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Author: Anne Cassidy

Small is Beautiful?

Small is Beautiful?

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It was a different kind of Academy Awards ceremony last night, but I still watched the whole thing. Set in L.A.’s Union Station, the nominees and their guests sat around little tables, as if at a supper club. All of which made the event seem warmer and more intimate, though admittedly strange, without the usual glitter and fuss.

With no host and no big song-and-dance numbers, the event focused our attention on what matters most: the awards themselves and the people who receive them. Though a few recipients went on too long and there were the usual political diatribes, I enjoyed the relatively unscripted moments. You could tell people were speaking to a small audience (only 170) from the way they talked. 

By now most of us are ready for a return to normalcy, watching movies on the big screen — something Frances McDormand urged us to do when she accepted her Best Actress award — and maybe even the four-hour-long extravaganza every year that honors those films. But the performances at this year’s Oscars make a case for small over large. 

(Info booth at Union Station, pre-transformation. Photo: Wikipedia Peetlesnumber1 

Measuring Loss

Measuring Loss

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More than a quarter of the U. S. population is vaccinated. With warm weather and outside gatherings on the horizon it’s easier to feel hopeful about Covid than anytime in the last 15 months.  But several sobering articles in this morning’s newspaper are clouding that sunny outlook. 

The crisis unfolding in India is one. A record jump in the U.S. death rate last year is another — it was the highest above-average rate since the 1918 flu.  

And finally, tucked away on an inside page was this headline: “Measuring a Nation’s Loss by the Years Covid Stole from Its Families.”

Public health researchers are pushing to include the measure of years lost rather than lives lost as a full measure of the virus’s impact. On average, victims of the disease lost nine years of life. While Covid-19 has attacked the old more than the young, it steals time from everyone it fells. 

We’ve only begun to come to terms with the enormity of our loss from this disease. One way to begin is figuring out how to measure it. 

A Whirl

A Whirl

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The last few days of paid employment are flying away like paper pages from a calendar in an old movie, the gimmick directors used to show time passing. Which is to say quickly.

But that’s now. A few months ago time was hanging around my ankles. I kept paging forward in my desk diary, looking at the day I had appointed for notifying management of my decision — it seemed as if it would never arrive. 

So in a way, my experience of time recently has mirrored its journey through our lives: the languid days of childhood, the accelerando of adulthood, the spin-crazy way the pace picks up as we age.

By that reckoning, next week will be quite a whirl. 

Petal Storm

Petal Storm

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A wild wind blew in from the west yesterday, bending the bamboo and sending Kwanzan cherry petals flying over grass and street. 

It was a veritable petal storm, as the wind continued through the night and into today, sending overnight temperatures below freezing and forcing us to bring in the few plants we’d set outside. 

I’m telling myself that it’s only a temporary retreat. Spring is on the march this Earth Day, and it will persevere in the end.  Until then, I’m watching the petals as they fly. At least they’re not snowflakes. 

Sauntering

Sauntering

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Writing a blog called A Walker in the Suburbs means I’ve become familiar with all the lovely synonyms for walking: strolling, ambling, rambling, trekking, treading and wandering. By far one of my favorites is sauntering. But until yesterday I never thought much about its derivation. It was while looking up Thoreau on another quest that I found this, from his essay “Walking”: 

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,’ to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, ‘There goes a Sainte-Terrer,’ a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.”

Although some would say the word “saunter” comes from “sans terre,” without land or home, Thoreau continues, this is fine, too, because being without a home can also mean being equally at home everywhere — and that in fact is the secret of successful sauntering.  

I’m looking forward to more sauntering and more Thoreau. 

A Constant

A Constant

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Morning on the Hunter’s Woods Trail: Mozart in my ears, details in my brain, details I hoped would filter away like a dusting of snow through trampoline mesh. And the rhythm of footfall did clarify the day; it reminded me of what is most important, which is to live fully when and where we are.

I was aided in this by the appearance of wildlife: first, a fox sauntering down the trail ahead of me and then, on the drive home, a wild turkey beside the road, bobbing its head as it fled into the woods.  

The critters pulled me into the present and away from the fact that this is a departure day, which is not nearly as nice as an arrival day. 

But the warmth is finally here, and the day is as perfect in its way as the cold, windy Thursday that brought her here. Both days are required, one for coming, the other for going — with the walks a constant between the two. 

Reading O’Brien

Reading O’Brien

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Ever since I saw Edna O’Brien on Ken Burns’ “Hemingway” I’ve been reading her books. I finished the Country Girls trilogy a couple days ago and am now enjoying her memoir, Country Girl.

It’s the proper order in which to read these books, I think. Not only because the latter came 52 years after the first of the trilogy volumes, but also because it’s interesting to see what she did with the raw material before actually getting to know the raw material. 

I say this because I started reading them in the opposite order and wasn’t happy about it. So I saved the memoir for last — and am glad I did. Here’s a passage from it about Drewsboro, where O’Brien grew up:

On either side of the track there were grassy banks full of wildflowers and burdock and flowering weed, bees buzzing and disporting  themselves in and out of these honeyed enclaves, and the smell of the nettles so hot. Birds swooped in random gusts, and butterflies, velvet-brown, maroon, and tortoiseshell, their ravishing colors never clashing, never gaudy, moved in the higher strata, like pieces of flying silk.

“

A Triumph

A Triumph

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I’m writing this on the deck, pushing it a little since the thermometer says it’s 44 , but doing it anyway because it’s so gorgeous out here that I don’t want to be inside. 

The grass is bright green and striped with shadows from the still-low sun. The trees have their earliest leaves, tender and golden. 

The azaleas have burst into bloom — the lavender one along the back of the house, the bifurcated pink one beside the trampoline, and the fuchsia one in the middle of the garden — a mistake in terms of landscaping but a triumph from the azalea’s point of view. 

Knowing how rare such moments of perfection are, I plan to sit here a moment, sip my tea and be grateful for every bit of birdsong. 

Just Marveilng

Just Marveilng

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You know the days when they come, days that stand out from others not because they’ve been set aside as holidays but because they have not. They’re naturally delicious from beginning to end with no agenda other than spending time with the people you love. 

I just had one of those days. Apart from an hour or two in the morning when I finished up work tasks from yesterday, there was nothing on the calendar but a quick trip to the store. Otherwise, it was a block of time reserved for hanging out and staying in. 

By 11 a.m. the babies and their mamas arrived to spend time with their aunt and sister.  It was loud and chaotic, with gurgles and shrieks from the infants and laughter and conversation from the adults I still call “the girls.” 

Copper, revved by the unaccustomed activity, patrolled the gathering like a shark in the water, looking for plump infant toes to nibble. We managed to contain him, but barely.

Now it’s evening. The babies are at home in bed, their parents are pooped, and we … are just marveling at it all. 

(“Sock letters” welcoming Celia home.)

Reunions Now

Reunions Now

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I haven’t hugged our youngest daughter since August, when she flew back to Seattle. That’s one Thanksgiving, one Christmas, one Easter, several birthdays (including hers) and one new baby in the family ago. It other words, an eternity. 

As I look forward to our reunion today, I think about others taking place across the country, families and friends long separated by work and pandemic restrictions. 

Just yesterday, dear friends from college texted me a picture of their gathering. Was it my imagination, or were their smiles brighter than they would have been had this not been a post-Covid meeting? Doesn’t everything seem a little more significant now? And if it doesn’t, shouldn’t it?