services for substance abuse prevention, intervention, and treatment. 

There cannot be enough helping hands to successfully combat the catastrophe of drug and opioid overdoses so instead of wringing yours in despair reach out to Angela Duhaime, the coordinator at (860) 823-3782 Ext 3481 and find out how to save a life.
-bill kenny 

#TakeTheKnee

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam

And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset

Tennessee made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset

Tennessee made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it

Can't you feel it

It's all in the air

I can't stand the pressure much longer

Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset

Tennessee made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune

But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail

School children sitting in jail

Black cat cross my path

I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine

We all gonna get it in due time

I don't belong here

I don't belong there

I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me

I tell you

Me and my people just about due

I've been there so I know

They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble

"do it slow"

Washing the windows

"do it slow"

Picking the cotton

"do it slow"

You're just plain rotten

"do it slow"

You're too damn lazy

"do it slow"

The thinking's crazy

"do it slow"

Where am I going

What am I doing

I don't know

I don't know

Just try to do your very best

Stand up be counted with all the rest

For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin'

Picket lines

School boy cots

They try to say it's a communist plot

All I want is equality

for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years

You told me to wash and clean my ears

And talk real fine just like a lady

And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies

You're all gonna die and die like flies

I don't trust you any more

You keep on saying "Go slow!"

"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble

"do it slow"

Desegregation

"do it slow"

Mass participation

"do it slow"

Reunification

"do it slow"

Do things gradually

"do it slow"

But bring more tragedy

"do it slow"

Why don't you see it

Why don't you feel it

I don't know

I don't know

You don't have to live next to me

Just give me my equality

Everybody knows about Mississippi

Everybody knows about Alabama

Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it!

-bill kenny

Funny the Way It Is

We are enjoying a run of summer days, in terms of heat and beautiful, blue skies, here in New England even though the calendar says autumn has begun. And it has, as I look at the trees and see more color and bare limbs this week than I saw last week.

I'm off from work, again, today, which should cheer immensely those with whom I share the workspace, so that I can join my wy wife and our daughter as we head north to near Springfield, to see neither Bart nor Honest Abe, but to be a part of what I have taken to calling New England's Largest Vowel Movement, The Big E.  

It's a state fair with everything that such a term entails and so much more. They deep-fry the most amazing things and, more amazing than that is they sell them to others to eat and they do. This year, in honor of my earlier adventures of the weekend, I'll wear my Superhero medal because there are, I suspect, people who have not yet seen it, despite my incessant self-aggrandizement efforts. I'll be bringing a ballpoint pen of course because I always have one and because I expect to be signing autographs. Or not.

I am enjoying our lovely weather only slightly troubled by the knowledge of the awful and horrible weather and its aftermath that millions if not tens of millions of other people are enduring. As a matter of fact, as I understand the TV meteorologists, one of the consequences of those killing rains and winds there is the lovely weather we are having here. 

It's a little disconcerting to me how we can accept our interconnectivity no matter where in the world we are when we look up to the skies but are unable/unwilling to see any of it across the globe when we look into one another's faces and hearts. 
-bill kenny

Hunter Ellis Is My Pace Setter

I have a membership at our local Planet Fitness (the basic one since I have a difficult time imagining myself dropping in at another one someplace else) that I use on weekday mornings. Right after I get up at half-past three, I don my gym clothes, sorry it's 2017, work-out togs, and head out for an hour on the treadmill. I go so early to trick my brain as I'm not fully awake because otherwise, I'd never agree to spend an hour at a time on a treadmill. 

Some wags have suggested in light of the distance from my house to the center I would add great health value to my sessions if I ran to the center and then, after finishing, ran back home. My response is usually some sarcastic variant of an anatomically difficult suggestion, even for a yoga-master (as opposed to a Jagermeister) to accomplish. (I know, you drink it for the 56 herbs; who doesn't, right?)

I use that hour to catch up on everything that's happened in the world from the time I dropped off to sleep the evening before usually while watching the PBS NewsHour. I use a treadmill where I can toggle between CNN and the CBS Overnight News on the big screens hanging on the far wall as I'm someone who needs to see as well as hear (on headphones) TV news as these days so much of it is driven by visuals as opposed to editorial/reportorial word count. 

The next screen over is Faux Gnus which, not surprisingly I never watch. When you refuse to listen to a different point of view, you're a bigot. When I do it, I'm principled. see? I am aware of the concept of irony, I just like being made an example of it. 

Overnight TV that doesn't just run infomercials is a strange beast indeed. There's a lot of 'we can get you out of debt with the IRS' ads and George Foreman is always on, not hawking his grill (which someone told me was first pitched to Hulk Hogan to sell and he took a  pass), but about a company that works with inventors. 

My current favorite is Hunter Ellis whom I had to Google to learn he was once (or maybe more than once) on some season of Survivor one of the thousands of hours of 'reality shows' produced for what must be the rest of the nation who are all more easily amused than I as I hate all of that stuff. Hunter does a celebrity endorsement for the Atomic Beam Lantern that causes a more elevated heart rate than I would have if I could run at 100 mph on the treadmill. He has, to read his biography, kept himself employed rather nicely but he doesn't have a Facebook page or not one I could find, even using the Atomic Beam Lantern. 

In the future said Andy Warhol once in a very distant past, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. That's why I stopped wearing a watch because I think that might be my best shortcut to being famous forever, or maybe just infamous.
-bill kenny   

 

Why Can't This Happen on a Workday?

Except that I'm in a fundraiser to combat breast cancer, this might have been all the reason I would have needed today to consider sleeping in this morning. As near as I can determine no Mayans were harmed, or consulted for that matter, in the making of that video.

And while we're on the subject of video-making, dear "Unsealed," spare me the mealy-mouthed disclaimer that's nothing more than a lame effort to try to hedge your bet on the date of the end of the world. Is you or is you ain't my girl? Not to put too fine a point on this, Horatio, but I got library books to return....or do I, huh?  

And this Unsealed guy is supposed to be a Christian numerologist (an endangered species I suspect), which I guess could be along the lines of an East Side Manhattan delicatessen offering "kosher ham?" Or not. Pay no attention to that mustard stain on my shirt and I won't count to ten. Makes us even though I think you are odd. 

Far be it from me to rain on your The Earth Is Going Out of Business Sale! but seriously? I suppose I should be happy if this happens at some point today since I'm kinda on the hook to mow the lawn (I hope) for the last time this season tomorrow after we drive home (unless I don't have to drive because the Earth is in flames). And if I do have to break out the mower, I'll be slathering on the sunscreen, and now the Nibiru-screen?   

Does anyone have recipes for green bananas? Hurry up, I'm asking for a friend.
-bill kenny

This Time Tomorrow

Tomorrow our daughter, Michelle, and I will again become momentary members of Sue's Crew IX (this time) in support of the YMCA of Metuchen, Edison, Woodbridge and South Amboy (New Jersey) Janice Garbolino 5 K Run/Walk in Edison, New Jersey. You have probably already guessed which event I'm hoping to do, even if I do it badly.

My brother, Adam and his wife, Margaret and members of their family have been involved in this event for almost a decade (actually, VIII years but who's counting) for sadly familiar reasons that we can only hope someday will only be a memory as we work to make cancer history. As was the case last year (when this photo was taken) I am very much in it for the tee-shirt when should I finish.

Suze Crew VIII (2016)/Photo courtesy of Sarah Lyn Thomas

Having made this trip from Connecticut any number of time, I can tell you it's quite a drive for us, and we're not the only travelers nor I suspect was ours anywhere near the longest journey, but it's well worth it for the cause and for the people involved in it.

To be proven again on the morrow

There's a long way yet to go in the battle against breast cancer and all that's been made so far is a very good start. But we've come a long way and it's been a long ride. We've come a long way to be here tonight.
-bill kenny