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Author: Anne Cassidy

Accidental Tourist

Accidental Tourist

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A novel that I still remember years after reading it is Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist. The protagonist writes travel books for people who find themselves in a place they didn’t expect to be. Yesterday, I found myself in a similar position: stuck in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the night. 

I was not alone. Hundreds of stranded passengers lined up at the American Airlines kiosk, frantically searched for hotel rooms, a task made more difficult by the fact that Garth Brooks was performing and there were basically no rooms in town. 

Luckily, I snagged the last room available in a marginal motel in an outer burb,  found a taxi willing to take me there, and slept on a queen mattress rather than the airport floor. 

Which meant that today I was an accidental tourist in Matthews, North Carolina.  

Different Shores

Different Shores

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Yesterday, a trip to Virginia Beach for a wedding. On the way, a bridge and tunnel, with views across the Chesapeake Bay all the way to the Atlantic. 

It looked gray and cold, this ocean, although it was the same one I saw only a few weeks ago from the other side. 

There, I could look down on it from above, could see the shades of turquoise, navy and cerulean.  I could walk a trail up and down cliffs that hugged the coves.  I could see the flowering cactus up close. Here, I could sense the vast expanse, waves lapping all the way to the Old World.

The same sea, different shores. 

Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal

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As the world economy continues to slump, the dollar and euro have nearly reached parity. Although this may be good news for American travelers in Europe, it’s hardly a happy situation. It does make me think about the euro, though, and how I felt about it when I was over there. 

The smallest paper currency is, of course, the €5 note, which means that denominations smaller than that, including €1, are coins. 

I felt the weighty difference when I was traveling. Does it cause one to spend more or less? The former, I think, since one might be tempted to treat the €1 as a quarter.  But it is more honest. The dollar buys so little these days it may as well be a coin.

So it gave me pause, these differences in currency. Think how much heavier our pockets and purses would be if we were to adapt a similar model. But would it make more sense in the long run? I think so. 

After the Deluge

After the Deluge

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The forecast had been warning us of severe thunderstorms. But they didn’t have to. The weight of the air and the persistence of the breeze foretold a system building, gathering strength, ready to unleash its full force.

Though there has been rain this season there haven’t been many thunderstorms, the kind of skies-darkening, wind-whistling tempests that for some of us are part of summer. Yesterday’s storm made up for it. Trees bent from the wind, branches fell, hail did, too. It didn’t last long but it was dramatic.

In the end, we were left with a mess to clean up … but much of it is already in the bin. 

Another One Bites the Dust

Another One Bites the Dust

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Yesterday, we had to have another tree taken down. This was a skinny oak, more skeleton than tree. Its removal leaves no real hole in the canopy. It left us slowly, which made it easier. 

While examining that tree, the neighborhood’s chief tree guy, Carmen, spotted another oak near the house, one that has much more meaning for me, one that the girls’ zip wire line used to run from, one that sits prominently in the middle of the yard.

“It’s half-dead now,” Carmen said, “Call me when the next half dies.” 

I take each downed tree personally. For me, a dead tree is a lost friend. For Carmen, a dead tree is more business. I call him the Grim Reaper. 

(Yesterday’s removal process at the top of the page, and a 2018 loss here.)

Portugal’s Pastry

Portugal’s Pastry

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I’ve mentioned them before, the pasteis de nata, the national pastry of Portugal. After finishing the box of six purchased in the Lisbon airport, I began to dream of the dense, flaky pastry, the creamy custard filling. 

The dreams led to research, a recipe and a video tutorial. The process would take four hours with no guarantee of success. It involved multiple foldings of dough and applications of softened unsalted butter. I tried to imagine myself doing it and couldn’t quite conjure the picture.

But surely in a major metropolitan area, there should be a bakery that sells pasteis de nata. So I began searching for such a place. I found one in a faraway corner of the city, then another right in Reston. I met friends there Friday to sample the wares. Not bad for a stateside rip-off. 

Then yesterday, a neighbor who visited Portugal recently herself dropped off a packet of six pastries. She found them, of all places, in a Lidl store, a discount grocer that apparently has a bakery! Who knew? 

I haven’t yet tasted the delicacies, but they sure look like the real thing!

Transformations

Transformations

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Last night my neighbors celebrated a special birthday with a dinner dance, complete with D.J., dance floor and tent. The latter turned out to be necessary since we had torrential rain and flood warnings just hours ahead of the event. But by the time the guests were gathering, the rain had stopped and the hosts had laid out a white carpet over the grass that led up to the tent entrance … and I felt like I was entering an alternative universe. 

It wasn’t just how the tent transformed the yard with soft greens and fairy lights. It was that the event transformed neighbors from people who chat about how deer are eating their hostas into people with careers and travels and families out of state, in short, into fully rounded human beings. 

I have a theory about my neighborhood, where houses are tucked away on wooded lots and there’s a scale and beauty lacking in many suburban enclaves. People don’t move here for showy homes. They move here because they like the woods and fields. It’s a value that translates into many other admirable qualities.  Last night reminded me of those. 

(The tent that transformed our backyard for Suzanne and Appolinaire’s wedding.)

Land of Trucks

Land of Trucks

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I’m the mother of three daughters, which means that I am, for the most part, a stranger in the land of trucks. But I’m becoming more familiar with them thanks to my almost two-year-old grandson, who has never met a truck he doesn’t love. 

There are trash trucks and food trucks (a nice modern touch) and dump trucks and more. There are trucks that hold stacks of alphabet blocks, which I’ve never seen in real life but which provide the all-important educational spin.

Most of all, I’ve seen Isaiah backing up his trucks, parking them, talking to them and immersed in play with them. That’s the part that makes me love them most. 

The Salad Green Blues

The Salad Green Blues

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I don’t usually read the food section of the newspaper because after decades of slinging hash I enjoy spending less time in the kitchen. But yesterday, I found myself pulled in by a piece that trashed, of all things, lettuce!

The author, Tamar Haspel, was not subtle: “Lettuce is a vehicle to bring refrigerated water from farm to table,” she began, explaining that the crop is 96 percent water. Then she launched into a discussion of why eating salad was bad for the planet (it consumes too many resources in exchange for too few calories and nutrients) and bad for us (it provides a halo effect for all the less healthy stuff we mix in with it — croutons, fried chicken strips — and is more likely to make us sick, since it can be contaminated with food-borne pathogens and we eat it raw). It’s not that we shouldn’t eat salad, she concludes, but that we should realize it’s a luxury to do so. 

As a person who builds many meals around salads (albeit forgoing iceberg lettuce, the most watery of salad greens), and who has sought them in vain in countries where food isn’t as abundant, I have to say that her piece was an eye-opener. I won’t be giving up my baby romaines and arugula anytime soon … but I’ll try to include even more beans, nuts and other nutritious add-ons when I eat them.

Seamless

Seamless

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There’s a way I want to live now that is best described as seamless. Unlike the work-for-pay life, where my time was parceled into segments set by modern office practices (meetings, deadlines, more meetings), the seamless life goes something like this:

I write for a few hours, then break to play the piano or clean the bird’s cage, followed by a walk and then more writing because a walk almost always gives me an idea or two. 

Which is not say there aren’t plenty of errands to run, laundry to do and other details of daily life. The seamless life is part reality, part aspiration.