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Author: Anne Cassidy

Sorting Day

Sorting Day

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Yesterday was cool and rainy, the perfect day to sort through drawers and throw away receipts. It began with a search for my national parks pass (not yet found), but continued long beyond that.

I amassed a pile of credit card receipts and tossed all but 2019’s. Along the way, I found a plethora of pool passes, a few expired gift cards and some stray Girl Scout badges, never sewn onto sashes.

It was, on the whole, a calm and meditative practice, sorting through old eyeglass holders, foreign currency and stray sewing kits — the kind of odd conglomeration that can only accumulate over time.

At the bottom of one drawer was a checkbook from Chemical Bank in New York. Haven’t heard about them in a while. No wonder. They merged with Chase in 1996.

It was that kind of afternoon.

Happy Global Big Day!

Happy Global Big Day!

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Today is Global Big Day, when hundreds of thousands of birders from the U.S. and around the world list the birds they see and hear on the eBird app designed by the Cornell Ornithology Lab. The data they supply is used to tell people where birds are in real time and also to do cool things like have farmers flood their fields to give wetland-loving birds a place to land.

Using the information supplied by regular birders tramping through woods and fields, binoculars and phones in hand, Cornell has built a citizen science powerhouse that is actually saving the lives of hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of birds every year.

The flooded fields are one example of this. The birders’ information feeds a digital map that tracks the travels of migrating species. Knowing that a flock of water birds is heading their way, farmers can flood their fields, giving the birds a temporary wetland in which to land for the night.

This concept originated with a Nature Conservancy scientist who came up with the idea of “renting habitat” instead of buying it. The flooded fields accomplish just that. But it’s the eBird app that makes the flooded fields possible.

Wouldn’t it be nice if more technology was like this?

(Tufted titmouse photo courtesy Cornell eBird)

A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal

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For the last couple weeks I’ve been single-tracking it, consumed with a big project at work that is absorbing most of my waking hours. It’s still under wraps, this project, but suffice it to say that it involves some historical research, some text writing and some speech writing.

It makes me realize how fast the hours can pass when one is engaged in interesting work. But it also makes me realize how important it is to be balanced. It’s harder to think of post ideas this week, for instance. It’s harder to do my own writing.

Ideally, there would be double the amount of hours in every day. I would have the time to be as absorbed in my own work as I am in the paid stuff. It would still be exhausting, of course, but just think of how productive I could be!

Welcoming May

Welcoming May

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I’m one day late in welcoming May, my favorite month. It helps that both my sister and I were born in it (though none of my girls, they’re summer/fall babies). It helps that the weather is warming and the summer is coming. And there’s a certain horse race in Kentucky that can usually be counted on to add some pizazz to the month.

When I was a kid, May also meant the end of school. It was almost more excitement than my little heart could take, a birthday and school’s out in one terrific explosion of excitement.

I’m far removed from those rhythms now, but I like to remember them. They remind me of an earlier, slower, more rounded time, when life flowed at a pace resembling sanity.

Now here it is May again … and so soon. But it’s always good to welcome it.

Good Fortune

Good Fortune

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Though I call this blog A Walker in the Suburbs, my feelings about suburbs are decidedly mixed. I appreciate the greenswards, the sound of spring peepers in the night air, downy woodpeckers at the bird feeder. I chafe at the driving culture, the isolation, the lack of community.

Alice Outwater’s Wild at Heart (mentioned last week, too) is reminding me why the suburbs once seemed like Shangri-La. In the late 19th-century, human waste was stored in cesspits and removed by horse-drawn wagons. The horses that pulled those wagons produced millions of pounds of manure, which collected in the streets.

“In 1900 there were well over 3 million urban horses in the U.S., and those city horses deposited enough manure to breed billions of flies, each one a potential vector for disease,” Outwater writes.

No wonder people moved out of the cities into what must have seemed like heaven. Grass, trees, manure that was manageable. Walking Copper this morning, I reflected on my good fortune.

Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions

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My morning commute involves driving to the Metro station, riding the train seven stops, hopping off, trudging up the escalator to an express bus that takes me to Crystal City, then walking to the office. Four segments, three types of transport, but it works. It’s a routine, something I could negotiate in my sleep — and often feel like I do.

When it’s very cold or rainy, I vary this slightly, stay on the train one more stop, then switch to another train, which also goes to Crystal City, where I can walk to within a few hundred feet of my office without going outside. This is the longer option, and it lacks the escalator walk (which has become part of my fitness routine), so I seldom take it.

This morning, though, I debated, because for once I dressed for afternoon warmth and not morning chill. When the train pulled closer to my stop, I deliberated. If I just missed a bus, I would have to wait and be cold. If I stayed on I would stay warm. What should I do? I really couldn’t decide.

At the last second, I stuffed the newspaper in my bag and jumped off the train. I’ll probably just miss the bus, I thought. But no, the bus was there. I stayed warm and got to my destination, where the time I’ve saved I’m now spending on this post.

Decisions, decisions.

The Return

The Return

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Sometimes it’s the ordinary miracles that touch us most. So it was yesterday when we spotted a hummingbird at the feeder. It’s always good to see these amazing birds return in the spring. But this time, we knew when they returned last year and were watching and waiting, filling feeders.

And then … a little bird appeared. It was April 28 — the exact same day they returned in 2018.

Do they have little timers inside? Small clocks? What is it that tells them when to leave and when to return? What propels them across mountains and oceans, back to this suburban backyard?

I’m sure there are theories, actual knowledge. I’ve probably even read some of it. But I don’t want to know about any of this right now. I’d rather just marvel at it all.

Fallen Petals

Fallen Petals

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In a slight twist on “March winds and April showers,” we’re in the midst of an April wind that follows on the heels of an April shower.

That has meant that the April flowers, in this case the lovely pink rose-like blooms of the Kwanzan cherry, are no longer attached to the tree but strewn about the grass.

This is the way of the world, is it not? And has anyone expressed this more simply and more beautifully than Robert Frost?

“So leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.” 

Walking Wordsworth

Walking Wordsworth

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I knew the Romantic poet was a walker, but not the extent of his rambles. According to Alice Outwater in a new book called Wild at Heart, William Wordsworth spent much of his day walking. He would compose poetry as he strode along gravel paths, which he favored over the bushwhacking preferred by his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (I’m with you, Wordsworth.)

Wordsworth covered roughly 10 miles a day, an estimated 175,000 miles in his lifetime. He and his sister Dorothy walked so much and at such odd hours that the local people suspected them of being French spies.


According to Outwater, Wordsworth’s perambulations were inspired by his meeting John “Walking” Stewart, an English philosopher who hiked from India to Europe. Wordsworth, 21 at the time, was especially interested in Stewart’s philosophy on nature.

And it was in nature, not sitting passively in it but walking through it, that Wordsworth found his life and his inspiration.

(Dove Cottage, near Grasmere in England, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy. Photo: Wikipedia.)

Three Years

Three Years

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As if I needed another reminder of time’s quick passage, today I celebrate three years at my “new” job. Three years sitting on the fifth floor of a steel and glass building, staring out the windows but mostly staring at my screen. Three years traveling to report on stories, visiting places I never thought I’d see, meeting people around the world.

I won’t say it seems like yesterday that I began this new adventure. In many ways it seems longer (which, I guess, is a vote against time’s quick passage). But it seems longer in the way that new and familiar things often do.

Already the years are speeding up here. The time between my first few months, when I could barely tell one project from another, and this time last year seems like quite a stretch compared with the past 12 months.

On the whole, though, I’m feeling quite lucky on this three-year anniversary. I work harder than I have to, but it’s work that engages, and sometimes even inspires. Can’t ask for much more than that.