Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PUBLICATIONS PMSS
Calendars Guide
1914, 1938-1978 

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TAGS: publications by PMSS, guide to PMSS calendars, fundraising, reflections on the meaning of “time,” links to pages with images of calendars, print shop, John Spelman III, Arthur W. Dodd photographs, Mary Rogers sketches, linoleum block printing, special calendars

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PUBLICATIONS PMSS Calendars Guide

Among the many publications of Pine Mountain Settlement School is an array of calendars. The first calendar, published in 1914, was used as part of the fundraising campaign of the institution. The idea was a simple one that bound the promise of the new school to a future measured by the march of time.

It is not surprising that the sensitive Ethel de Long Zande, co-director of the new settlement school would settle on this instrument of months and weeks and days to measure the School’s progress through time and to aim for its future.

The writer Jorge Luis Borges spoke to the compelling nature of time when in 1946 he commented in his essay A New Refutation of Time (1946, revised 1947)

Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.

Today time is ever more compelling as new science digs deeply into time and asks us all to reflect on “what makes it tick?” Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time (2017) and James Gleick’s Time Travel (2016) are two more writings among the many that have taken on the challenge of exploring that most elusive and pervasive element of our existence … time.

In their singularity, so to speak, calendars provide a thread that weaves together that elusive time. Calendars are knots in the thread that tie us to past and present. They measure our distance from the past as they measure our journey to our future. The writer Ursula Le Guin made note of the passage of time in this stanza from her short poem Hymn to Time, written just prior to her death in 2018:

Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.

In some ways, calendars are mind traps. They capture the arrows of time from year to year that mark our experiences. But, as James Gleick tells us, those experiences are only in our minds. It is the mind that does the experiencing and it is in the mind that

…we experience most immediately [and our mind] … is subject to the arrow of time. It creates memories as it goes. It models the world and continually compares these models with their predecessors. Whatever consciousness will turn out to be, it is not a moving flashlight illuminating successive slices of the four-dimensional space-time continuum. It is a dynamical system, occurring in time, evolving in time, able to absorb bits of information from the past and process them, and able as well to create anticipation for the future.

Taken as a whole the calendars of Pine Mountain create memories of place and imaginations of futures. The calendars are arrows to past, and to future. And, most importantly, calendars capture in the now, a range of personal viewpoints as each calendar creator and viewer aims their own “arrow of time.”

The Tracking of the Seasons of Time

JULIAN CALENDAR

Tracking time can be found as early as the Neolithic period of history. The first known calendars were based on the cycles of the moon. Later, primary Western calendars were based on the relationship of the earth to the sun. The Julian Calendar, named for Julius Caesar, was initiated in 46 BC and shifted away from the former lunar calendar. The Julian calendar soon became the standard adopted by western civilization and those under control of the Romans. It persisted largely because it was adopted by the later Christian church. The Julian calendar sought to simplify the complicated but accurate lunar calendar by adjustments using leap years. But, even the Julian calendar did not persist.

GREGORIAN CALENDAR

The Julian Calendar continued to perplex the timekeepers and was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar in 1582. The Gregorian calendar was named Pope Gregory XIII and was intended to refine the earlier calendar by reducing the number of leap years. The change did not happen overnight. It took some 300 years to make the adjustments. Essentially, the new calendar, like the Julian calendar, is a solar calendar with 12 months of 28–31 days each. Both calendars consists of 365 days, with a leap day being added to February in the leap years. The months and length of months in the Gregorian calendar are the same as for the Julian calendar.

While both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars based their calendars on the movement of the earth in relation to the sun, not on the cycles of the moon, they both needed continual readjustment. Ultimately, it is the Gregorian Calendar that is in use today even though it was subsequently found that the earlier calendars, based on the lunar cycle, were only two seconds off rather than our less accurate sun calendar. Further, because it continually needed to be tweaked, the day count of the 12-month calendar was affected. Atomic clocks and other time-keepers have kept us “on time.” But, time still persists in “getting away from us” as in the slowing/speeding up of the earth’s rotation.,

In Appalachia, the more tangible time-keeper, the Farmer’s Almanac ,is often used to help farmers determine when to plant and when to harvest. “Planting by the moon” is still a common practice in many households.

About the PMSS Calendars

Calendars at Pine Mountain Settlement School were not always published annually, yet there remains a remarkable number of calendars produced by the School and by individual workers. The following array of calendars covers a period from 1914 to the 1970s.

During the 1940s the publication of calendars was fairly regular. The work to produce the calendars was undertaken by students working in the print shop. It is this group of calendars that, arguably, provides the most interesting examples of this genre. These calendars were designed largely by two creative workers at the School: John Spelman III and Arthur W. Dodd,

The art for most of the late 1930s and 1940s calendars was created by John Spelman III who was employed during that time as the art teacher at the School. Spelman’s work reflects his deep affection for the Southern Appalachians and for the architectural forms of the mountain cabin in and around eastern Kentucky. He provided an outstanding model for the students and helped them to consider their own aesthetic responses to the region and the remarkable charm of the mountain log cabin and the basic principles of design in a two-dimensional format.

The second set of calendars during the 1940s, capturing the region in photographs, is the work of Arthur W. Dodd, school principal at the School and a skilled photographer. His work is found throughout the collections of Pine Mountain Settlement School’s photographs.

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GUIDE I: PMSS Calendars
1914, 1938-1978  

     1914 PMSS CALENDAR

1938 PMSS CALENDAR

1939 PMSS CALENDAR 

1940 PMSS CALENDAR

1941 PMSS CALENDAR

1942 PMSS CALENDAR

1943 PMSS CALENDAR

1944 PMSS CALENDAR

1945 PMSS CALENDAR

1946 PMSS CALENDAR

1947 PMSS CALENDAR

1948 PMSS CALENDAR

1949 PMSS CALENDAR

1950 PMSS CALENDAR

1951 PMSS CALENDAR

1952 PMSS CALENDAR – “A Year of Song”

1953 PMSS CALENDAR

1954 PMSS CALENDAR

1955 PMSS CALENDAR

1956 PMSS CALENDAR

1957 PMSS CALENDAR

1958 PMSS CALENDAR

1959 PMSS CALENDAR

1960 PMSS CALENDAR

1961 PMSS CALENDAR

1968 PMSS CALENDAR

1969 PMSS CALENDAR

1971 PMSS CALENDAR

1972 PMSS CALENDAR

1977 PMSS CALENDAR

1978 PMSS CALENDAR

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GUIDE II: PMSS Calendars
1914, 1938-1978  

1913 CALENDAR	1950 CALENDAR	1978 CALENDAR	2006 CALENDAR
1914 CALENDAR	1951 CALENDAR	1979 CALENDAR	2007 CALENDAR
1915 CALENDAR	1952 CALENDAR “A Year of Song”	1980 CALENDAR	2008 CALENDAR
1916 CALENDAR	1953 CALENDAR	1981 CALENDAR	2009 CALENDAR
1917 CALENDAR	1954 CALENDAR	1981 CALENDAR	2010 CALENDAR
1918 CALENDAR	1955 CALENDAR	1983 CALENDAR	2011 CALENDAR
1919 CALENDAR	1956 CALENDAR	1984 CALENDAR	2012 CALENDAR
1920 CALENDAR	1957 CALENDAR	1985 CALENDAR	2013 CALENDAR
1921 CALENDAR	1958 CALENDAR	1986 CALENDAR	2014 CALENDAR
1922 CALENDAR	1959 CALENDAR	1987 CALENDAR	2015 CALENDAR
1923 CALENDAR	1960 CALENDAR	1988 CALENDAR	2016 CALENDAR
1924 CALENDAR	1961 CALENDAR	1989 CALENDAR	2017 CALENDAR
1925 CALENDAR	1962 CALENDAR	1990 CALENDAR	2018 CALENDAR
1926 CALENDAR	1963 CALENDAR	1991 CALENDAR	2019 CALENDAR
1927 CALENDAR	1964 CALENDAR	1992 CALENDAR	2020 CALENDAR
1928 CALENDAR	1965 CALENDAR	1993 CALENDAR	2021 CALENDAR
1929 CALENDAR	1966 CALENDAR	1994 CALENDAR	2022 CALENDAR
1930 CALENDAR	1967 CALENDAR	1995 CALENDAR	2023 CALENDAR
1931 CALENDAR	1968 CALENDAR	1996 CALENDAR	2024 CALENDAR
1932 CALENDAR	1969 CALENDAR	1997 CALENDAR	2025 CALENDAR
1933 CALENDAR	1970 CALENDAR	1998 CALENDAR
1934 CALENDAR	1971 CALENDAR	1999 CALENDAR
1935 CALENDAR	1972 CALENDAR	2000 CALENDAR
1936 CALENDAR	1973 CALENDAR	2001 CALENDAR
1937 CALENDAR	1974 CALENDAR	2002 CALENDAR
1938 CALENDAR	1975 CALENDAR	2003 CALENDAR
1939 CALENDAR	1976 CALENDAR	2004 CALENDAR
1940 CALENDAR	1977 CALENDAR	2005 CALENDAR
1941 CALENDAR
1942 CALENDAR
1943 CALENDAR
1944 CALENDAR
1945 CALENDAR
1946 CALENDAR
1947 CALENDAR
1948 CALENDAR
1949 CALENDAR

GALLERY: CALENDAR ART (A Sampling)

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