MEMORANDUM

TO: The Universal Calendar Company

FROM: Lars Walker

RE: November

Having recently exhausted the November page in my 2009 calendar, I feel compelled to make you aware of my extreme disappointment with the quality of your product in recent years.

I make no comment on the art you selected to illustrate the month, although “Naked Maples in Dubuque” might be considered, by certain sensitive souls, a less than transcendent theme. I understand that you can only work with the material actually available.

I note that the November 2009 page contains the requisite number of days, i.e., thirty (30). This is technically up to code.

However, I can tell you, on the basis of a lifetime of experience with months, that your customers have not received full value for their temporal dollar. I am aware that months are packed by weight, not volume, and that a certain amount of settling may have occurred during transport. However, my memory is clear in the matter of the length of Novembers back in the 1950s when I was a boy, and I am convinced that this past November does not come close to meeting that standard. Clearly someone (I make no personal accusations) has been adulterating the product.

No doubt the costs of individual days have gone up since the time of my boyhood. I can understand, for instance, how days of May and June, requiring special protective packaging and refrigeration as they doubtless do, will have increased in value. Likewise the less fragile, but temperature-sensitive, days of September and October.

But November? It’s impossible to make me believe that the price of November days has increased to any appreciable degree. Surely November days are manufactured in bulk in China, and have an almost infinite shelf life. Spoilage should be almost unknown, as what could spoil a day that’s already part of November? Fungus and vermin are expected and (I’m given to understand) even welcome in certain quarters. Surely your warehouses are stuffed to capacity with November days. It wouldn’t surprise me if the costs of storing November days doesn’t surpass their retail value.

For that reason, I respectfully suggest that you make up for the inflation of Optimal Spring and Optimal Autumn days by giving us November days (at least) that make up the volume to which the public is accustomed.

A Full-Weight-for-Value March wouldn’t kill you either.

I thank you for your courteous attention.

ADDENDUM: I caught a cold in November. Do you propose to do anything about this?



(Cross-posted at Mere Comments)