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Author: Anne Cassidy

Going Nowhere

Going Nowhere

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A walker in winter may be trapped indoors by rain, ice, snow or cold. For several years now, though, I’ve had a secret weapon, a way to walk inside that doesn’t involve pacing. That would be the elliptical in the basement. 

The machine is designed to work out not just the legs and hips but also the arms and shoulders. The only part of the body it leaves untouched is the brain, that restless organ. 

Outdoor walks provide a moving display of images on which to dwell: familiar houses comfort, treed paths shelter, new vistas enliven.

But the elliptical walker has, if she wishes, a TV with streaming shows and old movies and whatever else she can find for distraction. She has a library of music and books to plug into on her phone. She has, in short, the world at her fingertips. And so she walks, and walks, and walks … going nowhere but quite content. 

Thank you, Mr. Epstein

Thank you, Mr. Epstein

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I read recently of the passing of Jason Epstein, an editor and publisher who launched the paperback revolution. When he was 23, earning $45 a week and just scraping by in the publishing trade (I can relate!), he proposed to the higher-ups at Doubleday that they publish the classics in soft rather than hardcover. 

His bosses listened, and Doubleday came out with Anchor books, which provided the works of  Lawrence, Stendhal and other greats for as little as 65 cents a title. Epstein edited Roth, Mailer and Auden, and helped found the New York Review of Books, but it’s the paperback idea he’s known for most.

Before the early 1950s, paperbacks were reserved for “lowbrow, escapist fiction,” the obit said, so this was a novel idea. And it worked! The new line sold briskly, and what became known as trade paperbacks quickly became a profitable arm of the publishing business, much beloved of students and others who wanted a library of classics but couldn’t afford the hardback versions.

So now when I’m moving yet another box of books or cramming one more paperback onto an already-crowded shelf, I’ll say, with only the slightest hint of irony, “Thank you, Mr. Epstein.”

Oscar Season

Oscar Season

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The Academy has spoken and we now have 10 Best Picture-nominated films to rent, stream or (gasp!) see in a theater. 

I think I’m ready for that last one. It’s been more than two years since I’ve entered a darkened auditorium, slunk down into my seat and let the world slip away.

By now there will be a new protocol: tickets purchased in advance, assigned seats; that was already happening but has become more regimented, I imagine. Masks will be required. Perhaps the concession stands will be closed. No popcorn? That would be a hard one to swallow, but not a deal-breaker.

It’s Oscar season. Omicron is waning. Whatever the lay of this new land, I’m willing to travel it. 

The Morning After

The Morning After

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It’s difficult to get the blog up and going the day after a big birthday celebration. Heading into its teenage years it’s needing a lot of sleep — and getting rather surly about picking up after itself, too. 

So I’ve spent the morning cleaning up confetti and collecting empty champagne bottles.

These are crucial years ahead, years requiring firmness and guidance. I don’t want the blog skidding off the rails. 

I’ve done this three times before, I tell myself. I can do it again. 😊

 (Photo: Pippx, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. And just for the record, I think this is the first time I’ve used an emoji in the blog. I won’t make a habit of it.)

An Even Dozen

An Even Dozen

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This morning I made my way down the hall in the dark, thinking I would read a while and fall back to sleep. I quickly discovered it was later than I thought, the sky already lightening. I’d slept through the night — and there’s always joy and excitement in that!

It’s with similar joy and excitement that I write today to celebrate 12 years of blogging: a dozen years of collecting my thoughts and sending them out into into the world, a dozen years and 3,643 posts. 

As I figure out this new writing life, A Walker in the Suburbs remains a constant. It’s a laboratory, a playground, an experiment. It’s where I celebrate books, travel and the strange little thoughts I have.

And on this clear, bright February 7th, my birthday wish for the blog is … more of the same.

Farewell to the Office

Farewell to the Office

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Long ago, a family of three moved into a house that was far too large for them. In fact, even to say it was a family of three was pushing it. This was a mom, a dad and a six-month-old baby. The house, while not palatial, seemed so to us at the time. We rattled around in the four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths. We parked a playpen in the living room, and put our dining room furniture in the, uh, dining room.

Except the dining room was barely big enough for a party of six, which we learned our first Thanksgiving when we had to turn the table diagonally to fit everyone in.

Meanwhile, the family of three became a family of four and then five. The dining room filled with toys, the hutch moved into the living room, and at some point it became official: the dining room was now … the playroom.

It remained that way for a decade or so, when I vacated the upstairs office I’d happily occupied to give each daughter a room of her own and moved down to this room, which absorbed two tall bookshelves and a “desk” (a hollow door laid across two filing cabinets). The office it has been these many years, also an ersatz den with a comfy couch — and a doggie haven.

Today, we move all the furniture and rip out the carpet. Tomorrow, a team of experts (my sister and brother) will help lay new flooring. The desk will be gone, and a new dining table moved in. The office is dead … long live the dining room!

Mall By Myself

Mall By Myself

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Yesterday, I was a walker in the city, not the suburbs. I began at 18th and L, deep in the business district. But that’s not where I stayed.

The Mall was my destination, heading toward the Capitol and my former walking route, site of numerous lunchtime strolls.

The monuments were there, glinting in a warm winter sun. The White House, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries building.

What was missing, what always seems to be missing these days, was the people. Empty thoroughfares make good straightaways, but what I would give if this scene were clogged with tourists and pickup soccer games and pale office workers out for a noontime jog.

Welcome Fog

Welcome Fog

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I woke up to a meteorological marvel, at least in these parts, something we seldom see around here. Morning fog is a soft way to begin the day; it blurs the edges of the world. It may also be giving the groundhog the conditions it needs to predict an early spring, but I won’t count on that.

For now, I’m content to look out my study window at birds perching on the chicken wire, awaiting their turn at the feeder. At the squirrels, hatching their next plan to commandeer the suet block. At the red fox, skulking behind the covered garden bench at the far end of the yard.

Every time I glimpse that bench, which is often, I think for a moment that I’m seeing the tiny playhouse we had when the children were small. It has the same outline, the same lightness against the dark green backdrop of the fencerow. 

But that place was torn down long ago, my girls are all grown up with families of their own. And I’m welcoming the fog, which promises a soft beginning to this new day.

Mom in Manhattan

Mom in Manhattan

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It is February 1, 2022, what would have been Mom’s 96th birthday. On this day, as on several previous February 1sts, I cede this space to the person who inspired me first, and inspires me still. In this post, written in 1994, Mom describes a snowy Manhattan and muses on what the city meant to her.

I have been snowbound in New York now for several days. I look out the window on 27th Street and watch the snow pile up. Hardy New Yorkers trudge through the ever-deepening snow. 

At home in Lexington when it snows, we rarely see a car drive down Colonial Drive and almost never see anyone venture out on foot. Here it is so different. The attitude is “nothing will stop us, even 18 inches of snow.” That must be a part of the chemistry that makes New York City what it is. 

I wish I had lived my life in New York City. It excites me as no other place has. There’s never been a time when I was ready to leave. And each time I have left, there’s been a little bit of myself that’s stayed behind.

(Photo: Vincent Paul, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Georgetown Gazetteer

Georgetown Gazetteer

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Tomorrow, my humanities class moves from online to in-person, so I’ll drive to Georgetown again, as I was doing last fall.  I’m looking forward to meeting classmates in person, though of course there will be the nervousness of any new venture. 

I took a trial run of sorts on Friday when I visited campus for a required Covid test. That was accomplished in minutes, which left plenty of time for a stroll around campus and through the neighborhood.

Flurries were flying as I walked the brick sidewalks and dreamed myself into the Federal townhouses. There was the buff pink with dark green shutters, a stately corner manse, a teal-shuttered beauty with the view of Georgetown Visitation. 

It’s a tough choice … but I’ll take one of those mansions on Prospect, one with a river view, please.