Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

A Summer in Moments

A Summer in Moments

Comments 0 Comment

This morning I caught a glimpse of two birds in flight. It was impossible to know their type, only that they were silvered on the wing and had a radiance most possible when the sun is low in the sky.

Here we are in high summer, a summer of discontent and national tragedies, a summer when it’s easy to feel befuddled and confused. There’s hardly time to absorb one reality before another asserts itself.

For me, summer has always been a time of healing. It must go back to long-ago school vacations. Summer was a time when we could get back to ourselves. Long books, late nights, deep pools — of water and of thought.

Now summer is over in the blink of an eye. It must exist in moments. Biting into the season’s first peach. Feeling warm sand between the toes. Watching late light slant through the poplars. Or seeing two birds in flight, with silver on their wings.

Outside Office

Outside Office

Comments 0 Comment

Working on the deck for a change, breeze blowing, crows cawing, Copper (newly shorn and feeling frisky) resting near my feet.

It’s clouded up here, and there’s enough moisture in the air to make me sleepy, even at 10 a.m.

After almost three months of working inside an overly air-conditioned building, it’s good to work with the sun over my shoulder and bird song in the air.

And good too, to lift my eyes from the screen and page to admire the day lilies and cone flowers, the begonias and the pot of campanula.

It’s summertime and the working (outside) is easy.

Morning Walk, Evening Prayer

Morning Walk, Evening Prayer

Comments 0 Comment
From this …
To this … 

Metro closures have one silver lining. They push people out onto the streets where they might actually … walk!

That’s what I did this morning, hoofing it from Pentagon City to Crystal City — which is not the metropolis-to-metropolis trek that it sounds like but a mile-long stroll.

It was the best way to start a day, even in this heat and humidity. I plugged in my earbuds and took off. I passed the bustle of Metro, crowds surging on and off of shuttle buses, then turned left on 15th Street, seeking shade wherever I found it.

In my ears, “When at Night I Go to Sleep,” also known as “The Evening Prayer” or “Abendsegen” in German, a lovely melody from “Hansel and Gretel” by Engelbert Humperdinck. For some reason I played this melody when I got off Metro a stop earlier in the city and walked from Chinatown to the Law Center. So it has become my go-to walking-to-work piece.

And it is blissful, calming music. Full and rich, perfect for tuning out the world while at the same time plunging into it. I arrived physically wilted but mentally charged. Maybe I’ll get off a stop early more often.

Endangered Fireflies

Endangered Fireflies

Comments 0 Comment

Preserve the magic — that’s what I took away from a recent Washington Post article on the declining population of fireflies in our heavily developed cities and suburbs.

Fireflies — or lightning bugs, as I grew up hearing them called — are harmed by pesticides and insecticides. If you’re spraying for mosquitoes, you’re getting rid of fireflies too. The greatest threat they face is the loss of their habitats, as fields and wetlands fall to the bulldozer and crane.

Seems like I see fewer and fewer flickers every summer. Though it’s tempting to say it’s part of growing up and growing older, losing the wonder and all of that, this article helped me realize that it’s not just in my head.

There really are fewer of these precious, ephemeral creatures in our lives. But we can bring them back — not by clapping hands but by living more lightly on the land.

(Photo: Audubon.com) 

Savoring the Summer

Savoring the Summer

Comments 0 Comment
I join the morning as it moves slowly over the drowsy
suburbs of Washington. I see it clamber up a bank of clouds and shimmer as violet curtains part to make way for the sun. The sunrise is so vivid that it colors even the dark leaves of the shaded maples.

I walk without earphones, listening instead to the avian chorus. Those birds; they always know what to do, rising early to claim the day.
It was still dusk when I left the house. Bats darted through the air, foraging for last-minute snacks. A slow-moving skunk lumbered across the road. Squirrels scampered up trees, chattering to their own.

Last night’s walk took me from daylight to darkness; today’s
from darkness to daylight. I think about how lucky I am to see one day out and another day in,
to savor the summer in its passage.
New York Walk

New York Walk

Comments 0 Comment

I started running when I lived in Chicago, but I started walking when I lived in New York.

I had walked before, obviously, but not “seriously.” In New York, everyone walks. Not for a stroll after dinner and not for their health.

Walking in New York is the purposeful stride from Point A to Point B. It’s hoofing it because the Uber or cab won’t come. This is Walking 101.

Of the 20 hours I was in New York over the weekend, I spent eight sleeping, five birthday-party-ing and four — four precious, wonderful hours — walking.

I hiked from 37th and Eighth Avenue to 115th and Broadway — and was making my way back downtown when I met Ellen and Phillip in the 80s on Broadway, then Eric on a cross street with the car.

It was the shortest trip I’ve ever made to the Big Apple. I wouldn’t want to take a shorter one.

But it was, I”m happy to say, long enough for a long walk.

Second City

Second City

Comments 0 Comment

It’s not a compliment, and Chicago has seldom taken it as one. Sure, the name has come to mean the comedy troupe not a comedic trope, but still … the City of Big Shoulders doesn’t like to come in second in any way.

I learned on last Monday’s boat tour, though, that Chicago was first called the “Second City” in 1890, when it came in second to Philadelphia in U.S. population.

That the metropolis had grown so quickly after the devastating fire of 1871 — which killed 300 people, scorched 2,000 acres and left a third of the city’s population homeless — made it a good kind of “second city.” But subsequent references have left a lot to be desired.

Today I travel to New York for an overnight stay. It will be my second city of the week. So there you go, Chicago. For me, for this week (and this week only), you’re the First City. And New York, sorry, you’re the Second.

Back to Vienna

Back to Vienna

Comments 0 Comment

A brief lull for Orange Line riders in Metro’s Safe Track program (I can’t believe we’re all calling it that! what a triumph of marketing?) allows me to come and go through Vienna. I was almost going to say “my beloved Vienna.”

Maybe that’s a bit too strong, but such is the lure of the familiar and comfortable that I almost thought of it that way this morning. There is the familiar parking garage, open and above-ground unlike the one at Wiehle-Reston. There is the bridge over 66, the newspaper hawkers, the buses roaring to their bays.

I got to take the morning drive along Vale and Hunter Mill Roads, the road muggy and shaggy with summer, the turns a delight.

It was only a commute, but it felt like a homecoming.

Toddlin’ Town

Toddlin’ Town

Comments 0 Comment

Chicago, goes the song, is a “toddlin’ town.” And when I was there last weekend, those words kept buzzing through my brain. I can remember Frank Sinatra singing them. I can remember my dad singing them.

Dad loved Chicago, would come up twice a year to the Merchandise Mart, where he’d peddle new rattan furniture lines. He stayed in the Palmer House, and in between clients would slip out to browse in bargain basement record bins. He came back to Lexington with a whiff of the faraway, bringing tales of this windy city on a lake so big you couldn’t see the other side.

“Bet your bottom dollar, you’ll lose your blues in Chicago … the town that Billy Sunday could not shut down. … On State Street, that great street, I’ve just got to say, they do things they don’t do on Broadway. …  I had the time, the time of my life. I saw a man who danced with his wife, in Chicago, Chicago my home town.”

Those lyrics are from memory mind you. Brought to the fore by a whirlwind weekend in a place I used to call home.

Chicago River Tour

Chicago River Tour

Comments 0 Comment

I didn’t think much about the Chicago River when I lived here decades ago. I paid attention to it on St. Patrick’s Day, when it was dyed kelly green, but otherwise it was more of an embarrassment than anything else.

This began to change around the time I left. There was a clean-up-the-river campaign. There were new buildings by premier architects. And there was the river walk, built to rival San Antonio’s — which it certainly does.

There were so many facts in yesterday’s architectural river tour that I can only remember a fraction of them. We saw the tallest building designed by a woman and learned of a building that could not support its marble facade and was refaced with granite.

We saw the Merchandise Mart, Navy Pier and Sears (now Willis) Tower.  We marveled at the reflective glass that gave us a picture of the buildings behind us.

Most of all, we (or at least I) caught our breath at the beauty of it all, at the majesty of the great city spread out before us, all glittering water and glass.