Memoir of a Real Life Archives - Page 11 of 20

Mechanical or Intuitive: Which Approach Works Best for You? – A Real-World Lesson (Part II)

By Chris Carosa on April 2, 2019

The Conclusion of: “Style or Substance? A Real-World Lesson – A Real-World Lesson (Part I)”

“Yes, you may hit the right notes more often than Chris,” she began, “but your intuitive desire to physically search for the perfect note interferes with the broader tempo of the entire piece. Chris is mechanical. To him, keeping that tempo is more important than finding the perfect pitch. The concertmaster’s job is to lead the entire orchestra in maintaining this tempo.”

The answer shocked me. I never thought of myself as a mere machine. But there it was. The teacher had just said so. I was mechanical, not intuitive.

This didn’t sound right. How could a machine find the joy in playing the way I did? Wasn’t a machine dispassionate? Doesn’t a machine work precisely because it has Continue Reading “Mechanical or Intuitive: Which Approach Works Best for You? – A Real-World Lesson (Part II)”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged concertmaster, Gates Chili, high school, John Cage, orchestra, violin

Style or Substance? A Real-World Lesson (Part I)

By Chris Carosa on March 28, 2019

I never had someone so mad at me. And for no reason. We were both in tenth grade. Except for orchestra, we shared no other classes. We did share an Italian-American heritage. And she was mad in a way only an Italian-American can get mad. I’d seen it all before. In my extended family. In my neighborhood. In the dark alleys of the most obscure hallways within the school.

I just didn’t get it. I didn’t even know what a concertmaster was. Yet, there I was. Her, me, and the violin teacher.

But I get ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning of the story…Continue Reading “Style or Substance? A Real-World Lesson (Part I)”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Great Speaking Tips, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged A Tune A Day, Arkansas Traveler, concertmaster, Happy Birthday song, math, orchestra, Pop Goes the Weasel, Santa Lucia, The Irish Washerwoman, Three Stooges, violin

That Time I Discovered “Idle Time” Doesn’t Really Exist

By Chris Carosa on March 12, 2019

A well-known academic who researches retirement policy recently referred to me as “the indefatigable Chris Carosa” in an article she wrote for Forbes. In case you were wondering, the dictionary defines “indefatigable” as “incapable of being tired out; not yielding to fatigue; untiring.” If she only knew the half of it.

I got one of those stomach bugs a couple of weeks ago. You know the kind I mean. They come from nowhere and lay you flat for a good twenty-four hours or so. In the interim, you don’t want to eat anything, you don’t want to drink anything – plain and simple you don’t want to do anything.

Except sleep.

And sleep I did. Pang in my gut notwithstanding.

Well, I didn’t quite sleep. It was more like floating in and out of consciousness. (C’mon, we’ve all been there, so you know what I mean.)

Funny thing when I fall under the weather like this. Physically, I’m beat. Can’t move. Don’t want to move. Just want to lay there in a quasi-vegetative state.

Only not really. Because as weak as my body feels, my mind is buzzing like a busy bee. A busy bee trapped in a hive that it finds quite confining.

As my body lay idle, my mind began exploring strange new mental states. It suddenly dawned on me. All this idleness took me away from my routine.

But what exactly was that routine. Sure, there was the routine of work. Yes, work wasn’t getting done, but would prove to be no big deal. (By some miracle, I had entered this Continue Reading “That Time I Discovered “Idle Time” Doesn’t Really Exist”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged multitasking, old movies, Video Game, video games

Confessions of a Numbers Guy

By Chris Carosa on March 5, 2019

Admit it. How many of you read the headline and immediately thought of running the rackets? Tsk, tsk. Too many late-night gangster movies watched on AMC for you!

No, this numbers guy has nothing to do with gambling. I’m not worried about some random fed chasing me down on some random RICO charge. These numbers deal with only one thing: math in its various (legal) applied forms.

My high school teachers knew me better than I knew myself. For four years I paraded from class to class singing the hosannas of science. In science class I asked the toughest questions (especially in physics). In social studies class I trumpeted the scientists during the Age of Enlightenment. In English class I rebelled – even to the point of denying any Continue Reading “Confessions of a Numbers Guy”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Alana Foley, B.F. Skinner, Carol Weissbrod, Cesidia, S.S. Stevens, Sheila Tobias, Sian Beilock, Star Trek, Susan Levine

The Stuff of Dreams…

By Chris Carosa on February 19, 2019

These are not the dreams you have in the daylight. The kind of dreams you have for your children, your career, your life.

No. These are the dreams you have at night. When nobody’s watching. Not even you.

We all dream of the places we’ve been, the faces we remember, and the events we’ve lived. Sometimes we dream of what was. Sometimes we dream of what might have been. Sometimes, well sometimes we just don’t know what we’re dreaming of.

Dreams can be a time machine. Dreams can be a soul machine. Dreams can be a wish machine. That dreams are a machine attest to these two undeniable facts pertaining to Continue Reading “The Stuff of Dreams…”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged chess, Dream, dream interpretation, Edgar Cayce, lucid dreaming, self-fulfilling prophecy, Sigmund Freud

After the Fall

By Chris Carosa on February 5, 2019

I grew up with concrete driveways. That’s what happens when your father and your grandfather were professional masons. I hated those concrete driveways in the winter. All my friends had blacktop driveways. Blacktop driveways retain heat better. When the snow falls on blacktop driveways, it melts (at least at first), making shoveling easier. When it falls on concrete driveways, it doesn’t melt. Try shoveling that. I vowed my house would have an asphalt driveway.

Of course, in those freak lake effect events, the snow accumulates quickly. Especially when it’s cold. Even blacktop driveways can’t help you with the shoveling.

That’s not the only way blacktop driveways can disappoint you.

Asphalt – the material of which blacktop driveways consist – tends to be more flexible than Continue Reading “After the Fall”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged asphalt, Charles Schultz, Charlie Brown, concrete, Dad, grandpa, lake effect, Miss Powell, wrist

50 Years Ago When the Earth First Rose

By Chris Carosa on December 18, 2018

It was the first time I flew in a plane. It was the first time I skipped school. It was the first time we took a “real” family vacation.

It would be the first time we wouldn’t be home for Christmas. It would be the first time we’d be having Christmas with no snow. It would be the first time a young astronomy enthusiast would discover his own Christmas “Stars.”

December 1968. California still had a sparkle of promise. When all those who defined cool were still busying themselves leaving on the last train for the coast.

We weren’t leaving. We were just visiting. Courtesy of American Airlines. The excitement derived from all those firsts overshadowed the fact we wouldn’t be spending the Holy Day with the extended family we grew up with. On the other hand, my father no doubt looked Continue Reading “50 Years Ago When the Earth First Rose”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life Tagged 1968, American Airlines, Apollo 8, California, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Earth, Frank Borman, James Lovell, Knott's Berry Farm, Moon, Mt. Palomar, Stars, synchronous rotation, tidal locking, William Anders

George and Me

By Chris Carosa on December 4, 2018

Bush turned to me and said, “C’mon, let’s put our arms around each other to show everyone we’re friends.”

You may not remember this. Leonard Zelig was the kind of ordinary everyday man who you’d expect to live an ordinary everyday life. Somehow, though, he managed to find himself regularly appearing with extraordinary celebrated people during extraordinary celebrated events. Leonard Zelig isn’t a real person. Never was. Yet Woody Allen’s brilliant 1983 mockumentary Zelig left theater-goers thinking he was.

It seems like we all have our Leonard Zelig moments. We live each ordinary day in an ordinary way. Then, fate brings us face-to-face with extraordinary people in extraordinary times. Think about the times you’ve found yourself at the same shop with a movie or TV star – someone who seems so distant because our only connection to them is through some unapproachable media context. When we’re young, that can be a very exciting thing. As we age, we come to understand those distant stars are no different than us.

Like you, I’ve had my fair share of close encounters. Like the time I rode the train seated across from Pearl Bailey. (Don’t remember her? Read “My Lunch with Pearl Bailey,” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, September 13, 1990, to find out more about the incident and the subject.) I always tried my best to be polite and respect the person as a person. (Except in the case of John Dean, who, while having dinner with him, I bluntly said, “You Continue Reading “George and Me”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 1980 Presidential Election, Buffalo Bills, Central Intelligence Agency, Davenport College, Jack Kemp, John Dean, Monroe County Republican Committee, New Hampshire, Pearl Bailey, President George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Vermont, Vermont State Republican Committee, voodoo economics, Woody Allen, Young Republicans, Zelig

First Man – A Titanic Odyssey of The Right Stuff

By Chris Carosa on October 30, 2018

What could be more fitting that, on the heels of the month where we celebrate the incredible voyage of Christopher Columbus, I feel compelled to share my thoughts on the movie First Man. The film depicts the life of Neil Armstrong and culminates in his historic voyage to the moon, a feat of exploration that, at the time and even today, has been compared with Columbus for its historical significance.

Imagine combining 2001: A Space Odyssey with The Right Stuff, then throwing in a pinch of Titanic at the end. That describes First Man.

First things first. Speaking of 2001, there’s a joke going around that Stanley Kubrik allowed Continue Reading “First Man – A Titanic Odyssey of The Right Stuff”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, Movie Reviews, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 2001: A Space Odyssey, Agena, Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Christopher Columbus, Chuck Yeager, First Man, Gemini 8, Gordon Cooper, moon landing, Neil Armstrong, Saving Private Ryan, Space Race, Stanley Kubrik, Steven Spielberg, The Blue Danube, The Right Stuff, Titanic

Celebrate! October is Italian-American Heritage Month!

By Chris Carosa on October 3, 2018

According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of illegal lynchings between 1882 and 1962 was 4,736. This data was compiled by the Department of Records and Research, Tuskegee Institute, Alabama; and published in: Ploski, Harry, and Williams, James; The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on Afro-American, 4th ed. New York: Wiley, 1983. As you might suspect most of these lynchings (roughly 73%) were perpetrated upon blacks. It might astonish you, however, to learn the largest lynching event in U.S. history contained no black victims. Here’s how I discovered this fact.

A couple of weeks ago, Tim and Deb Smith’s “Mendon’s Historic Hamlets – Rochester Junction, Part 2” told the story of the death of Spencer Howe. The suspect, Nicolo DeNardo, fled the scene, but was later captured by police. The headline in the Democrat and Chronicle shouts “Struck Down by a Dago.” The casual use of that ethnic slur got me curious. Did other newspapers of that era also use it?

I quickly found out there’s an island called Dago in the Baltic Sea near the Gulf of Finland. Apparently, it was quite the popular place to wreck your ship in the eighteenth century.

I landed closer to my mark when I saw the following page two of the Friday, January 2^nd, 1835 edition of The New York Evening Post. Here’s what it said: “Five Dollars Reward, for Continue Reading “Celebrate! October is Italian-American Heritage Month!”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Christopher Columbus, Dago Frank, David C. Hennessy, Italian, Italian American, lynching, New Orleans, Nicolo DeNardo, Thomas Duffy