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Author: Anne Cassidy

Of Lions and Lambs

Of Lions and Lambs

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The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them. 
Isaiah 11:6

 The program has been on my computer for a while, but I’m only just starting to learn it. InCopy works in tandem with the InDesign program. It protects design files while allowing editors to make changes directly in them.

While I don’t plan to do away with paper proofs, learning to make changes myself frees up the designers and guarantees more accuracy.  It means I won’t hesitate to remove the dash I just added in the last round of page proofs because I decided the comma was better after all.  It gives me a little more control.

More to the point, it brings words people and image people closer together. The lion may lie down with the lamb — which is how I thought the Bible verse read until about ten minutes ago, when I looked it up.

 

A Grisly Discovery

A Grisly Discovery

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I woke up this morning to the news that human bones had been found alongside a trail in my neighborhood. A walker noticed the bones on Sunday, called police, and yesterday the remains were tested and found to be human. That’s all we know for now.

I walk those trails all the time. We all do. Copper sniffs seemingly every tree and bush. Apparently he missed a spot.

The police have asked anyone with information to call. Here’s what I’d like to say: This is our safe, snug little corner of the world. Please let there be some logical and non-scary explanation for this. Please let our woods remain the quiet sanctuary they have always been. Please don’t let this happen here.

Double Feature

Double Feature

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When I was a kid you saw two movies for the price of one. Yesterday I two movies for the price of two — thanks to some felicitous timing at a gem of a small theater.

This place has smallish screens and no stadium seating — but four of the eight nominated feature films were playing there plus some selected shorts (which attract the die-hard fans).

What joy to find a good seat (on the right hand side two seats in), to snuggle down so my head was resting on the back, to stuff my windbreaker behind me for extra comfort — and then to enter the two fantasy worlds created on screen.

I left the movies as I always do, slightly stretched, slightly dazed, open to possibilities. A double feature is a short vacation.


(Photo: Courtesy Cinema Arts Theater)

Five Years Old

Five Years Old

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If it was a child it would be getting ready for kindergarten, grasping one of those fat pencils with a chubby fist.

If it was a dog it would finally be settling down, chewing fewer slippers, ruining fewer rugs.

If it was a house it would be settling into its foundation, growing into its lot, needing a fresh coat of paint on the trim.

But it is instead a blog, a body of work, an electronic oeuvre — and I’m not sure what it’s ready for, other than continuing.

I began A Walker in the Suburbs on February 7, 2010. Happy Birthday, blog!

Stayin’ Alive

Stayin’ Alive

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My soundtrack this morning is courtesy of our parakeets, Sid and Dominique, who chatter and chirp and sing. They are cheerful little creatures, supplying much entertainment. I could spend hours just watching them climb and preen and jump from one perch to the other.

The birds outside are just as busy. They flit and feed and hop along the deck railing. Right now a red-headed woodpecker is chipping away at the suet block. It’s vital protein for these chilly mornings. After he flies away, I spot a cardinal in the back of the yard, bending the forsythia branch with his tiny weight.

I turn my gaze back to the page. This is my work. Not as direct as the bird’s daily toil. But just the same — it’s what I do to stay alive.

(Photo: Claire Capehart)

Remembering Snowmaggedon

Remembering Snowmaggedon

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Five years ago today the first flakes flew in a storm called Snowmaggedon, which dumped close to three feet of snow here before it was done.  It was, next to a couple of rough Chicago winters, the most snow I had ever seen. It closed schools and offices and slowed life to a pioneer pace. It spurned removal; some neighborhoods weren’t plowed for a week.

Though grocery shelves were empty and some folks were climbing the walls by the time it was over, it was for me — and for many — the pause button I’d been waiting for.

There were long lazy hours for reading and writing, for making soup and baking rolls. Time for walking down the middle of a busy road because it was impassable for cars.  Time to start this blog.

It was, in short, the world upside down and white. Will it happen again? Not this year, from the looks of it. But the groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter. We can always hope.

Full Moon

Full Moon

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Perhaps we’re in the midst of a celestial spitting contest. Or maybe it’s compensation for a long, cold winter. (I know, I can’t complain about winter; I missed three weeks of it!)

But whatever it is we are enjoying not only glorious sunrises but also spectacular moon rises.

While some people spied last night’s orb orange on the horizon, I didn’t see it until I left the grocery store. It was big and white by then, surreal, disorienting. So outsize I mistook it at first for an earthbound thing, a construction light. But no, it was our dear old moon.

My last full moon was in Toura, Benin, on the edge of the Sahel, where it lit the village paths and huts. A moon there is a practical asset, a streetlight, a directional. The moon here is just another heavenly face. Good for the soul, which is good enough for me.

Sunrise Photography

Sunrise Photography

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Vienna Metro, 7 a.m.

A train lumbers into the station and a swarm of thickly clad Northern Virginians scampers to board it. It’s 25 degrees outside; our breath makes clouds in the morning air.

I take a seat on the right hand side just in time for the big show — the winter sunrise. Clouds pile up and fan out, a medley of pinks and blues. On the horizon, a gash of gold.

The photo I take is grainy, a blurry likeness through smeared glass, with train lights reflected back at me. An imperfect replica, captured with a click (since I forgot to switch my phone to silent).

Two minutes later, the man in front of me takes out his smartphone, snaps his own sunrise shot.

If I do nothing else today I will take comfort in this — that someone else noticed the day unfolding and took the time to make it his own.

How a Trip Becomes a Story

How a Trip Becomes a Story

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Our bus trip took 12 hours, then we took a bush taxi. We saw elephants, hippos, baboons, a cheetah. The beach was deserted, and the hotel looked like an antebellum mansion, complete with Spanish moss.

After a while, a trip becomes the stories we tell about it. What we say, what we omit. What we remember, what we forget.

Here are the cotton fields, the market, the red striped cathedral, the old bridge and the pigs rooting beside it.

What was once a place alive and breathing, filled with wood smoke and goat bleats, is now a sheaf of digital images — and the stories I tell about them.

Music and Memories

Music and Memories

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My little iPod is a treasure. The size of a large postage stamp, it clips onto a sweatshirt or slips into a pocket. It holds most of my collection and keeps a charge for hours.

But the music it provides is nameless, faceless. It arrives via iTunes or a thumb drive. A bit comes from CDs but none of it, absolutely none, from vinyl. I have records, scores of them, and at one time I had a gizmo that would translate them to digital files. But even that music becomes anonymous once it’s assimilated.

One doesn’t sit and listen to music while staring at a CD cover or the tiny image of one I see on my iPod screen. What will never be the same again is the visual dimension of music, the way the album’s cover art became a part of the listening experience — became part of the music itself.

I’m taking these and other albums from Dad’s collection home with me. Not just for the music — but for the memories.