Happy Birthday

I wrote this many years ago and have no problems revisiting it today because the sentiment it expresses is exactly how I feel even, and most especially, now. 

I've never been a hockey fan-actually, never much for ice skates (weak ankles but thank goodness no bone spurs). We have a beautiful Ice Rink in Norwich that we went to when our children were younger (and so were we) but I don't think I've been in it for the last eight to ten years. It's me, not them. 

Back to the hockey. The first time I saw her she was wearing a Buffalo Sabres hockey jersey-a souvenir I was to learn from an earlier relationship. (I'm fine with the memory because I got the girl in the jersey.)

To be honest, if the Sabres or any hockey team had looked as good in their jerseys as she did in this one, I'd have become a fan of the struggles to capture Lord Stanley's cup years earlier. 

She was tall-taller than I, thin, with long straight hair. I had seen her in a club Chris and I went to in Frankfurt am Main's Sachsenhausen district and this was later and we were at another place, "Old Smuggler's", beyond the Hauptwache near the Eschenheimer Tor district. 

She was, and is, so beautiful, I forgot to breathe and the moment I saw her I knew I would marry her. I didn't know her name, didn't know how to meet her, or know anything about her but I knew I would marry her. 

I'm not a person with a strong religious faith (me, not Him) but by the time we got engaged the 4th of March; it's engraved in my wedding ring I came to believe that it wasn't, isn't, and couldn't be coincidence or happenstance that had crossed our paths. 

I cannot conceive of how wretched my life would be without her--how, in a hundred different ways every day, everything I do and everything I am is because of her. She almost makes the day begin. Happy Birthday, Angel Eyes.
-bill kenny

Here's to the Travelers on the Open Road

The future arrived a little earlier today than it did yesterday as we've begun Daylight Saving Time. It seems to me in reading that link Benjamin Franklin may be perceived as having a hand in the development of DST. By this time tomorrow DJT will be blaming BHO for it, bigly. 

I'm never sure what to do with this extra hour of daylight I have. We're the only species, to my knowledge, who divides temporal moments into arbitrarily measured units. I'm especially impressed how all of us on the globe have agreed to use the same increments; none of this 'how many centimeters are in an inch or yards is needed to be a kilometer?' stuff. Sixty is sixty (at least for seconds) until and unless it gets to twenty-four (hours) though when we start rolling the hours into days and then months, the accounting gets a bit ragged.

Hello Dali

I think most of us across the globe have some form of DST (hand on your heart, were you surprised to discover North Korea didn't observe it? Yeah, me neither. Perhaps the Dear Leader doesn't have a watch). 

I just gotta believe if we all put a little something into the kitty, a few seconds here and there, we'd have ourselves quite a tidy sum of minutes and hours we could redistribute to those who made a hash out of it the first time around, a lockbox of sorts. So what do you say? 

You scoff because you don't see a practical use for this saved time? How about this, for instance, you want to go for a swim, but you've just eaten, what to do? One quick call to the DSTLBAC (Daylight Savings Time Lock Box Advisory Committee, 1-866-MIN-UTES) and there you go, catch a wave and enjoy. 

Unless you're a shark already in the ocean of course as I don't know if they have to wait after eating anyone or anything.

-bill kenny

This Time Tomorrow

This time tomorrow, it will be later than it is at this time today by one hour. Tonight (technically at 0200 Sunday) we spring ahead and “gain” daylight on the late afternoon part of our days. 

It’s most noticeable tomorrow for an obvious reason and then it becomes incremental creeping in at Shakespeare's renowned 'petty pace' through late in June cresting (so to speak) with the Summer Solstice on Thursday, June 21^st .

Time is like the tide in a river and it’s rising right now whereas in the autumn it ebbs. Of course, it still flows endlessly to the sea (ask King Canute about that and watch the typos, buddy) and one more or less hour is a subject I used to find fascinating as a callow youth. 

Those days, and the memories of those days, are both faded and in most places bare so now, at nearly-sixty-six, I am always aware of the sound in my ears my own blood makes as it rushes through my veins.

More appropriately to my somewhat melancholy frame of mind when contemplating the remaining days and wondering how many more beginnings before the end, I find myself concentrating more on what I do with the hours and days I have, no matter how many or how few. 

Perhaps you’ll find that perspective helpful as well.

-bill kenny

(Not) Everybody's Working for the Weekend

More on this topic tomorrow.

In the spirit of tomorrow night/Sunday morning, I'll keep it short.
-bill kenny

They Call It Chivalry

The calendar says for those of us in the Northeast and, at least theoretically, most of the rest of the nation, this winter of our discontent is drawing to a close. This weekend is the start of Daylight Savings and not much longer and the swallows return to Capistrano. 

The Boys of Summer are already the rounding into shape as the Guys of the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, and not a moment too soon, so this next weekend of the third month in the eighteenth year of the twenty-first century should, I hope, be the start of better things. 

Dylan offered that it takes a lot to laugh-it takes a train to cry. My mother, world-renowned mom of six of the most thick-headed and strong-willed children to ever walk the planet, demonstrated her smartness to us all when, without consulting the Internet (there was life before ether. Who knew?), told us it took more muscles to frown than it did to smile. We believed her because she was our Mom and it didn't hurt that she was also right, but how did she know? 

So we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster (and yeah, Michael, I know where I swapped out one consonant for another and why). I always wear trousers with pockets so I have someplace to put all the fun. 

We can promise to not miss what we do not have and enjoy our now in the now and look towards tomorrow with hope and not dread. "I'm carving 'em up through the dust in your town. Crawling over rubble just to sound me out. Tend to wonder why?"
-bill kenny

The Next Installment of the Red Bead Experiment

The more things change, the more they remain the same and I'm never sure if I should be happy or saddened by the constancy. I know the difference between a rut and a grave is too often only the depth of the habit. 

Despite some of winter’s snow and cold looming ahead of us later this week, it could get very warm (if not heated) in the coming weeks (if the past is prologue) as our elected and appointed municipal officials work to develop a budget for our city. 

And like the ones we each have in our own households, it will not happen without arguments, agreements, smiles, frowns, and everything in between with everyone across the city, in the end, happy and unhappy at what that final document is. 

Compromise and cooperation will be critical to collective success (and at times will be in short supply). In all the years I've lived here (a quarter of a century plus), two things I've never heard from either the City Council or the Board of Education are "we have more than enough revenue to cover our needs and "we certainly won't need an increase in our requested budget." 

Instead every year we are told that 'this will be a very challenging budget season." I think we are already bracing for more of the same. Last week there were stories about the 1.7% increase in the Rose City’s grand list ($31.5 million dollars). And there were also reports on Board of Education deliberations about balancing educational needs with fiscal realities. 

Neither were isolated phenomena but are two sides of the same coin and part of the recurring realities those who serve in elected and appointed positions must attempt to manage if we are all to succeed.

The upstarts and malcontents who gathered in Philadelphia in the heat of the summer of 1776 were angry at a monarch who “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent …swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” declaring independence and proclaiming the function and purpose of government was to protect the "unalienable rights (of)…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 

So how much happiness can we stand and how much can we afford?  Instead of government at all levels working for us, we struggle to pay for it as we file our federal and state income taxes, knowing no matter how much we paid this year, next year it will be more because it's always been that way. 

But why is that business as usual?

We must both make and be the difference by being active and informed in the discussions and debates that will shape the decisions creating our next city budget. The city’s website will post schedules of hearings by every municipal department and each of us is welcome to attend. We each have two ears and one mouth and probably should use them in those same proportions to listen and speak to one another for all of us. 

-bill kenny

Do NOT Quote 'Game of Thrones' to Me

Woke up yesterday as did many in New England to snow. Not the possible Snowmegeddon some TV weather folks are predicting for later in the week or over next weekend but more of the 'excuse me, I'm only passing through' variety of snow event (I picked that term on the weather channel). 

From what I understood of news reports, Boston and large parts of coastal Massachusetts got the cod smacked out of them, again, but since those who drive with that license plate around here usually have the suffix 'hole' after their tag, because of how they drive, it reinforces my belief in karma (did you see how I tied that reference to license plates? I'm using up valuable "A" material here, kids). 

The guy at the next treadmill yesterday morning was furious at the snowfall (which wasn't much of anything in these parts) ranting at anyone who'd listen and at least one person you know who didn't want to listen, as to how this was 'bullshit!' 

I was going to point out it was, technically, frozen precipitation but remembered Pandora, not the streaming service, but she of the box of disquiet unleashed on the world and decided to remind myself it was the first week of March and NOT the first week of May and snow (and other four letter words) happens. 

We got it. Hilarious. Thank you, next.

-bill kenny