Hey Andy, Nice Watch!

We all have someone (or more than one someone) about whom we wonder wistfully ‘how can I miss you when you never go away?’ (I can hear your thoughts, y’know; and right backatcha). Though we have never, nor in all likelihood shall, ever meet, one of those folks for me is Lindsay Lohan.

I’m not going to rant or vent. She is who she is in the same way I am who I am. We share the same biology and from a nearly approximately infinite distance in space, we look very much the same. Of course, I can’t claim to be a character in a video game. Lindsay, over to you. 

I love hard luck headlines and stories like that. It is a hard life if you don’t weaken here in The First World. And I’d know, because I’m an expert. Submitted for your inspection: my unhappiness a short while back at how far an electrical outlet was from a nightstand in my hotel room on which I had my cell phone because it was really hard to get the recharger cord to reach. Yeah, I’m that guy-and I find it comforting to know Lindsay’s my gal, struggling bravely to overcome an irony deficiency,  

I thought between making movies which sink without a trace in the market faster than the Lusitania did in the ocean, she was getting all kinds of help up on Rehab Mountain. Or maybe not? Baby girl, if you’re forced to choose between Max and Christopher for life advice, choose Chris and leave ‘em laughing when you go.

- bill kenny

Some Premature Congratulations

While I could get organized enough to buy a birthday card for two people from every state of the Union, I’m not sure I could afford the postage and with the holiday falling this year on a Friday, making a ‘natural’ three day weekend instead of those artificial celebrate-on-Monday ones, I’m not sure the cards would get there. So this space will have to do, even if I’m premature-Happy 238^th Birthday, America.

Before it gets really crazy busy between now and Friday, perhaps each of us could look in the mirror and then look around at the country we received from our parents and which we are giving to our children. There’s been as much gained as there has been lost through the tears and years of sacrifices and some of what has changed has been better and some of it has only been different. The dilemma has always been in deciding which.

History tells us the heat was unbearable and tempers were hot in Philadelphia all those years ago as malcontents and troublemakers (in the eyes of His Majesty, George III, King of England) gathered to refine, define and catalog their grievances and complaints with the most powerful empire the world had known.

Listing what it called our ‘unalienable rights’ to include ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ the founders of our republic, who didn’t agree on very much except that the present state of affairs could not continue, concluded the only way forward on a largely unexplored, new continent whose size and wealth was not yet known, was to break with the past and declare independence from England.
    
Out of all of that has come all of this.

Along the way, the original magic and meaning gets lost sometimes in the noise of backyard pool parties, and barbecued anything. Our politics is spirited even if our interest isn't. It’s not even that we all agree with who we are and what we are doing, because we don’t. It’s been suggested as a nation we haven’t been this divided morally, philosophically, politically and socially since the Civil War. And that should sound ominous to those of us who still care.

Some say never have so many had so much of life’s material rewards but, others offer never have so many struggled to hold on to what they have. On the outcome of this fall’s Congressional elections, we hear, hinges the future of our nation-just as it seemingly always has. It was true then and remains true now.

I fear what’s missing is a national sense of self and our confidence and belief in our own abilities to forever adapt and triumph. We had those traits at the Founding and I would hope, this 4^th of July, each in our own way, we might again find them, for those whose inheritance we are and for those whose promise is yet to be. Happy July 4th. May July 5th and all the days that remain be even more so.

-bill kenny

Another Pealing of Donne's Bell

With the school year drawing to a close all across the country (and don’t get me started on how the school year in the USA was originally designed for the children who were taught and how it’s shifted to be a tool that benefits the adults who operate it), items that might have been passed over without comment, really without being seen, become front lobe material.

Take for example the eight-month old tragedy that claimed the life of KeAir Swift, 14, in Eastpointe, Michigan who drowned in his school’s swimming pool. I confess to NOT having remembered or probably read (the absence of the latter explaining the former) the news account at the time. The semi-gothic novel part of the tale (signaled somewhat ominously I think by its mention here) concerns two teachers, Johnathon Sails, a substitute assigned to Swift’s class that day whose reaction, response  and subsequent behavior is in sharp contrast to David Zauner a teacher at the school who dove into the pool fully clothed and attempted to rescue the young man.

We live in a curious time-people take responsibility for all manner of acts, both of commission and omission, without accepting punishment while the rest of us, rather than insisting people accept the consequences of their own making responsible instead believe “there’s got to be somebody we can sue.” And there almost always is.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to her/his day in court and Mr. Sails is getting his.  As it happens, so, too, is Mr. Zauner but for curiously opposite reasons as the reward, at least near Detroit which would seem to have enough other problems, for doing a good deed is now grounds for dismissal as punishment of the innocent is too often part of our search for the guilty.

To be clear: I know neither teacher, nor anyone connected to them. The assumption and presumption of innocence is a given in our judicial system. All the trials of Job, and Johnathon and David, for that matter, will play themselves out in a time frame neither you nor I can pretend to guess. By the time that happens, lost in the depositions and prepositions will be the solitary life lost forever of a youngster who did not know how to swim but somehow ended up in a swimming class that resulted in his death.  

Mark Twain is reported to have said (though I have never found it), “Everyday, a child is born who will change the world. We just don’t know which one it is.” KeAir was a short time here and a long time gone, whose death is a personal and familial tragedy but also produces a ripple that crosses generations and other artifices that separate rather than join us together.

-bill kenny 

At the Turn into the Second Half....

Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem that long ago that I was pushing the snow blower around at all hours of the day in a vain attempt to say ahead of the snow.

At the water's edge, facing into the Thames as it heads to The Sound.     

And when it wasn't showing, it was freezing. We had some of the coldest temperatures on record this past winter since they started keeping records. And this is New England so you know we have all those 'since George Washington slept here' kinds of note takers and plaque makers running round.

I love how the ducks have no fear for the people with whom they share the waterfront. 

And our start into the spring was more like a lurch as we had snow when we should have had crocuses (crocii? I'm never sure) and it just never felt like it would ever get green again.

Yantic Falls from the redoubt facing it. 

And now we're on the back nine of the summer of 2014. The Solstice done got your girl and gone and everyday the days get a little shorter. You can't really put your finger on it but you can feel it. And it's happening and we can't stop it.

I like when Howard T. Brown Park is filled with people enjoying themselves and one another.

But we can enjoy it. This weekend I played hooky from whatever it was I was supposed to do as a 62 year old. I slept until almost eight o'clock in the morning on Saturday, only because I had to get up and bring our old freezer to the dump and on Sunday very nearly until nine o'clock, because the dump is closed on Sundays.

The blue of the sky brings out the red of the brick in our City Hall 

And talk about sun! We had almost enough for my liking except at night when it got dark. I'm not such a  big fan of darkness when I'm goofing off. That's why I like the sun and the only thing I like more than the sun is even more sun.

I love the bricks of the Harbor Walkway.

All the photos you see here I took with my cell phone. Not the one I use to not make phone calls-I'm not even sure how the phone part of it works. I used the other phone the one whose camera I really like and that connects directly, somehow, to Google+ and a program it has called Auto Awesome and it is (you can tell which picture got that treatment).

I'd imagine a sermon on "Drinking" to be very informative, especially over wi-fi.

I am not a photographer. But I play one on the Internet. At least during the summer.

At the foot of Yantic Falls.

-bill kenny

I Read the News Today

In case you had somehow not noticed, because my heart beats on the left side of my body, my politics more often than not reflects that physical manifestation in my philosophy. I don’t dislike the Fox News Channel (FNC) because it’s a partisan mouthpiece for a Republican party whose most recent impact on my life was to send me on unpaid vacation for seventeen days at the start of the fiscal year to prove a point they ultimately abandoned.

I was paid for the days I wasn’t allowed to work making the entire exercise moot unless you are an American Tealiban about whom I find it hard to ever say a kind word. In fairness, if you lean that way, I’ll wait while you click ‘close’ and move to something that's elsewhere on the Interwebs [and if it helps, you are why I’ll never vote for another Republican in my life-consider it hardening of the political arteries, mine and yours]. Thanks.

The FNC are very good at what they do. All their talking heads are quite handsome and/or very pretty, dressed more for a cocktail party on a Koch Brothers yacht (or oil tanker) than a town hall meeting, or a neighborhood watch. They look like the kind of folks who have their barbecues catered and whose paddock for their polo ponies is worth more than my house. And that’s fine, from each and to each.

No. I actually dislike MSNBC for its obnoxious parroting of some of the Farthest Left Vitriol produced at our Seat of Government, Dodge City y’all, where they use the volume of sanctimonious stridency to mask the absence of facts on whatever issue they are over-wrought about. 

Watch C-SPAN for an hour when the House is debating…anything. I have run out of motion sickness bags so I’ve turned off the volume and recommend playing something by Megadeath to serve as the audio. “So Far, So Good…So What?” will do, and good luck.

FNC does a fine job of articulating and toeing the line embodied by the Death Star ideology of Cheney and the Drones You Seek (still think that should be the name of a grunge band). Their applied veneer of impartiality is almost completely dry and practically flawless. It covers and conceals.

The about 4.3 million 18-49 year old predominantly white men who comprise the FNC core audience eat their stuff up with a spoon. That’s okay with me-it keeps that crowd off the streets, out of the bars and away from the women. It’s weird seeing gun racks on Saabs but to each his own I suppose.

Admittedly, the FNC rating pales when you look at any of the broadcast networks’ evening news ratings, the lowest ranked of which still pulls in almost twice the numbers Fox claims. But that’s just the kind of pesky fact and wider perspective that FNC so resolutely ignores and avoids.

FNC has no interest in the nuances of geo-politics so it simplifies decades of struggle on economic justice reducing it all to shrieks about millions of illegals’ children pouring over our borders. Pre-thought thoughts, just swallow.

It provides a platform to the same crypto-fascists who created a Where’s Waldo search in 2003 for imaginary WMDs to blame the inevitability of the result of the last four hundred years of middle-eastern politics on a White House it loathed from the day it took office. Can you say, “Mission Accomplished?” I knew you could.

If I had to label myself it would be as a “Relentless Pragmatist” who feels news should be like argon gas, odorless, tasteless with neither volume nor mass. News was never about partisanship, gotcha journalism or ‘bombshell’ revelations. It was, and should always be, a delivery of factual information without speculation, embellishment or bias.

Murrow, Cronkite, Reasoner, Reynolds, Jennings, Brokaw, Huntley and Brinkley and dozens more all struggled to keep their personal prejudices out of the stories they reported. And now? Your agent wants you to throw a snowball at the weather girl to undercut the climate-change story. 

I found this on the FNC web site, “Stewart and Colbert Changing Their Tune?” which looks like an actual news story-except…..dammit, Jon and Steve are on another network whose most-watched program is a badly drawn cartoon. Their offerings are not produced by their network’s news division (I doubt Comedy Central even has a news division-if they did, it would be news to them I suspect). 

Wait until FNC turns its attention towards John Oliver. Oh buddy, that will NOT be pretty. What! Oliver isn’t even an American, is he? Double Yahtzee! Actually, potato, potatoe. Meet the New Boss, lather, rinse, repeat. Apples, meet Oranges. Oranges, where are you going with that juicer in your hand?

So FNC is swinging at comedians on mock news shows because they have poked them in the eye with a sharp stick on more than one occasion. Sort of like the English National Team beating Our Lady of Perpetual Motion's U-21 Summer Soccer Camp team 11-0, proving they are, too, good footballers, so there, nyah! (Too soon, Wayne?)

And you can bet the What Nots and Hottentots who drool as Bill and Megyn start to deliver the Word According to Roger Ailes are sliding into full salivation mode believing if we just remove that pesky “i” we’ll be that much closer to Heaven and a return to America being the greatest nation on earth.  

- bill kenny

Marvel Comics on Line One for Me (I Hope)

I discovered earlier this week that I actually really have a super power. Whether I can use it to create my very own Life of Reilly (not Bill O’ but this one) has yet to be determined but I’m doing so well already that it’s sort of a moot point (from which you can see Rising Gorge on a clear night; see, Sara J, I do remember some stuff from long ago).

I think I’m downplaying the superpower because it’s not really as dramatic and life-affirming as I’d have hoped if I were being given the chance to choose my own. Are you ready? I have the power to make full to their top black plastic garbage can liners stand up, and not tip over even a little bit, when taken out of the trash receptacle.

Don’t snort in derision (perhaps super hearing is now also another of my superpowers). I’m very excited about this. I already had the glasses and have had a cape for years that I keep in the car, in the spare tire wheel well and that I have to explain whenever the Triple A road service folks come to give me a hand on the interstate.

Yeah, I know it’s not much; but it’s something and I’m grateful for it. I was completely surprised when I discovered this secret ability and have been dismayed at the number of blasé people who live in my neighborhood. No matter how many folks I demonstrated this to yesterday none of them were impressed. One even asked me if I’d take the bag with me on my way out and put it in the bin. I did. But I did NOT do so with a glad heart, let me tell you. 

Would I have preferred something more along the lines of an ability to rapidly straighten out grocery shelves of canned goods in disarray? Maybe. Though I’m unclear if the Forces of Evil have designs on wreaking havoc in those aisles of our groceries. I’m thinking of asking Dick “20/20 Hindsight” Cheney what he thinks but figure if I can wait another thirty seconds he’ll tell me all about it unsolicited. A guy who really is his name. Glad that’s not my superpower. I’ll rejoice with my trash bags and be glad.

Unless I’m being Hefty.

-bill kenny

Man geht immer mit einem lachenden auge....

Don't scratch your head too much, the title today is German. Based on yesterday's World Cup match between Deutschland and the USA, a translation to consider might be this visual:

In my family, the result saved a lot of emotional churn as my wife and both of our children were born in Germany and Sigrid remains a German citizen. And spoiled guy that I am had you told before the evening of the first game of the first round that the USA would be playing for a chance to win their division... (pause) of Death, I might have wondered what you were smoking.

The pair of teams for whom I cheer both made it to the Round of Sixteen. How the USA will fare against Belgium remains to be seen, but that's the next chapter of the story and we'll know more when we turn the page.

Speaking of pages (Jimmy? Sorry, no) these matches aren't played on paper but on the pitch and a team analysts felt was superior and picked to go far, Portugal, is, indeed,  going far, all the way back to Lisbon as this weekend gets ready to unfold and the matches continue.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” So if you talk in your sleep, don't sleep, but never stop believing in the beauty of your dreams.

- bill kenny