Bluesy Rhythms of Fall

I covered my tomatoes last night.

Covering green tomatoes, protecting them from a freeze while hoping for another two weeks of warm weather so they will ripen on the vine, is a cherished fall tradition.

Every year, I end up picking the last green tomatoes and storing them in a paper bag so they will ripen, but I’ll do that in a week or so.

It felt good to perform a normal, seasonal rite of passage.

This week, I’ll cross more seasonal tasks from my list.

 I’ll go around the corral fences, preparing to wean the calves and lambs.

I’ll bring the cattle home from the summer pasture.

I’ll take steers to the processor and then deliver beef to people who appreciate my efforts to provide it.

My 13-year-old daughter, Abby, is back in school and playing volleyball.

My days are bookended by walking with her out to the bus in the morning and picking her up from practice at 6.

I can’t help but beam at her rapid improvement and that her team wins some of their matches.

These are the routines of fall, the jobs I know how to do because the rhythm of the seasons beats in time to our earth rotating around our sun.

I rely on that rhythm, revel in it.

It feels good to sway into that bluesy, mellow song of fall after the hard-charging, rockin’-out songs of summer.

The long, bright, sweaty days of hay, fences, and tires – oh so many tires.

The early dawns of Saturday farmers markets.

COVID and protests and wildfires.

Fall brings deeper breaths, slower steps and a sense of accomplishment.

Then the phone rings.

An automated message remixes the bluesy rhythm into head-banging, unintelligible rap.

Several people at my daughter’s high school tested positive for COVID-19.

The school is closed for two days of disinfecting and distance learning will be implemented for at least two weeks.

No more volleyball practice, no more sitting in my dark pickup, waiting for Abby’s bus to pull in after a nighttime game, no more updates from the bus driver each morning.

I don’t yet know whether Abby needs to be tested.

I don’t know whether we need to quarantine or whether the people we love and have hugged in the past couple of weeks might get sick.

Thomas Friedman’s book, Thank You for Being Late, comes to mind.

In 2016, Friedman used globalization, technology and climate change as examples of such rapid change that humans can’t adapt.

Individually, the changes from each stress us out, compel us to react in strange, unpredictable ways.

Combined, all three impact work, politics, ethics and communities.

An easy example sits in my hand.

My phone becomes almost obsolete as soon as I purchase it.

Moore’s Law says the number of microchips in this tiny computer will double in two years, barely enough time for a person to figure out the new apps. In the past 10 years, computers and phones changed far quicker.  

I despise updates to my phone.

Policy takes even longer to adapt to change.

If Friedman wrote his book today, I bet he would include the summer of 2020 as the ultimate symphony of a global pandemic; technologically dispersed, unreliable information and exploding climate change. The finale will be the chaotic election season.

In fact, the joke is that none of us will turn our clocks back on November 1 because 2020 doesn’t deserve even a single extra hour.

But still, the jobs I need to do before the snow comes don’t change.

I listen to the bluesy rhythms of the land.

I love my family.

I cover my tomatoes.