events Archives - Page 10 of 41 - A Walker in the Suburbs

In Kentucky, Rain and Tears

August 2, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

When I was strolling on the beach recently a fellow walker greeted me with “Go, Hoosiers!” I almost cheered him on. There are plenty of Hoosiers in my family and I went to college in Indiana for two years. Then I realized what he was up to. I’d almost forgotten that I was wearing my Kentucky T-shirt that day. He was asserting dominance.

There’s been no forgetting my home state these last few days. As more tragic reports flow from the flooding in Whitesburg and Hazard and other Appalachian towns, it’s hard not to think about the dire straits in which my fellow Kentuckians find themselves.

These people had so little to begin with. They live on steep mountain roads with creeks in their backyards. The rains that triggered floods and mudslides are supposed to happen once or twice in a thousand years. People weren’t expecting creeks to become raging torrents that lifted up refrigerators and cars and, worst of all, swept away children and parents and brothers and sisters.

More rain fell last night in Kentucky … and more tears, too.

(On dryer ground: a photo taken last year in central Kentucky.)

Bewilderment

July 28, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

A late post today since I was preoccupied earlier with errands and a birthday. It’s my middle daughter, Claire’s, special day. When I began this blog, she had just started college. Now she’s a working mother preparing to have her second child.

While I try to make gratitude the chief emotion of each day, other feelings creep in. Today it’s bewilderment, an all-too-common response.

How can Claire be a young mother already? How can any of my daughters be grown women with families and jobs and adult responsibilities?

Time passes. It’s the oldest story of all — and the hardest to believe.

The Deep

July 19, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

The sounds of a party filled the place: laughter, conversation, the clink of glasses. But step away from the main room and it was another world.

Sharks patrol their waters with ruthless intensity. Rainbow fish flit to and fro, a blue starfish pulsing in their tank. Porcupine fish bristle. And stingrays glide through the water like so many fluttering handkerchiefs.

At the entrance, schools of sea creatures swim to the left of us, to the right of us, and above us, too. It was a dramatic entry into another world, a world of the deep.

Thoughts on the Fourth

July 4, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

On one of my first trips abroad, the passengers in the airplane burst into applause when we landed back in the U.S. It wasn’t a difficult landing or an especially long flight. But it was a less jaded age, and I, novice flyer, started clapping, too.

I had more mixed feelings re-entering the U.S. a week ago. While we were away there were more mass shootings, several disturbing Supreme Court rulings (one of which produced equally disturbing vandalism at my Catholic church last week), and explosive testimony about the actions of our former president.

I love my country, but three weeks away from it was refreshing. I read no newspapers, watched no televised news. I took a break from our Weltschmerz, an Old World term that has become a surprisingly apt way to describe our not-so-new problems.

Tyranny, inequality and intolerance have always been with us. Many came here in hopes of escaping them. But they are part of the human conditions, and they have followed us here.

In my optimistic moments I still think the grand experiment that is the United States of America can weather these difficult, polarizing times. But it will take our efforts and our prayers and our sacrifice to do so. I hope we are up to the task.

Memorial Day x 2

May 30, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

Today, Memorial Day falls on Memorial Day — May 30, that is. Perhaps it is doubly Memorial Day, then, Memorial Day x 2.

I looked for photos of Washington, D.C., to celebrate the occasion and came up with these from a nighttime visit to the monuments with work colleagues in October of 2018.

Notice how the emblems of our democracy shine out as darkness surrounds them. Perhaps a fitting metaphor for this day, this year.

On Midwives and Texas

May 25, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

In my mind now are snippets of the music played in “Call the Midwife.” Not just the opening tune, but the crescendo that signals a baby is about to be born, the whimsical notes that accompany Fred the handyman, and the ecclesiastical chords that sound whenever the nuns gather to pray.

All of this suggests that I watch a little too much “Call the Midwife” — and on that point I plead guilty — but there’s a reason why I do. And it’s worth mentioning on this day we’re all grieving the tragic loss of life in Texas.

“Call the Midwife” takes place in the East End of London in the 1960s. Watching it whisks me into a completely different world from the one I inhabit. It’s a world of poverty, to be sure, but also a world of community. It is not a world without violence but it’s a world where police are armed only with billy clubs and the only children who die are rare ones who, despite the best efforts of the midwives and doctors, do not survive a difficult birth.

I started re-watching the show a few weeks ago when I was feeling under the weather because it never fails to buoy me up. And you can bet I watched an episode last night to calm myself down. The show distracted me from the thoughts swirling around in my mind so I could fall asleep. But now it’s morning and the thoughts are back:

When will we do something about the gun violence in this country? Whatever it is, it won’t be enough. But it will be a start. And without it … well, I just don’t know what will become of us.

Tallying…

May 2, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

Over the weekend, a milestone: it’s been a year since I started this new life. The temptation is to tally up the “accomplishments,” to see if I’ve earned this freedom.

But the “freedom” is already teaching me not to add up accomplishments, to see that as exactly the sort of mindset I was trying to escape.

Instead, I’m remembering the farewell message I sent my colleagues in April of 2021. I told them that I was leaving to “write, study and travel.” And lo and behold, writing, studying and traveling is exactly what I’ve been doing.

So the only tallying I’m doing today is … the counting of blessings.

Orthodox Easter

April 25, 2022 Anne Cassidy Comments 0 Comment

They entered the ornate cathedrals, slogging through rubble to get there. One photograph shows a country church and a lone woman entering with a basket. Another shows a hastily assembled altar, soldiers in fatigues.

It was Easter yesterday in Ukraine, but the shelling and the funerals continue. The message of a suffering savior and a glorious resurrection, the promise of eternal life, was delivered amidst the smoke and the terror.

For us, the war in Ukraine is a story we read in a newspaper, a report we watch on television. Switch off the screen, put down the paper … and it goes away.

For the brave souls in Ukraine, there is no pause, no end to the horror. For them, for now, war is life.