Going through my mother in-law’s drawers as we packed up her belongings, throwing away nonfunctional appliances, opened up vistas, windows into the past.

For instance, this simple pocket calendar (my favourite calendrical timekeeper format):

I suppose the year was 1946 when this was issued, a time when the U.S., Europe, China and Japan, amongst others, were mending global relationships.

In 2012, war on that scale is more a memory, a chapter in a history book, than anything else.

Now…well…we live history every day, don’t we?  Our lives, our individual lives, are ours to call our own, with many wanting our attention to make their lives seem more important than what we have planned to think and do.

Jostens, for instance, was once willing to trade a metallic perpetual calendar for a moment of your time thinking about class rings, announcements, awards and other objects that a commercial jeweler and stationer could provide not long after national rationing had reduced the frivolity of consuming items in daily living in exchange for items in daily killing to preserve a relatively peaceful way of life.

These days, the areas on this planet where we can openly play wargames amongst ourselves dwindle.

When average citizens can share their daily lives, the minute details of their subculture, without fear of oppression by bullying forces keen on preserving their wealth and prestige at the expense of the average citizen’s meager means, then what is war for, exactly?

What about a class ring?

I had a class ring once but sold it to take an older woman on a weekend snow skiing trip.

The ring meant more to my parents (who used their hard-earned cash to purchase it for me) than to me, a person who rarely sees the value in status symbols, fleeting as they are in the grand scale of our species’ history.

But without class rings and graduation announcements, I wouldn’t have this piece of nostalgia in front of me.

Somewhere, someone is wearing a piece of jewelry made of the gold from my class ring.  There may also be someone who mounted the citrine stone, once ordaining my class ring, that closely represented my secondary school primary color — orange — as well as the birth month of the girl I spent most of my time with.

There are stories to tell, observations to make, cats to feed and laundry to fold.

Yet, here I sit, imagining the year 1946, a year of promise, when the UN was formed and a year before the CIA was formed.

Syria’s independence from France was declared.

Project Diana bounces radar waves off the Moon, measuring the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon, and proving that communication is possible between Earth and outer space, effectively opening the space age.

The precursor to Sony was founded.

A Greek referendum supports the return of the monarchy. Later, George II of Greece returns to Athens.

Italy became a republic.

The World Bank began operations.

The interim government of India takes charge.

The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) starts setting standardised standards for standard bearers everywhere.

In the first Basketball Association of America game, the New York Knicks defeat the Toronto Huskies 68–66 at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.

The Casio Company is founded by engineer Tadao Kashio.

One calendar year — what a turning point!  Even 22 years later, 1967, the last year of the perpetual calendar, seems so far away sometimes…