Echoing John Sebastian

I've decided to continue my Don't Mask, I'll Yell policy. It gives me something to do and let's face it, it's a target-rich environment.  Honestly, it's not that hard. Remember:

Wash your hands, keep your distance, and get your shot.
-bill kenny

Same Movie, Different Actors

Don’t let the physical separation in City Council chambers or the long-distance participation by citizens via telephone line be anything more than a distraction during this Annual Municipal Budget Creation Season (I like giving things capital letters; it makes them seem important and costs me nothing).

While many aspects of our circumstances have changed, at its essence, the budget creation process, the reasons for the requests, the reactions by many of us to those requests and a thousand tiny conversations and discussions are actually all the same. 

It’s been suggested the best thing about City Manager’s proposed budget was that it wasn't worse. Sort of like ‘the good news is there’s no more bad news.’ Except, in this case, his presentation was a statement of where we are. We decide what happens next.

The budget is the result of discussions we, the residents of Norwich, will have with one another, with our municipal department heads, and our elected officials as we (and they) craft a document by which we determine the amount and variety of municipal services, from public education and public safety through road resurfacing and everything in between, and what we are willing to pay for those goods and services. Our city budget is a compact we make with one another, for one another.

It's okay to have had a reaction to what was offered-but, it’s more important to have engagement and informed suggestions as part of the remaining process. A great place to start is by having a copy of the proposed budget (‘you can’t tell the players without a scorecard’) and you’ll find that on the city’s website. It’s deserving of your time and attention but while it tells us what things cost-only we can decide what they are worth.

Our first opportunity to comment on the record is the first public hearing tomorrow night at seven-thirty in City Council chambers (and you can follow along at home as well). And at the risk of boring you, let me note again this is OUR budget. We should each be prepared to speak as well as be willing to listen to others when they speak because that's how reasonable people develop solutions, not by scapegoating and searching for the guilty.

Many of us have never been faced with the conditions we are confronting right now, but as a nation, we were here eighty-eight years ago as President Franklin Roosevelt led us out of the Great Depression with passionate, precise, and thoughtful words filled neither with alarm nor anger. 

"Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. Yet ...(c)ompared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.

“This Nation asks for action, and action now...It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. (I)t can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly."

We are each called upon in our way to act wisely and well for ourselves, our families, and our city.
-bill kenny

Why Put It Off Another Day?

We've spent over a year praying decades of the rosary, holding out hope while holding our breath, and maybe, just maybe, the dawn's early light is just over the horizon.

For many that light will never come so if you're alive and waiting for your life to return to normal to start living again, you'll never have the opportunity you have at this moment, so seize it and never let go.
-bill kenny

The Caterpillar Sheds His Skin

 "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is."

"Oh, The snow will be a blinding sight to see as it lies on yonder hillside."
-bill kenny

Who Were Those Masked Men (and Women)?

Yeah. I preach to the point of screech about hand-washing, vaccinating, social distancing, and masking up. This is sort of more the same but with a swing beat from some terribly talented people, one of whom I consider an acquaintance.

Sometimes the purpose of art is to conceal art. And sometimes its whole function is to make you smile while telling you something that might just save your life. 
-bill kenny

Faith Is Cold as Ice

Nature knows things at which we bi-peds with our computers and big brains can only guess. On March 19, the Feast of Saint Joseph, as they always do, the swallows came back to Capistrano. From everything I've ever read, they've been doing this for quite a bit longer than it took us hairless apes to even notice. I refuse to buy in on the party line, 'no one knows why or how they know...' because I sincerely believe someone does and chooses to NOT tell the rest of us.

I was thinking of them last night waiting for the bees who show up every spring to live under the wooden banisters of our front porch to do so. They are late, it seems, this year. I'm not sure if a bumblebee is a real type of bee or just a made-up name but that's the way they look. They're black, with what appears to be a yellow pullover and they hover about eight to ten inches off the steps when you come out on the porch and dart away, right after they zoom in, directly at you (as if scanning their sector).

I'm not an entomologist, but I find it interesting they seem to drill or eat through the underside of the railing, leaving little piles of sawdust as they go and live, I suppose, snug in the holes they create. At the end of the season, they disappear as suddenly as they arrived, and Sigrid goes out with wood patching goop and fills in their holes which then dries and hardens and in the next spring, the cycle begins again.

We (or I, at least) have no idea what the bees are doing aside from playing what looks like chicken with one another on the porch during most of the daylight hours. Sometimes, someone going up or down the three stairs from the porch to the sidewalk will attract their interest and they'll hover practically in the person's face, undaunted by waving hands (even if they get hit) until curiosity sated, they go back to Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free or whatever they're playing.

I'm not sure I'm not just a little jealous since they don't spend anywhere near as much of their time pondering me as I do them. They seem to be untroubled by questions such as Why are we here? Because we're here. Roll the bones. Why does it happen? Because it happens. Roll the bones.

-bill kenny

Following the Footsteps

The first full summer we lived at Pole 274 (no Lakeside Drive stuff in those days) on Harveys Lake in Pennsylvania, on just about every day to include the ones with some rain and some other meteorological gunk I would run around the shore perimeter of the lake which is in excess of eight miles (I didn't know that at the time, among the universe of things I didn't know). 

I'd take off down our driveway and when I say down I mean gravitationally, hang the left (rehearsing for my days in NASCAR) and continue past where Uncle Jim, Aunt Dot, and our cousins, Patsy (we were trying to call her Trish and I was terrible at it), Michele (just one L) and Dori lived, then past Sandy Beach where Mr. and Mrs. Sam had a drive-through until Hurricane Agnes knocked it over. 

Still farther around the lake was Hanson's Amusement Park where the Avanti Waterbugs used to stage their early water-skiing shows. We didn't have a boat our first summer so we did odd jobs to help the show; I even got to be the show announcer. 

The rest of the way around is kind of fuzzy in terms of memory though I think I used to pass a pizza place near the intersection where traffic from Dallas ('The Big D) hit the road around the lake which was close to the last quarter of the route. 

Like very nearly everything else in my life, there was no purpose to the running. I wasn't trying out for the high school track team (there was none) or serving as Gump's precursor. I just ran and I mention it now because, for much of the succeeding almost-fifty years, the only thing I've run is my mouth.

My brother-in-law, Russ, runs, or at least ran, marathons even after he and Kara moved to Florida for the joy of running while my brother Adam, pre-pandemic, ran in the New York City (among others) marathon as well as in many shorter Jersey Shore distance efforts to keep himself in shape and because he loved running.

A number of years ago he started participating in the Tunnel to Towers 5K Run and Walk, joining with thousands of runners and non-runners alike to honor the memory of firefighter Steven Siller's sacrifice and have something of lasting good and hope come from one of the most tragic of days in our history.

The #Tunnel2Towers Foundation raises money to support innumerable good causes and projects and every little bit helps. Adam used to use his annual participation as an opportunity for those of us willing and able to donate to so do. 

The Run/Walk was canceled last year as we descended into the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, but planning and preparation for a full calendar of commemorative events in observance of the 20th Anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center are well along. 

So far along in fact that earlier this week, because I'm on their mailing list, I received a solicitation from the #Tunnel2Towers Foundation to contribute again this year. I did and in much the same way as Adam brought me to them, I'm introducing them to you.

Sometimes we are in danger of being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the horror and evil of so many villainous bastards in the world which is a tragedy because our world can and should be a beautiful and loving place. Every good deed is a candle lighting the way to making where we are and go just a little bit better and brighter. 

Today might be a good day for you to strike your own match against the darkness.
-bill kenny