Last year I bought a wall calendar that featured historical pictures of Milwaukee. I found it at my local giant bookstore. It was awesome.
I went looking for another one for 2011. The publisher’s website has calendars for lots of other places…but not Milwaukee, and not any of the other towns where my ancestors lived.
I started looking online for history-themed calendars. I didn’t find any that I liked. Then I thought…wait a minute. Couldn’t I get REAL calendar from history?
So I got out my trusty genealogical calendar, which shows the calendar for years from 1753-2000 (and I’ve penciled in the subsequent years). It turns out that 2011′s calendar is identical that of the following years:
- 1870
- 1881
- 1887
- 1898
- 1910
- 1921
- 1927
- 1938
- 1949
- 1955
- 1966
- 1977
- 1983
- 1994
Then I went on Google’s shopping search engine (which searches just about every shopping site out there) to look for interesting calendars from these years. There are thousands of them. You can find bank calendars from tiny towns your ancestors lived in, calendars featuring advertising for companies where your people worked…you name it.
I ended up with gorgeous 1977 whole-year calendar for my office for 2011, and a Red Owl Food Stores 1956 calendar for 2012. Both are infinitely cooler than anything I would have found at the bookstore (and cheaper too; one was $10 and the other was $5). Why buy faux-retro stuff when you can get the real thing?
Photo by peagreengirl
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Fantastic idea Kerry – and possibilities for novel Christmas presents! Thanks for posting
So clever!
This is such a great idea. Thanks for doing the year research for the lazy among us (me). I’m psyched to be able to tell what day it is in style *and* be green about it.
My mom reuses calendars
You have an interesting mind
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I believe the term you’re looking for is “weirdo.”
I still have a perpetual calendar my grandfather gave me. It’s from a bank in Salem, Massachusetts in 1948, and it must have been a freebee for opening an account or something similar. It’s a small metal disk with rotating gears that show the month and then the days of the week rotate. I keep it in my desk drawer, and use it to calculate old dates. The internet is better for this, but not as much fun.
You have no idea how hard I am fighting the urge to google that, find one, and buy it RIGHT NOW. I am consumed with calendar envy.
I have an old 2004 icon calendar that I love so much I reuse it from year to year by just placing on it the current page from one of the cheapo calendars we get in the mail.
Creative and brilliant!
I really did laugh out loud — and learned something! Thanks, Kerry!
Just brilliant.