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Category: place

Houston Delivers

Houston Delivers

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To riff for a moment on a city defined by a sentence amplified by a movie— “Houston, we have a problem” — let me just say Houston had far fewer problems than I expected to see.

While there was evidence of Hurricane Harvey — a boarded-up motel and piles of refuse in neighborhoods (the latter viewed by other wedding-goers, not me) — the city, on the whole, glittered and gleamed.

From the Johnson Space Center to the funky soul food breakfast joint my sister-in-law found to a host of museums on everything from medicine to bicycles — Houston delivered.

The best part was walking through the parks, past fountains and waving pink grasses and through the studied stillness of the Japanese garden. Dogs and families, girls in ballgowns for their quinceaneras, even a tightrope-walker — everyone out to savor the cool breeze and sparkling low-humidity day.

Happy Birthday, WCSP!

Happy Birthday, WCSP!

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On a late walk yesterday I learned it was the 20th anniversary of C-SPAN radio. It began on October 9, 1997, and one of the first interviews aired was with Rep. Jay Johnson (D-Wisc.), who, in addition to representing Wisconsin in the U.S. House of Representatives was also a former disc jockey.

The first time I remember hearing C-SPAN radio was in the car taking Suzanne to a ballet recital at Children’s Hospital in D.C. It was December, 1998, the Clinton impeachment hearings, so the radio station had been on the air for more than a year already. But it was way down there on the left end of the dial (90.1, WCSP FM), and easy to miss if you were doing a quick scan.

What was notable about the timing was that Suzanne and the other members of the Center for Ballet Arts were performing scenes from the “Nutcracker” not just for the children in the hospital but also for then First Lady Hillary Clinton. I imagined what she must be feeling at the time, what it took for her to show up anyway. Turns out, that was just the beginning.

Anyway … driving past the Capitol on the way to the hospital that day gave me one of those “only in D.C.” moments that I’ve never forgotten. But C-SPAN radio with its gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House and Senate makes you feel like you’re always “only in D.C.” — but in a good way.

I’m no policy wonk, but when you can slip in the ear buds of your 10-year-old iPod radio, tune to 90.1 and listen to the Sunday talk shows while you’re walking … well, no secret to why the radio station celebrates two decades (and the television station even more).

Happy Birthday, C-SPAN Radio. Wishing you many happy returns of the day!

(Photo: C-SPAN)

The Light, Again

The Light, Again

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I stopped walking this morning long enough to take this shot.

“I almost did the same thing,” said a neighbor, running past me in the opposite direction. The light would have slanted in a bit lower through the tress when he passed this tunnel of green.

Not that I’m complaining about the angle I got to see. Seeing light pour through the trees first thing in the morning reminds me that there is more on heaven and earth than we can ever comprehend. We’re lucky if we have eyes to see and a lens to capture. But the light is there for us even if we don’t.

Ripening

Ripening

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Vines have twined, leaves have greened, flowers have bloomed — but they are only the prelude, the tuning orchestra, the tapped microphone. They are the dress rehearsal for the big show.

It’s a play being enacted in countless gardens and across endless sunny meadows. It’s the ripening of berries, the slow evolution of flower to fruit.
Ripening tests our patience, but nature will not be hurried. I’ve had my eye on these blackberries for weeks — from their waxy white infancy to their lush red adolescence — waiting for them to plump up and ripen into the shiny purplish black that means they’re ready to eat. 
I see this berry patch often on my walks; it’s hiding in plain sight, tucked between two evergreens up against a guardrail. I’ve tried to take each stage as it comes, to enjoy the ripening process. But I’m bedeviled by two questions: When can I eat the little guys? And will the birds get them first? 
Cloudy

Cloudy

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It is not, as I write this, actually cloudy outside. But it was an hour earlier, when I was walking, and it has been cloudy more than usual this summer.

One thing about the Washington, D.C., weather I’ve always appreciated: It doesn’t mess around with clouds. They are purposeful when they’re here. They quickly disgorge whatever it is they have inside — rain, snow, sleet or hail — then scuttle along to their next destination.

This is the most relentlessly sunny place I’ve ever lived. And though one might sometimes find it tiresome — like a frisky puppy that keeps licking you in the face — I love that about it.

Growing up on the cusp of the Ohio River Valley, I had what I realize was more than average cloudiness. This bummed me out. I remember wishing more than anything that the sun would break through — probably so that I could go outside, slather more baby oil on myself and soak up more harmful UVA and UVB rays.

Now that I think about it, maybe the cloudiness was a gift. Bad for the mood … but better for the skin.

Dutch Wave

Dutch Wave

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The headline caught my eye yesterday. “An inspiring green space in the concrete jungle.” Could it be the High Line? And yes, it was.

Gardening columnist Adrian Higgins wrote about the verdancy of New York City’s linear park, its stunning perennials and the way the wildlings (I love that word) mimic the flowers and weeds that flourished on the abandoned train line before it became an urban rooftop garden.

Higgins focuses on the plants themselves and the style of their plantings, as well as the man behind the beauty. Landscape designer Piet Oudolf is a leader of the “Dutch Wave” school of gardening, which is heavy on perennials and herbs and pollinators.

It’s nice to have a name for the pleasing combination of shaggy grasses and delicate flowers. Not that I will try to create it at home but so I can roll it around in my mind as I stroll, recreating the walks I’ve taken on the High Line, a place where plants and people come together so admirably.

(The perennials in my garden are not Dutch Wave.)

The Basement

The Basement

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I’ve spent the last three days in a basement going through my parents things. By the end of the day yesterday, Ellen, Phillip and I had loaded one car with boxes to save and another car with boxes to discard. One car is bound for Virginia and Maryland, the other car for the county dump.

There’s a lot of Cassidy history in those two cars, and I’m bleary-eyed from going through it all. So many thoughts about the messiness of life and the tidiness of death. Thoughts amplified when Ellen and I drove to the cemetery late yesterday and I saw the clean sweep of grass and stone.

I dash off this post on a beautiful summer morning, window open to crescendo of cicadas and the low hum of a neighbor’s air-conditioning. My parents are gone, but we are still living. I could have called this post “The Cemetery.” But I called it “The Basement” instead.

Suspended

Suspended

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When I traveled to Kentucky regularly I’d hit the road early and be in Lexington by mid-afternoon. But now when Ellen and I drive together we leave late on a workday, drive partway and stay overnight. Traveling becomes less a duty and more a road trip.

Last night we pulled off in Fairmont, West Virginia, and are now cosseted in a roadside hostelry. How sumptuous these places have become! A gym to die for. Bowls of fruit and raspberry tea. Soft lighting. High-thread-count sheets. This is not your grandfather’s no-tell motel!

A funny feeling takes over in these places. You are not quite here, not quite there. You are comfortable, You are just off the road or about to hit it. You are … suspended.

Place without People

Place without People

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It’s been 14 months since I visited Lexington. I’ve never been away longer. To the other bewilderments of these days I add this one: that I’ve been gone so long from my hometown.

There’s much to recommend the trip I’m making there this weekend: It’s summertime and it’s with my sister. But I approach it tentatively, much as a dental patient probes the tender spot where a tooth has been.

What’s missing from Lexington now is why I ever was in Lexington in the first place — and why I returned so often through the years. What kind of place is Lexington without Mom and Dad?

When people are gone, place remains. But what is place without the people who created it?

Porch Light

Porch Light

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An early walk this crisp morning as the day took hold and porch lights still were burning. What a cozy beacon is a porch light, what ease and relief it promises. A welcome to the late arrival. A comfort to the sleeping suburbanite.

Yet it also says, this is our place, this cone of brightness our bulwark. Come closer if you dare, but only if you know us. And if you know us, show your face.

Otherwise, slap your newspaper on our driveway, stuff mail into the box. We do not reveal ourselves to everyone. Only to the those for whom the light burns.