Michael,
I don’t think anybody is seriously contemplating calendar reform. I got a copy of the English version of the French Republican calendar from Frank King and It is hanging on a wall in my house. I love it because it is historically interesting and, in retrospect, amusingly goofy. The names of the months were parodied by contemporaneous English writers as adjectives like “sneezy, chilly, and breezy.” I would actually love to have a French version if anybody publishes one. It would have to retain the juxtaposition of the normal calendar with the FRC calendar so you can tell what today’s day and month would have been called. I wonder if anybody can figure out a way to juxtapose a pre-Julian Roman calendar onto a modern calendar. I think it would have to be arbitrarily reset somehow rather than fast forwarded. Jack Aubert From: sundial <sundial-boun...@uni-koeln.de> On Behalf Of Michael Ossipoff Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2022 9:02 PM To: fabio.sav...@nonvedolora.it Cc: Sundial sundiallist <sundial@uni-koeln.de> Subject: Re: Republican Calendar, Year 231 . The first thing I want to emphasize is that calendar-reform is not going to happen. What to do? Just deal with the calendar that we have…the one that we’ve had for two millennia.(…but with its Gregorian-modernized leapyear-system). Don’t waste your time on calendar-reform, because, for one thing, it isn’t going to happen. . But suppose that there’s an alternative calendar that you like. Calendar reform advocates are notoriously un-cooperative among eachother, & that further eliminates any chance of reform. But, even if the calendar were changed, then with the many different proposals around, what is the chance that the one that you’d like would be the one that somehow got adopted? Zilch. So that’s another reason to forget calendar-reform & just deal with the calendar that we have, the 2000-year-old Roman Calendar. . The OP was advocating for the French Republican Calendar, translated into your particular country’s language. . …but would its seasons be relevant to those who reside south of the equator, or in the tropical regions? No. . It would be a seasonal calendar based on the seasons of one particular lat-band. Hardly something that could be called internationally-fair or meaningful. . But let’s look at some other attributes of the French Republican Calendar (FRC): . It starts its year at the Autumnal Equinox, for those north of the equator. (A more generally meaningful name for that equinox would be the Southward-Equinox.) . Why? Well, the French Republican government started around that time of the year. That was a commendable government, & an improvement on what it replaced, but is its commemoration really what we need as the basis of our year-start choice? . There are good arguments for starting the year at the northern-hemisphere’s Vernal-Equinox, Winter-Solstice, or Summer-Solstice...or at the ancient Celts’ year-start at their Samhain holiday, which corresponds to our Holloween...or at the start of October, the Roman month that contains Samhain...or at the start of Scorpio the ecliptic-month that contains Samhain. But I’ll spare you the year-start discussion, because, for one thing there isn’t going to be a new calendar. . Resuming the attributes of the FRC: . The FRC is a year of 12 months of exactly 30 days each. Seems like a nice aesthetic simplification. But it leaves 5 or 6 days that aren’t any day of the week, & don’t belong to any month …not so neat after-all. . Days that aren’t any day-of-the-week are called “blank-days”. They’re a mess, & that’s too obvious to need any explanation. . But, whatever reform-calendar you might like, its unlikely that it would be the one adopted, among the many proposals. …as if there were even any chance of any new calendar being adopted anyway.
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