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Author: Anne Cassidy

Terror in the Tunnel

Terror in the Tunnel

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For 15 years I was a Metro commuter, riding the Orange Line train from Vienna to the District and, later, to the Crystal City area of Arlington. Before that, long before that,  I rode the New York City subway whenever I wasn’t walking through the Big Apple. 

All of which is to say, I’ve spent way too many hours/days/years (?) of my life riding the rails of some underground transport system or the other. I mastered the art of looking the other way when disturbed people entered my car and began hectoring fellow riders — or of slipping away entirely and hopping on an adjacent car when matters seemed to be spiraling out of control. 

I can only imagine yesterday’s horror on the N Train in Brooklyn: the smoke, the shooting, the blood, the panic. Terror has erupted, this time in a subway tunnel. Not to be gloomy, but it’s only a matter of time before it erupts somewhere else again.

Old House

Old House

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Whenever I’m in Lexington I make the pilgrimage and drive to the houses where I grew up. Unlike my own children, who know only this much-loved and much-battered center-hall colonial, I had three places to call home. 

My sister and I drove past one of them last month. It’s a house I lived in only two-and-a-half years, the one I returned to from college and my early work years in Chicago. But though my time in the house was short, it left a big impression. 

I’m not used to seeing the house from the back, but we drove down a cul-de-sac that gave us this view, that showed us the deck that’s been added, the trees that have grown up in the decades we’ve been gone. 

When I look at this photo, I see not just a ranch-style house with a walk-out basement and steep driveway, but the rooms inside … and the people who used to live in them. 

Back to Practicing

Back to Practicing

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When I bought the new piano last year, I told myself I would play whatever I wanted. No agendas.  No “practicing.” I only wanted to hear the sound of the instrument, which makes any kind of playing pleasant to the ear, even the rusty renditions of pieces I once played with ease. 

But I’ve reached the point in this renaissance (can I call it that? I think so) where something more is required, some sort of foundation for the playing that is to follow. 

That something is Hannon. Yes, Hannon, much reviled in my youth but now revealed for what he/it actually is: the means to an end. The stronger and more nimble my fingers, the better I can master the Brahms’ intermezzos and  Chopin nocturnes and Bach fugues I’m trying to play. 

At this point I begin to understand the purpose of those dreaded assignments of my youth, the scales and the Hannon and the other exercises I avoided whenever possible, teacher notes scribbled on the yellowing pages, usually the words “slow down.” Can it be that I’m now inflicting these exercises on myself? 

As a matter of fact, I am. I know that practice won’t make perfect. But it will make better. 

Trail Talk

Trail Talk

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Walkers usually keep to themselves. We’re an introverted bunch. But yesterday was different. 

“Can you believe this day?” a woman said to me as she came closer, gesturing to the blue sky, her arms raised as if I were a long-lost friend. 

I thought for a moment we might know each other, so enthusiastic was her greeting. But no, she was just a fellow traveler, her tongue loosened by the endorphins or the trail or the fact that we were both alive and well on a glorious spring morning. 

Lucky Enough

Lucky Enough

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A male cardinal hops along the front walk, pauses briefly, then flies up to perch on a slender branch of the climbing rose, his crimson plumage shouting out from amidst the green.

It’s not long before he’s back on ground, foraging in the leaf meal, pecking around the forget-me-nots, glinting in the periwinkle. 

He shines, this cardinal, his feathers brighter, as I’ve read they are this time of year. He’s all decked out for the ladies, of course. And I’m lucky enough to be around for the show.

(Unfortunately, the cardinal couldn’t be bothered to pose. But I did snap a quick photo from the rear.)

The Good Fight

The Good Fight

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So far, April is proving to be as wet as March was windy. The months are playing their usual roles, in other words. 

I feel a certain responsibility on rainy days: unless otherwise occupied, I should use them for cleaning closets or going through old files in the basement. 

Which means that after I’ve written, and after I’ve studied, and after I’ve made today’s calls and sent today’s emails, I must get myself to the nether regions of the house … and fight the good fight.

The Bells of Healy Hall

The Bells of Healy Hall

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If I’m lucky, I arrive on the Georgetown campus in time to hear the bells of Healy Hall toll the Angelus. It makes an already timeless experience feel even more so.

The bells were tolling last night as I walked to class past the old stone buildings through a cool and soggy evening. 

I thought about a passage from Thomas Cahill’s Mysteries of the Middle Ages, which details a 1219 visit between Saint Francis of Assisi and Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. 

Some scholars think that it was then that Francis came up with the idea of tolling the Angelus bells at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. — the Christian version of the Muslim call to prayer. A likely story, and maybe just that, a story. But it was easy to believe it when the bells were ringing. 

April for Real

April for Real

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The new month has crept up on me. Though it is April in reality, it is March in my mind. What to do about this? Get out and walk through it, I suppose. 

I’ll be looking for the usual signs: violets nodding in the early grass, bluebells along the path. The yellow blossoms of forsythia greening along the stem. And if we’re lucky, the dogwood and azaleas will overlap enough to make the tableau you see above.

Winds will blow, rain will fall, maybe even snow. But the sun will mean business. That’s another way to know that April is really here.

The Walking Cure

The Walking Cure

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Solvitur ambulando — “it is solved by walking” — is the unofficial motto of this blog. Throughout the years, the walks I’ve taken have not just stretched my legs and bolstered my mood; they have also proved, over and over again, that simply getting up and moving is the solution to many of life’s problems.  

For the most part, then, despite all the physical advantages it brings, I still see walking’s chief benefit to be a mental one.

What I remembered this weekend, when I strolled outside for the first time in seven days—after being down with a cold and other annoyances—is how walking helps a body recuperate. The combination of fresh air and footfall working their magic.

The walks were not the fastest I’ve ever taken, nor did they cover the most ground. But they took me out of the house and into the wide world, and I was grateful for them.

An Obit a Day

An Obit a Day

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Sometimes, the best way to start the morning is by reading an obituary. Not just any obituary, though. It needs to be one like that of Arthur Riggs, 82, who with a colleague, Keiichi Ikatura, developed synthetic insulin. Riggs died March 23. 

I learned that Riggs and Ikatura developed a genetic technique that led to the first human-designed and human-made gene that would function in any organism. This paved the way for the creation of synthetic insulin, a “lifesaving development for millions of people with diabetes,” the Washington Post said.

Before this discovery, people with diabetes relied on insulin from cows, which had a high rate of allergic reactions. The synthetic insulin avoids this risk.

Dr. Riggs lived in the same house for 50 years, drove “modest cars,” said the obituary … and quietly gave away much of the money he earned from royalties on patents — $310 million — to the institution he helped to found. The name of the institution: the City of Hope. 

(Ikatura and Riggs in 1978. Photo courtesy City of Hope.)