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SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | AUGUST 2025 7 By Karen Range, Resident Aer the excitement of its preceding month with the Fourth of July activities and reworks, August may seem, well, a bit dull. ere are no major holidays, summer started back in June, and fall won't begin until September. I was thinking that perhaps this quote from novelist Sylvia Plath aptly summed up August: "e best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. e odd uneven time." I decided to look further into August. Does August deserve to be thought of as an uninspiring and unimportant month? I discovered that some very signicant events (and some not quite as signicant), both positive and negative, have occurred in August. Here is a sampling: • August 2, 1776: e parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence was signed by most of the Continental Congress. • August 26, 1910: Mother Teresa was born. • August 18, 1920: e 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratied, granting women the right to vote. • August 23, 1939: e movie classic, e Wizard of Oz, premiered in movie theaters. • August 6, 1945: e United States dropped the rst atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. • August 14, 1945: Japan announced its surrender, eectively ending World War II. • August 21, 1959: Hawaii became the 50th state in the United States. • August 16, 1962: Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best as the Beatles' drummer. • August 6, 1965: e Voting Rights Act was signed into law in the United States. • August 21, 1987: e movie Dirty Dancing was released in movie theaters. • August 31, 1997: Princess Diana dies in a car crash. Some of these events have been momentous and changed lives (I mean how far would the Beatles have gotten without Ringo?!). But seriously, the world was never the same aer the atomic bomb or aer women gained the right to vote. Based on history, in the future, I will consider August to be not just the 'dull' border between summer and fall, but a time when anything can and does happen. The Significance of August

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