[Dargon-writers-list] Hmm. Calendar Question!

[White, John]

Victor Cardoso wrote:

> At any rate, I'd like to make a graphical calendar to help writers and 
> be able to explain it. Do we want to leave everything the same and live 
> with the contradiction, redefine Melrin as a summer festival, or move 
> the equini to correctly make it a temporal spring festival again? Any 
> thoughts on this?

In order to make Melrin *both* a mid-year festival and a spring festival,
the spring equinox would have to be moved to somewhere close to the
middle of the year.  If Earth had a mid-year festival, it would go between
June and July (the sixth and seventh months), which means it would start
about a week into summer.  Pushing the summer solstice into either July
or August would even further throw off our already faulty and inconsistent
(but canon) portrayal of what each month is like, since they would get even
farther from their Earthly counterparts and namesakes.  (Of course, this
would also push the winter solstice into February, putting our year's
beginning somewhere in the middle of fall where there's no particular
reason to begin or end a year ...)

So, in order to a) not be one of the silent assenting majority and b) not
throw away 5+ years of trying to reshape the subtle understanding of
what month means what in terms of time of year, climate, etc, I vote
leave things as they are.  

Note that I will happily change my vote in the face of evidence that I've
been violating actual canon (i.e. a proper grep through the back issues
to find instances of solstices and equinoxes and Melrin references, with
stories that are less than 15 years old holding much more sway than
even my own old stories with hours and minutes in them), not that I
expect my current vote to be doing anything but standing alone anyway.

        \\Dafydd
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