Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

Arms and the Walker

Arms and the Walker

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A walk I remember, a man in front of me with his arms clasped in back, an image I recall now, weeks later.

Seeing him stroll like that brought to mind characters in Russian novels wearing great long coats; they held their arms like that, too. Is it the posture of thought?

The arms not moving in tandem with the legs in motion, but anchored, as if to keep the emphasis on the cerebral.

I think more freely when striding naturally, legs and arms in opposition. It’s the rhythm of footfall. The arms are along for the ride.

Late-Season Snow

Late-Season Snow

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Winter won’t let go this year. More snow here, white flakes on green boughs, and little icicles dangling from the low rafters.

The daffodils hang their heads. Too soon, they must be thinking. (Too soon being an occupational hazard for the daffodil.)

As the season lingers, I ponder its good points, the way it keeps me inside, with an internal focus. Not yet ready for the late nights of summer, the outward focus of warmth and light.

The flurries out my window are welcome. I watch them as they float aimlessly to the ground.

Unbroken

Unbroken

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I finally read the book Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. Published in 2010, this is the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic athlete and World War II airman who was shot down over the Pacific.

Zamperini and two other crew members drifted thousands of miles (47 days with sharks constantly encircling their flimsy raft) before being captured by the Japanese — and their real troubles began.

Beaten, starved, humiliated — but somehow never giving in — Zamperini survived the war and the first difficult years that followed. He has lived a rich, full life.

It’s an old-fashioned good read, and it stays with you. Not the details of plot, but the lessons of character. Read a book like Unbroken and it’s difficult to feel sorry for yourself.

What We Look For Now

What We Look For Now

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It’s been a wild, wet, windy, snowy March — time to look ahead to warmer days.

To seek the spot of color in the still brown woods. The bright break in the clouds when the sun shines through.

The clutch of boats beneath the bridge, their hues out of place in storage but not when skimming the water.

Which they will do soon. We know this will happen. It always has before.

Double Duty

Double Duty

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In the midst of a long-postponed office clean-up, looking through every file folder, feeling virtuous about the growing pile of to-be-recycled papers, I learn that my e-mail is being upgraded. Quick, I have to purge my electronic files, too.

Are we the only generation who will straddle this digital divide? What does it mean to live with one foot in the world of paper, books, interview notes printed and stapled, marked-up manuscripts — and the other in e-mail, text messages, tweets, jpeg and mp3 files?

Does it make us more tolerant? More inventive?

Or does it just make us more tired?

Contrapuntal

Contrapuntal

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In honor of Bach’s birthday, a meditation on counterpoint, on two voices (or three, or four!) that sing alone — and together.

Two independent melodies, touching so lightly and so infrequently that they seem to be strangers — meandering up and down the scale alone, breaking into random song, complete enough to threaten each other, yet never doing so. Seemingly independent.

But they know each other, oh yes they do. And though they have their own motives and pace, when the end comes and they have made their own way through the measures, they pause, settle down happily and embrace.

Almost Spring

Almost Spring

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Spring arrives in less than two hours. I learn this not from feeling it in the air or hearing it in bird song but from looking it up online. Which is to say that it hasn’t felt much like spring this March.

This time last year we were coatless and reveling in cherry blossoms. This year we’re dodging “precipitation events” (what the weather folks are calling potential snow storms — just in case they go bust like the “Snowquester” did in parts of this area).

I’m not complaining about the cool temperatures. Last year was warm enough to be eerie. Spring will be all the more welcome when it arrives.

Not when it arrives at 7:02 a.m. When it arrives for real.

March Sadness

March Sadness

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This isn’t my headline. I purloined it from an article about how March Madness isn’t what it used to be, how a combination of big money, “one and done,” the glamor of television and its preference for the slam-dunk over the mid-range shot — most of all the steady encroachment of the spectacle that is football — how all of this is changing the sport.

But that’s not why it’s March Sadness for me.

It’s March Sadness for me because the University of Kentucky isn’t in the NCAA tournament.

How’s that for entitlement? But it’s worse than that. Not only do Kentucky fans expect to be in the “big dance” — they expect to be in the Final Four.

It’s good that “Selection Sunday” was also St. Patty’s Day. Thinking green helped us not to feel blue.

(A view of Lexington from the University of Kentucky Library.)

Sustenance

Sustenance

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On a walk the other day I saw a robin perfectly posed, a worm in its mouth. It was showing me its best side, with the worm in profile, and I thought about the great battle for sustenance, how it dominates.

Even in the suburbs, hawks circle their prey, crows haggle over carrion and squirrels horde their acorns.

We think we are immune, but of course we are not.

Our houses are empty from dawn to dusk, our children grow up in an instant —and all the while we are driven, too. The great battle for sustenance consumes, subsumes us all.

The Irish Season

The Irish Season

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The travel agents call it shoulder season. The New Englanders call it mud season. I call it Irish season. The time between winter and spring. A time when anything can happen. Snowfall or sunshine. Bloom or bust.

I’ve only been to Ireland once, but it feels like more often. Maybe I live vicariously through the travel of others. Or I listen to so much Irish music that I fool myself. Or I feel such an affinity for the landscape that I see it wherever I go.

Or maybe I visit there every year during the Irish season.


(County Clare channeled through the hills of West Virginia.)