Through the Past, Darkly

Today's back page is almost older than I am. Almost. At the time I called it: 

Watch the Ripples that Unfold Unto Me

Had a pleasant surprise the other evening in my email inbox, a postcard from my past. I had a kind note from Johannes D in Regensburg to chat, briefly, about a Graham Parker project he's working on and to share with me his memories of listening to me on the radio, in another life, on the multiple occasions Graham was kind enough to stop by the station and visit.

The 'station' was American Force Radio, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main in the old days of the two Germanys; in this case in West Germany, known as the Federal Republic of Germany, to distinguish it from the People's Republic of Germany. 

Those were Cold War days, not that I had a walk-on part in any of that as a skeeter-winged Airman in the US Air Force who played records, wrote and produced public service announcements, and interviewed rock and rollers for GI listeners and their families numbering into the hundreds of thousands. 

I had the time of my life. Though to be honest, I had also enjoyed AFRTS Sondrestrom, Greenland even when it went to seventy-five below zero on Christmas Eve 1975 and stayed there for three weeks in the twenty-four-hour darkness. Sure, it was miserable, but we were all miserable.

Being an Airman, even a jeep (junior enlisted personnel), in a primarily Army organization, like AF, was, a day at the beach by comparison and you never had to worry about the sands of time getting in your lunch. Except, of course, they always do. Rock and Roll kids grow old, even if they don't grow up. The number of nights in the week where you can hang with the trolls and the gnomes after the gigs starts to shrink as Neverland recedes in the rearview mirror.

I smiled reading Johannes' note for all that it brought back to me and for all that has escaped forever, never to return, because had I realized then he was listening as intently as he was, I might have tried harder to be better at what I did than I proved to be. 

Maybe worked out more, or harder because "...you can't be too strong. You decide what's wrong. Can't be too hard, too tough, too rough, too right, too wrong."
-bill kenny

Truth Decay

When we were kids, we'd hear (and say) 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' It would appear, based on headlines I've perused in recent days that a company named Smartmatic would like a second opinion on that cliche and the amount of injury it suffered at the hands and more especially the mouths of Fox News. 

Nothing says 'we're sorry' like 2.7 billion dollars.

I defer to my brother, Adam, on the legal merits of what's been filed but I skimmed it and found it to be gripping. Truth to tell they had me at the start of their introduction,  "The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable..." 

Cynic that I am, it confirms my belief that Fox News was a nest of lies and reaffirms the present tense of the verb as used earlier in this sentence.
-bill kenny

 

A Pinocchio Public Service Announcement

Remember when we were growing up and part of growing up was learning stuff every day? 

And some of the stuff we were learning was useful and some of it like Algebra and Latin maybe not so much but we learned it and to varying degrees, we have retained some vestige of the knowledge we first acquired when we were growing up. 

We've been at this Pandemic Prevention Polka for just about a year now, but we keep screwing up the baby steps stuff. Some of us seem to have a brain so small, as Mr. Roarke the Athletic Director (and a no slouch at either Algebra or Latin) at Carteret Academy once exasperatedly exclaimed during a long, cold, winless prep school basketball season in the winter of 1970, 'if we put it into a mosquito's ass it would roll around and make a noise like a bee-bee in a boxcar.'  

Here it is: 

Subject to your questions, that concludes my briefing.
Figure of speech! Put your hand down!
-bill kenny 

Cookie Monster Endorsed

This is the time of year when in decades past the card tables were set up outside grocery stores and young women and little girls in brown and green stand politely and patiently waiting for you (in this case, me) to decide how many boxes of Trefoils (or Samoas or Do-Si-Dos) can be purchased for personal, immediate, and gluttonous consumption without looking like the gourmand that you, or at least, I, truly am. 

I like to think of it as the Second Most Wonderful Time of the Year. And, in support of that point, I'd add that the only thing more marvelous than Girl Scout Cookies are MORE Girl Scout cookies. There, I said it (while typing it). AmIRite?

As happened last year, COVID-19 and the precautions to combat it are changing how we'll be again supporting the biggest fundraiser the Girl Scouts have all year but, and it's just a thought from someone admittedly not known for doing a lot it, if you have a hankering for Girl Scout cookies and don't have a local troop to support, please think about buying them from Troop 6000, which is entirely made up of girls from homeless shelters in New York City.

Read the story behind the troop

If you've scrolled down to here waiting on a funny or a quip to close this out, sorry. I'm thinking about how many boxes of Trefoils I can claim with a straight face to my wife are an investment, knowing she has a much smaller number in mind. Buy the cookies, help the kids.
-bill kenny

Still Sixteen Ounces to the Pound

I wrote this a decade ago, exactly, for my brother Adam's birthday. The year previously I offered my birthday wishes on the first day of his new position at a new law firm. This year it's been forty-eight hours since he improved his new partners' practice and he's probably already got the code to the copy machine (Us Kenny men are doers, though one of us at one time preferred Dewars). 

What's changed since I first wrote what follows?  He and his bride, Margaret are grandparents multiple times over as their children married and started their own families. And our Mom passed away after a full and fearless life and there's not a day that goes by when we, her six children, don't think of her.

It's really hard for me to believe I have such elderly siblings, but 'there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I suspect this is not one of those things. At the time I called it:

An Ounce of Blood

Today is my brother Adam's birthday. The law of averages being what it is and the population of the earth being what it is, he's probably not the only one. I don't especially care. 

I am the oldest of six. Adam is the youngest. Sandwiched between us are three sisters and another brother, all of whom at various times did so much more than merely take up a seat in the Chrysler Newport station wagon and/or the Renault 10 as we traveled from who we were to who(m) we became.

Joan and Bill (Senior) are our parents. Mom lives in Florida. We buried dad a long time ago. At times, walking away from the grave is easier said than done, and not all the promises we made to ourselves about who we were going to be when we grew up were delivered. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Adam wasn't even yet a toddler when he was hospitalized as part of a medical safari of sorts that his pediatrician put him and my parents through in search of causes (and treatments) for a mystery he couldn't solve. Adam would stand in the crib and howl in pain until Yakky Doodle Duck came on the ward TV. I learned how to do the voices of all the characters to distract him. I still do them, except now to distract me.

Later, I dragged Adam to undergraduate classes while I was at Rutgers. He wasn't a mascot or a talisman or a babe magnet and he wasn't my show and tell. He was my guy. Those were exciting times; there was revolution in the air (I thought) and I wanted to make sure he was a witness. After graduation, my class traded blue skies and clean air for BMWs and stock options. Sell-outs, you say? I saved my receipt if you want proof.

I recall a mad dash behind the wheel of that barge of a station wagon after discovering Adam was having a seizure on the couch in one of the eighty-five or so rooms of a ranch house we lived in, hurtling towards Saint Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick with this tiny person's jaws clamped tight on the thumb I'd jammed into his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. It was about then that I figured out the doctor in Highland Park was full of crap (I had long since concluded he was an a$$hole).

Somewhere and somehow I wandered off and away. Not all who wander are lost but many of us did while others stayed that way. Bob's your uncle but Jack was the role model. For decades I had the same contact with my brothers and sisters those in the witness protection program have. Didn't start out that way but stemming the tide is harder than riding it, even when you know it ends in the sea far from land.

I always told myself there'd be time to catch up/make up for all the missed weddings, the births of children and in some instances, grandchildren--most of that didn't work out and my Air Force salute (shoulder shrug) became my silver bullet signature. Adam grew into the man he was supposed to be.

He found Margaret, Suze, and Rob and forgetting my (broken) promises of that armadillo from Texas and a penguin from Greenland (he was too smart to believe that one but too polite to call me on it), he invited my family to be part of his life on a very important day for him and his family and he remains my guy, often despite me.

I've got lots of IOU's to redeem should the 'really big' reunion be held, and not all of them will or can be redeemed because redemption is rationed and rarely earned. There are bridges to rebuild and fences to mend with almost everyone with whom I grew up. That's for maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it's oh bright early as I post this, and, speaking of early, I can still hear Mom, on seemingly any morning for many years when we all shared the same roof, shouting 'Up and At 'em, Atom Ant!' (don't ask). He probably is already. All I can add is Ayup! and Happy Birthday!
-bill kenny

I've Had My Phil

Happy Groundhog Day! (?) I suppose extending felicitations are appropriate as I've never heard anyone wishing anyone else an UNhappy Groundhog Day, though I've seen enough with a possessive and with a plural, though never both. 

I know someone born in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on this date BUT whose name is not Phil though that would seem to have been low-hanging fruit at the time of his nativity.

My brother, Kelly, would be disappointed, somewhat, to learn his name also isn't Bill, as in Bill Murray, which might seem to be an acceptable alternative as a sort of homage to his cinematic tour de force.

I think Kelly is on to something with his regard for that movie since as I've aged I have a growing sense of us living and reliving the same day over and over again. The fear of End of Days may be misplaced as it could, for some of us, actually be more of a new paragraph than the closing of a book.

Look at our world, then at our nation and, then if you promise to NOT blink, look at your own life. What do you remember of where all of this was this time a year ago, a decade on, or perhaps a score of yon years? I'm starting to think the rewind button is stuck and all that changes are the characters while the play rolls on.

Lest you think I'm depressed or distressed, nothing could be farther from the truth. I love this day because it's all the excuse I need to listen to this and smile, at least usually in that order.
-bill kenny

Thoughts Meander like a Restless Wind Inside a Letterbox

Over the weekend, wandering around with the other nitwits on Twitter, I came across a posting inviting people to offer their favorite Beatles' song lyrics. Reading the suggestions and in some instances the very strong reactions in response to those posts, I ended up with Across the Universe stuck in my head.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

-bill kenny