My three calenders

For my week-by-week desk calender through 2011, I will be relying on an unflashy but serviceable item from American Express, with factual tidbits on each page about various destinations where I could presumably enjoy a debt-financed vacation with my Amex card. It tells me with referemce, for example, to French Polynesia that the "views from Moorea's Belvedere Lookout are among the most spectacular in the South Pacific." Those views encompass two famous bays -- one named for Capt. Cook, the other not. But it is the one that is not named Cook's Bay (named, rather, Opunohu Bay) where Cook in fact landed. So it says here.

That reminds me a bit of the tricky American history question, "On what hill did the battle of Bunker Hill take place?"

This desk calender alson has a neat "thirty years ago this week" feature on every page, so I can keep track of what was happening in 1981.

Separately, my month-by-month calender for the coming year, from Dr. Seuss Enterprises, provides me with 13 Seussian illustrations. This is one of those so-called 16-month calenders, in which the last four months of the outgoing year have to share one page before one gets to the usual month-per-page stuff: hence the 13 illustrations. Why is that necessary? I need one calender a year anyway -- why does anyone think I need four months worth of quarter-page overlap?

The oldest illustration is for the month of July. It's from Horton Hears a Who, a 1954 publication.

Finally, for the day--by-day calender on the top of my dresser, I will this coming year be relying on "non sequitur" to get me through MMXI. Enough with the Latin phrases.

Out with the old, in with the new!