“I’m sorry if the truth offends you” – COVID & the Confederate States of Spoiled Children

Brushing off a mid 2020 draft post and noticing what’s not changed much with an entire administration returning and resetting the US. Read More…
Brushing off a mid 2020 draft post and noticing what’s not changed much with an entire administration returning and resetting the US. Read More…
My dad, Jim Walsh, died suddenly on September 26, 1997. Three days prior I spent my last night with him at a Tiger game.
A couple days after his October 1st funeral, I wrote the following, wanting to record as much significant memories for what was, at the time, not too significant a day. But I can still feel his final embrace and the laughter and mutual support we offered each other that evening.
Jim Walsh (1940-1997)
Tuesday September 23, 1997
Dad called me from his car phone with his standard, “Hi Kev!” amidst the static of the … Read More…
My childhood neighbors, mysteriously known to us kids on the block as “The Bachelors” paid someone to clean out their basement–the same year I had just started my career in photography as an eighth grader with an eye for old gear at garage sales.
Mike and Greg prove the touchdown did happen.
Like my dreams of a career as an architect, I was deeply affected by one show–and in 1979 was influenced with the Brady Bunch episode as Greg savedthe football season with darkroom heroics that proved the touchdown–or it was the 35 mm camera that Mr. Pedotto gave me. Either way, I knew what an … Read More…
On December 5, 2021 of one of the greatest men in my life left behind an extraordinary legacy of love and acceptance–Mr. Alan Eidelman–Clawson High School social studies teacher.
Alan Eidelman (1943-2021)
His love of teaching, students, laughter and pure acceptance of everyone he met truly left a permanent impact on thousands of Clawson students, many who became teachers because of him, as well as the students from Academy of the Sacred Heart (his longtime retirement teaching position) and for busloads of students who were so moved by his tours at the Holocaust Memorial Center.
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Most people don’t really consider themselves to be experts in much–for example. My kids once accurately defined our specialized fields: “Dad’s kinda funny sometimes and mom finds stuff.”
But when it comes to hammering out that brief description of yourself in LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram it can be surprisingly difficult to find much to really brag about–let alone translate it to a full-blown resume.
It’s a lot easier to look at your reflection and see that one tiny zit rather than combed-hair, clean teeth or at maybe even someone who remembers to clean the mirror once in a while.
Lynn Eads, … Read More…
Check out our WandaVision Roundtable podcast.
I’m still processing the remarkable WandaVision and its re-boot of the role of television on our culture, the metamorphosis of its consumption and digestion–and thankful for some friends to help me get some perspective on this tragedy wrapped in familiar sit-com sets with a laughing audience.
The Fonz, Kunta Kinte and Darth Vader’s paternity claim. My first three thoughts while processing WandaVision. Marvel and Disney+ actually had the nerve/guts to stretch out its nine-episodes over NINE weeks, reminding me of my first television cliff-hanger, many years before JR was shot.
Three moments of delayed gratification jump to mind from my childhood–triggered by the weird time-warp that WandaVision so accurately displays–making one week cover 50 years of jokes, hairstyles, … Read More…
Original photography by Kevin Walsh. Also featured on Digging Detroit.
Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery offers a unique historical walk through Detroit’s golden era, founded in the late 1890s by Detroit’s captains of industry and politics
Founded in 1895 – Woodlawn Cemetery – 19975 Woodward Ave, Detroit
I first encountered the magic of Woodlawn on a walking tour with Bailey Sisoy-Moore, founder of Detroit History Tours. I then was forutnate enough to become a guide in her tour company’s “Buried in Detroit” bus tour of multiple historic cemeteries.
Incorporated in 1895, it offered the opportunity of … Read More…
Third row, center. Pretty good for the hottest show on Broadway–even better when it’s a free seat.
The challenge? To convert a once-in-a generation stage-play into a multi-million dollar budgeted film. So pay attention, right? No stress. For a photographer there’s perhaps no greater thrill–finding that one great angle, great color, great contrast.
Cinematographer Declan Quinn was asked to help bottle the magic of the Broadway juggernaut through an itty bitty lens–or twelve. He joined me in a podcast to discuss the 2016 shoot–and even passed along his camera schematics of the monumental project on a very tight schedule.
Note: I actually wrote the following in the weeks following Donald Trump’s 2016 inauguration and it has sat in my draft bin ever since. I decided to shelve it and wanted to give some time for Trump’s presidency to actually have some history behind it, feeling that while I graded the new president low scores even after just one month, I had hopes they’d improve–I guess more of an early progress report than a semester grade.
Following innumerable crises and jolts to our system, let alone in just the last 12 months an impeachment, a pandemic, nation-wide protests against inequity and finally the terrifying events at the capital on Wednesday January 6, 2021 I remembered to take another look at this post–as the nation was jolted into a Washington-version … Read More…
It’s been a ton of time since my last post and if I don’t jot down some of the crazy things that have changed the world in the past two months as the COVID-19 virus has crushed the economy and stripped the streets of Manhattan, Rome, Paris and caused the Venice canals to run clean I’d be one pretty lame blogger. While the government plays ping-pong with the stock market today with suspicious eyes on each side of a slush-fund for the right or a socialist welfare state for the left, there are too many people dying, too many people sick, too many losing paychecks and, frighteningly, far too many people who think it’s not a big deal.
But here’s my narrow experience so far–the first … Read More…
I was looking for a Father’s Day picture to put on Facebook today. The upside of cracking a rib last winter while wearing socks on carpeted stairs was pooling all my family photos into a server. Flipping through them I realized the lessons that can be found from each one.
Jim Walsh was only 57 when we lost him 22 years ago but his love of the moment, his family and a good laugh stay with us each day–and his “dad jokes” were passed down from father to father decades before that term became a household term about five years ago.
I’ve looked at this picture a hundred times, mostly to see us kids–and to try to remember Katie’s full-sized doll’s … Read More…
“You’ll be hit by these big waves that’ll sneak up on you.” That was what Fr. Jack Trese told us about grief at my dad’s funeral in 1997. But a week ago I got clobbered by one those waves in the form of a showtune I couldn’t stand–driving south in the middle of Ohio.
These days, my go-to stations on Sirius include “On Broadway,” “The Beatles Channel” and “The Seventies on 7,” especially on Saturdays they reply Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” broadcasts from the same week from 1970-79. I was very excited one weekend brought back my transistor radio tied to by handlebars as I listened to WDRQ delivering my newspapers at 5:30 AM.
In addition to the Saturday Night Fever‘s stranglehold on the airwaves that spring … Read More…
“We have ten percent of our students who attend charter schools in my county,” said bill sponsor Sen. Dave Hildenbrand, R-Lowell. “And I feel like it’s an equity issue.” (link)
The GOP leaders aren’t satisfied with just dipping their corporate bills into state per-pupil funding (with far less oversight needed than traditional schools), they now want a piece of local districts’ property tax millage.
Michigan Senate Bill 574 proposes a handy crossed-out edit of the 1976 law…
It’s just one … Read More…
One of my favorite get-togethers has always been the night before a wedding or reunion–everyone’s in town and it’s much more casual in some bar than the big shin-dig the next day. But one of those great nights was tainted on September 11th, 1998 with the release of Kenneth Starr’s report on Bill Clinton (link).
One year earlier, I had been ridiculed by one of the guys when I admitted voting not once but twice for Clinton. While I knew many of my friends were clearly planted on the opposite side of the political spectrum we’d always handled our differences smoothly; but that night seemed to move beyond … Read More…
Twenty-five years ago, I was playing tennis the morning of my marriage. I don’t normally whack myself in the forehead with my tennis racquet but that was what happened. Look carefully at my wedding pictures and you’ll see the little knot. My blushing bride Patrice couldn’t stop laughing and said, “Well that was a dumb thing to do!”
Twenty five years ago–and it just happened–that tennis game, wedding, birth of two kids, two houses, eight cats, four barbecue grills and 4,000 students just happened,
Somehow our marriage keeps moving along at light speed–after just a quick two week period of dating and six month engagement. We’d eaten lunch together for the first two months of the school year in the teacher’s lounge but it started … Read More…
Probably midway through junior high was when I finally put some kind of tie between the size of a house and the income-level of the dad who pulled up in the driveway at dinnertime. I didn’t notice that one pal’s father was an executive at Ford and the other guy’s dad fixed transmissions (way cooler, by the way). The most awesome dads coached little league or took us to Tiger games; the coolest moms were den-mothers for the cub scouts or didn’t mind us screaming “Marco Polo” for eleven straight hours in their above-ground pool.
Clawson, Michigan remains a small town with hundreds of ranches on the 1960s “newer” north end of town and the bungalows and frame houses from the twenties when you cross Main street nearly one … Read More…
Thus, in typical thin-skin, knee-jerk Twitter-ese, President Trump issues a Don Corleone “and that day may never come” warning in the wake of a court-ruling stalling his seven-country travel ban.
Nothing makes people more willing to give up their rights than an emergency. And nothing primes the pump better for an emergency decree than a worst-case-scenario actually happening.
Adolf Hitler didn’t take over Germany by force–he was elected chancellor, not dictator in 1932 and sworn in on January 30, 1933. He promised change, jobs for the working class and most importantly plenty of scapegoats to blame for losing … Read More…
Four years ago, my intended formula for this blog was pretty simple–pick a form of media (TV show, movie, billboard, cat footprints) and let it take you down a path or two. But the last path I took was in August, before I returned to the high school classroom for my 26th year. Being in an office setting since 2012 certainly gave me more physical and creative energy for activities like blogging as well as producing a documentary series, but it also pulled me a bit away from some basic reality-check questions that I’ve always enjoyed from teenagers–beyond “Can you give me passing grade and a pass to go home?”
The days following Election Day produced some poignant conversations for this English major turned video production teacher–with just a minor … Read More…
I’m often baffled by anyone who want to be friends with me–particularly about lefty agenda items that can’t be shaken out of my brain through a meme or “But Hillary did worse!” argument.
Maybe they are on an evangelical Karl Rove mission to let me see my folly–or perhaps they’re just fans of NASCAR crashes and fifth grade choir concerts. It’s like me saying, “You say you sell Amway? Let’s hear all about it!”
I think the Zuckerbergians in the bowels of Facebook should develop a litmus-test for friends, replacing the holistic score we give folks as we look over our friends “in common” before we let them in our virtual lives of cats, knee injuries and occasional political viewpoints.
No one likes unpleasant surprises, such as finding out your house-closing that your new neighbor can’t … Read More…