Endless summer

[heliopausa]

We get two Junes this year!  Or something like it, anyway.  I'd never been able to work out how the lunar-solar calendar worked, in terms of keeping the New Year in late winter, when it (the calendar) had twelve months of thirty days each and 12x30=360, whereas there are 365-and-a-bit days in the solar year - so that in strict logic, the New Year should be a little further back each year, and slip further and further back, meandering until New Year ends up in autumn, or mid-summer or something, which would be chaos.  But this year I found out how it was kept straight - we get an extra month, and it's in summer - so that we're getting two Sixth Months this year - the first one starting today, and the second one starting on 23rd July. Though to slightly balance that, the Fifth Month and the first Sixth Month are only 29 days long, instead of the proper thirty.  Still and all - two Sixth Months!
My friends say that this extra month presages a long hot summer - grim thought.  On the other hand, I'm wondering if it's going to give the younger school students - on holiday this month - several extra weeks' holidays.  I bet it does!
So that's how come there are two Junes this year, and why I'm justified in calling this entry Endless Summer.

For your refreshment after all that, two pictures from the endless summer - glorious bang lang trees in flower, and appropriately (since the flowering of the bang lang signals exam time for tertiary students) flowering above open-air bookstalls.

Comments

[sovay]

But this year I found out how it was kept straight - we get an extra month, and it's in summer - so that we're getting two Sixth Months this year - the first one starting today, and the second one starting on 23rd July.

That's really neat! The Hebrew calendar—also lunisolar—has a similar intercalary fix, only it's an extra month of Adar in the winter.

For your refreshment after all that, two pictures from the endless summer - glorious bang lang trees in flower, and appropriately (since the flowering of the bang lang signals exam time for tertiary students) flowering above open-air bookstalls.

That is beautifully summery. Thank you!

[heliopausa]

I'm sorry to have left this so long unanswered.
I think I'm falling in love with the whole idea of calendars, and how humans mark the year. So many ways - so many New Years! (Am I right in thinking that it's Hebrew calendar New Year now? Best wishes for your year! May it be a hundred times better than the one just past.)

The Vietnamese intercalary month isn't always summer - it depends of the times (of solstices etc) and the seasons (the old seasons, which I don't even know the names of, but along the lines of summer, winter etc, but with more of them).

[sovay]

I'm sorry to have left this so long unanswered.

Life gets in the way of internet. I hope things are all right with you.

(Am I right in thinking that it's Hebrew calendar New Year now? Best wishes for your year! May it be a hundred times better than the one just past.)

It is, thank you! Even ten times would be an improvement. And it wouldn't be so bad if it spilled over to most of the people I know, either.

The Vietnamese intercalary month isn't always summer - it depends of the times (of solstices etc) and the seasons (the old seasons, which I don't even know the names of, but along the lines of summer, winter etc, but with more of them).

That is extremely cool. I like the idea of a month that shifts through the year. Calendars are wonderful.

(Are you reading Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire—Ninefox Gambit (2016), Raven Stratagem (2017)? I ask because of calendars.)

[heliopausa]

As to the reading - no, I haven't been reading anything at all, but thank you for the tip! :)

editing to add: haven't been reading anything at all except a burst about ten days ago, when I read every single one of the Narnia Fic Exchange stories. :) I especially liked one called "The Foreigner", which offered an outside view of Narnia's politics and polity.

[sovay]

I especially liked one called "The Foreigner", which offered an outside view of Narnia's politics and polity.

Link?

[heliopausa]

http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Narnia_Fic_Exchange_2017/works/11896647

:)

[tielan]

That probably means an extra long chilly winter for us... :(

[heliopausa]

Sorry to have left this so long unanswered. I think you escaped the long, chilly winter, didn't you? :)

[redsnake05]

I like the idea of you getting two Junes. One of the best things about lunar calendars is how flexible they can be in solutions for reconciliation, and having two lovely early summer months is clearly a good way to go about it.

[heliopausa]

I'm sorry to have left this comment for so long unanswered. It's not always an early summer month that's repeated - in 1985 it was in spring. I don't know how the calculations work, except that equinoxes and solstices and eight traditional seasons are all part of it.

[autumnia]

My mom likes to celebrate family birthdays according to the lunar calendar and she seems to get double birthdays a lot more than the rest of us. :-) Not this year at least, but in any event, we usually end up celebrating during the first occurrence of the month.

[heliopausa]

Your mother is very clever! :)
But yes, it makes sense if you know the lunar-calendar day the family members were born, to celebrate them on that day - if they were the second full-moon baby of the year (or two days after the fifth new moon, or whatever) - well, then, there they are, and the second full moon of the year (etc.) is always theirs! :)

[asakiyume]

Intercalary months are great--a whole extra, liminal set of days. Even just an intercalary day, like February 29, coming every four years, is cool--fun to have a birthday on that day and be only four years old when your peers are sixteen. But to gain a whole month, it seems like getting a time turner, somehow.

I bet there are poems written about the exam anxiety provoked by seeing the pretty bang lang flowers.

[heliopausa]

I was puzzled by how people seemed hazy about when and how the intercalary month was happening, since in the culture I grew up in every child knew the rhyme about "Thirty days hath November..." and which years would be leap years.
Maybe because the first is always new moon, and fifteenth is always full moon and it doesn't matter what number the month is called?

I wonder, about the poems! :)

[blueinkedfrost]

These are really beautiful photos. Hope that you are well.

[heliopausa]

Thank you very much; it has been more disruption than illness (though a bit of that) but I'm hoping that things are now getting back to a more even keel.