Greetings from Kermit

This is from so long ago, I have no recollection of it at all. It was called originally:

Frog Soup

Mission creep is what group dynamics folks describe what the rest of us might well call L.O.S.T, or Line Of Sight Tasking (I'm still not sure what we call group dynamics without making our moms cry). 

Here's how it works: at some point in a project, one of the very bright people who came up with the original idea realizes there's yet another function s/he forgot within the transaction and announces 'someone needs to do/be .....' DANGER! The first person who makes eye contact after this has been said inherits this new responsibility with absolutely no authority or means to accomplish it. Don't look up! Oops, well, thanks for playing. 

It's part of our lives as individuals, as well, fretting in the various roles we each play in the drama. I had a plateful (and more) when it was just me, myself and I. Falling in love and getting married moved me, or us, to egoisme a deux and then we added children to the mix. Solo, spouse, parent, while also being a child, sibling and wearing a half dozen other hats. You can't tell the players without a scorecard, especially when we each are covering numerous positions.

Is there a limit to all this multi-tasking, if that's what this actually is (I like to think that term is better applied to linked tasks vice totally different ones-like a product being both a floor polish and a dessert topping) and when do we reach a limit, how do we know? 

I remember the 'how to cook a frog in boiling water' semi-urban legend (don't judge; I run with a colorful crowd, sehr bunte leute) that makes me suspect there's no 'top end.' If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will simply hop back out; but, if you place the frog in the pot of water and then slowly and carefully raise the heat of the flame under the pot, the frog will never move until it has been cooked.

I've often wondered if this is why so many of us are called chickens? 
-bill kenny

Better, not Bitter, with Age

It was long ago and it was far away and I called it: 

Between Marzipan and Mayhem

When the title came to me earlier, I thought it was an inspiration. As it turns out, it was a sneeze. And the only thing in my case worse than a stuffy nose is an empty head (and, actually, they often seem to travel together in the HOV lane on the Human Highway). 

I noticed the other day it seems the 'killer app' for Twitter has arrived and, here's a surprise (NOT), it's porn (GASP!). Or, technically, MORE porn. It can't be just me as a new twit (need to work on designating recent members with a cooler name), but everyday I have at least one note from someone who wants to "follow" me and when I click on their name linked to their account to return the favor, their account is usually 'suspended for suspicious activity' and I'm admonished 'to mosey on along now, nothing to see here...' Not being the sharpest spoon in the drawer, it took me a few of these notices to suss out what had happened. 

I'd read a long time ago, when books were fashionable and kindle was what you did with fire, that VHS, or video home system, as that format was called, pretty much was established when porno producers discovered you could transfer feature-length movies to a single VHS tape as opposed to much shorter, if not better fidelity and resolution, home Betamax tapes. Wasn't the first time quantity had overwhelmed quality. 

We've seen the same type of economic model evolve on the Internet, although 'see' isn't intended to suggest a personal voyeur or a voyage, for that matter. Not that any of us knows anyone whoever goes to any of the hinky websites, of course. Those places all make boxcars of money from other people, living in another dimension, most of whom are even now it seems, based on recent activity, on Twitter. 

I've often wondered what all this march of technology has done to the sale of raincoats. I, too, believe in 'let a smile be your umbrella if you want to gargle snow.' And I also believe that Marzipan and Mayhem would be a great name for a band, except as it turns out, someone else thought a part of that idea would make a better name! Gesundheit.
-bill kenny

We Need the Wood

Out driving the other day I found myself behind someone with a bumper sticker that you just know has a HUGE story behind it. I've sort of seen the first part before, "My Dog is Smarter than Your Honor Student" but it was the second part, "My God Can Beat Up Your God" that leads me to wonder just how deep some still waters run.

I long ago abandoned in despair the faith of my fathers so there really is no upside to the hereafter for me and I can appreciate the humor of having painted myself into a corner. I'm just never happy about having to sign the painting.

I'd like to think so many different cultures around the world have embraced the idea of a deity because the ideal represents a unification of values and belief systems that, no matter the flavor or brand, have more in common sometimes than those who practice them. But worship as a WWE or maybe better, as a UFC, event? Priceless.

I've grown old watching us shift from the belief that we were created in God's image and likeness to vice versa, which scares me far more than I care to admit. Probably not my place to wonder, but if there are End Times, and they do arrive, and if all that which is prophesied does indeed come to pass, who among us is going to stand before the angels and Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, the Thrones and Dominations, and explain to God, whatever you perceive Her/Him to be, exactly what the heck we've been doing down here. 

That should be a hoot.

-bill kenny

SIGH and Other Four-Letter Words

Show me what you'll pay and I'll tell you who you are. If you attended or watched on the city's website Monday evening's Norwich City Council meeting and its adoption of a preliminary municipal budget for the next fiscal year, perhaps, like me, you can be forgiven for wondering about what exactly happened. 

Not that you asked and not that it’s important (except to me) but we can do better than what went on for much of Monday’s meeting. My moment of Zen, if you will, started at the Council Informational Meeting at 6:30 where an excellent presentation of the city’s five-point marketing plan was offered, with a strategy to entice and excite businesses and families from across the region to get more in Norwich by relocating here.

And then, less than an hour later, many of the reasons that marketing effort highlighted, such as schools, affordable housing and other quality of life programs became just words as that same City Council seemed to decide the marketing plan needed no actions from them at all.

As someone who’s sometimes sneeringly referred to as a Norwich booster (and I wear that as a badge of pride), I’m disheartened and discouraged because the things we do speak so much louder than what we say. but I am not (yet) defeated. We continue to be a city where people speak AT instead of WITH one another. And I include myself in that because it's the responsibility of everyone who lives here to find a way to work together to do what's best for Norwich.

Norwich really isn't a place anymore where generations of families grow up and grow old together. We are not a city our children want to come home to. Instead of trying to build that city through collaboration, cooperation, and compromise, we eye one another with distrust and suspicion. We’ve forgotten no one has a monopoly on ‘best ideas’ and that most ‘best ideas’ are a result of joining together different ideas. 

We have no patience for solutions and processes that can't be implemented and produce measurable results by the time we reach the end of this sentence. And that’s a challenge because so much of life is waiting for things to happen (but also being prepared to act while you’re waiting). 

Leaving me to ask how do we make Norwich, again, a place for all of us to come home to? The politics of the past is how we got here. But where to next, and how? If you always do, what you've always done-you'll always get what you've always gotten. And the difference between a rut, which is what we are struggling to escape, and a grave, which is where we are heading, is the depth of our habits. 

We need to think and work together, not just say it, but actually do it. We need to believe we can do better and then do better. We need to be the city we want to tell the world we are: proud of our past and confident in our future. We can only count on one another and we have to start to do that. If not now, when? If not us, who?
-bill kenny

Perhaps More Sap than Sapiens

We call ourselves homo sapiens, Latin for 'wise man' so I'm not sure why we're not reacting more wisely to yesterday's release of an over one thousand page report from The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on the rapidly accelerating extinction of species and devastating alterations to our shared planet's eco-systems. It is NOT a cheery read at all.

Lots of media reaction has us staring at the obvious (and usual) suspects when we speak of concerns about greenhouse gases, climate change, and the like here on the Big Blue Marble. And I get that sentiment but it's too easy to harumph about what Donald Trump is or isn't (mostly isn't) doing to safeguard the environment, because we were going to Hades in a handbasket before he became President so it's on all of us and not just him or any other leader anywhere in the world.

And it's not just that I'm a polar bear lover or a giraffe devotee, though there's a charm to both, and all, animals (and I'm as big a fan of Blue Planet as the next person) but relentless pragmatist that I am, we have hard science telling us that we will run out of breathable air and drinkable water sooner rather than later. 

Since we're a life form that needs both to survive, worrying which one will run out first is pretty much a moot point. For the self-proclaimed smartest species and crown of creation, we don't seem to fully grasp that we do not have a Plan(et) B; and that each of us, for all of us, from treehuggers to climate skeptics and everyone in between must do what we can when we can or will won't be able to do or be anything anymore. 

It's not politics, it's the survival of our species and hopefully, we're smart enough to understand that.
-bill kenny             

And a Better Class of Fish

I have some pretty disparate information sources I read every day. I start with a summary of Google News and work my way through the state Associated Press coverage and the local newspapers serving this area of Connecticut and then puddle-jump my way across the broadcast and cable TV websites. I don't pretend it's exhaustive, impartial, inclusive, all-encompassing or anything of the sort.

I like to get a quick catch up from the time after I closed my eyes and put my head down on the pillow until the next morning when my day begins. Suspect that's true at your house as well. Does that mean there are days I linger over a faraway dateline? Sure. 

Such as the story from someplace in the middle west about a person petitioning to have his name legally changed to "In God We Trust", because he feels a higher power has saved a wretch like him. Where's Gracie Allen when we really need her? C'mon, stories like this (and these opposable thumbs) help separate us from the animals and fill up the day. I don't imagine they thrill too many judges, but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few legs (according to Mike Tyson).

The great thing about the world wide web is there as many sources of information for you as you can bear to click and use. With very little effort, 'underground' and 'establishment' can look, read and sound about the same. What you believe in to be the Truth and what you regard as the Lies (capitalization deliberate) have as much to do with you, the receiver, as it does with the sender. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to be sure the account you're reading is more or less objective (and that can be a hard job). I don't like those misgivings and wish the instances that gave me pause were fewer and surfaced less often.

I never attribute to malice that which can be explained by ignorance, but sometimes I get angered by a story which selects those facts which support a previously reached ideological position masquerading as a conclusion. I'm guilty of it, too, at times, that whole  'my mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts.' but even if we all do it, that doesn't make it right.

Just me or do a lot of the folks on both sides of the aisle not seem to have an understanding of the definition of an independent fact? Far too much of our debate on the issues of importance, locally, regionally, state and nationally seem to be a variant of the Argument Clinic or "I know you are but what am I?" Our young nation once had the Lincoln/Douglas Debates of 1858 but I don't think we'll see anything like that ever again in our lifetimes.

We tend to get those things we want and not necessarily those things we need. And then we are surprised when we are unhappy. Quick, find someone to blame, because that's what we'll want next. Right after we get a bigger boat and a deeper ocean.
-bill kenny

Setting the Table

I don't think this was in one of Paul's letters to Timothy. But it seems it should have been.

Should make for an interesting sermon.
bill kenny