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Author: Anne Cassidy

Eleventh Hour

Eleventh Hour

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It’s almost time for 2025 New Year’s resolutions, so why think about 2024’s? Because I’ve fallen way short on one of them, an important one, as it turns out.

While I’ve cooked a little more this year and added a few new dishes to the repertoire (sweet and savory granola, chicken shawarma, cucumber salad), I’ve been less successful meditating. In fact, the “meditate more” resolution is in danger of becoming one of those fond perennial hopes (“don’t worry so much”) that clog the gears of self-improvement.

But the more I think about it (don’t think!), the more I realize that stilling the mind is one of the best tools we have to living with uncertainty and doubt. All I need to do is open the newspaper every morning to understand how important it is to co-exist with uncertainty and doubt.

So what to do? Publish this post, close this machine, sit still and think about nothing. It’s a tall order, but I’d like to enter 2025 feeling a little bit better about 2024. This might help.

Footprints in Time

Footprints in Time

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These are dry days in the mid-Atlantic. Though we finally received rain on Sunday, there was precious little of it and it arrived after a record-breaking 38-day drought.

A funny time to be thinking of footprints, then, because I can’t imagine the hard-packed ground would yield to a pickaxe let alone a hiking boot. But I was just skimming a book called Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, who discuss the importance of footprints.

Footprints are clues to the presence of natural resources, the authors say. They embed us in a landscape. If we pay attention, the impression of a boot or a paw tells us who has come before.

Here’s how Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it: “All things are engaged in writing their history … Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. The ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.”

(Dinosaur footprints from the Algarve region of Portugal.)

Mind Bending

Mind Bending

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By now most of us recognize the Blue Marble photograph. Even if we don’t know it’s called the Blue Marble photograph, we’ve seen this picture.

It was a meta moment for our planet, as the Apollo 17 astronauts looked out their window and snapped a shot of our globe floating like a blue-and-white dream in a sea of darkness. The first time Earth was viewed from space.

What I didn’t know, but only learned by reviewing a new book, is that the raw image originally submitted to NASA placed the southern hemisphere at the top of the frame. (Those weightless astronauts didn’t know which way was up!) NASA flipped the image before releasing it to the public. It would have been mind-bending otherwise.

To learn why North landed on top, you’ll need to read the book. But isn’t it interesting to ponder a world where what’s up is down and what’s down is up? Kind of puts us in our place, doesn’t it?

Tap, Tap, Tap

Tap, Tap, Tap

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The question of the day is this one: Is it easier to skim books while reading them electronically? My answer would be yes.

It’s easier to tap a page than to turn one, and I’ve been tapping plenty while reading The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws by Margaret Drabble.

It’s not that I’m not enjoying the book; I am. I’ve always liked Drabble’s novels. I would follow her voice anywhere, even into a 344-page book on jigsaw puzzles. In fact, it’s about much more than that, dipping into games, mosaics and children’s books.

Still, the book has much more puzzle than it does personal history. There’s a remedy for that, though: tap, tap, tap.

A Close Call

A Close Call

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It came out of nowhere, wings flapping, talons at the ready, and before I could process what was happening I was fighting off a red-shouldered hawk. It didn’t want me for lunch. But it was definitely interested in the parakeets sitting outside with me, blithely chirping and hopping around in their cage, taking in the unseasonable warmth.

The red-shouldered hawk is a substantial bird, weighing a pound or more with a wingspan of several feet. I often hear hawks, and I see them occasionally, too, either in flight or perched nearby.

I never thought I’d have to fight one, though. Because the raptor was not discouraged by my first swat. It circled around and came back for more. It knew what it wanted and was determined to have it. Had I not been there it would likely have killed the budgies; its talons are long enough to reach inside the cage.

I often rhapsodize about the natural world — and why not? It comforts and inspires me; it connects me with the divine. But to live among wild creatures means to accept them on their own terms. The hawk is a predator. Parakeets are prey. The flimsy bars of a birdcage are a very small part of this equation.

(A closeup of Toby before the attack. Afterward, he made himself very small and didn’t move a muscle.)

In the Stacks

In the Stacks

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I hadn’t intended it as a stress reliever, but when I stepped into the stacks at Georgetown’s Lauinger Library this morning, my shoulders relaxed, my fists unclenched, and my breathing slowed. The books took me to a cool, calm place, a place I needed to be.

I was there to pick up The Postsecular Imagination, but I wanted to make the most of the trip, so I browsed a bit. I found nature writing and place writing. I found solace.

All the words and all the wisdom. All the folly, too. The human condition writ large. The human condition writ, period. But the human condition between covers. Which is where I’d prefer to find it right now.

What Matters Most

What Matters Most

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I tried to avoid contact with the outside world this morning, but the news alert function on my computer had other ideas. I can’t say I was surprised. My mind held out hope but my gut told me otherwise. I seldom take an antacid; I swallowed a large dose last night.

The world will go on, I tell myself. As if to prove the point I glimpsed the first fox I’ve seen in months scampering through the the backyard. I cracked the window and sniffed the air spilling through the screen. It’s an aroma that takes me back to earliest childhood: wildness with a metallic overlay.

Nature heals, I tell myself. What matters most is what’s at hand: family, friends, faith, health, home. I hope that everyone in this country can feel the same, no matter which circle they inked in on their ballot.

Circles

Circles

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In the end it all comes down to circles. I walk to the table, pull out my own pen (superstition? fastidiousness?) and ink in the ovals on the paper ballot.

I move my pen slowly, methodically. In my mind are memories of 2000, hanging chads, holding ballots up to the light. Let there be no questions, no doubts. Just miles from where I live, federal buildings are barricaded, extra police are patrolling.

When I finish, I slide my ballot into the machine. A message reads “Your vote is counted.” In exchange I receive another circle, a sticker to wear. “I voted.”

After all the anxieties and doubts and change of candidates in July. … After scanning the newspaper for months, shielding myself from news I know will make me crazy. … After all the emails and texts asking for money and support. … After all of this, it comes down to this ballot, these circles, this vote. It’s my right as a citizen, and I embrace it fervently. I hope we all do!

Take Back the Dawn

Take Back the Dawn

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For us early morning folk, the time change gives us back our mojo. No longer fumbling in the dark on waking. Now a rim of light glows around the edges of the shade.

I walk down to my office window to find a palette of color. The corals of sunrise and the oranges of autumn make dawns as rosy-fingered as Homer said they were.

I know what’s waiting around the corner. This light will not last. Mornings will grow dark again. But for the moment, I’m reveling in them.

A Martian Morning

A Martian Morning

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Up early, I creep into my office, journal and book in hand. There is homework, committee work, a presentation, two papers. Plenty to do, in other words. But here, in this warm sanctuary, at this apple-green desk, all I want to do is look out the window at the dark sky.

Is that a star? A planet? Some quick googling tells me that it’s Mars, visible in the southern sky before dawn.

As long as I’m looking, I read about the Red Planet. Though its years are almost twice as long as ours, its days are almost exactly the same.

Here on Earth, the days are long but the years are short. On Mars, perhaps we could reverse that — or at least tweak it a bit.

(Photo of Mars courtesy Wikipedia.)