Going Into Two Eighteen
Whether you say two eighteen,
Two thousand eighteen,
Twenty eighteen,
It’s of little consequence.
Change is coming three days hence.
Are you looking forward, backward?
Being in the constant now?
Eighteen is a lovely number, don’t you think?
On the brink… full of promise
That the best is coming to us!
Lowbrow maybe, but my now.
Peasant-like or fluffy, but,
A thoughtful possibility
That makes me happy and serene,
Looking forward to a two eighteen
A new but evergreen Arlene.
The 1st day of every Roman month was "calendae," related to the Latin verb "calare" (to call out, referring to the "calling" of the new moon when it was first seen. A calendarium was an account book or register," since accounts were settled and debts were collected on the calends of each month. The Latin term was adopted in Old French as "calendier" and then by the 13th century in Middle English as "calender." The 1st calendars were developed by Bronze Age cultures. Of particular importance was the lunisolar Babylonian calendar with years consisting of 12 lunar months, each beginning when a new crescent moon was first sighted low on the western horizon at sunset, plus an intercalary month inserted as needed by decree. The calendar was based on a 21st-century BCE Sumerian predecessor. Counting from the new moon, the Babylonians celebrated every 7th day as an "evil-day" when officials were prohibited from various activities, and common men were forbidden to "make a wish." The lunation of 29 or 30 days basically contained 3 7-day weeks and a final 8- or 9-day week. The Persian calendar system gave rise to the Zoroastrian and Hebrew calendars. By the time of Homeros the Greeks divided the year into 12 lunar months without any intercalary periods yet added. Most Greek states began the year between the fall and winter, but the Attic calendar began in the summer. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Greek system gave rise to various Hindu calendars and the Roman one. In 45 BCE Gaius Iulius Caesar introduced a leap day every 4 years. Pope Gregorius XIII refined that reform in 1582 by adopting modifications by Christopher Clavius to a scheme advanced by Luigi Lilio (Aloysius Lilius) earlier in the century (Lilio had died 6 years before his calendar was adopted). In the Gregorian calendar, which has become the international standard, a leap year occurs in every year divisible by 4, unless they are divisible by 100; an exception is made if it is divisible by 400.
ReplyDeleteIn 1745, 7 years before the UK adopted the Gregorian calendar, Hugh Jones ("Hirossa Ap-Iccim") of Maryland proposed a 13-month Georgian calendar, with Christmas as the last day of the year; the 13 months would be named after Christian saints, and the leap years were treated differently than in the Gregorian calendar. In 1834 Marco Mastrofini devised a 365-day calendar with 52 7-day weeks plus a holiday at the end of the year (a 2-day holiday every 4th year). In 1849 Auguste Comte's Positivist Calendar had 13 months (Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, Caesar, St. Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Descartes, Frederic [after Friedrich II the Great of Preussen], and Bichat [after the father of histology Marie François Xavier Bichat]. In 1902 Moses B. Cotsworth designed the International Fixed Calendar with 13 months of 28 days, with an extra Year Day holiday added at the end of the year and in the usual leap year an additional leap day in the summer; a 13th month, Sol, was inserted between June and July. The scheme was endorsed by Sandford Fleming, the Canadian inventor of standard time zones, and used by The Eastman Kodak Company from 1928 to 1989 because it was more rationally organized from a business perspective. In 1930 Elisabeth Achelis proposed a World Calendar in which every year has 12 months and 4 equal quarters of 91 days, but only 3 months (the 1st month of each quarter has 31 days, the remaining 2 have 30; each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, but a Worldsday holiday is added every year between 30 December and 1 January, and another Leapyear Day is similarly added at the end of the 2nd quarter in leap years, followed by 1 July. In 2004 Richard Conn Henry, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, proposed a perennial Common-Civil-Calendar-and-Time calendar of 364 days with an extra week ("Newton") added every 5 or 6 years (in years that begin with dominical letters D or DC or end with dominical letters D or ED. Dominical letters are derived from the Roman practice of marking the repeating sequence of 8 letters A–H, commencing with A on 1 January, on stone calendars to indicate each day's position in the 8-day market week.) The proposal was further modified in 2011 by Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke by moving the leap week from the middle of the year to the end. Time zones would be replaced by Cordinated Universal Time, as Greenwich Mean Time was renamed in 1967. Each quarter has 2 30-day months followed by 1 with 31 days.
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