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Homemade Holidays

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on June 30, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) I had an interesting conversation with some eighth graders the other day—yes, it can be done. They outlined their summer vacation plans in relation to two national holidays that bookend their seven-week break: the 4th of July and Labor Day. As they spoke of the coming academic year, they continued to use holidays as the milestones with which to mark important events. I find it sad that they see the days ahead as a small number of “important” dates in a sea of “filler days.” It’s like the people who celebrate “hump-day” every Wednesday because it’s halfway to the weekend, an outlook that reduces five days of the week to drudgery in the hopes they’ll enjoy the final two. What a rotten ratio. Of course, as a teacher, I’m constantly planning my instructional units against the holiday calendar. I’ve been around long enough to know I have to finish a unit before vacation, otherwise the Magic Troll robs my students of all memories of what I taught them before the break. During the school year alone, we have Labor Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Groundhog Day (okay, a bit of a stretch), Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, April Fools Day (even more of a stretch unless you’re a middle school teacher), Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and Father’s Day. This list doesn’t even include other religious holidays such as Easter, Passover, and others that don’t coincide with winter or spring breaks. No wonder our children begin to think in terms of “important” days and “other” days. Shouldn’t every day be important? What we need is a way to turn those “filler days” into “killer days” (and no, Walt Disney Corporation, you can’t steal that for your next promotion). Take today: Thursday, June 30th. Nothing special, unless you happen to celebrate Meteor Day, an observance of the 1908 Tunguska Comet Impact in Siberia, Russia… and who doesn’t? However, there are too many interesting things about this date to saddle it with such a pedestrian name. Three great Americans were born on this day: former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson in 1966, actress Christine Taylor in 1971, and swimmer Michael Phelps in 1985. One of these three is a drop-dead, stone cold fox. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t Mike Tyson. Speaking of Mike Tyson, on this date in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opened. Speaking of Psycho, in 1994 the US Ice Skating Federation barred Tonya Harding for life. See how special this day is already? In fact, June 30th is chock-a-block with interesting moments: in 1865, eight conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln were found guilty; in 1914, Mahatma Gandhi's was arrested for the first time; in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's published her novel Gone With the Wind, which logically led to the 1952 debut of the TV soap opera Guiding Light. In 1974, Soviet…

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iPhone’t Do That Again!

While getting gouged at the gas pump during last Thursday’s torrential rains, I noticed an SUV stranded underneath the bridge of the railroad tracks. It seems every railroad trestle in the area overlooks a makeshift pond during heavy rains, but the (crappy) picture I took with my iPhone shows this was no ordinary storm. Normally I’d be the one tempting fate to see if I could plow through the water in a game of engine roulette, but I just happened stop off to get gas just before the bridge. The cars driving underneath the bridge looked more like amphibious landing craft at Normandy as they floated the last ten or fifteen feet until their tires hit pavement again. As I pondered taking out a second mortgage to pay for topping off my gas tank, I noticed one car struggling to move forward. The rain was coming down in sheets, and the waters were rising quickly. Hoping to remain dry, I silently willed the car across, but it was as if someone had put a matchbox car in an aquariu I tried to take a picture, thinking maybe the Stratford Star could use it as a tweet, but it was raining so hard I feared frying it. I put it in my pocket to keep it dry. When it became clear the car wasn’t moving and the cavalry wasn’t coming, I sloshed into the pond and made my way over to the car. Before I knew it I was up to my hips in water—if you’ve ever considered jumping into a river created by a flash flood, don’t. It’s exactly the same as jumping into a half-full trash can at the beach and filling the rest with bilge water… only much, much colder and faster. I got the driver’s attention and she rolled down her window—she was eight months pregnant and didn’t know what to do. She said she’d just called the fire department, which I thought was a wise thing to do. Knowing I have karmic debts to pay, I had her turn off the car and put it in neutral so I could push her out. This is not a wise thing to do. Eventually someone else came in to help and we managed to get her clear just as the fire trucks arrived. In other words, if I had done the smart thing (who knows what electrical wires could fall in the water and fry me like bacon… or an iPhone) and waited for them to help, I wouldn’t have waded into toxic water with my wallet and iPhone in my pocket. I wouldn’t have had to bury my phone in a bowl of rice in a desperate attempt to keep it from burning out, and it wouldn’t smell like a chocolate cigarette even a week later.

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The Flowers of Graduation

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on June 16, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) Tis the season for high school reunions—I can tell by the sheer number of messages sprayed onto car windows with shaving cream and cake frosting. I need to see through my windows as I drive, however, so permit me to put my thoughts on paper instead. To Graduating Students: Congratulations! As you stand in line to get your diploma, take a moment to remember that first frightened walk to your kindergarten seat so many years ago. How did you end up here, a refugee from an Elton John video, dressed in a frumpy gown and funny hat as you fuss over a tassel? You’ve come a long way, baby. Now, the bad news: you haven’t really learned anything important yet. High school teaches you how to learn, but the real world doesn’t care about the area of an isosceles triangle. Instead, now you’ll be expected to be open enough to learn what really matters. I like how Cambridge University puts this in perspective, referring to its graduation day as General Admission. That degree you just received is a ticket, nothing more. Which show you go to, and how much you enjoy it, is up to you. Choose wisely. If you’d allow me to offer a bit of advice about handling this big day, I’d ask you to thank the family and friends that helped you get to this point.  Too often we wait for important occasions to show our full appreciation to the ones we love, then forget to do so amid the distractions of the day. It’s a sad reality that twelve years of full-time academic study for adolescents remains unattainable for most. Your family made sacrifices to provide you this opportunity; it’s their day, too.  That means that, yes, you have to kiss Aunt Marge. It ain’t pretty, but all of us had to do it. Besides, she doesn’t give you the card with the check inside until you do. To Parents of Graduating Students: Congratulations! Now that he’s graduating, you’re “this close” to turning Timmy’s bedroom into a yoga gym. Before you send him off to college, though, you have to shepherd him through the events surrounding the commencement. Remember that part I wrote earlier about how graduating students should remember that it’s their family’s big day, too? Forget that. This is their day, even if you have relatives and friends coming from all over the country and you’re still scrounging for additional tickets to the ceremony. Bite your tongue when your kids say that today will be the most important day of their lives; let them bemoan that this will be the last time they’ll be with all their friends as a group again. Let them enjoy their pre-nostalgia with whatever hysterics they can muster. Don’t worry that your kids will read this and neglect the advice I gave them earlier about thanking you: I find that students won’t read anything addressed specifically…

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An Open Letter to My Neighbors

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on June 2, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) I love my neighbors, at least the ones who live close enough to walk over and egg my house if they don’t like this piece. It’s the rest of you I need to speak with, so I’ll address you individually. After all, one of the advantages of having one’s own column is the ability to save on stamps. To the guy who keeps revving his motorcycle engine at 2:30 in the morning: You’re aware of the function of a muffler, right? More than mere decoration, it’s designed to significantly reduce the sound of your exhaust. I’m not supposed to feel in my chest how well you’ve cleaned your carburetor each time you pass my window. More importantly, you were supposed to get over needless revving when you outgrew your Big Wheel. If you still feel the need to announce your presence to those of us silly enough to sleep at these hours, try putting baseball cards in the spokes of your wheels. Or cure cancer. Either way. To the idiot who cuts through parking lots rather than waiting for the light to change: I secretly hope someone backs into you as you race through those parked cars to save that extra 60 seconds. I don’t want anyone injured, I just want your car badly dented. I know that’s horrible. I’m sorry. To the people who still throw trash out their car windows: Is your life so tightly scheduled that you can’t hold on to that bag of Fritos long enough to find a trash can? This isn’t the Space Station—we have regular trash pickup each week, and it’s already paid for in our taxes. Did you never see the crying Native American commercials? To the woman who jumps in front of me on the platform just before the train comes to a full stop in order to be the first one inside: Look, it’s a guessing game to stand in exactly the right spot on the platform so that the doors are directly in front of you when the train comes to a halt. We all know the rules. You guessed wrong. You can’t cheat and walk in front of the winners, the ones who spend months estimating the diminishing velocity and distance of a moving target. If you want to be first, earn it—like we did. I’m not afraid to step on your open-toed shoe. To the guy who drives around in the Ford Crown Victoria with the standard-issue search light still bolted to the driver’s side door: Do you notice how traffic slows to a crawl wherever you go? Are you trying to give us a heart attack every time we notice you in our rear view mirrors, or is driving around in an unmarked police car just your way of fulfilling a fantasy? Unless you’re leading a search party for a missing child, you can lose the search light. And the Ford Crown Victoria.…

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Monday Morning Raptureback

Say what you will about his failed Doomsday predictions, Harold Camping makes for fascinating theatre. As I wrote in my column just before Judgment Day (http://www.stratfordstar.com/opinion/my-voice/walshs-wonderings/69116-sign-of-the-end-times.html), Harold has a very healthy belief in himself—track record be damned. He’s even managed to kick it up a notch since emerging from his hobbit hole, declaring that he was right all along—lack of Rapture be damned. Turns out we’re still on for the End of Times on October 21, 2011—especially the damned. Asked for a comment by the International Business Times on May 21 after (surprise) he was still eartbound, Camping opened his door in a Members Only jacket (he has to be the sole surviving member at this point) and asked “Just give me a day. This is a big deal, and I gotta live with… I gotta think it out.” Addressing the media from his studios on May 23, Camping said, “If people want me to apologize I can apologize (Author’s Note: that’s not an apology). Yes, I did not have all of that worked out as accurately as I should have, or wished I could have, but that doesn’t bother me at all because I’m not a genius.” Not a genius? Hush your mouth! You just managed to fake an apology while deploying the “I’m only human” defense for taking on the superhuman task of being God’s public relations rep. Even better, he went on to say that he really wasn’t wrong at all. He said the Rapture was to be understood spiritually, not physically. “The sense of it is still the same, that Judgment has come, that we are now under judgment where it was not prior to May 21st. Spiritually there’s a big difference in the world that we can’t detect with our eyes.” In other words, the election results aren’t in, but all the precincts are closed. We’re just waiting for the final tally. Want proof? Well, you can’t see it with your eyes, silly, so… no. No proof for you. Instead, his Family Radio empire touts his new slogan, “We are almost there.” It reminds me of my dad as he packed my family in the station wagon for a 12-hour trek to Ohio. We’d whine, “Are we almost there, yet?” and he’d answer, “Yes.” Then we’d be in the car another four hours. We’re in for a long ride, folks, and Harold is just ramping up. On May 3, 2009, Harold addressed a packed gym of about, oh, 24 people about Judgment Day. He spoke of carcasses being thrown into the streets and desecrated because they are under the wrath of God—who knew how excited folks would be to finally get to desecrate bodies? Some of you might be wondering, “Why us? Why now?” First of all, quit your whining—we’re almost there. Secondly, we are being punished more than the folks from the previous 13,000 years because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sorry. These are the drawbacks of being a…

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Sign of The (End) Times

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on May 19, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) It was a cold January morning when I drove past the Barnum Avenue billboard in Bridgeport, but its message warmed my very soul: “He is coming again! May 21, 2011.” I pulled my car to the side of the road and wept tears of joy. The message couldn’t have been any clearer: Justin Bieber must be scheduled to perform in the Arena at Harbor Yard! My wife was the first to break the news. “It’s not Justin. They’re talking about Jesus.” My sense of disappointment was deeper than missing out on a Bieber Experience: while meeting Jesus was something I’ve always had on my Bucket List, I was hoping it would be the last item left in the bucket. Luckily, the 21st is a Saturday—this won’t be the traffic nightmare it could have been. Because I am a geek in addition to being somewhat dim, I looked into the organization that so crushed my heart. Turns out the man behind the sign is Harold Camping, the crusty biblical scholar that runs Family Stations, Inc., a Christian broadcast ministry based in Oakland, California. He’s the barnacle on channel 66 WFME, an impossibly frail figure whose seated biblical lectures are broadcast around the clock. This isn’t his first Armageddon rodeo. In 1992, Camping published a book titled 1994? in which he established Sept. 6, 1994, as the return date for Christ. Oops. He later admitted that his math might have been incorrect. This time, his logic is clearer: he has devined that the number 5 equals "atonement." Ten is "completeness." Seventeen means "heaven." In an interview with Justin Berton of the San Francisco Chronicle in 2010, Camping explained how he reached his conclusion that the world will end on May 21, 2011. He determined that Christ was put on the cross on April 1, 33 A.D. It’s been 1,978 years since that day. Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days—the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year. Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500. Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500. Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared "I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that," Camping said. Me, too! It’s so simple I’m surprised we missed it. In his appropriately named follow-up book We Are Almost There! he presents additional Biblical evidence which points to May 21, 2011, as the date for the Rapture and October 21, 2011, as the date for the end of the world. Followers of Camping claim that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world's population) will be “raptured,” or bodily pulled into the air to meet Christ upon His return. The rest of us will mope around…

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A Gift We Give Ourselves

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on May 5, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) I was nine when I first “discovered” the public library. I’d been in it many times for book reports or the occasional Indian Guides meeting, but it took a rainy day and Norton Juster to make it magic. I was banned from watching TV due to bad grades and forced to tag along with mom on errands, including her frequent trips to the library. One day an elderly librarian took pity and slipped me a copy of Juster’s Phantom Tollbooth, a book about a boy my age fighting terminal boredom. As a result, this woman opened up the world of reading to me, transporting me to new worlds. When I returned the book the next week, the librarian suggested another, then another. I left with a shiny new library card, a stack of eight books, and a love of reading that would last the rest of my life. I couldn’t tell you her salary or the percentage of my parents’ tax dollars that paid it. If you’d asked my parents, they’d have called it priceless. In middle school, the library permitted me to bring home all the music I couldn’t otherwise afford; by high school, they added VHS movies. In college, I was given free access to online journals and eventually media for my mobile computing. However, the evolution of the library included not only the manner in which the library allowed us to access information, but also the manner in which it was consumed. Typing rooms became mobile offices with free internet; children’s areas were expanded to encourage ReadAlongs and extensive programming; study booths added computer stations and stacks were reorganized to accommodate lounge areas. Librarians evolved into media specialists in order to wrangle all the assorted resources into a cohesive system that improved access. Once merely the gatekeepers of the written word, media specialists now guided and educated visitors on ways to better understand the wealth of information available in all its forms. I couldn’t tell you how much it cost to train them or the time this training required. If you’d asked the students or job seekers who got the help they desperately needed, they’d have thought it worthwhile. Today, the role of the media specialist is even more important as the amount and variety of information explodes. Instead of being provided neatly on bookshelves, information accessed digitally is often disorganized. In addition to offering a level of quality control with regard to the validity of resources, media specialists can cull the overwhelming number of those resources in order to maximize results and save time. Rather than a decline in attendance, the evolution of the modern library has created a need to service a larger number of patrons representing a wider segment of our population. In difficult economic times, it’s important to remember that equal access has always been the cornerstone of the American library system. Those who cannot afford books, videos, computers, or…

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As Easter Approaches

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on April 21, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) This past Sunday marked the beginning of Catholicism’s "high holy days" with Palm Sunday, a day that commemorates Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and eventual showdown with Pontius Pilate. It is one of the six Holy Days of Obligation in the Catholic Church. These mark important events that merit participation in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. On Holy Days, much like Sundays, Catholics are supposed to refrain from unnecessary work and attend church services. As a child, Palm Sunday meant three things: we got the brand new parish calendars (with the dates of all the upcoming parish league basketball games), we received our palm fronds (plastic-like, yellow-green leaves that we formed into crosses and put over our beds), and finally, that Easter Sunday was only a week away! For Catholic children who’d been forced to give up something meaningful for the 40-day Lenten season that culminates on Easter morning, this was the light at the end of the tunnel. I grew up believing that the Easter season was chock-o-block with Holy Days and the dreaded weekday masses they entailed. My mom pulled us off playgrounds for masses on Ash Wednesday (the start of Lent which finds Catholics receiving ashes on our foreheads while praying for strength in preparation for Jesus’ death and resurrection), Holy Thursday (the day on which Jesus and his disciples have the Last Supper), and Good Friday (the day on which Jesus was killed). It was only while looking into joining the seminary after college that I learned that none of these days required us to go to mass. With seven rowdy kids on her hands, my mom kept up the ruse in a desperate attempt to save our souls through overexposure. She also “suggested” the items we give up for Lent each year, and inevitably that meant no sweets at all. By the time Easter Sunday rolled around, the Walsh kids were irritable and jumpy in the throes of sugar withdrawal; we counted down the hours like addicts outside a methadone clinic and dreamed of the baskets of candy that waited for us upon our return home. Because my mom forbade us to touch them until after mass, we spent our morning trying not to hate the children snacking on chocolate bunnies in the pews around us. How the crucifixion of Jesus Christ has been marketed into a festival of marshmallow chicks and egg-shaped chocolate lorded over by a giant rabbit is beyond me. Even as a child with a harelip who should have seen this animal as a role model, I saw little value in the Easter Bunny. He doesn’t even have an opposable thumb! Easter celebrates our victory--through the death and resurrection of Jesus--over eternal death, but all the Easter Bunny does is hop around and hide eggs. I was never even clear on whether the bunny was the one leaving us the candy baskets in the first place, so weak…

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“That’s Clearly Over The Line”

It’s an amazing era to be alive, mostly because You Tube has archived our most embarrassing moments in perpetuity. This morning I was forwarded a video of my childhood nemesis, Lawrence Welk, the man my parents chose to watch instead of “The Six Million Dollar Man” on our only TV. Welk’s wholesome blend of gospel, orchestral, and country music was inflicted on America for more than twenty-seven years before it was perpetrated again on that generation’s offspring in the form of endless syndication on PBS. The purity of The Lawrence Welk Show made Ed Sullivan look like Timothy Leary, yet clearly one of his producers let one slip past the goalie in this particular episode broadcast in early 1971. The duo of Gail Farrell and Dick Dale performed “One Toke Over The Line” as a gospel/country number… and with straight faces! To appreciate the irony, it’s important to note that Brewer & Shipley’s song (and only hit) had just been banned by the FCC. The Vice President of the United States at the time, Spiro Agnew, had just named them personally as dangerous and subversive to American youth. On April 15, 1971, Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the song, “began a steady cruise up the charts – until the FCC issued it’s ‘reminder’ to broadcasters to know the meaning of songs that ‘tend to glorify or promote the use of illegal drugs such as marijuana, LSD, speed, etc.’ Now, at least half a dozen Top 40 stations have dropped the single.” Explaining the meaning behind his lyrics, Michael Brewer  said, “One day we were pretty much stoned and all and Tom says, Man, I’m one toke over the line tonight.   I liked the way that sounded and so I wrote a song around it.” In fact, Shipley often introduced the song in concert as “our cannabis spiritual.” How fitting, then, that Lawrence Welk looked on approvingly at the end of the song and said, "And there you heard a modern spiritual by Gail & Dale." There is something deliciously appropriate in seeing those who hold themselves up as paragons of virtue unwittingly switching sides for a moment. In a state of religious fervor, one of Welk’s producers must have heard the words “sweet Jesus” and “sweet Mary” and completely missed that Mary was actually Mary Jane. A song referencing pre-marital sex and smoking pot, sung by a woman dressed as a cowgirl as she bounces on the lap of a grown man? That is really “over the line.”

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Webpage Training Wheels

I'm kicking the tires on some new website additions, the first of which is this more functional blog interface. I have no idea how these things will turn out because my webmaster (me) is notoriously dim. I hope to tweak it over time, but for now it's mostly for archival purposes. If you notice any dead links, please draw a chalk outline around them and let me know via the Contact Me link on the home page. There is a Contact form at the bottom for any comments or questions.

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