And Then Everything Changed

Enough is being written and reported on every media platform about the tone-deaf buffoon in the White House inviting the Afghan leaders of the Taliban to Camp David for 'peace negotiations' to end American involvement in that sad little nation at the point in the calendar where we recall the events of September 11, 2001. 

This is not about PantsCrapper45 who is possibly as large a waste of skin as has ever walked the planet. This is something I wrote long before him and his kakistocracy ever came to town in attempting to remember what we had been as a nation before everything changed. I called it:    

Cell Phones Ringing in the Pockets of the Dead

In the interests of full disclosure, I'll note the title today is a theft from Willie Nile.

I'm old enough to remember where I was when I learned the President, John F. Kennedy, had been murdered in Dallas, Texas. I can see it very clearly, still--basement classroom, row closest to the door, fifth seat back, staring up at the loudspeaker on the wall where the morning announcements usually emanated, utterly bewildered by the words Sister Immaculata, the principal, was speaking. It was English, but I didn't really understand. Even days later as the caissons rolled by and the riderless horse with the boots backward in the stirrups and John-John's salute, it was still sinking in.

I can also remember where I was on September 11, 2001-at my desk, at work and someone popped in to say 'a plane has hit the World Trade Center' and my first thought was he meant a small prop plane, like a Piper Cub. I went to the Web, as it turned out half the people on earth were also doing and had trouble getting into any of the news sites I visited on a regular basis because their servers were buckling under the volume of traffic.

They weren't the only thing buckling, as by the time I made my way upstairs to a staff lounge where a television with cable was located, one of the towers was less than an hour away from following suit, though none of us knew that. 

The TV talking heads were scrambling to get seated and explain to us what had happened, as the why wasn't yet known. Someone had gotten hold of the accidental video of one of the jumbo jets (I was numbed, looking at the size of the plane) going into one of the towers, simply being swallowed up, and NOT coming out the other side. I'm not linking to the thousands of sites that have it-ALL of us need to remember it, and NONE of us ever need to see it again.

This clip ran, it felt like, for days, as analysts took it apart one frame at a time.  I read where the news director at ABC, at the request of the late Peter Jennings who anchored three days of non-stop coverage, STOPPED showing the clip because he feared the impact it was having on viewers. Too late for me and many more like me.

In a flash, NYC (and Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania) became every day in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In Fortress America, with our oceans and armed forces to protect us, we had watched for years as violence became a regular occurrence in Israel, in Sri Lanka, in the Philippines and elsewhere. It hadn't really touched us. Yes, there had been the murder of the Marines in Beirut in the Eighties, the explosions that killed people at the embassy in Africa and the destruction of Khobar Towers and the death of American airmen, but all of those were television news stories.

We paused, watched for a moment, and then changed the channel. We weren't stupid or unfeeling, just distracted by modern life. We understood, at least in the abstract, that terrorists are people who have nothing to live for, but we failed to grasp that people who have nothing to live for will always find something to die for. And then they want you to die for it, too. 

I am not the brightest bulb in the lamp, so I may not have been the first one to recognize the worldview the maniac cowards halfway across the globe constructed to rationalize murdering thousands of innocent people because they were, in some obscure way, responsible for creating everything the hate-filled crazies despised and feared.

More than two towers of concrete, glass, and steel fell that day and more than hundreds of hopeless people hurled themselves from windows in those towers to certain death on the streets below rather than perish in the inferno and carnage that only a fully-fueled commercial passenger jet creates when it crashes into a building. 

The only opportunity left to behave like the sentient creatures we all believe ourselves to be, the Crown of Creation (no matter how you envision the Creator), and to attempt as a species to find political solutions to questions of homeland, heritage and personal liberties disappeared, perhaps forever, in the dust and debris of that day.

Many people died trying to save many other people and many are still dying to this day and we remember them as heroes because of that sacrifice. Maybe what we should remember is more the reason why they rushed in to save those who were overtaken by the calamity and the chaos. I think they died believing they were making a difference in trying to help if but only one other person. 

And because of the willingness that each showed in giving of their life to attempt that, I think we owe them, and ourselves, another opportunity to work for peaceful and just resolutions to all the challenges facing all of us on the Big, Blue Marble in the 21st Century.

Hey, those who hate and exult in your hatred, don't get lost in the noise. It's not, nor ever been, "My God can beat up your God." As Voltaire noted, without man there is no God. Here's the real lesson: Anything worth dying for is worth living for. One day at a time, no matter how sad remembering that day is, or how painful that memory will always be. 

Through the tears, across the years and despite the fears, we shall always triumph-to do less would betray and dishonor the memory of all, before and since, who sacrificed so much for us to be here now. And being here now is the Soul of America.
-bill kenny

Mind Over Matter

Finally, a malady for our times.

We look about trying to find a villain when we need to only look in the mirror.
-bill kenny

Postcard from America Past

When I was a child, mom taking us shopping in downtown New Brunswick, NJ, was a big deal. We used to get dressed up to go into 'the city.' New Brunswick felt like the city to kids growing up in Franklin Township, off Easton Avenue.

New Brunswick had a train station where all the dads drove to every morning (or moms dropped them off in families with only one car) and the dads took the Pennsylvania Railroad trains to exotic places like Linden, Elizabeth and Penn Station in Downtown Manhattan literally underneath Madison Square Garden. 

Families were large and were mostly people who had moved out of New York City to the 'country' (wilds of Central Jersey) for their kids' sake and the fresh air. We all lived in cookie-cutters houses, mostly ranches and upstairs-downstairs split levels. The houses in our development on Bloomfield Avenue all had basements. A short bike ride from where we lived Levitt and Sons came in as they had in Long Island and elsewhere and put up thousands of houses in every direction imaginable all built on concrete pads with no basements. 

Once housing reached that critical mass level, the merchants in downtowns like New Brunswick didn't know it but their days were numbered. New Brunswick had enough stores, Stride-Rite Shoes, PJ Arnolds, and Littman's Jewelers with enough parking spaces to accommodate all the people who lived there. But when we descended like locusts from the suburbs, consuming all the parking and hogging the sidewalks, things went sideways. 

Out on Route 18, just beyond the Route 1 traffic circle where Route 22 headed North to New York and south towards Princeton, huge tracts of land in North Brunswick and East Brunswick became the homes for one-stop retailers like Two Guys from Harrison, Modell's Shoppers World, EJ Korvettes, Sear and Roebuck (no idea who Roebuck was) and lots of smaller merchants who had been squeezed out of downtown.

These shopping areas had parking lots that stretched for miles and we stopped going downtown because it was too hard to find a parking space and hit the strip malls on the highways because they had everything we wanted to buy. And when someone came up with the idea of enclosing those malls, we sold our clothes because we thought we were in heaven.

Downtown died. But so what? We had The Gap and the triumph of Retail Darwinism. More people opened more malls and we all drove farther and faster to shop at them. And life was good, or so we believed. And then the Internet and online commerce came along and left concrete mausoleums where thriving retailers had been. 

If you doubt me, don't doubt David Bell who's made a career of documenting dead and dying malls. If you watch enough of these carefully you can probably see yourself unless you choose to look away.
-bill kenny         

(Almost) Sweet Home Alabama Redux

There are only two types of registered voters in the United States: those who know we have a self-aggrandizing, mendacious weasel in the White House and those who find it out.

Subject to your questions, that concludes my briefing.
-bill kenny

Is Mumpsimus Fatal?

Say the first name that comes to mind for this definition:

Mumpsimus - a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong.

Thanks, Karen!

Yeah, that was a little too easy, wasn't it? 

Couldn't resist.

And all that's happened in the blowback from #SharpieGate is that those of us who already thought our nation's president was a mendacious, manipulative, no-talent grifter have even more proof of our convictions.

Not exactly from the Good Housekeeping Seal folks.

And as they say on those late-night TV infomercials, 'but wait there's more!"

And one more for good measure.

And those who choose to NOT see him for the saltimbanco that he is, still don't. 
Screw "E Pluribus Unum." Embrace instead, "Errant saepe raro dubium."
America 2019. <sigh>
-bill kenny

Long Time Gone

I have been giving people a piece of my mind in this space every day for so long it's a miracle I have any mind left at all. This is from so long ago the days had twenty-two hours in them, at least that's how I remember it. At the time I called it:

How Do You Figure Out the Tip When Paying the Bill of Rights?

When we have the will and the inclination, we have the tools and technology to expand our world beyond our wildest imaginations. There is also the danger, because we are humans with free will, to use those same tools to restrict and constrict the world as we see it or as we'd like it to be seen. 

There are no right answers on our fascination with and addiction to media just as there are no wrong answers as to which platforms we use for news and information. When the Founding Fathers, assisted by others, created the Bill of Rights (and this is a marvelous site), they could have not foreseen the world in which we now live. 

For them, freedom of speech, and within that, 'the press', was a matter of newspapers and broadsides (one sheet exhortations and excoriations on behalf of and in opposition to issues of Colonial America). The electric fire of today could not be imagined or controlled-as it turns out, neither could its impact.

Now, when you touch that TV dial or click the computer mouse you often have to do 'rock, paper, scissors' on where you turn and tune for news. Truisms are often truths, and perceptions of reality are frequently reality. Many people believe certain broadcast operators and cable providers are right or left of center (and those are some of the kinder names they're called) and cite numerous examples to support their positions. 

Meanwhile, the sum total of Americans who get their information on a world beyond their threshold from television (of any kind) continues to decline and the folks who manage the contents inside the video boxes insist they have no idea why.

TV news probably now does more persuasion and less informing because advocacy draws better ratings than reporting. Broadcasters and cable operators alike pander to audience 'segments' as long as those segments buy the products those broadcasts are sponsored by, from the advertisers who bought time because the broadcast's demographics could deliver certain groups in large numbers.....and round goes the gossip.

Do you suppose Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington saw eye to eye on every aspect of what proved to be the American Revolution? Or perhaps they came to an agreement on the portions they shared and agreed to disagree, 'later', about the rest. Maybe we could try that again.

You must get as tired reading it as I get tired typing it: the issues we face can't be captured in a seventy-second story with a ten-second stand-up location lock-out (TV speak for "in Bug Tussle, Oklahoma, I'm Edward R. Murrow."). They require our fullest attention, no matter our political beliefs (as a matter of fact, precisely because of our political beliefs). 

The farther out in space you travel the more we all look alike down here. How about we agree to put the remotes down and nobody gets hurt? Step away from the cable box and the computer monitor and keep the satellite dish where we can see it. 
-bill kenny

Smiling with Our Mouths Full

For gourmets and gourmands alike, this is a week in Norwich where you can be forgiven for humming or even singing "Glorious Food" from the musical Oliver! Hope you have a napkin handy to take some notes and then use because you'll need it.

The 44th Annual Greek Food Festival starts tomorrow (just in time for lunch at 11) at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church on Washington Street, less than a block from Norwich Free Academy and Chelsea Parade, lasting through Sunday afternoon. 

In an amazing coincidence, the church is a mere four-minute walk from my house, and even closer when the gyros are just about done. As the festival stretches over four days, you could theoretically dedicate yourself to enjoying a different specialty every day or just sampling everything every time you go (no one is judging (I hope)).  

You will want to save some room (on your plate and in your tummy) because Saturday is the 28th Annual Taste of Italy in Howard Brown Park, at the Norwich Harbor.

Forget GPS, roll down the car window as you're driving in downtown and just follow your nose. Unless you have a crippling head cold, you can't miss it. As for the car you came in, get yourself a heaping helping of the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center with lots of free parking and then use the short walk to help you work up an appetite as you follow the mouth-watering aromas. 

There's a reason why The Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee have held this Pastapalooza for almost three decades as anyone who’s ever attended it can tell you. Food, fun, and friends all start with the same letter and Taste of Italy is proof that it's by design. 

The Taste starts at eleven in the morning and goes until five in the afternoon, and no matter how hungry you think you are when you arrive, it will still not be possible to eat all the marvelous dishes being offered by our area restaurants, but it's okay to try your hardest. 

We do a lot of food festivals throughout the year, thanks in large part to Global City Norwich and Norwich Events, so much so that I'm thinking perhaps a better symbol for The Rose of New England might be a Fork, but that's food for thought at another time. The celebrations are more than food course, they're about each of us and all of us.  

We have large numbers of people from various heritages and we all bring something special to where we live. Some I don't know as much about as I'd like to so events combining customs and cuisine are part of the bridges we build within our community to better communicate with one another even if sometimes a lot of we say is just a variation of "are you gonna finish that?"

And if you're looking at a calendar and wondering about the space between the Greek Food Festival starting tomorrow and Taste of Italy on Saturday, that's where you pencil in First Friday Norwich across all of Chelsea and wonder why there can't be more days of the week.  

-bill kenny