Delayed Gratification

For a number of reasons, we did not have our Harbor Fireworks originally scheduled last Saturday as the capper, so to speak, of the Rose Arts Festival.  

Fingers crossed, Good Lord Willing and the creek don't rise, we could/should/might have them this evening to the delight of the tens of thousands of folks who travel from distances great and small to ooh and aah about them.

Drone footage of the 2019 Norwich Harbor Fireworks

As well they should, they are lovely. And I say that as a very nearly-professional fireworks admirer. No, I don't get paid to watch them, though that would be cool wouldn't it?, but I very much enjoy them and appreciate the craft, hard work, and skill that produces them.

Awesome drone shot by Brian Swope of the fireworks on July 5, 2021

All of that said, I'm hoping my town will join the trend sweeping the country and replace fireworks with drone displays. Many people with variants of PTSD and animals sensitive to loud noises would greatly benefit from a serious rethinking.
-bill kenny

 

Punctual People Are Lost in Their Plight

I retired five years, and a week, ago. The people in whose employ I was might argue I stopped working many years before that. They can take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut. 

But it does bring up an awkward for others never for me, interesting question that I get asked all the time now, 'So what do you do?' I usually offer a variant of the classic Prince Raspberry Beret response (I mean, we're practically twins), except I'm (slightly) taller and not dead (yet) so I've been searching for a more satisfying answer.

I may have found it and it's breath-taking.

“Understanding how the global human system functions is crucial if we are to sustainably navigate planetary boundaries, adapt to rapid technological change such as artificial intelligence, and achieve global development goals,” the researchers wrote.

“Time, it has been said, is the coin of life — and in a globally connected society, it is essential to have a thorough global understanding of how that coin is spent.”
-bill kenny

 

I've Worn Out All the Reasons

Maybe it’s a function of the age I’ve reached or, I fear more likely, of the age in which we live but I’m experiencing an acute patience shortage when looking at the challenges great and small confronting us as a city, a nation, and if the science is to be believed, as a species. 

Too many of us too often, present company included, have our minds already made up so don’t even try to confuse us with facts. As for sources of information, we tend to shop for outlets that confirm our perspective, no matter the issue or its complexity rather than challenge us to think outside our own experiences. 

We take comfort in finding our feelings echoed and amplified. As for the feelings of others especially those with whom we disagree? There’s a phrase going around about them, but I won’t use it here even though we’ve all heard it. 

We’re all always a bit testy at budget time and we’re always unhappy at the City Council’s decision, no matter what it is. We could decide to repair or replace how we make decisions about spending our money but all we do is talk about making changes without really making any. And then, once again we’re dismayed and angry that we keep reliving the same argument every year. 

Despite the anger and unhappiness that service on our City Council seems to generate among so many of our residents, we are fortunate to have interested and talented people who are willing to serve. We need more of them because it's a universal condition across the United States:  No one has enough time, and everyone needs help.

If you've ever had children in school, you already know about the PTO parents who were also the band parents who were also the class trip escort parents, and who were the prom chaperones, and that list goes on forever. It's true in municipal government as well. You see the same (too few) people at City Council meetings, who also attend Board of Education meetings, and they are the ones who offer to serve on a citizen committee of some sort or other. We’re lucky to have so many people in the same device.

The rest of us could all pitch in, but some of us get along better with others (I am more of an acquired taste). I get concerned when so much energy is devoted to tearing people down with whom we disagree. I don't have the strength that (anymore) and it's hard for me to pretend that many of the unkind things I hear and read were NEVER said much less to forgive and forget them. 

And that’s the heart of the matter: carrying around the grudges and bruised feelings over slights (real and imagined) that keep us from starting again. Sometimes I'm concerned that the long, proud history of New England sometimes gets in our own way of trying new things and walking away from our past. How much of yesterday do we really need to overcome today to have a shot at a tomorrow that is large enough for us and our children? 

Look at us right now. Everything we have was created because of choices those before us made, good and bad, whether buildings, businesses, neighborhoods, or families. It’s true we cannot go back but we cannot stand still. We can only go forward, together. 
-bill kenny

I've Often Felt Forsaken

By many accounts the heat was oppressive and tempers were hot in Philadelphia two hundred and forty-seven years ago as that aggregation of malcontents and troublemakers (in the eyes of His Majesty, George III, King of England) gathered to refine, define, and catalog their grievances and complaints as they took exception with the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.

Enumerating what it called our ‘unalienable rights’ to include ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ the founders of our republic, who did not agree on very much except that the present state of affairs could not be allowed to continue, concluded the only way forward as a people on a largely unexplored, new continent whose size and wealth was not yet known, was to break with the past and declare independence from King and Crown.
   
Out of all of that has come all of this.

And along the way, the original magic and meaning have sometimes been lost in backyard pool parties, car sales, and chicken fried steaks on the barbecue. Our politics is spirited even if our interest isn't and our understanding of the issues is muddled and muted. 

And, again, it’s not that we all agree with who we are and what we are doing. It’s been suggested we as a nation haven’t been this divided morally, politically, and socially since the Civil War. And that observation and analysis should mean far more than it does.

Some say never have so many had so much of life’s material rewards but, others say never have so many struggled to hold on to what they have. On the outcome of every election, or so it seems, lies the future of our nation-just as has always been the case because every election is important, and if you choose not to decide, that, too, is a decision.

What may be missing is our national sense of self and our confidence and belief in our own abilities to forever adapt and triumph. We demonstrated those traits at the Founding and I would hope, today, each in our own way, we might again find them, both for those whose inheritance we are and for those whose promise is yet to be. Happy 4th of July.
-bill kenny

I've Got Your Back Now

“Independence Day, often referred to as the Fourth of July, is a national holiday commemorating the July 4, 1776 adoption of our Declaration of Independence.  The Second Continental Congress voted for a resolution of independence on July 2, 1776.  The actual Declaration was debated, revised, and finally approved on the fourth. 

“Historians have long debated, and disputed, whether the Declaration was actually signed on July 4.  Many believe it was really signed on August 2.  An interesting coincidence is that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers to also serve as President, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, the Declaration’s 50th anniversary."

Independence Day is NOT about car sales, beach trips, beer-guzzling, barbecued gluttony, or chest-thumping jingoism though we have, through benign contempt, reduced much of today to variants of all of that shortsightedness. We focus on the fireworks and fail to see them as symbolic of the ordnance expended in deadly earnest that helps preserve our freedoms.

We too often are a nation of people who use our precious gift of free speech to tell others with whom we disagree to shaddup; who understand our freedom of association to mean we can dislike with impunity those with a different religion, sexual orientation, political ideology or skin color sometimes regarding them as somehow less than our equals.

Tomorrow between the grilled hot dogs, keggers, and marathon backyard softball games, should be an opportunity to enumerate and appreciate the blessings that nearly two and half centuries of selfless sacrifice have allowed each of us to regard as our birthright: The freedom to be whomever we choose to be. 
-bill kenny

Follow the Flag

 "You can stand alone

Or with somebody else

Or stand with all of us together

If you can believe

In something bigger than yourself

You can follow the flag forever

They say it's just a dream

That dreamers dreamed

That it's an empty thing that really has no meaning

They say it's all a lie

But it's not a lie

I'm going to follow the flag 'til I die."

"Into every life a little rain must fall

But it's not gonna rain forever

You can rise above--you can rise above it all

We will follow the flag together

We will follow the flag together."

Happy Birthday, USA.
Let's try every day to be better tomorrow than we are today.

-bill kenny

Got Plans for Today?

Yes?
Then change them.

No?
Excellent! Here's why:

See you there.
-bill kenny