Probably Should Skip This Date Entirely

I was on my way to one thing today as I started to write this, and then got sidetracked to an entirely different thing. Sort of how life imitates art. 
Or how Art (Carney) used to eat Life (Cereal) when Mikie wouldn't.
I could be misremembering that.

What I'm not misremembering was forty-one years ago today at a little after half past nine in the morning in the administration office of the 435th Tactical Airlift Wing (TAW), I signed on the line and turned in my green Armed Forces Identification Card and became a private citizen again, ending my association as an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. 

It was a Friday and I would begin the next chapter in my life the following Monday returning to my previous assignment, now as a civilian employee, for considerably MORE money than as a GI (so much more I wondered what took me so long to cross over to the shirt and sweater brigade). 

In the eight years that followed, I was to work in four different organizations before, in an irony that proves God has a sense of humor and I am Their punchline, also on this date I was in a very different office of the same admin section picking "Grow-ton, Connecticut" as where I and my family would be living as my employment disappeared from Germany and with it my lifestyle and that of my wife and children. 

I had been notified in March I was part of the NATO Surplus to Requirements Overhead and would be reassigned, ready or not. At first, it had looked like we were going to Winchester, Virginia, somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley to do who knows what with who knows who but that fell through. 

And then up popped a job in Grow-ton as I was told it was pronounced. In Connecticut. Only a few hours from where my brothers and sisters and others related to one or the other or both lived. Not that I was keen about telling them I was coming nor would they have been especially overjoyed to learn of their pending good fortune.

We each have lived lives of quiet desperation, and, more often, perspiration. My arrival with two children under double digits who spoke no English would have been interesting but not earth-shattering for any of us. 

In retrospect, in the last three-plus decades the person who has failed to immerse and then emerge has been me, more often than not. I'd say 'Color me surprised,' but I'm not.

-bill kenny

  

Don't Know Why

I watched with apprehension and a vague sense of unease at the calendar as I turned it from August to September and now that the day and the reason have arrived, I'm still not ready: the start of autumn, 

I'd like to think I'm braced for what's to come but I know I'm not.  And spare me the 'To every season,' I'm not listening. I do not enjoy any aspect of this new season which the calendar says starts today but around here began a bit earlier as the trees prepared for it at some point a couple of weeks ago.

The leaves silently depart as the light of day grows shorter and the winter of our discontent approaches on cat's feet.
-bill kenny

We All Know Someone Who Talks Out of It

Between the attempted assassinations of one of the Presidential candidates (hint: the old, fat, hate-filled, orange, and stupid one) and the fabulist fiction of Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, you may not have heard about the most recent batch of Ig Nobel prize recipients. 

Yes, it's in good fun and slightly tongue-in-cheek but also very serious science and (somewhat improbable) research. 

Recently honored work included US research to house pigeons in missiles to help guide them to their targets; UK investigations which found that claims of extreme old age tend to come from areas that have short average lifespans and a historical lack of birth certificates, and a French study which found that scalp hair tends to whorl in a clockwise direction, though less so in the southern hemisphere.

As fascinating as all of those efforts seem to be, they pale in comparison to the research team from Japan who captured the top prize by discovering mammals can breathe through their anuses.

I have no idea how this got here, honestly (sort of)

And you thought I had made that up. 

I was hoping to learn if those mammals could also talk out of the same orifice simultaneously because if not, there's at least the hope they might suffocate.
-bill kenny
  

Brevity Is the Soul of Something

I love words and have my entire life, I've watched with a cautious disdain rivaling Richard Cory's as we've devolved from words to and through emojis (I still call them emoticons which makes me think of Decepticons which is from a movie (I believe) that I've never seen. And is as close to hip as I get these days). 

In this interconnected age, I'm handicapped as a typist in online conversations, mostly with Nigerians seeking business partners, because I'm a terrible typist but mostly because I spell out every word and try to be correct in how I spell them. 

In the interests of speed, I avoid transubstantiation and words of its ilk, because I rarely text The Vatican and very few folks beyond the Papal balcony even know what the word means much less how to spell it.    

As for abbreviations? I'm making an uneasy peace with them in that I use them though not as often as people corresponding with me do and I have to look up so many of them so often because I have no idea what some of them mean. 

Which is why I may keep this article handy as a kind of crib note. 

I will point out, however, that it's missing my current favorite, FAFO.
-bill kenny

Let's be Frank about Saint Francis

Who among us doesn't know, or think they know, the Franciscan Serenity Prayer? 

I say it's long past time time for an update.  

I have ideas for updating The Ten Commandments as more like Ten Suggestions but waiting for approval on corporate sponsors. Maybe a light beer or an energy drink? Stay tuned.
-bill kenny

The Tyranny of Tomorrow

It was William Shakespeare's Macbeth, who may have been the first literary figure to offer a cogent argument on the virtues of planning your work and then working your plan when he offered, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day..."

In addition to its eloquence, it's memorable for both its utility and applicability-though in this era (or error?) of diminished expectations and shortened attention spans it's disheartening to realize how quickly we can seem to get lost as individuals and as political units from the municipal to national government level.

We were much more flexible and forgiving when we were younger. I know, “OK, Boomer,” but we were in so many aspects of our lives. And now? Look at us, ossified and petrified and clinging to our beliefs, behaviors, and habits often despite all evidence to the contrary.

We’ve forgotten there's always been more than one way to get from here to tomorrow. The more successful paths involve inspiration and perspiration in nearly equal amounts, that is, a brilliant insight or an original idea combined with hard work. Not forgetting some good luck.

My father was fond of citing the Pennsylvania Dutch as the source of one of his favorite expressions "the harder I work, the luckier I get" but I defer to wherever your mom or dad say they heard it, too. Luck, like hope, is a four-letter word and both have that in common with a plan. But critical to any plan is having definite, precise, and clearly defined goals with a strategy of how to use the tools at your disposal to achieve those goals.

Without all of that, a plan is just a wish you make with your heart. And while that worked out well for Jiminy Cricket, we're having a critical shortage of wishing stars right now, to so I guess we’ll have to make do the old-fashioned way. Personally, I think the top hat and spats played a larger role than previously believed.

There's been enough words written on "how get this city/state/nation back on track" where we each insert the name of the place where we live, step two paces back and admire our handiwork, seldom realizing a good beginning is only that, a beginning.

Articulating a plan means making sure that everyone who needs to be in agreement with it, and that usually means everyone where you live understands what you're sharing, the reasons for what you're proposing, the impact of the sacrifices they will need to make for a common good and then to get on board with the program and own the plan for themselves. All or nothing at all.

Top down, bottom up, there's no one path because there's no one destination-only a journey that has a beginning of each day and never ends. The only constant in our world has always been change and the need for change.

There's never an end to progress-only pauses along the way and no matter what happened yesterday, tomorrow will be here in a moment and cares not a whit about those successes and failures.

We can learn from them, and we can build on them, but we can't live forever on their memory or their meaning. As Banquo admonishes, "if you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak."

Far too often, all that remains is silence.
-bill kenny

I'm Too Something or Other for My Shirt

I have never claimed to be a fashion plate. Growing up in parochial and then prep schools, wardrobe selections were out of my hands. I was in the military and the Air Force, for all its supposed liberal leaning, always frowned on tie-dyed combat utility uniforms. 

So here I am in the winter of my years, dressed mostly in short-sleeve tee shirts with snappy sometimes(to some people) offensive sayings when not wearing rock and roll band and branded shirts 

I have some spiffy sports shirts, and I think at least one with the guy on the horse, in my wardrobe, I don't think I have any of the shirts that have an alligator on them, or with an alligator eating a guy on a horse (I think we'd both remember that one). 

I see a lot of people of both sexes (or should I say 'of all sexes'?) at the gym (when I go) in shirts and outfits that really make me feel every day of my seven-plus decades. I've encountered women who look to have spray-painted their exercise clothes on. I can always tell with the tops because there are two buttonholes too few and on a cold morning too many party hats. 

Make no mistake: I am happy you are comfortable with your body (after all, you're the one inside of it); can you understand me not so much?

The other day two guys were wandering the facility while I was cursing the treadmill (as it was kicking my butt again) in the kind of clothes that lead you to believe their households are governed by that 'first one up is best one dressed' rule and they are late sleepers. On the front of the one's black tee shirt in white letters was "Weakness is for Tussies" but they used a P instead of a T when they made the shirt. On the back, was "Balls to the Wall" (without a second S for wall).

The fellow alongside him had a shirt back with "Train Like a Maniac" and when he turned around, he had what appeared to be a self-portrait of himself on the front. And people wonder why I insist on earpieces and listening to the audio player(s) on my cell phone. When I encounter someone while out and about I NEVER remove the earpieces, and as they are speaking simply repeat over and over again, 'I won't hear you, I won't hear you.' Some think I should say can't but I've chosen that verb deliberately.

I actually have a shirt with a slogan I got years ago that's still true. People smile when they read it though they shouldn't. It says "I probably don't like you either." In light of how many of my social interactions haven't been working out, it might be more useful to get a shirt with my name and address on one side and 'other side up' on the reverse.
And then hope all those folks from the Literacy Volunteers keep their funding.
-bill kenny