75. ODE TO THE CALENDAR

Calendars are useful for keeping track of events, holidays, meetings, deadlines, and milestones. They help us visualize our daily schedules to make us productive. In the old days, new parents referred to calendars for possible babies' names, as the pages contained feast days of saints--which explains my 2nd name, Maynardo--I was born on Jan. 21, 1957, the feast of an obscure saint, St. Meinrad (Maynard).

 My late father prefers the large Chinese calendars,  the ones that Chinese-owned stores in our town gave away. The numbers are laid out in a graph-like format allowing him to write reminders like the day a new LPG tank was installed, bill payments, addresses and phone numbers of people. 

 In the 60s and 70s, we had all sorts of complimentary calendars for the taking--from our local banks, groceries, hardware shops, PASUDECO (the province's largest sugar mill where my grandfather was a client), and even insurance companies. 

It's sad that we take calendars for granted, ripping a page every month, until a calendar's gone. Now, they are so hard to find, and if you are ever given a free calendar--it's usually the one-page freebie printed on thin cardboard, with small, numbered days that you can barely see. I have already a 2022 calendar containing the picture of a politician whose face occupies 3/4 of the calendar space.

I am keeping this anyway--along with the extinct 1980s Ginebra pin-up calendars that the liquor company distributed to store owners, of which my Mother was a recipient, having operated a friendly neighborhood store back then. She gave these away to drooling, drunken customers, but  still had many left.  I stowed them anyway--they make nice cabinet shelf liners and are useful for my paper craft projects.

More importantly, and kidding aside, old calendars give forgotten details to events past. Take this 1957 calendar, issued the year that I was born. I found out that  I was born on a Monday--isn't a Monday's child supposed to be "fair of face"?. Did you know that Pres. Magsaysay died on a Sunday, March 17, 1957?  All Saints' Day, Nov. 1, fell on a Friday--which probably meant that people went home on Oct. 31 for an unprecedented  4-day holiday! Dec. 25 Christmas was in the middle of the week--Wednesday--but back then, the holiday school break was all of 2 weeks!

Elsewhere around the world, 1957 was also the year of the Asian Flu pandemic that claimed over 150,000 lives world wide, foreshadowing the current, more deadly covid pandemic. Russia also launched its Sputnik satellite in October 4 (thank God it's a Friday!)--thus ushering in the Space Race war.  On the lighter side, the Frisbee came out for sale in January, but this flying plastic saucer became popular here only in the 70s!

These seemingly trivial facts and details don't appear on your FB Memories, they are revealed and recalled only in old calendars. So the next time an unsavory "politico" gives you a calendar, don't throw it away. By all means, use it...keep it...or repurpose it! Fitted with a foam board at the back, that calendar with the candidate's face makes a nice dartboard! Para mawala na sa kalendaryo!