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Author: Anne Cassidy

Warm Heart

Warm Heart

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Malawi is known as the “warm heart of Africa,” and has so far has lived up to its name. The people are friendly and the weather is hot and muggy. The rainy season has begun, and as I write these words the storm that was brewing in the distance is now pounding the Mafumu Lodge in Lilongwe, where I just got settled.

Even on the 30-minute drive from the airport, the scenery didn’t disappoint. The plains stretch out for miles with jagged-edge mountains rising from them. Trees are sparse and twisted in that way that says “Africa” to me. Women tote loads on their heads, men ride bicycles, children run barefoot along the road.

There is that great jumbling together of people and place that happens when you travel, the awareness, even in my sleep-starved brain, that the world is so much bigger than my little corner of it.

Malawi-Bound

Malawi-Bound

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Last night wasn’t a long one for me, hemmed in on both sides by packing and writing and preparing for eight days away. But that’s OK, I tell myself, since I’m about to be on Malawi Time, which is seven hours ahead of us.

Until a few weeks ago I wasn’t entirely sure where Malawi was. I knew it was in southeastern Africa, but that’s about all. Now I know it’s bounded by Tanzania, Moazambique and Zambia; is dominated by Lake Malawi and has just commenced its rainy season.

Winrock has a wonderful project there, working to curtail child labor, which is higher in Malawi than most other places in the world. Thirty-eight percent of children are engaged in it, largely in the tobacco fields.

I will be traveling throughout the country, meeting students, teachers and others who are fighting to change this. One of them is Leonard, who was so inspired by the anti child-labor club at his school that he coaxed his friends’ parents into sending their children back to school.

It’s at moments like these, when I’m nervous about leaving my home and family, that I remind myself of the people I’m about to meet and the sights I’m about to see, God willing. And then I realize, all over again, how privileged I am to do what I do, how grateful I am to be able to see the world in this way.


(Look closely at the picture above. That’s an elephant, a photo taken on my last trip to Africa, to visit Suzanne and Appolinaire in Benin in 2015.)

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo

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It’s a big day here, the birthdays of Celia and my brother Drew, the day before my work trip to Malawi … and the final day of National Novel Writing Month.

On November 2, I found a 500-word story I’d worked on years ago, and, on a whim, decided to turn it into a novel. The goal for National Novel Writing Month (fondly known as NanoWriMo) is 50,000 words in 30 days. I wasn’t sure I could do this, but I did some quick math and realized that if I wrote 1,667 words a day I could produce a novel. It wouldn’t be a great book, but it would be a book.

I’m proud to say that I crossed the finish line late last night with 50, 009. But I’m still trying to finish the novel. The  main character’s husband is stuck in Chicago when he needs to be in Lexington. The main character herself, a realtor, is juggling two important sales, at least one of which could tank. And there are other stray plot lines flying around like loose wires after a big storm.

In short, I need another another hour and another thousand words.

But then, I hope, I will be done.

Happy NaNoWriMo!

(A P.S. to this one. It took me several more hours, but I finally finished about 7 p.m. The final product is about 54,000 words. One of these days, I may actually read it!)

A Change in the ‘Hood

A Change in the ‘Hood

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Last year this time two longtime neighbors moved to Hawaii and sold their house. This year, the neighbors across the street moved out, almost on the same exact day. This time the move was only two miles away rather than 4,700 — but the effect is the same: a hole in the neighborhood, in the fabric of life in this little corner of the world.

When John and Jill moved in, they had a baby about the same age Suzanne was when we arrived here. Now their baby is in high school, and his two brothers not long behind him. It is only life, of course, only time. But when it’s the people you wave to on a daily basis, who you chat with at the mailbox, who are part of your life in the way that good neighbors are, it makes a difference.

The house won’t be sold till the spring, so for now it just sits there empty, a missing tooth in a lopsided grin.

(This is actually our house, but theirs isn’t much different.)

Windy, with a Chance of Jet Noise

Windy, with a Chance of Jet Noise

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It is not just a little bit windy today. It is gusty enough to send incoming Dulles aircraft into the dreaded alternate runway pattern.

This means that as I sit here snug and cozy in my house, proofing, editing and listening to a webcast I need to write up, I also have one ear cocked for the sound of sudden jet deceleration.

It’s unnerving! But also, not unexpected. This happens on super windy days.

All I need to do is keep on working, hang onto my hat — and try not to listen.

Tale of the Transponder

Tale of the Transponder

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Paying for speed and ease of use makes sense to me. Which means I’m theoretically in favor of toll lanes on busy roads.  But when the toll lanes are the only lanes and the fee can hit $50 for nine miles of pavement, I have to draw the line.

Tolls on Route 66 can be avoided, though, when there are two people in the car, so Tom and I drove in together this morning. The toll, which changes every six minutes based on volume, was $34 when we passed under the sign. But four minutes later, when we hit the restricted section of the highway, the supposedly free-flowing part, the road was still clogged. We crawled along the expressway for miles, not seeing clear pavement until more than halfway through the trip.  Bad enough when you’re traveling for free, but hardly worth paying for.

And that’s not all. The main reason we drove in this morning was to avoid a $10 surcharge for not using the special transponder that has a switch you can set for “HOV2” (signaling that there are two or more people in the car). It had been a year since we rented two of these transponders and apparently had only used one.

Paying for open pavement — and paying not to use a transponder. If this is the modern world (and it most assuredly is), please drop me off in the 19th century.

We Brake for Trees

We Brake for Trees

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I can’t remember how we discovered Snicker’s Gap, the Christmas tree farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I do know that Claire (pictured below with her puppy Bella; her beau, Tomas; and their older doggie, Reese) was in middle school. So it’s been a few years.

And in those few years, a few other people have caught on that trekking out to the country and felling your own fragrant Douglas fir provides more seasonal cheer than driving to the shopping center at the corner and choosing a tree from the parking lot. We did that often, too, when the children were younger. But Snicker’s Gap has been the tradition for 15 years now.

What’s become abundantly clear, especially since yesterday, is that many others have made the same calculation. We waited 30 minutes to get into the place. The lesson for next year: Leave earlier, arrive later … or find a nice tree in a lot somewhere.

Shopping Season

Shopping Season

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What’s the saying, when the going gets tough, the tough go … shopping?

As Americans hit the malls and big box stores, as they weed through websites in search of cyber deals, I think about the pastime of shopping, what it can do for you and what it can’t.

My mother liked to shop. If she had time to kill she would while it away in a store or two.

This is not the way I unwind. Put me in a darkened movie theater or downstairs in the basement with an episode of “The Crown.” For me, shopping is a means to an end.

But the shopping season is upon us, so today I’ll do my bit for the economy. Not with joy or gladness but with a sense of duty.

Gratitude on Ice

Gratitude on Ice

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It’s one of the coldest Thanksgivings on record here, with wind chills in the teens and temperatures that won’t make it out of the 30s. A perfect day to stay inside, chop onions, peel potatoes and baste the turkey, all in a steamy kitchen.

Though it’s tempting to put heat at the top of the list of things I’m most grateful for today, I’m going to push it aside for friends and family. We haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving here for a couple of years, Suzanne and Appolinaire having stepped in as the hosts with the most lately, but today the clan (minus Celia, who’s in Seattle) is gathering here, and by late afternoon there will be a full house.

It has lately been made clear to me (as if I didn’t already know it), just how important family and friends are. Not just for celebrations like today’s, but for the dreary mornings and frantic evenings of life. So on a day for giving thanks, my heart is full of love for the people who make life worth living for me. Not just today but every day.

Give a Little Whistle

Give a Little Whistle

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The old Russell Hobbs tea kettle gave up the ghost a few weeks ago. It seems like just the other day it was the new Russell Hobbs, so I was unprepared for the breakdown, at first thought I must have been turning it on the wrong way.

But oh no, it was truly broken, could no longer be babied along by turning it every so slightly to the right on its base, like cracking a safe. Now, the search for the new tea kettle will begin, but given the craziness of the season I could see it taking a while.

In the meantime, there is a stand-in I brought up from the basement and dusted off. It’s the trusty whistling tea kettle, decades old. It may be made of aluminum, it may be hastening our senility, but I love the jolly way it announces that the water is tea-worthy. Not with a click of a power switch but with a shrill whistle that brings me scurrying from the far corners of the house. It brooks no interruptions, knows its own mind. And the water it produces makes a fine cup of tea.