Giving Thanks

We're heading towards the 'traditional' holiday season and today's words are, sort of, part of that as I've offered them in years past as the calendar rounds the clubhouse turn. 

I'm writing in short sentences since you probably have a lot to do today and not a whole lot of time to do it all in, what with Thanksgiving knocking on the door and all.

For those of us not planning to pick up or drop off someone at an airport who's flown in/flying out to be part of the Thanksgiving holiday, there's the organization of the shopping list as we ready for the annual trek to the grocer for the 'things we forgot to get for the feast' shopping expedition. Taking care of the little things counts in life and most especially in holiday dinners.

My First World Problem is always about cranberries, jellied or berries? Yeah, I lead a hard life. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. While I'm standing struggling with what is truly a trivial concern, I'm somehow not seeing those around me who would trade my troubles for theirs in less time than it takes to read this sentence.

This is the time of year we celebrate our good fortune, in a vaguely historical homage to the Pilgrim's Progress that we can't quite explain. That's probably because we get it wrong. The First Thanksgiving was really an act of generosity by those from here who had with those who were recent arrivals and who did not.

We think of The Pilgrims when we think about Thanksgiving but it's the Native Americans who sustained them and helped those ill-equipped settlers adapt and overcome whom we should be honoring and emulating. 

We've all passed by at least a half-dozen collection points every day where donations for those whom we call 'the less fortunate' are being assembled. Except, people who need our help are not less fortunate-they are our neighbors and in some instances, our family and friends.

I don't care what the news says about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. No one I know can eat the NASDAQ, whatever that is, so don't get fooled. Your times may be better but that's not the case for a lot of other people. If you thought the last ten or so years have been hard with recession and depression, try being a family that didn't have much to start with when things went sideways.

This time of year, and more so now than last year and way more than the year before that, agencies and organizations that work with the invisible indigent we have chosen not to see are nearly overwhelmed by the requests for help.

Ask the St. Vincent de Paul Place about how many (more) hot meals they're preparing for the holidays and how many new food pantry customers they have. And if you buy a few more canned goods and goodies than you'll use next Thursday, swing by the Norwich Family Dental Associates on Lafayette Street this Saturday and donate to their food drive. 

And if recent years are any indicator, this is when the Connecticut Food Bank receives the largest number of donations, to include yours, which is all well and good assuming hunger is a holiday thing, except it's not.

This Thanksgiving when you're with friends and family enjoying the food and festivities after the feasting please go online and find an agency someplace doing good and donate so they can do better.

How much should you give? Until it helps.
-bill kenny

Heal or Heel

I am NOT a doctor, nor I do play one on television (or anywhere else; I'm looking at you Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, and Roy Moore) so I'm perpetually puzzled at all the prescription advertising heading my way usually during national broadcast news programs. 

I've lost track of all the ailments that can be managed by the products being hawked and I never tire of the admonishment to "tell your doctor" about some aspect of your life that might, just might, cause you to drop dead from whatever it is BigPharmaInc are selling during this commercial break. I'd like to think my doctor is aware of my allergies and problems otherwise perhaps before worrying about new meds I need to shop for a new doc.

Early in the morning on the treadmill at Planet Fitness as the minute hand slowly crawls towards half-past five, there are ads for diabetes supplies (yesterday was a repeat ad for a "CGM," a constant glucose monitor I suspect, though NO ONE ever said that) as well as for a Teeter board or something that I strap myself into and then stand on my head and it helps my back. And the guy who makes it pitches it on camera and jumps up in the air shouting, "I'm 72 years old and I feel great!" He looks NOTHING like Tony the Tiger. Just sayin'.

There's a device I strap to my outer leg and the pulses make all of my pain disappear. Sign me up except why do I only see the advertising for this miracle device at oh bright/but still dark early on weekdays. And surely the folks who design these pitches realize I don't assume everyone wearing a white lab coat is a doctor, right? I mean they could be barbers (what a great name for a band!)

I have no illusions that I will live forever, though at least a while longer would be nice (depending on what's for lunch) but I suspect all of us can live without and live better all of those video-promoted medications and wonder cures that we all know in our hearts are really neither. 
-bill kenny     

  

Living Where the Air Hurts My Face

One of the downsides to living where there are four seasons is the transition from summer to autumn, especially for the trees and their leaves. I am very much of the 'live and let live' persuasion which translates to the 'lie and let them lay' position on leave gathering. 

I've noticed this again this year in my neighborhood, some of us have gathered so many, it's as if we're waiting for them to fall from the trees and nab them on the first bounce. We rake them all up and some of us, maybe you have the same kind of neighbors where you live (unless you are that neighbor where you live), place them in black plastic bags awaiting pickup by the trash folks. 

After gathering and placing at the curb the dustmen empty the plastic bags into their trucks and simply discard the bags. Causing me to wonder what the point of the plastic bag was/is. Elsewhere I've seen these VERY large paper bags filled with leaves, in theory, because the paper is biodegradable, all of it can go directly into the landfill--or do you think they're headed for incinerators? Around here we have trash to power incineration units though I've no idea how much energy we get from such an operation.

For millions if not billions of years, I estimate, we as a species did nothing with the leaves as they fell. You see all that dirt all around us? I have a funny feeling where some of it might have come from and I'm not sure what we're accomplishing by how we're operating now. While I wasn't looking compost has become a lost cause, it seems, perhaps even a dark art. 

In its place, we have created a first-class annoyance, the leaf blower. We went from devices that looked like vacuums and picked up fallen leaves and plopped them into bags (do you remember those?) to a gadget that hangs from your hip and can be used to blow leaves that have fallen on your property into someone else's yard or out into the street.

I think leaf blowers are a much more accurate and contemporary symbol of America in the 21st Century than either the Bald Eagle or the Stars & Stripes. There's nothing that says "Wha?!" more than a guy on a Saturday afternoon working a leaf blower wearing dark shades with Ibuds in both ears. And I'd ask him why he's doing what he's doing, but he's as oblivious to me right now as I am to him for the rest of the year. Ahh, Sweet Suburbia. We've got Mother Nature on the run--now what?

-bill kenny

A Different 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Count the number of times in the course of your day (in person or on the phone) someone asks 'how are you?' or words to that effect. I think we use turns of phrase like this to fill up the silence between us. No one expects an answer and when you finish your count, I think you'll be surprised as to how often throughout the day we reach for this conversational crutch.

Every time I go to a physician's office (and I see enough different doctors that I have my very own Blue Cross/Blue Shield customer rep, 1-888-bill-sick, though NOT for Hartford Healthcare), the receptionist asks me how I am. I am in your office to see your doctor, why don't you do the math.

I'm certainly NOT here for the six-month-old magazines am I, or that gorgeous view of the tops of the cars in the parking lot? And as lovely as that wall clock from the drug company rep for one of the erectile dysfunction treatments may well be, I already have a watch and didn't stop in to check the time. Besides the size of the sweep second-hand makes me feel inadequate.

Perhaps, the person behind the desk feels they should do something for the co-payment.
After all, when I get in to see the doctor, I'm not going to get a complimentary tongue depressor and I've yet to be offered a special on a colonoscopy (BOGO 'buy one, get one half off!').

How are you supposed to respond, "I'm fine"? Oh? Why are you in the doctor's office, then, buster? Do you get your co-pay back? I don't think so (I sure don't).

When I do get to the exam room, the doctor invariably starts with 'how are you?' as well. But that's why I'm here! For him to tell me how I am. Perhaps I'm actually part of a carney act, where he guesses my weight or how much change I have in my jacket pocket.

Thirty-eight cents, by the way, and none of the five coins is a dime. Hmmm......
I'll check back in with you later on. You'll know it's me. I'll ask 'how are you?' but I won't be listening to your answer. Oh well.
-bill kenny 

If You Can Believe in Something Bigger than Yourself

This is Veterans Day across the United States and Remembrance Day in Our Neighbor to the North, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Actually, that was an attempt at light-heartedness that may have struck you more as light-headedness, as our neighbor to the north is Canada, as you hopefully already know. Geography and sophistry in the same ether at the same time! 'Murica!

Patriotism, George Bernard Shaw once offered, is the misguided belief that one country is superior to another because of the accident of your birth. I'm proud to be an American and particularly delighted I'm not Lee Greenwood.

I'm proud of my nation because of who we are as people and what we do as a country when we follow the voices of our better angels-though I'm sometimes disappointed by we who are and how we sometimes behave towards the rest of the rest of the world and one another.

I'm a veteran, but not a Sgt Rock of Easy Company (that position was filled; I asked). I didn't have a hard job in my eight years in the US Air Force and what difficulties I had, I concede, I mostly made for myself (and were probably deserved). I didn't fix planes, dig ditches, rescue people or hump cargo (or vice versa; okay, some payday weekends I only have the fuzziest of memories).

I worked for the American Forces Radio and Television Service as a broadcaster. Yeah, I know, who'd have thunk it, right? My big worries were a record skipping on a turntable, or an audio splice separating. I had a small, nearly minuscule job but like the millions with whom I served, I took what I did seriously and attempted in my shambling way to do it to the very best of my ability. And, at least for today, I'd like to believe each of us in, and out, of uniform did (and do) the same.

This isn't Memorial Day, dedicated to preserving the memories of all those who gave their lives in the defense of their nation. Today honors everyone who has ever served in our Armed Forces. The distinction between the two observances is important, I think when I recall Joseph Heller's Catch-22 where Yossarian tells LT Nately 'it makes no difference to a dead man who won the war.'

It's a reminder it's incumbent upon those who survive 'the war,' whichever 'war' you wish to cite, to help fashion a more peaceful world that follows. A world where Carl Schurz is correctly and completely quoted, 'My country, right or wrong; if right to be kept right if wrong to be set right.' Beginning with each of us, every day. Forever.
-bill kenny

Mandy Wasn't Handy

I guess in-flight turbulence can have a larger definition than I might have ever previously assumed, based on this newspaper story. 

Somewhere, I have little doubt, Erica Jong is smiling while adjusting her zipper. Please return your seatback to its upright position. 

-bill kenny

It's Not Dreiser's Drama

The flags are still at half-staff across the country as the funerals continue. The shooting at Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday morning, is another "American tragedy." We are beyond cliche in the use of that term and I hope the estate of Theodore Dreiser get themselves a good lawyer and sue somebody. 

Our romance with weaponizing our society from the very youngest to the oldest, a refusal to make having a license for a weapon at least as hard as owning a dog and criminally under-funding mental health resources to assist the millions of broken, beaten, and battered our society produces led to the inevitable and predictable result and will again, and again, and again.

I was long past sending thoughts and prayers to those murdered or injured decades ago and I'm not sure what else is left to say to mealy-mouthed muttering of the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House who feel it's 'too soon' to speak about 'gun control' after Sunday's shooting. 

That leads me to wonder exactly when it's okay to speak about the murders in Newtown, Connecticut, also with guns, which was five years ago next month. I honestly don't think ANY of these shootings have a "best if talked about no earlier than' date and you're kidding yourself if you feel otherwise.

How about the babyiest of baby steps, Congress and Mr. President, though it will take some balls, and ovaries to make it happen? Why not allow the Centers for Disease Control to resume researching firearms injuries and death. I said "resume" because until 1996, the CDC did that research but the NRA claimed it was advocating for gun control and threatened to stop bankrolling campaigns for those in Congress, in both houses, if funding for that research wasn't cut. Money doesn't talk, it swears.

And two decades later we have bromides like a "good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun," which some to include the Prevaricator in Chief are intimating is what happened in Sutherland Springs (except 26 people were killed before the good guy evened the score). 

As President Trump said early our time Monday morning, every nation has mental health challenges-left unsaid is how no one else has the manifestations of violence with guns of all kinds that we here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave have. What, if anything, is the relationship of any of this to where we are? We don't know, because we don't have the information, but we could and we should. 

Tell our elected representatives in the nation's capital that, in case they haven't noticed, we are murdering one another out here in the heartlands and someone needs to stop us before we kill again. We don't need a good guy with a gun, pious platitudes or more helpless shrugging of shoulders. 

We need research that looks at our situation, makes an assessment based on the facts at hand and proposes solutions. And shut the phuq up about thoughts and prayers, please!

-bill kenny