A Decade and Two Days

I'd like to think my memory is as good as it ever was but concede the sad truth many of us share that the older I get the better I was. This is from ten years (and a pair of days) ago and based on current events and headlines from Southwest Asia, feels more like just yesterday:

Photographs as Memories

The photographer who captured a moment in long ago war in a faraway land before most people currently on Earth were born but part of the collective memory of a lot of us who came of age in The Sixties, Hubert van Es, died in Hong Kong yesterday. He was 67. 

He was a Dutchman who found himself in Southeast Asia as a photojournalist as the War in Vietnam ground to an end and produced a very famous image of came to be known as "The Fall of Saigon" (in April 1975) — a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop in an attempt to escape Saigon as the North Vietnamese Army entered the city. 

For two generations of Americans, Vietnam was not an especially shining moment, either in history or in memory and there are not a few who believe to this day much of our national sense of self and our place as a nation in the world was adversely impacted by an intervention that began as a well-intentioned limited involvement and ended for far too many as a nightmarish quagmire.

van Es was part of a worldwide coalition of creative persons, both visual and reportorial, who witnessed a world larger than themselves and recorded moments within it and shared them with the rest of us, both in the then and now and in all the days that were to come. They recorded history but offered no judgments on it--allowing us to have the information and perspective to evaluate for ourselves. 

In the decades since The Fall of Saigon, we've talked among ourselves about the meaning of our engagement, how it ended and what it all meant. In many ways, the resolve and resourcefulness we show now as we move in the world are a result of the expectations (dashed) and experiences (rescued) that we formed in the days when celluloid was the notepad of the ages. Few paid so much attention, and so well, as Hugh van Es. 
-bill kenny

A Change Is Gonna Come

Change can be both evolutionary and revolutionary and, depending on where you are, it's sometimes too slow and almost non-existent.

Sixty-five years ago today, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

We still do not have equality in many aspects of our society, including our public school education throughout the country, but Sam Cooke was absolutely right even as we've yet to agree on the calendar for the date we arrive.
-bill kenny   

Never Gets Old

This is from exactly ten years, a full decade ago; and while the characters to some extent have changed, the movie is exactly the same. I called it: 
 

If Money Talks, Who's Listening?

All across Connecticut, towns and municipalities are practicing their ability to walk on eggs while holding their breath, knocking on wood and keeping their fingers crossed (mine already are-you can tell by my typing). 

In Connecticut, despite the calendar which starts in January and ends in December, the fiscal year starts 1 July. Meanwhile, the Federal government starts its fiscal year on 1 October. You can't tell the budgets without a calendar.....get yer red hot calendars...!

Cities and towns whose sole power to tax is tightly defined and controlled by the state, are busy measuring three (or more times) and cutting once all across the state as many, like Norwich, have requirements to have an approved budget for the next fiscal year by a date rapidly approaching at the end of next month.

They should be nervous-a great deal of their budget depends on allocations from the state of Connecticut and, let's face it, no matter the state and no matter the town, if the choice comes down to a program or position in the Capital or one someplace in the 'boondocks', guess who's going to win? Color me surprised only as long as we can afford crayons.

But, as is so often the case in The Land of Steady Habits, the Governor,  and the Legislature, haven't quite agreed on the next budget (and really aren't within shouting distance of one another) and until/unless that happens, the 168 municipalities at the lowest level of participatory democracy, our hometowns, are in limbo. Any guess they make on State dollars can, and the laws of probability suggest, will, be wrong.

We go through this around here, to varying degrees, every year. And every year we all get a case of the heebie-jeebies and vow to 'fix' this 'broken system' and then suffer amnesia when the crisis passes. As a matter of fact, since it's so familiar and recurs so often, I'm not sure if 'crisis' is even an appropriate word to describe it.

Better a horrible end, than horrors without end, I suppose, but this annual dance could end with very little effort if we could all sit together and work it out. After all, money talks. And some days you can't get a word in edgewise.
-bill kenny

Any Road Will Get You There

I've never really been a big fan of yelling, though I wouldn't be surprised if our two children had a  different opinion. If I thought it would fix anything I'd be out in my garage right now yelling at the first car I ever owned back in the day, a 1962 Corvair until it turned into a Corvette. Pretty sure I'd be more than a little hoarse (and not a pony) by now from all that shrieking.

Did I attend/join in Monday evening's City Hall rally in support of education prior to the second public hearing on the budget? No, because I didn't (and don't) think it changes anything and the hullaballoo and hurt feelings surrounding the rally, comments made by members of the City Council, and the continued perception of public education as a cost rather than an investment causes us to lose our focus on what I think is the heart of the matter. 

For lack of a more elegant assessment, we have come to the place where the road and the sky collide in terms of how we local government goods and services. How we finance all of the things we say we want in the manner we want them is a challenge we're no longer successfully addressing so arguing at the top of our lungs about what one or the other item costs, in this case, public education, is missing the bigger flick.

If I had a dollar for every time in the twenty-seven years of budget deliberations and discussions I've followed that I've heard 'this is a tough budget year,' or 'what you're seeing is bare-bones,' or my personal favorite 'there's nothing left to cut,' I could fund all our municipal departments and have money left over.

Let's channel the anger and animus so many of us are feeling right, with more than good reason perhaps, into something more productive than marking up poster boards and name calling. Since we've spent years saying 'we need to find a better way' let's stop talking about it and find a better way.

Every election (and we have one coming up in November) we ask candidates seeking office ‘do you support education?’ as if anyone would answer ‘nope; gimme ignorance, it’s easier to fool dumb people.’ My point is what do we mean when we ask that?

When we say “I support education” I suspect some of us mean the industrial age model we have now and have had for decades, not the technology age we need and should have. Eisenhower isn’t the President, except in many of our history books (is it still called that?) and we need to look at the now and the next and prepare for them. We're not doing that so we're failing our children and ourselves and are digging a hole so deep we'll never get out. 

I don't know what I don't know about creating 21st Century public education and paying for it. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, especially after yet another bruising budget season, in believing we may not be asking the right questions (which could be why we don't seem to have any answers). 

Two essays from the Center for American Progress worth considering are "Seven Great Education Policy Ideas" emphasizing today’s students need better preparation for jobs to support their families and allow their full participation in our economic growth and a "Fresh Look at School Funding," on how to pay for that transition

Why not a task force (no idea of how many members) from across the community to examine, evaluate and recommend new approaches on how we deliver public education to our children, to include the tow I just mentioned. The only rule for that conversation would be there are no rules.

The only rule for those conversations would be there are no rules.
My mom used to tell us as kids when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. Based on current events, we aren't running out of time to test her theory; we are already there. 

-bill kenny

Rosaries vs. Ovaries

I would never be happy listening to anyone, including those to whom I am related by marriage or birth, telling me what or how to do any aspect of my body so I'm always confused when (invariably) men in elected office at all levels of government seem to think it's okay to get involved and offer laws and strictures on what a woman, any woman, can and cannot do with her own body to include all aspects of her reproductive rights.

I'm a man who was raised a Catholic so I'm doubly NOT someone who should ever talk about abortion unless some of the legislative initiatives wending their way inexorably to the Supreme Court mandate that everyone must have an abortion. Otherwise, not my table. 

In other words, if you are opposed to abortions, don't have or get one. 

Guys, we don't have the biological equipment required to think we have a seat at the table for any discussion on reproductive rights.   

-bill kenny

Speaking in Tongues

Some people think I was born mean. Most of those who think that share my last name but that doesn't mean they are always right even though I am. I think this may prove I was born meaner and have mellowed. You're welcome. At the time I called it:

Flypaper for crazies?

We'll all seen people with sweatshirts or tee-shirts that say 'ask me about my grandchildren.' I at some point in the past unknown to me have been fitted with one that says 'tell me about anything at all, I don't mind.' 

I was in the local grocery yesterday afternoon grabbing some sports drinks as if what I attempt now at the fitness center could ever be confused with physical exertion. Humor me, okay? If I want to think it's a workout, what's the harm in letting me have this little fantasy. It isn't, and if cornered I'd admit it, but I do get winded and a bit sweaty and parts of me hurt until the Tylenol kicks in. Plus I look cool with a multi-pack sports drink in my hand as I stand in line. I get almost as much of a work out carrying that to the register as I did on the treadmill. 

I wound up behind a fellow carrying a lot of stuff in his bare hands, without benefit or a shopping cart or a basket. I've had that happen, where I get ambushed in the baked goods by freshly made oatmeal and raisin cookies while I sort of have my hands already full (A reach exceeds grasp kind of moment). 

Have there been times I've parked the item I originally came into the store to get and bought a lot of other stuff, taken it all out to the car and then returned for the original item? Yes, guilty as charged.

Not sure what happened with this guy. He was pushing a bag of charcoal briquettes in front of him but did not seem to have any meat you would normally associate with grilling in his hands (and I don't care to imagine where else he might have put it). 

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I've never been hijacked by briquettes when I'm Lost in the Supermarket, so I didn't have the highest regard for this fellow traveler on the Big Blue Marble. When he started mumbling, from where I was behind him (I scrupulously enforce that ATM space rule when I'm in line. It will never be my hot breath you feel on your neck and vice versa) I thought he was talking to the scandal magazines alongside the gum and candy. 

One of the most sobering aspects of growing old, is how, as I've aged, less and less of the headlines or pictured celebrities mean anything to me at all. One of magazine covers had someone who is so famous she only has a first name and a TV show (I think), but I have no idea who she is or the name of the show and no matter how often my daughter (and even my wife) tells me, I know I will never learn it. There's nothing sadder than an aging hipster.

Anyway, Marty Mumbles seemed to be talking to the magazine with what looked like Mel Gibson, or someone else, and (maybe) his girlfriend as a thumbnail-sized photo on the cover. I think the wife of a scandal-ridden public figure was also on th over telling me she was staying married to her husband even though I hadn't asked and from what I've read elsewhere, it's all pretty tawdry. Sometimes I think the USA is now The Truman Show, and not Harry S, except the batteries have been removed from the remote and we can't change the channel. 

The fellow in front of me wasn't talking to Mel or the wife, as it happened. I looked up to realize, as he stacked his stuff (and '12 Items or less' became a suggestion, exactly when? I missed that memo) as high as he could on the smallest possible amount of space on the conveyor belt, he was actually talking at me. There was a reasonable amount of frantic head nodding and eye-blinking, which was of no help at all in understanding a single word of whatever he was, or wasn't, saying. 

All the while the cashier was scanning his stuff, he had his back to her, addressing me. I always get these guys so I just bided my time. When she announced the total, I had to point him, using the smile and nod technique (and NO sudden movements) in her general direction so that he realized the ride was just about done. 

Of course, he wasn't prepared to pay and went through his pockets looking for cash, paper, and coins, before defaulting to a credit card, shuffling off with enough plastic bags to choke a landfill all the while jabbering away to anyone (else) who made eye contact.

When I handed the cashier my sole item, she remarked that she hadn't seen me 'in here with that guy before' as if I made it a practice to collect strangers in the night. I thought about telling her just that and then decided silence, in my case, was golden. Besides, if I dawdled, I'd be late for the cookout, and that would never do.
-bill kenny

Gimme An "M"

My mom passed away a little less than three years ago. I'm sorry you never got to meet her because she was wonderful, though if you had you might have wondered why she was saddled with me as a child. I'm pretty sure she'd have an answer for that because that's how she was. This is from a long time ago and at that time I called it:
 

M Is for the Mudflaps

I figure everyone with a pulse, or an approximation, is waxing poetic today in honor of Mother's Day, as well we should except....my mom is a tough old broad who wrangled six of us to adulthood, the last three for a significant distance without her partner of (at that time) nearly thirty years. 

At some point today, unless I beat her to the phone call, she'll call to wish my wife a Happy Mother's Day and then walk across the street to the beach on the ocean where she lives in Florida. Don't ask her what the Spanish word for snow is because Mom hates snow, really hates snow.

When I was a kid, Mom was more than unflappable, she was a force of nature and in the nearly three decades since the death of her husband, all of her children, joined by grandchildren and now great-grandchildren have watched her lead the life she wishes after taking care of so many of us for so long. 

Mom came to visit Sigrid and me and our two children when we all still lived in Germany. She and Franz and Anni Schubert, Sigrid's parents, got along wonderfully well even though they shared not a single syllable of a common language. Sigrid's mom was a Rubble Woman upon whose back the Federal Republic of Germany became the economic engine of Europe in the decade after World War II. Anni's husband passed some years ago. The two women took, and take, no shit from anybody and raised children pretty much who are the same way.

My sisters, Evan, Kara, and Jill are accomplished, masterful and successful. They take care of their own families with the same devotion and also the same discipline (no feet on tables, no glasses without coasters) as their mother did them. Glenn, Russ, and Joe are fortunate to have them in their lives and smart enough to know it.

I and my two brothers, Kelly and Adam, are married to women, Sigrid, Linda, and Margaret whose Moms raised them to give us the confidence every day to go out into the world and try to reinvent it in our own image and, when we come home at the end of each day, defeated but undaunted, to convince us we can begin again on the morrow because of their love and support. I think at last count we have, among us, two point three boxcars of children, some with families of their own.

I realize you fear with my diabetes being so sweet puts me in danger of being terminally mushy. No worries, I'm not, as I invoke the deathless words of Ray Wylie Hubbard to close. Love ya, Mom(s), all of you.

-bill kenny