Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Monday, April 6, 2026

From a Three Hour Cruise to a Two Week War

I don't know who the President's 'little buddy' is, but I'm guessing, based on how much spilled blood and overpriced oil are climbing up his trouser legs, it's no longer Stephen Miller. 

His televised pep talk last Wednesday night about winding down the Iran Not-Quite-a-War-But-People-Are-Dying-So-Yeah-Maybe-It-Is-One might have been more convincing had he not already assured the nation and world two weeks earlier that he was just about already done. 

And I won't mention the previous use of the 'two-weeks' notification when he started on whatever the hell it is he and Pete Kegseth are working on in and around the Strait of Hormuz. 


I think what we need is for the Professor to invent a way to extract oil from coconuts. That should please Thurston Howell, Musk, Bezos, Koch Brothers, and the Tech Bros.
-bill kenny
 

Sunday, April 5, 2026

Pithy and Pointless

If you are observing Easter Sunday today, best wishes and all the happiness of the holiday. 

Perhaps like me, you have difficulty explaining the relationship that chocolate, a bunny, and the Resurrection of Christ have with one another (unless you just choose to overlook all of it). 

We may not be pulling on the same oar, but we're both in that boat. I think if we put our backs into it, we can still reach shore.
-bill kenny

Saturday, April 4, 2026

Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella

We're having our usual early spring weather in Southeastern Connecticut: lots of grey skies, heaping helpings of wind, and either the threat of rain or its actual delivery on just about any day. Great weather if you're a duck.

I'm not complaining (well, maybe a little), and I'll take rain over snow ten out of ten times. However, I will whine about it, because that's how I'm made.

When you sit through all the showers I do this time of year, you can get a little curious about rain, including its smell, origin, and the place on Earth where it hasn't rained in over 2 million years.

Imagine being the Leafguard Gutter guy and working on commission.
-bill kenny

Friday, April 3, 2026

A Moment of Reflection

There is, preached Kohelet in the Book of Ecclesiastes, a season for every purpose under heaven. It says in the Old Testament, seasons for everything, and around the world today, for those of us of the Christian faith, we are within the Paschal Triduum

Monsignor Harding, wherever he is in all of eternity, would be wide-eyed with wonder that, of all that I have been given or taught, and of all that I have lost or had taken from me, that would be a term I would hold onto.

I know a lot of Christians who see the birth of Christ, Christmas, as the defining moment of their faith, and I guess if you work retail, that's an attractive argument. As a child growing up in Holy Mother Church in the late Fifties and Sixties, I knew (and had plenty of nuns, Sister of Charity type, if I forgot) for Catholics, it was the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

I can still remember Sister Thomas Anne faintly smiling as she ticked off the three events on the fingers of her right hand: pinkie, ring finger, and middle finger (how ironic is that? 

She paused as she would note the similarity to the Holy Trinity, three persons in the One God. When I watched her do this same explanation, with the pregnant pause in the same place, complete with the slow smile of accidental recognition of her triad point for the next five years, there was still a sign, but, I must confess, the wonder was gone. And yet, I suspect she, too, is smiling today. 


It is Good Friday, a day of such momentous import to so many disparate elements of our historical, philosophic, and cultural identity, where, no matter your belief or disbelief, you can take solace from the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God who became the Son of Man and laid down His life. 

Even if you have hurts that can never heal, you can have hope, if only for today, knowing there is a tomorrow.
-bill kenny

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Endorsed by Joe Friday

So much talk about 'fake news' these days. Here's a page from the past that will stop you in your tracks. 

Talk about getting a leg up on law enforcement.
-bill kenny 

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Big Doings on the Blue Planet

Having spent the last three months (or more) bleating piteously about the awfulness of our winter (I'm sure much to the simultaneous annoyance and bemusement of those who had real winters), I'm now whining about all the rain and grey skies we've had since Spring officially began.

Yes, I could calculate, assuming a lowered atmospheric and ground temperature, just how much snow the inclement weather I am complaining about would have produced, which would have shut me up quite nicely, thank you, as I'd be outside even now probably with a snow blower and mukluks (the perfect name for a grunge band, imho).

Instead, I got up both yesterday and today with temperatures above freezing (a novelty of sorts) and weather struggling to make up its mind. Poor me. In honor of April Fool's Day, perhaps a snowfall of mini-marshmallows might be a practical joke by Mother Nature, or, in light of how many of us have yearned for Spring's arrival, real snowflakes that look like marshmallows.

We could stand outside and stick out our tongues and hold cups of cocoa, with peppermint swizzle-sticks. Except I dislike peppermint in cocoa nearly as much as I dislike mint in my chocolate ice cream. 

The first three months of 2026 are in the books, their passing marked by this day, a celebration of sorts for pranksters and practical jokers. And we turn to face the Spring, or what we hope will be spring soon enough. I have always found people and places slightly more attractive when the trees' buds are just about to burst and the birds' songs are louder because they are more numerous.

Unless, of course, I've parked my car under a tree and returned to find it covered in something that makes me wish wistfully for snowflakes and mini-marshallows.
-bill kenny

B-52's, Clean-Up in Aisle Seven

I was taking a shortcut last Tuesday afternoon, looking for Triscuits in my grocer's. I assume stores in big cities have aisles reserv...