The Home Forum Competition
You did brighten our day, as The Home Forum Competition invited you to do - with weather reports in the style of familiar authors. Your 500 entries showed how wide your weather eye is. The Bible, Lincoln, classic poets and novelists, the founder of this newspaper. Plus contemporaries like Harold Pinter, Anthony Burgess, and Stephen Sondheim. Also the recent past's Colonel Stoopnagel (Richard Summers), promising tomorrow will ''boo beetiful''; the very present Moon Zappa (B. K. Thornton) as ''your totally awesome weather reporter'' saying the slush will be ''grotie to the max''; and commentator Andy Rooney (Richard Barrett) asking, ''Have you ever noticed how the weather changes from one day to the next?''
Awards could not be first-second-third among this array of apples and oranges , not to mention pomegranates. Many said you'd had fun, award or not, and that's our main hope.
We'd like to publish all the entries - well, almost all. Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Kipling were among your most prolific weather reporters. Somehow E.E. Cummings brought out the most consistent batch of entries, a delightful dozen. We went for the one that added to word-play a typically romantic note. This sort of thing - a bit of implied comment, as well as mimicry - is often what made the final difference. Certificates to: the rain f a l l i n g down in the golden after noon Yields softly, sweetly to tomorrow's sky partly etched with cottoncandy clouds Heat r i s e s to aneversoprecise 92 degrees till night brings peace and reminds me of You. E.E. Cummings/Michael Pewitt Houston
For fair weather today, go out of state.
Mark Twain/Vi Jones Kahului, Maui, Hawaii
It is a truth universally accepted that coastal fog must lift to sunshine, suitable for a contracted tour to Derbyshire. If it should rain locally, it might be better to go on horseback, so one must stay the night. To walk abroad in such dirty weather, can only result in petticoats six inches deep in mud, though fine eyes may be brightened by the exercise.
Jane Austen/Virginia GoldenPortola Valley, Calif.
At 350 degrees, we have a glorious day, to be sampled leisurely. With a bit of imagination, you can do wonderful things with it!
Tomorrow will be a tricky little buster of a day at 450 degrees. Be fearless - stir it with vigor, sprinkle with a pinch or so of common sense, and top with a generous dollop of good humor! Chill your troubles and forge ahead!
The weekend promises to be wickedly rich with moisture. Slather with happy thoughts! If it plops, cheer up - for it's always 'Toujours bon appetit!' ''
Julia Child/ Dorothy R. Frost Haworth, N.J.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is will it rain, and when this lousy heat wave will break. In the first place that stuff bores me and in the second place I don't know all that much about it. But if you want me to give you the odds or something like that I guess I could. If I told you there's a sixty percent chance it won't rain, I guess that would make you happy. But that's not a hundred percent. You can't be a hundred percent about anything.
J. D. Salinger/Dean Van de MotterWinnetka, Ill.
Out upon it! It has rained
Three whole days together,
And is like to rain three more
(Unless it prove fair weather).
John Suckling/Barbara M. Ottewell Greenville, S.C. Though April is the cruellest month
Today brings warming sun. I will show you Your shadow at morning striding be- hind you And your shadow at evening rising to meet you. Here is a high of sixty-five And here is a low of thirty frosty degrees. Fear not death by water, remembering O O O O those days of summer past White bodies naked on the low sand, The pleasant rays of a splendorous sun. But beware Of thunder over distant mountains; The river sunken, and the limp leaves Will wait for rain. When speaks the thunder DA: We shall carry umbrellas DA: We shall enter our homes DA: We shall leave the sea. ''Il pleuvra demain.'' Shantih shantih shantih T.S. Eliot/Sally Noble Chicago More awards tomorrow.
