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Author: Anne Cassidy

Meteorological Assist

Meteorological Assist

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Where I live we have an ally in quarantine, a meteorological assist. Most every day, it rains. And what regulations might not accomplish, weather does.

Yesterday, for instance, we had about six hours of full-on spring sun. Balmy blue skies, no clouds or gloom — and there were lots more people and cars on the road, a sense of everyone bursting from confines.

This morning, though, I awoke to the pitter-patter of rain on the roof. We’re expected to have a deluge by noon. The greenery will become even greener.

It will be easy to be inside today. Which is one day closer to being out.

Something’s Cooking

Something’s Cooking

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As the physical reality of my world shrinks to house and yard, each individual room looms larger. The living room has become my primary work space, the basement an entertainment hub and gym, and the kitchen — ah, the kitchen is getting a workout.

Like many of us stuck at home, I’ve been eating more — and better — than usual. This is because there’s more food in the house and because my typical excuses for not cooking — what a horrible commute! such a day I’ve had at the office! — are no longer viable.

So when I come downstairs in the morning I’m greeted with distinctive cooking smells — with the tang of last night’s curry or the aroma of last week’s (reheated) quiche.

It’s a more full-bodied, full-aroma’ed house I live in these days. And I have to say … I like it.

Catkins!

Catkins!

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The oak catkins are back, draping and dropping, falling from trees onto car, lawn and deck. They’re graceful and gritty, ornery and ornamental. They make my eyes water and my sinuses swell.

These male flowers release pollen to the wind, pollen that finds its way to the female oak flowers to make acorns — and eventually new oak trees. But catkins find many detours from their appointed rounds. They hitch a ride on the soles of shoes, worm their way into houses where they burrow into carpets, slide into corners, and get stuck on the shaggy coats of one old doggie I know.

Years ago, during a catkin-heavy spring, my middle daughter, Claire, decided to start a catkin-removal business. She asked our neighbors if they’d like their driveways swept free of the things, and most of them said yes. Claire did a brisk business. She worked hard for hours, pulling her little wagon up and down the street and loading the catkins there after she’d swept them up.

I’ll never forget her trudging home in the late afternoon, full of smiles. She had a few dollars in her pocket, our neighbor’s driveways were pristine — and she’d brought all the catkins home … to our yard.

Still There

Still There

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Yesterday, I escaped again. This time to walk with another daughter, in an inner rather than an outer suburb —an old neighborhood with houses tucked into hillsides. The iris had popped there, and the dogwood and azaleas have bloomed longer than usual this year, thanks to cooler weather, so they were still in fine array. The flowering trees gave each house and yard the enchantment they deserved.

I’ve said this often (here and elsewhere), but the Washington, D.C., area is at its most beautiful in spring — and this year spring has lasted months.

This particular walk took us to the bluffs above the Potomac River, where we clambered on rocks and rain-slicked trails, through tunnels of foliage colored an eye-popping green. How lovely to be in that place in that moment. How good to have gotten out not once but twice (both for valid reasons, I feel I must add — for exercise and food drop-offs), to see a little more of the world that’s out there. It’s a good reminder, six weeks into quarantine, that it will all still be there when we emerge.

The Land of Other

The Land of Other

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Yesterday I escaped home and yard for a brief sojourn in the Land of Other. The Land of Other is not some mythical place far away. It is simply any place other than my own.

I hadn’t been in this land for two weeks, and it felt good to be there. It’s not that I mind being home all of the time. Mostly I don’t. But as the weeks wear on, and family members remain tantalizingly close, I can’t help but visit them.

Interactions were brief and mostly took place outside. There were two long walks, three frisky dogs, a daughter, a brother and — at the end, a box of take-out fried chicken.

Simple pleasures, deeply enjoyed. The Land of Other — it’s still out there. And knowing that makes me uncommonly happy.

Four Years

Four Years

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Four years ago today I started what I still think of as my “new” job. I moved from print to digital journalism, from editing a magazine to being a jack-of-all-trades writer/editor penning op-eds, success stories, profiles, advertising copy and whatever else needs to be done.

On the Friday of my first week I wrote a brief history of the organization. Seven months later, I was sent around the world to report and write stories in Indonesia and Myanmar.

Before I started, my new manager told me that working at Winrock was a little like drinking from a fire hose. He was not exaggerating. There’s hardly been a dull moment.

Turns out, I’m a little addicted to the fast-paced workplace. I thrive in it, though increasingly it wears me out. But I always do better with too much on my plate than not enough. And right now, of course, I’m grateful to have this work.

One thing I know for sure, and I say this with great fondness: In this job, I’l always have too much on my plate.

(Street scene in Khulna, Bangladesh, just one of the amazing sights I’ve seen through my “new” job.)

Open Pavement

Open Pavement

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Last week I ran an errand that involved driving home via the commuting route I used to take B.C. (Before Covid). I came down Nutley, turned left on Old Courthouse then left again on Route 123 before taking a right on Hunter Mill then the rest of the way home.

There were almost no cars on the road, as you might expect, and as eerie as it was, the commuting self in me (homo commutus?) rejoiced. Here, finally, was something we all crave around here, something rare and precious — open pavement.

As these weeks of quarantine give way to something more ominous — weeks (months?) of uncertain re-openings, re-closings and second-guessings, I think back on those empty roads I saw last week. They were broad, they were empty, they were beautiful. But as we all know … they can’t last.


(An almost-empty road in Colorado. It’s harder to find pictures of empty roads around here.)

Contented with Containment

Contented with Containment

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The more I read of Niall Williams’s This is Happiness (more about this wonderful book in a later post), the more I realize that, although I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, I also grew up in an Irish storytelling culture. Although on the surface my dad seemed to be the chief yarn-spinner, Mom was no slouch in the storytelling department, and her mother, my nana, could tell tall tales with the best of them.

One of Mom’s stories, which may have come in part from her mother — or at least happened when Mom was a little girl — involved a man whose name was Mangione, I think, or maybe Mahoney. This man lived on High or Maxwell or one of the tree-lined streets around the University of Kentucky.  And one fine day he went into his house, climbed up into an attic room, and — Mom always said this part dramatically — never came out again.

As a child I was always fascinated with the mechanics of this arrangement. Was there a bathroom up there? Did he receive his food on a tray? As an adult I realize that this man must have have had agoraphobia or some other anxiety that kept him from leaving the house. But whatever the reason, I’ve often thought of his as a cautionary tale, what happens to people who don’t get out enough — they simply stop wanting to leave.

Is our sheltering-in-place creating an epidemic of agoraphobia, a generation of hermits? Will the quarantines be relaxed, the doors thrown open, and people just yawn and say, that’s fine, but I’ll stay inside, thank you very much.

I feel it in myself, this lessening of desire to be out and about in the world, this contentment with containment. I wonder if others feel the same way.

Earth Day at 50

Earth Day at 50

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If Earth Day was a person, it would need reading glasses by now. The holiday that once seemed the epitome of peace, love and kumbaya may look a little dated in these decidedly less than peace, love and kumbaya times. But although reduced travel and worldwide lockdowns are giving us a tiny reprieve from global warming, Earth Day is still more important than ever before.

Last night I watched a documentary about Norman Borlaug, a Nobel prize winning scientist who is credited with saving up to a billion lives by launching the Green Revolution. The film described his laser-like focus to solve the problem of world hunger — and the selfless way he went about it (for instance, he never patented one of his new hybrids).

But the documentary also pointed out the legacy of the hybrid wheat Borlaug created, the water and fertilizer it requires to grow, the damage it has done to our environment and to social structures as displaced farmers flocked to cities, swelling their populations to the breaking point.

The film made clear that the seeds of one generation’s problems are planted in the solutions of the previous generation. We all do the best we can with the time we have.

What will we do, now? That’s the question Earth Day asks of us.

Elevated Apes

Elevated Apes

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“It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.”  — William Winwood Reade

I thought of this quotation while on a recent walk with Copper. The little guy is old now and seems to have lost most of his hearing and much of his sight. But there’s nothing wrong with his nose. He must retain most of the 300 million olfactory receptors dogs are reputed to have because he seems to enjoy sniffing now more than ever.

But he’s not the only one. Every day on our strolls together (and on my solo walks), I take a deep whiff of lilac. Say what you will about stopping to smell the roses, it’s the lilacs I walk across the street to inhale.

Savoring their delicious aroma gives me a hint of the pleasure dogs take in their own frequent sniffing. It is, then, a unifying activity, one that reminds me that we are “elevated apes” rather than “degenerated angels.”


(I first read this quotation in the book Love, Sunrise and Elevated Apes, by Nina Leen, a volume I treasure for its wisdom and photography.)