Democracy Is Not a Spectator Sport

Today should be a national holiday because it's Election Day and there's nothing more important than an informed vote. That's your hint to go and cast yours.

Bad officials are elected by good people who decide to not vote.
Don't let that happen today.
-bill kenny

Arboreal Detritus

We have no trees on our property. I mention that because this time of year walking from the front porch to the street in front of the house involves wading, yes wading, through two and three-foot-deep piles of leaves that have gotten pinned against the wall that joins the property to the city sidewalk. Every imaginable color and shape of a leaf. 

If you stand still in and among them, you can hear the squirrels working their way through the leaves in search of the bi-ped whom they have every historical reason to believe NEVER leaves the house without peanuts to feed them.

I hate when I come home and get out of the car to open the garage and one of the 'guys' spots me from a tree branch and starts a mad dash towards the car. The object, in the squirrel's mind, is to get to me before I get back in, so s/he can scarf up one or more peanuts and dash off. 

The flaw is I'm not equipped with the peanut dispenser option; not even the LL Bean model of the Forester comes with that. Chances of making the squirrels understand this: less than zero. Every day the same drill. I know better than to stock up on peanuts because if I ever do flip a peanut to one or more, I'll be buried by them as they'll just assume I've been holding out on them all this time.

The squirrels are starting to get their whiter shade of fur (I checked with the estate of Keith Reid, and they said that was okay) which, is the way things should be I suppose. I've started to wonder idly if areas of the world with palm trees have squirrels or chipmunks, but suspect I'll never bother to find out for myself though years ago I was keen to see it all and do it all.

Instead, I stand on my front porch and watch an oak leaf, almost perfectly pirouette, stem first, in very tiny circles from high overhead and land in the ever-expanding pile of leaves that have blanketed the sidewalk on our side of Lincoln Avenue. In the winter months, it's best to be on the odd side of the street, numerically speaking, because of how the sun rises and the manner and length of its rays help clear the ice and snow from the walks with less effort required than that of our neighbors on the opposite side.

One of the trade-offs, though, is November as the winds turn raw and blustery and blow in from the coast driving before them all the leaves that short weeks earlier had seemed like garland on tree branches across the region. Those days are behind us now, as the daylight grows shorter a little more every day through the Winter Solstice. The cycle of the season continues within and without us as the days dwindle down.
-bill kenny

Closing Walls and Ticking Clocks

This time today was yesterday when it was already yesterday. This morning in the wee, dark early hours, we fell back an hour (I've always liked how we keep that straight, 'spring ahead' and 'fall back' and that 'wander stupidly like a drunken lemur' I hear so often is, I guess, only used to describe me) all across the country.

I've never been clear how much of the rest of the world does this time-travel-but-standing-very still-stuff although daylight savings is utilized across significant portions of the earth's Northern Hemisphere. I wonder about hourly employees working overnight shifts when the clocks change directions....do they work seven and get paid for eight in the Spring and then work nine and get paid for eight in the fall? 

Is there a law or a workplace practice that covers this and why on earth is a seventy-one-year-old guy, pecking away at a keyboard in Norwich, Connecticut, worrying about stuff like this? When you have no life, interest in the obscure becomes a crusade.

We share the planet with a nearly infinite number of other life forms from single-celled amino acids to the full scale and scope of the abiogenesis catalog (You thought this was the band BEFORE Peter Gabriel joined? Nope), and none of them have watches, much less the concern for time and its division and measurement that we, Homo sapiens, have.

And then we look up in surprise and dismay at the time and wonder where it's gone when it hasn't gone anywhere. The end of a television program, a movie, a radio serial, or other entertainment, a relationship with another person, or a business relationship or political alliance.

You don't have to be Richard to have misgivings about time and what we do with it. Being human will qualify.

-bill kenny

Neither Tom Nor Time Waits for No One

He defined a gentleman as 'someone who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn't.'

Subject to your questions, this concludes my briefing.
-bill kenny 

The Moon's a Phantom Rose

 This is a creation by Jaci Scalz of which I never tire.

I don't have anything else to say except enjoy.
-bill kenny

Lost if not Forgotten

When I was very young, and despite your snicker I actually was young, going through the primary grades of St Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey this day, aside from Good Friday, was the saddest day of the year.

Today is All Soul's Day. When you're nine and have transferred to 'the Catholic School' from Pine Grove Manor in Franklin Township because there was finally room in the class near the start of the fall for you and Neil, your next-door neighbor who is now suddenly promoted to best friend, the more you think about the implications of All Souls' Day, the sadder it gets.

As I've aged (badly) I've developed quarrels with the Catholic Church in which I was raised but most of that churn is what I've taken to calling middle-level management. With all due respect to the priests, bishops and even His Holiness, the Pope, I'm not sure how much of the edifice the one true church (as it calls itself when it finds/feels itself under attack) has created since Jesus Christ founded it, Petrus, would pass the 'R U Serious?" test with the Lord.

We're not grading on a curve, either, guys. Wanted to pass that along. But one of the things I still believe, regardless of my exact grid coordinates in the theological hemisphere, is that there can be nothing more tragic than to be forever forgotten. As a primary grader on this night, I used to fall asleep trying to remember every single person I had met in my life, tough enough job when you're nine but when you're no longer nine, it borders on the impossible.

But maybe that's what 'heaven' actually is-the memory of you by another person. Look at history of it is a tale told by an---well, never mind who's doing the telling, but pay close attention to who's doing the remembering. Is forgotten the opposite of famous? And who prays for the souls of the faithfully departed when no one remains who recalls who they were? When facts fade, faith must suffice. 
-bill kenny

Next Week's Elections

Some things age like wine, such as good music or ink stains on dress shirt pockets. Others age more like milk, such as the words I first offered in this spot on the interwebz back in the heat of the election season a dozen years ago.

I’m not sure if I’m heartened that so much of what I see as drama this election season is the same movie with different actors, or depressed that we keep having the same discussions and arguments on the same issues all this time without ever resolving anything.

The distinctions between national and local politics, as events in recent weeks have shown, can be stark. While beneath the Capitol Dome of The District, the differences between Democrats and Republicans are visible from space, at Norwich City Hall in Council Chambers or in Kelly Middle School at a Board of Education meeting, it's more a matter of nuance than differences in ideology.

Again, this election season, we are blessed with choices and voices that many in neighboring towns wish they had, and yet, let’s face it, we’ll struggle as we always do to approach, much less exceed, 35% of all registered voters going to the polls and casting a ballot.

And that’s a puzzlement to me. We have two multi-million-dollar bond issues on the ballot, one for capital improvements and the other for a sorely needed and long-delayed (and not without criticism) new police station. If we won’t turn out for big-dollar concerns, what’s to become of us?

After all, by this time next week, we will have selected six city council members and nine members for the Board of Education. Here on earth, party labels don't mean as much as ideas and the personalities who espouse them. None of those seeking your vote are unknown to us or to one another.

Local government is always about neighbors who pitch in and help. We know many of those seeking office from block meetings, school outings, church groups, and other neighborhood activities. They are those who feel 'someone' needs to do something and are willing to be one of the someones who will do it. It's not easy and with declining federal and state aid and regional economic challenges everywhere you look, it doesn't promise to get any easier anytime soon.

We've spent decades talking about "turning around" downtown. And when you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. But those whom we elect next week have the beginnings of a better map of where we should be going next and how to get there. We need to make sure we choose wisely and well.

For those who see education as the fulcrum to leverage economic development, there are nearly as many challenges as there are opportunities ahead. What attracted me and my family thirty years ago to settle here was the Environment of Excellence in Norwich Public Schools. We need people willing to make the hard choices to return us to that standard, The days of the old schoolyard are long gone. Turn the page and start a new chapter.

We have a week remaining to look at the issues and at those seeking office and arrive at our decisions. Don't expect anyone to tell you how to vote and don't let anyone try to.

We owe it to our neighbors seeking office and to ourselves to make the best decisions we can. 
-bill kenny