Making the Calendar

Every year there is one thing that we are each guaranteed to use, a calendar. I was recently in an office supply retail store and standing at the calendar section I was totally amazed at the options one has to choose from. There were calendars for your desk with a month at a view that could be used as a desk cover. This type never worked for me. I always cover them up with paperwork, books and my “stuff” and so that style doesn’t work for me. Options for calendars include those that sit up on a desk, hang from a wall, and those that you can carry in your pocket. And calendars today are filled with information to the point that I discovered there are options for information too. Your selections include calendars with positive quotes, thoughts or a scripture verse for each day or month if that has your fancy. There are calendars with the birthdays of movie stars, but there is no address for sending a card. I guess the thought of knowing it’s a celebrity’s birthday and maybe yours too would provide some extra excitement for the day if you were a big fan of the celebrity. There are the historical calendars that provide all the moments that happened on a particular day in history. Those are quite interesting I have discovered. I was reminded of all the things I had lived through in my life time that I had forgotten already. I see the value in those calendars if you love history for sure. Deciding which type of calendar to select for your use must include the purpose of the calendar too. My parents in their business have long given to customers pocket calendars. I’ve heard people throughout the years talk about putting their monthly bills in those pockets and how much they like those calendars. Of course all the calendars I have talked about are real calendars----ones that we can hold in our hands. I am not even going to talk about electronic calendars. They are everywhere to select from. I have a calendar for my gmail account, one for outlook on email, one with the office computer. The best thing about electronic calendars is that if you have the correct application or program, you can sync all your calendars together, now that’s nice! Looking at all the different options and styles of calendars I was struck with this thought while looking at a birthday calendar that highlighted the birthday of Benjamin Franklin. He was born on January 17, 1706. Just looking at his name there were lots of things that began to come to my mind. I thought of him being a Founding Father of the United States, after all he signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a writer and loved science. Figuring things out captured a lot of his mind and time. He enjoyed completing experiments and to his credit, invention after invention. Most famously he is after all the father of electricity. Looking at pictures of him wearing glasses I am reminded that he created bifocals. (Thanks Mr. Franklin, I am wearing mine as I type this column) Thinking about all the things I knew about him and was reminded from simply looking at his name I thought what do people think when they see our name? There are some facts of Benjamin Franklin that are lessor known. He was the 10th son of his father, who by the way had 17 children in all. His father was a soap maker by profession and had wished his son Benjamin to be a minister. That didn’t happen because of the cost of education, but that didn’t stop Benjamin from making a difference. Not sure what our individual answers are about what people think when they look at our names written down. I hope for sure it can be said that we made a difference with what we had, where we were. If we each get that accomplished in 2013 I am quite confident that would be a good start to being remembered. It might not get our names printed in a calendar, but I am sure it get our names written on the calendar of those we did make a difference for. Until then