What's in a name

How many names have you had over the years?

I realized the other day that our names mark the various stages of our lives. While some stay with us, others come and go based on what we’re doing or who we’re with.

I’m named after my Dad, so in my early years I was often referred to as “Henry Junior” or “Little Henry.”

That was fine until I reached my pre and early teens when buddies or girls would phone and ask for me.  My Aunt Katherine, Dad’s sister who lived with us, responded with the simple question “big Henry or little Henry?”

You can imagine what would follow when I next saw my friends.  So, it was during my freshman year in high school that “Hank” was born.

I often wondered how Dad felt about my abandoning his name. My grandfather was Harry, so I felt a little disloyal to him, too. It wasn’t until a few years later when I joined the Knights of Columbus, where my Dad was a long time member, that I heard everyone there calling him “Hank.”

(While attending K of C meetings I also discovered that my Dad was a smoker. It must have been something he did socially, as he never smoked in front of us either at home or in the car. I don’t even remember him suddenly needing to empty the trash or go to the store for my Mother, which would have been perfect opportunities for him to have a quick cigarette or two.)

For the longest time I couldn’t adjust to being called “Mr. Sennott.” That was my Dad. But, I’ve become accustomed to it now. I still don’t like being called “sir,” but I understand it’s an attempt by the high schooler bagging my groceries or making my coffee at Dunks to be respectful. And I’ll give them credit for that.

“Mr. President” was cool during the two years I headed the Attleboro City Council. On a few occasions during that same time period, I briefly ascended to “Mr. Mayor” when the incumbent was out of town leaving me in charge.

My current names include “Dad;” “Papa,” and “Professor,” along with various tones of “honey,” depending on whether I’m in or out of the doghouse.

W.C. Fields famously observed that “it ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”

In this era when “throwing shade” is the rage and it’s often hard to have a civil discussion about much of anything, Fields’ wisdom is worth remembering.

It’s the names that we positively respond to, not the one’s we’re called, that define who we are. We have the power to label our unique brand and shouldn’t surrender it to those who disagree with us or for whatever reason just don’t like us.     

We are who we say we are.

 

 

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

I’m going to be 64 in April.

All those clichés you hear and ignore from older relatives when you’re younger -- stop and smell the roses; enjoy the time while you have it -- are actually true.

I don’t know how I got to be this age. I swear I was 32 not that long ago; or at least 47.

But then I start to think about some of the signature moments in my life and realize that many of them didn’t happen just last month or even five years ago. Some of them occurred decades ago.

I first realized I was getting older last January while shaving. I was thinking about how busy work was going to be over the next few weeks and months and noted that my granddaughter’s birthday was coming up in early April, followed by mine. If she was going to be four that meant that I was going to be…63!

I dropped my razor in the sink.

How did that happen? After 63 comes 64 then – oh my God – 65!

I don’t feel any different.

I don’t look any different. 

Right?

Not really.

I’ve finally grown into my white hair, but there seems to be less of it.  I used to religiously watch Jay Leno’s and before that Johnny Carson’s monologue before going to sleep. Now if I manage to not doze off before 10:00pm, I congratulate myself on staying up late.

I never got the fascination that people like my father-in-law had with Florida. He took great glee in calling us to report the current temperature and letting us know that everything – from the tomatoes to the cuisine at Costco – was better there than back home.

Now, after spending a few vacations in the Sunshine State, I understand what he was talking about – except for the food at Costco -- and watch the price of flights and hotels plotting the next time we can visit. 

I’ve also noticed lately when talking with friends that we spend more time than we ever did discussing our various trips to the doctor, what medical tests we’ve recently endured, and the current status of our various nagging ailments.

As I get ever closer to officially being a "senior citizen," I'm adopting Mark Twain's philosophy that “age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

While I’m well aware that there are many more years behind me than in front of me, I’m also lucky to be blessed with a wonderful family, good health, and great friends.

No matter what your age, who could ask for anything more?

Keeping It Simple

Many of us make well intended New Year’s resolutions. Most of us somehow manage to never keep them.

Lose 20 pounds; save more money; read a good book every week. They all fall by the wayside as the daily grind takes over and we never find the time to accomplish those things that we swore on our sainted Grandmother’s grave we would.

For 2017, I’ve decided to save myself the frustration and not commit to a check list of promises.

My goal for the new year is to keep life simple. My hair is white enough. I’m not going to worry about the things I can’t control.

I can't worry too much about what Le Grande Orange does in Washington.  If I do, my hair will start falling out quicker than it already is.
 
I’m also not going to be so concerned about what other people think. I’ve been around long enough to have earned the right to be grumpy every now and then.

What I can do is be the best husband, father, grandfather, son, brother, employee, colleague and friend that I can.

I can control the amount and quality of the time I spend with my family and do the best job every day for the people who employee me. I can be generous when generosity is needed. I can appreciate the people I’m around and the opportunities I’ve been given.

We’re in the final days of a year filled with tragedy.  The phrases “you never know” and “there but for the grace of God…” have been uttered far too often.

We need a fresh start. The new year won’t be without its challenges and tragedies, but if we focus on the good, the positive and the possible it has to be better than the one we’re thankfully leaving behind.

Tilting at Windmills

We’re going to be subjected for decades to the slicing and dicing of this year’s election results in an attempt to explain how Donald Trump was victorious.
As I watched the tallies come in and saw states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin go to The Donald, I thought about a book published back in 2004 called “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” by political analyst and historian Thomas Frank.

The book focuses on the rise of political conservatism in the social and political landscape of Kansas, whose leaders support economic policies that do not benefit the majority of people in the state. Yet, these leaders continue to be re-elected based on their positions on "explosive" cultural issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

The most recent example is current Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, whose aggressive tax cuts have resulted in substantial budget deficits significantly impacting the state’s already lagging educational system, as well as other important services.  Yet, he was re-elected,

While there certainly was a healthy dose of economic frustration behind the Trump vote, it also reflected a variety of hot button cultural issues from immigration and the rights of those who are LGBT to gun control and the place and role of women in society.

What I wonder is how many people who supported Trump understand how much they were voting against themselves.

 So, I wonder if people in Kansas understood on Tuesday that they were voting for someone who is a vociferous climate change denier, because their state greatly benefits from the expanding renewable energy business, especially wind power.

Since 2001, 25 wind farms have been built in Kansas with six currently under construction representing in total more than 4,500MW in generating capacity. It has been suggested that for every 1,000MW, the cumulative economic benefit is about $1.08 billion dollars. To paraphrase our President-elect, that’s “huge!” 

I wonder if coal miners and steel workers in Pennsylvania and auto workers in Michigan realize that they voted for someone who has pledged -- and will have the Congressional support -- to repeal “Obamacare,” which contains a provision that forbids health insurance companies from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

(I had an interesting conversation with my brother who lives in Michigan following the election. He said what befuddles him is the number of autoworkers who are now critical of the "bailout" that saved their industry and their jobs.)

With all the talk about creating more manufacturing jobs, I wonder if factory workers across the country, who supported Trump because he pledged to tear up a variety of trade agreements, understand that trade doesn't always equate to lost jobs. It can also open markets, so that there are jobs. (As long as you possess the skills needed to satisfy the demand.)

…and I wonder about all those voters -- especially in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- who either stayed home or didn’t cast a vote for President, because they didn’t “like” Hillary and/or found Trump impossible to support, are feeling today.

Not too good, I bet. This one's on them...

Post Script

This may be hard for some to read on the day after our stunning national vote, but election results sometimes have a funny way of being right.

Now that the 2016 political season is history, I can say this: it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that I wasn’t elected Mayor of Attleboro in 1983. (See “Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory”)

Looking back, I like to think that I would have been a good Mayor, but I can also see that I was young in a lot of ways, inexperienced and probably a bit too full of myself. I certainly had more than my share of critics, who would have liked nothing more than to see me fail and been eager to help me do so.

I hope I would have been a quick learner. In the days before the election, I had been talking to people with much more experience about joining my City Hall staff. I hope I would have listened to them.

In 1985, I was re-elected to the City Council having been selected to fill a vacancy several months earlier.  But now Mayor Reed, my opponent in 1983, lost her re-election bid to former Councilor Kai Shang, who had finished a distant fourth in the preliminary two years before.

Like our President-elect, no one in the political crowd took Shang’s candidacy seriously.

His claim to fame was two-fold. Shang shot the winning basket in the 1948 “Tech Tourney” giving Attleboro its first statewide hoop championship.

He was also involved in a long running feud with the City over the fate of his business/home.  Shang operated his family’s long established downtown laundry on property mapped out to be taken as part of the City’s redevelopment efforts. He and his family lived on the upper floors.  So, in addition to those who remembered his high school exploits, he also had the sympathy of many newer residents, who saw him as a small business owner being treated unfairly by the City.

Shang’s less than effective and often confusing public speaking style only added to his everyman image, which in many ways he was. But, it also served to mask the fact that he was a very successful businessman, who owned many pieces of valuable property across the City.

He was in marked contrast to Reed’s “high society ways.” As the only female Mayor in Massachusetts at the time, she was often involved in activities outside the City and even served as co-chair of John Kerry’s Senate Campaign. When word got around that she was being taken by helicopter to events, many in working class Attleboro were not impressed.

(Reed also inexplicably decided to go back to school after taking office and began attending nearby Wheaton College.)

When her term ended, Reed stepped away from politics. In in the height of irony, Shang began working at the new City Hall, built by Reed, and located directly across the street from where his family’s business and home had stood for decades. He was, in fact, a surprisingly effective Mayor for six years concerning himself with issues that impacted the average citizen.

Like Shang, there’s no predicting what will happen when Trump takes office.  But, the country survived the Presidencies of Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren Harding, and Herbert Hoover. (Though it took a world war for us to get out of the mess Hoover created.)

Here’s hoping that President Trump frequently surprises those of us who didn’t support him and at least occasionally disappoints those who did.

 

Bumper Stickers

I’m sure the bumper stickers have already been printed.
“She’s not my President”

“He’s not my President”

The first time I remember anything close that kind of message was in the Watergate Era when people from Massachusetts – the only state George McGovern carried – began sporting bumper stickers on their cars that said “Don’t’ blame me, I’m from Massachusetts.”

But I don’t recall people ever saying that Richard Nixon wasn’t their President. And no one suggested that Gerald Ford wasn’t, either.

Nixon was never a popular guy in Massachusetts dating back to when he and John Kennedy competed in 1960. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t respected.

My Dad – a good Irish Catholic Democrat – worked at a downtown Boston hotel where Nixon made an appearance during the 1960 campaign.  My Dad shook Nixon’s hand and I’ll never forget how excited he was every time he would ask friends and family members to “shake the hand that shook Richard Nixon’s hand.”

My Dad never voted for Nixon, but he also never said that “he’s not my President.”

My guess is that the “not my President” sentiment became in vogue when Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush received enough Electoral College support to move into the White House.  The sentiment has gotten even louder these last eight years, sadly reflecting a society where not everyone believes that we’re equal.

The slurs and the insults that have been sent President Obama’s way might be a preview of what will be said if Hillary Clinton wins in November.  (Just imagine some of those bumper stickers…)

“Not my President” is just another example of our cafeteria approach to issues large and small. 

Boycott the NFL because Colin Kaepernick’s protest during the National Anthem is disrespectful of the flag. But, it’s ok for my favorite country artist to use the flag as a patch on his jeans.

It’s perfectly fine for some to say that American isn’t great.  But, if others did, Sean Hannity and friends would be apoplectic.

It seems that the difference isn’t what you’re doing or saying, it’s who you are that makes it acceptable or not.

Magician Penn Jillette, who has become known for his political musings as much as his Las Vegas stage show, says that “democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.”

We seem to be losing is our willingness to agree to disagree.  We don’t all need to have the same views, that would be pretty boring. But we do need to start respecting other people’s ideas again, even if we don't understand why they think the way they do and couldn’t disagree with them more.

We all have the right to be wrong in someone else’s opinion.

 

 

 

 

 

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

In 1983, at the age of 30, I came within 297 votes of being elected Mayor of Attleboro, Mass.

Known at the time as the Jewelry City, it was home to Balfour, Jostens and other companies whose names would be familiar to high school and college seniors as the makers of their class rings and publishers of their yearbooks.

It was also on the cutting edge of the technology business with Texas Instruments employing hundreds of local residents at their multi building campus.

The fact that I was even a contender for the job was surprising. I had moved to Attleboro a scant eight years before. But, as the City Hall reporter/evening talk show host for the area radio station, I became familiar with many of the community’s movers and shakers.  My name recognition in the broader community increased when I began teaching at the area’s only Catholic high school.  When the City Councilor for my Ward unexpectedly announced that he was not seeking re-election, it didn’t take much to convince me to put my name on the ballot.

After all, I was an Irish Catholic kid from Boston whose grandfather and uncles had long careers on the Fire Department. My Dad was active in civic organizations in the Allston/Brighton section of the City and had been approached about running for State Representative, but declined. So it was sort of a no-brainer.

The other candidate was a  former Councilor, who was said to have a relative on every corner. Somehow I won.

After being re-elected two years later, I backed the winning candidate for City Council President.  I found myself Chair of what was considered the “powerful” Finance Committee at a time when the incumbent Mayor’s popularity was waning as he struggled to implement the budget cutting Proposition 2 ½ law, while hanging on to his dream of building Attleboro’s first free standing City Hall.  At the time, City Hall was the rented second and third floors of a downtown bank.

When the Mayor decided not to run for re-election, the field was open and I jumped in portraying myself as an expert on City finances.

I finished first in a five person preliminary getting 28% of the vote. Coming in second was the Finance Chair of the School Committee, Brenda Reed, who was completing her first term. We would go head to head in November.

The fact that I would be the City’s youngest Mayor, if elected, and Brenda would be the first woman generated a lot of interested.  We slogged from Legion Hall to Elks Lodge in a blur of candidate’s nights.  We appeared on the first ever televised debate on local cable. The Boston media – which generally ignored Attleboro -- swooped in the weekend before the vote to interview us.

Election Day brought great weather and both our teams worked hard to bring out our supporters. In the end, I came up short. The difference was razor thin, only about 150 votes, if you think about it.  (If she got 150 less, and I got 150 more…)

It was in the days and weeks following the Election that it really hit home how every vote counts.

Reviewing the voter lists in the days following Election, I easily identified 150 people we were counting on who never made it to the polls.  For example, neighbors across the street, who we had down for five votes.

When their three children, who were attending college in Boston called to say that they were taking the train home to vote, Mom told them not to bother because “Hank’s got this.”  That was the prevailing opinion in many political circles prompting a friend to turn the cliché on its head and joke that I had “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”  

Dad got stuck in work; Mom was only one who actually voted. So five solid votes, melted into just one. There were dozens of other examples of people who, for a variety of reasons, never voted.  

In the next few weeks we’ll be hearing from candidates, civic leaders and clergy about the importance of voting. It’s easy to snicker and be dismissive.

But take it from someone who has lived it, your vote does make a difference.

Even if you think it doesn’t.