A Postcard from the Past

I had forgotten all about this sketch from a long time ago. 

For months, sitting in the cage, on the hook attached to the bracket held up by the suction cup has been the (uneaten) block of suet for the birds outside my ground floor office window. I don't expect I'll see as many of them when/if I'm finally relocated to the fifth floor (I didn't get promoted, but some wag figured since I behave as if I were oxygen deprived, I may as well achieve altitude) but since I stopped filling the second feeder with seed because all they did was fight, bang against the window and makes a mess (often all at the same time), living large has been downsized. 

I still throw peanuts out for what was once an army of squirrels who've gotten fewer in number as the winter has gone on. I'm not sure if they book passage on tramp steamers for warmer climes, but they're not around here very much at the moment, though the one that does show up is ravenous in terms of appetite. 

It was just the other day I realized the suet was disappearing, especially after last weekend's cold snap, which may make sense since birds are cold-blooded and, I assume, need more fuel in the winter months, to keep on keeping on. Earlier in the week, the suet block had been reduced to about four beakfuls and I watched as a titmouse repeatedly strafed a woodpecker who was hanging on for dear life to the holder as his tormentor wheeled on wings and came back to divebomb him again and again.

From inside, safe and warm, it looked like the woodpecker was holding me responsible for this turn of events which guilted me into making sure to pack into my 'going to work' bag the new suet block my wife, one-half of Thelma and Louise, had taken out for me. Stumbling around by the dawn's early light, (and earlier than that, come to think of it), I managed to open the now-completely-empty holder, add the new block, and reposition it. 

Until about three minutes ago, when finally one of those itty-bitty birds too numerous to count, decided to take a bite, not one bird went anywhere near the feeder. I looked out the window and saw the squirrel giving me that 'calculating the length of the nearest evergreen branch to the feeder, the distance between the two and the approximate length of the leap to close the distance, snag the suet and nothing but net...' look that can spell only trouble unless he answers to the name of Rocket J. And from what I've seen, he answers to no one. 

The best I can hope for this time around, with my apologies to Mitch Brenner, might be '...a pair of birds that are....just friendly.' (And maybe, bus their tray.)
-bill kenny

A (Rocket) Blast from My Past

This is a day when I'm in the shop, so to speak. I'm well out of warranty, of course, but that doesn't mean stuff doesn't squeak and rumble except for the stuff that's supposed to but doesn't which is partly why I'm getting ultra-scanned today. I always think of it as like a "triple-wax" car wash without the wax, water or car. 

What it actually does is make me more nervous, or nervouser as I tend to think of it, as the dawn breaks because the process takes hours, you have to fast (I have the going slow part down pat) and the technicians proceed very carefully because I have a replacement artery in one leg, a stent in the other, two more in the heart and replacement knees, all of which make for unusual sounds when ultrasound hits them. 

When it's all over, and it takes just this side of forever but considerably less time than being dead, I should remember, there are a lot of nervous smiles and no conclusions, that's what the doctor does, and I get to go home. All of which is my way of trying to tell you why you end up reading this again today.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. After I discovered The Beatles and rock and roll, not so much, but there's many a cloudless night with a star-filled sky (the great thing about Life in the Sticks is very little light pollution from large cities and the heavens are gorgeous) that I do remember to look up and see.

It's a view I never tire of and a small part of me, that six-year-old with the space helmet, wonders what down here might look like from a vantage point up there somewhere.

That's why my brain understands what Rhawn Joseph is attempting to do but my heart still thinks he's a crank. But I'm being unkind; there's a surprise, you say (kiss my anti-gravity belt, no lower)-read this and judge for yourself.

I'll be the first to concede I was a skeptic but when I clicked here, he had me at white socks and his poem. I'm not sure if we sue one another more in this day and age than we used to of if it's just more publicized than when our parents and their parents were fussin' and fightin'.

We seem to play the litigation card earlier in the evening than previous generations did though I'm not sure a quick game of Parchesi or Rock, Paper, Scissors would get us any farther or faster. Gore Vidal once noted, "litigation takes the place of sex at middle age." I have no idea what he's talking about and you need to be careful, Alice. Or it's to the moon....
-bill kenny

Game Day

Finally! Finally?

Finally. 

Speaking only for myself, the greatest and weirdest Super Bowl of all time was the one my brother, Kelly, and I watched with Vincent and Albert M., at their parent's house just outside of Philadelphia when the New York Jets and Broadway Joe Namath upended the then-Baltimore Colts, led by Tom Matte subbing for the injured for most of the season legendary Johnny Unitas by a score of 16-7.

Not all the action, and definitely much of the physical contact, was not just on the field as my brother and I grew more and more uncomfortable while Vincent and Albert went from verbally sparring during the game, memory suggests just moments after the first half ended, to out and out brawling in front of the black and white portable television on the roll around cart.

I recall as the two wrestled and rolled on the floor Kelly thoughtfully repositioned the cart with the TV so that it didn't come crashing down on them as they continued to bang into it. Kelly had some experience with televisions and the power of gravity.  

Trust me. It makes whatever Lady GaGa is doing for this half-time show pale in comparison. As for the game itself, I have little interest and even less knowledge of any of the players on either team. Please don't spend all of this coming week telling me how I should've watched it. I most certainly could have and still chose not to. Do the math,

I wish two things for The Game today: your team wins, whoever it is, and you shut the fuqq up about it ever after. Amen.
-bill kenny

Thank you, Universe!

I was very nearly stuck standing today. My muse of inspiration was mute, as opposed to a Malamute which is just as well since I couldn't afford the food and vet fees. And I have trouble sorting which end poops and which one is for petting so I'm better off steering clear.

And then out of the metaphoric blue, this story landed, figuratively speaking in my lap(top). And where, exactly, in the airplane do you suppose all of this cocaine was found?

Proving the nose knows no bounds.

Of. Course. It. Was. Goodnight, Seattle!
-bill kenny

Redux: An Ounce of Blood

Today my brother Adam has a milestone birthday. He can tell you which one and while he's at it, he can tell you why he doesn't share his being born day with Pauxatawny Phil-but both of those are his stories. It is after all his birthday. I wrote much of what follows a long time ago, in honor of when he was born. I'll let you ponder that. Moving right along....

The law of averages being what it is and the population of earth being what it is, he's probably not the only one having a birthday, actually, I know he's not (looking at you, Claire). I don't especially care. And doncha love technology? Forty percent of the world went to bed hungry last night and we could feed 'em all. Instead, we invented a program that counts noses here on the big blue marble.

I am the oldest of six. Adam is the youngest. Sandwiched between us are three sisters and a brother, all of whom at various times did so much more than merely take up a seat in the Chrysler Newport station wagon and/or the Renault 10 as we traveled from who we were to who(m) we became.

Joan and Bill (Senior) are our parents. Mom lives in Florida. We buried dad a long time ago. At times, walking away from the grave is easier said than done and not all the promises we made to ourselves about who we were going to be when we grew up were delivered. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. 

Adam wasn't even yet a toddler when he was hospitalized as part of a medical safari of sorts that his pediatrician put him and my parents through in search of causes (and treatments) for a mystery he couldn't solve. Adam would stand in the crib and howl in pain until Yakky Doodle Duck came on the ward TV. I learned how to do the voices of all the characters to distract him. I still do them, except now to distract me.

Later, I dragged Adam to undergraduate classes while I was at Rutgers. He wasn't a mascot or a talisman or a babe magnet and he wasn't my show and tell. He was my guy. Those were exciting times, there was revolution in the air and I wanted to make sure he was a witness. After graduation, my class traded blue skies and air you could breathe for BMW's and stock options. Sell-outs, you say. Perhaps. I saved my receipt if you want proof. 

I recall a mad dash behind the wheel of that barge of a station wagon after discovering Adam was having a seizure on the couch in one of the eighty-five or so rooms in the ranch house we lived in, hurtling towards Saint Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick with this tiny person's jaws clamped tight on the thumb I'd jammed into his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. It was about then that I figured out the doctor in Highland Park was full of crap (I had long since concluded he was an a$$hole).

Somewhere and somehow I wandered off and away. Not all who wander are lost but many of us did while others stayed that way. Bob's your uncle but Jack was the role model. For decades I had the same contact with my brothers and sisters that those in the witness protection program have. I have to live with that. Didn't start out that way but stemming the tide is harder than riding it, even when you know it ends in the sea far from land. 

I always told myself there'd be time to catch up/make up for all the missed weddings, the births of children and in some instances, grandchildren (again, Adam's story to tell)--most of that didn't work out and my Air Force salute (shoulder shrug) became my silver bullet signature. Adam grew into the man he was supposed to be. 

He found Margaret, Suze, and Rob (who've each gone on to find their someone's and have their own stories to tell) and forgetting my (broken) promises of that armadillo from Texas and a penguin from Greenland (he was too smart to believe that one but too polite to call me on it), he invited my family to be part of his life on a very important day for him and his family and he remains my guy, often despite me. 

I've got lots of IOU's to redeem should the 'really big' reunion be held, and not all of them will or can be because redemption is rationed and rarely earned. There are bridges to rebuild and fences to mend with almost everyone with whom I grew up. That's for another day, maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it's oh bright early as I post this and, speaking of early, I still hear Mom, on seemingly any morning for many years when we all shared the same roof, shouting 'Up and At 'em, Atom Ant!' (don't ask). He undoubtedly is already. All I can add is Ayup! and Happy Birthday!

Life is a beach.

-bill kenny

Phil and Bill. Still.

That's Punxsutawney and Murray, if you're keeping score at home (and if so, why; and if not, why not). I know someone who not only was born on Groundhog Day, but was born in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and has spent a lifetime enjoying the looks of incredulity with which that news is met. 

What's a little spooky, to me, as if basing predictions of additional winter weather on the appearance or non-appearance of a furry animal's shadow isn't already goofy enough, is how much time flies and yet also remains exactly the same simultaneously.

Speaking of which and also having nothing to do with it at all, (think Alternative Facts) my brother, Adam, celebrates his two hundred and seventy-eighth birthday tomorrow (he was born an old soul), and at the time of day he goes running, there are NO shadows of any kind anywhere in this hemisphere. Or groundhogs.

This time last year, one political party was in the ascendancy we were told and this time this year, it's the other. Glad something is working out for somebody somewhere. Statements about both unemployment and underemployment have continued, and in many areas, the numbers have actually proliferated (except among those whose job it is to explain that bad is good and day is night; those careers are booming and no one knows why.). Bigly.

Last February we had national leadership struggling to develop political solutions to military situations that had started out as politics in Iraq and Afghanistan, not forgetting sidebar distractions with Iran and North Korea. And sonuvagun, it's unclear (to me) what if anything has changed. And if you're thinking Hugo Chavez was a striker for FC Barcelona, put down the Coke Zero and get your own smile.

I do know we all missed Stephen Tobolowsky at last night's banquet but considering how much the only constant is change but how constant that change has become, I'm sure we'll meet again before that Second Sitting. But I'm not so sure what happens if someone other than Phil sees his shadow. Six more weeks of chocolate bunnies, I fear.
-bill kenny

Silence = Consent = Murder

"This is not about religion."

That must certainly come as a relief to those of you who consider yourselves religious but managed to still cast a ballot, 'despite serious reservations' in support of the person elected 45th President of the United States. You do not need to reassure me that 'he doesn't reflect my beliefs,' not because I don't believe you (I don't, but who cares?) but because by voting for him in November you revealed yourself to have none.

Now you must live with the consequences of that decision (because you have no choice). Actually, we all have to live with your choice (that's the way it works; I voted twice for a Kenyan Marxist who singlehandedly averted a Second Great Depression while you picked a narcissistic, bellicose bully) but you cannot pretend to be ignorant as to where his piecemeal slippery slope is leading.

I don't think I have to spell it out, someone else did a long time ago at a moment many wanted to believe would, and could never, ever, come again.

And now here we are.

I'd hate for us to go through all eternity knowing we could have stopped the second showing of the horror movie but simply chose not to because, well just because.....

It's not that hard to remember: Never Again means never again for anyone. Always.
-bill kenny