Have You Heard?

“I know that I have less to live than I have lived.

I feel like a child who was given a box of chocolates. He enjoys eating it, and when he sees that there is not much left, he starts to eat them with a special taste.

I have no time for endless lectures on public laws - nothing will change. And there is no desire to argue with fools who do not act according to their age. And there's no time to battle the gray. I don't attend meetings where egos are inflated and I can't stand manipulators.

I am disturbed by envious people who try to vilify the most capable to grab their positions, talents, and achievements.

I have too little time to discuss headlines - my soul is in a hurry.

Too few candies left in the box.

"I'm interested in human people. People who laugh at their mistakes are those who are successful, who understand their calling and don't hide from responsibility. Who defends human dignity and wants to be on the side of truth, justice, righteousness.

This is what living is for.

I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch the hearts of others. Who, through the blows of fate, was able to rise and maintain the softness of the soul.

Yes, I hustle, I hustle to live with the intensity that only maturity can give. I'll eat all the candy I have left - they'll taste better than the ones I already ate.

My goal is to reach the end in harmony with myself, my loved ones, and my conscience.

I thought I had two lives, but it turned out to be only one, and it needs to be lived with dignity.” -Anthony Hopkins

Rhymes with Nifty

I had no older brothers or sisters. Folk music and Elvis Presley never really touched me as a kid.

The Beatles on Ed Sullivan introduced me to rock and roll (though I did already own a copy of "At the Hop" by Danny & The Juniors), and I've been a fan, however it's being defined on any given day, ever since.  

That's why as much as I love retrospective articles on the music I love, they also make me sad as I realize how I've aged (but I find some solace that the albums turning fifty this year will always be forever young). 

"Rock and Roll is the music your parents love to hate."
-bill kenny

Put a Sock In It!

When we were very small children our Aunt Claire, Mom's baby sister, would babysit  us (by us, I mean the oldest three as the younger three hadn't yet been born), and part of the good-night ritual was: 

"Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John,

Went to bed with his trousers on;

One shoe off, and the other shoe on,

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John."

Not sure it helped us go to sleep faster but the memory of it made me smile just now. 

I got thinking about it because I woke up earlier this week to outside temperatures of five above zero which isn't surprising because I live in New England but even though I already knew that it was still a less-than-happy happenstance. 

I've started to sleep with socks on (in addition to pajamas; mom raised crazy children, not stupid ones, at least after I was born) and am telling myself I am warmer. But I've learned there is a not unserious discussion ongoing as to whether it's healthy to sleep with socks on. 

Shari Lewis may have died for somebody's sins, but not mine. Amen.
-bill kenny

Morose and Somewhat Melancholy

I found this in a jacket pocket of a coat I no longer wear (metaphorically speaking). It's from almost fifteen years ago and stings as much now as it did when I first offered it. At the time I called it: 

Caught in Other Nets

I was helping my wife impose ordnung (look it up) on our basement the other day (mostly by staying out of her way). Not surprisingly, she and I have slightly different perspectives on how things are filed, stored, and saved. 

My views on all three are easy to catalog: wrong. All you need do is ask my wife. There's an eye roll and a medium-sized sigh (I used to only rate a small one) and now, as an added bonus from this sentence onward, there will be a vehement denial of the previous two, but don't be deceived.

We've lived in our house for over thirty-three years-George Carlin is right, it's a place for your stuff. Our container is very attractive and spacious though the basement where she and I were working is, I imagine, a little like limbo but without all the unbaptized babies' souls (just as well as the dust bunnies are everywhere and there's always something you taste on the end of your tongues that you can't quite place or name).

We've been putting things in the basement since we moved in. Obvious items that we weren't yet willing to let go of: appliances that operated on 220 volts and fifty cycles and for which, to use here, you'd need a step-up transformer (I have one, make me an offer). There were less obvious items, more saved by the heart than the head. Neatly packed with contents listed on the outside of the carton were many of the toys and bric-a-brac from when our children, now adults, were much smaller.

Some items looked like they were in the same boxes we used when we moved from Kasernenstrasse across town to Ahornstrasse in Offenbach. Without exchanging a word, I knew we wouldn't be placing any of those on the discard pile (I still have in the garage the chalkboard each child wrote on when they had their erste shultag).

It is amazing what you collect over the years and how much of it you can remember when you see it again (and how much you have NO clue about when reunited). Te disquieting part may be how much you become possessed by your possessions. Sigrid had boxes of singles (little records with big holes as I used to call them while she labeled my album collection, big records with little holes) and each dust cover came with a memory and a moment to match.

I think we both knew, and always did, that 'putting things in the basement' is code for pretending to remember who you once were even when you're less than comfortable with who you became. 

Not having to confront that person is a luxury I can afford though I probably enjoy it too much. For a moment we were as we see ourselves instead of as others do and who we really are. I'd chance again without regret, because the moment (however fleeting) seems to linger and abide awhile before disappearing.
-bill kenny

El Malei Rachamim

Today is the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. which serves as the cornerstone for today's observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I'm offering words I wrote several years ago to mark this day because they captured then, and now, my feelings and fears. 

As a child when my mother's mother told stories of "The War" her generation had fought, she rarely mentioned the death camps; perhaps because we were of Irish ancestry and Roman Catholic religion, perhaps for reasons she never had the time or the opportunity to explain. Europe was far away and there's too often a tendency to suggest it's good to let the past remain the past. Not this time.

I'm her age now and the cautionary tale that the Ha-Shoah should have been does not seem to be a lesson we have fully learned. There is mindless murder every day in every corner of the globe because of the color of skin, the choice of a God, the shape of an eyelid, and always some variation of the fear of The Other.

We are NOT much better here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, especially just months after a Presidential campaign whose mendacity and bigotry were such that many of us could shower for the next four years and still never feel clean as we impersonalized and dehumanized those with whom we are/were in disagreement philosophically and politically, rendering them abstractions and making them easier to hate and then hating them deeply and completely. 

As we keep Slouching towards Bethlehem we've continued our journey along the road to perdition and that, I fear, means we will persist in writing off one another and the damages we do to ourselves as part of the overhead of being on the planet. It is as if a person's lifetime is worth no more than an arched eyebrow or a shrugged shoulder.

I have yet to purchase this book but I shall because it's important, at least to me, that someone bear witness to who we were and how easily the danger and horror of all of that did happen and can happen again. Growing faint in the face of evil is to do nothing and doing nothing cannot be allowed, especially when we know that silence is consent and the first chapter in the horror story.

About a minute and a half into this trailer, Keri Lynn explains why she became involved in the Paper Clips Project. This is an old clip and I imagine her place has been taken by other bright and shiny young people who, if we're lucky, will not need to build rafts to save us from the flood of our own hatred but, instead, bridges that allow connections despite our differences.
-bill kenny

If You Liked Kakistocracy.....

I'm looking at the bright side, or trying to. 

The Tangerine Tyrant, the Petulant Peach, the Outraged Orange will be President of the United States for one day less than this time yesterday. 

I learned a new word and since I believe in sharing, now you will too.

Oh, and let me know when the price of eggs that so angered you that you chose a felon for President is actually lower.
-bill kenny 

Jockeying for a Window Seat

I live in the Nearly Rhode Island part of Connecticut as opposed to the Gold Coast piece of the state which has tried repeatedly to elbow Staten Island out of its position as one of the five boroughs of New York City. 

Our downstate brethren have Stew Leonard's, gluten-free polo ponies, the private cell phone numbers of vegan Beemer mechanics on speed dial, and dozens of rapid rail connections into Manhattan every day of the week. 

We country mice have a vacant storefront where Kresge's used to be, huntin' dogs as big as horses, a buddy who works at Tractor Supply Company and Southeast Area Transit, SEAT.

I'm not jealous; okay, maybe a little.
If reincarnation exists, my goal is for jodhpurs and a home in Belle Haven. I've already cased Metro North platforms for a cool place to stand to read the WSJ on my Kindle until my backgammon partner arrives for the ride into The City. In these parts, I'm styling if I own my bowling shoes. Not that I'd wear them on a SEAT bus, at least not on the schedules they've got now.

If you rely on mass transit this side of the Connecticut River, especially if you live beyond the Thames (pronounced like 'thame thit, different day') make like John Alden, call Mayflower, and move, pilgrim. 

I really do miss the real bus and rail lines, no more than when I watch a SEAT bus pass me with next to no one in it, or am riding one because my car is being repaired and I need to allow for three hours to make connections in both directions for a ten-mile ride. It's possibly faster to walk unless and until Connecticut invents pay sidewalks and then you'll need an EZ pass for your Uggs.

If we in Southeastern Connecticut were to push mass transit to its limit instead of limiting its access, what might we have? Bullet Trains named Desire? I'd settle for buses that operate every day of the week at no cost to patrons (how else will we ever wean ourselves from our addiction to automobiles?) and become the connective tissue across our region.
-bill kenny