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1955

Radio Script #252

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Little Talks On Common Things
February 6, 1955

If the uniform calendar we have talked about the last two Sunday niqhts seems to be so plausible, what is holding it up? Why don’t we get it adopted?

In the first place, there’s a howl from people who wi II lose the customary date for their birthdays. Since, .under the new calendar, there would no longer be any March 31 or May 31 or August 31, persons born on those days would simply h ave to ce leb rate the i r b i rthd?lYs on Ap ri I 1, June or September 1. They wou I d actua I I y find themse I ves no worse off than eve rybody was when the ca 1- endar was changed a Ii tt Ie more than 200 years ago. George Wash i ngton .• for i nstance, was actua Ily born on February 11. 1732. The change I n the ca lendar made the new date February 22.

Furthermore only eight persons in every 1,000 in the world population have birthdays on the I ast day of March, Mayor August. And what a bless i ng the new calendar would be to people born on February 29, for they would havB a birthday every year instead of once in four years. Anyone born on December 31 would celebrate his birthday on World Oay, the 365th day of the year, intervening between the last day of December and the first day of January.

Government officia Is, especially in the larger nations, have until recently shown little Interest In the change. Apparently they have taken the attitude that the old calendar has been too long established and public sentiment is too firmly fixed. The foreign offices of both the United States and Britain have shown no interest in the proposed change. Three years ago our own State Department announced that “whi Ie proposa Is for ca lendar reform have many merits, it would be di fficult to put such projects into effect unti I mass popular .support within the United States has been demonstrated.” The Department suggested it would take no stand without a mandate from Congress.

It is indeed the apathy of large and powerful nations which has slowed up the adoption of the new calendar. v-/hen the Republic of Panama proposed the calendar’s adoption in 1949, it got nowhere. Only a few small countries came to its support.

But in 1953 one of the world’s powerful nations came to the side of calendar reform. That nation is India. Two years ago Prime Minister Nehru named a calendar reform committee. He publicly stated that today’s calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C., and readjusted by Pope Gregory in 1582, has defects that make it unsatisfactory for universal use. About fifteen months ago the government of India proposed to the United Nations the adoption of the new World Calendar. In its proposal the Indian delegation to the U.N. stated:

“The new calendar is scientific, uniform, stable and perpetual. It offers harmony and order to government, fi nance, industry, labor, retai I trade, home life, transportati on, and educati on.”

Religious observance is so closely linked to the calendar that we may as well ask, “\vhat is the attitude of the church toward calendar reform?!! The Roman Catholic Church has announced that it is wi I ling to collaborate with the United Nations in the plan. The Rev. Daniel OIConnell .• director of the Vatican Observatory, explained in an article in the Vatican newspaper that the plan for the World Calendar was devised by a Catholic priest, and that the church has no reason to oppose in principle a modification of the present calendar.

Father O’Connell further insisted that such faulty features as months with odd lengths, quarters varying from 90 to 92 days, and a second half of the year three days longer than the fi rst ha If, were not put into the ca lendar by Pope Gregory, but were already there as an inheritance from pagan Rome. No major Protestant denomination has expressed opposition. A few extreme fundamentalist bodies with smal I membership have denounced the proposed calen- ~ar, on the grounds that a blank day between the end of December and the beginning of January would cause more than six days to intervene between two Sabbaths. Apparent Iy they do not accept Jes us’ own statement, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

These opposing voices are few and not powerful. Several of the larqe Protestant denominations have already officially endorsed the World Calendar, and more of them are sure to do so in the’ near future.

The main obstacle is apathy. Not enough people care enough. Those of us who do care must he Ip to line up the support of loca I, state an~ national organizations.

Then, If the U. N. proposes the World Calendar, as It seems likely to do, our Congress will be in a position to ratify it, for Congress is attentive to publ ic opinion. Let your Congressman know that you are in favor of ca lendar reform.

A writer in a recent issue of the Saturday Review summed up the situation as fo I lows: “Mos t i nte rnat i ona I p rob I ems today a re so comp II cate d th at eve ryday citizens feel they are not competent to deal with them. But calendar reform is out in the open. There are no c I ass if ied documents. I nte II i gent farmers, workers, housewives and business men can al I speak on it with authority. If we do speak, and do It quickly, we can end the chaos in our calendar.!!

Do you remember the bank holiday 22 years ago? And do you remember some of the loca I scri p that was used wh i Ie the banks were closed? I recently saw two examples of that scrip. These were notes of $1 and $5 denominations issued by the Wyandotte Worsted Company and bear the signature of John H. McGowan. The company’s scrip was also valid if it was signed by either N. H. Barrows or E. ‘1-1. McGowan. On March 6, 1933 the Watervi lie Sentinel announced: “The ~/yandotte officers have approximately 5,000 of these notes to sign. Through the cooperation of local merchants this scrip wi II be readily accepted. Every note is guaranteed by the company and wi II be payable at the Peoples-Ticonic bank when currency is avai lable.”

A lot of people were caught napping when the banks closed in that March of 1933. A prominent Watervil Ie attorney searched every corner of his home for empty mi Ik bottles to turn in at the store. At the Haines Theater someone passed a three-cent piece for a dime, th ink I ng he had cheated the theater by seven cents. Actually he had cheated himself eight cents, for it was a threecent piece of 1853, worth 18 cents.

Wanting a new tie, one merchant swapped a 300-piece Jigsaw puzzle from his own stock for the neck-piece from another merchant’s supply.

A conscientious father deposited a check in his boy’s piggy bank. When the boy protested, the father wrote the check for double the amount he took from the lad’s bank. When the banks reopened, the son found he had made a shrewd dea I •

One hoarder, gleefully recalling the bi I Is he had hidden away against Just such a rainy day, went to select from his hoard so he could crow over fellows like a wealthy neighbor who was left with 50 cents in cash and a checkbook that couldn’t be used. The story has it that, when the hoarder opened the old box In which he had placed more than a hundred one-dollar bills, he found that moths had been there before him, and the paper shredded away at his touch.

Whi Ie it lasted — which fortunately wasn’t long — the bank holiday was an annoying time.

In sp i te of a II that has been sa I d and wri tten about Fort Hal i fax, one point has never been made clear to me. For a long time I supposed the old fort faced on the Kennebec. That is not the case at al I. It fronted on the Sebasticook. The present old blockhouse that we now call Fort Halifax was situated at the southwest corner of the original fort. Up the Sebasticook from it ran a palisade to a sentry box, where at right angles a low structure, 80 feet long and 20 feet wide, formed the soldiers’ barracks, at the end of which was another blockhouse. Then on the side parallel to the river-bank palisade, was a dormer-windowed, two-story bui Iding, 40 by 80 feet, in which were the off i cers’ quarters, the storehouse and the a rrro ry . From the corner of that bui Iding ran another palisade to the first blockhouse. Fort Halifax was therefore a recta ngu I ar plot with open ground ins ide, and en,c lased on two sides by palisade walls, and on the other two sides by bui Idings. It had two blockhouses and one sentry box.

The inland blockhouse was taken down many years aqo by Benjamin Pettis and was set up near the river bank a mile and a half farther down the Kennebec. It was long used as a barn, but finally went to ruin. Its original foundations were later discovered.

Through the patriotic insistence and financial sacrifice of the D.A.R., The remaining blockhouse stands preserved to this day.

Many people have told me that one of the Fort’s blockhouses once stood at The top of Sand HI II. It all depends on what one means by the Fort. If one means the original, rectangular, palisaded fortification I have just described, The blockhouse on Sand Hi I I was not a part of It, and that blockhouse was indeed put up several years after the original fort was built. But if one means The who.le area now comprised in Winslow vi Ilage,the hi II-top blockhouse was indeed a pa rt of ita I I. I n fact the name Fort became so attached to the wh 0 I e vi Ilage that, wei I into the twentieth century, older, rural inhabitants of WinSlow, when they went to the vi I lage, always said they were going to the Fort.

It was 25 years ago that the trustees of Colby College voted to move the institution to a new site as soon as feasible. How many of you remember the excitement of that summer of 1930, when W. H. Gannett offered to give to the trustees the spacious hi Iiside site of Gannett Park in Augusta, if they would move the college to the capital city. Although it was the trustees, not President Johnson, who had made the deci s i on to move somewhere, the venom of I oca I wrath was turned aga i nst that man whom today every loca I person honors as It/aterville’s foremost citizen. When the excitement had subsided and all persons concerned were friends again, Dr. Johnson could reminisce with a chuckle:

IIThat was when ‘tJatervl lie people adopted the slogan, ‘Keep Colby, move Johnson’.11 How 9 I ad Watervi lie now is that I t kept both. I t was on November 20. 1930 that the Co I by trustees voted not to leave Watervi I Ie. As the Senti ne I put it: nsy a unanimous decision, 25 members of the Board of Trustees of Colby Co liege voted not to remove the co liege from the ci tv of its birth and, at th is meeting yesterday, thus settled an extremely difficult problem which has been smoldering and burning in Watervi lie and among the alumni throughout the country since last spring.”

Fol lowing that vote the Citizens’ Committee, which had given assurances that Watervi lie stood ready to render sUbstantial aid if the col lege would select a new site within the city limits, got energetically busy_ They raised $100,000 and purchased the severa I farms that now make up the near Iy square mi Ie of I and that forms Col by’s Mayf lower Hill campus. That site became Co I by’s new home by gi ft from the ci ti zens of Watervi lie. And who, more than any other person, made possible the beautiful bui Idings which now grace that site? You all know who he was — the man who misguided critics a quarter of a century ago said was trying to take Colby out of Watervi lie: Franklin W. Johnson.

Year: 1955

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