Take the 31st of January.
Please.
And while you`re at it, take all the other 31sts too.
You`re never sure they exist. You have to recite that goofy poem. Except you get mixed up because November and December both rhyme with September.
In an age that can produce gourmet cat food, you shouldn`t have to deal with 31sts. So it`s good to know that nine years from next New Year`s Day, you won`t have to.
Starting then-Jan. 1, 2001-no months will end with 31sts. They`ll all end with 30ths. Except for December which, to make up for the missing 31sts, will end with a 35th or, in a leap year, a 36th.
Everything will be neater, everything will be cleaner, everything will be better.
That is, if everyone will listen to Maurice and Mollie Freedman.
The Freedmans are a couple in their 70s who have earmarked their golden years for renovating the world. They think four centuries is long enough for a calendar that was basically a repair job. They think they have a better one. They call it the Tranquility Calendar.
”It`s so stupid that the calendar has been frozen in time for 400 years,” Mollie says. ”We`ve advanced in every other area. But it`s sacrosanct, like the Bible.
”Can you change the calendar? Why not? It`s man-made, not God-made. You can`t do a darn thing about the weather; that`s God-made. But the calendar is man-made. So if it`s broke, let`s fix it.”
The Tranquility Calendar would fix the patchwork day-count, because it has 11 uniform months. It will fix the split in weekends (Sundays in the far left column, Saturdays the far right) because all its weeks start on Monday. It will fix the confusion about holidays, because holidays have fixed dates. It will fix the end-of-the-year crunch, because there are more days between Christmas and New Year`s.
When it takes effect, the Freedmans say, all of life will be easier. It will be easier to make plans, easier to do business, easier to make monthly comparisons, easier to practice the rhythm method.
And best of all, it`ll be easier to recite the goofy poem, which will then read: ”Thirty days hath September, and all the rest except December.”
”You only have to remember two dates!” Mollie adds. ”Thirty and 35, for God`s sake!”
A date with destiny
The Freedmans live in a small room in Manhattan`s Roger Williams Hotel. But in the room there is no room. There is furniture-and there are boxes.
Boxes stacked seven high, boxes stacked three across, boxes blocking the closets, both of which contain more boxes. There are about a hundred boxes, and they all contain files. Files compiled by Maurice on topics including, but not limited to, the calendar.
Maurice has a business card that identifies him as ”Historian, Archivist, Document Examiner, Art Historian, Author, Philatelist, Lecturer, Playwright, Journalist.” (Mollie has no card, but she does have a
biographical sketch, which identifies her as a Certified Master Graphoanalyst.)
The card also says ”Foremost Authority on Declaration of Independence,” for the Freedmans` other major quest is to get the world to accept their proof that it was Benjamin Franklin, not Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration, and furthermore, that Franklin forged all the signatures.
And under that it says ”Foremost Authority on the Tranquility Calendar,” which is the claim most easily supported, inasmuch as, they say, the calendar was Maurice`s idea.
A key resolution
It began more than 40 years ago with a passing interest in calendar reform. The result was what Maurice called the Calendar of the Sun. It added two days to the week, which he named Uniday and Newday. ”We could see there`d be too much resistance,” Maurice recalls. The Calendar of the Sun slowly set. He moved on to the concept of the Tranquility Calendar (which is a variation of the ancient Egyptian calendar), but he didn`t begin to promote it until 1970. The year before, men had landed on the moon, calling their module Tranquility Base. The name was an inspiration. The calendar campaign was back. From 1987 to 1989, the Freedmans had their first Tranquility Tour, in which they stumped for the calendar in every capital except Honolulu. They mailed information packets to the news media and appeared in newspapers and on radio and TV. And they delivered letters to the offices of all the United Nations representatives. Twice.
The UN is where the dream could become reality, and the first step is getting a majority of the 29 countries in the General Committee, the General Assembly`s procedural body, to approve the idea and place it on the assembly`s agenda. Fred Eckhard, a UN spokesman, says this could happen. But he adds that with 10 years to go, the Freedmans are cutting it close.
”You`re talking about everybody in the world changing the way they count time,” he says. ”We haven`t succeeded in getting everybody in the world to drive on the same side of the road.”
But the Freedmans believe the Tranquility Calendar is the calendar that sells itself.
Time out
The enemy calendar, the one now in use, is called the Gregorian calendar. It was designed in 1582 to correct the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar was designed in 46 B.C. to correct the Roman calendar. The idea of fixing the calendar does not begin with Maurice Freedman.
What the Freedmans actually loathe is the Julian calendar, which, except for the corrections, is our current calendar. Julius Caesar, for whom the calendar was named, decreed that most months would end with 30ths and 31sts, and that February would end with a 29th or 30th. Then when July was named for him, and August for the Emperor Augustus (his great-nephew), Augustus allegedly swiped another day from February to make his month as long as Caesar`s.
”We`re celebrating guys like Julius and Augustus Caesar for their superstition,” Mollie says. ”Did you know that they thought all even days were evil? So we`re still celebrating these idiots? For what? What have they done for us lately?”
The Freedmans are not the first to have this perspective; in fact, bunches of reformed calendars have been proposed. Among the best-known are the Thirteen-Month Calendar, the World Calendar and the Perpetual Calendar. But the Freedmans think they`re all just as dumb. Maurice calls them ”mirages.” The main attraction of the Tranquility Calendar is simplicity, they say. The changeover would be effortless: no new day names, no new month names.
”It`s the simplest change, with the maximum results,” Maurice says.
”By just looking at the Tranquility Calendar, you get a feeling of peace and order, because of the evenness of its month,” Mollie says.
Indeed, Maurice adds, the calendar could bring the whole world closer to peace: ”The leaders of all these nations can join together in a major step that shows the advancement of their intelligence.”
Other deals
One thing is clear: If the Freedmans create world peace, they will definitely have come a long way from selling Bridgepoint Playing Cards.
Bridgepoint Playing Cards are bridge cards with printed point-values in the corners. Maurice invented them in 1951. They hit the market the following year and were a monster hit. In the late `50s, the Freedmans appeared on behalf of them in department stores across the U.S.
The couple later collaborated on other things, including a musical called ”Big Ben Franklin,” but none of them approached the success of the Bridgepoint Playing Cards. The cards, which sold through the mid-`70s, and Mollie`s handwriting analysis provided the support for Maurice`s research.
Now the Freedmans see their lives culminating with the UN approval of the Tranquility Calendar. And they see that happening by Aug. 10, 1995, their 50th wedding anniversary.
They`re planning to lobby the UN ambassadors again, to start getting them primed for 1995. They expect encouraging reactions; they say everybody loves the calendar.
The only objections, they say, come from people with birthdays that fall on the 31st.
”We have given our life to research,” Mollie says. ”And there`s been no compensation. The compensation has been the joy of discovery, the joy of finding the truth.”
”We feel this is like a legacy,” Maurice says. ”We didn`t have any children, which is one of the things we possibly regret. But we can still help make this a better world for our civilization, by improving one thing: the calendar.”
