Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

Above It All

Above It All

Comments 0 Comment

A few hours before Tuesday’s monuments tour, my colleagues and I gathered on a rooftop to share drinks and dinner. This is the view that greeted us.

I’ve lived here for decades and never before seen a rainbow over the Washington Monument. It looks like there should be a pot of gold buried somewhere at its base — but I didn’t find it when we visited later that night.

It was the view that was golden: The city spread out at our feet, the low buildings, the honeycomb of highways, the late-day light.

Monuments at Night

Monuments at Night

Comments 0 Comment

Last night, a tour of the Washington, D.C., monuments at night. There was Lincoln, the great man’s right foot protruding slightly, as if he were about to push himself up and walk out to greet the beleaguered citizens gathered there.

What would he say? What could he say? Seeing him made me long for a statesman or stateswoman, someone larger than life who will come to save us all, who will do the right thing no matter the political consequences.

The scale of the monuments only grows in the darkness. Darkness is what we had last night — a rich, warm darkness that meant we could stroll around in shirt sleeves the second week of October. But darkness is what we have in a metaphorical sense, too. And that darkness isn’t as comfortable.

I took heart from the lights and the sounds, the throngs of people staying up late to see the marble and the fountains, those who — I hope — still believe.

Decluttering Times Two

Decluttering Times Two

Comments 0 Comment

Am I the last of a dying breed? Not just a dying breed, but a unique breed — perhaps one of the only generations that must manage both digital and actual files? I’ve spent part of an evening pulling photographs off an old computer that is less-than-accessible due to charging issues, and as I’ve been doing so, I’ve wondered, do we have any parallels in history?

Were there once people who had to contend with both stone tablets and papyrus? With the scroll and the codex?

As the pace of change increases, the pace of managing that change falls on the shoulders of those who not only have a crammed-full hard disk but also scores of musty, sagging boxes in the basement.

Where to start? How to proceed? One must be ruthless on both scores, I suppose, must pitch the papers and books — plus ancient computer files, too. Yesterday was a good day for that, with a sheaf of papers recycled at the office, and desktop computer files trashed at home. It’s a bit like bailing out the ocean with a thimble — but it’s a start.

(How many of these need to go? Quite a few!)

Creeping Numeralism

Creeping Numeralism

Comments 0 Comment

It was called the zoning improvement plan, but went by its chipper acronym, Zip. And it wasn’t adapted quickly, wrote John Kelly in yesterday’s Washington Post. Zip codes met with “pockets of resistance,” he said, including from the White House, which omitted “20500” from its official stationery, even though President Lyndon Johnson had ordered federal agencies to start using the five-digit code a month or so earlier, in June 1965.

Americans may have been sick of numbers, Kelly said. Three years earlier they’d had to start including Social Security numbers on their tax returns. That same year, 1962, AT&T introduced “all-number” calling — which put an end to such notable exchanges as BUtterfield 8 and MUrray Hill 6. 
In fact, Kelly reports, there was an “Anti-Digit Dialing League” created to fight “creeping numeralism.” 
I wonder what the anti-numeralists would think of life in 2018. Today I created three new passwords, all letter-number-symbol combinations. In the course of doing that I was sent at least four different codes that would expire in minutes or hours. Numbers were texted to me, which I then used to create new letter-number codes. 
As I wrote recently, the world has been heading toward numeralism for at least 400 years. Now we have Zip-plus-four. Put me in the words column, though. I’ll fight “creeping numeralism” wherever I find it. 
(Mr. Zip courtesy Wikipedia)
Fading Beauty

Fading Beauty

Comments 0 Comment

The wedding was at 5 p.m., but there was time to meander along a Meadowlark Garden trail toward Lake Gardiner, to see the late-summer salvia and coleus, the asters and ornamental grasses.

It had been cloudy most of the day, but the sun had come out a few hours earlier and warmed the air.

With each turn of the gravel trail the eye took in another artful arrangement of fern and grass and frond.

What a balm for the spirit is a mellow fall afternoon, the air just warm enough, the scent of crisp leaves. After the frenetic growth of summer, the fading is welcome. The beauty seems to come from the fading. And there is comfort in that.

Two-Walk Day

Two-Walk Day

Comments 0 Comment

Walking early this morning and walking again later, I hope. The two-walk day is one I’ve come to appreciate. Walks like bookends, like brackets. Walks that hold you up, that wake you up, that keep you sane.

I’ve always felt this way, but lately more than ever.

For what is a life but the steps we take of it, the twists and turns we make of it. The people we help along the way.

The two-walk day gives me twice as long to ponder these truths and mysteries.

Labyrinth

Labyrinth

Comments 0 Comment

Last night the pavement unfurled like a gift. It caught my feet and led me through the dark. It gave me room to breathe.

Earlier in the evening, October fireflies crawled up from the ground, blinking as yellow as the road marks I wrote about yesterday. If the fireflies could do it, so could I.

So I donned a headlamp and reflective vest and took off down the newly lined road.

The air was cool on my arms; it had the weight of summer air. It buoyed me as I strode past lamplit houses. It calmed me with its passage.

Last night, the road was my labyrinth.

Yellow Lines

Yellow Lines

Comments 0 Comment

The trees are starting to turn, just the first hints of yellow and gold. And Folkstone Drive is following suit. After weeks and months of being a work in progress, the road has two long yellow stripes down the middle of it.

It picks up the mood of the season. Bright yellow school buses, crisp orange leaves, and, if you’re lucky, a stand of Black-eyed-Susans, though more far gone than these.

Yesterday’s walk took me up and back beside the new yellow lines.

It was a still, warm afternoon that held me as I sauntered. It was good to be walking.

Green and Gray

Green and Gray

Comments 0 Comment

Ireland seems like another world already. It is another world, of course, or at least another country. But it’s one I’m going to imagine now, because the fields are so green and the stones are so gray and the two go so well together.

There was a feeling there that everything will be all right in the end. A strange feeling, when you think about the history of the place. But a cozy, warm feeling.

Maybe it’s the gallows humor there or the expectations, which aren’t as high as those on this side of the Atlantic. But whatever it is, I’m going to be drawing on it today.

Mellow Sunshine

Mellow Sunshine

Comments 0 Comment

Over the weekend, as D.C. reeled from yet another emotional and divisive week, the weather gave us a gift: days of mellow sunshine and low humidity, scant clouds. Not Indian Summer, not yet, because we haven’t had a frost. More like the early September days we hoped for but didn’t receive.

There’s a thinness in the air this time of year that allows us to enjoy the warmth, not dread it.  I remember feeling this thinness while doing homework in early September during grammar school. Sitting on the front stoop, wearing my green-and-gray-plaid uniform and a too-tight pair of saddle shoes or penny loafers, still in love with my cartridge pen with peacock blue ink.

Somehow, those memories are all mixed up with the feel of the September air, not quite fall but not quite summer, either. A glorious in-between time.

That’s what we had this weekend, even though we’ve just entered October, what we’re promised through the week. If you listen closely you’ll hear a collective sigh of gratitude.