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Author: Anne Cassidy

Active Shooter

Active Shooter

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On the day of the latest mass shooting in the United States, I took part in an active shooter exercise at my workplace. We learned how to run — low to the ground in a zigzag pattern. We learned how to hide — turn off the lights, close and lock your door, barricade it if possible. And we learned how to fight — go for the hand that is holding the gun, do whatever you can to slow or disrupt the killer.

I sat politely, even took notes. Colleagues joked and laughed about crawling under their desks, George Costanza-style. “I learned a lot from watching Seinfeld,” said our presenter. 

I don’t know if employees at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino had taken active shooter training. But could a 30-minute presentation have helped them  counter the assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns? And more to the point … is this how we want to live?

(M2 Browning machine gun, courtesy Wikipedia)

The Great Migration

The Great Migration

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I’d wanted to read The Warmth of Other Suns for years, from when I first heard about it. I knew little about the movement of African Americans from the South to the North other than that it occurred.

I hadn’t realized the time frame of the migration — that it lasted from World War well into the 1960s. And I was unprepared for the calmly recited horrors of the Jim Crow South that drove people North and West.

The three people author Isabel Wilkerson chooses to follow — chooses after conducting more than 1,200 interviews — talked with her over days, weeks and years. They shared every detail of the fearful, stunted lives they left behind and the hardscrabble lives they found when they arrived.  We take the train with Ida Mae and her family as they head to Chicago and with George as he escapes to New York. We ride along with Pershing later known as Robert as he drives across the country fighting sleep because few motels accepted black guests.

Wilkerson accompanied the three on trips to visit friends and family, back to the southern lands they left behind. She visited them in the hospital and attended their funerals. She knew their dreams and disappointments.

So it was with no small measure of authority that at the end of the book Wilkerson could write:

The three who had come out of the South were left widowed but solvent, and each found some measure of satisfaction because whatever had happened to them, however things had unfolded, it had been of their own choosing, and they could take comfort in that. They believed with all that was in them that they were better off for having made the Migration, that they may have made many mistakes in their lives, but leaving the South had not been one of them.

(Tens of thousands of emigres from the South moved to Harlem in New York City.)

Dark House

Dark House

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Woke up this morning to a dark house. It was an early rising, and I’m used to coming downstairs to  dim light and shadows, thanks to a fluorescent light over the kitchen sink that has become so much a fixture that I don’t notice it anymore — unless it’s out, as it was today.

Gone were the shadowy shapes of the worn couch and wing chairs. Gone the hutch and table. Gone the carpet and trim. Instead, the blue dial of the clock radio face asserted itself, and the microwave timer threw its glowing dots into the void.

It was a different downstairs that greeted me this morning, a blank and mysterious one. One that made me realize that what I usually think of as darkness isn’t that at all. It’s only a dusky substitute.  

Power of the Press

Power of the Press

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I saw the movie “Spotlight” with one of my favorite millennials. “It was a little slow,” she said as we walked out, providing the perfect opening for a (groan) story.

Not that things were wonderful back in the days when you looked at old newspaper articles on microfiche (mine inevitably got jammed) and did research by looking at actual physical books (sometimes they actually physically were not there).

But watching the movie reminded me of the excitement of reporting a long, complicated story, something you’d immerse yourself in for weeks or months, something you’d begin to dream about or wake up thinking about.

It reminded me of the power of the press and the great profession of journalism, from which not only I (doing media relations at a law school) — but the whole country — has drifted. Few news organizations have the time and resources to devote to long-form investigative pieces. It’s a sound-bite world, and we’re all the poorer for it.

(Web offset printer, courtesy Wikipedia)

A Door Ajar

A Door Ajar

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It’s a mild day so I write with the French doors slightly ajar. A small breeze wafts in across the deck. The deck where we hung out yesterday eating crab dip before the big feast.

Afterward there was a game of bocce ball — and some energetic raking preceded it. (Hard to play bocce ball with leaf piles everywhere.)

It was a different kind of Thanksgiving. New people to share it with. A tinge of sadness, too. A dish or two we’ve never tried before. All befitting a change, a shift.

I liken the shift to the door ajar. A door through which one sort of life has ended and another sort of life has begun.

Smile, It’s Thanksgiving!

Smile, It’s Thanksgiving!

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Thankful for the warm air that’s moved in today. Thankful for the walk I took before everyone was stirring. Thankful that the turkey is already in the oven. Thankful that the pies didn’t totally burn up last night (they’re only slightly singed). Thankful that someone else is bringing the rolls, sweet potatoes and whipped cream.

Thankful that when I picked up the dish detergent under the sink and found it sitting atop a crushed eggshell that it made me think of an eggshell mosaic I made when I was a kid. Thankful that the eggshell mosaic recollection triggered a happy, peaceful memory of Mom, who I miss so much.

Thankful that the stuffing is made and the green bean casserole soon will be. Thankful that the clan is gathering or has gathered. Thankful for a day that’s about thankfulness.

Practicing Gratitude

Practicing Gratitude

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The winds have stilled. The temperature has risen. Crows call from tree to tree. Thanksgiving has come a day early as I spend this half workday at home.

I’m glad not only because I save the three hours I would have spent commuting — which means a head start on the pumpkin pie and stuffing for the crowd of 14 that will be dining here tomorrow — but also because I have an extra day to practice gratitude.

It is, if not a muscle, at least a skill to be honed and fine tuned. One I should practice much more than I do.

They’re Home!

They’re Home!

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A little over a year ago we were making the sad trek to Dulles Airport for Suzanne’s return flight. She would be in Africa another year before returning yesterday “for good” — or at least for a few years, which means “for good” when you’re in your 20s.

Yesterday we watched many travelers emerge from Customs into the International Arrivals Terminal — a grandma who was instantly swarmed by two young grandsons, a man whose three beaded-hair daughters yelled “Daddy” and enveloped him in hugs.

And then, finally, emerging from the door, the two we were looking for. Appolinaire in a green sweatshirt over his West African print shirt, Suzanne in a thin flowered  blouse and a colorful lanyard for her passport pouch.

It was — they were — one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. But I saw them from a distance just for an instant, because soon they were smothered in hugs, too.

Out of Africa

Out of Africa

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The second leg of their trip has begun, the one that will bring Suzanne and Appolinaire from a  village in the north of Benin, West Africa, to Washington, D.C. The trip began last night in the little Cotonou Airport and continued with a brief stop in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, before landing in Istanbul, Turkey. There they boarded their U.S.-bound flight, and now they’re heading home.

But preparations began over a year ago, pulling together the paperwork for the K-1 (fiance) visa, filling out forms, collecting photographs, sending the packet off and then waiting, waiting, waiting.

Luckily, the waiting was done in West Africa, a place where patience seems bred into the bone, where people think nothing of standing for hours on a hot roadside in hopes that the 200,000-plus-mile Peugeot that’s been carrying them to the next village can once more be coaxed to life so they can  cram into it and get going.

This patience, and the shrugged shoulders and hopefulness that go with it, is an excellent trait to carry along to the new world. It will help them navigate a complex culture and the inevitable waiting times and snafus built into becoming first a resident and then a citizen of the United States.

We’ve been needing a lot of patience ourselves lately as we counted down to the day — November 23 — that we thought would never come. And we’ll need an extra dose of it this evening as we crane our necks in Dulles’ bustling International Arrivals Terminal, looking, looking, looking for a dazed young couple to walk through the doors and into our arms.

State of the Leaves

State of the Leaves

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More leaves have fallen than are falling. They drift up against the fence and under the azaleas. They crinkle under foot. They cluster in the garden, cushioning each chrysanthemum petal that drops quietly to the ground.

In the woods some leaves hang on, stands of red and yellow, brave flags flying. And even in the backyard a yellow poplar shimmers in the breeze.

But by this point in the season, leaves have become the enemy. They must be raked or mowed, bagged or strewn. They are duty, not poetry.