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Author: Anne Cassidy

Happy National Walking Day!

Happy National Walking Day!

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It’s the first Wednesday in April, which the American Heart Association has deemed National Walking Day. You can go on their website and read about the health benefits of walking, the best warm-up stretches and how to prevent injury.

Notable to me is the word “National.” Most countries don’t need a Walking Day to get their citizens up and moving. In many parts of the world, if you don’t walk you don’t work and you don’t eat.

I see no need to extol the benefits of walking more today than other days. There’s a reason why I named this blog A Walker in the Suburbs. But I will point out that in one of my favorite cities in all the world, walking is not just popular on National Walking Day but all year long.

New York City is a walker’s paradise. It’s the place Alfred Kazin describes in A Walker in the City, to which this blog tips its hat. It’s no coincidence that lively walking cities are lively cities, period.

There is something about a human that loves a walk. And what better day to remind ourselves of that?

Hanami

Hanami

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I just happened upon the ranger talk at the Tidal Basin last evening at 6 p.m. I’d decided to see the cherry blossoms after work, and then, impulsively, walked counterclockwise instead of the other way around. And there, at the FDR Memorial, was a green-suited ranger with a Smokey the Bear hat.

He was speaking of L’Enfant when I arrived, but went on from there to cover the flood of 1881, the creation of the Tidal Basin and the ugly construction-site look of the land around it at the turn of the 19th century. He described National Geographic writer Eliza Scidmore’s 24-year campaign to plant Japanese cherry trees around the basin, a quest that finally took root, so to speak, when President Taft’s wife, Helen, became interested in the project. (The lantern above commemorates the spot where Taft planted one of the first cherry trees.)

There are other twists and turns to this story and how cherry trees came to dominate the landscape around the Washington and Lincoln monuments. But my favorite part of the talk came when the ranger talked about the Japanese custom of hanami or “flower viewing” of the sakura or cherry blossoms.

The sakura represents a “short life, well-lived,” the ranger said, and for that reason was revered by both samurai warriors and kamikaze pilots. Hanami celebrates the fleetingness of the blossoms, the beauty that is ours just for a moment — and more lovely because of it.

The Overdog

The Overdog

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Yesterday, I watched my first and last University of Kentucky basketball game of the season. Such is the hubris of this Kentucky fan that she missed the first two rounds of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, figuring she’d tune in only if her team made it to the Elite Eight.

There was a not-so-subtle assumption here, of course … which is that her team would make it to the Elite Eight. Not such a crazy assumption given that they’ve been there 34 times. Heck, UK has played in 17 Final Fours. Auburn, the team that beat us yesterday, has never been to the Final Four. Which means that, as usual, many people were pulling for our opponent to win.

I understand this emotion. In fact, I usually pull for the underdog, too — except when the underdog is playing UK. My rationale is that Kentucky is not the first in much else. US News ranks the Bluegrass State 34th in education (which is an improvement from when I was in school) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis lists us 42nd in per capita income.

The fact that we’re not the the underdog in basketball — that you might even call us the overdog (no fooling) — seems only fair to me. But that never stops me from pulling for the boys in blue. I want them to win every time.

(“Underdog” cartoon photo courtesy Wikipedia) 

The Volunteer

The Volunteer

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In so many ways, the name doesn’t fit. When I hear “volunteer,” I think of a smiling face with a hospital tray, or a badge-wearing angel at an airport information desk. There is a lot of goodness in the word, to be sure. But the word also a martial implication, young men marching off to war. How odd, then, that trees that spring up where they aren’t planted are also called volunteers.

But they are, and I can now stand amidst the branches of one — a weeping cherry that was spared at birth by our neighbors the Morrisons, the same neighbors who are more than halfway through their around-the-world cruise. Decades ago, they left the cherry alone while it spread its roots, enlarged its trunk and sent its branches down in a cascade of blossoms, larger and more fulsome every year.

The tree sits far too close to the street, is off-center, is too big for its footprint. But it has thrived, just the same. And watching it bloom this year makes me wonder at the wisdom of natural selection.

According to the itinerary they left behind, the Morrisons recently left Sri Lanka for Indian ports. These will be followed by a long string of sea days, then Jordan and the Suez Canal. The Morrisons aren’t in Virginia to see the small pink flowers bud from the hanging stems. For this, they will need a stand-in — and  I volunteer. 

Remembering the Light

Remembering the Light

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Traveling with a photographer for 10 days as I did last month in Cambodia has made me more attuned to light, to the waxing and waning of it, the quality of it. I’d heard of the golden hours, the ones early and late in the day, when light slants low over the landscape and casts a glow. But I was unsure of how far you could push it, how little light you could have to still capture a shot.

Our last full day in the field had us racing to reach a family before dusk. Even I, non-photographer that I am, was biting my nails. Would we get there in time? Would there be enough light left?

I’ve seen the photographs … and there was. The couple we wanted to capture stand arm and arm in the setting sun, the brickyard slag heap reflecting its final rays.

The young woman wears a red checked dress. She’s changed into it for this photograph, though her husband still wears his work clothes, which are streaked with grime and brick dust. This touches me greatly, the efforts she took, her simple gold necklace and flip flops, the way she cupped her stomach, cradling the baby she carries, due next month.

Life goes on; light goes on, too.

Lenten Thoughts

Lenten Thoughts

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Two nights ago after a leisurely dinner, I found myself reading a fine essay about Lent. I rounded off the dinner with a few squares of white chocolate as I pondered Michael Gerson’s words.

The chocolate is significant because I didn’t give it up this year, and in Gerson’s thoughts I found some justification for my decision. “Some of us give up sweets,” he writes, “with the dual purpose of self-sacrifice and dieting. It is fully consistent with American ideals to kill two birds with one ancient spiritual practice — examining our inner selves while losing those 10 pesky pounds.” The focus instead ought to be on the inner life, he says.

What I was striving for this Lent was to pray more, snipe less — to be more grateful for that which has been given to me. In that I’ve been only partially successful. But I’m encouraged when I learn of others who struggle too.

Gerson describes an earlier “enforced Lent” he experienced recently, a week in the hospital with poor food and no electronics. “What did I miss? Lots of things. What could I do without? Pretty much everything.”

Such denial, he writes, reveals that the “richness of life is found elsewhere — in … the experience of gratitude — not for this thing or that thing — but for God’s radiating presence in all things.”

I don’t typically seek spiritual uplift from the newspaper. But that’s what I found the other day.

Meandering More

Meandering More

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Lately I’ve been living the life of a dog-walker. Not a professional dog-walker, mind you, the kind that gets paid, but an amateur — a true amateur, according to the French root of that word, one who loves, who does what she does for love.

And love this little guy I do. We all do.

A couple weeks ago he started limping. Did he hurt his paw? Would it resolve itself? The vet rendered a verdict: Copper had torn his ACL! Who knew canines had anterior cruciate ligaments?

While some dogs have surgery for this, I doubt this dog will. Instead, we’re keeping him quiet and giving him medicine for pain and healing.

Keeping Copper still is not an easy feat. It means barring him from running across the backyard, something he wouldn’t have attempted two weeks ago but now, as he improves, he would love nothing better than to do. I’ve barricaded the deck stairs (his only way out of the house without a leash) and he’s walked a few houses up and down the street when he needs to do his business.

It’s been an interesting interlude, this routine dog walking, quite a departure from the typical Copper experience, which involves holding on for dear life. Instead, the two of us have been meandering more, Copper sniffing, me musing — both of us slowing down and taking life a little easier.

Interior Decorating

Interior Decorating

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I don’t take naturally to interior decorating. I have no flair for it, no natural aptitude. I know what I like, which for lack of a better term I’ll call Old World Cozy, but this is not an easy vision to articulate.

A recent burst of decorating energy has propelled me online and into furniture stores, where I wander bewildered among the couches, tables and chairs. The problem with making one decision is the many others that follow. 
If we buy this couch, must we buy the chair? And the ottoman? And what about end tables and lamps?  Ah, yes, the list is endless. 
Which is why … sometimes … I do nothing at all.


(Photo shot in a furniture store showroom which shall remain nameless.)
Brave Buds

Brave Buds

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Before the leaf and flower, trees take on a vague pink sheen. On closer inspection the sheen turns out to be clusters of budding branches. But from afar, when caught in a spurt of sunshine on a breezy day, they seem to gleam with a light pink halo.

It’s the maples, the brave ones, showing us the way. It’s not that hard, they say. It’s a matter of faith, of reaching to your highest branches, letting the life-force flow.

On a walk this weekend I snapped photos of trees and shrubs in various states of bloom. I thought about anticipation, potential, that which is worth waiting for. Surely there are spring shots lovelier than these.

But to me these speak to the heart of the season, that from the gray trunks of winter come a riot of bloom. That summer greens would never happen without these brave buds.

2,700

2,700

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Sometimes I only see the milestones after they happen. Yesterday’s was this: I’ve written 2,700 posts since I started this blog in February 2010.

It makes sense, I guess, numerically speaking. I’m in my tenth year, and I write almost 300 posts a year.

Still, the round numbers always make me reflect on how much this blog has become part of my life, an (almost) daily habit.

What this boils down to is that I make sense of the world by writing about it. I’m a born scribbler, that’s all.