First Day of Quest, First Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Electra): It's the first day of autumn, the fifth season in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar, but it still feels more like a Dog Day outside than Autumn, at least here in Georgia. But we'll get there.

Friendly reminder that in the New Revised USC, each year has 366 days divided into six seasons of 61 days each. Each year starts with Childwinter and end with Hagwinter, Childwinter is followed by Spring and Hagwinter is preceded by Autumn, and the remainder of the year between Spring and Autumn is divided into Midsommar and the Dog Days.  Yesterday was the last of the Dog Days and today is the first of Autumn.

Each day of the New Revised USC has a specific name taken from Angus MacLise's original USC, although some of the names have been moved around. The names are virtually impossible to memorize, but all you need to know for Autumn is the first day is known as First Day of Quest and the 61st and last day is Last Day of Quest. The autumnal equinox falls on the 21st day, Day of the Blood Sun. The 24th dozen day of the year (two dozenth dozen) is the 44th Day of Autumn and is called Tenth Ocean, and a dozen days after that is the Eleventh Ocean.

Each season has a five-day sequence of same-named days, sort of like a holiday celebration, and in Autumn, the 33rd to 37th days are First Day of the World Course, Second Day of the World Course, and so on to the Fifth Day of the World Course.  

Eeeks in the New Revised USC consist of six days to evenly fit into the 366 days and so each year begins on the first day of the week and each year ends on the last day of the week. The days of the weeks area all named for stars, with the final and ultimate day named for our Sun, Helios. The first five days of the week are in alphabetical order for mnemonic purposes and are Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Castor, Deneb, and Electra. 

If all that's sounding difficult and complicate, here's a calendar of the Autumn season to help make sense of it all.

If your question isn't "What?," but "Why?," I'm afraid I may not have an answer for you. Who needs or wants an alternative calendar? I don't know. I ask myself why I'm trying to format this blog to the New Revised USC, and the closest I can come to an answer is, "Because I can?"

The original USC was developed by artist, poet, and calligrapher Angus MacLise, a founding member of The Velvet Underground who was fired from the band by Lou Reed before the first album was recorded. MacLise revised the USC at least once, and I made several additional changes of my own, including six seasons instead of MacLise's five, adding a 366th day, the six-day weeks and the weekday names, and moving many of the day names around to fit the revised format, although I kept all of the names to preserve the poetry of MacLise's orignal. 

This blog has an avatar for each season, so no more images of Barkley now that the Dog Days are over and we're retiring the hound until next year. The avatar for Autumn is a Retired Old Man in the autumn of his life, based on an idealized (and glamorized) version of my own face as interpreted by an AI image generator. So you're stuck with my gray beard and balding head for the next 60 days.

That all got a lot more involved and complicated than I had intended! At this point, I either got you to understand my methods and approach, or convinced you that I have indeed lost my mind - or maybe both.