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Author: Anne Cassidy

Good Walking

Good Walking

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The day began early, but the only walking I’ve done is what was needed to take me to and from Metro. Which got me thinking about the difference between walking and good walking.

Walking is like writing. Both are humble and utilitarian occupations, something most people do all the time.

But like good writing — in which words are strung together in a way to arouse sympathy or disgust, beauty or ugliness — good walking elevates the pedestrian. It is more than just a way to move from one place to another. It is a conscious and reflective exercise.

Good walking wears out the body and fills up the soul. It turns otherwise dreary and muddled days into clear and purposeful ones.

Good walking — I hope to do some at lunchtime.

Rowing Thoughts

Rowing Thoughts

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When weather makes walking impossible, I use the rowing machine in the basement. It’s a noble form of exercise, full-bodied and bracing. The first few minutes are agony.

But like most activities that require intense exertion, rowing eventually settles the mind. Arms pull forward, legs push back. The rhythm takes over.

And it’s only then, ten minutes in, that the mind can begin to roam. Rowing thoughts are bulleted and basic. They are not walking thoughts. But they are better than not-exercising-at-all thoughts. And yesterday, they were all I had.

Monochromatic

Monochromatic

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More snow last night, a few inches, enough to coat the mud and the leaves, the daffodil and crocus shoots. Enough to make it clear that it’s still winter.

Temperature-wise there has been no doubt of late, with single digit wind chills. But palette is important, too, and today February looks the part.

We are back to a monochromatic world. Black trees, leaves, lamp posts and pickets. White everything else. It’s better this way, I think.

Ten!

Ten!

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On February 13, 2006, my children were in fifth, ninth and eleventh grades — all still at home.  My parents were alive and going strong. Copper the dog had not yet come to live with us.

On this day, a Monday, I got off  Metro three stops closer to home, walked into a new office and started a new job. I was editing a magazine, which meant not only writing and line editing but also working with designers and a printer. I’d never done anything quite like it before.

The months and years have passed, the magazines have gotten to the printer (on deadline!) — and the job has remained.  It’s changed, of course. Now I edit web stories, press releases and media advisories; I keep tabs on videos and tweets and Facebook posts. I’ve adjusted, I guess you’d say.

I try not to think about what I would have done instead. This job has given me an income and security. It has given me the flexibility I needed to raise children and tend parents. But I’m a freelancer at heart and don’t always measure success in the conventional manner.

Still, today I raise a glass — a bit tentatively and not without irony, but I raise one just the same. Ten years is a long time to be at a job. It’s a milestone worth celebrating.

Ripples in Space

Ripples in Space

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Yesterday’s announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves, a phenomenon that Einstein  predicted but which had not been observed until now, does not exactly make me slap my forehead and say, “I knew it, I knew they were going to figure that out one of these days.”

I had no idea that gravitational waves were even in the maybe column. Physics for me will always be a high school class I somehow registered for without the required calculus and Mr. Taylor peering over his glasses to say, “Miss Cassidy, WHY are you in my class?” 

But after reading about the “chirp” scientists heard after converting gravitational waves to sound waves, a “chirp” that had for decades eluded them, I wanted to learn more about gravitational waves, these “ripples in the fabric of space.”

“Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the
Universe,” Stephen Hawking said upon learning of the discovery. “The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionize
astronomy. This discovery is the first detection of a black hole binary
system and the first observation of black holes merging.”

Black holes merging. Ripples in space. Kinda puts everything else in perspective, doesn’t it?

(Photo: Phys.org.)

The Climate of Reading

The Climate of Reading

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The Wind is Not a River is not a book to read in the winter. When his plane is shot down, journalist John Easley bails out and lands on Attu, the westernmost of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and the site of the only World War II battle fought on U.S. territory.

Easley has come to report on the war but instead finds himself in a damp, cold place known as “the birthplace of winds.” He survives by eating mussels and coaxing fire out of grass and driftwood. He wraps up in a parachute to sleep.  He is never really warm.

When I read this novel I find myself pulling up the covers or tightening my scarf. Such is the power of fiction to take us out of one place and plop us down in another.

But I must choose books more carefully. Read in the warm months, this book would be a cool breeze. Read in the winter, it’s yet another nail in the coffin of cold.

Passage to Spring

Passage to Spring

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Lent arrives early this year — before Valentine’s Day. This is cruel timing for those of us contemplating a 40-day ban on chocolate.

But if it gives us an early Easter and an early spring (not that those two necessarily go together … ) then bring it on.

Meanwhile, the wind is howling in from the west and roads are slicked from last night’s freeze. This will be the coldest week of the winter. A fitting time, then, to begin a spiritual pilgrimage, a journey, a passage.

I always remind myself that “lent” comes from the word “to lengthen.” Seen this way, then, lent is a passage to spring. It is a time of lengthening days, of birds on the wing. A time of promise that soon we’ll be green and growing again. 

Back to Africa

Back to Africa

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Time for a mental vacation. I’m heading back to Africa for a few minutes, to Parc Pendjari in northwest Benin, bordering Burkina Faso.

It was a last-minute addition to our itinerary, something we undertook because we found a family of five to tag along with. They had hired a guide and driver — the only way to see the park — and let us join their group.

We saw elephants and baboons and a young cheetah. We stayed at a lodge that seemed lifted from a novel: a circular, open-air lobby with small cottages clustered around it. Our twin beds were draped with mosquito nets, and there was a shower with running water.

After lunch and siesta we clambered back on top of the van and rode through the countryside as the sun sank lower in the sky. A sea of grass waved around us; the whole world seemed made of it.

It was a moment out of time, one I return to often, a moment of tamed adventure. The wild around us, the promise of rest to come.

Sculptural Snow

Sculptural Snow

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A walk over the weekend took me past snow piled in fantastical shapes. Snow like the wind-scoured face of an ancient mountain. Snow like an architecturally inspried installation of an avant garde exhibition.

What snow we have left has blackened caps and sides. It has hardened into peaks and valleys. It is nothing like what fell here 17 days ago.

What’s left now are the remnants of plowed mountains, covered with exhaust and road soot. It’s snow as refuse, snow as sculpture.

Now We Are Six

Now We Are Six

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The recent blizzard reminded me of this blog’s beginnings six years ago today during the snowstorm known as “Snowmageddon.” (This year’s blizzard name, “Snowzilla,” just hasn’t caught on.)

Had we not received two feet of snow in 2010 I would probably not be marking six years of A Walker in the Suburbs in 2016.

But we did, and I am.

To celebrate the day, I turn to A.A. Milne, who not only wrote Winnie the Pooh but also this lovely poem:

When I was one,
I had just begun.
When I was two,
I was nearly new.
When I was three,
I was hardly me.
When I was four,
I was not much more.
When I was five,
I was just alive.
But now I am six,
I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six
now and forever.