Because We Need a Little Christmas

In much the same manner as a rabbit who distributes chocolate eggs has replaced the original meaning of Easter, we've grown old in a culture that has a Jolly Old Elf flying around the world in one night handing out presents that look just like the stuff you can buy for the kids in the store with the giraffe. Funny how art imitates life and then again when it doesn't.

I'm a fossil who grew up in the Fifties where we had air raid warnings that involved hiding under our school desks and facing away from the windows (to avoid the flash of atomic incineration), three (if we had a good antenna) TV stations, all black and white all the time, fathers that got up early and went far away to work and moms who made sure we got to school, came home, put on play clothes before we went outside (every time I see either droopy drawers or tattered-knee jeans, I try to imagine the reaction of my mother or, more especially, my father, and smile as I shake my head), had dinner, did our homework and got ready for bed where we'd get up and do it all again. 

Mine was a nuclear family--now most of us live in an unclear society-anything goes and nobody knows. Back in the day, we had Sister Rose, Sister Thomas Anne and Sister Mary Jean and this time of year, our heads were not filled with thoughts of sugar plum fairies (never did get that line or what they were supposed to be. Fruitcake, I've had; sugar plums, not quite), but we were experts on The Nativity Scene (I felt compelled to backspace and capitalize the "T", because I was taught NO other way to write it). 

We learned all the hymns, often in what Sister Mary Jean called 'the original Latin' which I realized years later was a private joke she and my father shared and while there's a certain happiness in Jingle Bell Rock, for hard-core jollies, try Adeste Fideles (sung by someone who thought the Wise Men had given The Child the gift of Frankenstein, since I had no idea what frankincense could possibly be).

We've become people who are more familiar with the returns policy at The Mall than the hours during which confessions are heard at the local church, or as I heard it called the other day by someone too young to be facetious, "The God Store." Many of us are exhausted from the search to find that special present for that certain someone and I wish those of us in that situation a rapid recovery. 

I've been told a friend is a present you give to yourself and there's no such things as strangers, only friends we haven't met. If that is true, and it is, after all, Christmas, when miracles can and do happen, resolve to start today to be the miracle in someone else's' life. And, although it's been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas.
-bill kenny

Cold Is the Wind of Grief

This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and for many (more importantly) the 'so many days until Christmas' countdown has dwindled down to less than one! (exclamatory marks sold separately at fine stores everywhere)

Maybe today is a good day to see someone in a corner of our lives we normally see through on our way to the many important things we each do and never really acknowledge. We're a pretty crowded ant farm with beepers and briefcases and sometimes the person next to us falls through a crack and we never notice.

Anglicans (Church of England in the UK) call this Stir-up Sunday, not as in get agitated or become more forcefully engaged in the world around us, but for more quiet and comfortable reasons, but I do like that name and the possibilities and connotations.

For some of us, this is the best of the Season of Joy and for others, it's really nothing more than the next to last Sunday in 2017. We are the sum total of all the choices we make and the lives and love we share. We are the reason for this season.
-bill kenny

You Dreamed of Heroes Riding Across the Sea

There was a lot of dust on this one, so I'm not sure how secure the cloud where all of these get stored actually is but this one is pretty old and stuff... On the other hand so am I.

This World Wide Web and global village connectivity are paying off for me, big-time, this Christmas as I have all my shopping done (I think). I don't have to brawl at the mall or feel like a salmon going upstream to fulfill a biologic destiny--I can smile, at least until the statements come in the mail, thanks to the online merchants who've built a better virtual mousetrap and have delivered on their promises of a new world in the morning, or within two days if I choose priority shipping. Oh, come all ye Commerce, Epay and by PayPal...

I'm still handicapped by my lack of ability to visualize items. Unless I've seen it on a store shelf or caught an advert in a newspaper or on television, simply reading a description online with or without specifications on size and weight, I'm clueless as to the item's actual size. 

I live in fear this will be the Christmas where that Stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap comes to life under the tree in the living room of my house (a tree that looks spectacular and which I can admire without ego since my wife made all the Christmas magic happen. Again).

I'm glad I'm done, more or less, because I caught a TV spot for Jenny McCarthy, in my opinion, this generation's Lucille Ball, but, without the red hair or comedic gift, is hawking a workout video for Wii or maybe it's a computer fitness program that, when followed faithfully, will enable me to transform myself into her image and likeness. 

Such news generally causes me to inventory our supply of stout rope and mentally map which overhead fixtures might best support my weight, so enthralled at this prospect am I, and then came the deal-clincher. In the background, though thankfully NOT by the original artists, the music to her sales pitch was The Beatles' Revolution. 

I'm sorry but The Beatles were the soundtrack to my growing up years and not just me, a whole generation of nations. Every time their song catalog gets sold, someone does something like this and (take my word for this) it really grinds a lot of us greatly. 

Almost ten years ago, someone in the telecommunications industry thought exploiting Come Together to a server or whatever they made was a brilliant idea. I was hoping we would, indeed, come together and throw stones through every plate glass window in their corporate headquarters. 

Now, I can dream, should I find the workout under my tree, to finally develop enough upper body and arm strength to be able to hurl a small car both for distance as well as height. 

-bill kenny

Pools of Sorrow

I fell across an ancient (for me) post earlier in the week and despite the years since I first wrote and the events, it describes I could still feel the sting of regret. So much for time passages, I guess.

These days it's dark when I get up and drive to work and it's dark when I come home. I'm lucky that my current office has a window. I've had jobs where I was not so lucky and would come home and ask my wife probing, intimate questions like 'what was it like outside today?'

Speaking of which, one of those jobs for many years was working in radio and television both on the air and as a producer, writer, editor, videographer, audio grip etc. No business like show business unless you're a landscaper and then this time of year it's no business like snow business I suppose.

In putting a paperclip back in the center drawer of my work desk this morning, I saw my old audio splicing block. I've had it all my life, or just about. I got it when I was twelve in a downtown music store in New Brunswick, NJ, that disappeared I have no idea how many decades ago. Until just now I hadn't thought about it for many years and for a moment, I forgot its name but I have it now, "Varsity Music."

The music store, like PJ Arnold's, like the George Street Playhouse, like Macarones' Town House Restaurant, were businesses struggling to survive, huddled together, perhaps for warmth, near the railroad station. At first it was the Pennsylvania Railroad, then Penn-Central as two bankrupt operations, the Pennsylvania and the New York Central joined forces to, together, NOT make a profit even larger and faster than each had done individually. 

Then it became Amtrak and then after yet another reorganization that took six inches off the front of the blanket and put it on the back but insisted it had made the blanket a foot longer, Conrail). Varsity Music had singles, 45 rpm one-song per side pieces of vinyl, posters, albums, musical instruments and supporting equipment, to include blank reels (but only the five-inch kind on the plastic hubs, ugh!) of audio tape, and grease pencils (fancy folks called them 'china markers'),splicing blocks and splicing tape.

I smiled as I touched the neglected block sitting in the compartment where you could store pens and pencil (it's an old desk, for an old man in an old building) back when you used those, and paper, to do jobs instead of the keyboard, mouse and computer workstation now sharing space in the office. 

We each have favorite songs, or TV shows, foods and movies and have memories of events associated with specific moments in our lives and as I realized this morning, a lot of mine are tied to that splicing block and to a life and lifestyle that's not only in the past but would be historical if it were not already obsolete.

I've tried on more than one occasion in our shared past to explain to each of my now grown children what it was I did for a living when I met their mom. Children are always curious about this, I'm told, though I never remember asking my parents how they met (but I do recall my stunned surprise when I found out). Radio has changed so much, in corporate structure and in how it's actually created, that NONE of the skills I learned in the course of decades working in it have survived.

I can remember dubbing an interview to open reel that had been done with the late John Lennon. I was supposed to fly to New York to do an interview, based on the question areas I'd created for the European record company (who were surprised 'you didn't ask any questions about the Beatles?', no I said: 'do they play on his record?'). 

I was on active duty in the USAF, and had a military training requirement (needed for future consideration for promotion and an immovable object) that prevented me from flying to New York to do the interview so the record label had a staffer ask all of my questions, and agreed to embargo the use of the answers for 48 hours after the interview so I could use them first.

Great plan and real coup except Mark David Chapman murdered Lennon the following day making the interview a very valuable item indeed. And all I could hear as I transferred the entire conversation to open reel so as to better edit it was the sound of what could and should have been. Never to be.

Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box, they tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.
-bill kenny

When the Sun Stands Still

This is the shortest day(light) of the year. From here until late June the amount of daylight every day will get incrementally more until by the time we're ready to start planning summer vacations we'll be sick of all the sun (present company excluded). Or not. 

Winter is why I don't enjoy Autumn, (<= understatement alert!) because I know what's coming next and the fact that it's been getting darker for months, and even more so and faster after we fell back at the end of Daylight Saving Time, just makes it harder to see both in the morning when I get up and when I come home from work in the afternoon. We can treat the cold and the snow as read for purposes of this discussion. 

Osage Forest of Peace 

So as we sing the seasons through, today is the day for a dark and deep note as we begin to moderate the key and alter the tempo as the changes that make up our universe enfold and unfold around us.
-bill kenny


 

I Stare Up at the Tree

It's crunch time for gift-givers as online merchants and brick and mortar stores angle for just one more fingertip from that fistful of dollars we each spend every holiday season. Like you I tend to split my time between sitting in front of a computer screen and roaming the aisles. 

It’s a little disquieting when you think about it that what we call the season of giving has become such a big business focused on the getting. Maybe that's another reason why I try not to think too much (and usually succeed). 

We both probably have one or two (or, in my case, more) gifts still to get and then we have to make sure they'll arrive by Christmas but let's devote less time and energy to the getting and more thought and heart to the giving.

Almost every store we've been to since Thanksgiving has had donation stations for those less fortunate, and they are wonderful opportunities to share. I can think of three different small businesses I frequent who have sponsored or supported fund-raisers for families in need and I know I'm not the only one who has contributed. 

Of course, the Salvation Army kettles are part of the season as they should be. And who hasn't helped 'fill a police cruiser' or 'stuff a bus,' on almost any weekend this month? 

Each of us has been blessed in one way or another and we can, in turn, share our blessings with someone else. Our giving can be our gift.  

When I talk about giving I'm not, thinking about the one-offs or the spontaneous moments we have. Yeah, that couple of bucks and the loose change in our pockets gets us a smile and nod from the bell-ringer and makes us feel better about ourselves but we have another opportunity right here and now to give gifts that benefit and sustain many across our city and region more in need of help than they will ever say or that we could ever imagine. 

When I think close to home I think of the annual St. Vincent de Paul Place Dinner for All. They are in need of helping hands to provide thirty dozen Christmas cookies, two-hundred and twenty servings of roast beef, sixty pounds of yellow squash or zucchini. Perhaps you're more of a potato person? That's good because they need a hundred pounds or so of spuds. 

And let's not about forget dinner rolls, or the butter to put on them, paper plates, holiday napkins, and coffee with cream and sugar for afters. You can find the full list of needed items online or you can send a note to Bonnie at bysvdpp@gmail.com.

It seems like a lot of food because it is but they feed a lot of people every day of every week all year long, so why not make a cash donation to sustain their work in addition to helping out right now, When you do, you’ll receive far more than you gave. Merry Christmas. 

-bill kenny

Time the Conqueror

Today is my Dad's 94th birthday. He didn't live to see it-he didn't even get close, passing away in 1981. I often thought we didn't get along because we were so different, and I blamed him for that, but in the decades since his death I've come to realize it's because we are very much alike and all this finding fault junk is foolish, especially since I'd have to be the one to blame. 

My dad had a very quick mind and a mouth to match. The laws of probability suggest he wasn't always the smartest guy in the room but I don't ever recall being in a room when he wasn't probably the smartest guy, no matter the subject and no matter the size of the room. He was a natural wonder of the world and while, in hindsight, I realize he was often wrong-he was never in doubt.

I recognized the exact moment I had become my dad, ironically not in any form of interaction with our children (who hadn't even been born yet), but in a work situation many years ago in radio broadcasting with someone who could have been far better than she was, had she made the effort. She explained through tears after what she felt had been an especially caustic critique session that "I can't work as hard as you can!" And though it was my voice, it was my father's words which coldly countered "I don't want you to work as hard as I can; I want you to work as hard as you can."

Where my father and I differed is in our circumstances-I suspect he was far more of a humanist than he was ever comfortable admitting. He was very much a man of his time, born in the years before the first Great Depression of parents who'd migrated to the Land of Opportunity. They had a family of all boys who were strivers, all of them as near as I can remember. In the years since his passing, I've thought of them only rarely and lost any means of contacting any of them. I never cared to speak with them since I don't think they knew much more about my dad than I did. 

We were six children, two groups of three, two boys and girl in the middle in the first cohort and then two girls and, finally, another boy in the second cohort. We three oldest knew him as a two-fisted force of nature who got up before anyone else in the neighborhood, perhaps even in the whole world, and rode the train to "The City" where he taught the sons of the rich (to little effect as I had opportunity first hand, repeatedly, to discover) and came home when everything was dark. We wanted for nothing and, speaking for myself, I never once considered what it cost him for us to live that way.

Our second cohort had different lives as he died before my middle sister, the oldest of the three, had graduated from high school. By that time, I had gone as far as you can in this world from him, distance wise, only to learn no matter how fast you are you can never outrun your own shadow or your own conscience. When the American Red Cross operator notified me of 'an emergency, a death in the family' I wasn't surprised it was my dad but my sense of guilt at hearing the news did surprise me. For just a moment I was again that little-too-small and little-too-loud boy who often felt overmatched by a father, a Captain of the Universe no less, who never knew what to say to his own children that would sound like the love and encouragement he was trying to offer.

About a year after we married, my wife and I came to the United States. It was very important for me that my father like the woman I loved, even as I told myself it mattered not at all. She wasn't Irish, she wasn't Catholic and he loved her anyway. I had worried for nothing. It was a delightful relief and a wonderful visit. He and I almost talked but there would be time for a real conversation on a future visit. When we said goodbye at the airport, he was misty-eyed and I thought of my sister Jill and her 'it's very warm, my eyes are sweating' but I didn't say it aloud.

That moment at the departure lounge proved to be the last time I would have an opportunity face to face in this life to ever not tell him something I could, and perhaps, should, have. I spent many years struggling with the burden of that moment and the memories not so much of all the things said but, rather of all the things left unsaid that now will stay that way for all time until memory ends. Happy Birthday, Dad.       
-bill kenny