Leaves of Brown Came Falling through the View

We have no trees on our property. I mention that because this time of year walking from the front porch to the street in front of the house involves wading, yes wading, through two and three foot deep piles of leaves that have gotten pinned against the wall that joins the property to the city sidewalk. Every imaginable color and shape of leaf. If you stand still in and among them, you can hear the squirrels, who usually hang out in the back yard waiting for our daughter Michelle to feed them peanuts, working their way through the leaves in search of the bi-ped whom they have every historical reason to believe NEVER leaves the house without peanuts to feed them.

I hate when I'm coming home in the afternoon and get out of the car to open the garage and one of the 'guys' spots me from a tree branch and starts a mad dash towards the car. The object, in the squirrel's mind, is to get to me before I get back in, so s/he can scarf up one of more peanuts and dash off. The flaw, as you've guessed, is I'm not equipped with the peanut dispenser option-not even the LL Bean model of the Forester comes with that. Chances of making the squirrels understand this: less than zero. Everyday the same drill. I know better than to stock up on peanuts, because if I ever do flip a peanut to one or more, I'll be buried by them as they'll just assume I've been holding out on them all this time.

The squirrels are starting to get their whiter shade of fur (I checked with the estate of Keith Reid, and they said that was okay) which, because we're practically to mid-November in New England is the way things should be I suppose. I've started to wonder idly if areas of the world with palm trees have squirrels or chipmunks, but suspect I'll never bother to find out for myself though thirty or more years ago I was keen to see it all and do it all.

Instead, I stand on my front porch and watch an oak leaf, almost perfectly pirouette, stem first, in very tiny circles from high over head and land in the ever-expanding pile of leaves that have blanketed the sidewalk on our side of Lincoln Avenue. In the winter months, it's best to be on the odd side of the street, numerically speaking, because of how the sun rises and the manner and length of its rays helps clear the ice and snow from the walks with less effort required than that of our neighbors on the opposite side.

One of the trade-offs, though, is November as the winds turn raw and blustery and blow in from the coast driving before them all the leaves that short weeks earlier had seemed like garland on tree branches across the region. Those days are behind us now, as the daylight grows shorter a little more every day through the Winter Solstice. Breeze blows leaves of a musty colored yellow. The cycle of the season continues within and without us as the days dwindle down.

-bill kenny

The Tolling of Donne's Bell

I had an inadvertent moment of reflection earlier this week. I confess to not doing reflection very well-I long ago chose between fight and flight and when I tell you I go through lots of shoe soles, you can guess my choice. Tuesday morning was different.

I had an early morning email from a colleague with whom I either correspond or speak on the phone twice a week, simply asking if I were okay. As I was working on an errand and another project, I didn't respond right away. A short time later I had a call from a casual stranger, someone whom I know but with whom I have little day to day interaction, calling to 'see how you are' which was answered, seemingly, when I did.

He inquired if I had seen one of our local newspapers and if so, had I checked the obits section. Both of my answers were in the negative but I understood why he'd asked (My sympathies to the survivors). I hadn't realized I was part of a franchise but now recognized the subtext of the email message from earlier and how not responding wasn't helping matters very much. In the course of the next two days I was more than a little surprised over the number of people I heard from in connection with the news note.

Let me be clear: there was no outpouring of emotion rivaling the renaming of Bedford Falls or a singular moment of clarity-as a matter of fact I think I detected a note of unhappiness in at least two voices when they learned I was still among the living (patience, my friends, patience).

It's odd (for me) to think I could have lived x number of years not all that far in distance from someone with whom I shared a name and have never shared any other aspect of our lives (I don't even like pineapple) and yet here we were, two more puzzle pieces in the same device. lives in parallel paths never intersecting until the horizon.

I don't think I'm experiencing survivor's guilt since I doubt someone is bestriding the earth calling out departures in alphabetical order, though with a God who crucified His own Son you can never be too sure, I am being more careful with each footfall before taking it, weighing every word a moment longer before wielding it like a weapon, trying to breathe out as much as I attempt to breathe in.

We live only a short distance from the congregational church near the green, up the street from Saint Patrick's Cathedral. The bells from both toll at various times during the day, every day. Now I better understand how some no longer hear the bells and why.

-bill kenny

The Nation Which Forgets Its Defenders Will Be Itself Forgotten

Today began as Armistice Day, marking the end of "The War to End All Wars" also known as World War One, but obviously and sadly, failing to achieve its goal, hence the numerical suffix. For most of the thirty-five nations who fought in it, it lasted the better part of five years, from 1914 to 1918; we here in the United States didn't become a combatant until 1917 but made up in ferocity of engagement what we lacked in length of deployment. The world one hundred or so years ago was very different than the one in which we live and is so unlike today it's as if it were another universe. If we survive as a country and culture for another one hundred years, what will now look like to those here then, I wonder.

There are many observances around the country today. And like ours in Norwich, Connecticut, at eleven this morning in the Village of Taftville's Memorial Park, the ceremonies are often simple with little pomp and circumstance as is probably most befitting to celebrate a well-shared national experience. In 2009, the last year I could find verifiable statistics, there were nearly twenty-two million veterans among us, and it takes every kind of people to make a world and to serve in uniform.

Today is NOT Memorial Day. We honor all those who served in our nation's armed forces, living and deceased. As we edge ever closer to our first full decade of war as a consequence of events in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the size of our veteran population, the imperative and importance of taking care of all those who are wounded in body and/or in spirit grows. Veterans Day really becomes a Day of National Remembrance and Recognition of all the characteristics, embodied by those who serve as well as those who wait for those for serve, that allow us to remain the freest nation in the history of world.

I'm old now but I can remember the boy I was who listened to a Navy veteran of the War in the Pacific during World War Two, just elected President of the United States, urging us all to "....pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Service to others, like any other habit, becomes second-nature when performed often enough. Last week's elections capped a lot of discussion, and more, on determining what's wrong with our nation. Today is a day to remember all that is right with us, and with one another.
-bill kenny

The Next New Beginning

The clock fell back to mark the fall and winter season four days after Norwich voters decided to step forward, choosing to believe there's another spring and summer in our downtown. All the back-slapping, hail fellow well met and congratulations that needed to be handed out are hopefully, all done because the hard work is yet to get started.

When you don't know where you're going, any road can get you there-but not every one will. Lots of details for management of the downtown development bond were 'to be determined' and 'fleshed out' when/if the residents approved the proposal. That's where we are right now-we can stop saying if and start doing when. That is, when public meetings and smaller group discussions lead to the development of criteria for the types of businesses that will best complement downtown and incentives are offered to merchants we will patronize, we'll see an increased flow of pedestrian traffic and incremental growth in the commercial portion of the city's Grand List.

Those whom we've elected need to grow more comfortable with multi-dimensional and multi-directional thinking--not just 'what's next?' but what happens after a succession of 'what next.' They, and all of us who live here, will need to both drive the car and build the road. We are most comfortable with a rate and pace of change that places one event in sequence after the other. The world towards which we are moving doesn't always work in that manner. Change and reaction to it are more spontaneous and less regimented.

What will help determine how well we will manage tomorrow will be a skill we need to have today: an ability to communicate openly and honestly with one another. There's safety in numbers, when you learn to divide. How can we be in if there is no outside? No secret agendas, no saying one thing while meaning another, no more nods and winks and private codes. We need to rely on one another to say what we mean and to mean what we say.

Cooperation and collaboration need to be hallmarks of our dealings with one another as we open ourselves to a world that too many of us have avoided for decades. Many of us are not sure which model to follow, but I think most of us would agree, as we demonstrated last Tuesday with our votes for two of the three bond initiatives, we're no longer willing to be silent and passive victims. This unreasoning fear we've had of any idea Not From Here needs to be replaced by a willingness to try new ideas from new people, and if necessary should first attempts fall short, to try again until we get it right.

-bill kenny

Bless the Weather

I guess the nicest thing about the snow squall that visited yesterday was that it didn't happen Sunday in the midst of the New York City Marathon. My sister Kara's husband, who actually has a name (since that title gets cumbersome) Russ, ran and was marvelous (I couldn't run that distance or at that pace if someone were chasing me with a bat) and, by extension (friends of acquaintances), I know a few other people who ran as well.

Edison Pena, who would have easily had the winning entry in the Chilean "What I Did Over My Summer Vacation" essay contest (were one to have been held), finished his race to put an exclamation point on a year that has been anything but declamatory. I don't think the snow would have bothered him, except to wonder where the rest of it was.

Me, not so much. I've lived here for nineteen years. I have the almanac and the snow blower and ice melt and the windshield scrapers in every color and flavor in the rainbow. I have one or more calendars and am keenly aware of what time of the year it is where I am and what usually happens around here when we get here.

Still, when I opened my eyes shortly after three AM, I could hear the persistent tap-tap of something harder than Dylan's Precipitation falling and hoped it was crustacean body parts against the window, but knew it wasn't. I stopped being a fan of snow right after I stopped having days off from school because of it so yeah, it's been a while since I've smiled when it happens.

When Pat and Mike were much younger, we used to mush down to Buckingham School (long since closed) with what seemed like half of Norwich to sled down the hill alongside the playscape and the basketball court. Someone had erected a fence at the foot of the hill, luckily, since kids would get up quite a head of steam and barrel right across the sidewalk and onto Washington Avenue (actually a rather busy state road) and wind up as the hood ornament on somebody's 1968 Terraplane Turbo Diesel as they made their way to the casinos. The other half of Norwich went to the Golf Course where, among the hills and dales, there were some primo saucer sliding sites.

We didn't really have a lot of snow on Monday-we had a large amount of slush, truth to tell-gets all your clothes wet and the sled blades get rusty real fast. I went into work as normal (or as close as I ever am to normal) and I suspect there were no kids, or adults for that matter, off to try out the sledding places. I don't imagine this was our only opportunity this winter, or even for this week. Bless the weather that brought you to me. Curse the storm that takes you away.
-bill kenny

So I Set My Sights on Monday

This is a week that's more or less two shorter weeks with Veterans Day on Thursday, a holiday we've so far failed to commercialize (not that we haven't tried) providing a break in the routine. Though, in looking at the meeting calendar, the variety of different topics and approaches makes for an interesting week already.

Today, actually this afternoon at five in Room 210 of City Hall, it's a regular meeting of the Ethics Commission. The city's website has no October meeting minutes or the notice/agenda for this afternoon's meeting though if form follows function, review and approval of the October minutes will be on the agenda as will, I imagine, continuing to identify those areas of the Ethics code that are in need of adjustment and refinement.

At five-fifteen, in their office space at 169 Route 2 in Gales Ferry it's a regular meeting of the Southeastern Connecticut Water Authority, whose website could do with a refreshing, I think, in terms of currency of content.

Tuesday morning at 8:30, the Youth and Family Service Advisory Board meets in City Hall's Room 335 (a/k/a 'The Cone of Silence' because if you don't sit in the VERY first row, you'll hear nothing of what is going on. Some have suggested that's where I should write these notes.). They meet every other month, and here's a copy of their September meeting minutes. It's human nature to spend a lot of front lobe attention on 'big picture/big ticket' items, but many of the programs this group is engaged in are quiet, small pieces, lots of one to one empowerment and enrichment requiring many small steps that become a great leap forward when you look at where they started.

At four in the afternoon, in their facility on the New London Turnpike, it's a special meeting of the Norwich Golf Course Authority to approve a budget and a pair of contracts with two employees.

At 5:30, and I'm walking on thin ice a bit here is a regular meeting of the Board of Education. The City's website says the meeting is in the library of Kelly Middle School (and the December meeting will be in Samuel Huntington School) but the agenda of both the September and October meetings, as posted on the Norwich Public Schools' website, indicate those meetings were in Huntington. I'm not a betting man (this close to the casinos that is sort of foolish, I know) so I'd suggest calling the office at 860.823.4200 and double-checking the location.

The Public Works and Capital Improvements Committee, which meets every second Tuesday of each month at five in the afternoon in the Public Works Directors office at 50 Clinton Avenue, except when it doesn't, should be meeting this afternoon. There are no minutes from a September meeting for which there is an agenda posted on line and I think I remember the October meeting was cancelled though there's no notice to that effect on the city's website.

As a matter of fact, so far in calendar year 2010, there are minutes of TWO meetings and notices of FIVE consecutive cancellations (to include a cancellation that had minutes. Huh?). There were news stories earlier this week about how the members of the city council will work harder on communication with one another and with the public. Look at the municipal website, ladies and gentlemen, it's a target rich environment for improvement.

The Zoning Board of Appeals is scheduled to meet at seven in the basement conference room of the Planning Department at 23 Union Street, though their most recent meeting minutes and agenda is from September rather than October (I didn't find a cancellation notice). The ZBA has the sometimes unglamorous job of enforcing policies and ordinances they didn't formulate and the rest of us more often than not rely on its members to know the zoning codes and related materials, because we certainly don't.

Thursday morning at eleven the Frederick J. Sullivan Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2212 and the American Legion Post 104 will hold a Veterans Day observance in the Taftville Memorial Park. All across this nation, people will take time out Thursday as close to the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month as they can, in a tradition that began as Armistice Day, marking the conclusion of 'the war to end all wars,' World War I.

That it has a Roman numeral after it might lead you to conclude, correctly, it wasn't successful at being the war to end all wars. Here in 2010, we don't even bother giving the wars numbers or names, we just take for granted the men and women who fight them in countries far away and out of sight. Hope you can join us in Taftville, or wherever you live, to recognize the too-many-to-count who've worn our military's colors in peacetime and in war. Thank you, and thank them, too.

Thursday afternoon at five, in Chacer's, it's a meeting of the Downtown Revitalization Zone, rescheduled from last Thursday (but it's not a special meeting though I think it's supposed to be, technically). The agenda lists review and approval of the October seventh meeting notes (I'm not sure why the word minutes isn't used). Neither notes nor minutes are posted on the city's website; as a matter of fact, click here for EVERYTHING on the city's website about what should be an important component in the rebuilding of our downtown. Perhaps together we can figure out how to get 'the word out' on important information that is probably NOT getting to those of us who live here the way the committee members would like.

On the City's website for Saturday is a note of cancellation on a meeting with the Small Business Association that, I hope, will be well-attended when it is held a week from tomorrow, Tuesday the 16th at 6:30 PM in City Council Chambers. We should have, by now, all the pieces to solve, or at least to start to solve, the decades long puzzle that has been a moribund downtown.

The time to do so has arrived.

-bill kenny

This Time Tomorrow

This time today was yesterday when it was already yesterday. This morning in the wee, dark early hours, we fell back an hour (I've always liked how we keep that straight, 'spring ahead' and 'fall back' and that 'wander stupidly like a drunken lemur' I hear so often is, I guess, only used to describe me) all across the country.

I've never been clear how much of the rest of the world does this time-travel-but-standing-very still-stuff although daylight savings is utilized across significant portions of the earth's Northern Hemisphere. I've always wondered about hourly employees working overnight shifts when the clocks change directions....do they work seven and get paid for eight in the Spring and then work nine and get paid for eight in the fall? Is there a law or a workplace practice that covers this and why on earth is a fifty-eight year old guy, pecking away at a keyboard in Norwich, Connecticut, worrying about stuff like this? When you have no life, interest in the obscure becomes a crusade.

The why we move clocks forward and back is the part I will NEVER understand no matter how erudite the explanation. I know, 'how did you find the ONLY National Geographic in the history of the magazine without women with really big MA----'. Cool your jets, PF Sloan; none of us are in seventh grade or thirteen anymore. As a matter of fact, technically we'll all be an hour older when Sunday becomes Monday than when yesterday became today. Science makes my hair hurt. And that's another thing I don't understand.

We share the planet with a nearly infinite number of other life forms from single-celled amino acids to the full scale and scope of the abiogenesis catalog (now available for only three easy payments, and if use your credit card right now...), and none of them have watches much less the concern for time and its division and measurement that we, Homo sapiens, have.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day/Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way. And then we look up in surprise and dismay at the time and wonder where it's gone, when it hasn't gone anywhere. The end of a television program, a movie, a radio serial or other entertainment, a relationship with another person, or a business relationship or political alliance.

You don't have to be Richard to have misgivings about time and what we do with it. Merely being human will qualify. I'll leave the sun behind me and I'll watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by....I can see the world and it ain't so big at all. This time tomorrow.

-bill kenny