Somewhere Santayana Grimaces

Do you know what a bellend is?
See? Learn something new every day.

Here's someone who is a perfect representation of both definitions, as well as being a United States Senator, Josh Hawley. Talk about multi-tasking! Which is pretty easy since he is basically a tool.

Josh does a lot of posturing as the photo on the left suggests and nearly as much running as the right one indicates. He also likes to run his mouth. 

National Guard on college campuses. What could possibly go wrong, Josh? 

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-bill kenny

Still Waiting on My Pony Ride

Today is the 150th running of the "Fastest Two Minutes in the Whole Dam World or Something Like It." It's Kentucky Derby Day, the Race for the Roses, and a hundred or so other cliches that those who follow the Sport of Kings (and I wasn't sure what they meant for quite some time about that growing up) take as seriously as those who follow the World Series, the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup take their sports.

The difference is you don't get to ride a teammate around a track in anything resembling a counter-clockwise direction (I think; and do they change directions in Australia for the obvious reason) which is too bad because I imagine a placekicker riding around on a linebacker would be quite a striking visual.

All I know about the event today is what Dr. Hunter S. Thompson wrote in 1970 when I was barely eighteen. It tore my mind in two; your turn. And, you're welcome.
-bill kenny

Man or Mouse?

We see ourselves as the self-anointed 'Crown of Creation.' I'm surprised more of us don't have dislocated shoulders from patting ourselves on the back on a repetitive and recurring basis. 

That's why I get both dismayed and disappointed when this kind of shit ends up on a serious news site as if it were anything other than a shiny object meant to distract us. 

Were you not amused by the hero America (and possibly the entire world) didn't yet know it needed. Of course you were. Smile and say "Cheese!"
-bill kenny

It's a Long Walk

Today is the birthday of our baby girl, Michelle. She was the smallest and most perfect person I had ever seen on the day of her birth. When I held her head in my right hand as she slept when she stretched out, her feet almost touched the bend of my elbow.

Two days old

She was and will always be my Itty-Bit, my Ichy-Michy even though I am forced to concede neither of those nicknames plays well these days (so I hardly ever use them and never in public. Well, except for you on the Interweb).

At Oma and Opa's

Michelle no longer can sleep in the crook of my arm. There are times when her pace is so frenetic I'm not sure when she does sleep. I more often than not read about her exploits and adventures on things like Facebook when I get up in the morning.

Bet you didn't know I still had this one

She is her mother's daughter. Thelma to her Louise and I marvel at the self-assured and confident little girl who is now a purposeful adult striding through life equipped, or so she believes, to handle whatever is around the next bend.

IKEAing in New Haven

Michelle completed her studies as a music major at Eastern Connecticut, captivated her Kyle as she moved along, and is helping people stay safe and healthy as a member of a hospital in the heart of Old Virginia. 

Wedding Day 2013

And while I know the world will be braced for her, I can't help but believe she'll make her mark. And I hope she'll always remember that no matter how far apart we are, we will always share the same sky and the same moon and stars. 

Happy Birthday, Michelle.
-dad

Choosing Cancer or Polio

There’s a big to-do right now about the movie, “Civil War” described as ‘A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.’ I confess they had me at ‘dystopian.’

The title, of course, is a reference to the original War Between the States, 1861-1865. Today is not a day to write about that war but, rather, the political environment that led to hostilities then, and how history could repeat itself, and to what extent.

I saw a shirt with “We no longer have a difference of political opinion. We have a difference in morality” and realized no matter how you view that, it’s true.

I was thinking about that because, in the freeze-dried, drive-by manner in which we live, we spend about a minute looking at a headline and the cut line on a photo and move on to the 'next news story' as if involved in a marathon sprint contest. Assuming we read a newspaper at all. Whoever talks last or loudest carries the day, even if they're talking trash. Sadly. that was as true in the decade leading up to the Civil War as it is now.

I will point out that in the period just before the winds of war swept everything before them then, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas engaged in a campaign for Senate in Illinois regarded by historians and others as a model of civility and extreme intelligence. Viewed from today’s perspectives it seems more the exception than the rule.

One of my favorite places in the online world is here, both for a closer look at our national history but also for every aspect of that election campaign whose outcome may well have influenced the rush of events producing the Civil War (I’m not sure how accurate that statement is but I take comfort knowing in less than thirty seconds you will have forgotten you read it. Call me cynical.).

Fast forward to the hear and now and scan any national political report today and tell me your flesh doesn't crawl with dazed revulsion at the motion and commotion on both sides of every issue. We've gone from "A house divided against itself cannot stand” to "Fake News and Rigged Elections.”

I’m discomfited that more of us aren’t frightened by the tenor and tone coming at us from all sides and I'm not sure if we allow this hullabaloo to go on like this because we're too tired to stop and think or because we fear if we do stop, we may never start to think again. 

Perhaps it's the fatigue from feeding the white noise generator that is the 24/7 news services that's numbed us to our core. With so many tongues wagging there's no effort made to listen by anyone to anyone else. Somewhere along the line we've added "Nyah, Nyah! Hanny, Nanny, Do-Do" to the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and it seems to be the only part we can remember.

Often enough in the past, we've gone crazy from the heat. Almost two hundred and fifty years can do that to you, but our better angels have always intervened and interceded at critical moments in the life of our nation but this time they are conspicuous in their absence, leading me not so much to wonder about what will happen next, but to dread it.
-bill kenny

Remember Charlie, Remember Baker

History is a funny thing. Today fades right into yesterday before your very eyes and then because it was so subtle you almost but not quite forget about it. Almost.

Today, forty-nine years ago, I was getting rousted out of a perfectly good bunk in a barracks somewhere on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, by a fireplug of a man with a Smokie-the-Bear hat, SSGT Griffey. I was a month (plus a few days) into Basic Training, but the news headlines were being made half a world away with the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. 

I grew up in an era when history was reduced to the memorization of dates and events to be parroted back on test days. Still, even in today's world of alt-facts and fake news, I'm confident so many years down memory lane we, as a country, have never really made our peace with that war, the way we fought it, the way it ended and most especially with how we treated those who came back though never home from it.

And we still have large numbers of young and not-so-young men and women, deployed across the globe serving our national strategic interests and furthering our foreign policy objectives while I sit in front of my big screen and bitch about the two hundred channels of cable I get.

Some have suggested Vietnam demonstrated the danger of trying to conduct a guns AND butter war, that is, we send people off to fight while back on the home front little changes. If that's the theory, then I guess it's true, since while we had sappers trying to clear mines from rice paddies in monsoon season we also had half a million gather in the mud of Yasgur's Farm. And when all the toking and joking was over, the ages of everybody were practically identical, though I think the guys humping it through weeds were younger, but also older.

But the Vietnam War, as all wars are, was less geopolitics and more personal loss and grief across a generation. I was still finding buildings and classrooms as a wide-eyed freshman at Rutgers when I lost forever a Manhattan prep school classmate, Roy O., in Vietnam.

I was grateful so many years later as part of the events surrounding the Norwich Sesquicentennial when the American Veterans Traveling Tribute to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial stopped at Howard T. Brown Park, giving me a moment to say thank you and farewell to my friend.

From what I know from long-time residents of Norwich, the city lost twelve young men in the Vietnam War. When I read accounts of that war and its aftermath, I'm angry, bitter, and more than a little guilty at how so many of those who survived were treated, Those fortunate enough to come home returned to us often wounded in places that will never, ever heal and were left to their own devices while the rest of us raced to forget what we never knew enough about in the first place.

Praise we great men and women I know, but the sacrifices made by those with whom we live and love make me wonder if we praise and remember the right people.
-bill kenny

Short, Sweet, and Sad

Not gonna lie. I missed it and I'll bet you missed it, too. 

I'm talking about the recently concluded Texas Sandfest. 

As a kid who spent his early summers at the Jersey Shore, I'd like to think some of those with whom i shared the beach could have found themselves on the Sandfest Medals podium but then again, maybe not. There's always next year, though. 

Am I right? 
-bill kenny