A Time to Reap

I don’t know about you, but, of all the changes in seasons, the one from summer to autumn seems to me to be the most dramatic and definitive. One day it’s summer heat, the next day my heat comes from a furnace as nights chill into the 40s. Children go back to school and Hollybrook Road gives way from skateboards and bicycles to big (noisy) yellow buses. Pumpkins blossom on front stoops; jugs of fresh cider populate local farm stands, even as farmers harvest the last corn. Garden flowers wilt, leaves color. Lawn mowers retire and snow blowers are prepped for the first—Yikes!—snow. The birds migrate—me among them, a snowbird winging south to warmer climes where my arthritis is less problematic and the pavement less treacherous underfoot. Florida sunshine here I come!

So it’s no wonder I have an earworm that won’t relent. Maybe it’s a song more potent this year as I contemplate the death of jazz great Ramsey Lewis and the more monumental passing of Queen Elizabeth II, which I observed from this side of the pond in spirit with my British friends who contributed to this season’s playlist. Thank you, Helen, Julie and David.

The great singer-songwriter and social activist Pete Seeger wrote “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in the late ’50s; the song was first recorded in 1959 (when I was 7 years old), but I didn’t come to know the song until The Byrds’ 1965 rendition became an international hit. This month the song has been rewinding in my inner ear again and again. I’ve brought it up in conversations with several friends, and a couple of others mentioned it to me. I suspect my preoccupation with the song is connected to the fact I turned the big 7-0 this month!

Let the playlist begin…with deep thanks to contributors: Nicolas Eckerson; Taren Hillger; Julie Holmes, David Swanston, Helen Cope, Ahmad N. AL Najdawi, Sandy Smith, and Numero Uno.

Please feel free to send me suggestions for the next playlist!  I’d love to hear from you.