August of Wind - Aunt S

Herschel Winn was tired of his name. He was tired of spelling his name for people. He started thinking about changing his name. Around that time, reports of other people changing their names started appearing in the news. Herschel was fascinated by the report of the man who changed his name to "In God We Trust." "If he can do that," Herschel thought, "I can do anything." Herschel was intrigued but not surprised when another man was unsuccessful in his attempt to change his name to "F--- Censorship." "You can't really take a name like that to the bank," Herschel reasoned. Herschel wanted to make a dramatic statement with his name without being profane or vulgar. He thought about his birthday in August. He thought about some of his favorite movie titles, such as Gone With the Wind and Lawrence of Arabia. "I know," Herschel thought, "I'll change my name to 'August of Wind.'" He thought about capitalizing the o in "of" as his middle name and decided against it. "I don't care if it makes filling out every form more difficult for the rest of my life," thought Herschel, "e.e. cummings wrote his name in lower case, and I can too. I can do whatever I want. Maybe I'll become a famous author or poet." Herschel went to the court to file a petition for change of name. When the court clerk told him the filing fee would be $320.00, Herschel reconsidered. "Perhaps I'll just use a pseudonym," Herschel thought. "I actually rather like my name. I'm not sure I want to change my name after all." Herschel never did change his name to August of Wind.

August of the Wind - Aunt Jean

It was that kind of a month – the August of Wind. Most of the paint sheared off the side of my car that I had mistakenly left out of the garage. A good deal of the roof went and the chickens had a surprisingly good time flying around in the coop. Who knew they were such athletes!

Since this period had followed the Placebo of June and the Doldrums of July, no one actually expected wind. Quelle unpleasant surprise! We were totally unprepared but have managed to survive as you can tell from this short missive. My hair will probably grow in again at some point. I am, however, looking forward to the September of Soporificness.

August of Wind

Sly, warm and slinky, the August of Wind was one of endless possibilities.
Oh what fun to blow all the ripe apples off the tree at one time,
to lay bruised and rotting under the cruel, hot sun.
And what a delight to blow gently through the garden greens, with her warm breath,
sending the pale green tempting aroma wafting down to the creek where the roof rats congregated.
They lifted their rodent heads and imagined salad for dinner
before a night flying up and down the cable wires and jumping on and off the roof.
The apples nearly gone, the lettuce eaten to the ground,
the August of Wind just smiled. She had more tricks up her sleeve.
Tired of little backyard games, she swept across the State of California
burning down more area than in any year tracked since 1930.
But she was just a summer breeze. What havoc will her dad
December of Wind bring when the warm, silky weather is done?

Lucy Autrey Wilson

August of Wind - Greg

The spring pixies who love to hang out on the blooming flowers in springtime rarely ever come out during the blazing summers. They mostly dwell in shady caves and forests where they can keep cool while the sun scorches the land. However one year there was strong gust of wind in august and it blew the pixies out from their shady hiding spots out into the open heat. These pixies have a particular blend of magic that causes everything they touch to grow rampantly and beautifully. The reason spring is often so beautiful is because of their presence and the reason things seem to wilt a bit in summer is because of their absence.
No one could understand why everything seemed to suddenly burst back into life in the middle of the hottest part of summer. Then they felt more gusts of wind in august which brought rain along. It was as if the plants had all anticipated the strange return of the rain in august and had all started growing and blooming ahead of time. No one would ever suspect that it was really the spring pixies who had been lifted out of their resting places and who had begun to play and frolic in the windy heat of august.

Summer - Grandma A

The Spring had passed with the trees looking gorgeous in flowers, and then that ended abruptly and it was cold, cold. The plants in the atrium shivered and complained and waited to bloom and at last it was summer. From cold with the heater on it was just as suddenly hot, very hot. All day I cowered in the house with the doors closed as the rose plants in the atrium burned, zizzled, cooked. At first it was not too bad. I opened the doors at night and shut them for the day. Night at least it does get cooler, unlike Gary, Indiana where the night, singing with the song of mosquitoes, and cicadas, and heat, stays about the same night and day, 95. The family at night gathered on the floor next to the open door downstairs, too hot upstairs, but it was a lost cause, there was nothing but heat coming through that open door. Ah, how lovely it used to be when a rain preceded by lightning, and suddenly darkened skies, poured down and we ran out to get wet, all wet, all gloriously cool and wet! A welcome relief from the gooey wet of sweat. But event that had its good feature. All the ailments in the body poured out through the skin and one prepared for the winter with all one's frame inner and outer made clean. Unfortunately when one is 89 the ability to sweat seems to disappear. The outer and inner heat rise together. One staggers to the couches and barely breathes waiting for the night and a chance to open the door. The roses having no way or place to stagger to, drop their burned leaves and support the bugs, the bugs which eat chunks of the buds, and clip the leaves, the bugs which gather in clans on the buds and eat, the bugs which bring mildews, the bugs. From the dry woods come the coyotes moving to the irrigated retirement community, accompanies by the deer also weary of dried up forage when they can destroy gardens and eat tender buds about to bloom. The turkeys wandering about looking large and healthy annoy various dwellers who want them killed. One of them got in a house and frantic tried to fly out through a window breaking the glass. A fox made a next and had a family of little foxes in a closed in space in another house. The dry heat was bringing the wild life into civilization. Plants, particularly promising buds of beauty, pet dogs and cats were candy for these wild creatures. The vast crawling society of slugs and snails had hidden away to appear at the first rain. Rossmoor was enjoying baking and being restricted in water and it was another summer. Oh how we longed for winter! Oh in the winter how we longed for summer! Oh in the atrium how the plants did fry and suffer and flop over and shrivel. Oh, summer, oh, summer!

Summer - mom

Summer - Cousin G

Summer is not fun for everyone.
Fortunately for little Johnny Gillespie, this summer was going perfectly and he was having the time of his life. He was enrolled in summer camp and it the most fun thing he could ever remember doing, and he was already nine, so he had a lot of memories. At least he thought so. One day while he was waiting for his turn to kick in a camp game of kickball, he had a flashback to last summer.

His parents had dragged him and his older sister all over the country visiting all these relatives and friends that he did not remember although apparently he had met most of them before. He had gotten pretty sick of being told what a handsome young boy he was. What did he care about that? He wanted to be playing kickball. His sister also was pretty irritated about having to leave all her friends so she was in a bad mood during the entire trip. This resulted in her being mean to him which didn’t help things at all for Johnny.

“Johnny, you’re up!” yelled the camp counselor who was acting as his team’s coach.

He kicked a single which scored a run for his team.

Johnny’s older sister wasn’t having as much fun as he was. She was headed off to college for her freshman year in the fall and she was panicking about her wardrobe and her computer, cell phone, ipod, and a whole lot of other things that she wanted replaced with the latest and greatest things on the market. In order to pay for all this stuff, she had to have income so she had a boring and monotonous summer job working at a grocery store. She did get to see her friends when she wasn’t working or shopping but all they did was sit around her room and complain about how they didn’t have the latest computer, cell phone, ipod, or whatever else, and worry about how disastrous college might turn out to be. Johnny could not understand why they would waste their time on such severely boring conversations but he just figured that that’s what boring older sisters did. Most of the time he was having too much fun to notice anyway.

If Johnny’s sister thought she was having the worst summer of all time, she was greatly mistaken. Her parents both worked full time and were working overtime because of recent lay offs and because they wanted to make a little extra cash to compensate for the humongous bills they would be paying due to their daughter entering into college.

Meanwhile there was little Johnny Gillespie out at summer camp. He was playing kickball and also baseball, football, basketball, tennis, etc. To Johnny, summer was a time to have endless fun and if someone had told him that it wasn’t always going to be that way he wouldn’t have listened and he wouldn’t have cared. After all, he was only nine.