Calendars

One-by-one my many calendars arrive.
I get seven.
So far I have three, two more are on order, one I can’t get until December, and my own I’m not so sure I can do.
Just because my wife died doesn’t stop from getting my calendars.
Anyone who follows this blog knows they aren’t really calendars.
After all, seven is extreme.
I don’t use ‘em as calendars.
Only one is used as a calendar, and that’s because I no longer have the computer-calendar my wife kept — which had no art.
What my calendars are are wall-art that changes every month.
I can also evaluate each picture. Some are extraordinary, and some are dull.
At least they’re all pretty good.
I got an antique-car calendar from Hemmings once, and returned it.
The printing was marginal; the dot-matrix setting was too big.
The dots on the calendars I get are so small I can’t see ‘em.
My own calendar is the one I worry about.
It had previously been done with Kodak Gallery®, but Kodak Gallery went defunct with the Kodak bankruptcy.
Kodak Gallery was bought by Shutterfly, so now the calendar would be by them.
I haven’t tried it yet. There are pictures I haven’t taken I might wanna include.
There also is the fact I no longer have a wife around.
I figured out Kodak Gallery myself, so I can probably figure out Shutterfly.
But I have no confidence. It seems to have vaporized with my wife’s death.
I set aside the “O. Winston Link ‘Steam & Steel’” calendar, a railroad calendar, in case my own calendar bombs.
The calendars I already have are -1) my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar, -2) My Oxman Publishing hotrod calendar, and -3) my Tide-mark Press All-Pennsy color calendar.
Both “Ghosts” and “Oxman” solicit my business. I order online — did a while ago.
Tide-mark solicits me too, finally. A number of times I missed the All-Pennsy color calendar. I ordered too late, and they ran out.
The calendars I have on order are -1) my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar, and -2) my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar.
Audio-Visual solicits my business, usually in July.
The Motorbooks calendar I have to Google. (Motorbooks is a supplier of car-literature.)
My Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is the first calendar I got, probably in 1968.
For years it was my only calendar.
When first published it ran only railroad-images by Don Wood, including the photo below, the best photo Wood ever got.

Photo by Don Wood©.

The best picture Wood ever took.

Four Pennsylvania Railroad Decapods (2-10-0) are moving the heavy Mt. Carmel ore-train up the 1.31 percent grade of the Shamokin branch in PA. to interchange with Lehigh Valley in Mt. Carmel, two pulling and two pushing.
But this year the Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is late.
So far, no solicitation, so I tried Google.
Late because they lost their printer; out-of-business.
The Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendars will be printed this month (September).
But I could pre-order, so I did.
I order two, one for myself, and one as a Christmas-present for my railfan nephew, now 27.
No way would I ever miss the Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar. Very few are published, and they quickly sell out. The calendar is rare, and has some the best images I’ve ever seen.
Of note is that I have two All-Pennsy calendars. That’s the Pennsylvania Railroad, now defunct, once “the Standard Railroad of the World,” and once the largest.
I’m very much a Pennsy railfan. Many of the first steam-locomotives I saw as a child were Pennsy, and they were prettiest.
I saw other steam-locomotives, like Reading (“redding;” not “reading”), but the Pennsy engines were much more attractive.
I’m a railfan because of Pennsy, I guess.
The one I can’t get until December is my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar.
It appears in the December issue of Trains Magazine. It can’t be ordered online. It has to be snail-mail. My other calendars are online, even now the Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar, which used to be snail-mail or eBay.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17, 2012. Like me, she was 68. I miss her dearly.
• “Art” is a newspaper term, referring to photos, graphs or illustrations. A story with photographs is said to “have art.” —For almost 10 years I worked at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost seven years ago.
• RE: “the dot-matrix setting.....” —Four-color printing (magenta/black/cyan/yellow) is done with color-dots. The default dot-matrix setting is 75 dots per inch, except that big you can see the dots. Smaller dots are more expensive, and if the dots are small enough they’re not noticed.
• RE: the “O. Winston Link ‘Steam & Steel’” calendar...... —During the late ‘50s O. Winston Link of Brooklyn took photographs of the last steam-powered railroad in America, the Norfolk & Western. Calendars are made from these photographs. (There is a Link museum in Roanoke, VA, headquarters city for N&W.) —Link specialized in night photography, setting up 89 bazilyun huge flashbulbs and reflectors.