Reach Out and Touch the Flame

I think I like the Norwich meeting calendar better when items are crammed together, back to back to back, instead of spread out all across the week. Just me, I suspect-I don't have much of a life, and certainly don't do much with what I have but it's just more convenient to me when meetings are concentrated, though we start the week by sending out an SOS for all those with the gift of bi-location.

Tonight we have two different meetings across town from one another at the same time. I'm not sure what to suggest as a remedy except maybe to ask Marty McFly if you can borrow the keys to the DeLorean (if it has a sail, I'll bet I can get it into a parade the end of June here in Norwich. But then again, maybe not. )

The Volunteer Firefighters Relief Fund (whose information on the Norwich Municipal website is woefully inadequate and out of date) meets in Room 209 of City Hall at 5 PM. Not directly connected, but excellent background reading to put what this meeting is a part of in better perspective is this article from Sunday's The Day newspaper. Read it fast--another day or so and it'll cost you money to look at it on line (I wonder if the reporter sees any of that?).
Here's another piece of background reading, and it's been around a decade or more and helps me understand, as Joanne P. noted last Monday night at the City Council, why we see the same faces in the places every week at every meeting. This is a REAL eye-opener and no longer a portent of the future, as that has already arrived.

Also tonight, also at 5, in the Norwich Public Utilities building at 26 South Golden Street, is a special meeting of the Board of Public Utilities' Commissioners for a "Workshop on Performance Review Process." Your guess is as good as mine, maybe better (my utility bills seem to be getting bigger in recent months, much like yours, so I hope whatever this is, it helps keep the lid on that while also continuing to guarantee me and my family excellent service).

Tuesday morning at 8:30 in the Latham Science Center of Norwich Free Academy is a meeting of the Youth and Family Services Advisory Board (based on its name, I'll wager an important tool in many aspects of quality of life issues, but judging from its entry on the City's website, completely outdated and less than accurate. It appears to have one member as the appointments of six others expired anywhere from nine to five years ago. Gimme the 'Norwich is Moving Forward!' pep talk again because I eat that up with a spoon, and while you're at it, tell me about the rabbits, George.)

At five PM, in the Public Works Office over at 50 Clinton Ave (I don't live near there-as you can tell from the 'over there' reference for which I apologize. If you're across the street at 49 Clinton Avenue I guess it's not so much an 'over there' situation though I don't think there is a 49) is a meeting of Public Works and Capital Improvements Committee whose meeting last month was wiped out by weather and whose agenda is missing in action, at least on line. Here's the draft minutes of their November meeting which is also their most recent one and based on them, I'd expect to learn more about the Dog Pound project. In light of the declining revenue available to this committee and the aging infrastructure that's part of their mission, their job gets harder and harder to do every month, so thanks for trying to do it.

At 7 PM, in the conference room (I think) in the basement of 23 Union Street (next door to City Hall) is a regular meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals (a board, again ,with members whose appointment have or about to become, expired. Not forgetting now State Representative Christopher Coutu, former Alderman, is still listed as a member, but as a Democrat). Here's their meeting agenda and I love Item J by the way.

Also at 7 (McFly!), in the library of the Beth Jacob Synagogue (it's a fine line between old school and Old Testament. Word to your mother.) back by popular demand (of sorts), is a special meeting of the Ethics Review Committee, whose agenda is ONLY available by going here on the Norwich website and scrolling down to where they show up under 'municipal meetings'. I'm the recording secretary and the meeting, as I understand it, may be an attempt by the Chairperson, Mr. Goldman, to get action (more likely reaction) from the City Council to whom we gave our final report and recommendations (basically an expanded code) last March, who held an informational session with us in September to thank us all very much and to tell us tell us they had questions and were working with City Hall professionals on those questions, and then stopped talking at all. As far as I'm concerned, the City Council has the report (but where we can all help, I'm confident we shall), but based on some of the antics (it's a shorter word than Semiseptcentennial) in the last weeks, there's more need than ever for more ethics rather than more questions.

There's a letter in Sunday's Bulletin, that looks to me like somebody got a Word-A-Day calendar for Christmas, 'perfidy'-I haven't seen that in print in decades. And I would love to know from whom (by name) the email cancelling the contract came. I won't be surprised to wait until the next City Council meeting and a suspension of the rules to find out. Meanwhile I'm sparring now with a variety of barn yard animals, so whichever one is invoked, it's in shape for the meeting. For an event that was designed to, and should, instill a sense of pride across the City, it's not working out that way at all.

Wednesday morning, another of those quarter hour flashes I love, this one at 8:45 at 23 Union Street is a meeting of the Rehabilitation Review Committee. Here's the minutes of their 21 January meeting. That afternoon at 4:30 at Westwood Park is a meeting of the Norwich Housing Authority, neither of whose previous meeting minutes, nor agenda, are available. The Norwich Baseball Stadium Authority meets at six in room 210; perhaps the same weather that did in the Public Works meeting last month also impacted them as their last meeting minutes are from December. I'm working on how, with seven members present, the votes all seemed to be 8 to zero; perhaps there's sales tax?

Rounding out Wednesday at seven PM in the Central Fire Station over on North Thames Street is the Public Safety Committee. Based on the January draft meeting minutes, I'd anticipate learning the City Manager has received a corrected and reviewed copy of the city-wide equipment inventory and plan of deployment. This is a concern and request that this committee has had for over a year as it has worked with all the fire departments to create a document and a plan. Good for them and better for us.

That's it for this week. "The cities aflood/And our love turns to rust. We're beaten and blown by the wind/Trampled into dust. I'll show you a place/High on a desert plain. Where the streets have no name. Where the streets have no name."
-bill kenny

Not Drowning

I spend a great deal of my time in doctors' offices. I'm not a pharmaceutical representative or someone who works in health care, I'm someone who treated himself like crap, heedless, headstrong and self-absorbed, for a very long time and now it's catching up with me. I'm almost the character in Entourage on HBO except my posse all have initials and lab coats. The only thing all of them have in common is me (I; Sister Jean taught me well).

I was in the local blood drawing lab yesterday morning to prep for two visits a week from tomorrow to two different doctors. One is my endocrinologist whom I see for treatment of Type 2 diabetes (and yes, I watch CNBC's Diabetes Life every Sunday night at seven, unless I don't) and then my primary care physician who has been working with a lot of the specialists he has been sending me to see ever since I was hospitalized for renal failure last July and then developed pancreatitis.

Now I see a nephrologist, a rheumatologist, a gastro-enterologist and a cardiologist in addition to the vascular surgeon and orthopedic surgeon (plus the first two doctors). Everyone is very nice, professional and reassuring and, considering they have me for a patient, very good-natured. There's a ritual that before I see anyone of them, there's 'blood work' involved.

Yesterday was a tanker truck kind of day for drawing blood. I've had days where eight to ten vials of blood have been drawn as if somehow the answers to how I have gotten here are locked in the plasma or red corpuscles. Those answers haven't been found yet, but my medical team is keen to keep trying.

While at the window to give the phlebotomist or blood services nursing technician (they are two different careers and neither likes to be thought of as the other) and, this time (surprise!) a urine sample was required ('Can you fill this please?' she asked me, holding up the cup on her side of the glass, seated at her desk. 'From here?' I inquired somewhat dubiously) when the door to the waiting area opened and more people shuffled in.

Waiting rooms are bad places for me. I have to sit near other people and I'm not good with people at all. I cannot accept the fact that there's no expectation on any one else's part that I be amusing or amazing or talk at all, and yet, the Imp of the Perverse will not allow me, or them, any surcease as I watch myself attempt small talk with diminishing results that always causes me to redouble my efforts until eventually the unfortunate next to me gets up and moves, or leaves.

This has actually happened to me. Someone named Lacey (I think, or maybe they called out 'Lucy', a couple of months ago, gathered her things and was gone in the blink of an eye--joining in the mists of memory a 'David' and a 'Robert' from bygone years). But yesterday, in walked two adult women with a child of, perhaps, nine or eleven (I'm not good at guessing people's ages or weights; and don't get me started on their IQs). The child, wearing a blue winter jacket and a blue knit cap (it was nice yesterday weather-wise but it was more than a little cold at 7:30 in the morning and it is early February and this is New England, etc....) walked the length of the waiting room to stand alongside of me, practically on top of me, as I waited at the window.

He stared without blinking upwards into my face as one of the adults, perhaps his mother, in an embarrassed tone of voice explained 'Alex is autistic'. Alex studied me, studying him and he smiled. I don't have a doctor for autism (yet) and if you know more about it than I, good for you, but to me, autism suggests Alex finds his inner world more interesting than our external one, and reacts accordingly.

Having been accused by people for too many years of not having emotions (which pi$$es me off-proving the assertion wrong, I think), I was face to face, literally, with a person who was emotionally self-contained and was, in essence, window shopping. I gave him a ticket from the 'take a ticket' basket while explaining to him he would need that number when he was called and he nodded his head seeming to acknowledge that and was led by the other adult woman to a chair opposite the processing window where he sat down without loosening or removing his cap or jacket.

In a few moments Alex got up from his seat and walked to where I was now sitting to stand in front of me at my chair and stare down as I sat. When my name was called, he started to follow me to the drawing area but was detained by the other woman and all the while, from the next room as the tanker truck filled with my blood, I could hear him (actually not so much him as the two adult women) struggling to keep him under control. He never sounded or behaved dangerously or defiantly--just very set in his ways and very determined. When the blood drawing finished, I got the spot of cotton to hold on the extraction point in the arm where they took the blood and then two strips of tape to hold the cotton and to grab thousands of little arm hairs when you tear it off later (fast or slow makes no difference; it hurts and stings).

As I put my jacket on I could feel eyes and turning as I was leaving I saw him staring at me with his left arm raised at the elbow, moving two fingers up and down in a wave of farewell. There are six billion of us on the planet and we're pretty successful at avoiding one another for long periods of time. Yesterday, for a moment, I was reminded that we're all in the same ocean and so I waved back and was gone.
-bill kenny

The message is getting lost in the noise

Sort of the public announcement portion of the program.
If you're in the vicinity of the St. Vincent de Paul Place Soup Kitchen in Norwich (CT) around lunch time today, grab an apron and a spatula and give Mayor Lathrop a hand flipping burgers and making lunch. When the "City Hall Outreach" (or whatever snappy title it has) started last month, it was announced that every first Saturday of the month, the Mayor and others would be manning the grills. Since today is very much the first Saturday of the (next) month, that good deed should be going on. And if you had a couple of bucks in your apron pocket to give to the folks who run the soup kitchen, I'll bet they could put it to good use.

I didn't really follow the Beijing Summer Olympics (and just me, or is the turn of phrase, "Relive Beijing 2008" just a little too creepy?). Once I learned the Chinese authorities weren't going to permit the televising of the "500 meter Can You Outrun a Tank?" dash, my small amount of interest in the proceedings pretty much evaporated like tear gas on a breezy day.

I wasn't alive when the world held its nose and closed its eyes but went to the 1936 Summer Games in Hitler's Germany, but I'm young enough to hope my children, and yours, never ask us why we all decided to do it again. The best way to combat injustice and government-sanctioned murder, as we know from our own history, is to grow faint and silent when confronted by it.

Anyway. I don't really know a great deal about Michael Phelps. Egotist that I am, I will note that I know more about him than he about me (is that a me4z4 play on words? Not really, but thanks. Y'know, your guy really does smell good) so I'm aware of the media turmoil about what sounds like a variation of the "I didn't inhale" defense all those years ago.

The guy has won, what?, a dozen or more Olympic gold medals for swimming? He is a professional swimmer (which has got to be a bit like being a professional cyclist) you do it for the love of the sport, I suppose). How do you, or can you make a living as a professional swimmer? What does he put on the line on the hotel room registration for 'occupation'? How does the front desk check that out, fill the tub? Half the time, watching swimming on TV, you can't even see the person because of all the churn in the water and the head bobbing and the arms flailing. How do you make any money? From leasing the space on the bathing cap or on the back side of your swimming trunks?

And now Phelps is not permitted to swim competitively for three months. What little I saw of the coverage in Beijing leads me to conclude when he was in the pool, the races weren't all that competitive in the first place, so what is the real point? I guess it's symbolic--have a photo with your face buried in a bong (because we all know what goes with a bong) and no swimming for three months. Sort of like Mom telling you to NOT go in the ocean for an hour after eating. The fish now wear wristwatches?

I get the larger argument about setting an example and being a role model. Noted--except, just you and me now, how many of us want our children to grow up to be professional swimmers? Far less than those of us who want them to grow up to be happy. So much for the 'example and role model' contention. And let me also point out Phelps didn't sign up to be anything other than a kid poolside, going swimming. When did all of this turn into all of that?

Here's what I think: all the government sponsored public service messages for just how awful and evil drugs really and truly are (and I'm sure they are. And expensive, too. I dropped a fortune on Uriah Heep albums back in the day. And I gotta tell ya, for the most part, now they are mostly unlistenable), all those arguments basically got shot in the butt when the Phelps and the bong photo surfaced (maybe a sponsor can buy space on the barrel of the bong? They're doing wonders with photoshop these days, ask the Iranians. Hey! A couple of bucks is a couple of bucks, okay?).

My first thought was "golly, how many medals could he have won if he weren't inhaling?" My second thought was "since when do I ever use the word 'golly' when thinking? Jeepers!" With his capacity built up from all those years of training, his lungs could probably inhale a cloud the size of Katrina. All across America, the men and women on police forces who have Officer DARE duty have been looking at children seated across from them at school desks, lecturing on the evils of weed, whites and wine, knowing the kids are laughing all the way home on the school bus. The silver lining to this, I guess, would have to be that interest in high school swim teams is at an all-time high. Let's do a couple of laps in celebration, okay?
-bill kenny

Groucho Would Smile: You Vet Your Life

"For the days of old when we dug up the gold in the days of 49," there were various (and to us in the Air Age 21st Century, even quaint) forms of entertainment such as people going to movie houses to watch the Pathe Newsreels, staying home and gathering around the radio cabinet for any number of programs or, if ridiculously well-off having one of those radio cabinets with a tiny picture tube, a television. Pundits didn't think it would last, and it turns out punditry was a career with a finite future (who knew?).

A lot of programming in the early days on NBC and CBS and a chain of stations known as the Dumont Network (and you thought all we'd ever had were alphabet networks!?) was radio show transplants to include Grouch Marx, "You Bet Your Life." I was thinking of Groucho just the other day while, Cold Warrior that I am, continuing to marvel, even in these tough(er) economic times how little appeal his cousin, Karl, seems to have for folks around the world. I recalled Groucho's toy duck with that hundred dollar bill (these were the days of old, remember) given as a reward whenever a guest on the show said the secret word.

In recent days, the secret word seems to have been 'oops' or close to it. From the world of politics we have Nancy Killefer who 'forgot' to pay taxes on her help and the not-quite Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Daschle who had memory problems as well. In the interest of fairness (a concept more alien by the day to the American Body Politic) I'll point out that both of these folks' career ambitions (and horizons) were done in by third parties: whoever does (or now, did, I suppose) the payroll for Ms. Killefer and whoever handle(d) Mr. Daschle's taxes, since let's face it, they have people for this stuff.

I confess to making a movie in my head where Tom D, like my evil twin Skippy last weekend, is wrestling with Turbo Tax on line, and rummaging through the 'tax file' kept in a kitchen drawer that has EVERY Gosh Da*n receipt in the history of civilization 'just in case' it's needed at tax time. Not.

My bigger point is, and this happens NO MATTER WHO is in the White House, so the simple simians on Fox's Beltway Boys can belt up (as can all the other stuffed shirts who shout at one another in TV studios across the entire political spectrum) hundreds of folks have crawled through every aspect of the life and times and rubbish bins of a Presidential appointee, well before s/he is even an appointee. Background checks, credit checks, school attendance and conduct reports ('ate paste in third grade on rye bread. Could be a problem Mr. Kenny, we'll get back to you. Put the Elmer's and the Triscuits down and get out of the office!") as well as interviews and profiles, and it never crosses the person's mind to mention, even in passing, 'oh yeah...I was in the white slavery trade while a mercenary during the Biafra Civil War, but I declared the income in block 49a on my federal taxes. You don't think that'll be a deal-breaker, doya?'

Nothing. Not a word of warning to anyone. Just an 'oops' when (not if, when) it's unearthed. Did you really think no one was going to find this stuff out? How dumb do you think the people are who wanted you to come and work for them? 'They'll never find out I put myself through college wrestling midget transvestites for tuition.' Yeah, sure, that secret's safe. Safe as houses. There are no secrets and no places left to hide (and no really good books left to read while hiding out anyway). Today, it needn't be a fact, or even real--how often do you get email from someone that turns out to be a scam, a prank, or some form of bogosity? Straighten out your lives, and your versions, c'mon! "And remember, Captain Spaulding, only one answer between you."
-bill kenny

Running even faster

Heading out this morning I grabbed a piece of scrap paper from the kitchen table and threw it in the rubbish container, and there on the top, obviously from last night and whatever project my wife was working on, were her orange-handled scissors. She has had them a long time. They weren't left-handed scissors but she was fond of them. I had no idea how many products are made that NEVER take into account that not everyone is right-handed. Sinistro, from which we in English derive 'sinister' actually means left in Latin. See, this blog is a public service! Where's my bailout money?

My wife has been complaining in recent months at how the orange-handled scissors were growing more dull by the day. I was thrilled that there was finally something in the kitchen duller than I am, but now it's over. When she called me earlier to talk about something else entirely different, I asked her about the scissors and she told she had run out of patience and had discarded them.

I can remember as a child, not a toddler, a grade-schooler, maybe once every fortnight or so, all the Moms on the street and in the neighborhood would gather up their knives and their scissors and even their pinking shears (those things scare the bejabbers out of me) and when the fellow driving the oldest car/truck I had ever seen, a black ford that looked like Henry himself might have built showed up and pulled over and opened the back of the truck up to get at his workshop, all the moms would spend the afternoon visiting with one another while the sharpening man (I'm sure he had a title and I'm sure I'd never guess it) whetted the blades, and turned the sharpening stones and everything old became new again.

Shoes were made of leather, and mostly in Ohio and not of plastic all from someplace I cannot pronounce and when the heel or sole wore out, Mom took them to the cobbler who wrote out a ticket and gave her a stub and she came back in a week or so and your school shoes were as good as new, if not better. We had milkmen who delivered milk, real milk not that percentage off stuff that always reminds me of milk of magnesia, at least in color, and don't get me started on the taste. I don't care if 'whole milk clogs your arteries'. I've never seen a calf have a stroke, ever. Come to think of it, the #1 killer of cows is people.

My Mom had an eggman, koo-koo-cachoo, Mr. Ruben, who brought us brown eggs so big I thought, as a kid, they were ostrich eggs, not that I had ever seen an ostrich or one of its eggs. When Mr. Ruben had a heart attack, all the Moms in the neighborhood struggled to get by on supermarket eggs--those little white pullet pellets that looked like pigeon eggs (and no, I had never seen pigeon eggs either. There was no NatGeo channel back then.)

And slowly we grew up and gave away reusing things and fixing things that were broken. Pitch it--we'll get it another one when we're out. Wrong size, wrong color, imperfection in the hemline, or missing a stitch in the inseam? Throw it away. My wife has a sewing machine and I don't think anyone else she knows has any idea of how to use it. In the spirit of total disclosure I admit that my sewing skills consists of leaving the button and the shirt from which it came on my wife's sewing table with a note that says 'please' and the next day, the shirt is fine. I move in mysterious ways my wonders to perform.

These days, which will someday be the good old days for our children and their children, it's all replaceable so don't get too attached to any of it. That red stapler, in the dustbin it goes. The line between John Milton and Milton Waddams just disappears. We've traded a chance for Paradise Lost for an inbasket of those TPS reports.
-bill kenny

It Wasn't Your Time, Warner

I've weighed sharing this since Sunday night. I didn't realize, fully, I had this ability and while I would have pledged to use it only for good, I can understand how people in Phoenix, Arizona, might wonder how sincere I'm being.

Yes, we all know the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl 43 (it does look a lot nicer as Roman numerals, XLIII, and it's as close to learning something of historical value that some of us may ever get) but I have a confession to make. No matter what you've read on line or in print, heard on the radio or saw on TV, I (and Bruce Springsteen) am the reason why the Steelers won.

This happened despite my NOT knowing the names of anyone on the team. I followed pro football until moments after Super Bowl III, when my NY Jets defeated the Baltimore (yes, before there was an Indianapolis) Colts (and before there was a Baltimore Ravens) 16-7 (XVI-VII; this is fun). My interest in pro football waned rapidly and in direct proportion to the Jets' ability to field a credible team. Funny how four decades go by in the wink of a young girl's eye, innit?

Permit me to explain. I am deeply devoted to all things Bruceian, to include watching what I knew would be a disappointing 'concert' at halftime with The Boss and the Band. He got shelled in some reviews I read from folks whose typing fingers could easily be bent the other way just to teach them a lesson, but who seem to have missed a fundamental truth about rock and roll and TV. They don't mix and they never have.

TV renders everything harmless. Submitted for your review: Rush Limbaugh, Keith Obermann, Bill O'Reilly, Paula Deen (had enough?). Something (in this case, some one) as larger than life (and louder) as Springsteen was bound to NOT come across on TV as he does live but that wasn't the point of his performance. The guys with the green eyeshades who run his record company did some quick numbers crunching and rolled the dice that he'd have a record either just out or coming out soon (he always does) and Yahtsee!

I digress. Here's how I helped the Steelers. NFL time is like nothing else on earth. When I popped over to the channel carrying the game (I was watching a House marathon, getting tuned up for Monday night), at ten minutes before seven, there was only five minutes played and as I watched, the Steelers kicked a field goal and went ahead 3-0 (or should I say III-O?). Back I went to House, had the cane out and everything.

When I checked in again, Kurt Warner was throwing into Pittsburgh's end zone but a Steeler intercepted and, like a ramshackle, runaway boxcar, rumbled and bumbled his way all the way down the sidelines and scored a touchdown. And it was XVII to VII at the half. Note to NBC: I didn't appreciate having to watch the five guys in suits explain the first half of the game to the people who, unlike me, had watched it all already. I ain't here for business baby, I'm only here for fun. Where is he? Oh, yeah, you had to vamp for time while the stage was put up, sorry. Bruce, the E Street Band joined by enough other letters of the alphabet to form their own language, covered every inch of the playing field and my TV screen. When his performance ended, so did my interest-and Greg House never even knew I kissed and told.

As the closing credits on the House episode at the top of ten o'clock rolled (the one with the lover donating a piece of her liver, if you must know) , I figured I'd check the final score of the game (the only thing that's longer than the pregame show, which now starts on Tuesday the week before the game, or seems to) is post-game. To my amazement, the game was still on and the Steelers, now trailing, had just gotten a first down from the shadows of their own end zone (though technically, it should be their own goal posts as goal posts can cast shadows, not end zones. Damon Runyan doesn't know everything).

And then in the next eye blink, someone in white is catching a pass surrounded by Cardinals and John Madden is doing that spluttering thing he does so well (and for so long. He sounds like one of his turduckens cooking in a deep oil fryer, doncha think?) and just like that--The Steelers Win! The Steelers Win! The Steelers Win!

And so, Rooney family (not you, Mickey and Andy), you're welcome. If you wanted to get me backstage passes for every stop on the next World Tour of Bruce Springsteen, I'd call us even. I'm just hoping he and the band won't be playing at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Not enough exits.
-bill kenny

if airplanes are housed in aerodromes, where do we keep the Palins?

"Able was I ere I saw Elba." I was taught by Dr. Richard Arthur George, Head of the English Department (though I cannot recall anyone else in the department) at the Carteret Academy for Boys (West Orange, New Jersey) that that is the longest palindrome in the English language. And it's much cooler than the "Poor Dan" example the definition offers ('in a droop' indeed!).

I've always been pleased, as if I had something to do with it, that the zip code of where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, is a palindrome, 06360 and go to great lengths to NOT use the "plus four" part of the zip, not because I wish to delay the mail (just the bills, thank you) but because then it's not a palindrome. Whenever, in person or on the phone, someone asks for my zip code, I not only give it, I also point out it's a palindrome and am greeted at best with a blank stare and at worst by a yawn. If you're looking for someone to blame for the possibility of no mail delivery on Saturdays, I may be your guy (or yug, to keep this palindromic thing going, I guess).

I mention this because my brother, Adam, had a great story yesterday on how it came to be that he does NOT share his natal day with a Groundhog. I love eyewitness accounts, which, technically I suppose his wasn't, but it sure sounded like it. And speaking, okay, typing, as I was a moment ago about the post office, albeit somewhat obliquely, there's a possibility when he gets home today (but more likely tomorrow) the world's greatest birthday card (from me, of course; you had to ask?) will have been delivered. It may well be the greatest birthday card in the entire universe (which is also sort of a hint) and actually was the subject of an email I received from John and Druscilla Hallmark, of the South Hampton Hallmarks (of course), over the weekend inquiring as to my intentions in connection with the purchase of their card. The American Greetings people aren't anywhere near this customer-oriented and, believe me, I notice little touches like that.

This past Presidential election season, so much attention was paid to Governor Sarah Palin that almost unnoticed was the Presidential campaign of (to me) a more famous same last name. And what would our country look like had this succeeded-one can only wonder. It's a fine line separating the Economic Stimulus package from The Piranha Brothers, though Joe Biden does look a little like Dinsdale, at least in profile. And how I wish I had heard of either Michael (British and Loony) or Sarah (Plain and Tall) before encountering the most appropriate of palindromes for today's birthday child, "Madam, I'm Adam." Thus endeth the lesson and not a moment too soon.
-bill kenny