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My four 2013 calenders



For my week-by-week desk calender through 2013, I will rely on an unflashy but serviceable volume from American Express. As with last year's Amex calender, there are factual tidbits on each page about various destinations where I can presumably enjoy a debt-financed vacation with my Amex card. One of the early pages tells me, for example, with reference to the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, that their "rich diversity" is reflected in several traditional dances, which it proceeds to list (but I won't.)

While the Seychelles get January, the city of Marseille in France gets February, with an early reference to its use in the 1970s as the seedy setting of a great movie, The French Connection. But the city, we are assured, has come a long way since then.

Separately, I have two month-by-month calenders for the coming year, For my office, I have one from Amber Lotus Publishing, providing me with fractal art. Artist Alice Kelley creates these images through a computer program that assigns a color to each point in an image that is based on an answer to a chosen equation. There are also various wordy captions, such as this bit from Morris Kline. "The tantalizing and compelling pursuit of mathematical problems offers mental absorption, peace of mind amid endless challenges, repose in activity, battle without conflict, refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings, and the sort of beauty changeless mountains present to senses tried by the present-day kaleidoscope of events."

I also have an Audrey Hepburn themed calender for my personal space. I acquired this as something of a byproduct of my New Years Eve revels. Not a very interesting story

Finally, for the day-to-day or "box" calender on the top of my dresser, I am done with the witticisms from the Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, and will this year be looking at (if not exactly learning) one Latin phrase or maxim each day.

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