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Author: Anne Cassidy

Room of One’s Own

Room of One’s Own

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As a work deadline nears I’ve been spending more time in the office — 11 hours yesterday. Though I’ve become an office nomad at home — and I prefer it that way — I find myself sinking into the quiet here. And it strikes me, not the first time, that the office is a “room of one’s own” for me.

When Virginia Woolf wrote that a woman must have “money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” she probably was not thinking of an office in a modern workplace, clicking and typing, moving text with a cursor, putting out an alumni magazine. And I certainly don’t pen novels in my office. I write and edit articles about faculty and alumni accomplishments.

But what I do have here is freedom from the hurly-burly of home. Not just from the dishes that need washing and the carpet that needs vacuuming, but from the world of the family with all its attendant joys and worries.

What I have here is separation, and on the best writing days I carry that separateness around with me like a wonderful, warm cloak.

A Commuter in the Suburbs

A Commuter in the Suburbs

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I dreamed all day of walking home from the new Silver Line station. I plotted the way before my feet found it. And when I began, it was just as I imagined — segments of trail, mostly paved, with clear markers of distance gained.

Strolling south across the highway, I meandered through the leafy association campuses and a golf course, its wide greens calling. A short tunnel took me to parkland paths with benches and a bridge, then up a steep dirt path to a shopping center.

I passed golfers putting, teenagers dawdling, dog-walkers walking, crepe myrtles blooming. Ambling south out of the center, I strolled past a community garden and pool to the lot where I parked my car in the morning.

One day I’ll add those two extra miles and walk all the way to the house. But for now, this is bliss: to make my way home (mostly) on foot.

Feels Like the Future

Feels Like the Future

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My first day on the Silver Line, camera in hand, I soak in the experience as if I was a tourist. Which in a way I am. This is a new place, this strange new commute.

My first thought: It’s a long time to spend on the train. My second thought: I wish we could barrel straight down the center of the Dulles Toll Road without that long detour through Tyson’s Corner. Four stations is a lot of stopping and starting.

My third thought and most overwhelming impression: this feels like the future. It’s not the future yet. Some of the stops lead to sad strip malls and car dealerships. But that will change. In 25 years, maybe even in 10, Tysons will be another Ballston or Clarendon, the Orange Line’s great urban density success stories. We have a way to go in this part of Fairfax County, but the Silver Line is a start.

Welcome to the future. Almost.

Power Weeding

Power Weeding

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It’s an ancient rhythm. Step, bend, pull. Weeds figure prominently in some Bible verses — they’re always choking out the good plants, being bundled and burned at harvest time — and there must be references to them earlier in human history, too.

Yesterday we tackled the weeds in our yard. They were not quite as high as the ones in this picture (taken in the woods) but high enough. I started late in the day, rushed through the back garden in time to start dinner.

Power weeding: Stooping low, gathering the slender stalks of stiltgrass from the bottom, twisting, pulling and tossing.  (At least this invasive plant separates easily from the soil.)

Before long I had piles of weeds scattered around the cone flowers, piles I gathered and stuffed into the big bag in the front yard. A harvest of greenery. A happier garden. And this morning — ouch! — aching muscles.

Happy Dance Day

Happy Dance Day

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“Up the steep and very narrow stairway. To the voice like a metronome. Up the steep and very narrow stairway. It wasn’t paradise, it wasn’t paradise, it wasn’t paradise, but it was home.”

                                         “At the Ballet” from “A Chorus Line”

I missed International Dance Day (April 29) and National Tap Dance Day (May 25), so … happy National Dance Day!

Ballet Nova is offering free classes and there’s a big event at the Kennedy Center. But I’ll stay home, practice my buffaloes and think about the dance classes I’ve taken through the years: the very first when I was five, then adult beginning ballet at 18, folk dance and modern dance in college, and a series of classes as a young adult.

At Joy of Motion in Chicago the teacher actually advanced us to pointe work. For a few precious, foot-cramped weeks I felt like a real ballerina. Later, in New York City, I took ballet uptown and midtown — once even in a studio above Carnegie Hall. I was earnest, tight, worried about my turn out.

Now … it’s all for fun. Tap is loose and joyful. It’s difficult to take myself seriously doing it. It’s a happy dance for happy National Dance Day.

Poison Idadee

Poison Idadee

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When Suzanne was little and first encountered an itchy rash on her arm, she couldn’t quite say “poison ivy.” It came out “poison idadee.”

And “poison idadee” it has remained these many years.

I’ve been getting into some “poison idadee” myself lately — and I have the itchy arms and bottles of calamine lotion to prove it.

It’s not fun, but I’m glad that I’ve ventured off trails, explored new paths and hacked my way through brush and briar.

Summer will be over soon enough.

Last Drive to Vienna?

Last Drive to Vienna?

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It’s a gray day (not like this photo), flecks of rain on the pavement, when I rush out the door. I grab the newspaper, jump in the car, buckle up — and I’m gone. There’s the familiar route down Fox Mill to Vale to Hunter Mill.

I know every curve and hill of these western Fairfax lanes. I know where the school buses stop, the garbage trucks too. It’s 17 minutes of twists and turns that make me feel as if I’ve come down the mountain. And in fact, the route once took hours instead of minutes.

But today’s trip was different — though I was three-quarters of the way there when I realized it:  The next time I take public transportation downtown I will most likely be riding the Silver Line. I will be leaving from Reston, not Vienna. I will drive different roads — or maybe not drive at all.

I can still ride the Orange Line, of course; no one will stop me. But will I want to when the Wiehle Station is half as far from home?

It was a poignant moment, even at 6:20 a.m.

It’s Horizontal

It’s Horizontal

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Sometimes I snap a shot because I can see it here in the blog one day. It is usually horizontal, for starters. And it is generic. And, in my own eyes at least, it is beautiful.

This is one of those pictures. I was walking through Annapolis with Ellen, talking about our work, our kids, what we’re reading now (we had just browsed in a bookstore) and there was the wall, the greenery and the stone.

Annapolis is a place I could photograph forever. The water and the land. The old and new. Church spires and weathered shutters. Flashy yachts and quiet gardens. Landscapes and close-ups. And horizontals, those especially, as many as possible.

Urban Corn

Urban Corn

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Was it whimsy that landed this corn plant here? An urban gardener looking for some fun?

I can’t imagine that it’s a volunteer. And if the sower of the seed was hoping for a bumper crop, well, there are only so many ears you can harvest with a single plant.

When I first saw the corn plant I was on a bicycle, phone camera back at the house. But my recent wanderings have taken me all over Reston, so on Saturday afternoon I found myself right back at the corner — the urban corn corner — where I’d spied it a few hours earlier.

So here’s the little corn stalk that could. Not exactly of Midwestern proportions, but not bad for a little plant in the Virginia suburbs!

Test Walks

Test Walks

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Metro’s new Silver Line opens in six days. Over the weekend I attended a ribbon-cutting for the new station and came home with bus schedules and maps and a plan in my head. On days when I’m not driving or biking to the new station (and there may be many of those!), I may bus the five miles to the new station — then walk home.

I tried out half the new route Saturday, Reston trail map in hand. I felt like a tourist in my own community. And in a way, I was. Like anyone else, I’m a creature of routine. I must be drug kicking and screaming from my well-trod trails and sidewalks.

But change is coming to this suburb, and I want to experience it feet first. So I parked in the Hunter’s Woods shopping center lot and picked up a Reston trail that took me to a park, then a golf course and finally to within a 10-minute stroll of the new station. Today I’ll amble the southern half of the course, from home to the shopping center lot.

So while Metro is doing test runs, I’m doing test walks. Soon we’ll both be in business.