Another Pause for Reflection

Today is the birthday of our baby girl, Michelle. She was the smallest and most perfect person I had ever seen on the day of her first birthday. When I held her head in my right hand as she slept when she stretched out, her feet almost touched the bend of my elbow.

She was and will always be my Itty-Bit, my Ichy-Michy even though I concede neither of those nicknames plays well these days (so I hardly ever use them and never in public. Well, except for you on the Interwebs).

At two days old

I have a memory of my father and his first daughter, my sister Evan, that I just recalled as I typed this because, like him, I have a song that captures the dynamic of the relationship. I'm smiling as I type this because his song was and remains part of the soundtrack of the film of his life and I suspect Evan, if she reads this, knows exactly what song I mean.  

Michelle no longer can sleep in the crook of my arm-there are times her pace is so frenetic I'm not sure when she does sleep. I more often than not read about her exploits and adventures on things like Four Square when I get up in the morning only to have forgotten any questions I wanted to ask her by the time she comes home from work. That amnesia may be the secret of our success.

She is her mother's daughter-Thelma to her Louise and I marvel at the self-assured and confident little girl who is a purposeful young adult striding through life equipped, or so she believes, to handle whatever is around the next bend.

"She was wide-eyed, now she's street-wise to the lies and the jive talk. But she'll find true love and tenderness on the block." Happy Birthday, Michelle!
-bill kenny

The Frog and the Scorpion

I could have been a professional playing member of the National Basketball Association, NBA, if I had different parents contributing to my genetic inheritance, different upbringing, any ability or aptitude at all for the sport combined with the training to cultivate the aforementioned skills and abilities. In other words, we could have all had ham sandwiches, if we had ham (and bread). Hold the mustard, especially if you can't cut it.

And in terms of cutting it, I am physically unqualified for the sport-ask anyone, I don't even have the legs for the shorts. I can barely stand to buy sneakers (that high-pitched whiny voice going 'is that American Dollars?" yep, that's me) and there's been no stampede among anyone who makes shoes to have an Air Kenny grace the store shelves (I actually prefer Luft Willibaldo but that would mean making the sneakers longer to accommodate the extra letters; I tend to trip over my own feet, so that's a non-starter).

Speaking of non-starters on the matter of Donald Sterling being voted off the NBA Ownership Island, you've read and heard I'm sure the polished polemic of Al "Super Narc" Sharpton and his polar opposite, Romulus to his Remus, chubby cubby wide-body buddy, Rush Limbaugh. Looking at both of them (though Al's done a nice job of slimming down, sadly without yet vanishing), all I can think of is The Band.

(Aside to Al: I would respect you more as a fellow-traveler on the Big Blue Marble if you'd explain the 'totally' part of 'totally outraged.' As opposed to what, partially outraged?)

This is who you need to read because if anyone knows whereof he writes from his days at Power Memorial in New York City through UCLA to an epoch-defining career in the NBA, it's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time Magazine. We are Here at the Western World and it's Sterling's turn to be the madman, with a world of witnesses. Jabbar's diagnosis of IPMS deserves to be part of our permanent vocabulary and is truly masterful.

I guess, with all the reading I've been doing on this since Friday, maybe the only thing I don't understand is why so many people who saw the signs chose to not read them. Sterling has always been That Guy.

This is not a new news story but an old one, as old as time itself. It's a variation of the frog and the scorpion who both needed to cross a stream. The frog, despite assurances and promises, feared the scorpion would fatally sting him while they were both in the water.

Halfway across that is exactly what happened and the frog, with its dying breath, begged the scorpion to explain. The scorpion as it,too, was drowning smiled at the frog and replied, 'why are you surprised? You knew what I was when you picked me up.'
-bill kenny

Education is the Transmission of Civilization

I should tell you to start that I am the son of a school teacher. We, my brothers and sisters, grew up in a house with daily reinforcements on the importance of getting a good education and were mostly unaware that we were fortunate in that our parents could provide us with an environment in which we could excel.

I mention all of that because every year in Norwich we spar over the amount of money the Board of Education requests of the City Council (and by extension, you and I) for the education of our children.

My children are now adults but, of course, will always be my children. Unlike your children, perhaps, they had the good fortune to attend Norwich Public Schools when offerings included chorus, instrumental music, language, art, MoPeep and a dozen other programs that I can only dimly remember now because we slowly eliminated them in the last decade and a half to reduce overall budget increases and thus slow the rise in tax rates.

When you look at remedial programs offered by secondary schools to whom we are sending our children, designed as tutorials for subject matter the children never learned in Norwich Public Schools so that they can succeed in high school you have to wonder about that carney trick where the huckster takes a foot from the back of the blanket and sews it onto the front and cons the mug into buying a blanket that's now a foot longer.

We get what we pay for and we need to adjust how we view tax dollars that support public education and recognize them for the investment they become instead of the expense we perceive them as being. As has been often suggested, "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Trust me-none of us can afford to live in a city where we keep cutting corners on the skills and abilities for success in the 21st Century.

There's not a parent among us who doesn't remember how 'things were back in my day' and wonders why that's not still true. No one steps into the same river twice, because both the river and you have changed. Change is the only constant in the universe and it's how we grow. If standing still could rule the world, how much of what you and I take for granted, the machinery within the scenery, from electricity through automobiles to computers would exist? Would you want to live there and, in terms of education, how do you think we get to tomorrow?

If we intend to rebuild our city, state and nation as the Age of Applied Information begins to bloom, how will we cultivate the talents of our youngest generation and harness their energy and enthusiasm without the tools they and we need?

I've heard it said that every day is a child is born who will change the world. The challenge is we don't know which child it is. Where do we think the next Edward Land, Steve Jobs or Larry Page will come from if not from within our community?

What's the point of worrying about physical infrastructure, from pavement to police stations to gas and power lines, if we persist in the belief we can keep postponing investing in our children? Public education creates a shared cultural frame of reference and values that are a reflection of we are and why we are here.

What do our schools say about us? What should they?
-bill kenny

Something Else Will Touch the Sand of a Foreign Land

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in USAF basic training we did physical training, PT ('so good, whiskey no good') in our combat boots or in the worst shoes ever made, chukka boots, to include the always-popular mile and a half run.

You can probably sense the warmth of the nostalgia with which I offer that recollection. Those crazy, hazy days of youth.

I didn't realize the military services, with the exception of the USMC who don't really care what your physical training footwear is, actually give recruits a cash-money-in-their-hand-allowance to buy sneakers (I realize the cool kids lunch table calls them 'sports shoes;' I don't care. They are sneakers) and the big news (I'm talking Big Bucks news) is that we may be guiding the young men and women who volunteer to defend us and the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic to buy American which is good news for the makers of the only sneakers I ever wear anymore.

No word on the socks or laces, or even if either (or both) are/will be optional and I, for one, wouldn't be surprised if, in pursuit of a multi-million dollar market, a few other folks jump into the game. Though in light of the logo on one of the brands, perhaps leap is a better term.

And I'm not talking 'bout no beat-up Ballys.
 -bill kenny

When the Hatred Within

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. I was someone who, while living in Central Europe, strove to visit the various and far-flung KZ always attempting, but failing, to understand the evil genius which grafted pure hatred to the Industrial Revolution and produced the hellish horrors of mass murder on assembly lines utterly beyond comprehension.

If the term Yom Hashoah is not familiar to you, maybe you can take a moment and (I'd hope) find a source of solace in a visit here. It's hard some days for the child I once was to recall being told I was made in the image and likeness of God. Harder still, to look at today and everything it commemorates and wonder what happened and why.

לעולם לא עוד 
-bill kenny

Requiem Aeternam

I confess that I had almost forgotten. I only vaguely remembered we in Norwich honored the men and women who served in Vietnam on the last Saturday of April while on my way walking back from the Stop 'n' Shop as I passed by the Chelsea Parade. I hurried home, put away my purchase and returned to join a very small crowd.

The weather was less than kind to us who gathered which was somehow ironic when I recall how we as a nation once treated so many who traveled so far and sacrificed so much for so few of privilege and power. I have long since conceded those who served did so for one another as they saw next to nothing from anyone else.

It was nice to spend a few moments conversing beforehand with State Senator Cathy Osten, like me, a Vietnam-era veteran. I appreciate her sharing part of what we spoke about with those who came to the event but more especially how she chose to keep parts of our conversation private.

We are as a nation a half century separated from the start of our engagement in Vietnam and pardon my aged and ancient cynicism, but based on the hash we have all made of the Second Act in Afghanistan, we have learned nothing. I cannot tell if I am more saddened or angered at how we continue to fight and die for Standard Oil and Coca Cola while nitwits of all political stripes manipulate us into thinking we and they are a team working for the good of the world.

Standing in the drizzle yesterday, and I hate drizzle because the weather doesn't have the courage to be a full-blown storm, I thought about standing in pretty much the same space some years earlier after musing about what that day might have brought us. Turns out peace and acceptance weren't it.
-bill kenny

The Picture Comes with the Frame

Today is my birthday. That I have reached two and sixty, zwei und sechzig, kommt mir sehr komisch vor, strikes me as funny. Considering I am usually the punchline it's odd to have the last laugh, at least once a year. 

There's a small chance of cake and pony rides, I am a huge fan of BOTH, because originally the plan today was helping neighbors across town clean up a recreation area alongside an historic and breathtakingly beautiful Shetucket River dam. I am very much a believer that if you can't find someone who's making a difference in our world, then maybe you have to be one. Bad weather today has postponed our collective good deed but I'll let you know how that all works out.  

I should offer Natal acknowledgements because they are deserved as opposed to the ones I'll be getting all day long for really not doing anything but (unwittingly and unknowingly) allowing biology and gravity to have their say. My mom will call today because she always calls and we both know I should be calling her as she did all the work and yet she'll congratulate me on my birthday and I always but not quite want to congratulate her for starting with me. 

It was a very different world 62 years ago and she and her husband, my Dad, Bill Sr., set off on a New Frontier about a decade before JFK named it and told us all where we were going, and was murdered for his trouble. 

I suppose to my younger brothers and sisters, I am the practice child. Every family has one. That you got to stay up after seven PM on a school night was my doing, because I didn't. On the other hand, all of my clothes were mine and never somebody else's sometimes before, sometimes after and more often than not, both. Thank you not having tried to choke me out every moment of every day since we each became adults because you certainly had, and often still have, perfect justification for so doing.

That all said, since the last time I had an original idea it died of loneliness, I've dusted off some notes I offered a year ago because I liked the way they read then, and even more so, now. I might have been smarter at the time, especially if you remove the 'smarter' part.  

This is a new kind of birthday complete with my browser hovering over the Google Chrome logo and because I'm on Google plus (Michelle, our very smart daughter's, theory) there was a caption wishing "Happy Birthday William!" (I may have added the exclamation point; Google is very much a declamatory operating system). 

More interesting and amazing, as a man who can count his friends on fewer than five fingers of one hand (and you've guessed which finger I am), I received the most cheerful of greetings and salutations in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Farsi (I believe), German and English as well as Jersey (ha-ha! THUNK! Sound of me laughing my head off).

I call all Social Media Facebook, FB, and I've mentioned the dichotomy of flesh and blood friends (F&BF) and Facebook Friends (FBF). With my mad math skills I calculated of the birthday greetings I received, 99.79% were from people I have never met, not shall I ever (in all likelihood). We aren't familiar strangers-neither they nor I would know one another if we tripped over ourselves.

Are the contrivances and edifices of Social Media a form of cloaking of those of us who are members of the lonely crowd or are we creating variations of Erich Fromm's egoism a deux? Are we now more, or less, alone than we were a decade, a generation, a lifetime ago and for what end and to what purpose have we allowed these invisible airwaves to weave a tableaux, a Story of Us, we can tell to ourselves to keep the dark of night at bay?
-bill kenny