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Author: Anne Cassidy

Atypical Tuesday

Atypical Tuesday

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On Saturday I saw my first lawn mower of the season and smelled the aroma of freshly cut wild onions. The daffodils are out and so are the iris and myrtle. Only now there are several inches of heavy snow on top of them.

Late work last night and a delayed start this morning have made today different from typical Tuesdays.  It’s a mid-March snow day, and it’s a welcome one. Not because of the snow, but because of the pause. Even a lackluster stoppage is a good one.

Though it may slow some of us down a bit (Copper is wondering if he might finally catch that squirrel), it’s always good to have a break in the routine.
Leaving DLT

Leaving DLT

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Here’s a modest proposal: Given that Daylight Savings Time now lasts from early March till early November and we have only three full  months in Standard Time, perhaps we should reconsider our nomenclature.

Maybe we should call the time we just entered — which begins with cold, bright evenings and takes us through spring, summer and fall — Standard Time.

And those other outlier weeks — we’ll call them either Winter Time or Daylight Losing Time (DLT).

I know. It’s a negative message.

But isn’t it closer to the truth?

Carpe Season

Carpe Season

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These are days of high contrast: 70 degrees and cherry blossoms one day, 30 degrees and sleet the next. Are those petals or snowflakes?

Weather like this reminds me of what I should always remember but almost never do: Enjoy what you have when you have it. So much is out of our control.

I thought of this yesterday when I took a quick stroll around the block at lunchtime. It was warm with a balmy breeze. The jacket-less turned their faces to the sun. The al fresco diners ate salads on round, wrought-iron tables. A lone Tai Chi practitioner balanced two red balls on the top of his arms, slow-mo juggling.

We all knew the forecast. No lamentations for what was to come. Just joy at what we had right that moment.

Can’t Stop Listening

Can’t Stop Listening

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The La La Land soundtrack is colonizing my brain. After seeing the movie twice and listening to songs on YouTube, I bought the album on iTunes so I could blare it from my laptop while cooking dinner.

But the music didn’t stop when I turned off the machine. I hear it in my head when I’m brushing my teeth or waiting for the bus or taking a walk. I hum it under my breath. I tap my feet at my desk.

Last evening, I played the soundtrack while bouncing on the trampoline. That may be the best use yet for the music, which seems to carry one urgent message. Get up and dance! Turns out, I’m not the only one who feels this way.  And the lyrics say it all:

I hear them everyday
The rhythms in the canyons that will never fade away
The ballads in the ballrooms left by those who came before
They say we got to want it more…



(Photo: Wikipedia)
PossibiliDay

PossibiliDay

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A year ago today I sat at an outdoor cafe on another warm March afternoon and gathered my thoughts for an interview at Winrock International. This is what I saw.

It wasn’t Paris. It wasn’t even D.C. There was no limestone monolith, no Capitol dome. Instead, there was corporate America, stone and glass, with the name of a major defense contractor emblazoned on the facade.

But in that strange way that a landscape sometimes becomes the emotions we experience in it, this view became a mountain vista, a red-rock canyon panorama. Because as I sat there sipping raspberry iced tea, the neighborhood stirring to life after a long winter, I thought about how the world I inhabited at the time, one that had shrunk to a series of difficult duties, didn’t have to be my world anymore. There was a way out.

The realization hit me like a thunderclap. I hadn’t even interviewed for the job yet. I had no idea if I’d get it or want it. But something would come through. I would have possibility in my life again.

I walk past this spot most every day now. Sometimes I’m lost in thought, other times I’m worn out after a long day. But every time I pass, I think about the feeling I had that first day. What a gift it was, unbidden and unbound — an hour and a day of pure possibility.

Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me

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I just finished Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, a book I’d read about and had wanted to try. It’s a short book, could be consumed in one sitting, and I almost did. 
Coates sweeps you up from the first words on the page and doesn’t let you go till the end. I don’t believe in
reparations, don’t believe the chasm of race is as deep as he thinks it is. But then, I’m white. I am, in his parlance, a Dreamer, someone (white or black) who shares the dream of American exceptionalism that is built
on the subjugation of the black body. Because the body is all, according to
Coates. There is no savior, no soul or mind that lives beyond the body’s end.
But I’m not writing about this book to debate its thesis but
to marvel at its prose and its power to sweep me up in an idea I don’t believe in and make me feel its force. His idea is an ocean wave, and we readers are the shore. Given time, it might wear us down.

I read this and think about my own story, my own lens. I don’t
see the world in black and white, but I see
divisions. The gulf
between the moneyed and the non, for example, and the canyons that yawn between the left and the right.
The passion Coates brings to his story is the passion each of us can bring to our own. 
The Return

The Return

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The “return” key of my little Mac laptop (the key called “enter” for all you PC types) had been growing balkier by the day, so on Sunday I took it to the doctor — the Apple store’s “Genius Bar” in my local mall.

I worried there would be a gloomy assessment — perhaps I would need another keyboard or even another machine.

But no, it was good news. All that was required was to flip off the key top and replace the pad underneath. “A piece of dirt may have gotten in there,” the technician said. (Really?! A piece of dirt in my house?) And apparently the machine is so delicately calibrated that even a minuscule crumb can bend the little tabs that hold this responsive pad in place beneath the key.

I shudder to think of what this means for the future. I mean, I’m careful with my computer, but I can’t use it in a vacuum. But I was lucky this time. The return was repaired in 10 minutes and I was once more back to fluid typing — which, like so many other things in life, one fails to appreciate until it goes away.

Culinary Serendipity

Culinary Serendipity

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It was 18 degrees when I woke up. The daffodils are nodding, the forsythia is quaking and I don’t even want to know about the rose bush. Still, winter weather has its consolations. One of them is soup.

This morning I had a sudden craving for my dad’s vegetable soup, rich and tomatoey with potatoes and carrots and celery and peas. So I started rooting through the freezer and pantry.

First I located a frozen soup bone, then a pack of frozen stew beef, left over from when I made beef bourguignon in the crock pot a few weekends ago. There were a few old potatoes in the larder and a half-forgotten stalk of celery in the bottom crisper drawer. Onions aplenty. Even two cans of tomatoes. There was, in short, everything I needed to make soup.

… Or almost everything. As I write this post I realize what’s missing. The V-8 juice. That’s what gives the broth its richness and flavor.

Too late now.  The soup bone is simmering. And the grocery store is only minutes away.

Tender-Hearted

Tender-Hearted

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On Wednesday, lured by the record-breaking warmth outside (it was 80 on March 1!),  I walked to Gravelly Point at lunchtime.

Gravelly Point is where you go to see the jets swoop low before landing at National Airport, and by the time I got there wind gusts were so strong that I realized this was probably a dumb place to be.

Was it just my imagination, or did the planes seem to tremble as they banked into their final turns? Could a sudden gust throw them off course?

I kept my eye on each craft, and was surprised by how those big birds made me feel. Watching them land, the brave tilt of their wings, their plucky landing gear, gave me the same tender-hearted feeling I had on 9-11. It’s a rare and anomalous emotion, one I’ve been trying to understand since that day.

It is pity, in part, but also also pride and patriotism and compassion. It’s a sudden awareness of fragility — both human and technological — and of how hard we work to stay aloft.

The Hello Project

The Hello Project

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It’s called the Hello Project, I think, although I can’t seem to learn much about it online. I heard about it last night at book group. People are paired with their political opposites and have phone conversations, a Rust Belt conservative with an East Coast liberal. It’s a way to share views and bridge the great divide.

What I can’t stop thinking about it, though, is how it’s come to this. Why do we require such artificial means to such natural ends: honest sharing of views, speaking without censure? Why do so few of us know people from the Other Side?

Is it because we live in boxes and zip codes and echo chambers? Because we’re angry and afraid? Some of these, to be sure, but probably much more: fissures widening so slowly and inexorably that we haven’t realized they were there until they’ve become almost too big to bridge.

I’m glad there’s a Hello Project. But I’m sorry we need it. It’s as if we cut down all the trees in a forest and then planted saplings in their wake. Yes, I’d be glad for the saplings, but I would mourn the old trees, so strong and true.