Hooked on Phonics: It's a Dry Spelling

There are days, I know, when I offer you an item that might best be regarded as "news from the newsroom floor" if you haven't already concluded 'Pshaw! This is outright balderdash!' All I can say to that assertion my good sir or madam, is please call me before you offer such an utterance as I have always wished to hear both Pshaw and balderdash said aloud.

Such is the case again today, but I can only insist I am offering you a double dollop of the truth stuff when I tease you by quoting just the headline, "North Carolina Couple to Give Birth in Company of Dolphins."

Before You Click: it's not the Miami Dolphins. Too late, I know.
And as a bonus to the story, I am offering to you the "Top News Arab Emirates" version of the story. They seem to be an online English language news aggregator whose command of my native language's idiomatic and syntactical nuances leaves a little bit to be desired. I think of them as Drudge in a keffiyeh.

I know you believe I love this story because I watched Flipper on TV as a kid but that's not strictly true. I watched it on TV as a kid and as an adult. Thank God, or Allah as they might say at Top News Arab Emirates, for Nick at Night. Let's just say somewhere Mike Heron just cashed a royalty check and smiled.
-bill kenny

Tipper or Al

This is an interesting day in my house as my wife and I start the process to renew for the second time her resident alien registration--a process that wasn't a walk in the park when we initiated it in December of 1991 and which became part of the infinitely more complicated post 9/11/01 world.

We'll be in Hartford, actually near Hartford, for some time today accomplishing the mechanical aspect of the process (my wife is still under warranty; oh how I love that joke!) with the paperwork having already started (Sigrid is relentlessly organized and has been at this drill for some time).

The initial application in 1991 was very much a No Fun Allowed process as we faced a very large and, in my opinion as a fellow Federal employee, stunningly uncaring if not actually hostile staff of people with whom we interacted. We succeeded, I felt, in no small part despite their efforts rather than because of them.

Interestingly enough, a decade ago, the much more intense and complex renewal process was relatively painless and smooth so I often wonder how much my fear twenty plus years ago colored my original perceptions and suspect I know the answer.

I mention this because bubbling through our legislature in Hartford, albeit a distance from where my wife and I will be for part of the day, is a proposal, actually a proposed law, that would allow folks who aren't supposed to be here here, politicians call them 'undocumented workers,' to apply for and receive State of Connecticut driver's licenses.

The argument as best as I can follow is seductive even if the logic is somewhat tortured. In a state where property insurance is not only nearly a religion but where crimes against property are often punished more severely than those against persons, it has been suggested those who are not supposed to be here if they must drive to work or to live (because mass transit is something even in Connecticut cities that is close to non-existent) are currently doing so illegally (we are the Constitution State and sticklers for this stuff).

That means, as night follows the day, they have no vehicle insurance (you think you can smell what the Prudential Rock is cooking. No you can't.) and while public safety could and should be a concern, much more importantly there are taxes and fees involved in all aspects of purchasing insurance.

Did the light of cognition just come on? Welcome, camper! Connecticut has the beggar's bowl out for new "revenue streams" (= taxes) and the legislators in Hartford have already spent all the money projected to be collected from this insurance expansion/explosion. And let's not forget the costs and fees associated with the issuance of the licenses themselves. Ka-ching!

Meanwhile my wife watches the postman every day for official looking mail that will not contain a driver's license application proving rules are for people who don't know better. Adds a whole new meaning to 'you need not be present to win.' Actually it's easier to win if you're not really here (wink, wink). If we're not careful, we're going to owe Hughes Mearns royalties. And these days we're so tight for money we squeak when we walk.
-bill kenny

A Well-Known Thoroughfare

Sitting in City Council chambers last Monday night as they discussed money and metrics for continuing their relationship with the Norwich Community Development Corporation, NCDC, I thought about how  the road to a well-known warm place is paved with the best of intentions.

That adage not only explains all the folks in chambers that night wearing short-sleeve shirts but why our Public Works Department has to devote so much time to fixing potholes. For many years, in that delightful tongue-in-cheek style I've elevated to High Art, I used to suggest to anyone who'd listen (and many who refused) that NCDC was held in the same regard as The Illuminati and perceived by many as being responsible for about the same number of ills in the world. In recent weeks as discussions about its continued funding deteriorated into anonymous, on-line barbed innuendo and personal invective, I started to realize just how small a small town often is.

I'm dangerously close to being that guy who, if you could buy me for what I'm worth but sell me for what I think I'm worth, you could live forever off the profit. And guess what? I'm not alone, far from it.

Norwich, this city that we purport to so love, has been on a downward glide slope for a long time  probably since the mill operators went south in search of cheap labor in that first decade after World War Two ended. And aside from running in circles, and then changing the direction of the circles, we're not doing very much about it.

I don't pretend to be the City Historian-my family and I arrived here in 1991, not 1891- but I think the same attributes and characteristics that made Norwich such an attraction across the region since its founding are still extant. It is we, who live here, who have changed and maybe not always for the better but we can be.

Harry Truman once noted 'It's amazing how much you can get done when you don't care who gets the credit.' All the people on the City Council and Board of Education, the municipal department directors and the men and women who work for the city and those serving as volunteers on the dozens of agencies and committees this city has-are all trying to do good things for all of us.

And that includes the talented professionals at Norwich Community Development Corporation, which, by the way was created and is comprised of our friends and neighbors as well as elected leadership and local business people, not some off-shore faceless operation with no name and no number to trace. 

Norwich needs a multi-faceted, one-stop shop that specializes in everything as contradictory as that reads. From writing a business plan to applying for a construction remediation loan through using social media to build customer traffic to knowing how to file a permit, and in what municipal office.

Last Monday night, the City Council seemed to realize it has a valuable resource and ally to assist in the efforts to revitalize and repurpose our city and to take the first, somewhat halting steps to articulating a vision of what needs to be done and providing direction and political will to do it. That first step is the hardest but after we learn to walk, running will be a breeze.    
-bill kenny

Yankee Doodle Would Be Speechless

I've mentioned before that I love the Internet. Even if we weren't supposed to capitalize it, I would because It's Just That Wonderful. And I'm not talking about just cat memes though they are easily worth the kajillion of miles of fiber optic that makes them possible, along with those hurtling electrons. 

Where else could we argue earnestly as if it were actually important that those little animated do-hickeys are called Jifs, as in the peanut butter but singular as in sensation versus Gifs as in short for Giffords even though that isn't it at all. Talk about being the skinniest one in fat kid camp.

My current favorite discovery aside from the battle between Edison and Tesla followers for who is the true genius and wizard (hint: the train station on the NJ Transit line is called "Tesla"; not so much) is learning that MTV's Jersey Shore whose appeal eluded me from its debut through its demise is Big in Japan as, wait for it, "MTV Jersey Shore-the New Jersey Life of Macaroni Rascals."

That factoid makes my accidental discovery this past weekend that Alicia Witt is very much more talented as a musician than she is well-known (so far) as an actress (and she must be well-known if I know who she is) seem tame by comparison but it is, somehow a feather in my cap. 
-bill kenny

And Deja Vu, Too.

This should read somewhat familiar. I offered it last year on Memorial Day. I don't always express myself well but I was pleased with what I wrote last year and how I wrote it. So I hope you don't mind my rewarming it and re-offering it. 

Pardon my cynicism if I point out that a year later we still have the Crown of Creation dying in countries whose names we can't pronounce primarily for corporate need and greed wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, Forever.

Actually that's how long the infamy should last when you send young, talented people who have their whole lives before them into meat grinders with allies of convenience who are the best friends our money can buy and the scum of the earth otherwise.

Here in Norwich, we have a remembrance ceremony in Taftville's Memorial Park at ten that draws a reverential and diverse crowd, sort of mirroring the city people in uniform around the world are defending, and then at noon a parade that will move up our Broadway to Chelsea Parade in the center of the city for speeches and quiet thoughts about those we've lost. 

To those who made today necessary, may you burn in Hell always. For those who made it possible, thank you for your gift. I hope we, the living, lead lives which prove we deserved your sacrifice. 

We are a species who fortunately (for us) have selective memories. We took the commemoration of the birth of a person regarded by many on the planet to be The Savior and Son of God, Christmas, and turned it into a Festival of Conspicuous Consumption, unlike anything ever seen. 

Presidents' Day is a now a great time to buy a car-what'll it take to get put you in this spanking new Terraplane today?-and we've reduced to chocolate and jelly beans the celebration of Easter-just a slight repurposing of its original intent.

I get into trouble, emotional and otherwise, for saying aloud what other people think but are too afraid to admit that they do. I've been told this is why I have no friends but who wants cowards as friends anyway? 

The only place we need cowards is in elected office, especially at the national level and these days, we're spoiled for choice.

Today is a day where you cannot swing a cat (no snotty PETA letters, please; no cats are being harmed in the making of this blog unless you're reading it to them and then it's on you. Why did you think they're clawing the door?) and NOT hit a politician offering pious platitudes on the selfless sacrifice men and women in uniform make every day around the world 'to preserve our way of life.'

Today is Memorial Day, another holiday we've moved to a Monday so we can have a three day weekend with plenty of time for a barbecue, a run to the beach and some laps at the Brickyard. 

If we work it right, we don't ever or even have to think of those with whom we grew up who never got to be old, or about their parents and grandparents, who survived the Depression, battled fascism to its knees in a world wide war and, more recently, together with us marked the start of our Second Decade in the Global War on Terrorism.

Of those I've just listed, the last is the hardest for me to wrap my head around as I don't know what "victory" looks like--the Stars and Stripes waving from a minaret in Medina? Ron Paul elected President of Lebanon (from your lips to God's ear)? 

I honestly don't know when 'we win' and I suspect neither do the fools and ghouls who got us into this and who pop up on patriotic holidays to tell us how we are Waist Deep in Big Muddy and making great time.

Some have suggested the War of Terror's start could be the murder of the Marines in Beirut in 1983-or the killing of US service personnel at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. 

We've latched on to the cowardice of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because it happened on our soil, but seem to have forgotten how the earth has been hallowed by the blood of anyone in uniform who lost her/his life in our defense anywhere in the world.

War is not an abstract geo-political game played out on a grand stage by dominant personalities-it is very local, extremely personal and heartbreakingly private. Those of our neighbors who choose military service have as many reasons for so doing as there are those who so serve. 

We must never lose sight of all of those whose service makes us who we are and to whom we owe more than we can ever repay. They are a call to arms for each of us to be better than we are for ourselves, our children and our nation.
-bill kenny

The Other Football

It was familiar and it was strange, simultaneously. I got home yesterday afternoon in just the right time to catch the final twelve minutes of the Championship game of the Union of European Football Association, UEFA.

To show you the global appeal of the sport, well, everywhere but here in The Land of the Round Doorknobs, the game was played on the mother of all pitch, Wembley Stadium in London, United Kingdom, between two teams from Germany, Bayern Munchen who won the 50th anniversary season of the Deutsche Fussball Bund, in a record setting 28 games (!) {think clinching any divisional title in baseball a week after the All-Star Game; except the AL West which is usually in doubt three weeks after the season ends} and Borussia Dortmund who won the DFB title last season.

I was watching it on Fox Sports in Spanish, not because I speak the language (I don't), but because I didn't know where else to find it. Between watching Heineken Beer TV commercials voiced over in Spanish and listening to a booth announcer scream out and mangle Bastian Schweinsteiger's name, I never lost sight of the fact that I was in all likelihood one of about a dozen round-eye Anglos on the North American continent watching the beautiful game at all.

I'll root passionately for somebody come World Series time, but I'm reasonably certain all the teams will be based in North America. So as Shakespeare once asked, what's in a name?
-bill kenny

Or Teen Spirit

I'm always delighted by small children and infants though I often am annoyed at parents who don't keep better control of them in social environments. My wife and I were shopping yesterday and I hadn't realized it was 'bring your mewling child to the store with you' day because I was up to my butt in unhappy young people.

When that happens, I go with the flow and get cranky myself. Don't get me wrong-I'm not angry with the children. A newborn didn't decide to get in the car and drive to the mall. Mommy did. Or maybe daddy but based on what I saw yesterday, more than likely not, though mommy probably wishes she knew where daddy was.

I don't know when we became a country of the very young and the very old but having been the former and now being the latter let me tell you that all the other age groups, and food groups for that matter, had best starting pulling their own weight.

We spend way too much money in these parts on diapers and Depends. We built this nation for our children-that's the deal every generation worked with the one that followed except now we sold our children and their children out for off shore bank accounts and left them with no skills, no jobs and no hope.

We're so busy blaming the New World Order and the changing times that we have no time to look in the mirror and look at ourselves. When Gandhi talked about being the change you want to see in the world, he wasn't talking about the change under the couch cushions in the living room. He was talking about all of us to each of us, for everyone.

If being polite means being less than honest, maybe we should ask one another if that's too high a price to pay for comity. We owe each other the unvarnished truth in order to build the world we all want to live in. Hurt feelings are a luxury we most certainly can afford if they get us to where we need to be.
-bill kenny