Walsh Wonderings Column

“Summer’s Unwelcome Bus Stop”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 26, 2010, in "Walsh's Wonderings") It's so easy to forget what it's like to be a kid. Even as a teacher surrounded by them, I am constantly reminded how adults can forget the pain of things like the end of summer vacation. No matter how hard we try to make school fun, it's hard to compete against the freedom and unpredictability of summer. When those first few signs that classes are about to begin start appearing, a pall falls over even the happiest of students. This year, it happened in late July as I was watching Big Brother on CBS. A George Orwell fan, I'd stumbled across the show thinking it would reference 1984, and instead I'd fallen down the rabbit hole of reality television at its cattiest. Right in the middle of my weekly fix (I'm not proud), Walmart came on to utter the summertime blasphemy feared most by children: the dreaded "Back to School Sale." As a kid, these commercials were nails scraping across the chalkboard of my summer vacation, the clammy hand of mortality resting on what remained of my carefree days. After those first few advertisements for school supplies appeared, my friends and I viewed everything through the prism of our impending imprisonment, a kind of doomsday clock that loomed large over each passing day. On the other hand, our parents seemed to giddily count down the days as if anticipating parole. None of the four seasons has such a clear starting line as autumn in America: regardless of what the calendar says, children know summer ends the minute the yellow bus stops on their street. The fall season used to be the one time kids never attended classes because they had to help with the harvest; now it marks the inevitable return of the ten-month planting season of academia. This year Stratford students begin school on August 30th, with their teachers reporting five days earlier to prepare the soil. In the last two weeks, Stratford has been alive with preparations for the Big Day. In late August, even Staples resembles the birthday room at the Discovery Zone as kids bounce around the aisles in search of the perfect notebook. Parents perform subtle acts of bribery to ease the sting: I know you don't like math, but this calculator has a picture of Dora the Explorer. Shopping for school supplies is at once horrifying and exciting for reluctant learners: only the love for my brand new Harlem Globetrotters lunchbox managed to pull me from my mourning bed and off to the bus stop on that first day of school. From my perch on the library bench this week I see the mad dashes of harried eighth graders rushing to the references desk in the hope that suggested summer reading books haven't all been taken out. I overhear two of them indulging in a little summer arithmetic: "We're expected to read 8-10 books, but we only have to…

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“It Was Just That The Time Was Wrong…”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 12, 2010, in "Walsh's Wonderings") "A love-struck Romeo sings the streets a serenade Laying everybody low with a love song that he made. Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade Says something like, ‘You and me babe, how about it?'" -- Mark Knopler, "Romeo and Juliet," 1981 Stratford has always had a complex relationship with its renowned American Shakespeare Theatre, but 1981 held such promise. Newly appointed director Peter Coe had just signed Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones to lead the Stratford Festival season productions of Henry V and Othello. The theatre seemed ready to "step out of the shade" of the previous years’ financial difficulties and into a new era. Unfortunately, 1982 saw the theatre’s last full season before the state took control amid looming foreclosure on the mortgage in 1983. For the future of this once-proud building, that season’s production of "The Comedy of Errors" proved prophetic. The next twenty-seven years played out like a Shakespearean tragedy as battles over its name (changed to American Festival Theatre in 1988), deed (finally given back to Stratford in 2005), and vision eventually erupted into the legendarily vitriolic town council debates over its latest renovation. That the fate of the theatre still stirs such passionate debate underscores its importance to all of Stratford, embodying as it does not only our history but our noblest aspirations in the arts. It’s offered its citizens Shakespeare, yes, but also served as a gateway to the arts in so many other ways. In 1979 my dad took me to see Beatlemania there, and I still remember staring in awe as the majestic facade of the theatre emerged from the trees. After college, the siren song of the theatre was one of the reasons I chose to settle down in Stratford. "I love you like the stars above, I'll love you 'til I die. There's a place for us, you know the movie song. When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?" While the time might have been wrong for the American Shakespeare Theatre to remain solvent back then, there has always been a place for this regal figure in the lives of Stratfordites. This Thursday, the 2010 Festival Stratford adds to the rich tradition of the theatre as the Stratford Arts Commission sponsors four days of free entertainment on its grounds. Each day the Stratford Arts Guild will showcase the work of local artists, and yoga instructor Ashley Bardugone will conduct classes each morning at 8am. "Quickies in the Park," which showcases new works by Stratford’s SquareWrights members, will be presented along with the parody The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) more classic fare such as The Tempest. Children’s Day on Sunday begins with performances by local dance schools before Shakesperience Productions presents Rapunzel and the Interactive Shakespeare Workshop for Children and Families. (For times and other specific information, please go to www.festivalstratford.com or StratfordStar.com.) This is Shakespeare the way…

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“The Retail Queen of Fairfield, Connecticut”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on July 22, 2010, in "Walsh's Wonderings") It is the day after Thanksgiving, and the masses descend upon the local retail outlets like water from a burst dam, flowing like lemmings through the aisles in a pre-Christmas frenzy. However, one woman in a lonely corner of the grocery store is not there to shop. She waits patiently at the Returns counter with a turkey, or at least what’s left of it after her husband and seven kids had attacked it twelve hours earlier. The skeletal remains were easy to slip into the small plastic bag—even the wishbone had long since been taken out and snapped. “It went bad,” this woman says to the lady behind the counter, sliding the carcass across the counter. Only a pro walks into a store and demands her money back on a turkey without any meat left on it. Janet Walsh is a pro. My mom understood the craftiness one must adopt when trying to feed a family of nine each day. The family checkbook was packed like a musket with coupons skinned from local newspapers. Trips to the grocery store were military operations as seven kids invaded the unsuspecting stores offering samples on Saturday afternoons—who needs lunch when you can wolf down eight tiny slices of pepperoni pizza and wash it down with a thimbleful of the newest Coke? Our family did not merely buy in bulk; we stocked up as if winter was coming to Valley Forge. Each grocery trip ended with a game of culinary Tetris, where we’d stuff three separate freezers and two refrigerators with surgical precision. There was no rummaging through the fridge in my family; asked what was for dinner that night, my mom’s answer was, “Whatever’s up front.” It was not uncommon for a loaf of bread to lie frozen in state like Vladimir Lenin for up to a year before it was discovered in the back of the freezer. She’d thaw it like the wooly mammoth on those National Geographic specials, using a hair dryer to separate a few pieces for school lunches. These clay pigeons with peanut butter and jelly slathered all over them sat in our lunch pails like a muttered apology, still frozen by the time our class had lunch. “It keeps the sandwich fresh,” she’d say as we showed her our chipped teeth. What the poor lady working at the Returns counter that day couldn’t know was that my family lived on food that had long since passed its expiration date. She viewed the freezer as a time machine, cryogenically preserving batteries, cheeses, cold medicines, and milk that would make the folks at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not take notice. In fact, there were three types of milk in or refrigerator: the “good” milk (within a week of its expiration date), “mixing” milk (older, used on cereal or in recipes), and “sour” milk, which would only be so designated when something inside it tried to bite…

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