Perhaps a Decade On, a Decade of the Rosary Would be Appropriate

I cried when I wrote this ten years ago today and again just now when I rediscovered it. 

Your turn.

An amazing aspect of technological applications and evolutions is the development and dissemination of information that can be shared by an infinite number, but which is, simultaneously, beyond formal communication channel constraints and constructs. 

That's not always a good thing, and in wandering the Net, you either learn to read some folks and NOT read seriously others, or you are trapped online all day in an unending 'do loop.' 

Sitting in Norwich, CT, my view of the world (which actually becomes my world), is very different from yours-not superior or inferior, just different. An ongoing challenge is to take a micro-topic, something I think is worth writing about, and offering it within a macro-context (it ain't called the World Wide Web for nothing, Starbuck). 

So while I had started my day thinking I'd offer a modified rant on an issue of some import here in The Rose of New England, some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you. 

I never had an opportunity to meet Major Andrew Olmsted, US Army, though I read and enjoyed his blog on a regular basis until this morning. 

His final entry is literally that. If you can read it and keep from crying for him (and for all of us), tell me how, as I cannot stop.

"If I leave you, it doesn't mean I love you any less. Keep me in your heart for awhile."
-bill kenny

No Single Flake of Snow

Hope it is warm and snow-free where you are. Around right now here it is neither. 

It looks like the weekend will be devoted in equal parts to both shivering and shoveling with temperatures only reaching the low double digits and winds from the Canadian midlands creating wind chills in these parts deeply below zero. 

All of which will make the 12.2 inches we had around Norwich, Connecticut, that much more difficult to clear and move, to say nothing of melt because none of it will melt. 

This was how it started at about half-past ten on Thursday morning. 

It snowed without surcease until late in the evening and then the cold air that we are currently battling arrived and encamped. I enjoy living where we have all four seasons, but some days I enjoy it more than others. And some days, quite a bit less. Stay warm.
-bill kenny

Turn-About Is Fair Play

Based on a True Thursday in New England: 

"Come Winter I will build you a fire from the bones of who I used to be."

-bill kenny

Fare Thee Well, Cold Winter

We are bracing for Winter Storm Brody today at my house, on my street, in my city and state and region of the country. There's a very good chance before it's over, I'll have a far more colorful name for the winter storm than the one the National Weather Service has created. 

I returned to work for the first time in 2018 yesterday which sparked cries of 'why couldn't it be the only time?' so today's projected storm will seem like an answered prayer for some at my place of employment (who should be glad I'm agnostic because of what I would ask for if I were a believer).. 

I had lots of time for reflection and self-assessment while off and have concluded I'm glad I was born a human since I lack any special skills or abilities that would have enabled me to survive to anywhere near my current age as any other life form on this planet. ('I say, look, Livingston! It's a ring tailed bandicoot trying to access blogger.com!' Or not. And thus ends my homage to H.H. Munro (I hope it has earned your seal of approval)).

No other species divides the rotation of the earth around the sun in the rigid and unyielding demarcations we create-and let's be honest here, we are very good at it. Because we wind up with extra hours and fractions of time that accumulate as merrily we roll along, every four years we have a leap year, though this isn't one of those. 

I've never personally known anyone born on the Leap Day (if that's what February 29 is called) but I've read enough stories about the birthday celebrations and such to be happy that my mother had the good sense to wait until Spring to have me.

Meanwhile, it's still a pretty new calendar page, but the challenges and opportunities look very familiar, don't they? We need to resolve (assuming you didn't make any resolutions (I always resolve to NOT keep any I might make and therein lies the contradiction)) if such a formality is, indeed, required, to move from the 'talking about a problem' to 'finding a solution' (use of the indefinite article is deliberate there. I'm always disquieted by folks who tell me they have found 'the' way rather than 'a' way. (Not that I don't admire their confidence; I just don't share it. See: YMMV.)

My concern in this New Year, much like in the one just passed and many of those before that one, is that we get distracted while on the way to addressing a situation, and end up accepting less than our best effort as a solution, and leave undone something we meant to do. 

And then at the end of the day, or the end of a life, we don't reflect on where we started and how we got there, but rather turn the page and begin again oblivious that we've lost a day but are no wiser or better for its passing. Perhaps this is the year we might try "a small sprig of time and as much of prudence, you mix them all together." Thanks for the recipe, Tim Hart. It looks like we'll go the rest of the way without you.
-bill kenny

Here We Go

There’s nothing quite like the first days of a new year. All we can see is the unlimited horizon before us and cannot imagine ever reaching that place where the road and the sky collide even as we choose to forget we had that very same sense of hopefulness and eagerness about this time a year ago.

I always think of each new year the way I used to look at first snowfalls as a kid.

I will concede that I look at snow a lot differently now as an aging adult but back then, after peering out the window into the dark for hours, willing the daylight to come, and struggling to put on all the gear that Moms everywhere made us wear in the snow, we’d venture out slowly and carefully very aware of the first marks we made in that fresh snow. Usually, it was no more than the first sled ride across the backyard or the start of that first snow fort and we were all once again business as usual.

As I’ve traded my youth for knowledge (and still think I got gypped on that deal; wish I’d saved the receipt) I often feel it’s too bad we can't bottle that sense of unlimited optimism we had with that snow for this, the start of the new year, and have it in reserve to break it out when people and situations get serious and the going becomes harder, like tomorrow when the new year is just a little bit less new and all the days that will follow that one.

Some of us are daunted by the year that’s before us, wary with worries and questions that no one can answer and plagued by doubts and concerns that can and will only be addressed by the passage of time. If we’re lucky (and really does take more than luck) at some point in this year, we’ll look up and around and be surprised (and I hope delighted as well) with where we are and how far we’ve come. That will mostly be the result of ability, effort, timing and the help of others, I just hope we can remember that, especially that last one.

Here’s the deal: we made it to and through 2017. What’s done and gone is done and gone, make it a point to remember lessons learned and then move on. Let's all work on individual and community goals. Leave a little more for somebody else-perhaps take a slightly smaller piece of the pie as the plates get passed around and remember that lesson on the importance of sharing we learned back in kindergarten.

Norwich has a lot of things worth the time and talents of every interested resident and we can certainly use all the help we can get. We're not the only folks in the world, or Connecticut, struggling to make what we have better, but we're closest to it and can do the most good. Let's get started.
-bill kenny

Taking Stock

I will return to work for the first time this year tomorrow morning. I will have been off for three weeks as that happens which is the longest amount of time I've NOT been at work for decades. I don't know whether I should applaud or be appalled by that factoid. 

This was a really nice break for me and I can only imagine how much nicer it was for the people with whom I work who didn't have to see/put up with me on a daily basis. I am, as so many around me incessantly point out, an acquired taste (and by extension, not for everyone). In less than six months time (I'm practicing typing that) I will no longer work, despite having done so in some form very nearly every day for over half a century.
      
So, I'm a little morose and feel sorry for myself.  I'd apologize but once that started, I'd be at it forever so I'll just blurt type this and you can move on as if you'd read it and neither of us will ever speak of this again, okay? Deal.

There are so many things in this life I will never get done or get to do (those pony rides for my birthday come to mind), but I've accepted that when it's my time to die, I will miss my wife and children with my last breath and everything else will be, well, just everything else. 

I'm not looking forward to playing checkers until I pass away, but aside from serving as a visual aid in support of the argument for the road to not take, I have a frighteningly finite skill set and too many miles left on the journey before me.  
-bill kenny   

I Will Begin Again

If you celebrated out the ending of 2017, here we are in 2018 and welcome to the end of your first hangover of the year. One of the nice things about not drinking alcohol anymore is that the looking out the window today, at the first day of the next year isn't as dog-awful as it was so often so many decades ago. 

And so that we're clear. It wasn't that I drank that was the problem. It had a lot more to do with the fact that I swallowed. Even now, the sunshine bores the daylights out of me but I'm also deathly afraid of the dark, hence my dilemma.

So clear-eyed and empty-headed, I look out on the first day of our new year and can already see the gap between the promise and the performance at every level-personal, professional and political. I think I even got them in the correct order, for me at least. Your mileage may vary.

Did you make resolutions? And have you already broken one or more of them? I don't think the Guinness Records people keep track so you can safely claim whatever you wish and however you will. Of course, escaping your own judgment will be harder to do since you know best your own tricks and traps.

I have hopes for 2018-not resolutions. I hope this year to be a better person to people I've known already in my life and to whom I have been less than kind. Unless they're a$$holes, in which case, no deal (I threw that just in case someone who has taken advantage of me thought I was going soft in my dotage and wanted another bite at the apple). 

This is Day One. We can go anywhere and do anything. We just have to decide and then agree on what anything will look like. Let's go.

-bill kenny