How to Make the Cover of High Times

The Land of Steady Habits, Connecticut, legalized the sale and smoking of recreational marijuana just in time for the start of our fiscal year on the first of July. The mechanics of how sales will be handled, and where is still being hashed out (see what I did there?).

For a cash-starved state whose appetite often exceeds its capacity, the tax money generated by sales of Maryjane has already been spent, at least twice if the past is prologue. 

I have no interest in any aspect of the sales or use of The Devil's Flower but I will confess to a desire to invest in Frito-Lay stock since I suspect sales will really sky-rocket to even more historic highs (swidt?). 

From little acorns, mighty oaks do grow. 
-bill kenny

Then and Now

As a child learning American history (I think it's part of something called 'civics' now for reasons surpassing my understanding) I was always struck by how World War II began for America with airplanes. Actually with swarms of planes, low over the horizon, out of the sun over Pearl Harbor Naval Station in Hawaii.  

Today, seventy-six years ago, from the belly of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Super-Fortress, the US Army Air Corps dropped the world's first atomic weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and while a second bomb was dropped a matter of days later on Nagasaki to 'seal the deal' the harnessing of the atom into such a terrible weapon of destruction delivered by an airplane effectively ended the Second World War. 

"In some sort of crude sense...the physicists have known sin...

As a fan of symmetry, even as a wee slip of a lad, I was struck by the bookend effect of beginnings and endings.

I've read accounts where some of those who worked on the devices were relieved that the first actual use did not trigger, as they'd feared, an unfettered chain reaction they could not stop, destroying the planet. 

"...and this is a knowledge they cannot lose."
Robert Oppenheimer

Except, as I look around a somewhat beaten and battered world that's lived in the Atomic Age (and in dread of its consequences) even longer than I have been on earth, I wonder about that road to perdition, the slippery slope, and the law of unintended consequences. 
-bill kenny

So the Couch in Mom's Basement Was Unused All Weekend?

I encountered a person today with whom I have a nodding acquaintance, as literal as it is figurative, who was pretty 'stoked to be back,' and wondered if I'd missed him. Not since I had the scope repaired, I replied, as I always do just to see the blank look of zero comprehension in his eyes, knowing he doesn't get the joke but won't ask me to explain.

And then it was my turn to look blank as he shared with me, unbidden, that he'd been at TERRIFICON over last weekend in the convention center at the Mohegan Sun Casino. 

These happen (or did before the COVID 19 pandemic) on a regular basis around and across the country. He mentioned that as he went on about a lot of stuff I can remember feeling odd about since I thought all this time he was a grown-up. A little strange as a grown-up, but a big person in a big person's body, if you know what I mean. 

I didn't realize I actually knew one of those stereotypical caricatures of a person, with the dark and greasy hair, the small, nervous eyes, and the sweaty palms who lives on a couch in his Mom's basement because to my knowledge, none of that is true in his case and yet.....

I dug around a bit online, of course, and learned these events are a multi-billion dollar business that exists as something a lot bigger than grist for my snark mill so perhaps I need to speak less loudly and cruelly of things about which I know so little. Except I've been this way for sixty-nine plus years so why change now, right? 

I enjoyed comics when I was a kid. I am far more often childish now than childlike but sifting through the websites trying to understand the difference between graphic novels and comics and the thousands of shades of meaning between them, I was overwhelmed with the sound of commerce, as in big business, I was tempted to lie down. That was when I realized that was the purpose of the couch in the basement.

Thanks, Mom, for gathering up the Archie and Jughead comic books all those years ago and getting rid of them. Was Archie hooking up with BOTH Betty and Veronica? And what the heck was that thing on Jughead's noggin? 

Here at Life's Rich Pageant, it's always worthwhile to pack an extra napkin and use it for the spot next to your mouth. On trash day, I'll drag the couch down to the curb and help load it onto the truck. Should be a hoot.
-bill kenny

Making Your Own Place and Space

I've discovered in the decade-plus that these ramblings have been appearing in The Bulletin that a lot more people than I ever imagined actually read my words (Gulp).

 At first, I thought that obligated me to make sure the spell-check function was always in order (My previous computer had a wireless keyboard and after a while when it discovered what I was doing, it ran away) but I've come to realize that whatever form our conversations take, the important thing is that we have them and keep having them.

Some time ago, I mentioned the various agencies, boards, commissions, and committees across the city in need of infusions of enthusiasm and interest in the form of volunteers and reader responses ranged from 'who needs all that aggravation?' and 'where do I sign up?' to 'it wouldn't make any difference anyway.' In the latter instance, whether you think you can or think you can't, you're still right. 

The sky is not the limit; YOUR sky is the limit. And that's the difference.

There are municipal elections this fall for the city treasurer, Mayor, City Council, and Board of Education; and you don't have to be a spectator or a walk-on in someone else's campaign. 

If you feel we are heading in the right direction, then do what you can to strengthen that belief. That can take many shapes from informing yourself as a voter, posting a lawn sign, or contributing to a neighbor who has volunteered to be a candidate. 

And, conversely, if you feel a change in course is what's called for, then you should be part of that change in whatever shape or form you can offer. 

Government is not something done to us, but rather for us. The bumper stickers with 'Freedom Isn't Free' don't have the space to point out a lot of freedom is unglamorous and sometimes tedious, but always necessary, small-scale tasks, quite often unnoticed and even more often unthanked for, like chairing a committee hearing or helping a Saturday morning clean-up crew.   

We view so much of the world and events in it right now through prisms and filters of particular political or ideological perspectives that we often fail to see the expanse between earth and sky or how limitless the horizon stretches before us. We literally cannot see the forest because we fixate on a specific tree.

Here in municipal government, at the most local level of democracy, it should be easiest to create consensus. Yes, as elsewhere we have Democrats and Republicans and each have a platform of ideas that, by design or happy accident, must also appeal to just more than their own members if they hope to have a role in the forward motion of the city. 

But the white space between those ideas in terms of effort and implementation is where each of us can take our shot and make our mark. But you must be registered to vote and then you have to maintain an open mind and heart when weighing and measuring proposals and platforms. 

American democracy isn't for the faint of heart and that's been true from the very start of our country, whose birthday we celebrated a month ago but sometimes we're better at remembering the monumental events than the mundane miracles that made those milestones possible. 

A critical element in recapturing the morale and momentum we had around here before COVID-19 is for each of us to reengage in making Norwich the best place we can for our families and friends to come home to. 

To stop missing and mourning what we don't have and looking instead for allies and cohorts to help us build back better and bigger for everyone. Because, everything we have, are, and will ever be, ultimately comes down to who we choose to become. But first, you have to choose, or we all lose.
-bill kenny

It Doesn't Have to Be a Cape

When I was a kid I adored George Reeves, the original star of the original (black and white) television series, The Adventures of Superman. As a child, I found it perfectly logical and accepted without question that when he donned his disguise which appeared to be nothing more than a pair of glasses, no one, not even his Main Squeeze, Lois Lane, could suss his secret identity. 

My recollection is that it was Jack Larson, who played the cub reporter, Jimmy Olsen, who came closest to figuring it all by observing how odd it was that we never saw Clark Kent and Superman at the same time.  

But as much as I loved Superman, I never wanted to grow up to be him or like him because I knew I couldn't. I wasn't born on Krypton, but in New York City, and no matter how many bath towels or even bed sheets I tied around my neck as a cape, I knew I could never fly. 

And now, here we are, at the start of August of 2021 after hoping by this time last year we'd be well on the peak to normal, sliding and backsliding against COVID-19, continuing to argue among ourselves about where this plague came from instead of doing everything in our power to make it history. 

You don't have to be more powerful than a locomotive or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Just stop being a maskhole and if you aren't already, get vaccinated. 
-bill kenny

The Joy of Leroy

If you have/had children, you have/had LEGOs. 

They are indeed, as the song suggests, awesome, and along with their cousins for younger children's fingers and imaginations, DUPLO, they allow children of all ages to sail and soar anywhere and everywhere they want to be (sorry, VISA). 

But, as CNN reports, they can also reimagine office artifacts from long ago and far away. 

I'm thinking maybe we should give the folks running the LEGO Ideas platform some office space in Washington DC (away from The Capitol gift shop and the hordes of armed tourists), and let them have a crack at solving the infrastructure problem. 

After that maybe they can bridge the gap so many of us feel separates us from one another.
-bill kenny

Jump, Jump

I'm not sure why it's happened but for the last couple of days I've been humming, sort-of-singing, a couple of lines from a favorite and old, of course (because I am, too)) Garland Jeffreys' song. And then because the universe has a tendency to answer when you least expect it to, this showed up.

Best argument in favor of, ever.
-bill kenny