I Read the News Today

I wrote this a really long time and cried as hard the day I wrote it as I did the day the event I was writing about happened and that was almost FOUR decades ago. I still do not pretend to understand why Chapman is still alive and I really wish he weren't. That said...

If I need more than a dozen words to explain the importance of John Lennon and the music he helped create, and the other music he made possible, I'm too old and you're too young to be having this conversation. And since, chronologically, I got here first, you'll have to leave.

I was born the year Dwight David Eisenhower took the oath as President. Rock and roll was either very rhythm and blues-oriented (and called 'race music') or was so white it glowed in the dark with melodies from the Brill Building professionals as sung by any fresh face who showed up at the auditions. Little Richard's originals such as Good Golly, Miss Molly were covered and eclipsed by a variety of white artists and never enjoyed the success on pop radio station airwaves they should have, but the UK rockers had no way of knowing that.

People like Sam Phillips and Sun Records helped change all that with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and (of course) Elvis Presley. The seismic shock Elvis set off echoed halfway across the world where tub thumpers, literally as well as figuratively, who were part of something the British called skiffle, attempted to emulate the American records they were hearing in the coffee bars and teen clubs.

The perspiring and aspiring musicians who spent hours trying to copy every chord change of every R & B song they heard had no idea that in the USA, the music to which they were so devoted had been co-opted and to a large extent castrated by vanilla white safe-as-houses imitators. Their world then was so different from our world now that words fail, which is why (perhaps) so many of us who came of age in The Sixties turned to music in the first place as a replacement for language.

If all you know of John Lennon is what you've read, you cannot imagine the electricity late-night American Top 40 radio had when The Beatles were on. They built a bridge from the UK for every disaffected rocker to cross, and it mattered not if they could sing, Noel Harrison certainly couldn't, as long as they looked the part. 

The Liverpool lads stuck and stayed when so many others had faded away because they had talent, and the ear of a generation who sought a voice while they, themselves, searched for the sound they had heard years earlier. They may have never realized they had become the object for which they searched-we, on the other hand, never cared and embraced them as the Soundtrack of the World to Be.

The Beatles 'broke big in America' in the aftermath of the murder of John F. Kennedy and I've never believed that was a coincidence. They were the standard by which all other pop music was measured. It felt, for someone in his teens for all of their public career, that The Beatles had been around forever but when they went dark in 1970, they had been a chart presence for far less than a decade.

Where there were four, only two are alive today. All of them spent, and continue to spend, their solo careers battling unreal expectations, measured by critics and fans alike against an impossible standard no one could match. 

With Lennon's murder thirty-nine years ago tomorrow, the death of the public John overshadowed the personal tragedy his two sons, Julian and Sean, as well as the pain and grief his wife, Yoko Ono, and his first spouse, Cynthia, felt and must still feel every day of their lives. 

It's tempting when revisiting history to forget it can just as easily be written as his story because in this case, the bandmate, the father, and the husband were all walk-ons in the Beatlemania movie Mark David Chapman so abruptly and completely ended with a gun in New York City, in the evening hours of December 8, 1980. 

For many who never knew the man, except through his music, tomorrow will be a long day. There's little we can do except enjoy what he gave us while watching the wheels go round and round and wonder what might have been.
-bill kenny

Now It's Lit

My wife is very methodical. She builds up to projects with small steps but always in the forward direction. Early yesterday afternoon she finished phase one of Project Christmas 2019.

She builds a tableau inside a container every year, this time around it was a lantern and it, in turn, serves as the warm-up for decorating the tree, this year for the first time in thirty-eight years, just for the two of us. 

I'm thinking I have enough Christmas to last me the whole season now.
-bill kenny  

Me and My Monkey

My most recent original thought died of loneliness but before that, I wondered about the turn of phrase "emerging science indicates..." WHAT exactly is emerging science? Is it like rock 'n' roll, "I know it when I hear it"; perhaps more like Jennifer Warnes and her well-known heartache (and why wasn't that brought us to by Lasik, btw)? 

As a kid the rule was you had to define a word before you could use it (remember spelling bees and that desperation dodge, 'would you use it in a sentence, please?'). Now, you just throw out words like the small chimps in the zoo fling poo, and try, like them, to not get any on you.

What exactly constitutes a 'third world country'? If you're living in one, do you know it? Is there a playoff at the end of the continent where you can be relegated to the status of a fourth world country or advanced to a second world country and is there a checklist to document your advance to First World Nationhood? Is that the term that'd be used? And if you have to ask do you lose points?

We've seen so many of them, on TV, in newspapers and online, advertisements for prescription medications-who are those messages aimed at, us or doctors? If it's supposed to be us, I have a problem because the names of many prescription medications are nearly unpronounceable. Who comes up with those and how? Is it based on the compounds that go into them or do the drug companies hire marketing and opinion research firms to invent words? 

We've all heard of "Viagra"-what else was in the running? "Yippee!", or perhaps "YIPpee!" (see that subtle shift of focus just then; I could so do that naming gig for a living.) And have you ever mentioned a drug whose advertisement you're read to your doctor and what happened then?

Returning home the other day from an outing I was, perhaps, more hurried than I'd otherwise normally be. To be clear: I wasn't reckless-I was accelerated. Out of nowhere, a car came up behind me, then beside me and then well beyond me, disappearing at the bend in the road. What a driver and a complete maniac!

After I got home I remembered motivations are internal and behaviors are external, and you can't see what another person is feeling, only what he/she is doing. My high-speed driving didn't bother me because I knew why I was going that fast. 

My trouble was that 'other guy' (the maniac) who didn't reveal his heart, just kept stomping his gas pedal. Of course, to others on the road that afternoon, I, too, had been the nearly-identical twin we've all heard so much about. Proving yet again sometimes the things we do speak so loudly we cannot hear what each other is saying.
-bill kenny

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like .....

The skies grow increasingly more slate-grey as the days get darker sooner and the temperatures continue to drop while winter settles in across New England ahead of its official start way later this month. 

I'm not a big fan of the snow and the cold but I will point out that perhaps not so coincidentally there's more light and bright coming from within and without each of us as the joy of the holiday season starts to unfold a little more and accelerate as each day passes. 

And, as Small Business Saturday over last weekend showed, we're just getting started when it comes to celebrating the season. This week, we really get serious because again, as the kick-off to First Friday Norwich, this Friday it's the annual lighting of City Hall, starting at around half past five with Santa flipping the switch slated for six o'clock. 

If recent years are any indication, we may need a bigger downtown as hundreds and hundreds (and more) of us pour into every nook and cranny around City Hall for the carols, the singalongs and (of course) the countdown to and lighting of one of the most beautiful public buildings in all of New England (and when it gleams like a beacon, flanked by the two churches, throughout the holiday season it is, in my biased, even more lovely). And then afterward instead of heading home, why not enjoy the ever-expanding attractions and activities across Chelsea as the artists and artisans of First Friday show off and share? 

All that chatter you've been hearing and reading about in terms of an ongoing revival and renaissance across downtown isn't wishful thinking, it's concrete and brick and truer now than it was this time a year ago (and the year before that, if you're keeping track) and continues rolling merrily along because so many new people, enthusiastic beginners I like to call them, are staking their claim and working as hard as they can to make their piece of Norwich something special and something worth coming home to and not just for the holidays, though that's certainly a good start.

Sponsored by the Greater Norwich Area Chamber of Commerce, First Friday is a convenient label to write on your monthly calendar but the attractions and events are an ever-changing delight. It's a collaboration among the galleries, theatres, businesses, and civic organizations allying with local artists to include painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, culinary experts, authors, and photographers to bring each of us a night they hope we'll long remember and strive to equal on any and all of the other nights of the month that aren't First Friday.

If you tend to only go through downtown on your way to someplace elsewhere, you've got an evening awaiting you that won't have enough hours in it for all the exhibits you can check out, places to have a quick (or a leisurely) bite or perhaps to share a glass of cheer, or adult beverage of your choice, and you'll wonder, with good reason, why you haven't stopped in sooner, and more frequently, and longer and (see where this going?).

And I haven't even mentioned the Winterfest Parade starting Saturday afternoon at one on Main Street near Otis Library, Well, except now I have, I guess, and after I promise to see you there if I don't see you at City Hall Friday night, I'll return you to your regularly scheduled holiday season already in progress.
-bill kenny  

And So It Begins

My wife spent part of yesterday with our daughter at her apartment helping her 'fluff out' her (artificial) Christmas tree. And by the time I came home in the early afternoon from some errands ahead of what promised to be our first serious snowstorm of the season, she had ours up as well.

We've had artificial Christmas trees almost all the years we've been married. I have allergies to pine and our first Christmas after marriage, Sigrid got a small cut live (though, technically now dead) tree from the Offenbacher ChristKindls-Markt (very much in the shadow of the one in Frankfurt am Main and all of them completely eclipsed by the Nuernberg one). I sneezed and itched for a week to ten days afterward, proving my point about allergies and we went the artificial route since then. 

Our current tree is almost as old as our kids so it's not fooling anyone, at least undecorated but Sigrid does a spectacular job, without any of my help which she neither encourages, otherwise solicits or in any way welcomes, which is just as well as I have no patience for the strand by strand layering of tinsel, the untangling of the Christmas lights, with the obligatory find-the-burned-out-bulb that keeps the strand dark, and the placement of the ornaments. 

Sigrid spends hours and sometimes parts of days getting everything just so and I very much enjoy it guilt-free because NONE of my labor was involved. My absence from her efforts is one of my presents to her for the holiday season.
-bill kenny   

Belated but Sincere

It crept up on me as it so often does, but I get partial credit (I hope). 

Yesterday was my sister Evan's birthday. She is my oldest youngest sister. I’m actually kind of impressed that I nearly I remembered since I, myself, was so young when she was born. Of course, I must also concede she, was even younger at that time, and probably remembers it just fine, thank you.

When we were very small (with our heads at about the height that whacked dining room tables when you cut corners too closely as you ran around the house not that we ever did) 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 her earliest age, she was (and has remained) an animal lover while I only liked (some of ) them at mealtime.

She has had more than her fair share of tumult and tears (as well as triumphs) in recent years and, as always, has a lot on her plate these days with enough wishes and worries, hopefully in equal number to allow her to sail through the holiday season and into the New Year. Where fingers crossed, even better days await. 

Happy Birthday, Evan!

-bill kenny

The First Door Is Sunday on the Advent Calendar

When our children were, well, children, Sigrid made it a point to get each of them an Adventskalendar every Christmas season. She still does. It's another of the too many to count reasons I love her. Which leads me to muse (or murmur)...

Just me or has it been really hectic despite that "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" label we slap on this season? We've already had Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, with Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday both to come and in between we also had Where the Hell Did I Leave My Car Keys (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. You knew I was leading up to something and thanks for your patience while I worked to get us there safe and sound. Yes, it was a long walk but the view is lovely is it not? 

Still leaves, perhaps the question some may have as to its importance. Happy to help you out there. 

Feel free to use your tablet, smartphone, computer or search your heart to look up why.
-bill kenny