Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

Switching Browsers

Switching Browsers

Comments 0 Comment

Continuing on the tech theme, I write today from the office. It’s been many weeks since this was possible, all due to a log-in problem I could have solved much sooner had I just switched browsers.

Switching browsers is often the remedy to the problem at hand. I should know this by now. Is there a stubborn streak at work here? Am I making things more difficult by failing to switch browsers first?

Possibly, but it’s unconscious on my part. It’s part of being a digital emigre, someone not born to swim in these waters. I may find a solution, eventually, but it will never be an easy one. It’s as if my brain circuits won’t work that way.

Maybe writing this post will help me remember that before I pull my hair out, before I decide to completely redo my blog (which I hope will happen soon anyway), it’s better to take one simple, elegant action — switch browsers.

Calmer Computing

Calmer Computing

Comments 0 Comment

It was a day to rake leaves, plant bulbs, do laundry and prepare the house for visitors later this week. It was also a day to be frustrated by various computer glitches.

There was a new system update with all of its attendant woes, the retrieval of passwords once entered automatically, the held breath that formerly well-oiled systems would start up again.

There was the banishment of junkware called Gilpierro, which slipped onto my machine when I was downloading a schedule from a third party. That took about two hours.

With each snafu I worried that I wouldn’t be able to access this blog or my email or the document I’d just been working on. But so far, so good.

I like to think I’m becoming a little saner during times of software distress. One might not notice this by looking at me, but I have a little more faith in the power of machinery than I used to. It’s a calmer computing I engage in now.

(The photo doesn’t have much to do with computing, but it’s a calm scene.)

Waylaid

Waylaid

Comments 0 Comment

It was one of those days, one that seemed to start without me. I meant to write when I came back from my walk, but was waylaid …  then waylaid some more. And now that it’s evening I wonder, why bother?

Because writing here is a creative comfort, a way to soothe jangled nerves.

Because writing here is a way to celebrate walking, which also soothes jangled nerves. (Notice a theme?)

Because I try to write every workday no matter what.

Because there is much to be grateful for, even on a wind-whipped November evening.

Early Snow

Early Snow

Comments 0 Comment

There are still leaves on the trees, but that isn’t stopping the snow from falling. What was first billed as sleet and freezing rain has turned into snow that’s sticking on deck and railing, yard and street.

Roads, mostly untreated, are slick and getting slicker.

It will turn to rain later, they say. They being the Capital Weather Gang, my go-to weather source.  But they also said there wouldn’t be much accumulation, so I’m not believing them at the moment.

What I am believing is what I see from the warm confines of my living room. The snow is falling, and there may be a little sleet mixed in because it’s making a sound when it hits the ground. No silent snow, secret snow here. It’s early snow, loud snow.

National Landing

National Landing

Comments 0 Comment

It was before 8 a.m. when I landed at National Landing, landing in my usual way, which is to say via bus — not plane or boat.

National Landing is the former Crystal City, transformed overnight from a slightly down-on-its-heels and not-so-aptly-named set of office buildings, hotels, restaurants and parking garages to half of Amazon’s new HQ2 (HQ 2.5?).

As I walked from Metro to my office, I noticed a car with broadcast equipment staking out a spot for a stand-up shot. It was parked near the basketball courts that were painted with pink and green flowers a few months ago and accessorized with a ping-pong table and life-size chess board. A few steps away, on the other side of the street, was my building, now being shown in a promotional video with a faux glass-walled eatery in front.

I don’t know whether it’s the winter or the weather — or the fact that the HQ cat is out of the bag — but the basketball court isn’t protected from vehicular traffic like it was earlier this year during the “courtship” phase. And I saw no evidence of the painted bicycles that had been adorning the area until recently. I was feeling a little bereft, like the bride who wakes up the day after the wedding and finds that her beloved isn’t quite what he seemed before the nuptials.

It’s not disappointment, not exactly. But something very much like it.  I must remember the mantra that the building pictured above (formerly Noodles restaurant) reminds me every time I walk to the office. … “Good things coming.”

Let’s hope so.

Damp, Drizzly November

Damp, Drizzly November

Comments 0 Comment

A walk at lunch time yesterday, a dash outside and back before the rain moved in. Crystal City was almost deserted, federal employee haven that it is, so I had the sidewalk almost to myself.

I made my way down to Long Bridge Park and back, Gershwin in my ears, a big, soothing sound.

It was cold enough for gloves but I left them in my pocket. There will be time for them soon. For now I counted on the brisk pace to warm the extremities. And it almost did.

On the way back to the office, I looked up at the sky. The sun was trying to break through. It never quite made it, but I liked the way it was trying, the way clouds gathered and puckered, the pockets of light they let through.

It was a November Monday, not yet the “damp, drizzly November in my soul” that Melville describes in Moby Dick. It was just Monday, just November. The damp and drizzly, that would start a few hours later, would continue on through the night and into the dark morning. I hear the rain now, a steady beat on roof and road.

Local Heroes

Local Heroes

Comments 0 Comment

History becomes personal when the people we know and love are part of it. I’ve written before of Dad as a tail gunner in a B-17 bomber, flying raids deep into German territory and flying air support on D-Day. But I’ve written little if anything about my grandfather, a World War 1 veteran.

Mom’s father, Martin J. Concannon, above and top, served in the calvary in France during World War I. Details are hazy about the length and nature of his service so many generations later, but I think we can all agree that he looked dashing in his uniform.

Not to be outdone in dash, here’s a picture of Dad leaning against a B-17.

Heartfelt thanks to them and all the men and women who risked their lives for our freedom. May we always be mindful of the gift they have given us — and may we always use that gift wisely.

100 Years

100 Years

Comments 0 Comment

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Today we celebrate 100 years since the end of the Great War, World War 1, which killed an estimated 10 million soldiers.

My grandfather fought in the cavalry, and when I went with Mom to Europe many years ago, she shuddered as our train passed through Verdun and other battle sites.

The past not that long past to her, because it lived on through the memories of her father.

World War II is the war that lived in my memory, and in a way similar to Mom’s — because my father fought in it.

But it is World War I we memorialize today, the War to End All Wars (oh, how I wish that were true).   Here are the last paragraphs of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front:

He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.


(World War 1 trenches, 1916. Photo: Wikipedia)

For the Birds

For the Birds

Comments 0 Comment

The other day I was on the phone with the pharmacy, talking with a real human being instead of tapping in numbers.

“Do you have birds?” the real human being asked me, not surprisingly, since Alfie and Dominique were chirping up a storm.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“Parakeets?” she ventured.

“Right again!” I replied. And from there we were off, discussing the cheerfulness of birds and the pleasures of a home filled with their song.

Apart from 18 months in 2011-2012, we’ve had a parakeet or two in a cage hanging from a hook in the kitchen ceiling for the last 14 years. The birds are not directly over the table, but they are in the center of the house, where they can hear the humans whose flock they have adopted.

I’m midway through Jim Robbins’ book The Wonder of Birds and learning many things I didn’t know. For example, scientists’ study of murmuration  — birds’ ability to fly in unison in great flocks that twist and turn like a cloud dancing — is enhancing what we know of human cognition and metacognition.

It doesn’t surprise me that these intelligent and loving animals would have secrets to share. “I hope you love birds too,” wrote Emily Dickinson. “It is economical. It saves going to heaven.”

(Can’t find a good picture of the parakeets this morning, so this photo of a wild baby bird in our garage will have to do.) 

Survival Plan

Survival Plan

Comments 0 Comment

They’d predicted sun for yesterday, and at first they were right. It was sunny when I woke up and for several hours in the morning. But by midday the clouds had moved in … and they never went away.

It felt like the promise of summer cut short by early winter. The rains of Monday and Tuesday had stripped off many of the leaves, and the bare trunks of winter were out in full force.

It was time for my kind of mood music, for Mendelssohn and Respighi and Dvorak. It was time for a hooded sweatshirt and hands balled into fists pulled up into sleeves. It was time to make chili and turn on lamps in the afternoon.

In short, it was time to enact the winter survival plan. To listen, to light, to cook, to hunker down.