Knuckle Calendars

We heard a comment last evening about "knuckle calendars" - you know - so you can tell which months have 31 days...just start on one knuckle (either pinkie or pointer) and call that January (31 days) and go across and when you hit July, stay right there and call that knuckle August (another 31 month) and back track.

We are pretty much slaves to this invention it seems and now, with a long winter month ahead (first knuckle) and no snow yet but sure to come, we can think about things like this. We were remembering when our parents brought home calendars that were sent to their businesses by other businesses (fuel oil companies were big on this as were those fruit of the month things from Florida) but it seemed that everywhere you looked there was a calendar hanging on a kitchen wall or as a writing pad on a desktop. Now, not so much, as it seems every phone has a calendar that is linked up to your computer's electronic calendar that is linked up to your Facebook account and that is linked up to Linkedin and someone you hardly know knows when you were born and who you are visiting when and where.

Looking back, it appears that there was a pretty big interest in telling what day of the year it was and Druids and Mayans and all in between figured out how to move big stones around and carve and niche them to tell us what day it is or was. Calendars, simple or not, paper, stones, or electrons, are ubiquitous in our lives - literally couldn't live without them.

The term started probably in old Latin "Kalendae" (kalendarium), the time of year when accounts came due - the new year. One might think that calendars were the invention of the Income Tax folks.  Just might be. 

Back to work. Only January. No time for sluffing off.