robert f. walsh

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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The Hidden Cost of “Saving”

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on April 4, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) Especially in today's economic climate, most of us are looking for the town leadership to find ways to spend our money wisely. Unfortunately, sometimes decisions based on short-term savings and political expediency can prove disastrous over the long haul. One such decision was the recent elimination of an assistant Animal Control Officer (ACO) position. There are numerous arguments to be made about our moral duties to animals in this town and how their treatment is a reflection on us all. Others might argue that pet owners without children in our public schools deserve this tangible return on their tax dollars. However, while these might be strong arguments, I'd rather offer a more practical, economic rationale for the importance of re-instating this position. First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, I must share that I not only fully supported the new Animal Control facility slated for completion in early June, but also served on the first committee to pick its location. The numbers proved that the old facility on Frog Pond was simply inadequate for the growing needs of the department regardless of its location or cost. How ludicrous, then, to build a facility with twice the capacity but staffed at two-thirds the previous level! A little perspective is important: According to Stratford's "Proposed Operating Budget Expenditure Analysis for 2012," only 5.2% of our tax dollars will go to funding our police department. Of that small percentage, that department will spend more on the combination of overtime and uniform maintenance than on the entire annual budget for Animal Control. I believe the police department should have an even higher budget, so these levels prove that properly funding the Animal Control Division is not a high-ticket item. Projected savings to the 2012 budget for eliminating the assistant ACO position is only $44,504, yet the fees, licenses, and other surcharges for dogs alone in 2011 are expected to generate $32,500 for the town. A bigger facility will most likely mean more revenue provided it's appropriately staffed, so surely it makes fiscal sense to maximize this additional revenue potential? Even more important than the financial evidence is the issue of public safety. Marjean O'Malley, President of the Stratford Animal Rescue Society (STARS), states that our Animal Control Officers answer 3,600 calls a year out on road and handle almost 4,000 visitors in addition to handling the daily needs of the animals already at the facility. At the same time, they must complete the requisite paperwork that comes from impounding animals at a rate of almost 600 a year. Response times will be adversely affected because there will often be only one ACO on duty (due to scheduled days off, holidays, vacation, etc.). Already understaffed before this position was cut, taxpayers will soon notice additional ramifications, including dramatically reduced facility hours that undercut the entire philosophy of the new building. Rather than using the new community room for a variety…

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A Steady Diet of March Madness

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on March 24, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) As the NCAA Tournament begins its second week today, so does the March Madness diet that accompanies the basketball marathons I watch on TV. With my bracket on one knee and bacon cheese dip on the other, I watch my picks implode as I wolf down an entire bag of nachos. It’s Pavlovian, an annual rite of spring that inevitably leaves me with indigestion and extra five pounds by the time they crown a new champion. Each year, though, I promise that I won’t do it again. After two months listening to my home scale groan under my weight while it answered only with an endless series of error messages, I knew it was time to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the local gym. Like most gym memberships, I kept mine because not paying for it would be an admission that I’d given up. However, other than flicking the card out of the way each morning to find my house keys, it wasn’t getting much of a workout. Unfortunately, it seems this year’s “New Year’s resolution exercisers” are still hanging in there and clogging the gyms with the same regularity the bacon cheese dip is clogging my arteries. I needed something new. On my lap this afternoon is something called the Beach Body P90-X, and the box states that Tony Horton (whoever he is) is going to provide me with two “extreme workouts” using “the science of Muscle Confusion." It will get me absolutely ripped in 90 days.  While it sounds painful, the people on the box look really happy. Evidently, if I’m good, I’ll also get a chance to buy Tony’s Ab Ripper. Granted, when you’re as overweight as I am, “extreme workouts” seem like a one-way ticket to the emergency room. Ripping your abs loses its appeal when you’ve already ripped a hernia through your stomach wall. This box comes courtesy of my older brother, a well-meaning attempt to “confuse my muscles” into losing some weight. It’s the latest in a long line of boxed hope that has blighted my doorstep over the years. When it comes to yo-yo dieting, I am the Duncan Glow-in-The-Dark Deluxe Yo-Yo. The Zone Diet promised to retool my metabolism with a balanced diet that would hold off heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. It left me pining for carbohydrates and so hungry between meals that people began looking like big hot dogs. The Atkins Diet promised to change my body from a carbohydrate-burning engine into a fat-burning engine, albeit an engine evidently fueled by incessant constipation. Dr. Phil’s Diet Solution promised to change my negative thoughts to positive impulses, but he lost me when he said to substitute old habits (like eating pizza) with new ones (a nice shower or a good book). Doc, if I showered every time I wanted to eat ice cream, I’d have scraped off all my skin by now.…

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Music for a Phantom Holiday

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on February 24, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) The onslaught of President’s Sale commercials has finally subsided. Before the craziness of car clearances and appliance sell-offs, however, President’s Day marked Timothy Dwight Elementary School’s annual spring concert. What better way to punish our parents for a hard-won day off from work than to subject them to one-and-a-half hours of pre-pubescent interpretations of our country’s most patriotic songs? In middle school, my music class was the only place where my fellow students and I were faced with the harsh reality of our limitations. Mostly, the teachers would fall over themselves to prop us up and keep our faces out of the mud. My shoddy compositions were “an improvement.” My low math scores showed “creativity and promising thought.” Even in history, my butchering of events could be termed “revisionist optimism.” (Then again, my teachers kept referring to a President’s Day that even now does not exist as a federal holiday. It’s simply Washington’s birthday with Lincoln tagging along.) But in music, as in life, talent wins out in the end. I might have gotten pats on the back for remembering not to pick my nose in class, but by the time I got to music I knew the jig was up. To be in a room where children are playing instruments is to see God’s bias toward music. Those without talent stick out like a sore thumb—thumbs that would sound better if sucked rather than used to play the cello. I still remember how excited I was on my first day of sixth grade music class. Finally, I would get to play an instrument other than the tambourine or maracas. It doesn’t take long for the glory of a well-practiced recorder concerto to lose its luster. On that glorious day, our music teacher picked up each of the shiny, polished instruments before him and demonstrated how each sounded. I was hooked after hearing the trumpet. Even in music, I fell into line on the phallic spectrum: not quite the trombone, but certainly not the clarinet. No, the trumpet seemed “just right.” I don’t recall the exact reasoning behind this decision: the closest I’d come to a trumpet was listening to “All You Need Is Love.” Mostly, I chose it because it only had three buttons. Unlike the others, with their forest of valves and holes and strings and bows and slides to fuss about, the trumpet seemed like a scooter in a sea of Harley Davidsons. It might not get me any dates, but it wouldn’t take much to get on the road. My music teacher told us that we should name our instruments in order to better “connect” with them. My parents refused to buy me a trumpet, instead opting to rent one from the school. My dad would sooner buy me shotgun than a trumpet because it would make less racket, and even if everything went wrong he wouldn’t suffer long. I kept at him,…

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Clearing the Confusion

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on January 27, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) I woke up last Friday morning and slapped at my snooze alarm to no effect. A harder slap followed without stopping the droning of the news, so I crawled out of the covers and turned off my radio. The radio announcer still didn’t stop, and it took my sleep-addled brain a few moments to realize the voice was coming from outside my house. I raised the blinds to the newest sheet of blinding snow that had fallen on Stratford, and it was there I saw the slow moving police car using the bullhorn to wake up residents before their cars were towed to clear the snow. Even after all the news coverage of the recent snowstorms, many of my neighbors still didn’t know about alternate side of the street parking regulations during snow emergencies. Come to think of it, I didn’t know much about, them, either. A trip to the Town of Stratford website cleared a few things up (pardon the pun). Because there are approximately 200 miles of town roads in town, residents are asked to cooperate with several regulations to help with the snow clearing process. The most important is where to park: parking is permitted on the odd-numbered side of the street from 8:00 a.m. of the odd-numbered day to 8:00 a.m. the following morning. Parking is permitted on the even-numbered side of the street from 8:00 a.m. of the even-numbered day to 8:00 a.m. the following morning. Beyond the obvious benefit of being able to clear the road completely on one side, it prevents the “showdown” moments when two cars are heading toward each other and trying to determine who has the right of way. This becomes even more important on side streets because main roads are addressed first (especially those with steep hills and difficult intersections) and leaves side streets and dead-ends open to spontaneous games of chicken as drivers struggle to navigate through cars on both sides of the streets. After the main roads have been cleared, side streets are done next, then dead ends. The Town acknowledges that, “This may not seem fair to residents of side streets or dead ends, but main roads must remain open.” The residents of Stony Brook Gardens Co-op can certainly attest to the frustration of having to wait for the main roads to be cleared. For those of us armed only with a shovel during an hours-long struggle to remove snow, two interesting tidbits from the website address our worst fears. First, the Department of Public Works doesn’t care how beautifully you’ve shoveled the snow off your driveway; they will plow snow onto it in the course of their routes. They suggest waiting until all crews have finished before starting on your driveway. I’ve learned some interesting new vocabulary words from my neighbors when the plows sloshed a sheet of slush at their feet just when they thought they’d finished. Even if you manage…

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