Having staggered near a week into the New Year I am glad. The weather (not a fit subject for conversation) could use improving, but thirteen is behind and fourteen has begun, but that’s for us using a version of the Roman calendar once important for giving a common base, like standards of weight and measure. The month name is from the god-name Janus. (Some hold the old “gods” were as much representative of human traits as they were presumed deities. Mars God of War need not live outside if he finds expression in our own an angry spirits.) Janus looks forward and back; not a bad way to begin a new annual cycle. Some other parts of the world (they do exist) strongly resent our having forced this old Pagan calendar on them. With all the sincerity I can muster I sympathetically tell them to get-the-hell-over-it: find a better complaint! Disaffection with the number 2014 and month names from a “dead” culture is no worse than having a Year of the Dragon. Along with Monkey and Sheep these symbols have always been short on pertinence up here. Can’t think the last time I had a dragon concern. Lunar based calendars live up to their source, but what can you expect when you calculate from the dark side rather than that of the light? In any case, the Pagan image of Janus has some accuracy when it comes to us. If you look forward and back as Janus does I suspect you’ll see just how quick and easy it is for us to change. We do that about as well as we’ve gone Metric which I personally hold as science delusion and fraud because the universal logic of the system based on ten needs a clock and a calendar, doesn’t it? It needs a new form of clock to distinguish it from the old. I suggest a square with each side representing 5 newly divided hours for a nicely Metric 20 hour day. A Metric Calendar is even more fun because it requires an army of Meter Priests and Priestesses muttering mathematical incantations to keep our days divided and our roots square.

Actually, I have my own measures of time. To me April, May, and June barely exist except as Mud Time that seems to drag on and on before the two dozen “hot” July (named after Julius) days that herald the first frost of August (figure that one on your own). After the annual parental celebration of the start of school we along the North Shore experience the month of the gray hair Buick People come north to drive with precise control and a decided lack of speed to enjoy the colorful scenery on maps they follow showing rest stops highlighted brighter than the maples. There are not fewer Buick People in recent years, but fewer of them in Buicks. The youthful and trendy geezers have turned to hybrids while the hard care old school cruise defiantly in forms of the old Caddy. Their stately processions in season are as colorful and impressive as anything seen on Hawk Ridge and a lot easier to engage close up where you can appreciate the peculiar warble of a hybrid changing fuels or the solid KATCHUNK that shuts a camera safely inside a spacious trunk.

The season before the arrival of Janus is that of the Dun or Dunners. In the spirit of Good Will they try to importune us when we are down, meaning vulnerable with generously high holiday spirits. For at least 40 days (I am not sure what this is in Metric Months) I get calls to give to one miserably pathetic wretched cause after another. Why do they think I’ll be better disposed if they call at dinner time? Being careful not to choke I answer the phone with as much grace as can be had in me, which under optimal conditions is quite wee. If I am in a happy mood I might tell the caller wishing to speak to me about their worthy cause that I am not the person they wish to speak to but I’ll get Mr. Drabik for them if they will just wait a minute while I set down the phone. With luck I’ll remember to hang the phone up before going to bed. A shorter version of this is to say I am at the moment busy and will call them back if they will please give me their number. None ever has, which really makes me doubt the sincerity of their request. There is also pleasure to be had asking Dunners to please send information on their worthy cause to me by mail along with an envelope for my sizable contribution which they assure me will do more good much more swiftly if it is given by credit card right away. I’d have to be very convinced of the worth and validity of the Black Bird Foot Rot Relief Fund to give the poor bird feet anything, much less $100 right now. It is simply not going to happen, but it is a delight to raise hopes on the line’s other end, though I’m sure they go unpaid for promises made versus card numbers harvested. Come to think of it I seldom get the info in the mail. Maybe giving a correct address would help there, but if they are serious they should have known that already shouldn’t they?

Another seldom referenced measure of time is by the shoe horn. When a person is a child this device has no special use as you simply pluck your foot from behind your head to put sock or shoe on it. Some decades later you will on occasion use a shoe horn for tight dress shoes. My life stayed relatively shoe horn free until the 40’s when one of the things found residence near the bed. I thought the long shoe horn a mere curiosity until age 65. Who’d have thought time and condition could be gauged by the shoe horn?