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Author: Anne Cassidy

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.

Life Without Chocolate

Life Without Chocolate

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Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a day I’m embarrassed to say I often dread because for me it’s usually the first of 40 days without chocolate. There have even been years when it’s been the first of 40 days without sweets — a practice so difficult and fraught with deliberation (is granola a sweet? how about Irish soda bread?) as to render most spiritual gains irrelevant.

The trick, of course, is to deprive one’s self for a higher purpose —and not so radically that the deprivation becomes an end in itself.

I think this is possible. I really do. But there are always moments — usually at the end of a long day when a handful of peanut M&Ms would taste mighty nice — when it begins to seem more stultifying than edifying.

Still, like anything else, it gets easier with practice. Usually by Easter I feel like I could live the rest of my life without chocolate.

Of course, I never do.

Photo: Wikipedia

Many Are Called…

Many Are Called…

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I’ve been interested in the reaction to Sunday night’s Oscar snafu. Many have praised La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz for stepping up to the mic and saying there was a mistake, that “Moonlight, you guys won.” Horowitz has been called a true gentleman and a truth teller.

Horowitz did what we all wish we would do in similar circumstances: he handled a disappointing and embarrassing moment with dignity, empathy and humor. He even joked about it the next day, saying he got to win an Oscar for Best Picture, thank his wife and kids and then present the same Oscar for Best Picture. “Not many people can say that.”

In fact, no one else can say that. But what watching him makes me wish is that I could handle all the petty ups and downs of my life in such a generous, big-hearted way.

A worthy goal. Unattainable, but worthy.

Surprise!

Surprise!

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I figure since I won’t be able to sleep for at least another 30 minutes, I’ll write about the strangest thing I’ve seen in the years I’ve been watching Oscar presentations.

After actors Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty opened the envelope and read that La La Land won best picture, there was a flurry on the stage, a waving of red envelopes — and the astonishing announcement: Not La La Land but Moonlight was the winner.

The entire cast of La La Land had assembled on the stage, and they looked stricken. The Moonlight cast looked shocked.

Those who gave up on the Oscars and went to sleep early may reconsider next year. As a newscaster said, “It was a long broadcast but all anyone will remember is the last 30 seconds.”

Amen to that. And goodnight!

Photo: Wikipedia

The Russians

The Russians

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We’re hearing a lot about Russians these days: What do they know? What are they doing? How much influence did they have over our recent election?

But the Russians I’ve been thinking about have nothing to do with Putin.

They’re the Russians whose music has thrilled me since I was young. To listen to them after long absence is to think of Dad and his record collection, the albums of Khachaturian, Borodin and Rimsky Korsakov. Dad air conducting while their music blared on the stereo.

I came upon two Russian pieces on my iPod the other day: a Prokofiev piano concerto and Shostakovich’s Festive Overture.  Big, fresh, urgent — these pieces have great hearts and big sounds. I felt Dad’s spirit in them. I walked faster. And I smiled.

(a hill that seems vaguely steppe-like)