The Electricity Derby

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 3, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on November 10, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

It was odd enough having the first week of school cancelled because of Hurricane Irene, but dealing with power outages on a snowy Halloween? Not even the Great Pumpkin saw this one coming.

Since my childhood days, I’ve long been a fan of the Electricity Derby. In the days before laptops or Gameboys, I’d sit vigil during electrical outages while trying to guess which part of our neighborhood would get power restored first. Occasionally, a random house would suddenly sparkle to life, the glow of its lights illuminating our defeat. These were the cheaters, of course, the ones smart enough not only to buy generators but also keep them filled with gas. I hated them for their forward thinking and their refrigerators filled with unspoiled food. My mom would unearth the decades-old box of Carnation powdered milk that blighted the pantry shelf and inflict it upon us if the outage lasted more than a day or two.

Power outages were dangerous for the youngest boy in a family of seven kids. Electricity formed a kind of invisible fence that separated my brothers and sisters from me. The distraction of the radio, the televisions, and the video games protected me from their gaze. When the electricity went out, it was as if all the cages inside the zoo were opened at once. A boy could find himself pinned to the ground while his brother performed the dreaded “Loogie Drip” over his face, or get cornered by a mother who’d just noticed several more chores that needed doing.

This is probably when I first noticed how one’s senses are heightened when the power goes out. Without the white glare of the streetlights, suddenly the sky is filled with stars. You smell the trees and the leaves and the ground at your feet. You rediscover the sounds of nature around you in a way that’s never possible when you simply choose to turn all the lights off. You truly hear what your house sounds like: you notice every squeaky stair, every loose shutter. You begin to hear the conversations that your neighbors are having just behind the hum of the cicadas.

My neighbor, upon informing me that the power company had told him it would take a couple of days to restore power this week, calls this a “return to nature – a chance to live like our forefathers did, before electricity.” Sometimes, I hate my neighbor. After all, there’s no comparison here; our forefathers never knew any better. They lived every day with salted beef and reading by candlelight, so they never knew what they were missing. Take away their saltpeter for a day and they’d squeal like stuck schoolgirls!

We, on the other hand, are dependent on electricity; those who aren’t, like Unabomber Ted Kaczynsky, tend to go off the rails. I need to see “SportsCenter” before I go to bed or else I get owly. Losing electricity forces me to become hyper-conscious of things like the battery life of my iPod, cell phone, and laptop computer. My wife and I scramble to find our car charging cords, wondering how long we can hook them up before the car battery dies. We suddenly learn how much hot water is stored in the hot water tank in the basement, or how long the ice stays frozen in the freezer. Will the house alarm still work, or even the house phone? For the first time, we realize how many things rely on D batteries—every flashlight and emergency radio in the house seems to need one, and I haven’t bought one since 1994. Instead, I have scores of the AAA batteries that power the TV, VCR, DVD, cable box and dog alarm remotes that now sit useless… next to the useless flashlights. We are forced to use candles, which my wife buys without any thought of the practical reality of flame; she has only trinket-sized patchouli and clover candles that give off less light than my wristwatch. We begin to navigate the rooms more by smell than by light; the acrid rose candle in the bathroom, the vanilla in the bedroom, the maple (maple? maple candles?) in the kitchen. And who has matches these days? We stopped smoking years ago; the Smiths across the street smoke like chimneys so their house is lit up like a joint in a dorm room. We usually spend half the night looking under the couch cushions for that book of matches we remember from three years ago.

Still, after a few days we begin to get confident that we’ll never need electricity again. We get used to the ethereal silences and grow to appreciate the lack of electrified distraction that we often allow to dominate our lives. We keep the lights out at night, reveling in our newfound power over power. Maybe our forefathers had it right all along?

Then, just as I go upstairs to drift off to sleep amid the sounds of the crickets, I step in a steaming pile of dog crap. That’s when I remember that our forefathers lived like filthy animals, and I fall asleep to “SportsCenter.”

Continue ReadingThe Electricity Derby

Running A Fever

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on October 20, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on October 27, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

Jogging is right up there with chainsaw juggling on my list of favorite hobbies. Unlike chainsaw juggling, however, I keep trying to talk myself into liking the jog.

Like most things in my life that I consider failures, I like to blame it on my upbringing. (Keep this in mind for the future, kids: Works every time). Growing up as one of seven children in the “sticks” of Greenfield Hill in Fairfield, my mom logged thousands of miles shuttling us to our various swim and soccer practices. By the time we reached fifth grade, we all understood that if it wasn’t raining, we were on our own to get where we had to go. Our coaches must have wondered why the Walsh boys always arrived to soccer practice in a lather, never realizing we’d just biked six miles to get there. When our bikes were broken, we had only our feet upon which to rely.

As a result, my two older brothers decided to become triathletes, and I decided to become bitter. Instead of using this situation to its best advantage (using this travel as training sessions for their future races), I took it as an opportunity to whine every time I walked to work at the beach.

My brother Chris began pinning articles about Mike Pigg, a famous triathlete, all over our shared bedroom bulletin board. I retaliated by creating Mike’s fictional younger brother, Tim, and tacking up my own “articles” and “inspirational” quotes. Where Chris posted Mike’s quotes such as, “Whether you’re first or second, you have your pride,” I posted Tim’s: “Running hurts my toes and takes away from Twinkie time.”

I cultivated my snarky attitude toward fitness even as I desperately tried to “catch the fever.” Figuring prominently on the family bookshelf was a copy of Jim Fixx’s “The Complete Book of Running,” the seminal text of the running craze of the early 1980s. I leafed through it many times hoping to discover the zeal of the recently converted, only to put it down and grab another cookie. Not even his death of a heart attack (at the end of his daily jog, no less) could free me from the nagging notion that I should be out there running if I was serious about staying in shape.

What followed was about 20 years of sporadic “training,” three or four-week bursts in which I’d attempt to convince myself that running could chase away those unwanted pounds. Many of these bursts ended right after a series of kind souls pulled their cars over to the side of the road as I was running — to ask if I needed help, or maybe an oxygen mask.

It’s not as if recent news is helping my self-esteem as I try my hand at running again. Last week, even as I pounded away on my treadmill in a desperate attempt to complete a 2-mile jog, Amber Miller finished the 26.2-mile Chicago Marathon while 39 weeks pregnant. She gave birth a few hours later to a healthy baby girl, saying, “For me, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.”

On Saturday, Mark Ott finished the Hartford Marathon and did a handstand: He’d just finished his 51st race, one in every state and Washington, D.C.

As if this weren’t obnoxious enough, on Sunday 100-year-old runner Fauja Singh earned a spot in the Guinness World Records as the oldest person to complete a full-distance marathon when he finished the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. In my early 40s, I lose my breath when looking for the TV remote.

One thing keeps me from giving up, though, and that’s my brother Chris. He went from reading Mike Pigg’s inspirational quotes to becoming an inspiration himself as he fought off the ravages of colorectal cancer. Rather than rail at the injustice of getting this disease despite a lifetime of clean living and elite athletic training, he responded by preparing for his next marathon even as the radiation and chemotherapy robbed him of energy. Even when surgery threatened to permanently end his pursuit of Iron Man triathlete status, he found himself running in a series of events to support other cancer survivors. Today, he is not only a cancer survivor himself, but also one of the world’s foremost cancer care consultants (cancertreatmentsurvival.org) and, yes, an avid triathlete. Let’s see Mike Pigg top that one!

So I keep buying blister pads and trotting onto the treadmill in the hope I might someday be able to run four miles without stopping. While I’ll have to trade my Thanksgiving Day goal from the Pequot Runners 5-mile Road Race (pequotrunners.org) for the more attainable Stratford 5K Turkey Day Trot (hitekracing.com/turkeytrot), I keep training in the hope that someday running will grow on me. At one point I hoped to be able to match my brothers and finish one full marathon. At this point, I’ll be happy if I make it to the Thanksgiving table without a side trip to the emergency room.

I’ll keep training, though. Fauja Singh ran his first marathon at age 89, so I figure I have a few years to get this whole running thing down. Even Tim Pigg would have to admit that’s within reach.

Continue ReadingRunning A Fever

Parenting (is) A Bitch

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on October 6, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on October 13, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

I’m a sexist, no doubt about it. At least, I’m a sexist when it comes to my dogs: the Walsh clan has a strict “no Y chromosome” policy. Like a holiday sale at Anthropologie, we’re girls only. It’s not that male dogs are bad; in fact, two of my favorite dogs growing up were dudes. It’s just that getting older has caused me to get picky, and one of the gifts of old age is the propensity to perpetuate unsubstantiated stereotypes without apology. You know, like Glenn Beck.

For instance, when it comes to doing “number one,” I prefer the dainty female squat over the lifted leg of the male. Our girls empty their bladders all at once, an important consideration for those freezing January mornings when you’re dressed in nothing but your faded flannels and moth-eaten Led Zeppelin sweatshirt. The male dogs I’ve had in the past tended to dole it out a little at a time, making sporadic deposits as if handing out tips at the country club. Females are said to be able to “hold on” longer than males, which was a nice surprise for me: car trips with my wife turns into an impromptu tours of the local rest stops if we’re on the road longer than 20 minutes.

Female dogs are also supposed to be easier to train, and frankly, I need all the help I can get. Long ago, I accepted that the women in my life are all smarter than I; we’re not recruiting any more players from the losing team. Females are less distractible, a truly male trait if ever there was one. Speaking of distraction, it’s cheaper to spay a female than neuter a male. They also seem less angry afterward. This is important because the males have a stronger instinctual urge to roam, a la Tiger Woods, and I don’t need any teen moms in this house.

Like any protective father, I’m not a fan of potential suitors for my girls; no dog will ever be good enough for my pups. No matter how great he might be, nature has endowed him with an extraneous appendage that clouds the thinking of all of us so afflicted. The unexpected visit of the “red rocket” can turn a merry family gathering into an awkward lesson on anatomy (I guess that’s true for humans, too). I prefer to saddle the poor middle school health teachers with the birds and the bees, thank you.

Still, dogs crave the company of others, and I can’t protect them forever. We continue to seek out doggie playtime even though every trip to the dog park at Lake Mohegan finds me politely asking someone, “Could you please get your dog to stop humping my spaniel?” After all, my girls can’t help it if they’re hot. We seek out the company of responsible dog owners at places like the 6th Annual Fall Festival to Benefit Animals at Paradise Green in Stratford. Held this year on Saturday, October 8th, from 10am-5pm, it’s an amazing combination of dog walk, craft fair, and puppy playdate (additional information available on starsfest.com). After that, we’ll continue to hope for a permanent dog park in Stratford (check out “Residents for a Stratford CT dog park” on Facebook for information and petition).

In the meantime, I’ll smile at the males—I’ll pet them, praise them, throw the odd tennis ball or two—but I’ll keep a wary eye on them. After all, it’s a bitch to have female dogs.

Continue ReadingParenting (is) A Bitch

To An Ungrateful Steve Jobs

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on September 22, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on September 29, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This was written after Steve Jobs announced his retirement as head of Apple, but before he passed away.

I deserve better than this, Steve. We go way back, after all: Remember when “going to the Dark Side” meant using a Windows product? How quaint. Now Microsoft is the kid brother who tries to tag along wherever you go.

Have you forgotten our history? I was weaned on your Apple II computers at Tomlinson Junior High, those beige metal boxes that had all the computing power of today’s Hallmark cards. You were my first, a DOS programming experience that resulted in games where players were faced with ever-worsening options to avoid an inevitably gruesome death. You had me hooked despite your lack of graphics or your white typeface on that daunting black screen. Like dogs, Apple never computed in color.

By comparison, my brother’s IBM PCjr was a white monstrosity that took up our entire desk and weighed almost thirty pounds. Simply clicking on the keyboard made the tabletop wobble like a cartoon chicken. My dad, who’d only recently ushered in the technology era for the Walsh household with a surprise Atari purchase at Christmas, made me fall in love with you all over again when he bought the first Macintosh computer. Apple had changed the game by replacing the black screen/white typeface with… (wait for it) blue screen/black typeface. Still, it was a fraction of the size of the IBM, didn’t require DOS programming to run commands, and it had a mouse. It didn’t do much, but it made a nice clicking noise that sounded like progress.

I’ll admit I’ve had my doubts about you over the years. When my brother brought home the Macintosh II, I felt like the stodgy nun watching Whoopi Goldberg singing and dancing around the convent. Who needed all those pictures, all that color? Computers were for coding. If you wanted flash, watch TV! I stuck with your more pedestrian fare, sinking the last of my student loan money into one of your PowerBook 100 laptops. With a screen the size of my iPhone and the processing speed of my cocker spaniel, it allowed me the freedom to wait for the 10-minute boot-up procedure any place I chose… as long as it came before the 30-minute battery died. All this without all that troublesome color.

Like Leo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic, we clung to each other in a sea of technological change as Bill Gates turned Windows into the industry standard. Companies simply stopped making software for Apple computers. You swore you’d never let go… until you did. When you left Apple, I left. I bought my first Windows computer shortly thereafter, feeling dirty and alone. In the nineties, the dwindling pool of knuckle-draggers who clung to their Macs were mocked much like Betamax users were a decade before.

Unlike Leo, however, you did come back. You tried to woo me with the glitzy iMac and G4 Cube, but it was your iPod that reminded me what we once had together. In an act of surrender that would make Winslet proud, I’ve given myself completely to you over these past ten years, with iPods leading to iMacs leading to iPhones leading to iPads. I have shown you the monogamy you failed to uphold when you first left in 1985, only to see that you’re leaving me again with unfinished business. When you announced your resignation last month, you renounced the ability to right the wrong you have committed against me these last four years: the butchering of my very name.

If you, like me, have succumbed to the charms of Jobs and his iPhone, you can see for yourself: Every time I write “Rob” in my texts, it is changed to “Ron” using auto-correct. I know there are other Robs out there who feel as I do, mainly that Rons are not important enough to merit this “correction.” I mean, outside of the occasional Weasley, Howard, Popeil or MacDonald, how many famous Rons have there been? Robs are not only better represented throughout history, but the word itself functions as both a proper noun AND a verb! Defined in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language as, “To deprive unjustly of something belonging to, desired by, or legally due someone,” it’s clear I deserve better at your hands, Steve. Don’t rob me of my name.

Regardless, I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. Yours truly,

Ron

Continue ReadingTo An Ungrateful Steve Jobs

Shadows over Connecticut

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on September 8, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)

“Mr. Walsh, someone just bombed the Empire State Building!”

When you’re a middle school teacher, you get used to statements like this as you start your day. “Settle down, Edward, and take out your homework log.” The words tumbled effortlessly from my mouth as students continued to file in from the hallway for first period.

“It was a plane,” added Luwanda, holding her books tightly to her chest. “They are interviewing eyewitnesses on the Morning Zoo. Nobody’s playing music. They’re saying someone flew a plane into the Twin Towers.”

My first reaction was to share the story of the plane that hit the Empire State Building in 1945. “Accidents happen; let’s just hope everyone is all right.” An eerie calm had settled over the room, and I knew it wasn’t the worksheets on conjunctive adverbs I’d assigned them. I had many students whose parents and neighbors worked in that area of New York City. As they settled down to the task in front of them, I tried to sneak a peek at CNN from my computer. The site was down. Not wanting to frighten the students, I resisted the urge to walk across the hall to ask if anyone knew what was really going on.

I was helping a student with a question when Thomas burst into the room with a late pass. “They just bombed another building!” he announced, slumping into his seat. What followed was the longest fifteen minutes of my life as I tried to keep everyone calm. When the period bell rang without any announcement from the principal, I dared to hope that it was nothing serious.

It’s easy to take for granted how far technology has come in ten years; on that day, we had no cable TV in the building, and our internet had already crashed. I rushed to a colleague’s room and found other teachers already huddled around a small radio. “A second plane has just hit the South Tower,” someone said through the static. As one, we realized our world had just snapped its moorings. I’d arrived at school at 6:55 AM, and the big news was the opening day for the United Nations General Assembly; they’d just established September 21 as the International Day of Peace. Now, spared the gruesome images that at that moment were plastered across every TV screen in the country, we quickly assembled a plan to get our students through the day.

We were given the task of trying to maintain normalcy even as Flight 77 crashed into the west side of the Pentagon; even as our principal quietly took each teacher aside to ask us to pull the blinds and gather the children in the middle of the rooms. I led a discussion on Isaac Asimov while trying not to worry about my wife, a mere half-hour outside the city but unreachable by phone. I had to keep it together in order to distract my students from those same thoughts.

By 10:00 AM, the cars began to line up outside the school. The office began interrupting classes with long lists of students whose parents had come to pick them up, and a sense of panic rippled through the student body despite our best efforts. Students who had family in the towers were asked to go down to the office, where they huddled with the school psychologists and guidance counselors while awaiting news. Soon we were asked to turn off all lights, then our computers, as we waited in ten-minute intervals for the next batch of students to be called home. Those students who remained kept sneaking glances at the cell phones hidden in their pockets against school policy, their ringtones an eerie soundtrack of happy jingles as we struggled to read with what little light streamed around the blinds. The songs Pink Floyd once sung about the World War II bombing raids of London suddenly seemed far too real.

As soon as the buses came to pick up the last of the kids at the end of the day, we scurried to our homes, desperate to touch our loved ones and sort through the rubble of the day. My wife and I ate frozen dinners as Aaron Brown, on his first day anchoring the news, guessed which of the teetering buildings around the crumbled towers would fall next. We stayed up all night as various plots were proposed and everyone grappled with what would happen tomorrow. We waited for the call from school that would tell us whether or not to stay home. It never came.

For many of us, 9/11 was not the day that changed our lives; it was 9/12. As the towers fell on that terrible Tuesday, our heads were swimming with the fear of additional attacks. We were numbed with shock, unable to process the empty spaces where the towers once stood. On Wednesday morning we awoke to the realization that the destruction of the skyline in the economic capital of the world was far too… easy. Suddenly, America was not safe from those who opposed her.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of that horrible day, I still have trouble processing those two empty footprints of the World Trade Center towers. The shadows of those doomed planes remain, casting a pall over Ground Zero that no construction crew will ever repair. However, ten years have shown that we are stronger in the places our attackers tried to break us. They did not divide us from our Muslim American community, but rather forced us to better understand and work with it. They did not tear down our way of life, but instead reminded us of its importance. They did not force us to live in fear; they allowed us to rise above our fears and to do that most American of things: to hope.

I saw that hope in our school bake sales in the weeks and months that followed, in the repainted cafeteria of red, white, and blue, and in the way our students rallied to support those in our community who’d been been directly affected. I’ve never been prouder of my students than I was at this uncertain moment in our national history. As sad as I will be to relive the images of September 11, 2001, I will cling to that hope. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, the hope “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

To hope that, eventually, those shadows will pass.

Continue ReadingShadows over Connecticut

Dynamite In The Wrong Hands

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 25, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)

“It’s not fair!” whined the little boy as he tore from his mother’s grip. “Everybody else has an iPad or a Nook; why do I have to use a stupid Kindle? It’s not even in color!” He jammed an e-reader back onto the shelf, knocking the “Back to School” sign off in the process, before his mother managed to wrangle him out of the electronics department. She kept apologizing to him, asking him to realize how much it cost, even as she dragged him out of the store. A few of the other customers exchanged condescending glances, but I understood the moment all too well: it was Dynamite magazine all over again.

When I was that kid’s age, I was going into 6th grade at Timothy Dwight School. Among the many rites of September was the magical hour when the teacher would spread the Scholastic Arrow Book Club sheets on the tables before us, inviting us into the world of reading through a series of tiny checkboxes we’d fill out in pencil. We could order any book or magazine we’d like, provided we came in later that week with the cash or check from home. The teacher would give a short summary of each magazine and show us a few sample issues. Alas, like Wyle E. Coyote, I only had eyes for Dynamite.

Dynamite was a glossy magazine for children that fed us popular culture in elementary school bits: think People magazine on training wheels. It featured the biggest stars of the day on its covers without the girlish stigma of Tiger Beat or the amateurish camp of Bananas. Before the days of cable TV and the internet, magazines had cache. In short: if you were cool, you got your copy of Dynamite each month in the big brown box the teacher lugged from the staff room. If you weren’t cool, you waited to be handed your free copy of Junior Scholastic.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Junior Scholastic, mind you, just as there’s nothing wrong with a free VD shot or buying ramen noodles in bulk. It contained the news of the day in digest form, followed by a series of reading comprehension questions and quick quizzes or word searches. It was supposed to make current events fun, a form of Flintstones chewable vitamins meant to cover up the aftertaste of Walter Cronkite. The good folks at Scholastic carefully chewed up the news before regurgitating their monthly cocktail into our eager 6th grade hands, their cover stories bearing headlines like, “Understanding The Hostage Crisis” or “The SALT Treaty and You.” If Dynamite magazine was dinner and drinks with Alec Baldwin, Junior Scholastic was jumping bail with Daniel Baldwin.

In addition to Magic Wanda’s page of tricks, the Good Vibrations advice column, Count Morbida’s puzzles, the Bummers page (adolescent bits of satire that always began with, “Don’t you hate it when…”), or the occasional pull-out poster, Dynamite’s crack staff of journalists touched upon the truly important topics of our time. One need only review these actual headlines from my sixth grade year in 1979/1980 to appreciate the coverage. September: “Face to Face With Erik Estrada.” October: “Gary Coleman, TV’s Little Big Man.” November: “The Dukes of Hazzard.” December: “Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy!” January: “Mork and His New Pals!” February: “Buck Rogers, Then and Now!” March: “Live From New York: It’s Gilda Radner!” April: “BJ and The Bear, A Special Talk with Greg Evigan!” May: “Benji, Hollywood’s Top Dog!” June: “Meet John Schneider!”  After December, all the headlines ended in exclamation points (!) and sent a clear signal to every child that something truly wild and crazy was going on between those covers.

My mom was immune to Dynamite’s charms, however, and no amount of pleading would convince her to part with the requisite subscription money. Much like the cold-hearted witch who’d refused her growing boy’s desperate petition for a decent e-reader (the one he has isn’t even color, for goodness sake), my mother was content to see me locked in a cell of cultural ignorance that haunts me to this day. The headlines I saw when I peeked over to my classmates’ desks offered a glimpse into a world I’d never know. “The Bee Gees vs. The Beatles! Who’s The Greatest?” (I was never told.) “Dynamite Spends A Happy Day With Scott Baio!” (I was never invited.) “Meet Rick Springfield!” (To this day, I have yet to do so.)

Lady, if you’re reading this, spring for the kid’s Nook. Don’t rob him of the intimate, backstage knowledge of the Jonas Brothers latest tour lest he grow up and regret his ignorance for the rest of his life. There are some holes you just don’t fill. Worse yet, he might become even more obnoxious and someday write a column about it.

On a side note, I’d like to apologize to my mom for most every back-to-school shopping trip we ever took.

Continue ReadingDynamite In The Wrong Hands

Fending Off The Inevitable

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 11, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)

The moment you realize you’ve slowly become your parents is always a surprise; my moment arrived when I told my wife we’d joined a boat club. While I’d never made a secret of my desire to get out on the water, she reacted the same way my mom had years ago when my dad announced he’d just bought the family a boat. An odd smile formed on her lips as if forced to appear at gunpoint.

“Really?” she said. Just like Mom once did. “That’s interesting.”

Women are smarter than men; all the women in my life, at least. In the second week of August, however, the brutal heat and humidity of Fairfield County can lead otherwise reasonable men to ignore the wisdom of these women and seek refuge in the comforting arms of material excess. For some it’s a red convertible, for others a shiny new motorcycle; for the Walsh family, it’s always been boats.

Growing up, my six brothers and sisters and I were prisoners of the thermostat. Because my dad didn’t “believe” in air conditioning any more than he believed in swimming pools or Bigfoot, the summer heat reduced us to boneless, moist clumps of flesh draped over the couches like melted chocolate. When he told us about the boat, we felt as if Moses were leading us out of the desert. My mom stood stoically to one side, no doubt mouthing a silent rosary in anticipation of the future headaches in store. While my dad was trying to recapture his glory days in the navy, my mom would be saddled with the practical realities involved in readying seven kids for an afternoon on the water with this unapologetic perfectionist who’d never owned his own boat before. While he climbed up the tiny flybridge to steer, it was she who’d have to cram the brown bag lunches, sunblock, blankets, and seven kids into the tiny galley below deck every time it rained.

When we arrived at the Housatonic marina for our maiden voyage, we caught our first glimpse of the new (used) twenty-four foot cabin cruiser—or at least what had been one in a previous life. It bobbed sadly in between the majestic boats on either side, as lifeless as the floating bunker fish that surrounded it. These being the days before they cleaned up Long Island Sound, this was a far cry from “sailing the ocean blue.” My mom’s eyes began to tear up, but I couldn’t tell if it was the smell of the fish, low tide, or the sight of the boat.

Dad christened his dream boat “The Irish,” a loving nod to our family heritage, ignoring the somewhat checkered maritime history of the Irish themselves. He’d soon discover the irony. Out of necessity, my dad required that we immerse ourselves in nautical jargon. There was no front or back of the boat; only “fore” and “aft;” no left or right side, only “port” or “starboard.” We learned quickly not to speak of the “bathroom,” and even quicker not to complain about it. “It’s not supposed to be comfortable,” he’d explain. “It’s called the ‘head’ for a reason—now use your head next time so you don’t have to go to the bathroom on the boat.” When the “head” wasn’t working (which was pretty much the entire time we owned the boat), he suggested we “go for a swim” if we couldn’t hold out until we returned to the dock. Needless to say, the Walsh kids rarely swam too close to one another in those days, just in case.

As the summer wore on, my dad demanded we leave earlier and earlier for our trips on the Sound. Most assumed this was a practical matter: when something went wrong (as it often did), it dramatically reduced the time we had to wait to get towed back into shore. The Coast Guard was always very friendly as we chatted on the short ride in: “We didn’t know the radio was broken until we tried to get help, after we figured out the sonar was broken, after we hit the sand bar.”

The real reason was simpler: The Irish had no reverse gear, and my dad didn’t want anyone to see what we were doing to their boats as we left the docks. My brothers and I would line up on either side of the boat and push it out of its slip, inevitably bouncing off the boats to either side in the process. “Fend off!” my dad would scream, each of us assuming he must have been talking to the others. It turns out that “fend off” means to keep pushing the boat away from the other boats, but we just assumed that’s what the bumpers were for. Putting the Irish to sea was like playing a giant game of bumper cars, only with more cursing and a lot more smoke. One could be forgiven for assuming the Walshes were shoveling coal for fuel with that giant black cloud billowing from the engine.

Things weren’t much better coming back into dock, but we grew adept at pulling ourselves into the slip by grabbing the boats to either side. It was awkward if their owners were on board, but we smiled our way through it. Each trip was followed by a total scrub-down of the boat, nine people worn by hours on the water in cramped quarters now secretly humming “It’s A Hard Knocks Life” and praying for rain the next week. After two seasons of fending off the inevitable, the Irish came to permanent dock in our back yard, killing a large patch of grass underneath in symbolism so strong I am almost reluctant to include it here.

Still, on a sweltering August afternoon, I can’t help but think it might be time to get a boat. Maybe if it’s cheaper than the convertible, my wife will let me.

Continue ReadingFending Off The Inevitable

New Test For Political Nominees

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on July 28, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)

The Democratic and Republican parties announced their nominations for the November elections in towns throughout Fairfield County last week, eliciting little more than a collective sigh from an electorate weary of partisan politics. To be fair, the announcements were made even as President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner turned the crucial negotiations surrounding the need to raise the national debt ceiling into a high-stakes game of “he said/she said.” Faced with an opportunity for leadership, both sides reverted to childish antics more akin to “Thomas The Train” than Thomas Jefferson.

All sides in Washington agree we need to at least temporarily raise the amount the government can borrow by August 2 or risk defaulting on our obligations. This could mean further destabilizing the financial markets while devaluing the dollar and increasing interest rates. Rather than bowing to the gravity of the moment, both President Obama and Speaker Boehner chose to host separate press conferences vilifying the other.

On Sunday’s “Face The Nation,” US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner bemoaned that the histrionics resulting from these delicate negotiations have already gone too far. “You want to take this out of politics… you don’t want politics messing around with America’s faith and credit.” This simple posit can be applied to every major issue facing all levels of government today: painting each debate as an ideological struggle has wasted whatever credit our politicians had left. Few have faith in the ability of our elected leaders to play nice with each other, much less solve the problems set before them. A July 20 Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 80% of respondents are “dissatisfied” or “angry” about the way the government is working.

While discontent is not unique, one associates negative numbers like these with the Arab Spring more than a congressional recess. More and more Americans are growing sick at the prospect of further political gamesmanship among the major parties; former President Richard Nixon referred to this group of citizens residing in the middle of the two extremes as the “silent majority.” These are not flag-wavers or gavel-smackers; you won’t find them standing on the corner with sandwich boards or rallying in the streets. These are the folks whose time is taken up providing for their families, paying their taxes, and improving their community. They just want their government to work, and they’re smart enough to realize that some compromise is in order when working with a diverse population. To think otherwise is not merely childish but dangerous

It’s amid this backdrop that we meet the newest crop of nominations for local government, and one could be forgiven the cynicism that accompanies the platforms they trot out. I have the utmost respect for those local men and women who seek the thankless job of representing our best interests, but it’s hard to maintain that respect when important issues are held hostage to political affiliation. What we need is a layer of insulation between the strident ideology that paralyzes government and the consistent productivity which we desire of it.

In the interest of restoring some of that lost faith and credit in our elected leaders, I propose a simple three-part, common sense test to help weed out those whose “leadership” would contribute to political stagnation rather than remedy it. After all, we have to pass both a written test and a driving test before we get a driver’s license—shouldn’t we require a few things of those who will control our tax dollars?

First, each nominee should demonstrate familiarity with the primary definition of the word “compromise,” which is generally understood as a settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions. It is not, in fact, a dirty word, nor is it interchangeable with its secondary definition, which is to reduce in quality or value. Far too often, politicians seem to have missed the nuances between these two denotations. In short, if you feel that making concessions automatically means you’re compromising your values, you can leave your place in line and retake this test later when you come to your senses. You need to join a book club, not town council.

Second, each nominee should demonstrate the requisite level of creativity, adaptability, and resiliency necessary to accomplish the difficult tasks of representative government. Put bluntly, are you smart enough to figure out how to solve difficult problems and get other people to understand your solution? We don’t want to hear about the labor pains—just give us the damn baby. We’re sick of politicians whining about why things are broken—fix it or step aside and let someone else have at it. If you don’t have the ability to discover alternative solutions and see them though to fruition, don’t take up space on the ticket.

Finally, nominees should understand they are but stewards of a community that’s existed long before they were born and will continue long after. We don’t care about your won/loss record at town council meetings; we care about the pothole that just broke the rear axle. None of you will be in office long enough to change government, you can only nudge it forward or hold it back. If you’re pushing an agenda, step out of the line and paint it on a sandwich board. Leave the governing to those who value results over rhetoric and pointless posturing. If you don’t have the common decency to feel shame when little is accomplished on your watch, you won’t have the guts to take the blame. And yes, we expect that, too.

Sadly, it takes a certain kind of courage to submit to this kind of test, not coincidentally the same kind of courage it takes to become an effective leader. Platitudes are easier and allow for a larger pool of otherwise unqualified candidates to sneak in and gum up the works when elected. Like the mythical “Test To Become A Parent,” this test is too hard for the childish.

Continue ReadingNew Test For Political Nominees

Fun with Footprints

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on July 14, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)

Earlier this month, Canada joined France, Japan and Russia by refusing to extend the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to limit the emissions of industrialized countries (the US reiterated at a recent G8 dinner that it would continue to fight for climate change “outside the Protocol”). Poor and emerging economies wanted to extend the pact, but the departure of these big countries at U.N. climate talks that ran from June 6th to June 17th in Bonn, Germany, have cast a pall over the Green movement. While I respect how important “green” sustainable living is to the future of our planet, the infancy of this movement makes for great comedy.

Take carbon offsets, for example. A carbon offset is a reduction in the emissions of greenhouse gases or any carbon dioxide equivalent in order to make up the emissions made somewhere else. In other words, my wife guilts me into buying and planting trees to make up for the fact that I bought an SUV six years ago. In theory, they bridge the gap between what we should do and what we will do. In practice, however, they can be ridiculous. Rather than doing the hard work of capping harmful emissions, companies turn to carbon offsets as sinners do to the Catholic confessional: do what you like, but one visit to the priest absolves all sins. Unlike your spiritual salvation, however, you don’t need to wait long to see if it worked; former vice president Al Gore gives you the dispensation immediately (especially if you work for Generation Investment Management, a company Al Gore co-founded in 2004 that buys carbon offsets for all its employees).

The logic defies me. The next time I go out to eat, I will respond to my doctor’s concerns about my weight with, “I’ll order all the food I want, but I’ll also make sure to buy my dog a big salad. That way, it’s almost like I ate what I was supposed to, and not like the bloated pig I’ve become.” Even better, carbon offsets are now treated as a commodity. The Kyoto Protocol sanctioned offsets as a way for governments and private companies to earn carbon credits that could be traded in the global marketplace. The protocol established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a watchdog that ensures “real” benefits as a result of the actions taken. In my case, I can store up the “credits” I created when I was forced to eat a salad after I’d run out of pizza last weekend and really go hog wild before the next tailgate. I haven’t worked out the math yet, but I’m thinking one salad offsets about 6,000 calories. God I love healthy living.

Luckily, the creators of the Kyoto Protocol are not as dumb as I am, so surely they had a better way to get the word out to the public before the initiative began. After setting these important standards, the next logical step was to seek out high-profile backers such as Al Gore to create… the 2007 Live Earth Benefit for Climate Protection. Musicians from all over the world performed to raise awareness of the climate crisis by… creating a small climate crisis. You might remember the 7-7-07 advertisements, or maybe you just remember a string of really bad musicians preaching about turning the lights off when you leave the room. In the pantheon of benefit concerts, it registers somewhere alongside the 2003 Pack 13 Polka Marathon Boy Scout Benefit.

First of all, if you can’t get Bono for your benefit concert, you have to know something’s wrong. He is to “important shows” what Elton John is to celebrity funerals. Even that desiccated corpse from the Boomtown Rats, Bob Geldof, complained, “We are all (expletive deleted) conscious of global warming.” Did the guy who created Live Aid and “Do They Know It’s Christmas” just bitch-slap Al Gore?

Bob and Bono must have seen the p.r. avalanche coming: more than 150 performers flew more than 222,000 miles around the world to appear in concerts from Tokyo to Hamburg, many carrying their own dancers, crew members, hair stylists, etc. As an estimated two billion people watched or listened during the 24-hour concert, MSN streamed 30 million videos of the concert to over 8 million people around the globe. Assuming the typical computer uses 100-140 watts in addition to the 35 watts of a typical 17-inch display, and the average of 5 videos each lasted for the length of a typical Scissor Sisters song, you’re talking, like… many, many hundreds and thousands of energy (I was told there’d be no math).

The final tally from the “Live Earth Carbon Assessment and Footprint Report” was actually 19,708 tons of emissions. At 5-30 dollars per ton to offset, that’s… you know, I don’t know what the hell that is. What is a credit? Where do you get them, and for how much? Even my dog has looked up from his salad for this one.

It was fitting that the “have your cake and eat it, too” idea of carbon offsets was highlighted by the biggest collection of mediocre musicians in music history. What better way to promote a lighter carbon footprint than by headlining your show with Madonna, one of the world’s worst offenders at an estimated 1,018 tons of emissions per year while on tour according to John Buckley, managing director of CarbonFootprint.com.

In short, Live Earth was like hosting a wet t-shirt contest to encourage women’s rights. While the organizers did realize their goal of “zero net impact,” it probably wasn’t what they had in mind. Now the Kyoto Protocol seems destined for the same fate, and one can’t help hoping someone else will come along with a bigger footprint and a clearer plan to get us all moving in the right direction.

Continue ReadingFun with Footprints

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 dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to Canada. (His answer to the hit FOX program So You Think You Can Dance? “Yes. Yes, I do.”)

Unfortunately, some events from this day can’t count because they’re already associated with a holiday. For instance, on June 30, 1962, Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax pitched his first no-hitter against the Mets (Veteran’s Day); on this day in 1936, the federal government approved a 40-hour work week (Labor Day); and on this sunny June day in 1975, Cher married rock star Gregg Allman just three days after divorcing Sonny Bono (April Fool’s Day).

Other out-of-this-world events include the 1995 release of Tom Hanks’ Apollo 13 (with its catchphrase, “Houston, we have a problem”), which occurred 34 years to the day after the Explorer 12 rocket failed to reach Earth orbit. Exactly ten years after that, three Soviet cosmonauts died when their spacecraft depressurized during re-entry. Eleven years later, the doomed space shuttle Challenger rolled off the assembly line for delivery to Edwards Air Force Base. In short, let’s avoid any future June 30th launches.

There were other tragedies on this day as well: In 1520, Montezuma II, the last Aztec emperor, was murdered as Spanish conquistadors fled the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. June 30, 2003, saw the death of comedian Buddy Hackett, a man with whom my wife shared an uncanny (and unfortunate) resemblance as a child. Worst of all, who can forget that dark day on June 30, 1985, when the creator of the Twinkie, James A. Dewar, shed his mortal coil. Coincidently, this was the same day the atomic clock (the world’s official timekeeper) ticked off one extra “leap second” to compensate for the gradual slowing of the Earth’s rotation. If you were having a bad day that day, you could be forgiven for thinking it lasted longer than usual. That is, unless your name was James Dewar, in which case it wouldn’t have mattered.

There are many other important June 30th events in history, but I rarely paid attention in social studies. Yes, I neglected to mention that this date saw the majestic rise of New Kids On The Block (their single “Step by Step” shot to #1 on both the US and UK charts), but some stuff I just have to assume everybody already knows. The important thing is that we can make any day a holiday with a little research and a homemade holiday name.

After careful analysis of all the historic events that happened on this day, there is only one logical name for June 30th on the calendar: Christine Taylor Appreciation Day! (C’mon, you saw this coming a mile away—she was Marsha in the Brady Bunch movies. Duh!)

Continue ReadingHomemade Holidays