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Author: Anne Cassidy

Buying Local

Buying Local

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This year’s tree came did not grow on a sloping hillside in the richest county in the United States. We did not wait in line 30 minutes to be allowed the pleasure of cutting it down.

This year’s tree was not bought from Vale United Methodist Church, the white building at an ancient crossroads like a picture postcard with each purchase contributing to a fund to end hunger.

This year’s tree came from a small lot I noticed on the way out of town, a beaten-earth parking lot with a big tacky Santa Claus and a string of simple lights. On our first trip there, we met Bradley from Whitetop Mountain, down near the Tennessee and North Carolina border. His family has been selling trees on this spot for decades, he said.

Bradley apologized. The trees had been picked over, he said, but he was expecting a shipment that very evening. If we liked, he would take our number and let us know when the shipment arrived. I didn’t think we would hear from him, I figured the tree shortage had caught up with us, that we’d have to pay hundreds of dollars for a scrawny spruce.

But by noon last Friday, Bradley texted: the new shipment was in. We hurried over and found a full and fragrant Frasier fir. It now sits proudly in our living room. This year we bought local by necessity. Next year, we’ll buy local by choice.

Winterish

Winterish

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It’s not quite 11 a.m. and almost 60 degrees this December 17. The forsythia is confused.  

Yes, it lost its final leaves just two weeks ago, but the soft air and warm earth are belying the scant light, are sending messages of “why not” to the poor plant.

And what of us humans? Does it make sense to pack away the shorts and t-shirts, or should we just tuck them amongst the woolens? Are we navigating a new season here? 

Not quite winter. Let’s call it winterish. 

Semester’s End

Semester’s End

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I’ve always been a student at heart, and now I’m one in practice again—reading, writing, researching. Wait, that sounds like what I’ve been doing my entire career. But it was different, of course, When I was a freelance journalist, I read, researched and wrote about the topics I needed to sell an article. When I was an alumni magazine editor, I wrote about what I thought would appeal to my readers. And when I worked at Winrock, I wrote about topics that would explain and showcase the organization.

Now I’m studying and learning about topics purely because they’re interesting to me. These last few weeks, plunging into and through the final paper, I’ve been absorbed in a big topic that I can only scratch the surface of.

But how good it’s felt to scratch that surface. Stacking books around the desk, dipping into one and then another. And then there’s all the online research: I realized weeks into the semester that I didn’t just have to rely on Google Scholar. I had an entire research library with all its subscriptions and databases at my disposal. Which means that, in addition to the books and papers you see above, there are many more bookmarked pages or open tabs on the laptop that is almost buried amidst the clutter.

Our final papers are due today. I sent mine off Tuesday mid-afternoon, then took a long walk on a Reston trail to celebrate. It’s just a start. But it feels good to be a student again.

The Lights

The Lights

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Of all the rituals and practices of the season — the gifts, the tree, the wreath — one means more to me every year. It’s the lights. 

It’s the candles in the windows, the spotlights on the door. It’s the stars on high and the luminaries down below. It’s the icicles hanging from eaves and tree limbs wound with blues, reds and greens. 

It’s these candles in the dark, because that’s what all of them are: our puny fists raised together against the dying of the light. 

Christmas Oratorio

Christmas Oratorio

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Walking to a holiday playlist the other day, I made a merry discovery: the opening chorus of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is just my speed. It’s a bouncy piece of music, and when I was striding down the W&OD trail, dodging the bicycles, it seemed just about perfect.

There’s the timpani pounding out the beat, the flutes trilling in response, the trumpets soaring above it all, and then, of course, the chorus, entering in unison before breaking into various voices throughout the movement.

I looked up the English translation later. “Shout for joy, exult, rise up, glorify the day.”  The kind of words angels might use when announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds in the fields. 

But even before I knew the meaning, the melody and meter passed through my ears to my feet, in that way that only music can.

For Mayfield

For Mayfield

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I heard about Kentucky when good friends wrote to ask if my brother was OK. I checked the news then and learned of the horrible tornadoes that ripped through the country’s midsection. So this post is a lament: it’s a cry of solidarity for the residents of Mayfield, Kentucky, a town I’m embarrassed to say I had never heard of until Saturday, native Kentuckian that I am. 

At first, I thought it was Maysville that had been hit, a river town near where some of Dad’s kin were born. But no, it was, as I often say about Kentucky towns whose names I don’t recognize, “in the western part of the state.” And it truly is there, close to both Tennessee and Missouri, more midwestern than southern. Dawson Springs is there, too—another town hit by the deadly twisters. 

I keep thinking about the folks in the candle factory, perhaps some of them working an extra shift since it’s Christmas time and they could use the money. I think about the malls where those candles might be sold. Do we need those candles? Not really, but yes, because the residents of Mayfield need those jobs. 

It could have been any kind of factory, though. And it could have been any place. But it was in Kentucky, so my heart is even heavier. 

(Dark clouds outside of Nicholasville, from my August trip to Kentucky)

Red-Shouldered Hawk

Red-Shouldered Hawk

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My eyes are generally glued to the screen these days as I sit in my office, finishing up the paper due next week. But they do catch peripheral movement: a disruption of the leaves in the back of the yard, where there are still leaves left to rustle. 

On Wednesday, this wasn’t just any disruption. It was a bird so large that at first I thought it might be a squirrel. It had landed near a patch of bald earth and appeared to be scratching the ground. But it was almost out of my line of sight and I couldn’t be sure. 

Then a shudder of the wings, a springing into air. Either the squirrel had flown or this was a large bird of prey. It landed in the spindly weeping cherry, on a branch that barely seemed large enough to support it. 

And there it sat for many minutes, long enough to take a photograph, to view it through binoculars, to note its markings well enough that I can almost definitely say it was a red-shouldered hawk. Long enough that I could marvel at this beautiful wild thing perched nonchalantly on a tree in the backyard. 

The DNA of Shopping

The DNA of Shopping

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My Christmas list has morphed from one that was always on paper, even just a few years ago, to one that’s mostly in the notes section of my phone. 

This parallels my shopping, which has evolved from mostly brick-and-mortar to well over half online. 

I still scrawl gift ideas on slips of paper which I then tuck into my purse. And I still like to go shopping, to physically enter a store, even if I have to wait a few minutes in line or spend more time than I’d like looking for a price tag.

It’s part of the eternal give-and-take of hunting and gathering, a proclivity that I’m convinced is buried deep somewhere in our DNA.

(Not a shopping list, but a shopping district … this one in Lexington, Kentucky.)

Eighty Years

Eighty Years

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Shortly after publishing yesterday’s post, I realized that yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Eighty years … 

I looked back to see what I’d written on the 70th anniversary, and there was something I’d forgotten about: a special showing of the movie “12 O’Clock High” at a Lexington, Kentucky, cinema, which Dad had organized and hosted. 

I remember that now, how excited he was about it, how he had a little display area out in the vestibule of the movie house, with uniforms and medals and other memorabilia loaned by members of the Kentucky chapter of the 8th Air Force Historical Society.

Now, the World War II veterans are almost all gone. One of the more famous, Bob Dole, just passed away at the age of 98. My dad was not one of the more famous, except to me and the rest of us who loved him. But Dad was World War II to me, and since he’s been gone, I read as little about it as possible. 

(Photo: Genealogy Trails History Group)

Church Bells

Church Bells

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My church backs into a many-pathed woods poised on a rise above a creek called The Glade. Some weekends I drive over there early, park in the near-empty lot, and take a walk before mass begins. 

The last two weeks, I’ve attended the latest service. The sun has set while I’m strolling, the air grown still. I know I’m preparing to pray, not actually praying, but it’s hard to convince myself of that. The sauntering feels just as holy, the forest just as much a cathedral. 

As if to emphasize the point, church bells toll as I finish the walk. These are real bells, not recorded ones. I feel like a medieval serf being called from the fields, drawn from drudgery to the promise of eternal life.