Lather, Rinse and Repeat. Not One Word about Stop

At the risk of disorienting you, especially on a day whose evening is usually dedicated to deliberate disorientation, I'm resurrecting some previously posted words not so much only because the last time I had an original idea it died of loneliness (though it did; the funeral is Thursday) but I think they bear repeating.

I said-oh, I hadn't realized you were nodding in agreement rather than off. Color me embarrassed. Use the whole crayon.

This is the day, December 31, I always get wrong. Do I look back at everything I failed at this past year or failed to attempt and accomplish? That look back takes care of both the sins of Commission and Omission Father Costello used to warn us about in those excruciating lectures he offered after Mass on First Fridays at St. Peter's Church before we walked back up to school (and we'd endure anything rather than head back. Except his homilies).

My other choice for today is to look forward, but to what and how far? Should I be preparing to celebrate a cure for the heartbreak of psoriasis or having a fruit cup with thick syrup? Don't trivialize my choice of alternatives, okay? But feel free to see them as a cautionary tale for yourself if not tonight then at some future time.

Do you make resolutions and what are their subjects? I stopped a long time ago, before I met my wife, before we had our children (technically, she had them) and before we came to the Land of Round Doorknobs.

The only resolution I can recall ever making, and the one I encouraged our two children to also make and to keep, is to do the best I can do everyday. I'd suggest you be the same and do likewise and I don't care what it is you do, or don't.

We spend too much time every day interacting with people who did us a favor showing up, be it for work or for whatever else the event is. If you have zero passion or reason for doing or being what you are, where you are, spending any amount of time with you is too much work for me with far too little return. In the year that gets here on little cat's feet in less time than it takes to tell you about it, promise to never be that person, never.

The only thing each of us has the power to change is our self. And every day has new chances to do that. We own that choice and we own the  consequences for what we do, or what we choose to NOT do..

Be an exclamation, and not an explanation.
Live out loud and at the top of your voice as more than one person I know is fond of saying. Be happy you are here, because you are but a short time here and long time gone, and make sure the rest of us are thrilled about your presence as well.

Leave nothing undone and even less unsaid.
Each of us knows someone (or more than one someone) who departed from us in the course of this year and there are words still lodged in our throat we never said because we thought we thought we had time to say them. We were wrong, and that's part of being human-being wrong and traveling on.

I hope whoever they were, they were so marvelous and amazing that we shall always feel their absence and miss them for all of our days. Make it a point tonight to toast absent friends, accepting that all of this is a part of all of that and that our dance continues even as partners change because they must.
The same procedure this year? The same procedure as every year.
-bill kenny    

A Grave Matter

I went walking Saturday afternoon and decided to revisit an old favorite, right around the corner from my house, bordering on Lafayette Street, the Yantic Cemetery.

The cemetery is the resting place for all manner of people from nearly every era of Norwich's three and half centuries, great and small, old and young, salt and pepper (checking to see if you were still reading).

I was only there a few minutes when I encountered someone walking his medium-sized dog across the graves and between the headstones. I am often accused of being less than fond of dogs when it's their thoughtless owners whom I dislike.

The thing that most annoyed me was his casual disregard of a local ordinance requiring owners to clean up after their animals. To put it kindly, the biped was less than prepared as I had an opportunity to personally witness.

When I chided him about the disrespect for which he was responsible, he quickly moved from assertive to aggressive, suggesting it was not only none of my business but that I do something to and with myself that were I able to so do would probably mean I'd never take another walk as I'd be otherwise occupied.

That he lacked the brains to be embarrassed or ashamed because of an over developed sense of entitlement is what most annoyed me. I worked hard to use an even tone of voice as I explained if he and his chum didn't leave 'I will beat you with my fists until you bleed very badly.' I paused and stood there.

I'm not sure what I was waiting for. It has been decades since I threatened another person and am certainly not in any physical shape to do so. Rather than fearing whom I was becoming, I felt excitement but then keen disappointment as the man's eyes grew large as his voice grew small. He gathered his animal, making sure to not touch the organic memorial it had improvised atop a grave, and departed.

I haven't seen The Angry Man in a long while and realized I didn't miss him at all.
It took me the rest of the evening to calm down enough to have dinner with my wife, watch some television and turn in for the evening. You can guess whom I blame, right?

On my walk Sunday, I avoided the area around the cemetery. I'm hoping the gates and walls are still strong enough to contain him but to be on the safe side, I'll walk elsewhere perhaps through the spring rather than risk the return to being someone I know and fear.
-bill kenny

Luckily Bullwinkle Was Otherwise Occupied

I don't think the FBI which tracks (nearly) every kind of crime statistic either of us could ever imagine has a lot of data on assaults with ceramic squirrels. Perhaps Helen Williams is fortunate and this is a first. It's certainly a first for me (and my brother the almost-Pope [or should that be Almost-Pope]?). In any event. let's hear it for pioneer women!

I'd offer to toast her singularly sensational accomplishment with a bubbly beverage of water, barley, and hops but as I read the wire story that's sort of how she wound up in this jam in the first place. I suspect she sees no need to borrow (more) trouble unless it's a set of those pink flamingos some of us like to keep on the lawn.

I wonder if Boris and Natasha might have received a better reception had they dropped in on Helen. Probably not as warm a welcome as Rocket J. Himself would have received, goggles and all, but at least they could have pronounced his name without laughing. Or beer.
-bill kenny

A Half Full Glass Is Still a Glass

I took advantage of the atypical tropical temperatures for Southeastern Connecticut and my hometown, Norwich (Connecticut) yesterday, middle thirties (Fahrenheit), for a forty-five minute walk from my house near Chelsea Parade to the Norwich Harbor, where the Shetucket and the Yantic Rivers meet to form the Thames which empties into the Long Island Sound.

As walks go it was pleasant enough-I'm getting the knack of dressing in layers so I manage to do a decent job of staying warm without the risk of perspiring when I stride vigorously, which I do, everywhere.

2013 is having a going-out-of-business sale. We've already had the shortest day of the year and we're gathering up snippets and snatches of daylight with every tick of the clock and day of calendar we take towards a mid-summer's night in 2014, but there's a way to go between here and there, wherever there happens to be exactly.

While enjoying the view from the Howard T. Brown Park (I tell people "the 'T' is for savings (but it's silent and invisible)" and they tend to make crazy eyes and back away from me rather quickly so I always have plenty of elbow room) and watching the seagulls pick over every last scrap of detritus near the rubbish bins they've picked over for days, I encountered a fellow happy wanderer who was more a wonderer, and not all that happy come to think of it.

He wasn't thrilled at the temperature, and was very vocal in looking forward to something a little warmer, he told me. I did my usual 'in New England we have pine trees not palm trees' but he was having none of it. The more he spoke, the more animated and angrier he became. I am an expert in anger, so I recognize a member of the tribe when I see one.

I can't fix people like this and don't think anyone can. They are truly the proverbial 'would kvetch if you hanged 'em with a new rope' type from whom I once learned a valuable lesson and which I pass along to you free of charge, realizing the greatest thing about advice you neither solicit nor pay for is there's no obligation to take it.

The only piece of the earth you can save is the one you are standing on and the only person you should strive to be better than is the person whose reflection you saw yesterday in your mirror. When you look again today, see and be the improvement. As someone sang a lifetime ago, the movement you need is on your shoulders.
-bill kenny

Last Tango in Paris

I usually look at the calendar with such hope as the old year is ending and the new one begins. I had a lot more time in 2013, between sequestration and furlough, to cogitate on the politics of the possible just about every day of this soon to be over year. And my already shriveled and blackened heart got a little more of both.

I think my big lesson learned is no one looks out for you like you do and if you voted for anyone in any election at anytime this or in any previous year in the belief/hope s/he was looking out for you, I hope you kept your receipt because you will need it to file a claim for reimbursement, sucker.

That Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious you have had is that no one speaks for us Out Here in the Middle and, as such, a gesture of any kind is of no value or worth and you've already guessed what gesture I mean.

I'm thinking perhaps for those of a let's-make-a-New-Year's-Resolution bent and as a more effective punishment, and punishment's the word I choose deliberately, why NOT vote for anyone (and everyone) with an R for political affiliation this next election cycle.

I concede for me, the rationalization is pretty easy; my heart is on the left side of my body and my thinking reflects my biology. But pragmatist that I am, unless and until the Republican Party rids itself of the TEAliban, the GOP is a lost cause and unfit to be considered for partnership in governing.

You are correct to ask if such willful, arrogant shortsightedness hurts the election of some otherwise very good and kind people? Absolutely. But for those who think it takes two to tangle, tango or talk (you and me), please remember last fall's causi bellum, the Affordable Care Act, was and is the law of the land, NOT proposed rosy-eyed legislation. The attempt to 'defund' it was and remains the epitome of irrationality and spite. 

Meanwhile the current hardship being visited on millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits expired before they did, is totally avoidable, if reasonable and caring people can do both in sufficient quantities to mark the start of the New Year. If not, I remain stuck standing by my proposal of vindictive voting.

Here's my silver lining for you: once we've thinned the herd on the Far Right, we can turn our attention to the nut jobs on the far left of the Democratic Party and plow them under as well. Suspect they'll be a little less obstreperous once they see the political fate that has befallen their starboard leaning companions. 

Then, quite frankly, those of us remaining should be in fine voice to sing a truly National Anthem. Please stand and remove your head cover.

-bill kenny

Shouting My Hands Off

I was hoping today to offer you words that would carry you through the end of the year and into the next. Not that I'm not going to be here and around and about, it's just that sometimes I feel I owe you more than the by-rote drill of fingers tapping a keyboard or in my case A finger tapping a keyboard.

I'd even done some research on Christmas Day on recent events and how to be current and contemporary and produce an ephemeral essay that would be in tune with The Times, or at the very least, The Post, but I am forced to admit instead it's total failure.

After the hallucinations and recriminations, not to mention the aggravation follows the association of consternation unless, by now, it's a confederation. Happy Boxing Day und Zweite Weinachten.
-bill kenny

...the Peal of a Bell and that Christmas Tree Smell...

Merry Christmas, to you and yours, from me and mine.

If you don't observe the holiday, I will apologize for the salutation but most certainly not for the sentiment. As I've gotten older, I've discovered there are various customs and beliefs that can be expressed today and each one, as different as it seems, is in many respects one and the same.

In light of the weeks of frantic preparation and hectic intensity best marked by what seemed to be the simultaneous, spontaneous arrival of every person in the Western Hemisphere standing in line in front of us at the store, today now that it is here is a tonic.

Between you and me, I don't need snow, jingling belles or boughs of holly (or Buddy Holly, come to think of it), though they are all very nice and help make the season even more special. I get as contemplative as I am able to in the glow of the lights from the tree surrounded, as I hope you are, by your family.

I have no words to reflect my gratitude for the love of my life. She promised to love me in sickness and in health, and neither of us is certain, exactly, where Norwich, Connecticut, fits into all of that, but it proves life is indeed what happens when you're busy making other plans.

Today I’m grateful for the presents of the presence of our two children. I have forever memories of a German hospital delivery room and a newborn baby boy, listening intently as I sang "I've Been Working on the Railroad" in English at the very top of my lungs (is there any other way?) for hours, and of holding our infant daughter in the crook of my arm as she clicked her tongue just moments after being born.

He is 31-she is 26 and they are both used to their old man dissolving into a blubbering puddle of tears and smiles as I tell them in detail about their growing up, as if somehow they’d missed it.

The adults each have grown up to be are as wonderful and extraordinary as the children they were who blessed my life when I needed those blessings. Our family, like yours, brings various traditions and celebrations to the Christmas holiday with customs we inherited but have now made uniquely our own.

In Germany, the birthplace of my wife and our children, families open presents on Christmas Eve and that tradition crossed the ocean and remains with us to this day. Today, the First Christmas as the Germans call it, is for family and I hope you and yours are together if not in fact than in spirit, no matter the distance or time.

Tomorrow, or the Second Christmas, is a time for visiting with friends--the phone in our house will ring as my wife reconnects with those from her life across the ocean, wishing them well as I do you, for the coming year, knowing we have given one other the best gift we could ever have, ourselves.

Merry Christmas.
-bill kenny