Völlig Losgelöst

I've been hoping we'd do this since about an hour or so after the TV networks started posting election results four years ago.  

It takes a lot of lift to get something as big an asshole as Pantload45's airborne, but here's hoping after the polls close tonight, it's certified and verified.  

And I can breathe deeply knowing it's the end of an error. Finally.
-bill kenny

Not Talking about Any of the Dwarves

Let's pretend you asked for whom I'm voting. You're too polite to ever do that, I know but play along. 

Actually, I already voted; about a month ago, via absentee ballot. All Blue that's who.

And you?
-bill kenny

The Ticking of the Clock

This time today was yesterday when it was already yesterday. This morning in the wee, small, early hours, we fell back an hour (I've always liked how we always keep that straight, 'spring ahead' and 'fall back' while that 'wander stupidly like a drunken lemur' I hear so often is, I've learned to my sorrow and chagrin, only used to describe me) all across the country. 

Am I the only one who thinks we might have been better off skipping the 'fall back' this time around? Seriously. Who among us longed for an extra hour of what seems to have become a sheep-shit on white bread with mayonnaise sandwich of a year anyway? 

I've never been clear how much of the rest of the world does this time-travel-but-standing-very still-stuff although daylight saving is utilized across significant portions of the earth's Northern Hemisphere. 

I've always wondered about more mundane aspects of all of this like hourly employees working overnight shifts when the clocks change directions....do they work seven and get paid for eight in the Spring and then work nine and get paid for eight in the fall? 

Is there a law or a workplace practice that covers this and why on earth is a sixty-eight-year-old guy, pecking away at a keyboard in Norwich, Connecticut, worrying about stuff like this? When you have no life, interest in the obscure becomes a crusade.

The reason why we move clocks forward and back is the part I will NEVER understand no matter how erudite the explanation (It's from a decade ago but the song and logic, remains the same).  

We share the planet with a nearly infinite number of other life forms from single-celled amino acids to a full scale of the abiogenesis catalog (now available for only three easy payments, and if use your credit card right now...), and none of them have watches much less the concern for time and its division and measurement that we, Homo sapiens, have.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day/Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way. And then we look up in surprise and dismay at the time and wonder where it's gone when it hasn't gone anywhere. Everything ends whether it's a television program, a movie, a radio serial or other entertainment, a relationship with another person, or a business relationship or political alliance.

You don't have to be Richard to have misgivings about time and what we do with it. Merely being human will qualify. I'll leave the sun behind me and I'll watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by...I can see the world and it ain't so big at all. 

This time tomorrow.

-bill kenny

Charles In Charge

Of course, Halloween is different this year. Everything is different this year in case you hadn't noticed. Halloween is one of those holidays that started out, in my mind, for kids and has assumed a whole new life as an adult drinking-and-let's-get-dressed-up-and-misbehave game. 

So please don't think I'm less than kid-friendly, but most of the moaning about how COVID-19 has 'ruined' Halloween for the kids is coming from adults feeling sorry for themselves. I'm not willing to join that pity-party because nearly-seven decades on the ant farm have taught me when it comes to feeling sorry for ourselves, we bi-peds are remarkably capable at it and incredibly competitive.

Besides, my dim memories as a child in a costume with a mask whose eyeholes didn't align with my own suggest the wee ones might not be as nearly upset about the change in plans as we taller ones might be. As long as there's candy (NO Mary Janes or Charleston Chews, thank you), the tykes should be just fine.

Not that you're going see any of them going Full Charlie, or in this case, definitely NOT Brown.
-bill kenny  

Looking Back while Looking Ahead

When I was very young, and despite your snicker I actually was young once, going through the primary grades of St Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, All Souls' Day which is this Monday was, aside from Good Friday, the saddest day of the year.

When you're nine years old and have transferred to 'the Catholic School' from Pine Grove Manor in Franklin Township because there was finally room in the class near the start of the fall for you and Neil, your next-door neighbor who is now suddenly promoted to best friend, the more you think about the implications of All Souls' Day, the sadder it gets.

As I've aged (badly) I've developed quarrels with the Catholic Church in which I was raised but most of that churn is what I've taken to calling middle-level management. With all due respect to the priests, bishops, and even His Holiness, the Pope, I'm not sure how much of the edifice the one true church (as it calls itself when it finds/feels itself under attack) has created since Jesus Christ founded it, Petrus, would pass the 'R U Serious?" test with the Lord.

We're not grading on a curve, either, guys. Wanted to pass that along. But one of the things I still believe, regardless of my exact grid coordinates in the theological hemisphere, is that there can be nothing more tragic than to be forever forgotten. As a primary grade school student, I used to fall asleep trying to remember every single person I had met in my life; a tough enough job when you're nine but when you're sixty-eight, it borders on the impossible.

But maybe that's what 'heaven' actually is-the memory of you by another person. Look at history-much of it, as Willy the Bard noted, is a tale told by an---well, never mind who's doing the telling, but pay close attention to who's doing the remembering. Is forgotten the opposite of famous? And who prays for the souls of the faithfully departed when no one remains who recalls who they were? When facts fade, faith must suffice. 
-bill kenny

FWP

I think we'd all agree that significant portions of the world are in very sad shape right now. I'm not talking about those parts we might call First World and the COVID-19 pandemic, economic downturn, shortages economy, abrogation of equal rights, and/or a dozen other issues.

Huge segments of the world's population are at or near the subsistence level, that point where living hand to mouth is so precarious that there's an excellent chance you need to keep checking to make sure you still have all the fingers on the hand you started out with after you put it in your mouth.

Those parts of the world didn't need a pandemic for things to turn bad; things were already bad and now they are heading towards unbearable. And then you have the curious case of Bill Gross, Amy Schwartz, Mark Towfiq, and Carol Nakahara. I have every intention of feeling sorry for them this coming Sunday morning at about two (I lead a busy life and can't squeeze then in until then) and perhaps even organizing a telethon.

What? We set the clocks back Sunday morning at two? Oh well.
-bill kenny

Further On Up the Road

It’s hard to believe that by this time next Wednesday we will have gone from knee-deep in election year hoopla to waist-deep in big muddy aftermath, depending on for whom you voted and the results of those votes (and how far along the tabulation process is). 

That will probably be of small solace this week as your social media feeds, your email and snail-mail inboxes, and newspapers fill to bursting with information, letters of support, and endorsements for everyone on the ballot, sometimes to include people of whom you'd not yet heard. 

Here's the thing about all of that: the letters to the editor, comments in the online forums of the newspapers, calls to the radio shows, heated discussions with family and neighbors in your living room or street corner--ALL OF IT MEANS NOTHING if you don't vote. 

Nothing changes if we don't make the commitment to change. You want to blame somebody for the way things are? Start by looking in the mirror and then work your way around the room. It's certainly a target-rich environment, isn't it?

If you've been holding your breath reading this far and waiting for me to tell you either for whom I voted (I cast a mail ballot two weeks ago) or for whom you could/should vote, you can exhale and resume normal speed as neither is going to happen. 

That you vote is all that concerns me. We’re deciding everything from who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation’s capital, who speaks for us in the House of Representatives, who we'd like as our State Senator and our State Representative plus selecting a registrar of voters. 

Voting is serious business. Not everyone around the world gets to do it and a lot of us had friends and family, not to mention complete strangers sacrifice their lives so we could have this moment of choice but no pressure. If you want to vote, you'll make the time and if you don't, you'll make an excuse. 

But should you make that excuse grab your stuff and go sit on the far side of the city, or better yet, the state. Go ahead, start walking. Keep going. If I can still hear you complaining about how things are, and you decide not to vote, you'll need to be so far from me I can't hear you at all. 

Winston Churchill once said “Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”  

While Churchill was many things, prescient wasn't necessarily one of them so I don't think his remarks were intended as a commentary on this or any specific election but your mileage may vary depending on your perspective. 

Do you see government as something done to you or for you? Are you a victim or a victor? There’s the magic of choice in our imperfect form of government. Freedom of choice works best when everyone who can make a choice, chooses to make one.

So, choose, or we all lose.
-bill kenny