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Author: Anne Cassidy

A Time for Irony

A Time for Irony

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A word about today’s gathering on the National Mall, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.” It’s clever and it’s funny and lots of people I know are going, but I don’t want my daughter to be one of them.

She’s young enough that I’d like her first experience of such an event to be an actual and not an ironic one. It would take much more than a single blog post to describe how I feel about kids and irony. In short, I think it’s an attitude toward life best developed slowly and with experience. Best to at least start off life with some sense of purpose. There will be plenty of time later to become jaded.

I was heartened to read an op-ed in the Washington Post last week on this topic. In “A Like-In for Generation I,” Alexandra Petri, a self- described member of the Millennial generation, says, “To Generation I [that’s “I for irony, iPhones and the Internet,” she writes], “for whom life exists so we can put as many things as possible in quotes, this ‘rally’ is the closest we will ever get to a love-in. It’s a ‘like-in.'”

At the risk of sounding earnest and old-fashioned and absolutely square — give me a love-in every time.

Out of This World

Out of This World

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I walked outside this morning onto the darkened deck. A cool, steady wind was blowing and the moon and stars shone bright and clear. I thought about the worlds that exist beyond our world, about possibility and eternity. Then I walked inside to read this headline: “Galaxy may have gobs of Earth-size planets.”

In a paper published in the journal Science astronomers posit that there are “tens of billions” of planets the same shape and size as Earth in the Milky Way. This conclusion is based, among other things, on measuring “the minute wobbles [I love that phrase] of stars caused by the exoplanets that orbit them.” And also by a method called “transiting,” which looks for reductions in light coming from the star and planets being observed. Fascinating stuff, for sure. Also fascinating is the discovery of a rocky planet in a “habitable zone” around a star close to Earth.

It’s too soon to know for sure of course, but it seems increasingly likely that we are not alone in the universe.

Unseen Connections

Unseen Connections

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In The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig, Paul Milliron pauses for a moment to muse outside his one-room schoolhouse:

“There at the waiting pump I could not sort such matters out totally, but even then, I am convinced, began in me some understanding of how much was recorded on that prairie, in those trails leading to the school. How their pattern held together a neighborhood measured in square miles and chimneys as far apart as smoke signals.”

This passage makes me think about all the connections that are stitched into a community, often invisible and tenuous but there just the same. These connections are particularly hard to discern on the outer edge of a major metropolitan area. But I figure if Doig could see them on a prairie I ought to be able to feel them — and to sing them — in the suburbs.

Tree Aglow

Tree Aglow

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I waited weeks for the leaves to change, and now they seem to have done it overnight. I drive home from Metro through tunnels of green and gold and that familiar acrid scent. Back home, I rush out with my camera to photograph the most beautiful trees in our neighborhood. The shimmering maples, the burning bush, and behind it all a wash of brilliant yellow from the turning oaks. We’re expecting wind and rain later this week and the leaves that are now on the trees will soon be on the ground. It is good to acknowledge the fleeting nature of beauty — and of cameras.

A Mind of their Own

A Mind of their Own

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I have a theory about inanimate objects; I believe that sometimes they fix themselves. This belief has been roundly ridiculed by my family. But I write about it today because it has happened once again. My trusty Kodak Easy Share camera broke over the weekend, took odd wavy pink-tinted photos (see above). And today, now that I’m no longer in scenic Holmes County with a buggy in every parking lot, it is once again snapping fully tinted photos.

This — or something like it — has happened with radios, CD players, iPods, toasters and more than one computer. It has happened enough that I’ve begun to think these objects have minds of their own. They are like balky wayward children who when left alone will finally come to their senses. They want to be good. But as the parenting books say, they need to develop their own autonomy.

Just as the nonbeliever can always find a scientific explanation for miracles, so too can the skeptic poke holes in my theory. I realize that beneath this personification are loose circuits, faulty wires, software glitches. But I hold fast to my theory. I wait a day before calling for repairs. I believe that there is much about this world that we do not understand.

The Quiet Life

The Quiet Life

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On Saturday we toured Holmes County, Ohio, home to the world’s largest Amish population. We passed buggy after buggy, and after a while I noticed there were different models. Some were like sedans; others resembled little trucks. All were pulled by beautifully sleek black horses.

In the village of New Hope, Amish men with long white beards rode their bikes up to the hardware store. A few miles outside the village, past the small school, a woman named Lavina met us in her home and showed us the quilts she and her sister, Mary, had made. The quilts were piled on a double bed and she flipped each one over to reveal the varying patterns and colors of the one beneath.

A few miles away we bought stainless steel cookware at the Yoder Bargain store. A young girl with head scarf and long dress browsed the sewing notions. An Amish family looked over the baby clothes. We found an entire small room devoted to rubber stamps. The store was dark and quiet, and when we left to get in our car I glimpsed a fall tableaux: red-leaved trees, corn crib, white-hatted Amish grandmother tending the mums, a buggy in the distance. No electric wires or telephone lines in sight.

This is a quiet world, one without radio music, car horns or text message beeps. I couldn’t live in it, I certainly couldn’t blog in it, but I could enter as a visitor and savor the stillness.

Cross Country

Cross Country

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The birth of a first child is also the birth of a family. So today, as we celebrate Suzanne’s birthday with her, I think about all the places our family has taken us. Not just the states and the countries we have traveled to but the kind of people we have become because of each other.

Suzanne loves to run, and yesterday we stood on a crisp, windy course and watched as she and her teammates raced across the green grass, through the yellowing trees, and up an agonizingly long hill.

The wonderful thing about cross-country is that even the spectators participate. To see the race properly you must trot from one vantage point to another. So at the end of the race the runners aren’t the only ones who are exhilarated. Everyone is.

It’s kind of like a family.

Spirit of the Season

Spirit of the Season

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It’s the time of year when scarecrows lean on lampposts, monster spiders scuttle along rooftops and corn stalks cluster near hay bales. Halloween decorations have always seemed a little redundant in our house, though. Without even trying we have cobwebs in the corners, a squeak in the stairs and a haunted lamp in the living room. We usually put up other decorations too, witches, ghosts, even some fake cobwebs a few years ago. But those seemed rather silly. This year we may go “au natural.” We’ll let our house speak for us.

Life Among the Savages

Life Among the Savages

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I’ve been reading Shirley Jackson’s memoir of raising kids in an old house in a small Vermont town and marveling at how well she captures the endearing chaos of family life. “Madcap” is a word that comes immediately to mind, an “Erma Bombeck’ish” word that describes a certain style of postwar mothering that is loving but off-handed. And Life Among the Savages is certainly madcap. “Surprising” is another, because Jackson is known for her horror stories (she wrote the short story “The Lottery”).

Some of my favorite scenes in the book are set around the dinner table — one child demanding, another pouting and still another floating around in her own imaginary world. There’s a rise and fall to the dialogue that is exactly like the real thing. It makes me nostalgic for our own madcap days. Most of all, though, it makes me smile.

The Importance of Terrain

The Importance of Terrain

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One thing that cyclists, walkers and new drivers have in common is a renewed appreciation for topography. In our house we have one of each of these — a cyclist, a walker and a new driver — and we are all feeling the hills.

The long slow grades are the toughest for cyclists and walkers. But for the new driver it is the unexpected dip, the unanticipated downhill.

When you’ve been driving for years you forget that vehicles move even when your foot is not on the gas pedal. Cars can zip backwards down a driveway before you know it; they can pick up enough steam on a slow descent to push you quickly over the speed limit. Lesson one, I say to Celia, my voice wavering just a bit from the passenger seat: The brake pedal is your friend.

To myself I think: It’s good to remember the importance of the terrain. Topography keeps us humble.