What Scares Me Most Is Losing You

I will never be confused with a hopeless romantic. 

Hopeless? Definitely, incessantly, unceasingly. Romantic? Not a chance and not a trace. So what can I do when staring at the day on the calendar square dedicated to the celebration of love? No better than to reoffer some words from a moment much like today but long ago and pray they still ring true to the one I love. 

I do often wonder, in light of the journey so far, if he who travels fastest misses the entire point of the sojourn when he has no one with whom to share it. As someone who was very much, and for very long, unlovable, this is a day of major import and minor miracle, all at the same time.

I looked at photos of my wife, Sigrid, and I, back when we were fab and she was, as she still is, absolutely beautiful to me. It took zero intelligence for me to fall in love with her at first sight and something far rarer than intelligence to help us stay in love all those years on. I do find myself looking at her, then and now, and wondering if she still sees me as I was or as I am now and if the latter, why does she stay?

We have, she and I, grown old together which causes me to smile as I had nothing nearly so grand in mind when I first saw her. And there are those who knew me back before the day who would be amazed that she kept me nailed to one place long enough for all those years to have become all these years, and to some degree, I share their amazement.

We have a life that isn't and will never be the one I thought I wanted when I believed things worked out the way we desired (if we only wanted something bad enough), but when I reach the end of every day, to include today, I look at her and at our two adult children, Patrick and Michelle, and know that I love, and am loved by, them and I can't complain about some settling of the contents during shipment. Happy Valentine's Day.
-bill kenny

"We Change Them.”

Three years ago tomorrow, on a day celebrated nationally and internationally as dedicated to every and any concept of love, February 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing seventeen students and staff members and injuring seventeen others. Time does not heal all wounds.

Gun violence remains a uniquely American epidemic on a scale and scope that impacts every aspect of our nation and cuts us to the quick every time we attempt to set off in search of solutions. We can never end the cycle of violence if we never begin to stop the killing. 

Three years after Parkland, we owe it to every survivor and every victim of gun violence everywhere to never again accept that there's nothing we can do. #NeverAgain
-bill kenny

Even My Back Pages Have Back Pages

I've been at this a long time. Sometimes it feels even longer than it's been like these thoughts (or what seemed to look like thoughts from a distance) thirteen years ago when I first offered them which was not that long after I'd started scribbling stuff every day and throwing it at the Interwebz to see what sticks. 

If you were here then, thanks, and you already know what I called it; and if not, welcome and it was: 

Today's the Birthday of the President Named for the Car?

Yeah, that's the spirit and that's who we named the guy after, that big, long barge of a car. Or maybe not. This used to be the day we honored the man who was President when a still young country had such a determined difference of opinion on something as fundamental as to whom the blessing of liberty was extended that the only way to settle is was by a conflict of arms.

In 1860, after decades of compromise and accommodation over a dozen issues that always came back to the idea of freedom vs. slavery, Abraham Lincoln, failed Congressman, failed candidate in 1858 for US Senate from Illinois, look up the Lincoln-Douglas debates if you despair about our democracy and be of good hope, campaigned as the candidate of the fledgling Republican Party and was elected to the office of the Presidency of the United States. And, practically as he was inaugurated, the United States of America already philosophically and economically divided, took up arms against itself and disintegrated.

It's curious, to me, that we would call the War Between the States (its official name, btw) the "Civil War" since historians agree it was often anything but. With other nations picking sides to advance their own agenda, the two sides, bloodied and bedraggled, fought one another from 1861 through the spring of 1865, when the Confederate States of America, prostrate and exhausted, surrendered and 

Modern America began. 

What we are now is what we were then. Provided an opportunity to begin again with 'malice towards none and charity to all' as outlined by the soon to be murdered reelected Lincoln, instead, as a nation, we veered from that path and continued to settle old scores and create new wounds through the latter half of the 19th, all of the 20th and, now, into the 21st century.

We just concluded another Presidential election but from the rhetoric that's floated around since it concluded (and it is over, by the way), you have to wonder if we've forgotten where we came from and how we got here.

We cannot disagree without becoming disagreeable and when the day ends no one, wins. It's the death of dialogue and debate and a dearth of civility and kindness. The US Presidential elections have become the Greatest Show on Earth, sorry Ringling Bros., and there's barely enough time to clean up after the elephants and the donkeys in the center ring before we open the tent flaps and let the next crowd in for the show.

But I digress. Didja find a good parking spot? We got valet service for the high-end cars, like the Beemers, Benzs, Caddies, Lexus and (of course!) the Lincolns-lemme get somebody to take your keys. No scratches, I promise.
-bill kenny

Bob Berryhill Approved

I discovered just a few days ago, stored in our basement is/was a surfboard (in a very snazzy case) that is owned by our son. 

According to his mother, who is also my spouse, it ended up there as he moved from place to place over the last just about two decades (technically, I think he's lived in more places in his life, decades shorter than mine, than I have in my whole life. #GOALS), but now that he and his wife are finalizing their move to Florida there's an urgency to developing a plan for us to get his surfboard to him to be part of the move south. 

I checked my Beach Boys record and CD collection and while there's plenty of surf music there's no woodie or other means to get the board to him except my car (I don't want to have to negotiate with Mike Love) so I'm thinking in the not too distant future we'll probably motor down to where he and Jena live, and surf will be finally and truly up. 

But in the meantime, I found this which led me to seek out this, while on the way to this. 
-bill kenny 

Snow and Other Four Letter Words

This may sound strange, or worse, considering where we are geographically and on the calendar but I am not a fan of snow and haven't been since I was a small child. Yeah, living in The Rose of New England where we have all four (and more) seasons sometimes in the same afternoon probably puts me in the minority when it comes to the white stuff. And I'll concede my mood this time of year is in direct inverse to how much snow we're getting, becoming moody and truculent as it falls even though I know there's nothing I can do about it. 

When we're where we are now, clearing up from a weekend snowstorm even though we had snow left from the week's previous storm while having to prepare for a forecasted follow-on snowstorm you can feel a little like Jack London's stunt-double waiting for that re-write of To Build a Fire, but this time with a happy ending. 

Acknowledging that it's never going to happen is probably the first step in healing, but in these parts the way a lot of us don't clear our sidewalks after a snowfall, you might be hard-pressed to get too many steps in at all.

Snow is a little like life. Both have four letters and both conceal and reveal. In the aftermath of snow, like we had on Super Bowl Sunday, I like to go for a walk around my neighborhood, though the footing can be treacherous as uncleared sidewalks present challenges because the houses and automobiles I walk past everyday look very different and vaguely unfamiliar when blanketed in white. 

Saturday under brilliantly blue skies I set off to walk down Broadway to City Hall, make the sweeping right turn and head up Union Street back home. Most, though not all, of the sidewalk around Chelsea Parade was more and less cleared though I was intrigued that the side of Chelsea Parade bordering Washington Street, with the only parking spaces for the entire length of the Street, was fully cleared. Somethings are more mysterious the longer you look at them I guess, so I blinked and looked around.

Earlier in the week, I'd noticed two snowpersons (I'm not necessarily 'woke' I just don't want to precipitate a discussion about gender assignments for piles of snow) on Chelsea Parade made from last week's snow. Based on the number of footprints in the snow surrounding them, I suspect a lot of us did what I was planning on doing, traipsing across the Parade and posing for selfies with them. The one on the Washington Street side had what might have been a tie fashioned from a small branch, and a smiley face with two small stones for eyes. 

Both had survived the sunny days and hovering-around-freezing temperatures we'd had since the snowfall so I was unhappily surprised Saturday after crossing over from Lincoln Avenue to see both of them had been wrecked, knocked over, smashed, and trashed, made one with the snow from which they'd sprung and that moment was when the snow revealed to me yet again, lest I'd forgotten, that more often than not, there aren't sinister forces in the universe, or a confederacy of dunces at work to undermine all that we like or love but, rather, we are why we can't have nice things. 

We are the people who complain when 'the city' disappoints us but have no problems creating disappointments for others. We're the folks who blow our grass clippings out into the street, allow our autumn leaves to clog storm drains, and don't shovel our sidewalks after snowstorms. 

We're quite keen to hold someone accountable as long as it's not us. When it comes to our behavior, we're always very good lawyers; when it comes to others' behavior, we're often even better judges.
-bill kenny

The Victims Deserve Justice

The second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump for "high crimes and misdemeanors" with a charge of incitement of insurrection begins later today in the United States Senate. If the then-majority party in the Senate, the GOP, had done their job last January and convicted him of charges of abuse of power and obstruction, we could have avoided the YeeHawdists invasion of The Capitol this January. 

But lacking testicular fortitude at that time, the Senate Republicans felt it better to just move on thus emboldening the Orange Shitstain and dooming us to another year of his criminal neglect and malfeasance.

Schrodinger’s Impeachment

This time around, Senate Republicans have even less stomach and desire to antagonize the Vanilla Isis FuQnuts who are True Trumpers and would like us to just proceed as if January 6, 2021, never even happened.  

People died and no amount of 'let's move on for the good of the country' will fix that. Those who were murdered, and that's what happened to all of those who died, deserve justice and that justice includes punishing the person who incited all of this. And that person is Donald J. Trump. 
-bill kenny

From My Days in Stand-Up

Dusting this one off because I found it funny once. And maybe twice if we count today. 

Back then I called it: 

F.O.D.

Was sent on an errand by Sigrid, my wife, yesterday morning. I was home because I had bronchitis and since the last two times I've had it I've either ended up in the ER or actually admitted to the hospital, I decided Thursday afternoon to cut to the chase, leave work early and see my doctor during his regular office hours. He was quite pleased to see me though I got the impression he was surprised to discover I could learn things, like how to not be such a knucklehead with my own health.

He gave me a Z-Pack (because the name is too long to ever need to learn to say) and a note telling the people I work for I would not be at work until Monday (the joke being that I won't give them the note until Monday when I'm back at work) and sent me home to put on scruffy clothes, drink lots of fluids and stretch out on the couch.

I decided yesterday I would get cough syrup because I was barking as Sigrid phrased it, "like you are smoking two packs of cigarettes a day", which, since I used to smoke three packs a day (and stopped thirteen plus years ago), is a bit spooky. While I was out, I bought the other daily newspaper in this region (we get one delivered to the house, but it's not my favorite of the two) and I was to swing by the donut place and get a box of Munchkins.

I get that they are the filling knocked out of the doughnut hole-but Munchkins? I like the name but I'm wondering how they managed to get the rights to use it from MGM and whoever owns all the ancillaries connected with The Wizard of Oz. As if with the headache I have from the percussive coughing I'm doing, I have enough room in my brain to worry about this stuff. And for no especial reason, there were ten people in line before me, so I had some time to ponder the mystery of the Munchkins.

We did move rather quickly, all things considered, and it wasn't long before the fellow behind the counter asked me for my order and I told him, Munchkins. Any particular type, he asked, which wasn't a question I expected since it never crossed my mind that Munchkins came in types. No, I told him, but try to avoid giving me too many of the Lollipop Guild because they sing so loudly I can't hear my car radio. He stared at me like he'd never seen a person with bronchitis before.

-bill kenny