Duplicate Prizes in the event of ties.....

From the time I started working in radio, part-time, in prep school (that was really full-time, btw), for a large number of years, I could get away with dressing in jeans, or chinos, and a tee-shirt. Later, I moved up to 'casual slacks' (they're not just for casual Fridays anymore, y'know) and open-necked rugby shirts.

Americans get confused on rugby shirts, a lot. The ones with VERTICAL stripes are soccer shirts, and every stamp collector who followed World Cup '94 discovered the USA had no clue when our postal system, the USPS (the same folks who can't consistently and correctly deliver mail even when the address is printed on the front of the letter) issued commemorative stamps for the year we hosted the cup, and on the stamps were artists' renderings of soccer players (a/k/a footballers everywhere but here) all wearing horizontal striped shirts, meaning they were actually wearing rugby shirts. Team USA made it to the round of 16, not that a lot of us wrote home all excited about that development.

At some point, I 'graduated' to being a grown-up--and had to go out and get the costume for the grown-up job. So now I have pants with creases and a very small number of pockets, all with an extremely finite capacity (I used to love cargo jump pants with a hundred pockets and practically enough room to put a broadcast Betacam AND a Sachtler tripod in them) and shirts with collars, and lots of ties.

My wife organizes all of the clothes I wear because otherwise I'd just buy ten or twenty of the same everything: pants, shirts, socks, shoes, the whole rigmarole, and do my homage to Groundhog Day (I do resemble Bill Murray, come to think of it. When he's asleep).

What's that it says in the teeny-tiny print on the back of the lottery tickets?
'In the event of ties, duplicate prizes will be awarded.' Well! Back that Duplicate Prize Patrol van up to my house! Can I trade in all the duplicate prizes for one original one?
Who do I have to see to do that?
-bill kenny

Sometimes the things we do speak so loudly, I can't hear what we're saying

Have you started on your Christmas shopping yet?
I know, I'm supposed to say 'holiday' shopping in the interests of inclusivity and that's what I mean, but I revert to what I called it when I was a kid and we called it Christmas shopping.

In trying to explain to my two (sort of adult) children where their old man grew up, I realized the other day that until I went to prep school I didn't actually know anybody who wasn't a Roman Catholic. It just seems everyone I grew up were the same people I went to Mass with.

I always smile when I think of Monsignor Harding, whose first name I never knew (I may have been a full grown-up before realizing he undoubtedly had a first name. I just never heard it spoken aloud by anyone, that's for sure.) as he heard Confessions every Friday morning in the basement of St Peter Church which is where Sister Mary Jean marched all of us from Class 8-A on a weekly basis.

For the life of me, I couldn't understand what this woman thought we did all week that we had to confess every Friday. Sometimes, I actually made stuff up because I wasn't sure I had enough sins. Yes, I know now that lying about sin is, in itself, a sin, but I was thirteen and working on mysteries without a clue. I grasped the sanctity of the confessional and was scared silly at how dark it was 'in the booth' when I closed the door. For a moment, it was just me and God.

I could always sort of hear, but very muffled, Monsignor talking to the miscreant at the other partition and when I heard that window slide shut, I knew the drill: Monsignor was pivoting on his chair to my side, and was sliding open the door. Release the hounds....

Sign of the Cross and Bless me Father for I have sinned.
It has been one week since my last confession.
What would I say to him now? It's been nearly forty years, Monsignor; funny how time slips away.
Monsignor would always assure us eighth-graders that when he exited the Confessional, he could remember NONE of what had gone on inside and yet......on more than one occasion, when I'd offer 'I fought with my sister' or 'I was mean to my little brother', I could hear him sigh as he'd say, 'Billy, you did that last week! Will you never learn?'
And I'd straighten up on the kneeler and soto-vocce my defense, 'you said you don't remember this stuff outside the box!'
'Well, I don't,' he'd counter.
'Then how didja know it was me, then, Monsignor?'

Still working on an answer for that one, I guess, because I don't ever remember hearing it.
Perhaps another Christmas miracle? I meant holiday miracle.
-bill kenny

Spammers Gotta Eat, too

Over the holiday weekend, I've been surprised at how much unwanted and unwelcome email I've continued to get. For reasons that have a lot to do with me and little to do with a reality anyone else might recognize, I thought I'd see a slowdown in the volume of email offers for breast implants, penile extensions, dates with sweet young things who can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, solicitations on behalf of supposed family members killed in a car crash somewhere in Nigeria (it must be the African equivalent of Jan and Dean's 'Dead Man's Curve' as, literally, thousands of emails I've received all mention the street) and my favorite, the note from Yassir Arafat's widow, seeking my help (for a handsome fee, I should add) in getting back from the PLO the billions her old man helped swindle from the world community.

Check your in basket or spam folder. Right now, you, too, could be sitting on a fortune in opportunities, if only you make a leap of faith.....Yessiree, if you believe in something for nothing, or sometimes even less than nothing, have I got an email for you.
Perhaps you'd like a copy of that 'Microsoft email' where Bill Gates is sending everyone money--or maybe you and the family want a getaway to the House of Mouse with an email that purports to be from Disney with a sure-fire offer on a vacation at Disney Something Or Other (mouse ears optional).

I ran a calculator through all the offers in my spam mail folder for just Thursday through last night and I stand to make upwards of 136 Million (with an "M", brother) for very little investment on my part, aside from sharing my banking information with total and abject strangers who grow stranger by the minute.

I think the ones that tempt me most are from those with the exotic diseases who have found the Lord (I always envision Jesus with a LoJak locator) but who still want me to have their fortunes after they've shuffled off their mortal coils. It's touching, really. I just wish I had enough wheelbarrows to put all that money into. But perhaps, today will be my lucky day and a special offer from the widow of a founder of The Home Depot or Lowe's will send me an email offering me a package on Wheelbarrows Without End, amen. If so, maybe I'll put them in touch with Mrs. Arafat; it sounds like she can use a helping hand.
-bill kenny

The Warmth of Memory meets the Cold of New England

We had our annual Lighting of City Hall last night here in Norwich CT, which now calls itself "Connecticut's Christmas City" (and no other municipality cares enough to contest this assertion, it seems) and it was lovely, if a bit on the really long side.

I can remember taking my kids to this the day after Thanksgiving and it took about 45 minutes; a little speechifying, a couple of carols of the season, an arrival of a Jolly Red Elf, a countdown from ten and LIGHTS! And those of us assembled, cheered, wished one another a happy holiday (again) and went home.

In recent years, to include and involve all those who see inclusion and involvement as 'good things' more and more people, 'neighbors I haven't yet met' I like to call them, get up and sing or do puppets or sing in large groups or do carols and what was a brisk forty five minutes in the cold and the dark was, by last night, over two hours.

Again, last night, it was cold in New England in mid-fall. Probably about 28 Fahrenheit with a light (8 to ten knot) breeze, and the longer the night went on the colder it got. I always remember smiling when the lights on City Hall are first turned on but I also have to remember that every night between now and Christmas when I drive by City Hall, the lights will be on.

I watched parents with small children and infants leave before the lighting because their little ones had gotten too cold to stay. I was so cold, I gave thought to time-sharing someone else's child so I, too, had an excuse to leave. By the time the lights on City Hall came on at about twenty-six minutes after seven, we all sort of shrugged and began the March of the Penguins back to our homes.
-bill kenny

No Black Friday for Blogs

I was going to get up before I went to bed and write something, just in case you thought I might do that in honor of today being Black Friday in US retail, and then I remembered that my Mom raised crazy children but not stupid ones.

I was impressed watching all the TV commercials yesterday and reading the papers with all the inserts (the newspapers actually looked like the Sunday newspapers in terms of thickness, didn't they?) at the early hours so many stores had for today. And the rewards so many offered for sleep deprivation.
If, for instance, your city hall opened at 4 A.M. and gave you a 25% discount on overdue/past-due property taxes, would you line up the way you stood out out in front of Best Buy this morning trying to get one of the twenty 1080p HDTVs they had for under $500?

What if the state DMV office had offered a driver's license or vehicle registration for half-off, for the first one hundred folks through the door when they opened at five? Heck, at DMV, what if they just let you pick the photo for the license instead of keeping it a secret until after it's been laminated? (My photo ALWAYS look like a raccoon having a seizure because of the black rings under my eyes and how the camera always catches me in mid-blink).

And if the IRS gave you a 10% discount on your earned income credit for stopping in between 4 and 6 AM, would the line in front of the building look like the mob circling the Target trying to score a Wii console?

You ponder those questions. I'm heading out to the local church because if I get there before 5 AM they have a twofer on plenary indulgences and I need all the indulging I can get.
Sic transit bargains galore in every store.
-bill kenny

It's not just Thanksgiving

Today, the fourth Thursday in November, is Thanksgiving in the USA and all the best of the holiday to you and yours if you observe it.

As a kid I got confused that some holidays were fixed and others movable (this was before we had a Monday holiday law, which happened shortly after the end of the Civil War) and I'd lose sight that Christmas Day was always December 25th, whatever day in the week that proved to be (you always hoped for a Sunday because that way you got credit for church, twice, and had more time to play with whatever you had received for Christmas). I never really understood, and still don't, how some years Easter 'came early' in March and other years it was 'late' in April. I suppose I could ask the Pope to explain it, but he'd go through his 'naughty and nice' book, find my name where I'd prefer he not see it, and tell me 'no chocolate for you!'

But today, 22 November, isn't just Thanksgiving in the USA.
Today is the day, forty-four years ago that President John F. Kennedy, was murdered in Dallas, Texas. I was barely eleven and a half years old and in 5th grade at St Peter School in New Brunswick, NJ (in Sister Thomas Anne's class in the basement of what was still a brand-new building).
The announcement came over the PA from the Principal's office, Sister Immaculata, through the speaker in the corner of the room near the end of the school day and in the blink of an eye, not just for me, but for my entire generation and perhaps all who followed us, the carefree innocence of childhood was over.

As children we couldn't fathom what would cause anyone to want to kill anyone else (the violence on our streets and in our homes now was very different back then, and how we gathered and processed information was different as well), and as we headed home to houses with mothers and fathers and siblings gathered around the radio, there were only three TV stations in those days and 'live' broadcasting was a cumbersome operation, radio was faster and newspapers rushed out 'special editions', I think we all had a dim awareness something had changed, but we didn't know what and how much. A lifetime later, many of us still don't.
-bill kenny

Love is the answer

...assuming the question is 'what can you fall into that doesn't stick to your face?'
As part of the generation that insisted 'All You Need is Love' might I be permitted a do-over on that concept as I make my way to and through my Autumnal Years?

Not sure anymore that the world can be seen in absolutes like 'love' and 'hate' or black and white. And I'm not sure that was ever the case, despite a generation's fervent conviction to the contrary. Maybe that's why Tolstoy called it "War and Peace".

I think 55 years of running around on the ant hill, thirty of it as a spouse and twenty-five of that as a Dad has taught me that what I don't know may be of more importance than what I thought I learned. While my generation sang the Beatles' anthem, we were actually living the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" ('just as every cop's a criminal, and all the criminals are saints....') Sometimes the difference between essential and existential is nonsense.
-bill kenny