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Author: Anne Cassidy

Stop Time

Stop Time

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Ah, January. I know there must be something good to say about it. Let’s see …

January is a plunge into icy waters, a dive off the high board. That’s the bracing part of it, the embarking-on-a-new year part of it. 
January can be a brisk incentive, a long and relatively uncluttered month with time to get your teeth cleaned and update the will.

January provides plenty of inside hours for making soup and baking cookies. There’s hot chocolate and reading in bed when the snow is falling. 
But there’s one thing that January does better than any other month. It slows time. It’s the one month that takes forever to finish, that doesn’t seem like it’s over before it’s begun, that helps me catch my breath in this great, whirling craziness that is “midlife.” January stops zenosyne cold in its tracks. 
Two-Hour Delay

Two-Hour Delay

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When I was a kid, you either had school or you did not. There was no in between. By the time I had children, the two-hour delay was well established.

In many ways it makes sense. Icy mornings often moderate, and two hours can make a big difference in the condition of roads and sidewalks. Having just driven to Metro on a day deemed too tricky for an on-time start, I can vouch that the county made the right call today.

But I can remember what a mess it was when the kids were young and school started at 11:05 rather than the (already late) 9:05. I could barely transcribe an interview before they were home again. And there’s something about the moral relativity of a two-hour delay that disheartens me. It’s mushy, especially when employed too often.

Perhaps that’s why I slogged into the office today. It was hard … but it was pure.

(We only got an inch of snow today; the photos is from 2010.) 

Frozen Solid

Frozen Solid

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Footfall thunderous, thudding. No give in the ground. Crunching through frozen mud and thin white ice that begs to be broken.

This is what I’ve been walking on this winter when I venture off road to stroll on trail or berm. It’s a strange sensation, expecting give where you don’t find it.

Not unlike returning to a scenic spot of once-great beauty to find it befouled with new houses and fences.

The ground I knew — soft, fragrant, pliable — has become another rough element, something that doesn’t move with me but against me. It’s ground that may as well be … pavement.

Hooray for Analog!

Hooray for Analog!

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Steven Spielberg’s movie “The Post,” which I saw yesterday, was a rousing paean to the press. But it was also a loving tribute to an analog world.

Reporters pounded out their stories on manual typewriters. Copyeditors used pencil on paper, making those marks that once seemed like a secret language to me — and are now a secret language to almost everyone. Typesetters set lines of type in hot metal, loaded slugs into plates. All the weighty, tangible things of a world left behind.

Now we live a digital life, ones and zeroes. We skitter on top of ice that we may at any time fall through. On Saturday, the people of Hawaii were on high alert for 38 minutes, thinking they were under imminent missile attack — a glitch made possible by one person making the wrong selection in a drop-down menu.

Are some things easier now? Yes, I type, my fingers tapping keys that don’t have to be pounded, correcting errors with a click instead of a messy white  liquid. Is it just my imagination, though, or do the stakes seem higher in this unweighted, digital world?

The Howling

The Howling

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We’re back to winter here, with a blast of Arctic air that’s sending us down to 10 degrees wind chill tonight. Back to three layers, plus coat, hat, gloves and scarf.

Inside, it’s warm and cozy — as long as I ignore the wind.

Why does the wind howl, anyway? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself this winter.

When wind whips around a building or a tree, it splits up. The sound comes from the two currents rejoining on the other side, according to an article on the website Mental Floss.

Leafy trees absorb more of the vibration than bare ones do, so the howling is louder this time of year.

The explanation makes sense, but doesn’t stop the goosebumps. A howling wind is still a scary sound — even with a scientific explanation.

January Thaw

January Thaw

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The birds believe it. They are out in force this morning, robins and cardinals and crows. They are flitting from bare branch to bare branch, hopping up to puddles. Suddenly, there is water, something they’ve not had enough of this dry, frigid winter.

They, unlike humans, have not heard the weather forecast. They don’t know that this jig is up tonight when temperatures plummet from the 60s to the 30s (I think 30 degrees qualifies as a plummet … it will certainly feel like one).

So for today, just for a few hours, I’ll try to think like a bird, to pretend there is no future, no past, only a balmy wonder of a day with no breeze to speak of, just some light rain and not even much of that. In other words, a day — which is, in the end, all we’re ever given.

TC in the Suburbs

TC in the Suburbs

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Late-day walk with Copper, who was begging, pleading with his big brown eyes, not letting me out of his sight. OK, little guy. And so … we were on.

I knew we’d have a fun time of it when I saw a neighbor and her dog (with whom Copper has scrapped more than once) sauntering down to the bus stop. We’d inadvertently timed our stroll with the Folkstone rush hour: 15 minutes of nonstop bus and car traffic back from Crossfield School.

I hadn’t even reached Fox Mill Road before the first text came. That required I remove my gloves and send a return text, followed by a return email. While I was doing this, a sweet-faced boy of 7 or 8 approached us. Copper lunged at him before I realized what was happening. “He bites,” I said to the child, whose expression was suddenly frozen in horror. “I’m sorry, but you don’t want to pet him.”

We finally reached the halfway point, then turned toward home. On the way back, I received a call, a voice mail and another email.

Total elapsed time: 25 minutes.

This is what happens when walking in the suburbs meets telecommuting in the suburbs. Not exactly a walk in the park … but better than the alternative.

(Copper in his autumn bandana. That’s two Copper pix in one week. No more for a while!)

New Walk in Town

New Walk in Town

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Yesterday after work I jumped off the bus at Rosslyn, as I always do, but instead of transferring to Metro, I walked up Clarendon Boulevard, past Court House Metro on to Fairfax Boulevard and all the way to Ballston.

It was getting dark, lights coming on, the Christmas decorations still up in some stores and windows. There were dogs and their owners, children and their parents, millennials and their yoga mats.

This is a new route for me, many uphill stretches and some unknown areas that had me a bit turned around last night. But it’s a route I look forward to learning as the days lengthen. It’s the new walk in town.


(Pictures of another sunset walk; the new walk in town is not yet photographed!)

Instagram Takeover!

Instagram Takeover!

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My knowledge of technology is not always tip-top, so when I heard that a story I wrote would “take over” the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Instagram page this week, I acknowledged the news with an “oh, yeah, that’s great” mentality.

Turns out, this is actually a big deal. USAID’s Instagram account has 87,400 followers. Make that 87,401. (I just joined Instagram so I could “love” the post.)

Here’s the human story behind the numbers: I met this woman, interviewed her and her parents, walked the narrow, muddy path along the lake to her home. Her father hacked coconuts for us so we could drink the milk. The family brought out their plastic chairs so we could sit in style. The woman, who I call “Aditi” (but which is not her real name) fell prey to sex traffickers when she was 19. She was rescued before being taken to a brothel in India, but the experience nonetheless changed her life.

Trafficking victims are often shunned by family and friends. But the organization I work for has a project that comforts and counsels and trains trafficking survivors. Aditi is a star student. She has taken the help she’s been given and run with it. Now she’s the one who counsels survivors, the one who tells friends and neighbors how to avoid being trafficked. She’s proof of the great good that can come from small investments. I was privileged to speak with her and her family, to be hosted so hospitably in their home.

I’m now adding an exclamation point to my headline for this post. Make that “Instagram Takeover!”

World of Wonder

World of Wonder

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Yesterday, before the tree came down, I sat before it with the laptop as I have so many mornings these last few weeks, reading and writing in the quiet hours before dawn. The last holiday movie I saw this year was “Scrooge,” one of my favorites. This is not the dark comedy version of A Christmas Carol  starring Bill Murray. It’s the lovely if corny musical version of A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney.

What makes the film is the music by Leslie Bricusse:

Sing a song of gladness and cheer
For the time of Christmas is here
Look around about you and see
What a world of wonder
This world can be. 

Like any self-respecting writer who finds herself down the Google rabbit hole when she should be focusing her attention on the page, I spent a few minutes Sunday morning looking up this composer, at first hesitantly because I very much wanted him to still be alive, then eagerly once I found out he was. Not only did he write the music for “Scrooge,” the LP of which I once hunted down for years and finally found in  a moldy basement of a record shop in the West Village, but he also composed the score of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and teamed up with Henry Mancini on “Two for the Road” — two more favorite flicks.

There’s a certain satisfaction in learning that some of your favorite scores are written by the same person. It makes you want to know that person a little better. So I found an interview with Bricusse, now 86. At the end of the interview was what I would call the “nut graph,” the news value of the story — why there was an interview with Bricusse last November. It was because Scrooge, the musical, was just revived at the Curve Theater in London. In fact, its final performance was happening two hours from when I read the article. Not quite enough time to hop the pond and get there in time. But that’s not to say I didn’t think about it.

(Movie posters: Wikipedia)