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Author: Anne Cassidy

This Time With Music

This Time With Music

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This should have been yesterday’s post. But yesterday I hadn’t yet watched a televised recording of what I witnessed in person the evening before, albeit from a distance.

It’s been our habit lately to watch the 4th of July fireworks on D.C.’s mall — the same ones that appear in living rooms across the land — from a ridge in Arlington, across the Potomac. While this provides a hassle-free and far-off glimpse at the gorgeous display, it doesn’t supply a soundtrack. 

I got that yesterday, when I took in the replay of what I watched live Tuesday night. This time there were no toddlers jumping on and off my lap, but there was Renee Fleming singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and the National Symphony playing “1812 Overture.” 

It was fireworks with music. It was what I’d been missing.

What We Saw in It

What We Saw in It

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One of the tall old trees we lost last year was a prime display tree, the perfect reflector for the fading light of sunset. During numerous deck dinners through the years, our oldest daughter would stop the conversation, point to this particular oak, and say “look at the light on that tree.”

Its cousins might have been dark and nondescript at this point in the early evening, but this tree’s spot in the yard was perfectly calibrated for late-day light; it looked as if it was lit up from within. 

The play of light on its trunk is one of the lingering losses from that oaks’ felling last September. More than the tree itself, I miss what we saw in it. Aren’t many losses like that?

The Lady Vanishes?

The Lady Vanishes?

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When I was in New York last month I snapped a photo of Lady Liberty from the High Line. The sky was hazy (though not smoke-filled), and you could barely make out the statue’s distinctive profile. (Zoom in and look to the right of the gray girder to see the vague form hoisting her torch.)

As I thought about what to say this morning, I remembered snapping this shot, thought it might have a certain metaphorical significance: the lady vanishes, the statue so far away that it’s almost not there at all. 

Don’t we feel that way sometimes about our country, about its ideas and ideals, that we’ve forgotten what unites us in our fights over what divides us? 

The trick, I think, is to do what we can as citizens to keep alive its founding principles: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Tolerance, too. 

Flicker Sighting

Flicker Sighting

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Over the weekend, I caught a glimpse of this fellow, a Northern Flicker. 

It was an ordinary Sunday morning on the deck — breakfast and newspaper — and I’d been keeping my eye on a couple of robins who were pecking around in the backyard. There were some doves back there, too, and downy woodpeckers at the feeder.

A sudden flap of wings and there he was: extravagant, debonair. I didn’t know what he was at first, only that I’d never seen him before. I marveled at his polka-dotted breast, his crescent-shaped black bib, his long beak and intelligent eyes, which for several long seconds seemed to be looking straight at me. 

After he flew away, I flew inside … to find the bird book and identify him. It didn’t take long. He could have posed for this photo, although he did not. His stay was brief — but post-worthy.

(Photo: Courtesy Cornell Lab: All About Birds.)

Making Connections

Making Connections

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I learned yesterday that federal infrastructure grant money isn’t just going to roads and bridges. Some of it, admittedly a small bit of it, is going to trails. 

The D.C. area will get $25 million to improve pedestrian and bike connections throughout the area, part of what is hoped will be 900 miles worth of local trails throughout the District and five counties of the DMV.

While some of the money will be spent sprucing up paths that are already there, other parts will be used to provide connections between trails. That’s the part that interests me. People love to walk or bike, to move through space on their own steam. But they also like, in fact they need, to get somewhere, to commute to work, for instance. 

I know from my own explorations this winter how exciting it is to find passages between trails, to know that your wanderings can take you somewhere. And I’m glad that the humble little trail systems of our country are getting at least a small part of their due.

Summer and Smoke

Summer and Smoke

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For me and for many, summer is a recharging season. A lot of the recharging occurs outdoors. Whether it’s walking the trails, writing on the deck, or dining al fresco, summertime is outside time.

But not this summer. This summer I check my phone first. This morning the air quality index is 153, Code Red. So I’ll write from my office and exercise in the basement. There are plenty of indoor projects — cleaning up decades worth of clutter, for starters. 

I won’t be idle. But I won’t be happy. 

And yet … it’s the way many of the world’s people live everyday, without the privilege of working at (and inside) the home. Missing summer is the least of their concerns. I’ll keep them in mind today.

(Summer in the city, where there was no smoke last week. A tip of the hat to Tennessee Williams for the post title.)

First Storm

First Storm

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Yesterday I was writing outside on the deck, as I often do these days, when I realized how dark it had become, darker than twilight. 

I wanted to stay outside while the storm was brewing, but began preliminary shutdown so I could run in at the first drops, a caution imposed on me by the (ahem) delicate nature of the electronics in my care. I covered the wooden rocking chair, tucked away the seat cushions, and moved books and phone inside.

Not long afterward, the wind picked up in earnest and I skedaddled completely inside, up to my second-floor office where I snapped this shot. 

Oh, what a storm it was! Rain blowing down the street, like so many curtains swishing. Fat drops pelting the garden, which needs moisture so desperately. Even some hail thrown in for good measure. 

It was my first big storm of the season … and it did not disappoint. 

He Died Walking

He Died Walking

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I don’t read the newspaper obituaries everyday, but on Sunday one particular one caught my eye: it was about Esteban Volkov, who died at the age of 97 in Mexico. He was the grandson of Leon Trotsky.  

A mini history lesson, this article describes how Trotsky fled Russia after a power struggle with Stalin following Lenin’s death. Volkov’s father, a political supporter, was imprisoned and killed, and Volkov’s mother, Trotsky’s daughter, committed suicide. Volkov eventually ended up in Mexico City, living with his exiled grandfather. 

Volkov returned from school one day to find his grandfather dying in the arms of his wife and a security guard. After escaping assassins other times, Trotsky was killed with an icepick by a man who pretended to be his admirer. Young Volkov wasn’t safe, either, once hiding under his bed as a gunman fired shot after shot into his mattress. 

Volkov promised his grandfather he’d never go into politics, becoming an engineer instead. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, Volkov, by then retired, opened a museum about Trotsky in Mexico City. It now hosts 50,000 visitors a year. 

The obituary has a noteworthy conclusion, as Volkov’s daughter describes her father’s many positive traits: “He liked nature, mountains, the ocean and loved music, with Shostakovich and Stravinsky his favorites. He never stopped walking and even died while walking, outside his nursing home.” He died while walking, three years shy of his 100th birthday. That’s something to aspire to.

(Volkov, lower right, with his grandparents. Photo courtesy Wikirouge.)

 

Humidity of Home

Humidity of Home

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It’s not that Manhattan defies seasons, not completely. It can be stiflingly hot there, and bitterly cold. But weather does not rule as it does in other places I’ve lived. 

I remember my first winter in the city, being amazed when snow finally stuck on the pavement. I thought that all the heat underground — the subway, smoke belching from grates — would make it impossible for white stuff to accumulate. It eventually did, of course, but the city itself is an excellent distraction from all things meteorological. 

All this is to say that last week I was ensconced in a season-free bubble, so this week I open my eyes (and my pores) to the new season in town: summer. I know this not just from the calendar, and the writing on the street, but from the humidity, which began building Saturday and is now gearing up for a sticky, months-long run. 

What can I say — it can be miserable, to be sure, but it’s the humidity of home. 

Charm and Caution Tape

Charm and Caution Tape

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I write this morning from my quiet cocoon in the suburbs, pining for the cacophony I left behind. I stayed near NYU Hospital and the entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and except for the dead of night there was seldom a time when sirens weren’t sounding and horns weren’t honking.

A nuisance? It would be if I lived there. But as a visitor I accept it as part of the bargain. You come to the largest city in the country not for silence but for stimulation, and of that there was plenty. 

As I lace up my trusty tennis shoes for a walk through the neighborhood, I think about what they took me through yesterday: up and down the East River Greenway and across the city to Penn Station, dodging traffic, construction and the yawning maw of open basement stairways. 

The whole city should be wrapped in yellow caution tape. But that, strange to say, is part of its charm.

(I snapped this photo on yesterday’s walk.)