An Unkempt Garden of

We made a calendar!

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To use this calendar, print out the pages. I print them left-justified on landscape-oriented 8-1/2" x 11" paper, then cut off the excess blank paper on the right. Then cut vertically between the three week columns, then bind the calendar weeks to a large cardboard back cover, side-by-side as they are printed, but separated by your cuts. I hang the whole thing up by threading a ribbon through the coil binding and tying the ends.

Once a week ends, flip it to the back. You'll always see the current week plus two weeks into the future.

You can hang the calendar on the wall with the ribbon. Alternatively, you can make two holes in each of the sturdy cover boards-I recommend using a drill, and making the holes behind the weekly pages so they won't show. Then thread the ribbon through the holes, tie it in a loop, and stand the calendar up tent-style on a desk or shelf.

Here are photos of our realization of the calendar (read how below).

About the holidays marked on the calendar

We used smaller type for all the days that we ourselves invented. Most of our ideas are undemanding, whimsical, even trivial. Still, late on "harmonic series appreciation day", maybe we will remember (or look up) exactly what a harmonic series is and enjoy a kind of beauty unvisited since we studied math in school. Maybe on March 16th we will think about female superheroes and then be done with it. Maybe we will be interested enough in our wacky festivals that we'll remember to check the calendar every day and no longer miss any appointments.

Some less-joyful days are there largely to enhance appreciation of, and contrast with, better days. This is the explanation for "buy two things day" and "fear the Internet day".

In addition to the days we added, we also included a number of obscure popular observances we found. We await Bean Day, Take Your Pants for a Walk Day, and the Feast of St. Frumentius with great anticipation. Wear Something Gaudy Day surely has the potential to bind the world together for one shining day, even if only through the blindingly joyful color scheme of our respective festival outfits.

From there, it was a short step to exploring other cultures' more interesting holidays. Zoroastrianism presented the difficult choice among its three competing calendars. We picked one nearly at random. Hilaria is (or was, in ancient Rome) more than one day-again, we picked one. We do not intend this assortment of both cultures and holidays within a culture to be exhaustive-illuminating, perhaps, but only a little. We trust you will be able to do a quick search for any unknown holiday names. If we ever make another version of this calendar, we may include explanations for things like Bathing and Basking Festival or recipes for Bean Bun Day. This year, our calendar only points out these days' delightful existence and invites the user to inquire further.

The non-comprehensiveness at first applied to US holidays, also, but Dan rightly pointed out the unhappiness that might come from realizing too late that Mothers' Day was missing (there are now three different Mothers' Days on this calendar: Mothering Sunday, Fête des Mères, and Mothers Day; sorry, only one Fathers' Day). Also, Halloween is Dan's favorite holiday, and once you go there, you might as well put them all in.

We also added a few events local to our immediate geographic area that we didn't want to forget.

We made this for fun and to have some use for all the photos we've accumulated. We love the idea of inventing day observances that draw attention to underlooked, underappreciated, and underthought parts of life.