Fall Appears

This morning, when we awakened around 8 a.m., the temperature had not yet made it to 10 degrees Centigrade (about 50 degrees Fahrenheit for the non-metric-fluent among us).  We have not seen such a low morning temperature for many, many weeks.  And now, by 5 p.m., it is unusually dark outside because there is a heavy cloud layer and the rain is coming steadily down upon us.  I recognize that sound; I remember that sound; I just haven’t heard that sound for quite a while. 

And so it begins again, that go-round of seasons and of year that, for me, anyway, begins in September, not January.  Did the Romans get it so wrong because they lived farther south?  If the Romans had lived in  Nova Scotia or Maine, would they have thought that anything actually began in January? 

But, in any case, it looks like we are really here at the Fall, even though a few weeks later than usual.  And in Fall, our thoughts turn to warm fires and cozy things.  Which brings me to thoughts of community and why it is that I am so fond of the idea of community.  I mean, I’m pretty much of an introvert and I happily spend most of my days alone, although Ed is of course somewhere nearby.  But I still think that it would be a good thing if people could get together to do well things that need to be done.  Like healthcare, say.  Or like getting the community events sign replaced.  (We’re pretty okay on the latter, but suffering greatly on the former, of course.)  Or maybe like just getting ready for fall--we could help each other get our gardens ready for the winter.

And in light of that, I was told yesterday about “Blitz Day” in my younger daughter’s hometown.  It seems that every year, one of the local churches organizes a day in which they gather up as many volunteers throughout the town as they possibly can gather (including kids), and everybody goes to work on that day to improve the community.  Blitz Day was last week in the mid-size town where she lives in southeastern Missouri.  It’s a small town inthe midst of a rural area with a small-town feel, a kind of southern U.S. feel, a town where you can imagine lots of people rising to the occasion.  And, indeed, she tells me, 1200 people signed up to participate.  They did all kinds of things: my 12-y/o granddaughter helped to seal the asphalt in a playground; my daughter cleaned lawn furniture at a long-term care facility (pointing out along the way that she might think about offering this service to her own lawn furniture).  A good day, a good job, a community thing.  Gladdens my sentimental heart.

So, of course, I got to thinking about what it would mean if Point Roberts had that kind of response to a call for volunteers to serve the community for a day.  Obviously, 1200 people aren’t going to volunteer because we barely have 1200 people, but I’m thinking about how many one could get, and also about exactly what they’d do if you had them.  Then it occurred to me to compare the populations.  So I looked up the population of my daughter’s town and it turned out to be much larger than I expected: 70,000.  If you compared that to Point Roberts, it means that we could expect about 20 volunteers.  Which doesn’t seem so unlikely.  Surely we could do that well.  But what would we do?   The thoughts of fall.