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Author: Anne Cassidy

Layered

Layered

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An early walk this morning before the true heat sets in. I think about how well I know this place, my regular route, my neighborhood.

I remember when four sycamores were planted in the yard of the yellow house. It seemed such an extravagance at the time, trees already past the spindly stage.

The homeowner has since moved out, but I can see him there at the edge of the yard, surveying the work, his lanky frame not unlike the tall sycamores.

It is what one hopes for in a neighborhood, that it be layered with memories and associations, so much more than a suburban streetscape. A living, breathing record of life.

Reading for Life

Reading for Life

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An article in this morning’s newspaper reports on a study that shows that people who read books survive almost two years longer than people who don’t.

Intriguing, to say the least. Do readers stay sharper, calmer, more engaged in life? Or do they simply conserve energy by all that sitting and reading?

The study was conducted by Yale University researchers and published in a journal called Social Science & Medicine. The 3,635 subjects, all older than 50, were surveyed for their reading habits and divided into three categories: those who never read, those who read up to three-and-a-half hours a week and those who read three and a half hours or more.

The conclusion: After accounting for education, income and health, book reading still confers a “significant survival advantage.”

I didn’t need an excuse, but it’s good to have one, just the same.

Triple Digit

Triple Digit

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After three triple-digit temperature days in a row (that’s real temperature, not heat index, which was more like 110), we’re having a cold snap today (“only” 95).

I know I should hate it, should be hunkering down indoors with a cool drink and the AC ratcheted to 72, but it’s summer, after all, and I think about how cold our winters have been lately and how really, truly, sweatily alive I feel when pulling weeds in a buggy backyard with the sun beating down on my back.

Weird, to be true, but something I dream about when the cold winds blow. Which they will … soon enough.

(What’s blowing these grasses isn’t a cold wind but a hot breeze.)

Falling Stars

Falling Stars

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The Perseid meteor shower had good press this year. Some reports said the celestial event would produce up to 200 shooting stars an hour. This raised all kinds of hopes and set off visions of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

But this number didn’t take into account the ambient light of the megalopolis, the heavy tree cover and the lateness (earliness?) of the hour.

Still, I managed to see a few streaks of light flash across the late summer sky.The first couple seemed a trick of the eye — a blink, a quick gleaming stitch in the firmament. But the last couple were bonafide star blasts. They illuminated not just the night sky, but all the possibilities it offers.

Not “Starry Night” — but not bad.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Beach Grass

Beach Grass

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Still thinking about the beach — the fine white sand, the walks along the shore, the sunsets and early mornings, the downy plovers like so many bits of fluff.

And thinking about the entry to the beach, too, the green bulwark one passes through on the way to the strand.

For Atlantic beaches it’s a stroll past dunes and dune grass. But in Florida’s semi-tropical clime there are beach grasses and scrubby palms and maybe a spray or two of bright pink bougainvillea.

The path through the grass is not just a prelude and change of scene. It is, I like to think, a place for mental readjustment, too. It’s where I shed the landlocked me and prepare for the freedom to follow.

Olympic Teamwork

Olympic Teamwork

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Yesterday at work we had an Olympic trivia event. I guessed at every question — a testament to how little of the coverage I’ve watched so far. But last night I made an exception. I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch the women’s gymnastic team claim the gold.

It was worth the lost sleep. To see what body, mind and heart can do when working together was inspiring and humbling. 
Amplifying my Olympic frame of mind is the book I’m reading. Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat tells the story of the University of Washington men’s rowing team as they prepared for and competed at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. One passage stood out to me this morning: 

“The boys in the Clipper had been winnowed down by punishing competition, and in the winnowing a kind of common character had issued fourth: they were all skilled, they were all tough, they were all fiercely determined, but they were also all good-hearted. Every one of them had come from humble origins or been humbled by the ravages of the hard times in which they had grown up. … The challenges they had faced together had taught them humility — the need to subsume their individual egos for the sake of the boat as a whole — and humility was the common gateway through which they were able now to come together and begin to do what they had not been able to do before.”

The Beachcomber Amble

The Beachcomber Amble

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What is it about a beach that brings out the kid in us? Grownups build sand castles and play paddle ball, lie still for hours in the sun, live outside of time.

Purposeful striders lose their momentum. They don’t so much walk as amble. They take on the investigatory zeal of a two-year-old examining each stray stick and leaf.

As the tide recedes they stroll along the beach, picking up clam, coquina and cockle shells. They study them, pocket them or put them in a bag.

If a storm has just moved through, they might find intact sand dollars, lovely pieces of ephemera that somehow last through time and tides.

Then again, they may find nothing much at all, just a few shells that are precious because of the walks they took to find them.

The Vacation Effect

The Vacation Effect

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One of my favorite scenes in the movie “A Thousand Clowns” happens when Murray Burns is told he must get back to reality. “I’ll only go as a tourist,” he replies.

As I reenter my real life, I replay that scene, re-embrace that motto.

I look at the parking garage in Vienna, see not the cars but the stripes of light that make a pattern on the floor.

It’s not a bad way to live, as a real-life tourist, seeing the world with fresh eyes. It doesn’t last long, this “vacation effect.” But I’ll take it while I can get it.

Siesta Sunset

Siesta Sunset

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For Atlantic beaches I rise early to catch the sunrise. But for Gulf beaches, there’s no need to join the dawn patrol. The big show is in the evening.

About 7:45 or 8:00 p.m., there’s a little rush hour here of folks walking to the strand, some with drinks in hand, all ready to watch the big orb drop slowly into the surf.

Most carry their phones, others have cameras. My first night here I happened upon a sunset beach wedding. Though I usually like to people-watch, for Siesta Key sunsets I keep my eyes trained on the sky. Most people do.

What is it about elemental pleasures that so soothe and satisfy? I’m not sure. But I do know that vacations awaken our ability to seek them out and be part of them again.

The Sand

The Sand

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It’s the first beach day I’ve woken up to rain, so instead of rushing off on an early morning jaunt I’m taking a lazier approach to the day. I’m thinking about the walks I’ve taken here this year and the lusciousness of the sand on this beach.

And it is marvelous. More like flour or confectioners sugar, powdery and fine and so, so white. It never burns the feet. 
To run my toes through it, or my hands when I’m lying face down (well slathered with number 50 sunscreen, of course) is to know the soul of summer.

I found a little brochure written by the Chamber of Commerce extolling the local sand. It’s formed almost entirely of quartz, apparently, with very little shell matter, which accounts for its fine-sifted character. 
All I know is that it’s soft and warm and enticing. Kind of like a beach vacation.