Turns Out: We Could, We Did, We Were

I've long since exceeded the age where I can, or care to (more accurately), remember who won the Super Bowl for more than about three minutes after the game is over. It's funny in a way. I remember the Packers winning the first two, then the NY Jets and then the Kansas City Chiefs, I think. And then decades of white noise and hum. It's not like the game wasn't played, or the effort to win it wasn't expended. I lost sight of it.

Sort of like moon shots. The early ones we all sat up for, all communicants at the electronic seance in the living room, and by the time they became routine, and we started taking them for granted (perhaps) and not doing as much operational risk management as we could have, people got killed and no one was watching. Just me, or were you surprised to learn there was a shuttle launch scheduled for Super Bowl Sunday (but delayed by weather until Monday)?

Talk about how things change. While I can remember the Packers winning the first Super Bowl, I drew a blank on the halftime entertainment and had to look it up. Turns out Al Hirt was the big name that year, imagine that. My father played trumpet, or had one at least, and was a huge fan of Java. In the midst of a British Invasion that was to sweep away all previously defined categories of music, Java became just another thing my father and I didn't have in common.

I had forgotten, or never known (I forget which, maybe both) that Prince had played a Super Bowl halftime show. I seem to recall the Rolling Stones (or three of them) did and there was Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, Sir Paul McCartney, and Justin Timberlake and the Wardrobe Malfunction.

With all that as a frame of reference and my own twenty-two year old daughter's reaction to The Who as a guide, I was happy for us old folks Sunday night. It was strange to see Zak Starkey (Ringo's son from Maureen) behind the drum kit, but anyone behind the kit after Moon the Loon was going to be strange. And there were certainly enough lights and I assume Jerry Bruckheimer had a role in the production of the program since he tends to appropriate so many Who songs as themes (there's no truth to the rumor that the pilot for CSI: Norwich has Eminence Front, by the way) and coming out of the speakers on the side of the television it sounded great, didn't it?

I remember what The Who looked like when they arrived on these shores and how little resemblance to them the two survivors bore Sunday night. Then I looked in the mirror. Life will do that to ya-no matter who you are. They're All in Love, with whom they are, or were.
-bill kenny

Talk of the Town, Norwich Meetings 8-13 February

Okay, so again this year, Norwich is not the host city of the reigning Super Bowl Champion. I think we're learning to cope with the indignity of it all rather well. And besides, there's enough serious business to get done across the city this week to turn our attention to.

This afternoon at Five in Room 335 of City Hall, the Ethics Commission meets. Also in City Hall, also at five o'clock, but in Room 209 it's (in essence) the first meeting of the year of the Volunteer Firefighter Relief Fund Committee.

Tuesday, if the local papers are on target, will be a preliminary overview at five of the Board of Education's next budget as part of their regular meeting in the Kelly Middle School Library. I'm vexed that the minutes of their January meeting aren't posted on their website in accordance with Public Law 08-3. Tuesday evening at seven could be the first meeting of the year of the Zoning Board of Appeals, in the basement conference room of 23 Union Street

Wednesday morning at 8:45 upstairs on the second floor of 23 Union Street, it's a regular meeting of the Rehabilitation Review Committee who work very hard on the small details that make houses home, just look at the meeting minutes and see for yourself. At 4:30 the Housing Authority meets at 10 Westwood Park, though, consistent with their tradition, there's nothing approximating minutes or an agenda available on the city's website.

At six, in Room 210 of City Hall is a regular meeting of the Norwich Baseball Stadium Authority which may shed some light on the progress of the approval process for the transfer of the NY Penn League's Oneonta Tigers to Norwich to start the 2010 season. Considering where Dodd Stadium is located the League may want to think about changing its name and when the season ends, and the team considers a name change I'd hope Norwich would figure prominently in that new moniker.

And at seven, in the office space of American Ambulance, is a regular meeting of the Public Safety Committee, which gets involved in a number of wide ranging issues across the city.

Just a reminder, that Saturday morning starting at nine in the East Great Plains Volunteer Fire Department meeting room (upstairs over the engines) is Mayor Nystrom's second open forum where anyone and everyone can, and should, stop by and share a thought or comment with the mayor. It's not just speaking, I hope, but also listening. Clouds rearrange. Like the talk of the town.
-bill kenny

The Yellow and Green House on Old Route 12

Reading the local newspaper this weekend and the big, famous papers on-line, it looks like we're changing the direction of the circles at the national political level, while here in the Land of the Round Door Knobs we've cultivated 'tsk-tsk' as a tool of counterpoint and repartee as the state's operating budget hemorrhages money and Connecticut town's and cities brace for organized can and bottle drives to help control deficits.

A lot of us are really angry about where we are and have pretty strong feelings on how we got here. Most of that seems to involve blaming someone else, because, let's face it, you and me are pretty decent people, right, and we didn't come up with sub-prime mortgages and all the other magic bookkeeping that caused things to get so stupid that General Motors didn't just lay off employees, they laid off divisions of car companies (Saturn and Pontiac joined Oldsmobile on the dustbin of history). So much for too big to fail? Did we miss the iceberg warning?

I drove on Route 12 yesterday from Norwich to Groton, not because it's scenic, though it's pleasant enough but because it's how I go to work and have for the last eighteen plus years. It's a pretty straight shot, even if don't always know the names of the streets--Washington down past the Harbor, right over the Laurel Hill Bridge onto Route 12, straight on until morning. Yes, after a while, the car drives itself and I just slightly steer.

I used to drive, for well over a decade, the same route in both directions, going to and coming from work. Some years ago as the Laurel Hill Bridge was being reconstructed and my time is so important I couldn't waste any in traffic, I started coming up with other ways to go home-sort of a game, just for my amusement. Some of that has stuck around as the construction is long done, but I tend to bug out over the Mohegan-Pequot Bridge to cut back to Norwich on the way home.

Obviously not during the winter, when it's pitch black at both 4:30's on the clock but more in the Spring, heading to work, I'd passed on "Old Route 12" (it's where, I guess the road once was, and then it gotten straightened and became a loop like in a shoelace) four or five houses on good sized plots alongside of one another. The yellow and green house used to have kids' toys strewn across much of the lawn. It was set far back on the property and since the 'real' Route 12 was above, there was little traffic. Sometimes in the afternoons, I'd see children on the lawn and it was just a matter of course as they went from playing catch to kicking footballs to seeing sled tracks in the winter time.

I think in all the years I've passed the house, I've watched two, maybe three, sets of moving vans turn up and depart as new families made a home in the yellow and green house. I missed the last van, I guess, or perhaps the people who lived there just scattered pell-mell in the dark of the night. I'm not ever going to have a lucrative career as a spy or observer, because I'm terrible at connecting the dots. In my defense, I'd point out that I'm not laone.

At some point, perhaps two years ago as the first rumblings of the economic tsunami were being felt in boardrooms( the equivalent of first-class staterooms over the rest of us in steerage), the yellow and green house became suddenly empty. Over the course of the following months, all the various toys, soccer goals, and the small child's swing set, all disappeared, the grasses grew higher, but then I suspect the neighbors intervened to keep the lawn in check. The house was abandoned in place. There are no curtains on any of the windows and I noticed some months ago, the front porch has started to collapse, pulling lower the roof that I imagine the master bedroom upstairs once looked out upon as the parents' gaze continued to their children playing on the lawn.

Yesterday afternoon, coming home I got a good long look at the yellow and green house. I could see insulation and what looked like roofing material in the window that I've always assumed is the attic. That can't be good for anyone. And that's when I realized, for me at least, how we have come to be here in this precarious predicament, so far, without a happy ending. When banks and brokerage houses needed rescue, we did, because saving and doing big things is incredibly important. And because of all the energy and effort we expended there wasn't enough money, or time or concern or interest in saving the people whose family had lived in the yellow and green house, whatever color it was, on Old Route 12, or wherever in your neighborhood, the dream died.
-bill kenny

F.O.D.

Was sent on an errand by Sigrid, my wife, yesterday morning. I was home because I had bronchitis and since the last two times I've had it I've either ended up in the ER or actually admitted to the hospital, I decided Thursday afternoon to cut to the chase, leave work early and see my doctor during his regular office hours. He was quite pleased to see me though I got the impression he was surprised to discover I could learn things, like how to not be such a knucklehead with my own health.

He gave me a Z-Pack (because the name is too long to ever need to learn to say) and a note telling the people I work for I would not be into work until Monday (the joke being that I won't give them the note until Monday when I'm back at work) and sent me home to put on scruffy clothes, drink lots of fluids and stretch out on the couch.

I decided yesterday I would get cough syrup because I was barking as Sigrid phrased it, "like you are smoking two packs of cigarettes a day", which, since I used to smoke three packs a day (and stopped thirteen plus years ago), is a bit spooky. While I was out, I bought the other daily newspaper in this region (we get one delivered to the house, but it's not my favorite of the two) and I was to swing by the donut place and get a box of Munchkins.

I get that they are the filling knocked out of the doughnut hole-but Munchkins? I like the name but I'm wondering how they managed to get the rights to use it from MGM and whoever owns all the ancillaries connected with The Wizard of Oz. As if with the headache I have from the percussive coughing I'm doing, I have enough room in my brain to worry about this stuff. And for no especial reason there were ten people in line before me, so I had some time to ponder the mystery of the Munchkins.

We did move rather quickly, all things considered, and it wasn't long before the fellow behind the counter asked me for my order and I told him, Munchkins. Any particular type, he asked, which wasn't a question I expected since it never crossed my mind that Munchkins came in types. No, I told him, but try to avoid giving me too many of the Lollipop Guild because they sing so loudly I can't hear my car radio. He stared at me like he'd never seen a person with bronchitis before.

-bill kenny

Watch the Ripples that Unfold Unto Me

Had a pleasant surprise the other evening in my email inbox, a postcard from my past. I had a kind note from Johannes D in Regensburg to chat, briefly, about a Graham Parker project he's working on and to share with me his memories of listening to me on the radio, in another life, on the multiple occasions Graham was kind enough to stop by the station and visit.

The 'station' was American Force Radio, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main in the old days of the two Germanys; in this case in West Germany, known as the Federal Republic of Germany, to distinguish it from the People's Republic of Germany. Those were Cold War days, not that I had a walk-on part in any of that as a skeeter-winged Airman in the US Air Force who played records, wrote and produced public service announcements and interviewed rock and rollers for GI listeners and their families numbering into the hundreds of thousands. And don't get me started on the millions in the 'shadow audience' (citizens of the nations in which US forces were stationed).

I had the time of my life. Though to be honest, I had also enjoyed AFRTS Sondrestrom, Greenland even when it went to seventy five below zero on Christmas Eve 1975 and stayed there for three weeks in the twenty-four hour darkness. Sure, it was miserable, but we were all miserable.

Being an Airman, even a jeep (junior enlisted personnel), in a primarily Army organization, like AF, was, a day at the beach by comparison and you never had to worry about the sands of time getting in your lunch. Except, of course, they did. Rock and Roll kids grow old, even if they don't grow up. The number of nights in the week where you can hang with the trolls and the gnomes after the gigs starts to shrink as Neverland recedes in the rear view mirror.

I smiled reading Johannes' note for all that it brought back to me and for all that has escaped forever, never to return, because had I realized then he was listening as intently as he was, I might have tried harder to be better at what I did than I proved to be. Maybe worked out more, or harder because "...you can't be too strong. You decide what's wrong. Can't be too hard, too tough, too rough, too right, too wrong."
-bill kenny

Hitchcock's Revenge?

For months, sitting in the cage, on the hook attached to the bracket held up by the suction cup has been the (uneaten) block of suet for the birds outside my ground floor office window. I don't expect I'll see as many of them when/if I'm finally relocated to the fifth floor (I didn't get promoted, but some wag figured since I behave as if I were oxygen deprived, I may as well achieve altitude) but since I stopped filling a second feeder with seed because all they did was fight, bang against the window and makes a mess (often all at the same time), living large has been downsized.

I still throw peanuts out for what was once an army of squirrels who've gotten fewer in number as the winter has gone on. I'm not sure if they book passage on tramp steamers for warmer climes, but they're not around here very much at the moment, though the one that does show up is ravenous in terms of appetite.

It was just the other day I realized the suet was disappearing, especially after last weekend's cold snap, which may make sense since birds are cold-blooded and, I assume, need more fuel in the winter months, to keep on keeping on. Earlier in the week, the suet block had been reduced to about four beakfuls and I watched as a titmouse repeatedly strafed a woodpecker who was hanging on for dear life to the holder as his tormentor wheeled on wings and came back to divebomb him again and again.

From inside, safe and warm, it looked like the woodpecker was holding me responsible for this turn of events which guilted me into making sure to pack into my 'going to work' bag the new suet block my wife, one half of Thelma and Louise, had taken out for me. Stumbling around by the dawn's early light, (and earlier than that, come to think of it), I managed to open the now-completely-empty holder, add the new block, and reposition it.

Until about three minutes ago, when finally one of those itty-bitty birds too numerous to count, decided to take a bite, not one bird went anywhere near the feeder. I looked out the window and saw the squirrel giving me that 'calculating the length of the nearest evergreen branch to the feeder, the distance between the two and the approximate length of the leap to close the distance, snag the suet and nothing but net...' look that can spell only trouble unless he answers to the name of Rocket J. And from what I've seen, he answers to no one. The best I can hope for this time around, with my apologies to Mitch Brenner, might be '...a pair of birds that are....just friendly.' (And maybe, bus their tray.)
-bill kenny

Government as a Team Sport

Suspect your house is a lot like mine in terms of activity and hours in the day to accomplish things. We’re already into February and it was just the other day we wished each other a Happy New Year. Of course, as we should know by now, it takes more than wishing to make happy happen. And for any number of reasons, ranging from meteorological to and through fiscal, this is literally, the winter of our discontent. (Except, perhaps for my youngest brother, celebrating the anniversary of his birth today, so Happy Birthday!)

The (most recent installment of the) challenge of change which, here in Norwich, we began in November is to never lose sight that it’s a never ending process and not a product—a journey, rather than a destination. There is no Grandma’s House towards which we’re driving. And the road can and does often feel like it goes on forever.

Every day, city administrators and their professional staff, joined by, and with, volunteers on advisories, board, commissions and committees, all of them our neighbors, begin again as every aspect of municipal government’s ability to deliver good and services in response to our desires for a particular program (sometimes to complement another one and sometimes in competition with it), is balanced against the ability to afford the delivery of those goods and services.

Governance at all levels shouldn’t be a spectator sport, but because of the pace of our lives, we sometimes do not choose to invest the time in much more than glancing at a headline about a state or local issue. That becomes our level of engagement but elevates the degree of difficulty in arriving at decisions.

We have a general sense this coming budget season in Norwich, and not just here, will involve hard choices almost pre-ordained to make no one happy. If politics is the art of the possible, then, without our informed opinions and observations, we’ll see elected and appointed officials attempt mission impossible. When the smoke clears and we look for someone to blame for results we don’t like, look no further than the nearest mirror.

Almost every weekday, and weekends, too, there are public meetings on the nuts and bolts operating issues and many of the spice of life aspects that define us as a city--be they Board of Education, the Historic District Commission, Public Safety, Commission on the City Plan, Public Works and so many others-usually without anyone from the public attending.

Check the city’s website and pick a meeting. You might want to take a look at the on-line posting of recent meeting minutes so you are caught up, so to speak when you take a seat (and make a note if the minutes aren't posted; it's a violation of CT public law). You’ll know one or more of the volunteers on the board of committee, so the ‘them’ factor disappears immediately, which leaves only ‘us’ which is as it should be, if we are ever going to reinvent ourselves and our city. And since we’re learning to effectively speak to, rather than at, one another, why not use this as an opportunity to practice listening as well as speaking.

-bill kenny