A Memory that Cannot Fade

At a moment so long ago it reads as if that chapter of history should start with 'in another galaxy, far away,' on this date in 1941, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked by the Imperial Armed Forces of the Japanese Empire. 

Their goal, a pre-emptive strike that would eliminate the United States' armed might from the Pacific theater so that Japan's Co-Prosperity Hemisphere ambitions would sweep everything before them, wasn't realized and the USA, awakened from the slumber of self-indulgence and indolence, reinvented its own industrial base and used it as the fulcrum to overwhelm the Axis powers of Japan, Italy, and Germany. 

In less than four years (and uncounted killed, wounded and missing in action on all sides later), the Japanese home islands, as well as massive amounts of Western and Eastern Europe, were in rubble and ruins. The map of the world was to change shape, if not size, for decades afterward as ripples from the pebble in that pond traveled the surface of the globe-altering, if not improving, the definitions of nationhood and redefining the aspirations of people and cultures. 

Some historians have suggested that World War II signaled a new level of engagement and intervention in the world by the United States at a moment when that engagement was most needed; an engagement that continues I would like to hope, appearances too often to the contrary, to this day in many corners of the world whose names may not be familiar but whose threat to our way of life is not new.

Today across these United States  Americans will pause to remember those in the US Military who lost their lives on "A Date Which Will Live in Infamy." Here in Norwich in the David Ruggles Freedom Courtyard at City Hall, the Norwich Area Veterans Council is conducting a remembrance for state residents whose lives were lost in the attack. The remembrance begins at twelve minutes before one this afternoon to mark the moment seventy-six years ago when the attack on Pearl Harbor began.

Casualties on that day included 2,335 military members (2,008 Sailors, 109 Marines, and 218 Soldiers). Two Norwich residents were among those who died that day, Store Keeper First Class Harry Carlson and Seaman First Class Mike Quarto, shipmates aboard the USS Arizona.

While we remember them, and all who died that day, I'd hope we also remember as well all those in uniform everywhere today whose sacrifice and separation from their loved ones is just as real and as profound as those of the "Greatest Generation" who secured our liberties with their lives a lifetime ago. We owe all who serve our truest measure of devotion and gratitude. 

We must resolve, because of their sacrifice, to double and, if necessary re-double, our efforts to maintain the position of the United States as the world's best hope for all seeking a better life for themselves and their families around the world. 

We have lived for too many decades as the Promise of Liberty and Freedom to abandon our dreams and our hopes now.
-bill kenny

One City

If all went according to Hoyle, City Council chambers were filled yesterday evening for the oath-taking and swearing-in of our City Council and other elected officials. I'm writing this before the fact but have attended enough ceremonies to believe it was a happy and exciting occasion, as well it should have been. 

By the dawn’s early light today we'll read news accounts of the pageantry of last night and savor and reflect at least for a moment, I hope, upon the history we have and that we make not just when we have a change of Mayor or City Council, but every day even if some days, like yesterday we do it a little more (self) consciously than the other 364.

Now that all the applause has faded and the best wishes have echoed and disappeared down the hallways in City Hall, it's time for our City Council to begin its real work and there's plenty of it. 

No matter for whom you voted last month we, as a city, now have seven neighbors whose shoulders must be broad enough to carry the (often competing) hopes and expectations so many of us have for the better days we all want for the city which we share.

These same seven will also need to have backs strong enough to carry us in the new direction we say we wish to go but, in reality, have absolutely no appetite for the adventure such exploration would require.

I'd hope that more than a handful of those who witnessed last night's ceremonies will make it a point to attend Council meetings (both the schedule of meetings and agenda is on the city's website) because it can get lonely at those desks in the front of the room.

And once the flow of congratulations has ceased, and not pretending to be able to see the future but knowing the past, I'll wait to see how quickly we go from calling upon our newly elected Council member to calling them out for all manner of failings, sometimes real but far too often imaginary.

It's very easy to criticize decisions none of us will ever need to make, most especially when we know someone else will have to. There's a fine line between constructive and destructive criticism and sometimes we accidentally confuse the latter with the former. And sometimes, it's not so accidental.

   

I've lived here a little longer than a quarter of a century and understand the impatience that so many of us have about so much of where we live. I can see how far we've come but concede that there's a lot more to be done and hope our newly elected leaders will help move us farther along and that all of us across the city will get and stay involved and not just always show up on special occasions.

Our Mayor and City Council can do anything, but they can’t do everything. Only together with each of us can they, and we, succeed.

-bill kenny

Just in the Nick of Time

Tomorrow is the feast of Saint Nicholas or Nikolaustag. That probably means nothing to you but in my house, it's a means of measuring how far we've come and not just the distance traveled. The first time we celebrated this day on this side of the Atlantic, my wife and children had been residents of Das Land der Runde Turgriffe for less than a month. 

Something familiar from home, or what was to become their 'old home' was very important and as Sigrid has set aside some small chocolates for both Patrick and Michelle (and for probably Jena and Kyle as well) for tomorrow, it still is (though I wonder if not more for us than for our now adult children).

I confess to still seeing them as small. I remember hours of hollering "nur Patrick!" and his echo answer of "nur Daddy!" as if it were yesterday. Holding Michelle in one arm as Patrick and I sang "How Much is that Baby in the Mirror" to her reflection every night as part of the going to bed ritual. 

The bedtime story book with a story for every night-a different subject and a different adventure and how the two of them would sit up in their beds as my terrible German rendered any form of narrative nearly unintelligible for the two of them. And then afterward we'd all sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and it was lights out.

Es war alles sehr gemutlich and so long ago. Coming out of the grocery yesterday, the shopper in front of me was mumbling about the youngsters, definitely NOT from here, playing under the overhang as their mother struggled to get their baby sister out of the car and into a cart.

It's funny when little ones stiffen their arms and legs and refuse to make it easy for an adult to seat them in a shopping cart. Of course, it's only funny when you watch; when you're the adult struggling with the child, the humor is quickly lost.

Some people reach an age when you cannot tell how old they are-maybe I already have. Wouldn't want to try to guess his age but I think he needed glasses. I say that because he saw in me, as I walked past him, a kindred spirit whom he believed would appreciate his caustic characterization of where he imagined these children were from and where he wished they'd return. Except, jeder ist ein auslander, irgendwo. 

My response was to wonder to myself about his attempt to do something anatomically impossible, and not quite as much a suggestion as a directive. I could have been more vocal and gotten the same effect.

-bill kenny

Maybe You Too?

We had a Super Moon (although there were a lot of clouds making its visibility far less than ideal) last night here in New England. Maybe you too? I nod my head to indicate I understand and agree with most of the explanation for its appearance in terms of size, alignment with the sun, and the tilt of the earth at this time of year but I don't know if I believe me.

Between us, I was disquieted most of last week driving to work in what Sigrid might call 'the middle of the night' (between four and five in the morning) from the gym to my job on Connecticut state roads, watching the moon, when I could see it at all growing larger as I'd drive. 

Lots of people, myself included when I didn't live here in Norwich, Connecticut, tend to think of Stamford and Greenwich when we mention Connecticut. They are pocket suburbs of sorts of New York City and are as urban as Brooklyn or The Bronx in terms of population density and sprawl. There's another state and another state of mind beyond I-95. 

On the far side of the Connecticut River, which is where I and my wife live, that's not the case. I'm sure it's a little different now, but not too much, but when I arrived here in the fall of 1991 there were as many people in all of New London County as there were in Offenbach Germany, the city my family and I had lived in. 

One of the biggest difference in the Connecticut in which I live and the one you mainly think about is the light pollution and lack of it at night. Which brings me back to that moon that seemed to follow us everywhere as it grew larger and larger in the sky during the last few days. 

Full Moon Sky by Laurent Laveder

Without diffused ground light, I stand in my yard and look at the night sky and feel very small and alone despite the forty or so thousands of people who actually live in Norwich. It always reminds me of being a young child when we lived on Bloomfield Avenue in Franklin Township and I'd hear a noise at night outside and sneak a peek through the blinds thinking, I guess, I could see a sound though as an adult in the daytime I realize that makes no sense. 

But in the middle of the night, especially with a full moon against a star-filled soon to be Winter sky, when I look up I shiver just a little and not always from just the cold. Maybe you too?
-bill kenny        

The First Sunday on the Advent Calendar

Just me or will we have to go some to top the last half of the previous ten days or so, right?  It's been really hectic despite that "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" label we slap on this season.

To review, we had  Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Where the Hell Did I Leave My Car Keys (celebrated, perhaps only at my house), all of which leads us to today, Sunday, but a whole lot more than just Sunday. 

Today is the First Sunday of Advent. I knew that you knew I was leading up to something and thanks for your patience while I worked to get us there safe and sound. Still leaves, perhaps the question some may have as to its importance. Happy to help you out there. 

Feel free to use your newly-purchased tablet, smartphone or new computer to look up why.
-bill kenny

To Insanity and Beyond!

If I could do one thing in my life over, it would be to double down on purchasing stock in aluminum foil manufacturers. Not just because this is the time of year that here in the western world we see a lot more baking going on but I’ll give you partial credit for that answer.

In my lifetime (sixty-five years and change) I have witnessed an expansion of the Tin Foil Hat Brigade beyond anything even the Book of Revelations could have foreseen. And in recent days, just under the radar of actual news reporting, or as #Pantload45 calls it ‘fake news,’ we have “Mad” Mike Hughes leading me to wonder if there’s a bigger difference between pearl and peyote buttons on your shirt than modern science has previously been honest and comfortable in admitting (and how hard are the former to chew and swallow).

I love this guy’s story, back, front, and sides. This is the tale of a classic underdog with his steam-powered scrap metal rocket (and motorhome) struggling against all odds to prove the idiotic stupidity he has turned into his crusade is neither the former nor the latter when it’s actually both.

I cannot read enough of this stuff. The original Kickstarter, aiming for $150,000.00, raised $350.00. And yet undeterred Mad Mike seeks to go where angels fear to tread though technically in a ‘flat-earth’ worldview I'm not actually clear where Heaven is located unless it’s somewhere beyond the sea ice holding the world’s oceans in place around our flat disc of a planet (and good job! by the way).      

With the calm uncertainty of a somnambulist, Mikey continues to persist in lifting the veil of deception from our eyes, ears, nose, and probably throat. Still thinking of the Earth as an orb? Bam! “John Glenn and Neil Armstrong are Freemasons,” Hughes agreed. “Once you understand that, you understand the roots of the deception.”  Okie-dokie, artichokie.    

I still think the Mojave Desert is the wrong locale for this when/IF it is to ever happen. If you’re gonna spike the ball on centuries of science and exploration, I think the place in space to do it is Columbus, Ohio, and come to think of it, when is Mad Mike's birthday anyway? I sense an opportunity to swap out one Monday holiday for another.

-bill kenny

A Sister's Natal Anniversary

Today is my oldest younger sister's birthday. I sometimes find it hard to keep track of all of my siblings' birthdays but I think most especially hers because I, myself, was so young when she was born. Of course, I will admit that she, too, was young at that time, and has  probably remembered it just fine, thank you.

When we were very small (heads at about the height that whacked dining room tables when you cut corners too closely as you ran around the house) I used to call her "Boss in charge of the Dog." I don't think I ever actually did that in front of the dog, or better phrased, dogs, as from the earliest age, she was an animal lover while I only liked them at mealtime usually with mustard and pickle relish.

I've wracked my brain trying to remember the name of the horse she had while living in the Blackwell Mills Road house and I'm not unimpressed that I can remember the name of the road. Assuming I have, or did, which may not be as true as I'd like it to be, I'm confident she knows the name of that horse as well as any and all of the names she may have called me growing up.

Evan has a lot on her plate these days and enough wishes and worries, hopefully in equal number to allow her to sail through the holiday season all the way into the next and New Year. Where, fingers crossed, even better days await. Happy Birthday, Evan!
-bill kenny