My Hartford Marathon Mix

I will labor incredibly over the right mix of music for certain situations. Like I used to do in high school, I enjoy making music mixes – using my iTunes library, though, not cassette tapes - for birthday parties, casual friends-over hangouts, family dinners, and, what I plan to do tomorrow, the Hartford Marathon.

I am running only the 5k, though to test myself more strenuously, I’m planning to run it twice. (Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone.) But, as many runners will tell you, at least those listening to music – the Hartford Marathon people discourages, but doesn’t ban, the use of headphones – the right mix is important, critically important. The right mix, having songs with fast beats, uplifting, motivating lyrics, and positive associations, can put you in a “zone”, and is one of the tricks of the trade for runners. Well, that, and good sneakers, the right breakfast, and, of course, some training (or a fearless attitude) helps.

But the music is what echoes in your head while struggling to get up hills; music is what encourages you to push yourself during a race when you are running out of steam. When there isn’t an encouraging person – sometimes a police officer – standing on the sidewalk, a runner’s choice of music can give them a little edge.

Yesterday, I put the finishing touches on my mix – different from mixes of other races I’ve done, complete with a few new songs. I told myself: No slow songs this year. No thoughtful ballads that might seem inspirational, but are too slow on the course. There’s nothing worse than that, or a goof-up, like an inadvertent shuffle to the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.”

So, I will lay bare, my top 10 picks from my iTunes 2013 Hartford Marathon mix, for all to see and scrutinize.

1. “Some Nights” by Fun.. This year’s number one song. The drums and the choral chanting in the background bring the energy to this song. Memorable line: “This is it, boys, This is war. What are we waiting for? Why don’t we break the rules already?”
2. “Hearts on Fire” by John Cafferty. Who could forget this one from Rocky IV? USA vs. Soviet Union. Rocky doing situps hanging upside down in a barn. Memorable line: “Hearts on fire. Strong desire… rages deep within.”
3. “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO. Cool synthesizer music and drum machine gets the adrenaline flowing. Memorable line: “Party rock is in the house tonight. Everybody just have a good time. And we gonna make you lose your mind.”
4. “Crazytrain” by Ozzy Osborne. Just a psycho song, from beginning to end. Makes you mad, gets you hyped. Memorable line: “I’m going off the rails on a Crazy train.”
5. “Centerfold” by J. Geils Band. Going old-school again, I know, but this one is upbeat and fun. Memorable line: “My blood runs cold. My memory has just been sold. My Angel is the centerfold.”
6. “Home” by Philip Phillips. This one got me this past summer as I watched the Olympics when they showed the athletes’ highlights after winning medals. Memorable line “Don’t pay not mind to the demons. They fill you with fear.”
7. “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z. You just feel tough listening to this song, almost as tough as Rocky. “New York. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of. There’s nothing you can’t do. These streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you.”
8. “Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry. The only female featured on my mix. Memorable line: None appropriate for a family newspaper. But the “TGIF” “TGIF” chant toward the end is pretty cool.
9. “Panama” by Van Halen. When David Lee Roth was the band’s lead singer, the first time, this band rocked. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar pulses. Memorable word: “Pa-na-ma! Pa-na-ma-uh-ah-uh-ah-uh!”
10. “No Easy Way Out” by Robert Tepper. Another Rocky IV song. When Rocky takes a drive in his Lamborghini, reflecting on the purpose for his next fight, who cannot get inspired? Memorable line: “There’s no easy way out. There’s no shortcut home.”

It may sound strange to say, but I am psyched to come into Hartford early on a Saturday morning, as I know thousands of others are. Like them, I will have the right shirt, pair of shorts (even though they’re calling for an overnight frost!), and, of course, a fully charged iPod with my carefully selected mix of songs.

Will my music make me run faster? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But as long as I think it does, that’s all that matters.

Jim Calhoun: An Appreciation

The UConn men's basketball team takes the court for the first time tonight without Jim Calhoun as head coach. Last month, when Calhoun announced his retirement, I submitted this to the Hartford Courant, but a lack of space and another UConn article prevented me from getting it published.

So I submit it here, today.


We were lucky.

We were lucky that, for the last 26 years, Jim Calhoun, who retired Thursday as UConn men’s basketball coach, chose to make his coaching home in Storrs, where he built the program from relative obscurity in 1986 to a national powerhouse. Love his style or not, and many didn’t, he is the main reason why UConn won three NCAA titles, played in four Final Fours since 1999, and he helped make winter a season to look forward to in Connecticut.

We owe this to his fiery spirit, his passion for winning, his command and knowledge of the game. It should now be clear that, even when he was questioned by the media and fans for his coaching decisions – and in a place this small, every move you make as a high-profile coach is questioned – he knew what he was doing all along.

Just look at the way he retired – so late in the process that the university had no choice but to name his recommendation, Kevin Ollie, as the new head coach.

Having attended more than a hundred UConn basketball games since my freshman year there in 1990, I derived as much entertainment from watching Calhoun act on the sidelines as I did seeing his team play, perhaps even more so. On TV, I would have paid an extra fee to have a separate camera locked on him for the whole game, his body swaying, arms gesturing, having “conversations” with officials that were largely one-sided.

It is true that his courtside dialogue was often not PG-rated. From the second tier of the XL Center, as a season ticket holder I could hear him chew out one of his players after calling a timeout ten seconds into a game. The arena would turn library quiet, just to catch a few words of what he was saying. Though embarrassing for the player involved, the public criticism, which usually stemmed from playing lazily, usually worked.

His relationship with referees could best be described as tenuous. While most coaches stayed near their assigned spot in front of the bench during a game, he often wandered five feet onto the court. Calhoun stomped the floor if a player didn’t box out on a rebound or if he made an errant pass, and I saw the coach more than once put his dress shoe into the UConn Club sign on the bottom of the scorer’s table in a fit of fury over something that didn’t meet his expectations.

And of course, this is exactly what I liked about him, what many of us liked about him. His attitude.

After all, this was the guy who refused to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium one year, staying true to his Boston roots.

It’s this attitude and his passion that I’ll most miss, as I’m sure his players will. It’s this passion that propelled UConn from a promising basketball program in the late 80s to one that became a favorite, year after year, to win Big East championships. It’s this passion that made elite high school athletes perform so well at the collegiate level. As any coach knows, it takes more than mere talent to win games.

While Calhoun’s retirement was a national story – ESPN called on its team of basketball analysts on Thursday for commentary during their off-season – its statewide implications will be felt the most. For the last 20 years, the UConn men have been expected to win, and because of this, between 10,000 and 16,000 fans filled seats in Hartford and at Gampel Pavilion to witness this greatness. And hundreds of thousands more watched on television, often at the edge of our seats.

Jim Calhoun’s retirement was not unexpected – he did not commit to return as coach until the end of summer last year – but Thursday will go down as a sad day for Connecticut sports, on par with the announcement that the Whalers were leaving Hartford in 1997. When Geno Auriemma decides to retire, we will feel a similar void.

UConn basketball is arguably the closest thing we have to a men’s professional sport in our state. Whether you agreed with his antics or not, if you cared about Connecticut basketball for the last few decades, you are going to miss Jim Calhoun. I know I will.

David Polochanin of Marlborough is a teacher and freelance writer.

Slave labor?

All right, so when I looked out the window and saw the kids not only raking the leaves in the yard but they were doing so ON THEIR OWN, WITHOUT BEING TOLD, ON A TARP, I admit, I felt a little guilty, I felt a little useless.

Long Live Paper!

A professor at Tufts argues why we shouldn't, as our Secretary of Education believes, abandon paper. He's talking mostly about the future of textbooks, but also about one's ability to concentrate well while reading on a computer or some other electric device. Answer: You get distracted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opinion/long-live-paper.html?ref=opinion?hp&_r=0

Old people smell funny

It's amazing, but true. Old people smell, well, old. You might think that The Onion might publish this. But in the New York Times? http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/the-telltale-scent-of-old-people/

Essay About Christmas Undecorating

Good news on the writing front - the Hartford Courant yesterday ran this essay I wrote about when to take down Christmas trees and holiday decorations. Got the idea from passing by a house on my way to work that, as of Friday, still had its tree up. A little late, I thought...


When Should The Christmas Tree Come Down?
Holiday Dilemma: So, when is the right time to undecorate from the holidays?

By DAVID POLOCHANIN

January 15, 2012


Their tree is still up, its large, old-school glass bulbs aglow in the front doorway, as I pass by each morning. It's now Jan. 13, well past Christmas. I wonder when the homeowners will take it down, and then privately wish they wouldn't.

At least, not yet.

The small white bungalow in Glastonbury shines a light on an interesting seasonal question: Just when is the socially acceptable date to take down the Christmas tree and its related decorations?

Opinions vary, but it was my understanding that New Year's Day generally meant curtains for the Christmas season. Those who like to hold onto the holiday feeling leave the tree up until Jan. 6, when the Epiphany is celebrated. For many Christians, this is an important day. For others, it justifies prolonging packing up ornaments.

Our tree is currently on our back deck, still in its base, near the grill. My wife removed all of its decorations and lights and then hurt her back dragging it through the living room during the early morning hours on Dec. 26, before I woke up. She feels the need to cleanse our house of the clutter that inevitably gathers around the tree, such as dirty socks, magazines and used paper plates. While I would have enjoyed a few more days with the tree, what's done is done.

I don't sweat it anymore, and at least I didn't have to personally remove the tree, which I should add gave me two weeks of poison sumac after cutting it down. I learned that calamine lotion doesn't work.

At some point when I have a few minutes, I will carry the tree out into the woods behind some live evergreens and toss it beside trees from previous years, which resemble brittle skeletons of their former selves.

While Christmas trees are one matter, the outside lights and decorations still clinging to life can become, dare I say, a tad tacky, a tiny bit embarrassing, even an eyesore. In some neighborhoods I have seen those fake icicles dangling from the front gutter all year long. Is this some kind of personal statement, or simply the manifestation of a common syndrome: man being lazy?

Getting up on a ladder and removing the icicles would only take an hour, but there are so many excuses for leaving them up, and I can hear them now: It gets dark before 5 o'clock; it's too cold to do it; there's a game on soon; they look good next to real icicles; they could increase the value of our home if we decide to put it on the market in January; and, of course, the obvious: Why would anyone remove them if you have to put them up again in another 330 days? Not that I would use any of these excuses myself, but being a home project procrastinator, I understand every one of them.

This year, we took the family out one Saturday night in December and drove around admiring Christmas lights, an occasional tradition. With our two young children in the back seat, LITE 100.5 on the radio (have they stopped playing Christmas carols yet?) and hot chocolates in our hands, we enjoyed the lengths that some people go to when celebrating the holiday. The flashing light displays, the wreaths, the figurines of Santa and Frosty and Rudolph, and in one yard, Homer Simpson, were all a delight for us to see. That is, until we had to pull over and my son had to go to the bathroom in a parking lot. His bladder, it seemed, was bursting with hot chocolate.

It was a joyous season, but I'm happy to have moved on with the Christmas holiday. Still, when I pass by the front of the white bungalow, I hope to see the tree in that door, for just a little while longer.

David Polochanin, a teacher in Glastonbury, lives in Marlborough.

On Writing

It's the second day of the year - and I've just tied last year for total number of blog entries.

I kind of took last year off in the blogging world. (If you're reading this on facebook and want to see my actual blog, it's http://the30somethingsuburbanguy.blogspot.com)

But 2011 was a pretty good year for me writing-wise. I had my first poem published in October, in an anthology by Native West Press. In June, the Hartford Courant published an essay I wrote about my observations taking a walk around Glastonbury. And in August I had an essay published for the website of an educational journal, Middle Ground. Three pieces is not a remarkable number if all I was doing was freelance writing, but for having a fulltime job, it is respectable. I've definitely done worse.

The biggest news I received last year related to writing was that my request for a sabbatical leave from teaching for next year was approved. This is unquestionably huge. For many years, I've dreamed of taking a sabbatical to pursue opportunities to write (and hopefully get published) and next school year, this will be a reality. I have proposed five writing projects, including books of poetry and short stories for readers in grades 6 through 10, as well as three professional education journal-type articles. This will officially merge my experiences as a writer and journalist and teacher. For three years, I worked fulltime at big New England newspapers (Boston Globe, Providence Journal), and then went back to school to become a teacher, which I've been doing now for 14 years. Since I started teaching, I have written articles, essays for the Courant, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, Education Week, and some websites. Since 1998, I'd guess, I've had more than 30 pieces published in all. My sabbatical will afford me the time to develop and market substantial writing projects for children, which I plan to use in the classroom when I return to teach.

Having this year off will be a gift, and I am grateful. It's been a goal of mine for the last 7 or 8 years to take a sabbatical for the purposes of writing, and I now have 7 months to plan what I'm going to do. (A lot of this planning has been done already.) Someone has asked that I blog each day while on sabbatical, and while I think the idea is interesting - tempting, even - I plan to pour most of my writing energy into poems, short stories, and professional articles. However, I do plan to post more to this blog, to "keep the tools sharp", as my former journalism professor Wayne Worcester used to say, and share random opinions as well as the relatively ordinary things that happen to me.