rags

Keep On Rockin' in the Free World

rags — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:57:56 GMT

Today is part of a forty-eight hour national holiday that is actually supposed to be one day, Saturday. Who would make a two-day/one day national holiday and how? Nothing up my sleeves, ladies and gentlemen, this is just how we roll in this kinder, gentler land we love. I make comedy movies in my head (very small projector with itty-bitty take up reels) and I keep unspooling a short where Washington is trying to rally the troops at Christmas to cross the Delaware and surprise the Hessians at Trenton, and one or more of the farmers turned Revolutionaries says, 'dude! Tomorrow's Christmas and the day after is when the stores open early!'

Of course that's fantasy (some of the stores NEVER close on Christmas Day; both Santa and the Baby Jesus would be so proud) but a lot of us will spend a great deal of time today cooking raw meat over hot rocks, quaffing malt and barley beverages, or playing whiffle ball over on the equivalent of your hometown's Chelsea Parade (okay; not everybody) or perhaps learning the finer points of operating a sump pump to get the weather that's ended up in your basement to the nearest storm sewer.

All worthwhile endeavors, more or less, and I suspect, crabby people like me to the contrary, all of those who gave their lives in the course of the wars fought for, in and by this nation, would probably not have a problem flipping a burger, draining a cold glass or pitching an inning and letting it go at that. The bumper stickers note what those in the streets of Tehran have discovered for themselves, assisted by police cudgels, 'Freedom isn't Free'.

We who have always lived in this society and enjoyed all the protections our Constitution and Bill of Rights provide may sometimes take for granted what others elsewhere cannot, in their wildest fantasies, ever imagine. For generations, everyone, everywhere has wanted to come to America and be free. Newsflash: they still do. There's a reason why we have a Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor and nobody else does and it doesn't have anything to do with who gave what to whom as a present.

Who we are and what we do are the envy of the world even when we sometimes do thoughtless, hateful and hurtful things. We are the most powerful nation on earth (and in the history of the world) and we are a rare and noble notion that we and we alone should determine who we are, where we live, how we worship and for whom we vote as leaders.

We are the United States of America, not because our cars are faster, our grocery shelves better stocked, our homes prettier, our armed forces more powerful, our hair bouncier, our teeth whiter or our clothes cleaner. We are the sum of all of that and ten thousand other things--the freedom to get up tomorrow morning and move across the street or across the country and never need anyone's permission. The right (some feel it's a duty) to think our elected leadership are cloth-eared clowns who are leading us to ruin (and have been since 1776, I guess).

We have more freedoms we never use than the rest of the world put together, made possible by everyone who has ever been an American ever since there's been an America to be from. George Bernard Shaw once noted "(p)atriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." But I don't think we feel superior--I'm not always convinced we think at all. But if we did, and do, think, today might be a good day to think a little more about who we are and how we're going to pass what we have to our children, as our parents did for us.

We're a country whose Founders insisted our birthright included, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Not a lot of other places start out with 'fight for your right to party' as the major premise (with 'soda and pie' as, perhaps the minor premise). It may not make us 'better', only different-but at least for today, different is better and our better is better than your better. Whoever you are.

Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella.....

rags — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:26:46 GMT

I guess some of us were a little giddy in southeastern New England when we had two consecutive days with hardly any rain or clouds at all. Transports of delight, visions of working on that eternal tan, let's go get the car washed, turn me over-I'm done on this side. Sweet dreams are made of (all of) this.

Welcome to Wednesday. Wow. I hope it was drier where you are, though it's hard for me to imagine it not being that way. What was it David Letterman made famous, a weather forecast calling for 'hail the size of canned hams'? For awhile yesterday afternoon I thought it was raining Yugos from the sound of the impact of the rain on the roof and I was inside, on the ground floor, of a five-story building.

My wife, Sigrid and our daughter, Michelle, my version of Thelma and Louise, had great plans for Wednesday that were, literally, washed away. For reasons that weren't part of the mission briefing Tuesday evening, my wife announced she and Mike would be 'going to the zoo.' Despite my sometimes wondering, Sigrid did not attend/graduate or instruct at s.e.e.r. training. Everything she does is on a need to know basis and she does everything, so do the math. She tells me what I need to know, when I need to know it. And she also tells me when I need to know things.

Thus, there was no announcement Tuesday evening of a trip to the zoo to begin the conversation but rather 'either you'll have to make fried eggs to go with the rest of the potato salad or go get yourself something else to eat for tomorrow (Wednesday) night.' (I do not look like I've missed a lot meals, in case you were wondering.) From fried, not green, eggs and, not ham, but potato salad, she then progressed to explaining the zoo they would visit Wednesday was the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island.

I think there's a zoo in Bridgeport, Connecticut and Southwick, Massachusetts (I'm not sure why I believe that, actually, come to think of it) but it was the bright lights and big city for the Kenny Women. Rhode Island has a, umm, colorful (that's a good word) reputation among its Sister New England states, tracing all the way back to its founding by (you guessed it) Roger Williams who felt his previously-Puritan neighbors to be, well, too less-than-puritanical, for his tastes.

Everyone who doesn't live in Rhode Island has a story about the state to include a mention that it's NOT an island (fair is fair; neither is Long Island, sort of; or Coney Island or Gilligan's for that matter). If you believe half of what you hear, the Ocean State is a bit more free-spirited than those who reside in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts or in The Land of Steady Habits, Laurel bushes and nutmeg. In recent weeks, the state's reputation hasn't benefited from a discussion in their statehouse about making indoor prostitution illegal. There are hundreds of lines that come to mind, none of which you'll read here, so move along (and don't go inside, y'hear?)

My wife is very strong willed and can bend what the rest of us agree is reality to suit her own particular views like no one else on earth. She and my daughter drove to Providence, in the pouring rain, with every intention of peering at the caged animals. If the Roger Williams Park Zoo know what's good for them, they spent hours Tuesday cleaning the cages, powerwashing the walkways, polishing the glass and sent the polar bears to the dry cleaners to get that yellow tinge out of their fur. My wife notices all of this, and there can be indelible entries made in your permanent record.

When I had a text message from her telling me it was raining too hard for them to go to the zoo, I knew the animals were, even as she typed, picking out bunk space on the S. S. Minnow. Instead, she and Michelle went to the Providence Place Mall which may have been more of an adventure, for everybody, than was really called for on a wet and woolly Wednesday. They were fine, she volunteered. They had found an Indian Restaurant in the food court (not listed here-someone will be getting a note) and enjoyed a high and dry lunch. In their honor, I was tempted to put some curry powder and mango chutney on my fried eggs and wash it all down with a large glass of water.

Nearly Just Another Walk in the Park

rags — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:23:12 GMT

Somewhere Grantland Rice is smiling since nothing makes you feel better than recognizing there is an order to the universe, especially when it just caught up with someone deeply deserving of being caught up and through sheer serendipity you were there when it happened.

The longer Monday went on, the nicer the day became weather-wise, at least around here. I admit the bar for 'nice' weather for just about all of June has been very low, not just here but from what I've read, all over the USA and much of Western Europe. I'm never sure why that always seems to be the case, especially in the winter months. My wife will talk with her Mom, in Offenbach am Main Germany (GO KICKERS!) and more often than not Mutti's wetter is practically identical to ours. And when she gives you the temperature in February in Celsius, it feels even colder.

I was catching the late afternoon/early evening sun (I'm so pale, I am visible from the International Space Station as a white blip with a bald spot) and had just finished walking my laps around the NFA track and was on my way past Chelsea Parade back to my house. Norwich has, I think, a great deal of green space, to include the Norwichtown Green, Cit Ouellet Park, Mohegan Park (of course) and Chelsea Parade and a somewhat cordial, but occassionally contentious, relationship with dog owners.

Norwich has a leash law and at various times (I can recall) has had signs in the parks barring dogs, though the 'no dogs' posting in Chelsea Parade seems to be absent, or was the other day. When my children were smaller and we'd walk up to the Parade to play whiffle ball or soccer, it used to chap my butt when, as if possessing radar, we always found the presents of the presence of a dog, so to speak. I blamed and still blame the owners and never the animals. Bring a bag and a scooper and I'm a happy guy (how sad must my life be that a sentence like that captures it?).

Anyway, from across the street I could see a young(ish) woman entering Chelsea Parade with a LARGE dog. I'd estimate the animal stood at least as tall as to my hips-not a puppy, a full-grown adult animal. To her credit, her dog was on a leash, albeit was now on the Parade where it didn't really belong and I noticed she didn't have a scooper or a bag for that which was scooped. I gave some thought to asking her what her plan was when nature took its course, knowing the turn of phrase 'walk quickly away and not look back' would probably come up.

Meanwhile, near the trees that line one side of the Parade, the young woman searched for and found a fallen branch, not a large one but, a smaller, thinner one, a stick, good for a game of fetch with the dog. Clutching the stick, she advanced towards the center of the Parade and concentrating on not throwing like a girl (I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist), she flung the stick for the dog to retrieve. She forgot to release the animal's leash wrapped around her other hand. The dog took off like a shot, with the young lady trailing behind it like a pennant with hair.

I'll say this about that dog, the woman didn't slow it down a jot. It was like she wasn't even there. I think the dog was going for both distance and speed since the woman went a long way, really fast. I don't know if dogs get surprised so I don't know if this one was when it grabbed the stick between its jaws and turned to run back to its mistress and found her right there already. The dog, obviously well-trained, dropped the stick at the young woman's feet, or where her feet would have been had she been standing, and waited for her to throw it again.

The woman picked herself up, dusted herself off as best she could, did a quick check and seemed satisfied that she was where she had last left herself, this time released the dog's leash and threw the stick for the animal to fetch. And for just a moment, and if only for just that moment, there was balance in the universe, even if , from a distance, it looked to be wearing a flea collar.

É toda minha falha

rags — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:27:50 GMT

For about forty-seven minutes Sunday afternoon I was in restless rapture as the men's US Soccer team was thisclose to defeating the Brazil national team. I was still numb from the thrill of their having upended the Spanish national team earlier in the week (and actually may not have ever come down from the almost impossible, but ultimately only improbable victory over Egypt that propelled them into the semi-finals), and was out on errands and NOT watching the tube on Sunday afternoon. I wanted to watch but am aware of the historical impact my viewing has on sporting events and outcomes (all negative all the time). If only I could harness my power for good.

I know better than to try to listen to soccer on the car radio. First, I can hardly ever find it (I have Sirius radio which I got three summers ago for the music and not the news or the Howard Stern Channel(s; plural?!) or any of the other detritus across the band) and secondly I tend to squint at the receiver as if trying to see the action on the dial face. Not the kind of explanation you want to offer a police man, "but officer, he was off-sides!" to explain your cavalier disregard for the laws of traffic and/or gravity.

I returned to the house and tuned to the game, literally, as the second half began with the US up 2-0, or two to nil (I never count that way, ever. I call the guy in the net the 'goalie' and not 'keeper' and they play on a 'field', not the 'pitch') and it sure didn't stay that very long. Poor Team USA-not only playing a legendarily great soccer power, far from home, they now had me watching and rooting for them and that double whammy proved to be too much of a handicap, though they showed heart.

After Brazil scored to start the second half (I was still getting comfortable on the couch when they scored), I quickly changed channels. Panic mode, the remote landed first at the Eternal Word Television Network which (only) seemed like a safe haven. There was a discussion on the Life of Christ and since I've read enough of the New Testament to know the next part of the Greatest Story ever told, I went post haste back to the game, just as Fabiano scored to tie it.

I stopped at one of those infomercial stations (what a waste of bandwidth) and there was someone with a beard pitching Oxy-Clean. Turns out my talents aren't just confined to soccer matches so you know what happened next, right? Those dents in your car may just have to fix themselves from now on, and I'm sorry for my part in that.

Hoping the team had righted itself, I went back to the match just as the hugging and sliding on the knees for half the length of the field (or pitch, if you insist) was starting. The game was in the 85th minute and Brazil had gone ahead seconds earlier. Boy, I hate the samba and not just on Dancing with the Stars. I hit the remote again and ended up on The Weather Channel.

When their forecast called for a swarm of locusts followed by a rain of frogs for the holiday weekend, in Finland, I turned the TV off, threw the remote out the window and unplugged the set from the wall. My apologies to Clint, Landon and Tim. From now on, I'll watch only Red Sox games, I promise....(yeah, I am a Yankees fan. What's your point?). Go, team.

Let the (Three) River(s) Run

rags — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:28:27 GMT

We here in The Rose of New England, Norwich, Connecticut, are running out of days to celebrate the Semiseptcentennial which is a good thing for those of us whose tongues have tripped over that word every time we've tried to say it and a bad thing for those who've been able to learn "a little something" about the city from before we were here. For me and my family, Norwich did three hundred and thirty-three years without us and, from what I've caught up in recent weeks, did just fine.

As George Santayana admonished, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" and I think one of the things I've come to enjoy about the 350th anniversary is, in looking at the past, I've become more confident about future, despite how grim the present is at so many levels.
If you're in the area, you can witness (and better appreciate) how far we've come by using this project created by a positive force at every City Council, Keith R, to gauge our progress. As so many have told me so often over the years, I'm NOT from here-but I'm from here NOW.

We spend a lot of time in this neck of the woods talking about days gone by, forgetting that there's almost thirty-eight thousand of us here in the now, who, by our efforts on a daily and repeated basis, form a bridge from yesterday to tomorrow. Through everything we do and everything we don't do (commission and omission-Sister Mary Jean would be proud I've remembered those for all these decades), we add or subtract from our city. I wasn't born here and I'm not especially comfortable at the growing probability that I'll die here, but that's pretty much out of my hands so all I can do is my best for everyday that remains. And that goes for you, wherever it is you live.

Each of us is in a formalized environment with financial, emotional, organizational structures and strictures. We function in a form with a President, a Governor, a Mayor or a leader with a title of some sort and there are subordinate bodies and functionaries in a descending order to deliver good and services to us, the citizenry and residents. But there's also an informal association of significant others, our neighbors and friends, perhaps in a neighborhood watch, or a bowling league, or a group of volunteer firemen, or who coach a kid's soccer team or host scout meetings.

Where we live is the sum of all those activities-not just our bond rating and our reserve to debt ratio. What we are is defined and refined by who we are. Yes, it's important we have trash pick-up, but it's just as important that we keep an eye on our neighbor's house when they go away for a long weekend. We have a municipal apparatus for the 'big things' but we need to have engaged and energized citizens for all the things in between. So when I talk about this, or any, week's municipal meetings, it's the celebration of the volunteers who give of themselves to make where we all live a better place that should be paramount.

Here in Norwich, for 350 years, and now now a little more, we've been getting done that which we must do in order to build a city from which we can do those things we want to do (maybe not as successfully as we always can, but we can try again and differently the next time).

"Silver cities rise,
The morning lights
The streets that meet them,
And sirens call them on
With a song."

This is a very light week for formal meetings, though that shouldn't stop you, if there's something you feel strongly about, from organizing friends to develop solutions to those challenges you see around you.

Tuesday night at six in the conference room in their building at 10 Golden Street is a public hearing by the Board of Public Utilities Commissioners/Sewer Authority. You'll find the agenda for both meetings here, with a small suggestion for clarification. Both meetings were originally scheduled for last Tuesday the 23rd, and moved to this Tuesday. Technically, that makes them special, NOT regular meetings (because each City Clerk is required by state law to have a full year's listing of meetings before the new calendar year begins). We have trouble grasping this difference which is why some of us look at our governance agencies with a jaundiced eye.

Wednesday at seven in Room 210 of City Hall is a meeting of the Republican Town Committee. Room 210 is kind of snug as I recall from my years on the Baseball Stadium Authority, barely able to accommodate all of us and two or three folks from the baseball team. If one of the two major political parties in the city can hold its regular meeting in there, how many people can we be talking about? I think anyone can attend, it's in a public building after all, but you have to be a member of the RTC to take part in the meeting, which seems only fair.

And Thursday at seven in the conference room (probably in the basement) of 23 Union Street is a regular meeting (possibly) of the Inlands Wetlands, Water Courses and Conservation Commission, though there's NO agenda posted for the 2 July meeting (Wednesday starts the seventh month already!) and the appointments of all but one member, and alternate member, have expired. I hope the City Council might find the time at an upcoming meeting to make current ALL the appointments on advisories, boards, commissions and committees of those who would wish those appointments to be validated.

And it'd be nice if the chairpersons would do their best to inform the City Council about appointments and their status (it takes two, or more). And there's always vacancies, so if you're willing to help you might want to visit here and fill out one of these (though I did, about sixteen months ago and never heard another word....soon enough we'll have to fix the form, so maybe after that I'll re-apply).

We have a proud past in Norwich, as do you in your town. A past that shouldn't make us wonder what's happened as we worry about the why of today but rather challenges each of us to add to that tradition and build upon it, for our children and their children and all the children of those who will, one day and someday, live among us and for themselves and their families.
"We, the great and small,
Stand on a star
And blaze a trail of desire
Through the dark'ning dawn."

"The Late, Great Michael J..."

rags — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:01:33 GMT

I was reading a magazine
And thinking of a rock and roll song.
The year was nineteen seventy-nine
And I hadn't been playing that long.
When a man came on the radio
And this is what he said
He said I hate to break it to his fans,
But Michael J is dead, yeah, yeah, yeah."

Michael Jackson announced his coming of age in 1979 with the release of Off the Wall, the first of a trio of consecutive albums whose total sales now approach one hundred and sixty million copies and are still going strong (and nothing gooses sales like death. If the promoters of the London O2 Arena shows could figure out a way to do it, they could quadruple the number of shows slated there, starting next month and sell ALL of them out as well as the fifty they claimed were already sold-out).

As a fossil of fifty-seven years of age, I grew up listening to white rock and roll music. That The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and countless others who crossed the musical bridge from England based 'their' music on black American rhythm and blues meant almost nothing to me. I learned of Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Bo Diddley, Lightnin' Hopkins and more through the long-haired Englishmen who mentioned them in every interview and who were visibly stunned that more (white) American fans didn't know of them.

While some of us had Gary (Lewis) and the Playboys, Paul Rever and The Raiders and Tommy Roe, there was the music of Motown getting played beyond the 500 watt AM day time radio stations in the middle of the country. When Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey (Bill) Robinson and the Miracles, Gladys Knight and The Pips, The Temptations (with and without David Ruffin), Martha (Reeves) and the Vandellas (what the heqq was a Vandella anyway?) took the Top Five spots on "Music Radio! Seventy-Seven Double U, A, B See!" countdown, pop music had crossed a line even if many of us couldn't. Check out the soundtrack to Forrest Gump to discover how transcedent music had become.

For radio stations, long after the listeners had made the leap of faith, the segregation continued and when Music Television launched on 1 August 1981, with The Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star, musical apartheid was still alive and well. It was Michael Jackson's Thriller album, with the John Landis epic film treatment of the title track, but more especially Beat It with Eddie Van Halen's lead licks that kicked open the video door for artists of ALL colors and musical genres. No one ever looked back, at least not until last week.

All of that was made possible, if not inevitable, by Michael Jackson who died suddenly Friday and many across the globe were maddened by the loss and saddened by the circumstances. In recent decades, Michael Jackson had seemed to be more of a Greta Garbo, in terms of sightings and stories. There was Wacko Jacko who slept in a hyperbaric chamber, the man who married Lisa Marie Presley, had fathered children through some variant of the Immaculate Conception, dangled one of them from a balcony, was the subject of rumors on every aspect of his personal life and as deeply in debt as some entire nations. And if you think his life was one, long tabloid tale, we may never get the last of the deathly details.

Sad as it sounds, when I heard the news last week, it was the first time I had thought of the King of Pop in any context in many years. Shame on me? Shame on him? A life ended before its time, a gift of great price not fully shared and the tragedy of what could have been, overshadowed and measured by what was in its place.
"And the two of us went to this bar
And we stayed to close the place
And every song we played
Was for The Late Great Johnny Ace, yeah, yeah, yeah."

(-with apologies to Paul Simon)

Even then, Rolf Harris knew....

rags — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:45:08 GMT

An acquaintance who knows my appetite for the bizarre, and tries to avoid ever being the object of it, Bob H., shared an item with me that thrilled me to the marrow. It combines my love of the arcane dateline with my commitment to the concept of the global playground, and here it is.

Yes, if you're in Iowa and beset with crop circles, I'm not sure this helps you at all, but the Mel Blanc fan in me LOVES the idea that on the island of Tasmania there's something a bit weirder than the Devil (I've always been a bit disappointed that oh-so-many years ago when I saw a real Tasmanian Devil, it behaved nothing like Mel's and sounded more like Marvin the Martian.)

I think in light of the number of poppies the little fellows probably eat before wandering around in circles, the farmers should be grateful the beasties don't develop raging cases of the munchies and hit the local 7-11's for Ho-Ho's and sugar coated donettes. Just cleaning up the discarded packaging alone would take two days a week. Or so I've been told, as I have no personal experience with the snacking while stoned phenomena at all.

Initial reports, such as the one above were a bit sketchy, but leave it to the BBC, the Beeb(er) with apologies to Sir Eddie Haskell, to add granularity to this discussion and allow us to snicker while pretending this is serious business.

Speaking of which, as true where you live as it is where I live: "Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don't change." but nearly as important, and certainly more germane today is:
"Watch me wallabies feed mate.
Watch me wallabies feed.
They're a dangerous breed mate.
So watch me wallabies feed."
G'day.

We Couldn't Agree More unless It Were Less

rags — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:59:44 GMT

We had another nearly-nice day yesterday around here. I'm treating June in Connecticut as if it were a chocolate layer cake, always moist. Seems to be more or less a national trend but I don't live in Indiana, so I don't know what it's like where you are. I do know when John Donne rings the bell around here, I'm the only one in my corner. And right now, even though summer has officially started, I'm not working on my tan, that's rust.

So, of course, we had showers (if we were to NOT have showers, I'd fret that something was wrong with the clouds. Oldest children worry about everything and when stuff is going great, we worry that we overlooked something), not torrents of rain (at least around here) but enough rain that you knew it was raining as if Gene Kelly could keep a secret if his life depended on it.

And as I walked from Point A to Point 2 (I majored in neither math or phonics at Rutgers, nor orienteering (come to think of it) which must be why so many people tell me where to go) I passed a building where the sprinklers were on, making sure the lawn was getting watered. I almost dropped my umbrella in surprise. I imagine there's a schedule for this kind of stuff and a contract to regulate the relationship between the waterer and the wateree and yet, this is another one of those bridges that becomes a wall.

Instead of an agreement that helps get things done, we have a starting gun in a footrace to see which side can come with a faster reason for why something cannot be accomplished. Or, we have a variant of the Abilene Paradox in which one party is not willing to even attempt to change a relationship even though they say they want change. Instead, they maneuver to have the other side come up with reasons for why change is bad so they are absolved of any responsibility to change.

Happens everyday and more often than you'd imagine. Just watch the evening news and listen to what those who are our leaders say and then watch they do. In Hartford, Connecticut right now, both the Republican Governor and the Democratic state house want a responsible state budget. With both sides wanting one, what could be easier to accomplish? Yeah, right. Tell you what, how about you hold on to the umbrella and I'll go get a yellow Macintosh and a rainhat to go with it. I already have the tartar sauce, so no pressure; but for Friday dinners we like a nice piece of cod, okay?

The Evils of the Great Outdoors

rags — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:27:04 GMT

You have, I imagine, heard, seen or read something about the Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford and his power walk along the Appalachian Trail that ended in Argentina. Or perhaps in a woman by the name of Argentina. There was so much sniffling at the press conference I had trouble understanding him.

I did enjoy his explanation that 'it began innocently' which, I just put my polit-speak decoder ring on, means 'both people were fully clothed.' And then they went for a hike, I guess. Fresh air, flora and fauna, Ned Beatty, canoes, hot, monkey love. The National Park Service could be on to something here. Did someone just say Eric Weissberg? Earlier in his life, Governor Sanford worked as a guide on the Appalachian Trail and my notes say something about a G string, but I think that's in reference to a banjo (my ring just exploded so I'm not sure what that means).

Perhaps he and Senator John Ensign can organize a Philandering Meandering for Straying Spouses though I guess in the interests of propriety, men and women would not be permitted to hike or tent together. Perhaps Senator John Edwards could sponsor a merit badge or two, to include one on bi-partisanship and the person who collects the most badges during the hike could receive a Monica Lewinsky purse, for the ladies, or a cigar humidor for the men. (Or not.)

And Republicans were angry ten days ago when Letterman cracked wise about the family of one of their Governors? Yipes! He could dine out for months on this stuff, which will, in turn, spark spirited intellectual discussion and debate in that great American tradition that always end with shouts of 'your mother!' and descriptions of feats of gymnastic and anatomical derring-do. I suspect our Secretary of State still can't believe she doesn't have a dog in this hunt.

I'm starting to get a better appreciation of why more Republicans and even some Democrats regard Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh as Republican party leaders (okay, maybe NOT everybody). They've certainly done quite a job on the gender gap that's always supposed to be such a problem for the Grand Old Party. I'm wondering if Ann Coulter can't be persuaded to help out as well. Perhaps some cunning costuming, "look at those little shorts ... You can see all the way to Argentina." I smell a pay-per-view special that will be a hit from sea to shining shining sea and east and west of the pampas. 2012, here we come!

Jon & Kate Meet Dr. Seuss

rags — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:21:11 GMT

I don't watch pap on my TV
You'd think that means I watch TLC.
But I'm so bored with What Not to Wear
American Chopper? I do not care.

The shows all seem so fake to me
Because I remember the "old" TLC.
The Learning Channel it was called
Until into showbiz it was hauled.

More glitz, more handheld, more "Me-TV"
Toddlers and Tiaras, dysfunctionality.
I do hate to brag with this advertisement
But most of their shows are self-aggrandizement.

Those two luckless losers, Silent Jon and Witch Kate
The newspapers report, will now separate.
Maybe the kiddies can have their own show
Please tell me their names as I do not know.

Three years ago, both led the most quiet of lives
Then the chaos descended as the cameras arrived.
He was too surly, she was a twit.
How can folks in their homes tune in for this sh--stuff?

They're opportunistic, their kids make a crowd.
Have neither of them ever heard of Lance Loud?
Between diapers and feedings and small children's squeals,
They're fussing and feuding when not cutting deals.

And now, as it happens, Warhol was right.
Fifteen minutes is over so now say good night.
You were famous for being famous, that's the name of the game.
Though no one's quite sure of the source of your fame.

We'll cap all the cameras and shut down the lights,
And quietly skulk off into the night.
Yeah, it's sad about you, but it's worse about us.
Yourselves and your kids are now under the bus.

I never watched you so I guess I could gloat,
But I just changed the batteries in my TV remote.
Jon and Kate Gosselin, so their lives are all gone?
Let's turn on the tube, something new will come on.

"I Left My Trousers in My Other Pants"

rags — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:20:52 GMT

On a day where I have a few minutes after lunch before returning to the fray, I have a guilty pleasure I indulge. I'll go on line and read the police blotter. If Ross MacDonald wrote in haiku, it would most closely resemble the police blotter. Baseball fan that I am, the police blotter is to a full-out story as a box score is to Damon Runyan byline.

My most favorite 'crime stoppers textbook' (Chester Gould, where are you now that we really need you and how could Madonna and Warren Beatty screwed up Dick Tracy the way they did?) of the moment wasn't in the newspaper (yet) but rather showed up on line at the CBS TV news affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut, WFSB.

It had me at hello: Man In Underwear Held Standoff. I didn't expect video and there wasn't any-no hard feelings, that's why I have an imagination, though a bit more specificity would have helped. Boxers or briefs? White or a color and which color? Inquiring minds want to know (I doubt that in this case, but a boy can dream).

Speaking of questions, savor this line from the story: "Police said officers received a call just after 9 a.m. that a man was driving around his Third Street home (in Windsor Locks, CT) in his underwear." We have a yellow sun, right? I assume that means visitors from Krypton can use their powers of X-ray vision to see through a car door and realize the driver has no place to put his wallet or change for tolls.

And for sheer majesty of language, I'm tempted to notify the James Joyce Society for this pearl beyond price: "While negotiators were called to the home, police said the man tried to elude police by setting off a diversion in the basement and attempting to run out the door." The fellow is in his underpants--how much MORE of a diversion does he think he can create and, that said, why not share with the rest of us what his masterstroke (poor choice of words?) was.

The TV report offers me two BGOs (Blinding Glimpses of the Obvious) to finish by telling me the police took the man for a mental health evaluation (cannot imagine why) and the entire incident remains under investigation (though we at home will NEVER hear another word about this story. Guaranteed.)

For those who prefer newspapers to video, the Hartford Courant version has far superior granularity (it means 'more detail' but sounds so much cooler, it hurts; doncha agree?) but almost destroys the movie in my head because of the detail it offers, lacking in the Channel 3 story, to include the man's name. I like to think of him as nearly the Lone Ranger, wearing underwear instead of a mask. If I'm gonna stand on the front lawn of my own house in my underpants, holding a knife (I read that back about nine times and see no other way to write it), I sure as heck don't want my name in the paper. And don't tell a soul that the police had to taser me. What are we supposed to talk about at Saturday's Little League game, the weather?

In a way, except for the officers who were directly on scene as he was doing his Ginsu knife demo, this was almost a victimless crime. What, I wonder, would an APB read like had he robbed a bank and tried to blow that Popsicle stand? Would anyone have even looked at his face? Or would the cops be on the lookout for SpongeBob, because that's all that the witnesses remembered. And, just me, or didn't the getaway driver look a little like Michael Jordan? (As long as all he shows me is the money, we're fine.)

Norwich Meetings 22-26 June 2009

rags — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:23:05 GMT

I stumbled across this link, again, on the City of Norwich website and it makes me smile. Shows what The Buggles know. Turns out the Radio Star is unscathed, it's urban suburbia that tends to take it in the shorts. Twenty-one months left on a three year relationship, it'll be hard to top the first fifteen, I guess.

As for goings-on in The Rose City this week, there's a ton of Semiseptcentennial events you can most easily learn more about by visiting here.

Meetings-wise, this afternoon at four there's a (another) special meeting of the Board of Education though it's a public meeting really for the purposes of posting only as a reading of the meeting agenda suggests. And am I alone in being surprised as to how this agenda can be shared with the Norwich City Clerk for posting in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act and public law, but nearly all the other Board's meetings and meeting minutes cannot be posted seemingly anywhere.

At five o'clock in Howard T. Brown Park is a special meeting of the Harbor Management Commission, special despite what the agenda says because it's on a different day and time from its regular convening which is why the Commission had to send a note to the City Clerk, not to mention its location shifted from the great indoors to the great outdoors. If it's raining, does the meeting shift to the gazebo?

With all due respect to the agenda, which mistakenly presumes this is a regular meeting, there shouldn't be any new business as a special meeting must be restricted only to the posted on the agenda reason for the calling of the special meeting (there isn't on this one). While it would be heartening to hear an update on the Cadle Mill development, past meetings suggest that all's quiet (too quiet) on that front. If you are going to attend, I suspect there's a lot more specifics on the Harbor Management Plan update first introduced in May after months of work. From what I've read, it seemed like a good first draft with some work still needed.

The announced for Tuesday at four o'clock Building Code Board of Appeals meeting has been cancelled. For those (like me) keeping track at home there's NO posting of meeting agendas or any meeting minutes, since March of this year, on the City's website.

It may be worthwhile on Wednesday to pack a picnic lunch and hike over to 23 Union Street as there's a series of meetings going on there, starting at five, with the Dangerous Buildings Board of Review whose meeting agenda makes it one of the harder-working groups of people this, or any other, week in Norwich. I've joked about the name in the past, and it is a tad overly dramatic, perhaps, but the members are serious and sincere about making the city a better place for everyone.

Meanwhile, stay where you are if you go to that meeting because at 6:15, both in the basement conference room of 23 Union Street, are meetings of the 21st West Thames Street Advisory Committee followed at 6:30 (or when the first meeting is over) by the 751 North Main Street Advisory Committee (FWIW: for BOTH Advisory Committees, there are no agendas posted online and neither set of draft minutes mention where your meetings are held; how can you expect Waldo and Carmen San Diego to include them as part of their date?)

And at seven across town on New London Turnpike is a regular meeting of the Norwich Golf Course Authority, whose members' appointments have ALL EXPIRED. Perhaps the City Council can reappoint the members (or close New London Turnpike, whichever is easier), at an upcoming meeting? And my compliments to the Authority Chair for alerting the Council.

Thursday morning at eight, in their offices at 75 Main Street is a regular meeting of the Board of Directors of the Norwich Community Development Corporation. I am the most easily amused person I know, and even I have stopped laughing at the irony of the lack of a website presence for the agency designated by the Norwich City Council as the primary agent for economic development for the city.
You can probably get a meeting agenda and/or minutes of their last regular meeting by contacting Bob Mills, their Executive Director, though what you're to do if you're in search of new location for your business, is beyond me, possibly him and probably all of us. Hilarious.

"Dwarf on a moped speeds through the park
To Kilroy's Renaissance, the Temple of Art
Signs with a flourish, then makes it his own
Pockets his pencil, and slyly rides home."

We're Still Here

rags — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:08:36 GMT

True story I've just remembered: from so long ago, Patrick is our only child. He and I are driving from our home in Offenbach to my work in Frankfurt am Main. He is about three or so in the back seat of our car, in his car seat. The car is waiting for the light to change at the intersection of Eschenheimer Landstrasse and Adickesallee, just a block down from the old Frankfurt cemetery. "You know what?" he asked me, in German (as that's all we spoke), looking out the side window at a kebab-laden or a trinkhalle, "if Mom had married someone else, I would have a different father." Thanks for playing, indeed.

Both of my brothers, Kelly and Adam, are fathers, so Happy Father's Day to them and to you, even if you're not one of my brothers. All three of us are fathers without a reference library as our own father passed away almost thirty years ago and, quite frankly, set an example before his passing that I suspect none of us would have been interested in following.

I don't know if either of them have, in the course of their own families, had moments where they've wondered 'what would Dad have done?' I have had a few, but not as many as being the oldest, perhaps, I should have had. My wife and I are married for almost thirty-two years, and all but about eleven minutes of that are because of her hard work and certainly NOT mine. We have two children, a son turning twenty-seven in three weeks and a daughter whose birthday (her age is her business and not my story) was a little more than a month ago.

When my son was small and when my daughter was (much) younger, I was fortunate that my wife's Dad, Franz, was close at hand to serve as a sounding board to his somewhat befuddled and other cultured son-in-law as he struggled to remain competitive in the Parenting Olympiad. I never wanted children, or thought I never did, until Patrick and Michelle were born. I was very fine with defining myself as Sigrid's husband but I think 'and father of Patrick and Michelle' adds a lot to my resume.

I don't have happy memories of interaction with my Dad and learned many years later he could have said the same about his relationship with his father. I grew up thinking somehow I was the screw-up and judging from the caustic comments, I wasn't alone. I was numb, literally, after we learned my wife was pregnant with Patrick because I feared I would forge the next link in that chain, but that fear evaporated in the first moments of his life on this earth and while his sister later brought her own challenges (how could someone so tiny be so insanely defiant I used to wonder as she would glare up at me, no higher than my knees it seemed, and tell me 'no' for hours on end), I kept coming back to Freshman Orientation at Dad's College: Help Them Do Well and Be Happy.

I've since discovered, as have probably all fathers, it is pretty easy (especially in hindsight) and not unlike the lesson of Dad's College. You can't do too much about the skinned knees or the first true loves that break hearts but tell yourself, and your child, 'this, too, shall pass' because you know it will even when they know it won't. All you can wish for your son or daughter, is that they are well and happy-two conditions for which they, themselves are most responsible. I used to fret that their father, unlike the parents of their friends, couldn't afford cars for them to drive in high school, or ski holidays or wardrobes from A & F, wasting so much of my energy on pointless worry since both of them grew up never missing what they never had.

Today, Father's Day 2009, both of our children are adults with lives very much their own and have more or less accepted that in the heart of their dotty Dad they will always be his kids. And should the day come when they choose to have children, I think (or hope) they'll have good memories from their own childhood to draw upon and smile.

Pass the Ketchup and Praise the Admonition

rags — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:32:17 GMT

Right now in Connecticut, the (Republican) Governor and the Democratic Legislature have yet to pass a state budget, try as they might (and some days, the finger pointing and the 'I know you are but what am I?' under-five behavior does get VERY trying) and because it's not happened, the 168 municipalities across The Nutmeg State have had to improvise (= roll the dice) on their own local budgets.

In a state that thinks of itself as "The Land of Steady Habits," and has two casinos that would seem to argue just the opposite, you'd assume we'd have developed a comfort level by now on the amount of Jell-O being used in the foundation of our soon-to-be-next fiscal year. (And why can't we be "The Land of Comfortable, but Casual, Footwear"?). So our elected and appointed local leadership, all talking about tightening belts and lowering expectations etcetera ad infinitum (or so it seems) have "austerity" budgets "because of The Economy" (or some variation thereof).

But budgets, like diets, have two sticky moments: the start and the end. When you're trying to lose weight, the first five pounds and the last five pounds are the hardest to lose. Those are the pounds you can't talk off, that you can't start losing tomorrow; they have to happen in the now. Of course, I suppose, you could always go the amputation route, and obviate the entire discussion and that, it seems to me, is what may have happened this year.

Instead of having a hoped-for (by me) discussion on what should (city) government do and how much of it should be done (and how do we measure that) , we tried a 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' approach which doesn't do much ultimately to get rid of any of those ten pounds (total) we were hoping to lose. The shock waves of discussion we've had, and are still having, over how classroom population size may change, how building fees will escalate, and what will happen to property taxes, have all obscured that discussion. Too bad because that means we'll have it again and again, with less and less patience for differing and dissenting viewpoints which brings us to debates involving balled fists and hurled invective. And those always work out so well.

We, and not just here but across the country, took a page from the (borrowed, and heavily) book of J. Wellington Wimpy 'I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today', had fries and a shake with that burger and then went back to the office and removed ALL the Tuesdays from our desk calendar. Just not forever. The trouble will come later on when both the calories and the deferred costs of that hamburger go right to our hips. Good thing we can't afford to buy new jeans because we sure as heck aren't going to fit into them. Which is just as well because you can already guess what's gonna look fat.

Remembering All Mothers' Sons

rags — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:31:59 GMT

(Congrats to Adam and Margaret! The first 16 are the hardest.)

It's odd that on the day, Wednesday, it traveled to Norwich from Montville (on Route 32 in New London County), the weather was the driest we'd had in a fortnight or more. Odd, I mean, in an ironic way, because the American Veterans Traveling Tribute to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial commemorates a conflict that has always been associated with torrential monsoon rains, lush forests, and endless acres of flooded fields cultivated as rice paddies.

The VFW post in the Norwich Business Park (yeah, you read that correctly; don't try to figure it out, just be grateful it's NOT there alongside the baseball stadium or the condominiums) collected all the funds and provided the organizational wherewithal to host the commemorative wall at Howard T. Brown Park in Norwich (right at the harbor) during the Semiseptcentennial through Sunday, Father's Day.

I've never gotten organized enough to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in our nation's capital though I know where I'd go when I did. Roy Christopher Olgyay was three weeks older than I when we met as freshmen at the Browning School for Boys tucked between Park and Madison Avenue on Manhattan's East Side. There were three of us who were odd men out, Roy, me and George. George was a wrestler who lived in Brooklyn, which, for Manhattan scions might as well have been the moon. I was the son of the lower school headmaster and it would have been suicidal to harass me.

That left Roy. As near as I could tell (and more accurately, remember now) Roy's family was Roy, a younger sister and his mom. There had been a dad and a successful and comfortable life in Europe, actually in Hungary, but Soviet tanks put an end to all of that in 1956 and Roy never mentioned his father no matter how often or hard Charlie H and Roger C (the former, terminally bored; the latter, terminally stupid) would tease him, from all the niggling dumb stuff that Neanderthals in packs inflict on loners, through the wholesale destruction of Roy's school blazer. His mom never had a week when she didn't need to repair a tear or a rip.

He endured it all stoically, writing each injury down in a small notebook with a date and the time. George and I watched and never intervened because all of us knew the rule: you today, me tomorrow. As it turned out, Roy knew more than the rules and tomorrow caught up with him soon enough. I left Browning in the summer before my senior year for elsewhere. Roy left everything he had ever known and joined the Army for the express purpose of stopping the Communists in Vietnam. While others scoffed and smirked, he sweated and served. He was a true believer in the rightness of the fight. Roy arrived in country about the time the rest of us had scattered to the winds after high school graduation, so full of ourselves, on our way to colleges and universities.

Roy received a different education. He learned how to eat dry C-rations, how to fix a bayonet (even when it wasn't broken, strange language, eh?) and when, and how to always have extra pairs of dry socks because with all the rain and all the paddies a grunt walked through, the skin on your feet would rot in the boot if you weren't careful. As if, by the fall of 1970, in South Vietnam it was possible to be careful. As it turned out, he wasn't careful enough, technically, to make it to the fall, dying as a result of small arms fire on the 19th of September-probably while I was still wandering the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers College, learning my way around. The dude found his dust.

The Traveling Wall is at the edge of the park, framed by the harbor behind it. A few paces away, a volunteer looks up the name of the fallen and locates the panel and line on the wall while another volunteer helps you make a rubbing, as grey as the sky overhead, on snow white paper you can hold in your hand the way you hold the memory in your heart. I spent a moment in the rain with my sunglasses on because if nothing else I remain very full of myself even now, not so much talking about the good old days, because Roy can't and he didn't have all that many, but to bear witness in my small way to the sacrifice he embraced knowingly and willingly for those who may have been so wrapped up in their own lives it took a hike halfway across a New England town in the middle of June to try to make amends and sense of it all.
"If you have a farm in Vietnam/And a house in hell/Sell the farm And go home."
Welcome home, Roy.