What follows are my earliest pieces for my "Walsh's Wonderings" syndicated column in Hersam Acorn newspapers. I am currently (and slowly) updating the website, and I plan on bringing the archives up to date as the summer progresses. Please excuse the mess in the meantime.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on August 2, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) I’m spoiled. While four billion people watched last week’s opening ceremonies for the Olympics, I was busy trying to catch up on old episodes of America’s Got Talent. That’s right: I was watching someone whose “talent” was getting hit in the crotch while England spent $42 million on acclaimed director Danny Boyle to create a visual extravaganza that would celebrate the entire history of Great Britain in a little under three hours. (No small feat—I figured the Middle Ages would have lasted at least as long as dinner.) All Boyle managed to do was scrape together 15,000 volunteers to put on the most ambitious show in England’s storied history. (By the way: don’t spoil it for me. I know it’s a big deal, but I fell asleep before it was over. I still don’t know if the guy who gets hit in the crotch makes it to the next round.) NBC crowed that 40 million Americans watched the ceremony, but what were the other 275 million doing? 111 million of us watched the Super Bowl, and that only had two teams from the same country playing one sport! Assuming maybe 20 million Americans had dates that Friday night, this still leaves an awful lot of people who found something more interesting to do than watch television. Ignoring for the moment the gravity of the situation (there’s something better than watching TV?), we must acknowledge that we’ve become very hard to please. When I was growing up, we planned our summer vacation around The Battle of The Network Stars with Howard Cosell. Now most of us don’t have the attention span to look up The Battle of The Network Stars or Howard Cosell on the internet. The other day I overhead someone complaining he felt “ripped off” after watching the Amazing Spider Man remake. Normally I’d be the first one to say that there should be a rule about “remaking” a wildly successful movie franchise that’s less than ten years old. (Twinkies last longer.) However, this guy just spent eight bucks on a matinee ticket for a movie that took hundreds of skilled artists almost two years and $230 million to complete. I’d hate to have to buy that guy a birthday present. Unfortunately, just as I get comfortable on my high horse, along comes the opening ceremony to bring me back to reality (if not reality TV). I couldn’t be bothered to watch it live—I watched it on my DVR over the weekend. What did I miss? Nothing much, just a military flyby as David Beckham sped the Olympic flame to the stadium by boat and 7,500 actors transformed the field into a replica of London itself. Kenneth Branagh and JK Rowling emerged from their respective holes to find 30 Mary Poppinses descending from the sky on lighted umbrellas to fight a forty-foot tall Voldemort above hundreds of children dancing deliriously with their…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on July 17, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) It’s odd to see a memory under construction, the conscious act of recollection cemented and planted in full view of a curious public. Odder still is the attempt to make that memory sacred in the face of the sacrilege that caused it to come into being. That’s why I wasn’t surprised that my wife and I almost missed the most powerful symbol of the September 11 Memorial & Museum this weekend, lost as it was amid the sheer audacity of the blooming six-acre World Trade Center site. The memorial was tasked with casting the grief of a nation into permanence, replacing the thousands of handmade epitaphs dotting the city from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to Union Square. Understandably, eyes are drawn upward to One World Trade Center’s “Freedom Tower” as it wills itself into existence on the New York City skyline. A crane atop the structure reaches out a bony finger like Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Man,” each massive steel girder hoisted thousands of feet into the heavens in blasphemous defiance of gravity as life is breathed into the scarred ground. Below, the gaping maws of two man-made waterfalls marking the footprints of the old towers create a subdued orchestra drowning out the construction crews surrounding the site. The rush of cascading water is eerily reminiscent of the fall of the towers themselves, and teary-eyed visitors scour the bronze plates for the names of loved ones on the parapet walls that line the pools. The unfinished museum, consisting of two trident beams from the original towers, sits lifeless and encased in glass. An aching, painful absence permeates everything. It’s amid this paralyzing emptiness that the “survivor tree” stands in quiet opposition to the overwhelming feeling of loss. A whisper in a sea of screams, it sends a message that the glass and steel above it cannot, a permanence and hope of which these manmade things are incapable. Hundreds of young swamp oak trees seem to huddle protectively around this last survivor pulled from the wreckage of the fallen towers, but its mere presence suggests a power that renders protection meaningless. In October of 2001, the trunk of this callery pear tree was uncovered from the smoldering rubble in the plaza of the World Trade Center, the last living thing pulled from the wreckage. Like the citizens of the city, callery pear trees flourish in urban areas because they are tolerant of a variety or soil types, drainage levels, and soil acidity. Originally planted in the 1970’s, the charred and blackened stump was carefully exhumed and sent to a Bronx nursery as it clung to life. Soon, like the nation itself, the tree began to heal. In the process, it became a more fitting memorial than any of the buildings that now rise around it. Even after the ten-year anniversary of the attacks and the opening of the memorial site, we are still left…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on July 5, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) A few weeks ago, the New York Mets asked season ticket holders if they’d be open to the idea of a designated “quiet seating section” at Citi Field. Among its features would be a lowered volume on the PA announcer and the absence of music or cheerleading. This section would be located in the boondocks of the second deck in left field, where the seats normally go for $20 to $78 depending on the opponent. If you were interested, in other words, you’d have to be quiet while complaining about overpaying for your tickets. Soon, the online world was abuzz with complaints. Why not bring a set of earplugs, they reasoned. Why even go to a ballpark if you don’t want noise? For many, the stadium is the place our wives send us so we don’t look foolish screaming at the TV. The furor died down only after a subsequent press release stated that the purpose of the survey was to investigate ways in which autistic fans could better enjoy the game Frankly, I never understood what all the fuss was about in the first place. It’s not as if they were asking the whole stadium to go silent. Any Met fan will tell you that our home games have been eerily quiet for years by the time we reach the eighth inning. Heck, any game not pitched by Santana or Dickey this year could be designated an “excitement-free zone.” Who needs a quiet “section” when the entire stadium is the quietest area of New York every time playoff season arrives? It’s not as if this policy would affect many people, either: the Mets sit comfortably in the bottom half of the league in attendance despite a sparkly new $850 million stadium. My dad would have loved Citi Field; the only reason he took me to Met games was because he hated crowds, and the ridiculous new pricing model they’ve employed ensures more unsold seats than a Paris Hilton concert. Even after reducing capacity by 16,000 seats from the old Shea Stadium, home games at Citi Field have all the excitement of the waiting room for jury duty. I’ve been a Met fan all my life, but I don’t think they’re going far enough. As long as they’re asking my opinion, how about adding a “limited visibility section” for those of us who can’t bear to watch our bullpen blow another late-inning lead? Or maybe a section that guarantees the people directly behind me won’t carry on a running conversation with the people directly in front of me… for the entire game? I’d pay extra if there were a section that outlawed Yankee fans from reminding me they’ve won 25 more championships than we have, but I’ll settle for a section where the seats swivel so I can watch the US Open over at Arthur Ashe Stadium rather than endure another September meltdown.…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on June 21, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) Farewell, my lightly scratched and slightly fogged friend. Parting is such sweet sorrow. We’ll always have Paris. And Heathrow. And Chicago O’Hare. It’s not you—it’s me. Like cigarettes and unlimited data plans, I can no longer afford you. Still, we had our moments, didn’t we? Remember when I could stuff my laptop under you? (That was when I could afford the extra bag.) Remember when I’d fall asleep on your plexi-glass shoulder? (That was before they charged fees for extra legroom.) Remember when there was only one set of footprints? That was when I carried you—actually, your entire airline—out of bankruptcy in 2001. Three weeks after the attacks of 9/11, Congress passed the Air Transportation Safety and Stabilization Act. It provided grants, loan guarantees and tax waivers valued at $15 billion to save the airlines’ bacon. Your parent airline never liked me, though, and now they’ve figured out yet another way to keep us apart: extra fees for window seats. Parents can be cruel like that. In retrospect, ours was a relationship doomed from the start. It started as a fling, a one-flight stand on the red-eye from Orlando. I was just coming off a long-term relationship with the aisle seat, where my legs dangled carelessly in the delicious open spaces only flight attendants dared to tread. After an ugly breakup caused by overbooking, we were thrown together amid the chaos of coach. Accustomed to being shoehorned like crayons in a box on every flight, the comfort of your concave embrace was a revelation. How could I resist you? From the protection of the window seat, there were no more glares as passengers tripped over my feet in the aisle. I no longer worried about falling asleep on a stranger’s arm on long flights; instead, I rested my pillow against your vibrating hull. There were no more bruised knees from the beverage cart; no bonks on the head each time someone opened the overhead bin; no getting up every time passengers with teacup bladders needed to use the bathroom. Alas, your parents (like the Capulets and Montagues before them) conspired to keep us apart. They started by charging for my second bag, then charging for the first. Soon they were weighing my bags and measuring my carry-ons. Upset we were still seeing each other, they took away my in-flight meal and hid the blankets and pillows. I had to pay extra for using my frequent flier points, then had to pay fees for using my phone to book those frequent flier points. I had pay for the lousy movies after purchasing the lousy headphones. On top of all this, I had to pay extra for the fuel. The fuel! That’s like renting a tuxedo and being charged a fee for using the fabric. Let’s face it: your parents were always looking for a better match and a larger dowry. It’s become common practice…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on June 7, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) My mom ran a meth lab out of her house for years without getting caught; she stockpiled enough simulants and inhalants to make Charlie Sheen weep. My kindergarten teacher (who shall remain nameless to protect her family) was even worse; she let her students handle so many drugs that it’s a miracle any of us managed to crawl out of there alive. However, after reading the news this week, I realize that my beloved Gammy was the worst of all: she used bath salts. When I was growing up, glue sniffing was a phase that lasted about a day or two in elementary school art class. Trying to get high off a bottle of Elmer’s was like trying to suck a bowling ball through a straw: it could be done if you tried hard enough, but there wasn’t much of a payoff. Sure, you might hear a story about a model airplane enthusiast going off the rails every now and again, but who could blame them? When you gave kids glue, paint, contact cement, and small amounts of gas in a windowless room and expected them to spend hours fumbling over tiny details, it doesn’t take a Grateful Dead fan to figure out the first trip that plane is taking. It was a time when parents had fewer “hidden dangers” in the house from which to protect their children—mostly things like paint chips, asbestos, or the accidental ingestion of cleaning products tucked away on the high shelves. Nowadays, more and more people are drawn to that very shelf in search of a cheap, readily-available high. Stealing a bit of dad’s liquor or stumbling upon an older brother’s “secret stash” has been replaced by something far more sinister: studying ingredient labels. Stealing mommy’s Ambien is so 2011. These days, kids are finding novel ways to use household products in ways we never imagined. As a kid, I never looked at the felt-tip markers as a door to another world… I just used them draw doors. I never thought of spending my newspaper route money on paint solvent or correction fluid or contact cleaner. Unfortunately, these have now become common inhalants, both cheap and accessible. By modern standards, my parents’ home warehoused a laundry list of mind-altering substances. The kitchen cabinets contained aerosol air fresheners, degreasers, whipped cream dispensers, peppermint extract, and nutmeg. The bathroom cabinets were full of hair spray, cough medicine, nail polish, ammonia, and toilet bowl cleaner. In today’s climate, my dad’s workshop stocks of spray paint, gasoline, and car wax would make him a suburban Pablo Escobar. Regardless of where they fall internationally on science achievement tests, it seems our kids are developing a fatal interest in chemistry. Data from the 2011 “Monitoring the Future” study, an annual survey from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, shows that 13 percent of 8th graders reported abusing inhalants in the past year. Most…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on May 17, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) The thief had been stealing money from us for weeks before we caught onto it. Just last night, I spied the hulking figure squatting inside my open window, waiting. I wanted to reach over to my sleeping wife, to protect her, to warn her—but the sweat-soaked sheets glued me to the bed. The guttural growls coming from the intruder failed to wake our dogs, leaving only me to see the robbery unfold. I watched helplessly as the burglar greedily sipped at the air around us. I felt naked and exposed as the thought hit me: I had no defense against this cold-hearted criminal. Whatever power I’d had to protect my family was lost the moment that open window allowed this creature access… the moment my carelessness had provided the opportunity… The moment I’d bought it on sale at Walmart. Air conditioners, like cable TV, GPS, and the Ab Roller, are luxuries that somehow turn into necessities when our guards are down. Applying the old drug dealer’s adage that “The first hit is free,” most of us experiment a bit with our disposable income. After all, America’s economy is built upon indulgences like wedding china that will rarely, if ever, get used. These days, frugality can be seen as downright unpatriotic. If we’re not careful, however, this can bloom into full-scale addiction. Overnight, our cable package could include the Guam Channel and 24-hour coverage of Sudoku tournaments. Worse, it could lead to central air conditioning. Like vampires or vacuum cleaner salesmen, air conditioners have to be invited in—an evil we bring upon ourselves. As anyone who’s seen the monthly electric bill can tell you, air conditioning is evil. Check the utility costs after a heat wave—I’ve had muggers who left me with more money. And yet it only takes a short time with air conditioning to make it irreplaceable. I find it impossible to switch back to the fan after a few nights delighting in the frosted windowpane cloud of cooled air. When the electricity goes out, my withdrawal symptoms would put Robert Downey, Jr. to shame. The entire concept of air conditioning is designed to separate us from nature. We spend all winter cooped up and dreaming of warmer weather only to cower inside during July and August like snowmen afraid to melt. We install monstrous boxes in our windows that block out the sun, then close every other window and door to keep the cold air in—it’s as if we’ve moved inside the refrigerator. Also like the refrigerator, I always forget to change the filter—in this case, a large, netted screen so full of scum and filth that I shudder to breathe at all. The first weeks of use lead to endless sneezing, red eyes, and an insatiable desire for chest x-rays until I finally remember to wash the filter out. My father, who grows smarter as I get older, didn’t believe…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on May 3, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) One doesn’t often think of mattresses until lying sleepless in them for hours at a clip. In the well-lit showroom, all of them seem comfortable. That the “memory foam” will suffocate my wife and I in summer, or that the “dual zone” option will leave one of us sleeping in a crater, never enters our minds. A night in a hotel changes that. We’re thrown into a no-win situation: if we love the bed, we end up hating our own. When we get back, we’ll run down the laundry list of ways our bed doesn’t stack up, staying up all night adding foam layers or switching pillows. If we don’t like the hotel bed, we’ll be up all night playing with the AC or switching pillows. Only one thing is for certain: regardless of the mattress, we’ll hate those pillows. Mattress comfort was not a priority in my father’s house. Like heat in the winter or “free time,” comfort took a back seat to utility. A navy man, he spent forty years sleeping on a bed sewn from two twins rather than paying for a king. (His queen did the sewing.) It must have been a nostalgic nod to his years on naval destroyers that led him to purchase the used trampoline bunk beds for his sons. To be fair, they didn’t start out as trampolines. Instead, they started out as threadbare webs of thin wire held together by hundreds of small springs. The only thing that kept them from tattooing their chicken wire design into our backs were the stained mattresses that appeared to have been taken too soon from their mother—they were as thick as a seventh grade mustache. While completely unacceptable for actual sleep, they turned out to be fantastic trampolines. My parents hated trampolines almost as much as they hated buying king size mattresses. They refused to let us on them after a friend had been paralyzed in their youth. These army surplus bunk beds were perfect replacements, and I took to wearing an old football helmet to soften the blow as I hit the ceiling. Eventually, we stretched the wire netting until the beds became little more than wire hammocks inside the metal frame. There was an element of danger that went far beyond the obvious risk of the rusted springs finally snapping. My family followed proper prison protocol: as the youngest boy, I was forced to sleep in the top bunk. At the slightest offense, my oldest brother would lie in the bunk below me as I lay sleeping. He would place both feet lightly on the springs of my bed, which sagged down toward him like an old water balloon. The mattress above squeezed through the wire springs like sausage casings, allowing for a solid footing. He would then kick his legs up into the mattress of my bunk, catapulting me a full five feet into…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on April 19, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) And yes, I mean that literally. Folks like me who ride a motorcycle around Fairfield County in April aren’t just taking our lives into our own hands—we’re putting them in yours… and honestly, some of you don’t seem all that jazzed about it. There is an unspoken agreement between all drivers on the road: we promise not to swerve into each other at high speed just because the lady at the lunch counter forgot the fries with our order. The pilots of planes, trains, and cruise ships make this same tacit agreement, yet they very rarely come close enough to each other to worry. Car drivers, on the other hand, barrel toward each other at ungodly speeds while separated by nothing but faith and a pair of painted yellow lines. Unlike pilots, who demonstrate high levels of competency and mental stability over time before being trusted with the lives of their passengers, anyone with a pulse and a pair of keys can get behind the wheel of a car. Scarier still, there is a bravado that envelops people when they step into a metal cage with seat belts, air bags, and heated coffee cup holders. Grandma Jones has led a long, full life—she has no problem cutting against traffic while trying to figure out the GPS. The wonder of automated travel, streaking across open roads at speeds that took modern man centuries to finally achieve, fails to fully capture the attention of giddy teenagers on cell phones. People have become so bored of driving that the failure to multi-task while doing so is seen as a waste of precious time. We choose to forget that we are literally risking our lives hundreds of times on each quick trip to the store. We pretend that nobody in the surrounding bullets of metal and glass is falling asleep, texting, or returning from an all-night bender. We motorcycle riders are not allowed that luxury because we are exposed. The typical car is several thousand pounds; a truck several tons; the typical motorcycle weighs only a few hundred. We do not have seat belts, safety bars, or side-impact air bags—we are surfers atop a hurtling roller coaster. In a collision between the three, one of us is going to end up a stain on the road—guess which? For this reason, my brother refers to motorcyclists as “organ donors. Our only defense is a healthy skepticism of every driver on the road, the absolute certainty that someone is about to do something stupid. (You know, the same attitude dads have about their sons.) That, and gearing up for each ride as if we’re trekking across Antarctica even amid the brutal heat of August. The thick leather jacket, heavy-duty gloves, industrial boots and blue jeans are the only thing keeping us from smearing our skin across the road like clumped Chapstick as soon as we dump the bike. My…
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star and Fairfield Sun newspapers on April 6, 2012, in my “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) I recently undertook a fitness challenge from a fitness challenge from a friend, which is a prettier way of saying I’ve allowed myself to be humiliated on a weekly basis. This humiliation takes the form of something that’s been the bane of my existence since elementary school: pushups. I’ve always thought of pushups as the ultimate waste of energy. When I lie down on the floor, I usually plan on staying down there for a while. There’s something incredibly humbling about the symphony of groans and creaking bones that accompany my efforts to lower myself to the ground. Birthing cows make less noise. As a result, outside of looking for contacts or trying to unplug the answering machine, I tend to put most of my focus toward staying on my feet. I do acknowledge that it’s a great workout, such as it is. It primarily targets the muscles of the chest, triceps, and shoulders, but for me it’s a full-body workout: every muscle in my body shakes like a frightened kitten as I try to push myself off the ground. If shaking uncontrollably were a workout, I’d be Jack LaLane. There’s also a pushup for every personality type: “rookies” (those learning the basic movement) or “pansies” (people like me who treat pain as God intended — something to be avoided) prefer the kind that allows for the knees to touch ground. This simulates the form of a pushup without al that ugly effort they normally require. Then there are the show-offs, the ones who perform their pushups on their fingers or using the backs of their hands. These are the type of people who ride racing bikes on walking paths and they should be avoided at all costs … especially the backs of their hands. Finally, there are those who perform the one-handed pushup, usually in the most crowded area of the gym. They tend to undress in front of you in the locker room with a careless disregard for towel usage before going home to watch Rocky IV. Again. Seriously; ask them. However, pushups fail to appeal to me on even a symbolic level: right after you push yourself up from the ground, you consciously lower yourself back down again. It’s an exercise Anthony Robbins would do if Anthony Robbins were a depressed emo teenager. It seems silly to expend so much energy pushing one’s body mere inches off the carpet, although I admit it allows me to see how much dog hair has managed to escape the maw of our vacuum cleaner. Still, I couldn’t escape the inevitability of pushups as I grew up. My swim and soccer coaches assigned them with wild abandon. In my zeal to get them over with, I resorted to what my older brother referred to as “rabbit pushups,” a quick muscle-twitch action that accompanies a barely discernible bending of the elbow before it straightens back…