Chris Carosa, Author at Chris Carosa

Life In the Pits (Part III)

By Chris Carosa on April 19, 2016

For the previous installment – and to better understand the twist at the end of this article – you should first read “Life in the Pit (Part I).”

Moving is never easy for a youngster. To have a comfortable routine suddenly ripped from you can devastate a psyche that perhaps has not yet fully matured. In my personal case, I can say that my moving from one city to another at the tender age of ten-and-a-half represents an essential element of who I’ve become. It forced me to recognize things much quicker than my peers. I am, and always will be, eternally grateful for the opportunity moving presented.

On the other hand, I will forever complain about it. Too many changes. Too many lost friendships. And, in the end, too much guilt (but that’s another story). This particular story continues what we started several weeks ago and ends with a topic that may be more Continue Reading “Life In the Pits (Part III)”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Florence Brasser, Gates Chili, Herman Dilmore, Miss Avalon, orchestra, The Beatles, violin

The Night the Grand Old Party Died

By Chris Carosa on April 12, 2016

I was sitting in Amtrak’s Metropolitan Lounge at Union Station when it started. By the time I had already boarded the train, it was done.

On the evening of March 11, 2016, thousands of violent agitators marched their way towards downtown Chicago, intent on disrupting a scheduled campaign stop by Donald Trump, the leading candidate of a major American political party. Rumors swirled in advance of this event. It was believed various foreign funded Democrat operatives, along with the same Republican operatives that used this technique successfully in a 2014 Senatorial primary campaign, were working together to stop the Trump campaign appearance.

While it was never confirmed who organized the intimidating show of force, it worked. Large numbers of the Anti-Trump gang had maneuvered themselves into the University of Illinois’s Pavilion. Long before the speech was scheduled to begin, the troublemakers had Continue Reading “The Night the Grand Old Party Died”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Amtrak, Brownshirts, Casablanca, GOP, Hillary Clinton, Humphrey Bogart, Mendon Town Republican Committee, Nazi, New York, Snow storm, Trump

Conquering Kirk’s Rock

By Chris Carosa on April 5, 2016

“I was told there would be Gorns. We are the Gorns? Wait! What’s this? Charcoal. Sulphur. And, are those diamonds? Now, if only I was in the South Pacific and could find a random bamboo shaft…” Life is good when you can turn your dreams into reality. Here’s yet another example of that in this week’s Carosa Commentary “Conquering Kirk’s Rock.”

I used to think the TV contained little people and the scenes they acted in were real. I also used to think the music played by radio stations came from the bands performing live in their studios. For the longest time, I could never figure out how The Beatles traveled so fast from one radio station’s studio location to the next. And when it came to Hey Jude, well, forget it. That song has a never ending chorus that just keeps repeating. Somewhere, The Beatles are still repeating, “Naaaa, naa, naa, na, nan, naa, naaa, hey Jude!” and wondering how will they ever get off of this merry-go-round.

But back to the TV thing. We watch TV and wonder. We wonder how they can make a story come alive the way they do. We wonder how much of the scene is real and how much is a useless façade. And we wonder what those fabulous on location scenes look like in real life. If you’re like me, you Continue Reading “Conquering Kirk’s Rock”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged California, Captain Kirk, Gorn, Hey Jude, Star Trek, The Arena, The Beatles, Thirty Mile Zone, Vasquez Rocks

I Could Never Live on Pacific Time

By Chris Carosa on March 29, 2016

Who knew?

I used to brag about living on Pacific Time. Let me explain.

It’s been said that writer’s tend to do their best work either first thing in the morning or very late in the evening. I fall into the latter category. I don’t know if I consciously chose that category or if the category chose me. As many of you know, I have a fairly successful day job. This precludes the “first thing in the morning” category from my list of options as a Continue Reading “I Could Never Live on Pacific Time”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged California, writing

Sometimes Second Best Turns Out To Be the Very Best

By Chris Carosa on March 22, 2016

This picture was made for my dad, not for the contest.

The vision lay deep within my head for as long as I could remember. I don’t know where it came from. I only know it originated from a distant place – a distant past – and that it had an almost spiritual importance. I couldn’t explain the nature of that importance, but I knew I must follow it where ever it would take me.

So began my thoughts upon entering my first and only art class in sixth grade. This was only my second year at Florence Brasser Elementary School in Chili. By then, I had so divorced myself from caring what my peers thought of me that I had no fear of failing. So, with this picture in my head driving me, I gladly entered the contest, fully expecting to win.

Oh, did I tell you? I’m not the artist in my family. Never was. That would be my brother. Artists create something from nothing and see the wholeness of their creation. My brother was (and remains) very good at that. I, on the other hand, can never separate Continue Reading “Sometimes Second Best Turns Out To Be the Very Best”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Albright-Knox, art contest, Florence Brasser Elementary School, The Picture

Life in the Pit (Part II)

By Chris Carosa on March 15, 2016

This is the second of three installments; click this link to read “Life in the Pit (Part I).”

We interrupt this story for ten lessons learned from my life in the pit of a musical orchestra:Continue Reading “Life in the Pit (Part II)”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Anything Goes, Brigadoon, Cole Porter, Gates-Chili High School, Hello Dolly!, musical, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, Renee Fleming, violin

Rotary’s Casino Royale

By Chris Carosa on March 8, 2016

Who doesn’t like James Bond? And, if you like James Bond, you just gotta love a casino! Not since ol’ Doc Smith brought the circus to “right here in Honeoye Falls” so many decades ago have I looked with such anticipation to a Rotary event. (Yes, that includes the year they delighted my son Peter – who polished and shined it back to life – by awarding my ‘83 Camaro a third place price at the Rotary Car Show in 2011.) When we found out about the casino, (which wasn’t hard given the poster was right there on John’s counter at the Mendon Pharmacy), Betsy and I decided we had to go.

OK, OK, I admit I was more excited about the “Casino” part. Betsy, on the other hand, she Continue Reading “Rotary’s Casino Royale”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Casino, Honeoye Falls, James Bond, Mendon Golf Club, Rotary

Are You Busy Making Buggy Whips?

By Chris Carosa on March 1, 2016

Perhaps you wake up every day and head to work, content with the thought you’re doing your part to keep the wheels of America’s industry humming along. Or maybe you’re retired, but you know someone dear to you who trots merrily each morning in the pleasant bliss of gainful employment. If only for a brief fleeting moment, consider the opposite.

Call this a modern buggy whip tale. You remember buggy whips, right? If you don’t, well, that’s part of the story. Buggy whips are those short sticks with loose leather strings on the end. They were used to prod horses to make your buggy go faster. They were all the rage at the end of the nineteenth century. Heck, they were still quite popular well into the twentieth century.

Then Henry Ford discovered a way to mass produce cars. More importantly, he figured out Continue Reading “Are You Busy Making Buggy Whips?”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Apple, buggy whip, CD, iPhone, iTunes, music, music streaming, Napster, Pandora, record, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, SoundJam, Spotify, Steve Jobs, The Beatles, vinyl

Deeds, Not Words

By Chris Carosa on February 23, 2016

If you think that title might sound heretical coming from a wordsmith, just wait ‘til you read the rest of this column.

Say what you will about former Buffalo Bills coach Doug Marrone (I never thought he was cut out for the job), but he did leave one indelible mark in my brain: “Don’t confuse effort with results.” This was one of the bromides that he posted on the walls of the Ralph Wilson Fieldhouse for all his players (and Bills fans) to stare at. In a nutshell, it’s what Yoda told Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back: “Do or do not, there is no try.”

We’re all told to try our best. That’s fine. But we need to accept that it’s not good enough. When you try something, the result is you either succeed or fail. That’s all there is to it. There is Continue Reading “Deeds, Not Words”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged accomplishment, Aristotle, Buffalo Bills, Civilization, Doug Marrone, effort, Einstein, Galileo, Luke Skywalker, Newton, Ralph Wilsdon FieldHouse, success, The Empire Strikes Back, Thomas Edison, Yoda

The Daddy-Daughter Talk… About Gravity Waves

By Chris Carosa on February 16, 2016

Graphic Source: NASA.gov

On the morning of Thursday, February 11, 2016 at a press conference in Washington DC, an international team of scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the discovery of Gravity Waves. Long sought after, this phenomenon was first postulated by Albert Einstein more than a century ago in his seminal 1915 paper on the General Theory of Relativity. While the major media jumped on this “universe changing” story, the reports were not adequate to fully explain the concept of Gravity Waves and the implications of their discovery. Leave it, then, to the innocent questions of a young daughter to her wise father to explain The Facts of Life and Gravity Waves. What follows is the transcript of the actual conversation that occurred through Facebook messaging on Friday, February 12, 2016:

Daughter: [Friday 3:20pm] “Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory” (New York Times, February 12, 2016) “Scientists say they heard the faint chirp of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, fulfilling Einstein’s general theory of relativity.” (nytimes.com, accessed February 12, 2016)… did you see this? A lot of my friends liked this story, but they don’t know what it means.
Daddy: That’s because it’s not something tangible. We can’t really “see” a physical “wave.” What we’re doing is detecting radio waves – i.e., sounds. This branch of astronomy, called “Radio Astronomy” has been around for a while (it took off in the 1960s when a couple of Bell Labs engineers accidentally discovered it wasn’t pigeon poop, but Continue Reading “The Daddy-Daughter Talk… About Gravity Waves”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged black hole, Charlie Brown, Einstein, General Theory of Relativity, gravitational waves, gravity waves, Quantum Theory, Star Trek, warp drive, worm hole