Reprise without Reprieve

I'm working through, or trying to, some health challenges that are way more daunting at seventy-three than when I was thirty-three (and assumed I would live forever). This is from fifteen years ago.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Yet Another Last Chance?

I've mentioned before that where I live now is not where I was born. I was born in New York City. My parents and many of their friends moved to New Jersey when I was little more than a toddler. Jersey was one of two places that Eisenhower-era young married New Yorkers (YMNY) moved to when they had a few bucks. 

When YMNY had MORE than a few bucks, they moved to Connecticut, actually to the Gold Coast, not the part of the state in which I live now, east of the Connecticut River and almost in Rhode Island. Until the two casinos came along, this part of the state was known for Mystic, which was on either side of 95 North as folks went to Cape Cod for their summer vacations. 

There a lot of old towns and villages in the new england without capital letters-built along the banks of the rivers that were used to drive the turbines for the textile factories that disappeared in the late Forties and Fifties as cheaper labor in the Deep South shifted the industrial footprint only to be destroyed, itself, by even cheaper labor half a world away. 

Part of that Global Village 'what goes around, comes around' phenomenon we mistakenly think of as 'The New World Order' when the only orders around here are for fries and a shake. 

This new england doesn't suffer from Future Shock, but present shock. There are many people here who hold on to the past so tightly, believing it will return, though they know not how, that they literally and figuratively cannot grasp how much life and times have changed or how far behind they have fallen. 

They watch with a mixture of suspicion and hope as every 'new' person or 'new' idea is presented as The Next Big Thing, and when that definite article proves to be less than advertised, and their feelings change from disappointed to deceived, they neither forgive nor forget.      

Much of what I’ve seen in Norwich in the decades I  have lived here is a changing of the direction of the circles in which we run, as if the running were a plan of some kind. We elect new brooms to sweep old dust-or choose old brooms to leave the dust alone. It seems to make no difference, least of all to the dust. 

We were talking about downtown revitalization when I arrived here in 1991, and we're still doing it-and that's NOT accidental. People prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not. In nearly every election, we’ve had a chance to try a new path, for state representative, Congressman, Governor, Senator-you name the office- but we’ve steered clear of any and all new ideas. 

Those of us who didn’t grow up here will never be “from here” no matter how long we live in Norwich. Yeah, my kids went to school with your kids, but I didn't go to school with you, and that's what counts. To some extent, every discussion about this city becomes ‘this is a Norwich thing, and you don’t understand.’ 

Maybe, but here’s something all of us can understand about those of us not from here: we are less wedded to a past we never had and are more willing to risk our present for a more desirable future for ourselves and our families. It’s the New Math: the less you have, the less you have to lose.

It’s not that, as a city, we haven’t meant well in Norwich. We have had hundreds, if not thousands, of people, on a variety of committees, commissions, agencies, and boards, each with a tiny piece of the economic development puzzle, struggling to make a breakthrough and somehow hit a game-winning grand slam home run. 

But just because it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t mean it won’t. And how many times over the years have we been told, or told one another, “Norwich is on the move,” and “Norwich is turning around,” or “this time for sure.”

To be clear: Norwich is a city of great starts. It's the middles we don't do very well, and I’m not sure we’d recognize a successful end if we got bitten by one on ours. 

We're headed towards municipal elections this fall for seats on the City Council, Mayor, and the entire Board of Education, and I've yet to see a hopeful or helpful comment or a semi-constructive, concrete idea by residents and those seeking election that has ANY specifics.

Rather, we're the a$$holes on the bar stools near closing time, eyes glued to the big screen and telling one another how we'd do it if only we could be in charge, but will never lift a finger to help anyone else at any time who has offered to help. How about instead of Put up or Shut up, we try Show up or Give up.
-bill kenny

As the Twig Is Bent

The countdown is accelerating, and by that I mean the back-to-school countdown. 

All the shopping, planning, route-mapping, car-pooling, prospective after-school extracurricular activities integration, scheduling, and meal preparations take on a life of their own, and our children's return to the classroom is no longer an 'if,' but a 'when.'

As someone whose school report card grades often looked like I was crafting a ransom note out of the letters the teachers gave me, and whose own children are long grown and gone, I've watched from a distance as the U. S. Department of Education, at the direction of President All the Best Words, dismantles itself. 

Someone has forgotten, I believe, that the purpose of an education is to create a public equipped with the intellectual tools for critical thinking and analysis. And you can put that in your red ballcap and smoke it. 

I think the demolition of the federal department (leaving Linda McMahon to be the dummy for bridge at Cabinet meetings, not exactly a stretch, I suspect) brilliantly, if unintentionally, complements 21st Century Amerika, where we no longer care if children actually learn anything as long as they try 'really hard' and are well behaved. 

Attention, shoppers! Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And the last time I checked, no one was being awarded a medal for being a BETA or insisting their ignorance (and arrogance) should trump someone else's knowledge. I checked with all the scouting programs, and (surprised!) there's still no merit badge for 'I do my own research,'  but it's a nice dream, so keep at it.  

For generations, we've been shipping children to facilities that resemble warehouses more than anything else in yellow boxes with wheels for as much of the day as we think we can get away with, and then, in more recent years, get pissed at their teachers when the kids don't do well. That most of us can't identify our children's teachers because we've never met them at a parent-teacher conference (or even know where the kids go to school) is beside the point. 

The world in which you and I grew up, the post-Eisenhower era, which ended the Industrial Age (and for those who are post-Jimmy Carter, I hate your youth), has been replaced by the Technology Age. 

We in the Land of the Round Doorknobs use a lot of tech-and have a voracious appetite for more of it, but we haven't let very much of it change how we educate our children unless you think of 'badly' as an educational philosophy.           

Education is/should be the greatest financial investment we make as a nation/society. And more than anything, we need to reverse engineer unbiased measurements and standards to finally make sure No Child (Is) Left Behin,

Let's fill in the hole in the holistic approach for what comes next, and not just in the classroom. I'd like to see it in building design, traffic patterns, urban landscapes, our arts and crafts, and let's enforce it as we do now with other professions, ranging from plumbers to doctors. When was the last time you let your oncologist get away with 'dude, sorry I missed that shadow on your lungs' or had your general contractor explain as your basement fills  with water that "it's my bad." 

Education is built for distance and not speed, designed to last and to prepare us for a lifetime. The Brave New World schoolhouse doesn't have a lot of empty seats for vacant-headed people, and if we don't work to improve our game real soon, we will have difficulty reading the writing on the wall that says our time for coming and going has come and gone. We complain a lot about the cost of education in America wait until we start paying for ignorance.

-bill kenny

Picture Postcards from the Axl Rose Dance School

Some things that are/have been popular and/or highly regarded leave me cold. The appeal of foods like Overnight Oats has always eluded me. Automobiles of any kind in a color I've read called 'clay', but which to me resembles primer, are a non-starter and a hard pass.

I had a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) last week, which always sounds to me, stuck in the tube, like someone banging on a closed garbage can with a hammer. The techs were very nice and asked if I had a preference for the music to be piped through my headphones while I was inside. Anything except Coldplay and Nickelback, I answered. We all smiled as they thought I was the funniest person they'd had all day as a patient. 

I could and should have answered with dozens, if not hundreds, of others, but most especially, Guns N' Roses, as no matter how many trillions of streams they have online or articles I encounter on Slash as the Second Coming of Jeff Beck, I cannot get past Axl Rose. 

This isn't a true confession so much as a set-up for what comes next, as Axl, in his best on-stage crab-dancing days, was the first thing I thought of when I saw this video news feature: "Crab vs.Machine: Robot tests fiddler crab courtship tactics."  

Who knew? Size does matter, not just for humans.
Even in the cold, November rain.
-bill kenny

The Stale Taste of Recycled Air

This is the hardest part of the season for me. The promise of the endless summer that I savored in June has been replaced by a sinking feeling that I've missed out yet again, even when I'm not really sure about what, exactly, I've missed. The days are still very often hot, but the light fades faster than it did a month ago and there's something in the air, different and yet familiar.

In years, more accurately decades, past, this is the time of year when my wife and I would be organizing one or the other (or both) children for the arriving too-fast and too-soon school year (actually, my wife did all of the organizing and the school supplies were assembled despite my assistance). This not-summer much longer but not-yet autumn resonates beyond those of us with school age children.

That the world beyond my doorstep is in shambles and chaos is not helping me manage the malaise that's become my constant companion for reasons I cannot fully understand. We have lived in our house, on our street in our neighborhood and city for almost thirty-four years. I don't think the fatigue I feel of 'same shirt, different day' is a result of any of that but what's harder to sort out is what to do about it.

You may have had it happen to you as well-you look up and you're not where you used to be or where you want to be and have no idea how you got to where you are or what to do next. I used to tease my wife back when it was just she and me as I loaded us into the VW Käfer and just drove, that when you don't know where you're going any road will get you there. Eventually, we were always home and dry, more or less.

I've been around this juke joint for a not inconsiderable number of years, somewhat to my surprise and to the abject chagrin and dismay of more than a few people whom I won't dignify by naming, though they know who they are. I'm thinking that maybe I'm just momentarily becalmed and that in the next moment, or maybe the one after that, the wind will fill my sails and we'll be off again, racing to the horizon and beyond.

I'm enjoying the sunrises more than I ever have and to take as personal affronts when the days end. I can figure out how and when the night creeps in on cat's feet but cannot stop or slow it. Wishing the day's events can fulfill this morning's promise, just as I did yesterday and hope to as well on the morrow.

-bill kenny

Pushed B-52(s) and Bombed Them with the Blues

I took a shortcut the other day shopping for Triscuits in my grocery store. I would assume that big stores have aisles reserved just for specific products, in my case, Cheerios, Cheez-Its, and seedless grapes. 

However, then I remember that I live in a small town and we can't always have all the amenities we want. Some settling and sharing of contents may occur in shipment, and there's not a whole lot any of us can do about it.

By taking the shortcut, I ended up confronting the lobsters in the seafood department. I guess I should tell you that the Gorton's Fisherman needn't brave the dark and rolling sea on my behalf. I eat fish sticks and just about nothing else. 

And if I were to be honest, what I actually eat are tightly compacted bread crumbs that may or may not have fish in/near/close to them. One of the 'great things' people always told me as I was preparing to relocate to The Land of Round Doorknobs was how I could now have all the seafood I liked. I never had the heart to tell them I had all the seafood I liked by the time I was five.

Living in Southeastern Connecticut, where the farther north you head up the coast until you're Down East, the wider the A gets in lobstah, I cannot eat them and have trouble even looking at 'em. I'm a card-carrying carnivore, a fan of pork, chicken, lamb, and beef, whose motto is 'have napkin, will travel.' Fish, shellfish, crustaceans (nattily-attired and otherwise) not so much.

If you and I were to be marooned on a desert island, you should kill me immediately, since I can tell you right now, I'd eat you right after you'd fattened yourself up on all the fish you'd caught. Doubt me? Doze at your peril.

Staring at the lobsters in the glass tank (why do they have to be kept like that? This is somehow more humane than a box with metal sides? ) I was almost going to type forlorn looking but I have no idea what part of the lobster is the face, though I think I know what the mouth is (but NOT why it looks like they're talking all the time) and I've no clue what a forlorn one would look like in comparison to a joyous one. 

I suspect the easiest way to tell them apart is a joyous one doesn't have giant rubber bands around the pincers (claws?) because it's on the floor of the ocean instead of in a glass tank in a supermarket.

I wanted to ask the guy behind the counter if the store feeds the lobsters before people buy them (and if so, what? Soylent Green?), but they were selling so quickly the question was moot. It's strange watching them stacked atop one another, not really grasping the deal with the rubber band and still trying to get at each other in such a confined space. 

If they're capable of thought, are they thinking, 'this is the crappiest day of my life!' Until the hand (and arm) of Fate surprises them and they are momentarily borne aloft and suddenly learn there are worse things in life than being in a glass tank. 

I ducked into the next aisle, Prepared Food, when I realized that for all other carnivorous predators on this planet, we are unprepared food. Yes, Virginia, there is a free lunch. We're eating it now. Praise the Lord and pass the cocktail sauce.
-bill kenny      

The Song Remains the Same

I've had almost countless numbers of folks tell me, as if I were not aware of it, that  'Norwich is not ...' (a town in this region known for having Julia Roberts work in a pizzeria). 

Thanks. I've lived in southeastern Connecticut long enough to recognize the truth in that statement. As a matter of fact, the list of other places that Norwich is NOT is longer than my arm, but I think that's part of the problem residents, old and new, have with our city and with one another. 

With municipal elections around the corner and lawn signs being the seasonal growth industry with "Make Norwich More Affordable," and "Make Norwich Safer," starting to bubble up, let me offer a less than popular perspective that, just to piss off a LOT of people, over the next months for what will seem like an interminable number of times. You know who I'm talking to/about, and you should be grateful I am so patient. 

"How can we be in if there is no outside?" We need to agree on definitions of who we are, as residents and neighbors, and how we chose to be here. I will concede some people have settled in Norwich as a result of losing a bar bet; we can probably remove them from this discussion; but everyone else, old, young, male, female, whatever color/gender/sexual preference in the rainbow you choose to be, all the rest of us are in this together, some more so than others. And if I may, let's define ourselves in positive terms.

As a parent of two young children, when my wife and I settled here in the fall of 1991, neither we nor Norwich is the same as we are today. What we are looking for now, a small city with interesting places to meet, stores in which to shop, and restaurants in which to eat, is different from what those with school children seek, or those working shifts at one of the casinos, or those who lived their lives here and are looking forward to a quiet retirement. And all of us look to those who lead the city to deliver to each of us what we want.

Those who have been here for decades have memories and meanings that we who've arrived more recently can't comprehend or understand. Long-time residents look at downtown and see the ghosts of Norwich Past and fear that none of what once was can ever return. 

Others, travelling through the same downtown to elsewhere, see potential and promise all along the route, even if it's not 'textbook downtown', while still others see only empty storefronts and defeat. The challenge is not that we each see a different Norwich, but that each of our visions of where we live shares a common theme that often has us as victims, powerless to change our own story.

That's where we need to accept that change begins with us and moves from house to house, street to street, and across every neighborhood. We've tried countless variations of "help needs to come from Hartford or Washington or from the lone developer on the grassy knoll." And when all is said, nothing is done. 

Some of us seem to think we must do everything ourselves and wait until the world is ready to find us. Except when you look at the history of here, Norwich has always been at its best when it has been a part of the bigger world. 

It's when we've retreated into our separate villages and eyed those approaching from beyond our city limits with suspicion and distrust that we have failed. We've spent so much time waiting for "our" moment that we cannot even define, much less recognize, it.

It's what we do in the space between our birth and death, choosing to be an exclamation or an explanation, that matters. We have become a city of cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. And nothing brings that out like municipal elections. Every new idea, every different proposal, is examined to see what benefit 'they' derive at 'our expense.' Why does any of that matter? 

When we talk to one another, not at each other; when we choose collaboration over confrontation; no matter who we have been until that moment, we all become citizens of the same city, the city we each call home Yes, Virginia, the cliche is really true: we are all in the same boat, but it's in an ocean of opportunity. Grab an oar and put your back into it.
-bill kenny

Aged like Milk Instead of Wine

I'd characterize myself as a happy-go-lucky biped. I've celebrated seventy-three plus years perpendicular to the ground without anyone ending my existence, not that anyone else would notice. 

Not too shabby, all things considered (<= not that one). And then I find an old post, in this case from fourteen years ago, and wonder what was going on (realizing the tense of the verb is incorrect). Here goes:

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Misbred Gray Executive

I work for the Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm News Agency. Actually, that's true only in a very broad sense of the word; strictly speaking, it's not technically accurate though it captures almost entirely what I do and, by extension, who I am. I've reconciled myself to being that guy for whatever's left of my life. 

I am in that new retirement plan, WUD, work until dead ,so most of my silver linings come with grey clouds. But I sound so sincere when I argue otherwise as well I should, because that's what I'm paid to do.

Mine is the voice of reason that explains intellectual affronts and assaults on decency with a winsome smile and a sincere look. You believe me because you want to and I let you. 

I've been telling people we can make jet fuel from peanut oil, for many years-many decades actually, if I were to be honest which, in the interests of my own mental hygiene, I avoid doing for as long as I can as often as I can. 

I didn't quite get there yesterday. I was off because I needed to not be at work. That realization came to me last week as such a BGO, Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious, I was breathless with surprise. I'm the guy who's trudged off to work everyday of the week, and I mean everyday, for more years than I care to recount and hoped the people for whom I've worked would like me for so doing.

I secretly think I'm very good at what I do but fear no one else does and will somehow find out that I'm a phony and a fake and, worst of all, a hack. I've visited with people for years who've struggled to help me rearrange the furnishings in the loft above my eyebrows with little success. 

I keep bumping into my childhood and falling over the awful social interactions I had decades ago, wondering when the happy ending will get here, and not willing to accept that no matter how fast I run I cannot relive yesterday. You can't either, but somehow that's of cold comfort to me.

The biggest reason I was terrified to have children was because I feared I would be a failure as a father, having been a colossal cock-up as a son and a brother. Luckily, the woman I married has enough strength to carry herself and her car crash of a husband just deeply enough into the dynamics of familial relationships that our children made it to adulthood in decent shape. I take perverse credit in that success-that is, I'm thrilled I didn't fug 'em both up so much that they ended up like me.

Anyway. I told the people I worked for a full week before I asked for time off that I was taking it and everyone seemed fine and then yesterday morning, prisoner of my own routine, I had to check my work email while home and discovered many of those with and for whom I work didn't realize I couldn't rescue at least three of their ill-fated projects as I do just about everyday at work because I wasn't at work.

That I'm viewed as a piece of furniture by these obliviots shouldn't have upset me as much as it did-I've always known it-and I'm more concerned about why I allowed it to bother me. Actually, "bother me" is a euphemism for going bat-shit. I peeled the paint off the walls in our nearly-an office room off the kitchen with my language and didn't so much drive to work as start and aim the car. 

Once there, it took me about an hour to rescue people who on most days normally recover from nearly-drowning by toweling themselves off and then rushing headlong down the strand back into the water, confident one of their proles will rescue them.

It can be hard to differentiate between those who are waving and those who are drowning. I'm starting to suspect the only clear way to tell them apart is wait about an hour after the bubbles stop. And after yesterday's fire drill, I find myself pondering, "Beware of these, my gentle friends and all the skins you breed. They have a tasty habit-they eat the hands that bleed." A compelling argument for carrying napkins, even after realizing there's no second sitting for life's free lunch.
-bill kenny