Bob Hope Is Crooning Softly Somewhere

I've only experienced prom season watching our son and then our daughter prepare for theirs and that was in every respect of the word enough for me. I didn't go when I was in high school (it was an all-boys school so who would have had me then, or now, come to think of it?) and I never really grasped the origins of the word in the first place. But 'back then' we didn't have Google and now we do, so now I know.  

Knowledge is intoxicating, isn't it? I can still feel my legs wobble after that promenade through etymology. Heady stuff. 

Limousines, horse-drawn carriages, a parent's fancy car, you name it, and someone's child has experienced it unless you're Sherman Bynum. whose idea of arriving for the prom in a Sherman tank was almost as original as his crowd-funding page to pay for the tank rental. 

I'm sure everyone involved was tankful for the opportunity to be part of an iron-clad memorable moment.
-bill kenny

Good Luck, Chuck

At some point today, or maybe because of the time difference it's already happened, the coronation of King Charles III will be all that anyone, or nearly everyone, will want to talk about. 

If you're casually conversant with American history and recall studying the American Revolutionary War (you might need to remind yourself for the next few hours how that turned out), perhaps, like me, you can't really get all excited about this stuff. But to each his own, I suppose. But if you want to feel a part of at least the circumstances portion of the pomp then tuck into a heaping hearty helping of The Coronation Quiche.    

I suspect it's not quite as filling, or satisfying, as a Bacon Sarni or some Bangers (where's Miley Cyrus when we really need her, right?) but it's certainly pricey enough what with supply and demand and all. 

So, with a new monarch, the future's so bright the British Empire Will Need to Wear Shades, for obvious reasons. 
-bill kenny

Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits

My brothers have/had beards and mustaches. Our son has both. I've had one and the other at various times and sometimes or the other. I've also compromised settling in the middle and had a goatee.

I don't pretend to know why anyone else cultivates facial hair. I used to do it because I looked like a kid for a really long time and got carded in more places than you might believe ever served alcohol (but you would be wrong). Now, it's more or less a force of habit.

As I matured (=got older) my facial hair matched what was still left on my head and that was grey. I mention that because for about four days after I start growing a beard I think I look really cool. My spouse, on the other hand, thinks I look like a homeless person and I will acknowledge that I have noticed I seem to have a surfeit of spare change for reasons not entirely clear to me. 

I have beard oil, in case it squeaks (and since it doesn't I guess that means the oil works), and mustache wax, which tastes terrible and I know this because I have a habit of bitting at my mustache for reasons I cannot explain and that I still try to do even when I'm clean-shaven. And I own a bewildering assortment of razors for when I do shave and am constantly on the outlook for new and better ones since I'm never happy or satisfied with what I have.

I always end up shaving for the same reason, more or less, that I opted to grow a beard in the first place: because I can but fell across a short essay that suggests some people spend a LOT of time in deep thought on topics like this, though even after reading it more than once I'm not sure I understand why.

I prefer my musings on the subject to be slightly more musical.
-bill kenny

 

Like Grains through an Hourglass

One of my earliest memories and I'm guessing about the years here, was when I was six or maybe seven and my parents had a beach house (not really, they rented a bungalow), in the same colony that Mom's parents had one, in/near Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. 

All the bungalows were on concrete block stilts (and this is the fuzzy part of the memory) and were probably three-plus feet off the ground. They were made that way for hurricane season when the high tides came all the way up the beach and into the town and practically all the way to Route 36. Because I was a runt, I could walk under our bungalow and all of us kids used to play underneath them when we weren't at the beach which was just a short walk at the end of the path. 

I don't think I've been as carefree and careless in my life since then and the irony, of course, is that I had no way of knowing that those moments were in many respects as good as it gets. The tragedy of youth is wasted on the young and I was decades away from getting wasted but still...

All those hours at the beach made me an expert at digging holes ('to China if you keep going,' insisted Grampy) and building elaborate forts by filling the sand bucket with still-wet sand and turning it upside down and stacking the mounds one atop the other. If I'd known then who he was I'd have considered myself the next Frank Lloyd Wright until an incoming wave crashed my fantasy. 

However, my ambitions were nothing in comparison to Leonardo Ugolino who, unlike another well-known Leonardo, stays away from ceilings and gets down to it. 

The purpose of art is to conceal art and while the creations do not last forever, they last long enough to be more than memorable.
-bill kenny

Beware of Darkness

Growing up, one of the things I recall with less than fondness was the later in the day a phone call came, the less likely it was to be good news. In my family, we knew better than to phone home after 8 PM, no matter what, and no matter where we were. This was long before caller ID when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I know young people doubt me on this, we had no idea who was on the other end of the call. 

I have reached an age where, like it or not, I am all the adult I am ever going to be. I know I’m not alone.

The growing old part worked far too well and the growing up part didn't seem to work at all. I still get nervous going into a darkened room and will search out the light switch even if I'm only passing through. And phone calls now? Even with, or perhaps because of caller ID, when the phone rings in the evening, I am always startled (maybe wary is a better word). The phones we have require two rings to show me the number and name of the caller (and if I’m watching TV their identity is onscreen as well), and there I stand, momentarily transfixed, watching the display.

Despite 'do not call' registrations, I get a lot of callers who ‘technically’ don't want to sell me anything, which is prohibited by the registry, but rather only want a few minutes for a survey on a multitude of issues, services, and products which always seem to end in what sounds suspiciously like a sales pitch. And so many worries about my car warranty! Those callers I can handle and do so with a tad more relish and enjoyment than I really should have, truth be told.

But when I see the name and number of my son or daughter on the display, my bravado evaporates, and I start making horror movies in my head. I mutter 'Please don't be anything bad' at least three hundred times between the second ring, which displays their name, and the third ring which never comes because I answer the phone. 

Both of our children think it's amusing their old man breaks out in cold sweats when they call him after dark--if my wife answers the phone, I pace and fret within eyesight and earshot, lest she forget to tell me of a cataclysmic catastrophe that has befallen one of them.

When we brought them home from the hospital, and they still had that 'new baby smell', I used to sit in a corner of their room and watch them sleep. I was fascinated by their breathing and by any and every movement they made while in their crib. Being their father became the hardest job I have ever had, but I’ve loved the most.

As an adult, I understand and internalize the realization I cannot protect my children, who are in fact, adults, themselves now, from every evil and misfortune in the world, but when the day gets dark and the phone rings at night, my inner grown-up is nowhere to be found. And all the me that's left can do is stare at the ringing phone and hope the monster under the bed has vanished by the time I answer it.
-bill kenny

A Blast from Somebody's Past

I offered this a number of years ago on the occasion of our daughter's Natal Anniversary. Yet another orbit around the sun has been completed and it's her birthday, today. Our daughter, Michelle, gets annoyed when I write about her, even when I write nice things like she's the world's greatest squirrel wrangler or wranglette (I'm never sure) so I expect she'll be less than happily surprised I'm mentioning her today.

Michelle, who explains to people she has 'my father's wit and my mother's charm' has a birthday today. I have known her for every day of her life, she cannot make that same claim. I still cannot fully grasp my itty-bit is an adult, especially when I insist on calling her my itty-bit. But she is and in hindsight, I'm thinking perhaps she was born an adult intellectually and just grew into the size of one. This is from her 'early days.'

I can tell you we were NOT the biggest fans of Project Day when one of us was enrolled in Buckingham School's Integrated Day Program. The teacher would videotape each child's presentation and the question and answer session afterward and Michelle's mother and  I would take turns sitting in stunned silence as she departed from her carefully rehearsed script and descended into participatory educational chaos. On more than one occasion, I'm pretty sure I saw Conrad's Mister Kurtz, but then again it was awfully dark.

Michelle has an intensity about her that quite often can take you by surprise. She is in many respects, especially intellectually and emotionally, a quiet riot and amazingly confident in her own judgments, actions, and decisions. She may be wrong, but she is never in doubt.

She has a myriad of attributes and strengths from both the Schubert lineage as well as the Kenny clan but she is far more than the sum of her genetic inheritance or philosophic leanings and her character and intellect are very much her own. 

As she celebrates her birthday today you'd be well advised to join in, if you can, or be prepared to explain why you didn't. And Mike, I went this entire blather and only mentioned the squirrels once. What? Okay, twice! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

"I Am I, and I Wish I Wasn't"

If you realized from where I borrowed today's title, you may have already surmised that this will not be a snappy, sappy, yippee-skippy hooray it's Monday type of entry. And you would be correct. 

At the risk of sounding like the last of the steam-powered trains, I am more and more less and less enthralled with what 21st Century technology hath wrought. New is not always better and when I watch us adapt our humanity to complement extant technology I get nervous.

But when we deploy evolving technology to duplicate and replicate (literally as well as figuratively) our humanity, I do worry more than wonder where this is going and how it ends. I am taking some solace that in my advanced and advancing years, the end game will in all likelihood be accomplished ohne mich. 

Soon enough, we won't be able to tell one another from the machines we once controlled that now control us. And somehow once achieved, this will be considered a success.
-bill kenny