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Author: Anne Cassidy

Walkable Communities

Walkable Communities

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An article in today’s Washington Post describes what it says may be the community development of the future, as the pandemic has accelerated a trend toward telecommuting that was already in process. Called the Hub at La Plata, this mixed-use development makes it possible to walk to shops and live with one car — or even no car at all. 

An excellent idea … and one that Reston, Virginia, where I (almost) hang my hat (you can walk to Reston from here) has been practicing for more than half a century. Though the New Urbanism roots of Reston have taken a beating over the years, there is still enough of the original plan to make you see the point and offer up a silent cheer for it.

I had just such a moment yesterday, when I fast walked on one of its many paved paths. Signposts directed me to South Lakes Village Center one direction and Hunters Woods Village Center the other. I didn’t walk to either, but just knowing I could … made all the difference. 

(A photo of Lake Anne taken from the top floor of Heron House, in Reston’s oldest village center.)

Noting the Passing

Noting the Passing

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The pianist Leon Fleisher died August 2 at the age of 92. I’ve written about him before, both as a pianist and writer. I even vowed to learn a piece of music because of watching him play it, a promise I have not kept, by the way. So the least I can do is honor the man here.

Fleisher was a master of reinvention: winning competitions as a prodigy, losing the use of his right hand, despairing for a while, then eventually remaking himself as a conductor, teacher and performer. The difficulty he faced almost sunk him — he considered suicide — but he emerged stronger as a result. 

“Time and again, I would look at my life and marvel that so many wonderful things had happened that never would have happened if my hand had not been struck down,” Fleisher wrote in his memoir Nine Lives. “I couldn’t imagine my life without conducting. I couldn’t imagine life without teaching so intensely.” 

Curiously enough, Fleisher’s obituary shared the page with that of another artist and master of reinvention. The film director Alan Parker directed several movies I’ve loved, such as “Fame” and “The Commitments,” movies that, until reading his obituary, I wasn’t even aware were his. Like Fleisher, Parker took risks, made changes, didn’t find a safe path and follow it but continued to learn and grow.

Two men, two creative careers, but one lesson (at least for me): Whatever you do, they say, don’t get stuck. 

Joint Praise

Joint Praise

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Watching Tom recover (and nicely!) from knee replacement surgery makes me appreciate my own joints even more. That doctors can go in there, take out the diseased cartilage and bone and create a new knee (or shoulder or hip) from metal and plastic is amazing enough. But the originals are even more miraculous. 

Our joints are mechanical marvels that we take for granted every day. The range of motion, the strength and durability … I will never look at going up and down the stairs quite the same way again. 
While I seem to spend an increasing amount of time keeping my birth joints in working order, I have renewed incentive to continue and increase this practice. Not because I don’t admire the bionic versions, but because I’d just as soon keep the slightly creaky but still-so-serviceable ones I have. 

(Image: Wikipedia)
Night Walk

Night Walk

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I took a flash light but didn’t use it, because although it was dark, the clouds were illuminated in a strange sort of way, not glowing from within but lighter than they should have been at that time of night. 

It was a type of afterglow, but of sunlight rather than sunset. Clouds that had wandered into the evening sky and forgotten to dim their brights; clouds that almost looked fake, as if they were painted for the set of a high school musical. 

Walking home under the vault of heaven, staring at those clouds, I thought about how we so often forget that which is above us. It’s easy to do once inside, with our house pleasures and chores, with our television and computer screens, with the light they emit, the stories they tell. 

But all along, the night sky is out there, an abundance we ignore, perhaps because we must. Like all the seeds that never sprout, like all the words we never say. 
The Walking Wait

The Walking Wait

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I thought I had prepared well for yesterday. I would be waiting most of the day in a surgical center, so I packed a light jacket, took plenty of books and settled in for the duration. 

The surgical center had other ideas. I wasn’t allowed to stay there, due to Covid restrictions. I would be on my own all day in Bethesda, but of course wouldn’t want to be sitting inside anywhere. 

It was on the way back to the parking garage to figure out a new plan that I saw the sign: Capital Crescent Trail. This rails-to-trails path runs from Chevy Chase through Bethesda down to Georgetown. It is shady most of the way, with a great vaulting canopy of mixed hardwoods to cool and refresh the walkers and bikers that use it.  
I couldn’t believe my luck. This time, the wait wouldn’t be sitting in a sterile waiting room. It would be outside under the sky and clouds. I started off slowly, having already taken a fast walk earlier in the say. But with hours to kill before returning I could wander as far down the path as I chose. 
I didn’t turn around till Georgetown, almost to the C&O Canal towpath. I passed the Bethesda Pool, the Loughborough Mill and the dim spooky confines of the Delacarlia Tunnel (more on that in a separate post). It was a discovery-filled morning, a long, stretch-the-legs walk … and the perfect way to pass the time and still be close by. My prescription for waiting: whenever possible, take a walk. 
Endeavor

Endeavor

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The space ship Endeavour landed yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico, the first time a capsule had ever splashed down in that body of water — and from the the first flight operated by a private company. All this on top of the nine years it had been since American astronauts were launched into space from U.S. soil.

What struck me when reading the news accounts this morning was what astronaut Bob Behnken said after landing, thanking those who made the flight possible “for sending us into orbit and bringing us home safely. Thank you very much for the good ship Endeavour.” 
What a lovely word, endeavor: so much longer than the word “try,” more multi-faceted in meaning, more elegant in syntax. Though it is named for the space shuttle, the name spoke volumes about the vessel, the launch, the landing — and the times we live in. 
Back to Browsing

Back to Browsing

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Returns still go in the chute, and holds can still be delivered to an outside table in a plastic bag. But for the bold and restless, you can also now enter the Fairfax County Public Library branches in person. I took the plunge … and I’m so glad I did.

Though it was almost eerily quiet, it wasn’t like being in an empty restaurant, a place you expect to be lively and people-filled. The communion we have with the printed page is silent anyway.
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy finding the books I read in tangible form — not clicking to retrieve them on a screen or downloading them in an audio file. But browsing, tilting my head to read the titles, scanning up and down the shelves. Seeking and finding.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of picking Susan Orlean’s The Library Book because there it was in the “New Nonfiction” section and Anne Tyler’s Clock Dance because I was over in the “S”s anyway, looking for Stegner’s Crossing to Safety and her book was in the “T”s. It was the great pleasure of serendipity, of finding a book I wasn’t looking for but that was waiting for me all the same. 
Hunted and Gathered

Hunted and Gathered

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On my way to breakfast, I found four ripe blackberries, courtesy of my morning walk. It’s a bush I’ve known for years, quite accessible to deer and other passersby. 

Since four berries do not a breakfast make, I sliced some peaches on my cereal, from a bag our neighbors gave us after they had picked them at a local orchard.
This means that two parts of this breakfast were locally grown, hunted and gathered. And then … there’s the Special K. 
Working Al Fresco

Working Al Fresco

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I feel like a kid who finally has to come inside because the street lights are on. For the first day this week, I’m working inside. It was quite a run: four straight days of al fresco work. 

I’ve been writing this blog on the deck, editing articles, crafting talking points, and, yesterday, sending out a newsletter to 5,500 people, also from the deck. Kinda scary that one can do all this from the backyard … but that’s the way we roll now. 
Meanwhile, I go through two changes of clothes a day (it’s been in the 90s with 70-percent humidity), drink glass after glass of water or iced tea, and every day when the accumulated heat of the day seems ready to collapse upon itself, I plug in a small fan to ease my way to quitting time.
Minor discomforts aside, working outside is divine. I type to the rise and fall of cicada song, I answer emails while birds settle in the azalea bush behind me. Though I don’t hunt for worms or sip nectar to keep body and soul together, working outside makes me feel a part of the natural world in a way few other things have.  
Joyland!

Joyland!

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Yesterday, the neighbors had their driveway sealed, which meant that I was whisked away to a place I used to love more than any other — Joyland.

Joyland was an amusement park in Lexington, Kentucky that closed when I was young. How I came to conflate the smell of blacktop with this down-on-its-heels fun park was likely due to the hot asphalt of the parking lot.
All I know is that the merry-go-round there was an utter delight, and the roller-coaster, called the Wildcat, was a rickety wooden model that clattered when the cars rolled up and down its hills and valleys. 
When I made my First Communion and was told by the nuns that it would be the happiest day of my life, I asked Mom and Dad to take me to Joyland. All spiritual aspects of the day aside, if this were to be the happiest day of my life, Joyland would have to be involved. 
And, dear people that they were … they took me. It was after Mass and the family brunch, after the rain had stopped (because it was pouring that morning). The sun had come out and the pavement was steaming.  The whole place smelled like blacktop. It was Joyland! My happiest day was complete.