Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

70 Years Ago..

70 Years Ago..

Comments 1 comment


Japanese planes bombed our fleet at Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II.

Today, my favorite veteran hosts a showing of Twelve O’Clock High at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington.

Here’s what the newspaper (and my dad) had to say about the event:

Meanwhile, the Kentucky Theater, 214 East Main Street, will mark the anniversary with a free screening of Twelve O’Clock High, the Academy Award-winning 1949 movie about the U.S. 8th Air Force fliers who bombed Germany in 1942-45.

It will begin at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday with the introduction of several 8th Air Force veterans. The movie, which will follow, was arranged by Lexington’s Frank Cassidy, who flew 35 missions as an 8th Air Force tail gunner.

Cassidy said he hopes the Twelve O’Clock High screening will help today’s Lexingtonians understand what World War II fliers went through.

“This date, Dec. 7, 1941, changed the lives of many young men, me included,” he said. “I was still in high school when Pearl Harbor happened, and the next thing I knew, I was headed into the Air Force. Everything was different after that.”

Unlike many war films, Twelve O’Clock High explores not just the heroism of the fliers, but the psychological scars that many suffered in facing death day after day.

The 8th Air Force veterans will meet the public and answer questions after the movie.

(My father will be one of them.)


Photo: Genealogy Trails History Group

Morning After

Morning After

Comments 0 Comment


A house rises and falls on waves of conversation. When the words are flowing, as they were last night, all creation seems borne forth on a mighty tide. Together we can figure out what’s wrong with the economy (hah!), the school system (double hah!) or (the most complicated problem) when we can find time to get the Christmas tree.

The morning after a good conversation is peaceful and calm. Hopeful, too. As I write I hear the sound of a tiny bird chirping. Maybe a chickadee or a nuthatch or one of our other winter residents. Maybe it had a good conversation yesterday, too.

The Glade

The Glade

Comments 0 Comment


Yesterday the sun rose blood red between the dark trees, and swirls of frozen fog lingered in the low parts of the land. It was a good day to leave the neighborhood and walk the Glade trail.

The Glade. I’ve always loved that name. It sounds like something out of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. And I have great affection for this path since it’s one I’ve walked off and on for years.

But the Glade is not the place it used to be. A stream restoration project has elevated and opened up the creek bed, and what I noticed most was the gurgling of the water. Whereas before the creek was overgrown, muddy and still, now it is broad, open and brisk.

It was a lively place to be on a cold Sunday morning.

Neighborliness

Neighborliness

Comments 0 Comment


Last night I went to our neighbor Jeanine’s house for an in-home shopping show. The clothes were beautiful, finely cut and tailored, the fabrics a pleasure to touch. At the end you get to try them on. The point of the party is to buy stuff, of course, but I went for neighborliness. For connections.

We chose our neighborhood because of its friendliness, and in large part we have stayed here for the people. In the suburbs you don’t rely on folks the way you do in the country. When we lived in Arkansas we never went “down the mountain” without asking friends what they needed from the store. That happens here only when there’s a snow storm or other natural disaster.

Buying clothes from a shopping consultant isn’t exactly like building a barn or harvesting hay, but it’s what passes for pitching in around here. It doesn’t banish the anonymity of suburban living, but it tries.

A Place Apart

A Place Apart

Comments 0 Comment


I’ve been re-reading the memoirs of Niall Williams and Christine Breen, who in 1985 moved from Manhattan to Kiltumper, County Clare, Ireland to write, paint and live a simple life. Their first two summers were some of the rainiest on record and tested their resolve. But in 1987 the sun shone and the turf dried and the hay was made before the rains came again.

It was then that they wrote, “Days and nights in Kiltumper are perfect countryside settings for the quiet contemplation of a career, a love, a life. In this green isolation, whole chunks of life can suddenly seem unimportant. A walk across fields in the evening light can change philosophies forever.”

Like many writers they found that a change of scene created a change of heart. “Kiltumper had come to seem a sort of relief post, quite literally a place apart, a place to come to in which to draw breath and look outwards over the fields, to find the direction of your life.”

Reading this, losing myself in their fantasy, I wonder: Can I ever do the same thing by staying put in the suburbs? Can I walk my way into an epiphany? I must admit, when I’m reading about the west of Ireland, I think not.

December 1 and Counting

December 1 and Counting

Comments 0 Comment


A cold start to the new month. I drive to Metro in darkness, only the faintest lightening of the sky. I think about parking on the street and walking to the subway, as I have the last two days, but I decide on the garage instead. A train is waiting, I hop on only minutes before it leaves the station.

The day begins, as it often does, with a rattle down the tracks, the descent underground to Ballston, the switch to the Red Line at Metro Center, the quick walk to the office from Judiciary Square.

On the way I count blessings: The smooth logistics of the morning. Our celebration last night, the balm and joy that is family. How good it felt to laugh together over a book of silly pet photos. Work that busies me and pays the bills, and other work that inspires me and doesn’t pay the bills. The view from my office window: the alley, the buildings, the reflections in blue glass across the street. The view from our back deck as it looks on a winter morning.

For Celia

For Celia

Comments 0 Comment


Today is Celia’s birthday, my brother Drew’s too. They are in good company. Winston Churchill was born on this day, as was Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift and Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables.

Reading up on Twain a bit this morning, I learn that he loved cats. Celia is an animal lover in general and a cat lover in particular. So in her honor, here are some of Twain’s thoughts on cats:

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.
-“An Incident,” Who Is Mark Twain?

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.
-Notebook, 1895

Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use.
– A Tramp Abroad

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
– Notebook, 1894


Mark Twain’s cats
photo by Elmira photographer
Elisha M. VanAken, 1887
[Photo from the Dave Thomson collection]

Summer in Fall

Summer in Fall

Comments 0 Comment


Wet windy weather is moving in today, weather more in keeping with the season. So in honor of balmy blue November skies, of leaf-scented raking days, of shorts in winter, here is photo of skating in short sleeves, a celebration of summer in fall.

A Season of Change

A Season of Change

Comments 0 Comment


Yes, we are creatures of habit. This was on remarkable display at yesterday’s mass, the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical year and the introduction of the first changes to the Catholic liturgy in four decades. Even after all the hoopla and publicity surrounding the change, even holding the laminated text of the new language in my hands, I still said, “And also with you” instead of “And with your spirit.”

I wasn’t alone. The community of the faithful sounded more like the community of the confused. I’ll admit that many of us sometimes say the words without thinking. And while counteracting rote recitation isn’t the point (the point is to pray the mass in a way closer to the original Latin), it’s what I thought about as we hesitated and fumbled our way through the ancient prayers.

Change isn’t fun. Even if change is for the better (and many think these changes are not), habit pulls us back to the way things have always been.

The liturgical changes are proof that little things matter, that words are important — and that most of us must be drug kicking and screaming into the future.

Whimsy

Whimsy

Comments 1 comment


On a walk in Lexington, I spotted these pink plastic flamingos looking for all the world like turkey wannabes. So I tiptoed up to the front door and snapped a photo. I don’t know the birds’ owners, but I thanked them silently for making me smile.

As we drove home yesterday, east over the mountains, I thought of many things, but from time to time I would remember these “turkeys” and laugh to myself. Such can a single sight loosen the mood, set the mind to spinning happily.

It’s a good way to enter the holiday season. With a bit of levity.