Perhaps Why Hiawatha Sings

I’m blessed to live at the moment that I do-though because I am alive you feel slightly less blessed about your life and the timing involved in it. I think that has to do with eggs and how they’re prepared. 

Anyway, thanks to the communion and convergence of dumb boxes and devices like the one I’m typing this on and you’re reading it on we can launch satellites, calculate the number nanoseconds involved in any form of experimentation you can imagine, converse with people like, and unlike, us across the planet. 

The marvels are so numerous and pervasive I almost cannot blame the Third (and now Fourth and Fifth, I think) World for wondering why we in the First World haven’t cured all of us of all our ills already.

I suspect it has to do with how much time we devote to researching answers to questions like “how long is it?” I don’t pretend to know (or know of) women who discuss their personal and vital statistics and truth to tell, I have never had a conversation with any man on earth (or elsewhere) about such things but there's certainly enough speculation about the shape and size of things South of the Border.

Even under extreme and exigent circumstances such as being adrift in a life raft, if I couldn’t simply respond by invoking Longfellow and leaving it at that, I’d have to deploy the Chapman defense and hope for a message rather than a specimen in the bottle.      

- bill kenny

Death Leaves a Heartache No One Can Heal

The love of her life of my oldest younger sister, Evan, Glenn, passed away after a ferocious battle against cancer. In the course of the last two decades, I saw both my sister and her husband on infrequent occasions but I was always struck by three things about Glenn: he loved motorcycles, music and my sister.

The last of those three is really the only one that mattered and she was as crazy in love with him as he was with her. If ever there were two people who deserved a happy ending, it was they.

That is not to be and the pain that will be with my sister everyday for the rest of her life may feel at times greater than the moments of remembered joy of their lives together. I hope that will pass, and if I still prayed, that would be something for which I would.

I have no words to offer but these which I found from James Whitcomb Riley:

He Is Not Dead

I cannot say, and I will not say

That he is dead. He is just away.

With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,

He has wandered into an unknown land

And left us dreaming how very fair

It needs must be, since he lingers there.

And you—oh you, who the wildest yearn

For an old-time step, and the glad return,

Think of him faring on, as dear

In the love of There as the love of Here.

Think of him still as the same. I say,

He is not dead—he is just away.” 

-bill kenny

Saint Pat Leases the Carroll Building

The last time we had a parade in downtown Norwich was for Winterfest and look at the snow and cold around us. Now I’m not suggesting cause and effect but I mention that because Norwich’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is this Sunday and I’m concerned we might have large numbers of very short bearded men with pots of gold and shillelaghs that we won’t be able to get rid of until Memorial Day. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, but I wanted you to know the possibility is out there.

Weather permitting (a phrase we’ve used almost every day for the last seven weeks or so), the Norwich Saint Patrick's Day Parade steps off at one from Ferry Street, makes its way around Franklin Square and up Franklin Street and then uses Willow Street to march to Chestnut and then, in turn, Broadway before making a left at the Wauregan onto Main Street and finishing up at City Landing.

Here’s the website, complete with a printable map of the entire route and a listing of many of the other activities going on in and around the parade itself. Last year’s parade was a great success especially as an inaugural event, not just in terms of marchers but also for cosa a chur ar an tsráid (putting feet on the street) across downtown.

Think of the Parade as another reason to stop and visit somewhere far too many of us too often simply drive through on our way to someplace else sometimes complaining how ‘there’s never anything to do in Norwich.’ Which, I agree, can be true except when it’s not, such as this Sunday.

I was happily surprised last year by the number of people I met who do not live in Norwich but heard about the parade and the family-oriented crafts festival afterwards together with authentic food and beverages (both adult and unadulterated) who decided to try it on for size and were very pleased that they had come.      

Everyone is welcome to march, or mush depending on how much (more) snow we’ve had by Sunday and it’s really more of a brisk walk than a march in terms of distance-so you can smile and wave without breaking a sweat.  And you won’t be alone.

Others scheduled to march include all/some/part of the Norwich City Council and the Mayor, members of the Norwich Police Department and Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Police, joined by the Yantic Fire Department, staff of the Harp and Dragon Pub, New London Currach Rowers, as well as the New London Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Fields Memorial School Marching Band, staffers from American Ambulance and Macara Vehicle Services, Connecticut Tigers and the New Haven Police Emerald Society.

When Irish Eyes are Smiling, let’s hope they brighten and warm up Sunday afternoon enough to allow both the wearing of the green and the marching of the feet. And though it’s technically early, it’s right on time for Sunday: Beannachtam na Feile Padraig "Happy St. Patrick's Day!"

-bill kenny

In the Shape of a Heart

I took the love of my life to the Emergency Room yesterday afternoon with shortness of breath, dizziness and chest pains. The tests in the ER were cause for pause for the doctor who decided she'd be best served with a stress test this morning, and that the best way to make sure that worked out was to admit her to the hospital last night.

If you see me today and my smile looks a little more strained than usual, that's because it is. I don't do brave very well and I have to be brave and hope the woman I love will be better and come home with me today.

Look at me baby, struggling to do everything right. And then it all falls apart when out go the lights.
-bill kenny

Not My Circus

I'm assuming Foghorn Leghorn wasn't available to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference that concluded this past Saturday evening in Washington D. C. but it probably wasn't for lack of trying.

I suspect it may have been a scheduling problem aggravated no doubt by the fact that Foghorn is a cartoon character, voiced by the late Mel Blanc (before Mr. Blanc became the late).

My heart is on the left side of my body and my politics tends to follow my heart but I have a great deal of respect for people anywhere on the political spectrum, so much so that my liberal acquaintances fear I'm a neo-con and those of the conservative persuasion think I'm a communist.

The joke on both is that I see myself as a relentless pragmatist who is suspicious of anyone who offers me a philosophy, on life, politics or dress color, and uses the instead of a. Of course, for the last decade or so I've worn eyeglasses in an attempt to better see other people's points of view (alas, without much success).

Which sort of brings me back to Foghorn and his complete lack of political coloration or affiliation. Henry would know, except he is, also, a work of fiction. Looking at some of the those who did speak, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, makes me wonder about the line separating fact from fiction and who moved it.

Fiction is where philosophically I would have placed Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty a sort of make-believe reality TV person who might have been better served, I believe, had he remained fictitious instead of contributing to our ever enlarging scale and scope of fractious factionalism by taking a place at a political podium.

And we so often wonder aloud why more developing nations don't choose to emulate our style of democracy. With the President of the United States still regarded by many in attendance at CPAC as a Marxist Muslim Kenyan, I, for one, am grateful Marvin the Martian is not only imaginary but a terrible public speaker.
-bill kenny

Star-Crossed in Leisure

The first two months of this New Year are all used up already. Fertig, vorbei, in the rear-view mirror. I’ve still got New Year’s resolutions to make and the first sixty (metaphorically speaking) days are already over. The calendar no longer has that New Year smell.

We can plead weather in terms of distractions or barriers to accomplishment if we want-I do it all the time and am quite proficient at it, but truth to tell, what we haven’t started to get done yet in this year is whatever we had already concluded wasn’t that important to us in the first place. When you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there.

It’s not really a question of enough time-who, among us doesn't have that sad complaint anyway? But if we were honest, we'd admit to ourselves, it's not true. We have as much or as little as we choose to allocate on whatever we so choose. Of all the randomness in the universe, time and how we invest it, is about the only variable over which we have control.

So if you’re waiting for something, anything, before you start your next chapter in the story of you, stop waiting and start doing. I have some personal experience in this area and some recent history of people close to me that suggests waiting for the right time is an excuse masquerading as a reason that always proves to be a mistake. Be careful or you will find yourself echoing my favorite Dr. Seuss question, “How did it get so late so soon?”

-bill kenny

And Your Little Angel Hung the Cat Up By Its Tail

How surprised would you be if I told you today’s title and coda were unpublished lyrics from Where Everybody Knows Your Name, usually called the theme from the television show, Cheers. 

They were in the original song, just NOT in the TV version used as the theme. True story and another example of Ruth being stranger than Bridget in terms of the real, surreal and cereal which fill our lives.

I’m doing the perky, smiley routine today to keep me from scowling as I read about Mohammed Emwazi, more infamously known as Jihadi John. I make no pretense of being ‘enlightened’ when it comes to my hopes for retribution, swift, soon and sudden, for Jihadi and his buddies and I certainly offer no apologies for a desire for the revenge I feel.

Not that Mo loses any sleep over my anger-it’s the legions of infidels, armed to the nines, that I’m sure he’s more concerned about especially since everybody now knows his name. 

You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind and your actions in attempting to hasten the end of the world will result ultimately and finally in only ending your world, which turns out may be exactly what you are praying for..

-bill kenny