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Author: Anne Cassidy

Chicken of the Woods

Chicken of the Woods

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When I spotted it a week ago, I thought it was a flower. So brilliant, so orange. What kind of flower, of course, I had no idea. But I’m an optimistic gardener, also a bit near-sighted, and from a distance it appeared that some brave unknown volunteer had settled down into the clay soil.

On closer inspection, of course, I learned the truth. Not a flower but a fungus. A flower of darkness. A decomposer. Beautiful at its business, thriving on wounded oaks.

A little research and I have the answer — laetiporus, chicken of the woods, so called because it is edible and tastes like … yes, chicken.

I’ll get my chicken from chicken, thank you very much. Beauty I’ll take wherever I can find it.

Moment in Time

Moment in Time

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A quick walk yesterday at lunch time. Just long enough to feel the pulse of the city and to muse about what often occurs to me on walks in crowded places: That we are all here together on this earth. Right now. That we are all sharing a moment in time: young and old, weak and strong, those who’ve just begun and those who are almost done.

Some of us are in love; some of us are in despair. And some of us (those would be the teenagers on family vacations) are bored out of our minds. But for this one moment, the distinctions are irrelevant. We all feel the warm sun on our faces. We are all equally alive.

I don’t want to get all mystical now, but lifetimes, after all, are composed of moments. Which is why dipping my toes into the waters of humanity almost never fails to comfort and inspire me. It certainly did yesterday.

It’s Back!

It’s Back!

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You forget what it’s like. The feeling of moving slowly through the atmosphere, pushing it aside, clouds of moisture.

You forget what it does to your hair. How all attempts at order and smoothness are in vain.

You forget how it warms and comforts you, this steam bath that we move through most summer days.  And the muggy nights, so full of ache and promise.

For the last weeks we’ve lived in a dream: cool nights, warm days, sweaters after the sun goes down. But something was missing.

The humidity is back. Summer is here.

Framed

Framed

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The other day I stepped out of my car at the library to return some books and for some reason I was overwhelmed by the blueness of the sky.  I don’t think I was imagining it. The sky really was bluer than usual. In fact, it was blotting out the green of the trees and the brown of the brick.

Why the library? Why then? I have no idea. It was a fine, low-humidity afternoon. Recent rains had cleaned the air. 

I hurried home, back to where I could put the sky in its place. This is how I view it from the deck, softened by trees and — at least when I snapped this shot — puffed up with clouds.

Intensely blue? Yes. But parceled, balanced — framed.

World That Was

World That Was

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I see them everywhere. They’re made of straw or cloth; they are jaunty or slouchy. Are men’s summer hats making a comeback? In my limited experience on the streets and in the conveyances of Washington, D.C., the answer would have to be yes.

The question is whether this trend is dermatologically or sartorially driven. Given the fraught nature of our times, I’d go with the former.

Whatever the explanation, I’m enjoying it. The other day on Metro, my seat mate removed his straw fedora and for an instant I was back in the dark, downtown church we sometimes attended with my grandfather when I was very young. There were hooks in those old wooden pews, little pincers perfect for playing with during Mass, and that’s where my grandfather would hang his hat.

Metro cars, of course, do not supply this amenity, so my seatmate simply held his awkwardly on his lap. I shifted in my seat, tried to give him and his hat as much room as possible. I thought about anachronisms like hat hooks and how they seem so fussy and antiquated in our streamlined days. And I thought about what the world was like when we had them.

Home Again

Home Again

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Tom returns today from three weeks in Africa. Though work took him there, he had time for a wonderful visit with Suzanne, including a stay in her village, Toura.

Traveling in Benin is not for the faint of heart, so I imagine the house will look pretty good to Tom — running water, electricity and one or two more sublime blue-sky days for deck-sitting.

But the place — this house, this neighborhood, these woods and fields — is looking better and better to me, too. Freed of school schedules and young children, it is no longer a nest but a refueling station. It’s a place for the girls — and their parents — to leave from and return to as we make our way (separately and together) in the wide world.

(Photo: Katie Esselburn)

D Day + Seventy

D Day + Seventy

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Dad was in the 95th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force. He flew two tactical support missions on D Day. But it wasn’t until a 50th anniversary trip to the  beaches of Normandy that he realized what the ground troops had endured.

“I don’t think the American people appreciate what some of those men did,” Dad told a newspaper reporter interviewing him about the offensive. “Those guys, they deserve all the honors.”

Typical of Dad to say the other guy gets the glory. But he knew as well as anyone what it meant to climb into the cramped tail gunner’s compartment of a B-17 bomber and take off in darkness for the battlefield continent. He did it because it had to be done. They all did.

Now Dad is gone, and D Day has become less a personal war story and more a historical event. But it was a historical event Dad was part of — and he never forgot it. “You were part of this great, massive undertaking,” Dad said in that same newspaper interview. “You were part of history.”

(Photo: Lloyd Wilson Collection of the 95th Bomb Group Horham Memorial)

Ran Right Past It

Ran Right Past It

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Yesterday was National Running Day. Since this fact escaped my notice until after posting time, I’m celebrating it now.

In the last year I’ve become more of a runner in the suburbs than a walker in the suburbs. This has its good points and its bad points. In the plus column, I exercise a little more rigorously and finish a little more quickly.

In the negative column, well, I’m not walking. And walking sets the brain to spinning. It’s about the pace. The clip-clop instead of plod-plod. It’s about exerting one’s self enough to jostle the gray matter — but not so much that huffing and puffing is all I do. Walking gives me a chance to notice things; with jogging I might run right past them.

The best days are when there’s time for a run and a walk.  One for the body and one for the soul.

Details

Details

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Last night, a conversation about writing. About finding the time, setting deadlines, asking for help. Setting scenes, learning dialogue — these things aren’t easy for the journalist turned memoirist or the short-form writer turned long-form writer, my friend and I agreed.

But there are universals. The scrap of paper a child played with today in her stroller as her mother wheeled her up the Metro elevator. The bald woman in the flowered dress who waved to the conductor. Every day, a barrage of details finds its way into our brains. How to preserve them? How to honor them?

The details we seek as reporters are within us, and it’s up to us how we use them. One day they may surprise us.

Fern Forest Floor

Fern Forest Floor

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A walk yesterday in the late afternoon. Copper and I ran down Folkstone Drive, then ducked into the woods. It was cool and quiet there, and what struck me first was the filtered light. This is a second-growth forest, maybe third- or fourth (if that’s possible). The oaks are 70 to 80 feet or taller, and the birch and hickories and other trees in the canopy shade the smaller plants, give them a vaulted ceiling beneath which to grow.

I take off my sunglasses, hold them in my leash hand. The colors are even more intense now — the dark greens of the holly and the brilliant hues of the newly unfurled ferns. In places the woods are carpeted with ferns. It’s a fern forest floor.

I look more carefully at the delicate fronds, watch them as they wave slightly in the breeze. There is something satisfyingly primordial about ferns, something soothing in their longevity on this planet. They thrive in the indirect light.

As I think of writing about ferns today, Copper tugs at his leash. The ferns are the height of his sturdy little shoulders; he swishes through them when he ventures off the path.