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Author: Anne Cassidy

Trip Talk

Trip Talk

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No secret that I love to travel. But I also love to talk about travel. Yesterday a friend and long-ago roommate called to share tales of our recent adventures. She had just explored South Africa and Namibia. I had seen France, Belgium and the Netherlands since we last talked.

She had warned me about the bicycles in Amsterdam. I told her that now I understand. She tried to explain the grandeur of game drives. I tried to describe the charm of an Alsatian village.

At some point in our conversation I realized that it’s not the travel itself, it’s the way it makes us feel — or at least the way it makes me feel, which is alive and free.

Once, my friend and I trudged down snow-packed Chicago streets to buy groceries as we started our careers in a cold and busy city. Now we have different destinations.

It’s not that trip talk satisfies as much as travel itself, but it certainly brightens up a cold winter evening.

Revolutionary!

Revolutionary!

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I know that it’s 2025, almost 2026, but in my imagination it’s 249 years earlier. The founding fathers have drafted and approved the Declaration of Independence, but the excitement of that pronouncement has faded with the horror and tedium of war. Washington and his troops are preparing to cross the icy Delaware. The fate of our nation hangs in the balance.

I just finished reading The British Are Coming, the first part of Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Rick Atkinson’s Revolutionary War trilogy. I learned that the war for independence lasted more than eight years and took more American lives than any conflict except the Civil War, with which it had much in common, since brother fought brother.

Meanwhile, I’ve been watching the Ken Burns et. al. documentary “The American Revolution,” which features Atkinson as a talking head. I’m imbibing a double dose of American history — learning about the brutality, the geopolitical maneuvering, the difficulties and the costs.

But I’m also appreciating again the remarkable achievement of the American experiment. Though conceived in violence, slavery and the hostile takeover of native lands, the founding of our nation led to something unique in human history, something “epochal and enduring,” in Atkinson’s words: “the creation of the American republic. Surely among mankind’s most remarkable achievements.” It was revolutionary, you might say.

Winter’s First

Winter’s First

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Surely there is nobility in these early days of winter. Bare trees reach heavenward, their trunks a model of verticality. Nothing is wasted or feigned.

My eyes seek the green of ground covers and firs, the splash of morning light on a tall oak. They look for color in December’s pale grays and blues. They find something else, something leaden and true, what winter reveals, which is the essence of things.

It’s a new month, winter’s first. I feel its power in my bones.

Leftovers

Leftovers

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They are unfairly maligned to be sure, these remnants of yesterday’s feasts. Put away by tired plate-clearers and dish-washers, they rest in every cranny of the refrigerator.

What will become of them? I know what will happen to mine. One of my favorite meals in the world is a turkey sandwich. I will be eating as many of those as I can the next few days.

Also in my fridge is an entire casserole dish of untouched stuffing. There were three of them yesterday, and this one was never put out.

As for the Brussel sprouts salad (loaded with apple, pomegranate seeds, dried cranberries and roasted almonds), that will be savored as long as possible.

The best part of leftovers is how easy they’ll make tonight’s dinner.

(No pie leftovers, of course.)

The Diving Room

The Diving Room

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The pie is baked and the salad is made. The turkey is thawed and awaits its roasting. I have celery to chop, onions too, all for the dressing that needs to be assembled and baked. This will be a crazier Thanksgiving than usual, held not here but at my daughter’s house a few miles away. My parents’ dining room table is there, and so is a rambunctious young family.

So after prepping for the feast here, we’ll move the food to another house and another room, what my grandson calls the “diving room.”

It’s incredibly cute, the things kids say, and worthy of remembering and repeating. But in fact, “diving room” makes a certain kind of sense. Sometimes on this day I feel like I must dig deep to find the gratitude. This year, not so much. This year the “thanks” part of Thanksgiving is all around me. Whenever I have a minute, I plan to bask in it.

Requiem for the Penny

Requiem for the Penny

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A long time ago I wrote an obituary for the dime. The coin was still in circulation, but the New York City subway fare was going up from 90 cents to a dollar, which meant fewer dimes in my pocket. It seemed a good time to eulogize not only the 10-cent piece, but all small change.

Turns out, I was a few decades early. On November 12, the U.S. Mint struck the last penny. Though there are 250 billion pennies in circulation, according to the New York Times, the penny’s final minting does mark a moment. After next year, no more of the shiny copper coins will be sent into circulation. There will never be a 2026 penny.

I remember as a kid looking for wheat pennies or 1943 bronzes. Not for nothing did I grow up with a mother who believed her ship was about to come in. I suppose the value of some pennies will rise with this move, but most of them will continue their march into irrelevancy. It now costs three cents to manufacture a penny. Hard to prop up such a losing proposition.

Our currency has moved on, to say nothing of inflation. Pennies have little beyond sentimental value. But I’ll still keep a bunch of them on hand — if only for that reason.

(Photo, courtesy Wikipedia.)

47 and 48

47 and 48

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It happens often after a get-away: I may have physically returned to hearth and home (and the endless to-do lists that accompany them) but I’m still half-anchored to the places I just visited. In this case, to 47 and 48. That would be New Mexico and Arizona, the 47th and 48th states to enter the union.

I hail from the 14th state, Kentucky (1792), so to contemplate the 47th and 48th, the last of the continental additions, is to be in awe of how recently they were admitted — only a month apart, in 1912. My parents honeymooned in the American West only four decades later.

Do these states feel new? Not really. They feel old, even timeless. The parts of them we visited were beautifully remote. The closest gas station was 25 miles away, the nearest grocery store double that.

Lack of services means neighbors rely on each other. That, plus the wide-openness of their spaces and the darkness of their skies is a magnet for birders and researchers and people who chafe at boundaries. I admire the hardy souls who make 47 and 48 their home. I don’t think I could.

Geronimo’s Surrender

Geronimo’s Surrender

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Though the view out my window is of the Virginia Piedmont, I’m remembering the sweeping plains and pointed peaks of the Basin and Ridge. At a windswept clearing on Historic Route 80 is a monument to Geronimo’s 1886 surrender, which effectively ended the Indian wars. It did not end the hostilities, however. The massacre at Wounded Knee, for example, took place in December, 1890.

After numerous chases and escapes Geronimo and his band of Apaches formally surrendered to General Nelson Miles on a bluff near this lonely spot. Geronimo ended his days imprisoned at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, after appealing unsuccessfully to President Theodore Roosevelt to “cut the ropes and make me free.”

Geronimo died of pneumonia, the old man’s friend, in 1909. On his deathbed, he confessed to his nephew: “I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”

Another Country

Another Country

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It was a rare autumn monsoon, pounding the dry desert earth for hours. There was lightning and thunder, but no sign of the Milky Way, which we glimpsed our first night in Portal. The locals welcomed the rain, which had been teasing them for days.

The storm left a world rinsed clean, pockets of blue sky, the Chiricahuas sharp-edged against it. I looked, took a photo, sighed. This is why they call it the Yosemite of Arizona.

After snapping the shot, I climbed in the rental car, punched the gate code one last time, then bumped over the cattle guard, heading first east and north on Historic Highway 80, then west on I-10 to Tucson.

It was a short trip but a powerful one. The American West is like another country. So much so that I expected to queue up for passport control after landing at Dulles. Luckily, that was not required. It was a quick return home to the muted colors of a mid-Atlantic November.

Portal and Rodeo

Portal and Rodeo

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Imagine sister cities (sister hamlets is more like it) only miles apart but often separated by a one-hour time difference. That would be Portal, Arizona, and Rodeo, New Mexico. Arizona does not observe daylight savings time; New Mexico does. From March through October, folks lose or gain an hour every time they mail a letter or pick up a coffee.

It couldn’t have happened to a mellower crowd. People are drawn to this cloud island because they love sunshine and open spaces. The locals we’ve met are friendly and easy-going. They laugh about the inconveniences and rave about the natural beauty.

When we pulled up to this vintage post office yesterday, we were greeted by a friendly postmistress with a Great Dane named Mac. She kept the place open so we could buy postcards, then hand-stamped them for us.

Portal and Rodeo are places that the world has passed by. I’m glad we stopped here for a few days.