Let's Not Make a Deal

I've stopped watching TV news. When I watch our local news it's usually for the weather report but I live in Southeastern Connecticut and in August the weather is hot and humid with a daily chance of just enough rain to screw up that car wash I just got with no danger of reducing the dew point to something approaching tolerable.  

And the national news is all Trump Lies all the time and, quite frankly, I'm numbed from the roots of my rapidly diminishing hair to the tips on my toenails by the petulance and perfidy of the Prevaricator in Chief. 

Trump is like that shitheel used-car dealer whose commercials dominate late-night TV after the talk shows have called it a day. Every car on his lot: I don't know Stormy Daniels; You need ID to buy groceries; There was/is no collusion, through Mexico will pay for the wall; all of them have frame damage that needs straightening, used filler and bond-o to make body repairs, needed large amounts of sawdust in the bell housing to quiet the transmission, and have problems with the VINs on the registration. And his Trumpkins believe every word.

Not what I'm about today, not at all. 
As Yossarian offers to Chaplain Tappman in Catch-22, "let the bastards thrive for all I care since I can nothing to stop them except embarrass by running away' and I'm way too old and lame to attempt that so I just hope I'm still around when karma catches up to the Mango Mussolini and that posse of Trump Trolls he installed in the government. Nope, none for me thanks, I'm driving.

Mark David Chapman the man who murdered John Lennon is eligible for parole again and will request just that at a hearing later this month whose date has not yet been announced. I grew up with and on The Beatles. I don't think I would have survived adolescence without their music and I'm sometimes not sure how I've gotten as far as I have in all the years since. Fuck Mark David Chapman and his request.

Here's the only deal on the table: he gets to leave prison no more than one hour after John Lennon comes back from the dead. I'll hold the watch so we'll all know it's fair (mine has a sweep-second hand so I'll get it right to the very second). 

Actually, that's a lie, not the watch part. He stays in jail, below ground with no daylight and no one ever speaking to him until he dies and then when he finally does, we leave his corpse in the cell and seal it up and never speak or think of him again. Ever and forever.
-bill kenny/

Ellie Approaches Ten Soon Enough

I hadn't thought about two folks I once knew quite well for quite some time until I had a moment yesterday afternoon when Brian was there unbidden but quite welcome in my thoughts and then I found this scribbling from a long time ago and figured for some reason I was trying to tell myself something.

The electronic ties that bind as we huddle together in the Global Village create bonds that are in their way just as real as the roots they are now replacing. It's become a truism that no one stays in the same place anymore, and yet most of us not only know people for whom that is NOT true, we are, ourselves, those people. 

A few years ago, two reporters, Brian W and Dorothy S, for the at-the-time-Gannett-owned newspaper, the Norwich Bulletin, met, became engaged and were married while on the staff of the newspaper. As a matter of fact, for a period of time leading up to the nuptials, there was a regular feature in their paper (they alternated writing it, as I recall), "Hitched", that was quite fine and fun to read, especially for those of us who saw ourselves as 'old, married couples.' (I'll leave you to guess which part of that I saw myself as). 

The focus of their column changed, shifted actually, after the wedding and it remained a popular feature across the paper's readership as both Brian and Dorothy, via the column, shared breakfast in most homes twice a week as they tried out the different people we, as readers, knew they would need to become as a successful married couple. 

In many ways, they were Tweeners-not brothers or sisters or nieces and nephews, no blood relatives at all nor were they the folks in the Sunday color section, be it called "Home" or "Social" with the stilted photo from the church wedding of the pair (and you sit at the kitchen table trying to figure out how they ended up together) reporting "...and Mr. and Mrs.Irving  Glockenspiel, of the Hamptons' Glockenspiels, will honeymoon somewhere in Ibiza with a Runcible Spoon.." or some such stuff. We, the readers, felt we knew Dorothy and Brian because, in a way, we did. 

It wasn't technically cause and effect, but only a short amount of time had passed after their wedding when both of them accepted positions with another newspaper, I always thought it was part of the same chain, in the Mid-west (I say that like I know what that means; I don't have a clue) somewhere in Indiana I believe and they moved away and, seemingly, thus endeth the lesson. 

Except, with the technological tools of the Brave New World, like Facebook and Twitter and Lord-Knows-What-Else, many of us have managed to pick up the threads of Dangling Conversations and putting aside the time that has passed, it's yesterday once more. Or less. When we reconnected in cyberspace, courtesy of Facebook, Dorothy was great with child (their first) and Brian was working through a lot of the issues that prospective Dads everywhere knew he would have to master (and are confident that he will. 

It's been fun and familiar in a way these past few months, watching from a distance, as people I sort of once knew (but didn't really when you get down to it ) are on their way to becoming, in essence, other and completely different people that not even they know, as they join a new club, "Parents". 

And Monday, while all of our lives were going in whatever directions they were going, a daughter, Eleanor Ann, arrived and both Dorothy and Brian posted their thoughts and her pictures to their wall (I think that's the term) on Facebook and all manner of friends and acquaintances (I'm very much in the latter category) offered their toasts and (of course) congratulations. 

I keep returning to a vintage Peter Townsend song from an overlooked and underheard Who album, with questions that both Dorothy and Brian will ask one another if they haven't already and whose answers are ever and never changing. "Where do you walk on sunny times? When the rivers gleam and the buildings shine. How do you feel goin' up hallowed halls? And the summer clothes brighten gloomy halls?" Welcome to Earth, Ellie. Stay close to your Mom and Dad. Sometimes it's a dark ride. 
-bill kenny

Not Actually Rushed Off My Feet

I retired six Sundays ago. I started to type "I stopped working" but many of those with whom I once worked would have assumed it was longer ago than just six Sundays. Yeah, back in the day I hung out with the mean kids in the schoolyard.

Of course, since back in the day my blood pressure has dropped on average 25 points top and 15 points bottom. I have a battalion of physicians who've spent hours making sure I know the medical terms for top and bottom but it sounds folksier (more folksy?) my way so I do it. I'm always surprised that more people don't find me endearing and can never imagine why. 

My high point in the recent weeks of my newly-started retirement has been getting phishing email designed to get my dander up and elevate ALL the numbers of my blood pressure from "Bryan," whose email's subject line is "I really hate you." Talk about you had me at hello.

The email itself is as brusque and concise, "I really hate you and you know why! I know that you are not brave enough to reply. Sent from my iPhone" Where I come from those are referred to as 'step off, bitch' fighting words, so imagine how relieved I am that I no longer live where I come from. 

I know better than to answer though "Bryan" sends me at least six of those emails every day. I hope he's using a new iPhone every time, and people wonder why Apple was the first company in history to be valued at more than a trillion dollars.   

Sorry, Bryan, you'll need to try harder. A lot harder. 
-bill kenny

Another Missed Hallmark Card Opportunity

I concede this might have been more useful with a little more advanced warning on my part for your part but it is what it is but I'm sharing it now and you can make of that (or not) what you will and I can't change it. Monday is National Fresh Breath Day.  You're welcome.

I found out it out yesterday when I had an e-mail from a toothbrush manufacturer offering me an additional 10% discount on my purchase of toothbrushes (and why is it, again, that we do not call them teethbrushes?). As marketing outreaches go, and how many different successful outreaches can oral hygiene product vendors possibly have, it was okay I guess.

I especially enjoyed on the website how it's conceded that the origins behind National Fresh Breath Day are not known. In this the era of "Fake News," I can see someone, perhaps with smoky eyes and a Remember the Bowling Green Massacre lapel button slowly exhaling and clearing the room as they begin to spin a story so phenomenal it'll take your breath away. 

Brush 'em if you got 'em.
-bill kenny     

Ask Mr. Etiquette

I've played hooky a couple of times this week from the gym I visit on weekday mornings trying to avoid some of the Southeast Connecticut summer (the heat and humidity give us something to complain about while we wait for winter's return so we can bitch about the show and icy temperatures). 

I've stolen half a page from our daughter Michelle's playbook and headed up to Mohegan Park in the center, practically, of Norwich, Connecticut, and walked around Spaulding Park in the seven o'clock hour before the heat (and humidity) of the day have joined forces to bully most of us indoors. 

The half a page I've stolen is the destination; Michelle runs along the trails in the park to get and stay fit. I, on the other hand, walk along the path surrounding Spaulding Pond, the swimming hole no one I've ever met admits to swimming in even though so many of us were outraged last summer when attempting to balance a municipal budget our City Council chose to not fund money for lifeguards, so the beach was closed. 

I have neither the legs nor the breath to attempt to run around Spaulding Pond and tell myself, Fitbit firmly attached to my right wrist, that I'm doing my body nearly as much good as if I ran. Between us, I couldn't run for even a short distance or anything approaching a sustained rate if someone was chasing me over a cliff. So, like many old people, I tell myself stories about how much better I was at that stuff when I was younger.  

Not suggesting cause and effect but this tree was upright Tuesday morning but by Thursday
was sprawled across half the lower parking lot blocking one of the entrances/exits. 

As I walk along the path, in a counter-clockwise direction because that's how I was taught to do it, I pass people coming in the opposite (a/k/a 'wrong') direction as they, too, make their way along the trail. I'm pretty good at waiting until we are separated by about eight-feet and closing fast, before making eye contact and saying a cheery 'good morning.' I invariably receive a head nod or a 'hello,' and sometimes the occasional 'how are you?' in return.

When it's the how are you, I always respond with 'quite well and thank you for asking,' because I do value courtesy and civility but don't want to end up going shoe-shopping with any of these folks and, besides, I don't ask how they are because I don't actually care. 

Of course, there are also concerns if those you encounter aren't singular in number (we all are in person, of course) and there's a slight little dance we all do to see who moves/yields so the other can continue to walk two abreast. Some mornings I'm almost exhausted from the etiquette and protocols involved in a simple walk, and still, I persist. I admire myself greatly at those times.   

That's on the first pass around one another. I strive to make four circuits around the pond (I'm channeling my Inner Brit there) and still haven't quite mastered the what do we do to/with one another on each subsequent orbit. Sometimes I briefly nod or smile, sometimes the other person does or one of us struggles with our phone/iPod/music player thingie and don't acknowledge the other in any way so that we don't get trapped in an endless do-loop of salutations and greetings. 

I won't even mention the etiquette concerns I (at least) have about passing someone going in the same direction but even more slowly (I meant carefully). It's strange on a planet rapidly approaching eight billion of us wandering in every direction how hard we work to stay out of one another's way.   
-bill kenny           

A Story the Other Day Reminded Me of This

It wasn't so much a newspaper story as someone posting on Google Plus (yes, some of us still use that and I heard sniggering so stop it right now or I won't tell you about the account I have on MySpace) that reminded me of yet another page out of my book of rapidly diminishing memories. 
At the time I called it:

Somewhere a Sofa in Mom's Basement Weeps for Joy

I encountered a person today with whom I have a nodding acquaintance, as literal as it is figurative, who was pretty 'stoked to be back', and wondered if I'd missed him. 

Not since I had the scope repaired, I replied, as I always do just to see the blank look of zero comprehension in his eyes, knowing he doesn't get the joke but won't ask me to explain.

And then it was my turn to look blank as he shared with me, unbidden, that he'd been at Comic-Con in classy San Diego (thanks to 'Glory Hole Productions' because this could have been so much worse if you hadn't helped? Does the video war crimes tribunal have your address?). 

There have been scads of these annual get-togethers (ka-ching!). He may have mentioned that as he went on about a lot of stuff I can remember feeling odd about since I thought all this time he was a grown-up. A little strange as a grown-up, but a big person in a big person's body, if you know what I mean. 

I didn't realize I actually knew one of these parodies of a person, with the dark and greasy hair, the small, nervous eyes and the sweaty palms who lives on a couch in his Mom's basement because to my knowledge, none of that is true in his case and yet..... 

I enjoyed comics when I was a kid. I am far more often childish now than childlike but sifting through the websites trying to understand the difference between graphic novels and comics and the thousands of shades of meaning between them, I was overwhelmed with the sound of commerce, as in big business, I was tempted to lie down. That was when I realized that was the purpose of the couch in the basement. 

Thanks, Mom, for gathering up the Archie and Jughead comics all those years ago and getting rid of them. Was Archie hooking up with BOTH Betty and Veronica?  What was the deal with Reggie? And what the heck was that thing on Jughead's noggin? 

Here at Life's Rich Repast, it's always worthwhile to pack an extra napkin and use it for the spot next to your mouth. On trash day, I'll drag the couch down to the curb and help load it onto the truck. Should be a hoot.

-bill kenny

Money and Mouths

Growing up on my block in the swamps of Jersey, kids would challenge one another to "put your money where your mouth is," that is, prove the truth of what you're saying or pipe down.

With the benefit of hindsight a sixty-six-year-old man possesses when looking back at his own behavior while an eight-year-old, I'll admit none of us in my neighborhood had two nickels to rub together (and truth was often subjective and usually rationed).

But I've never been accused of allowing a lack of knowledge to keep me from having and often loudly voicing an opinion and that's why more often than not you can hear me long before you see me. I guess it's true that you can take the boy out of Jersey but you'll never get Jersey out of the boy.

While with the passage of all the years since then I don't remember whether any of us really did put money where our mouths were (though we certainly yapped a lot with 'em), I still can clearly recall the intensity of the challenge itself.

An almost-lifetime later, and living in a city with about forty thousand or so mouths, many speaking at the same time and very rarely agreeing with one another I (too) often join the "Nope" Chorale when ideas are offered and proposals are made for moving Norwich into the Now and making us the city all of us can be proud to claim as our home.

So it was last Wednesday morning, reading in the pages of The Bulletin "City Council Pitched $8.47 Million Revitalization Program" and my first reaction was that we've been here before, back in November of 2010 when voters approved a $3.38 million bond that funded downtown revitalization with a matching grant program to finance building upgrades, a lease rebate program intended to boost building occupancy and a loan program for business development. 

I've walked across downtown probably a thousand times in the almost eight years since we approved that first bond and if you have, too, then we both know that what Bob Mills of Norwich Community Development Corporation told the Council last Wednesday night is true.

He told our aldermen and women that the investment, so far, has resulted in 124,000 square feet of improved space across 17 downtown properties. and  ".,.$2.47 million of that money has been spent or committed, resulting in $22.8 million of economic impact to Norwich." 

Money doesn't talk, said Dylan; it swears, so I was listening very carefully as I continued to read “We have put nearly $23 million into the local economy over the life of these projects,” Mills said. “That’s a return of $9.22 to our economy for each dollar invested.” 

I don't know much about investing but getting nine dollars back for every buck spent sounds pretty good to me. The proposal would continue to support downtown Norwich but also foster development at our key city gateways and across our villages and business districts. 

The City Council are still working out the details and must finalize the scale and scope by August 20 if we, the people, are to have the opportunity to vote on it this November. Betting on ourselves again? Of course! Where else would you want to put our money?
-bill kenny