Calendars

Thirty days hath September, April, June, etcetera!

The old memory aide only rhymes at the beginning and never does explain why we have months of 28 days (sometimes 29), 30 days, and 31.

Nonsense!

The Julian calendar which dated back to 46 BCE was replaced by the Gregorian calendar in 1582. Both calendars attempted to align the seasonal year with the solar year. The Julian calendar missed the mark by 11 minutes which led to a drift of one day every 128 years. With the Gregorian calendar the drift is now only one day every 3,030 years. Still wrong! Plus, we still have to figure out what month it is, how many days are in each month, and what day was the first day of the month. It was Tuesday this month.

My fiction writing is always set in the year 2048 at which time we will certainly have come to our senses and simplified the calendar.

For our convenience in 2048, I have created the Junly calendar with the month of Junly between June and July: Thirteen months, all 28 days, 4 seven-day weeks (Monday thru Sunday) with an extra day at the end of the year, two extra days on leap years (28 times 13 plus one equals 365). The extra days are fun holidays when anything within reason goes.

Today I did some AI research and discovered that I am not the first to come up with the idea. Wouldn’t you know it? The Cotsworth calendar or International Fixed Calendar was proposed in 1902 by Moses B. Cotsworth: 13 equal months of 28 days with an additional month between June and July called Sol. The Cotsworth calendar was internally adopted by the Eastman Kodak company from 1928 to 1989.

Cotsworth called his extra days Year Days. The Cotsworth calendar did not catch on, but, as far as I can tell, only because some people did not like the extra fun days at the end of the year. Typical short-sightedness!