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Author: Anne Cassidy

Does Not Compute

Does Not Compute

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So this is the day I write about math, the day after Pi Day (Pi + 1). It’s better than writing about the Ides of March.  Maybe only slightly better, though.

“Don’t be afraid of math,” was the cheery message at the presentation on math and journalism I went to week a couple of weeks ago. Spurn math and you’ll cut yourself out of plum assignments. Spurn math and your accounts will be a mess. Spurn math and you’ll miss the story.

Our lives run on numbers, whether we like them or not. Make peace with them. But that presupposes  one has numbers to make peace with. Here is a brief tally :

Number of math classes I’ve had since high school: 1

Number of real math classes I’ve had since high school: 0

Number of business articles I’ve written: 1

Number of times I’ve written about numbers in this blog: 2 (see also Seven Times Seven)

Number of times I have not: 953

Number of times since elementary school that I helped my kids with math: 0

All of which is to say that when it comes to numbers, the only way for me to go is up.

New World

New World

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This was going to be the day I wrote about math. 3/14. Pi Day.

But then there was some news from Rome, and now it seems silly to write about math when I could be describing a small man on a high balcony asking people to pray for him. A man who didn’t take the papal motorcade back to his residence last night but hopped on the bus instead.

I looked at the crowd of faithful in St. Peter’s Square yesterday and thought about what a global phenomenon the papal selection process has become. The puffs of smoke. Habemus papam. The red shoes from Gucci. Everyone in my office crowded around a small TV.

The first pope named Francis. The first pope from the Western Hemisphere. First Jesuit, too. Conservative and progressive. New World and Old.

The looks on people’s faces as they heard the news. There was excitement, of course, and something else. I think it was hope.

Power Walk

Power Walk

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The more walks I take downtown, the more I compare them with my walks in the suburbs — the pace, the people, the places.

Yesterday’s was an outlier but also an example: A helicopter buzzed the Mall, breaking through the music in my ears, annoying me. I vaguely wondered if I should be concerned. A truck bomb? A heightened security alert? (Do we do the colors of danger anymore? I forget.)

As I made my way back to the office, I found Constitution Avenue blocked. That phalanx of bicycle police I’d seen earlier, they were just the front guard. There were uniforms everywhere. No one would be crossing the street anytime soon.

You’d think I’d be motorcade weary by now, but I’ve seen very few and none for this president. So for five minutes I was a tourist like the others standing at my corner — only without a camera or smart phone in hand. And when the black cars passed, motorcycles in the lead, ambulances bringing up the rear, sirens blaring, all the trappings and pageantry — I wasn’t listening to the music in my ears anymore. I was completely caught in the moment at hand.

I wasn’t intending to take a power walk yesterday. But that’s what I did.

Company of Writers

Company of Writers

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There were six people crammed into a booth in the darkest corner of a brightly lit pizza place off a busy street. There were two novels and an essay.

“Welcome to the writer’s group,” the waitress said. She’s served these folks for five years and has a feel for their rhythm. Maybe she has a manuscript in the basement, too.

It didn’t take long to feel at home. These are men and women who talk about transitions and character motivations and commas; who admit their dread of starting the next chapter; who spend much of their time with people who don’t exist.

Except that they do exist. They live on the page, and they lived for us last night.

It was good to be in the company of writers.

Late Light

Late Light

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There is so much we will do with it, this light. Porch sitting, weed pulling, trampoline bouncing, bike riding, hammock swinging, night walking.

There is so much we will dream in it. So many long evenings not quite in this world or the other but squarely between the two of them.

The map of our summer has not yet been drawn, or even the map of our spring.

But the late light is here. The rest can’t be far behind.

Wind, Flake, Flower

Wind, Flake, Flower

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Yesterday, the soul of March. Brisk breeze, clouds dark and low, occasional sun, and every so often a flake or two of snow in the sky. 

Cold enough for winter, bright enough for spring. The snowdrops along the path hung their heads, stayed close to the ground. It was cold even for them.

In a few weeks we’ll have cherry blossoms, daffodils, red bud trees. But not yet. There is a thinness to the light, a hesitancy in the air. The great drama is still playing out.

Will winter win, or spring?

In and Out

In and Out

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To exercise at lunchtime I don’t even have to leave my building. The health club upstairs is well stocked, well staffed and state-of-the-art. But two days out of three I put on my coat, slip in my ear buds and walk outside instead.

There are no weight machines, ellipticals or tread mills; no pool or spin class. Just pavement and people. But that’s the combination that works for me.

Turns out, it works for many. Exercising outdoors is often better than exercising indoors, studies show. It burns more calories and tweaks more muscles.

It has psychological benefits as well — and that’s what keeps me going. I come back inside after a lunchtime stroll tired and happy. The pavement is my treadmill, perspective my salvation.

Taking the Repeat

Taking the Repeat

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I’m not a musician anymore. I play the piano every few weeks. But I’m an avid listener, and sometimes when I hear a piece I knew from long ago, I can imagine the string bass part or I can see the piano music, the key signature, the caesuras, the repeats.

I always liked the latter. The vertical bars, one thick and one thin. The two dots. The permission it gave. Try it again, this time softer or louder or more legato.

Playing the same section twice had its challenges at times, especially if it was a difficult passage. But it also gave me, never the most confident of musicians, two chances to get it right.

Not a bad idea, in music or in life.

Snowquester!

Snowquester!

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Snow-starved Washington is finally basking in a day off that is not due to sequester-related furlough.

The government, schools, offices — all closed. Students, teachers, bureaucrats — even lobbyists, I imagine — are staying home and letting the world spin on its own for a few hours.

As predicted, it’s a heavy, wet snow — not so much falling as plopping from the sky. Or maybe it”s plopping from the white-coated trees. Or maybe both.

Today’s photo looks much like yesterday’s. But it’s not from the vault. It’s real time.

Will It Stick?

Will It Stick?

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Here in the suburbs of D.C. we don’t just argue about federal policies, we also debate what to call our snow storms. Though the Weather Channel calls the snow that’s supposed to start tonight “Saturn,” the Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang has named it Snowquester. And it’s not giving up the fight.

Putting aside the more primary question — which is why, since “Snowmaggedon,” we feel we must name our snow storms? —this naming convention does reveal an interesting turf war.

Apparently, the Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang asked folks to send them storm names last Friday, and the winning response was “Snowquester.” It’s the perfect appellation for a March snowstorm in sequester-weary Washington. And much more apt than Saturn, people say.

Will the name Snowquester stick? More to the point, will the snow?

We will have to wait and see.