Monday, June 30, 2025

This is the sixty-fifth installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. June is Accordion Awareness Month, so increase your awareness by listening to some of my favorite artists and soundtracks! Find any you’ve missed in this easily navigable index.

Frankie Yankovic is considered by many to be the American Polka King, having had a storied career across all kinds of mucis that invove the accordion, and having trained the Cow Polka King Joey Miskulin, a member of Riders in the Sky. He is not related to "Weird Al" Yankovic, though they did collaborate because of their shared instrument affinity. His music is also a great way to end out this special feature of a month, which is unfortunately over!

So, how did it go? Was Accordion Awareness Month on West Wind exciting? Enlightening? Ridiculous? Let me know with the poll below, just open in your browser to see it.

That’s it, June is officially over! I can really hardly believe it. As the accordions fade into the background, new opportunities and challenges present themselves. One of the highlights of this month is that I sold out every copy of Octave of Stars that I have on hand! I owe that success to my awesome readership, but a large portion is due to the work of Katherine Bogner, fellow Catholic author and educator, who took the time to read and review Octave, and to add it to the list of Catholic books for teens on her website. Give her a follow, a like, or whatever you please, and help keep the ball rolling.

So now that I have no more copies to sign and ship, any new orders will be printed at BookVault and sent directly to the reader. I’m not going to order a new batch quite yet, because I don’t want to have to worry about that while we’re moving. That’s right, the newest opportunity and challenge is that our family will be moving in the next few weeks.

What? Moving away from that wildlife preserve of a property that’s full of animal, plant, and fungus life, and the best sunsets ever? Yes, that’s the plan. Our priorities and plans as a family have changed quite a bit in the past three years that we’ve been here, and now it’s time for something a little different. I’ll talk some more about it in the monthly Dispatch on Wednesday (and explain why it’s coming out then and not tomorrow), so until then, enjoy the day and get ready for the long weekend!