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Author: Anne Cassidy

What Used to Be

What Used to Be

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Here’s what a walk is like in your hometown, every block a memory.

There’s my old high school; there’s my new one. There’s where I lived when I taught high school.

There’s where a fellow teacher lived who gave me a ride when it was raining.

There’s where my friend Joelle lives, a Bluegrass Trust beauty of a house with Buddhist prayer flags strung across the portico.

There’s the bakery that I always reach 10 minutes after it closes (thank God).

There’s the old house and the old, old house.

There’s the rag-tag park where we used to play. It smelled of earth then, and wet concrete. Now it’s filled with earth-moving equipment.

There’s the steep hill to the park, down which Dad once sledded, right into the creek.

I saw plenty of new houses, new trees, new people. But I hardly noticed them.

Instead I saw what used to be.

Perfumed

Perfumed

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The soil is rich here in central Kentucky, dark loam that sends forth an incredible profusion of spring blooms.

But what has struck me this visit is not the soil but the air. It is, quite simply, perfumed. I walk the familiar streets inhaling at every turn.

There are great, heavily laden lilac bushes, their flowers just waiting to be sniffed. And then there is another smell in the air. Is it apple blossoms? Spirea?

Whatever it is, it conjures up for me a childhood spent outdoors, and in the spring of the year, those first warm days,  the heady plunge back into that natural life.

So it is not just the current spring I am taking in, but all the springs before.

Compressed

Compressed

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Our late start spring means daffodils and cherries and pears all together.  It means the new spring green of the tree buds popping quickly, banishing winter grays and browns in 24 or 48 hours.

Wood poppies join the sweet woodruff. Forget-me-nots crowd the periwinkle.

It’s compressed, intense, riotous. It’s spring, finally.

The Capitol and the Copter

The Capitol and the Copter

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I’m setting aside other post ideas today to write about one of the zanier things that’s happened lately in the nation’s capital. I speak, of course, of the 61-year-old mailman who landed his gyrocopter on the west Capitol lawn to draw attention to the need for campaign finance reform.

The Secret Service didn’t intercept him, nor did NORAD. People in the area (if only I had been on one of my Wednesday walks!) told the Washington Post that the craft looked official with its Postal Service logo. Only when officers surrounded the craft did one bystander realize that “it was someone doing something crazy.”

When I lived in New York, people were always doing crazy things. Now that I live in buttoned-down D.C., the crazy things happen less often but are more notable. A farmer driving a tractor to the Mall and threatening to blow it up. A number of White House intruders, one of whom made it all the way to Obama’s quarters before being noticed. An intelligence agency employee who accidentally crashed a drone on White House grounds.

I’m tempted to say “only in D.C.” … but I won’t!

(The lawn in the foreground = copter’s landing pad.)

Truth and its Consequences

Truth and its Consequences

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The Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass died in Germany on April 13. His obituaries note the profundity of his novels as well as the shameful secret he carried into his late seventies: that Grass, the moralist who scolded Germany for its Nazi past, was himself a member of the SS.

Years ago I read The Tin Drum, which hardly makes me an expert on the author or his work. I write this post only to mention a comment (quoted below) that I read in his Washington Post obituary — that whether you praise or condemn Gunter Grass, his secret past may well have been what inspired his art.

“If Grass had not been living with this wretched little skeleton in his closet, he might never have written a word,” journalist Nathan Thornburgh wrote in Time magazine in 2006. “Instead a haunted Grass cranked out a series of brutal novels about the war [that] helped his entire country stave off collective amnesia for decades.”

Such is the power of art to wound, to salve, to ignite, to free.

Lincoln Cottage

Lincoln Cottage

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One hundred and fifty years ago today, President Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater. He was carried to a house across the street where he died hours later.

I pass the theater often on my walk home from work, pass it without looking, without thinking, pass it apparently without photographing it — since I’ve looked through all my photos and can’t seem to find one picture of the place.

The house above meant a lot to Lincoln. It was his getaway, his Camp David. Now called the Lincoln Cottage (located on the grounds of the Soldier’s Home), it was where he escaped from the city to write, to think, to spend time with his family. He would sometimes ride the three miles from the White House to the cottage unaccompanied — and he survived at least one assassination attempt en route.

Death was in the air here, too. The Lincoln Cottage was located within the grounds of a military cemetery and fresh graves were being dug at an alarming pace. But Lincoln treasured the relative tranquility of the place and wrote the final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation here. This humble house gave him peace.

Smooth Move

Smooth Move

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This week Metro returns to automatic train control on the Red Line. Sounds insignificant — but it isn’t. Since the accident in June, 2009, that killed nine people, Metro conductors have used individual controls for stopping and starting. And stopping and starting. And stopping and starting.

Which means that some operators hit the right point on the platform first time around, and others — uh, do not.

Which means that some passengers keep on reading the paper, using their phones, playing Sudoku, while others — the ones with weaker stomachs — sit very still and hope for fresh air soon.

The automatic train control promises a less herky-jerky traveling experience. Legato not staccato. But this will be available only on the Red Line (which shares no tracks) until 2017, when the Orange, Silver, Blue, Yellow and Green Lines follow suit.

I ride the Orange Line for a dozen stops, the Red Line for two. I can’t wait for my short, smooth ride.

Chilled Blossoms

Chilled Blossoms

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The cherry blossoms will peak this weekend, but I was downtown yesterday. So I hiked over to the Tidal Basin in the cold mist. And once there, I walked all the way around it, because that is what you do — even if it’s 45 degrees.

There was the same beauty, the same pageantry, the same fairytale canopy of white blossoms to stroll beneath.

There was a couple posing for an engagement photo, shivering in a sleeveless dress and thin cotton shirt while the photographers shouted at them to embrace one more time.

There were three guys snapping shots of a pair of tennis shoes atop an ancient gnarled trunk.

There were clots of tourists at the predictable places, the Martin Luther King statue and the Jefferson Memorial, following guides with furled umbrellas.

But because of the weather, there was also space, open pavement, more than one empty straightaway.

The blossoms, mostly open, entirely chilled, looked like they’ll last forever. But I know better. This time next week, they’ll be gone. 

Warming Up

Warming Up

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Yesterday’s walk was cold and damp. Tourists were unprepared, wearing thin windbreakers and cotton sweaters with no buttons. Anyone who had a hood was wearing a hood. It was that kind of day.

I had 30 minutes and wanted to make the most of them. And it wasn’t actually raining (as it is now). What else to do but walk as fast as I could without running, stoke the human engine? Pull my hands into my sleeves, cinch the belt as tight as possible… and go. 
Traffic lights work against this process, since it’s all about momentum. But once I was on the Capitol grounds I was warmed up within minutes. 

The transfer of movement into heat is one of those daily miracles. Yesterday it came in very handy.
Inside Out

Inside Out

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I write from home this morning, not always a given these days. What I see as I look at the French doors is a reflection of the piano light, the only one I flipped on this morning.

If I were to sit here long enough I would see that light, and the open music book (Schumann, “Forest Scenes”) it illuminates, fade away. In its place, the cloudy day outside.

It’s not unlike a church at night, stained glass windows gleaming into the void. Dark on the inside without the sun to flood through them.

From 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. we see ourselves; from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. we see the world. At this time of year  an equal measure of both.