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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion Podcast
Keeping it 101 is the podcast that helps our nerdy listeners make sense of religion. Why religion? Well, if you read the news, have a body, exist in public, or think about race, gender, class, ability, or sexuality, you likely also think about religion — even if you don’t know it yet. Let us show you why religion is both a lot more important and a little easier to understand than you might think. Put us in your earholes and let us show you why religion isn’t done with you — even if you’re done with religion.
Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion Podcast
SO GLAD YOU ASKED if calendars are neutral
More nerds than we can count asked why Ilyse is obsessed with calendars, so we distilled that into: are calendars neutral? They aren’t. End of episode?
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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
This is keeping it 101, A killjoys introduction to religion podcast in 2022-2023. Our work is made possible through UVM reach grant as well as a Luce AAR advancing public scholarship grant. We're grateful to live teach and record on the current ancestral and unseeded lands of the Abenaki Wabanaki and Auco Cisco peoples. As always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website.
Megan Goodwin:What's up nerds?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Hello,
Megan Goodwin:I'm Megan Goodwin, a scholar of American religions race, gender and politics.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Hello, I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, a historian of religion, Islam race and racialization and South Asia,
Megan Goodwin:Ilyse, can ask you a question.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Yes, you can. Very important. Are
Megan Goodwin:you ready? Okay, okay.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I'm nervous.
Megan Goodwin:What time is it?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:There are several answers to this question, but the right answer is game time.
Megan Goodwin:It's time to get ill come on.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I went game time you thought you were making a sports joke. Do it again. Do it again. All right.
Megan Goodwin:It was right there. It was about you. It was about time.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:It was about me being a time taskmaster, since we started late today. Keep going.
Megan Goodwin:Hey, hey. I have a very important question for you. You're ready. I'm ready. Okay, okay. What time is it?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:It's time to get ill. Yes.
Megan Goodwin:Thank you, Jesus. Welcome back to another episode of Keeping it 101 Nerds. We are very professional podcast.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Well, I mean, everyone is professional when it comes to the beasties.
Megan Goodwin:Yeah, hey, what are we doing today?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Well, I have a feeling you asked me about what time it was because today it's another so glad you asked episode. Which, if I can remind the nerds Megan, our election of episodes where we answer their burning questions totally and completely all in one episode. Love it. Love it.
Megan Goodwin:What burning question was in the soul of our nerds today?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:So I get this question a lot, on and offline. Most people ask it in worried possibly hushed tones. It's a lot of like, Ilyse, Ilyse, why do you only talk about calendars? Or at least we got it. You can't really stand winter break. But are you okay? Or Ilyse you know that this sounds obsessive? And this one, which I think you have asked me with this tone. Ilyse, not everything is about time.
Megan Goodwin:It's less of a question and more of a comment.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I mean, that is your vibe.
Megan Goodwin:How dare you but also that's correct. Time isn't real. So I'm ya know why? Why are we talking about this all the time.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:First of all time is constructed. But that doesn't mean it's not real Megan, that is like our whole thing. It does work in the world and orders us and conceals power. So don't tell the nerds it isn't real because they ask them questions about calendars. Because time is real, even if it's also sort of made up but calendars also made up and also hilariously real.
Megan Goodwin:I mean, they do fuck up my whole life a lot for things that are not technically real. So Fine. Yes, fine. Okay, fine. I am admittedly poking at one of your most tender spots, I believe you when you say time is real, even though I don't understand it or fully believe in it, but I believe you. And I own a number of calendars. So those are also real, I guess, technically. But like, why are we so glad that our nerds asked about calendars? And also, what are they asking?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Well, rest assured, our beloved nerds are not just asking whether or not I need supervision around a scheduling app. These came in both in the snarky ones I've already listed but also a number of questions like, "can you say more about why calendars upset you so much?" There have been a number of variations on why do we say calendars aren't neutral, which is frankly what we're going to focus on today. We've got a several questions about can we talk about calendars that aren't imperialist, which feels upside down to me? Why would we ever not talk about imperialism? And my favorite question, which which I got in a DM on Twitter was, "did a calendar hurt you?"
Megan Goodwin:Why I'm so glad you Okay, so I think I know the answer to that question, which is yes, calendars hurt you, calendars hurt me all the time, but in different ways. Oh, let's get into it, maybe? Yeah.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Yeah, I think I think we should just dig in. So I've got us organized in a few ways today, but we're going to talk about time itself.
Megan Goodwin:Coming from the beginning of time. Yeah,
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:no, this is like, from the beginning, as history has unfolded throughout time in place. First and foremost, calendars have always always confused the hell out of me and fascinated me to no end. You know why Megan?
Megan Goodwin:No, why?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Because I'm Jewish. You see,
Megan Goodwin:this is brand new information!
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:What that means is, for me in my tiny calendar obsessed brain is that I have always done two new years, one in January with the rest of the world that uses a Gregorian calendar and one in the fall whenever Rosh Hashanah rolls around in the Hebrew calendar month of Tishrei. Now, I'm going to do some nerding out about time itself.
Megan Goodwin:Love that for you.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:The reason that there are two new year's isn't because Jews arbitrarily decided that fall makes more sense as a new year than like, the middle of the winter.
Megan Goodwin:I mean, they're right.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Even though I do think it makes more sense?
Megan Goodwin:Which is also due at the end of October, beginning of November, just it's a good time to like roll into a new season and new year anyway. Right?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:It makes sense in a particular way. The real reason that happens is it because a bunch of Jews got together, you know, like 6000 years ago, and we're like, "Yo, this makes a ton of sense." It's because the Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, which means it accounts for the lunar calendar, that is to say phases of the moon, as well as the solar calendar, which is to say where the sun is in the Earth's sky. All of these are pre modern scientific ways to measure time. Neither fully accounts for exactly the like, the algorithm of days, right. So like that. They're like 365.2417 bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, days...
Megan Goodwin:do you hear how fake it is? I'm just fine.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:I mean, frankly, it feels more fake now that we actually quantified it. And there's like a repeating decimal in it. As opposed to people who operated from a lunar calendar being like, these 12 months of the year, these 12 cycles of the moon. That makes sense, or the people who followed like a strict solar calendar who were like, we've noticed that the sun has returned to the same point in the sky and the constellations are back to where we thought they were originally. Or this lunisolar saying, that's like, neither of those are quite right. So we'll do this weird hybrid calendar thing. Now a lunisolar calendar is why the months bounce around, and all Jewish holidays move about the Gregorian calendar, but do not roll around the whole year, which is Muslim, like what Muslim holidays do since the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar. Okay.
Megan Goodwin:Okay, that was so much time already. And bull that gif of Lady give up the lady with the numbers dancing all over her face. While, she looks constipated. But all right. What I think I hear you saying is that we don't even agree if we need to measure time using the moon or the sun or the moon and the sun. And that changes how people experience time.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Yeah, yeah. And so I'm using Jews, Muslims, and then this Christian calendar because they are things I think people are familiar with. But we could do this with other calendars, and we might later on the episode. So let me explain this in a different way. For Jews, Rosh Hashanah is not glued down, Passover isn't glued down. There's not one day of the year that it happens with respect to the Gregorian calendar, but the season remains the same because of this lunisolar calendaring. For Muslim, which is a little bit different. No, go ahead.
Megan Goodwin:Okay, so Rosh Hashanah doesn't happen on like October 12 every year but it always is kind of in the fall.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:That's exactly right. Okay. Because of this lunisolar calendar let me explain the opposite right. So this are not the opposite the lunar calendar so for Muslims, there's 12 Islamic months that are based on the new moons, and those months never change, the month of Ramadan is always Ramadan, it always follows Shavon and preceeds Shawwal, but Ramadan does not have a fixed season. So the Islamic year is about 10 days shorter than the Gregorian year, the year that we use in America. So holidays and festivals like Ramadan or Eid tend to appear to quote unquote move back by 10 days compared to the common -era calendar, which is to say some years if like Ramadan started on June 10 of this year, next year, it might start on June 1st. Okay, so so Ramadan does not have a season but it is always the same month.
Megan Goodwin:Okay. So it's always always the same month, but 10 years apart, one Ramadan could be in like June and then then 10 years later it could be in like December.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Yes.
Megan Goodwin:So the month is the same on the Islamic calendar, but not on the Gregorian calendar.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:That's exactly right.
Megan Goodwin:Okay. So I know that we owe our Muslim friends and brothers and sisters and kindred so much in terms of math and science. And also I'm sorry, but the still feels made up to me and I am awash in space and also time. And it feels like wibbly wobbly, timey, wimey, nonsense.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Way to make it about nerd culture.
Megan Goodwin:Thank you.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:In fairness, it's constructed right. Now, I know you comma witch the moons make sense to you. Yeah,
Megan Goodwin:yeah. I mean, yes, except when they're space stations.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Fair. I assume the sun makes some sense to you. Like, you know what that is?
Megan Goodwin:I mean, it's trying to kill me. But sure, fine. Yes. I believe in the sun. I see it almost every day.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:And you can accept that the sun is higher in the sky in the summer months and lower in the sky in the winter months, and that we might have observed that as vast communities across the world at some point.
Megan Goodwin:Yes, okay. Fine. I will allow it. Yes. Cool.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:And we might even imagine that people would have observed the moon changing its phases and such, and the sun doing its high low thing in the sky at the same time that they would have noticed night and light and made those things work together. So we can make sense of a lunar calendar, and a solar calendar and a lunisolar calendar.
Megan Goodwin:Sure, yes.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Dope. Me too. What makes less sense to me is that at some point, we imposed one way one way of thinking about time, and it still needs alterations to be right. So like we still have a leap year because like it's still not right.
Megan Goodwin:Yeah, it's not well and don't even get me started frickin time zones and daylight savings time. And it's just, okay, all right. So I feel like I suspect in in my heart of hearts, I feel that imperialism moment coming on, I feel like you're gonna tell me that calendars are actually about imperialism, which is kind of sort of what I heard the nerds asking about when they asked why you're mad about it. I think they know enough now to know that if you're mad it's probably imperialism so fine, let's let's talk about the year of someone else's Lord. My friend
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Goodwin This is my favorite you phrase this is my favorite casual Megan Goodwin phrase and you've been doing it since grad school where like you'll say when you're really mad about presentism right the idea that something"now" should be better than it was "then" wherever now is and whenever then was you would always in grad school be like in the year of someone else's Lord 1989 And it was fucking hilarious and you still do it. It's the best.
Megan Goodwin:Straight up stole that from Keisha Ali. That is a Keisha Ali-ism...
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Oh, really? Yeah, then more props. More props to one of our favorite scholars Keisha. But fine. So stealing from both of you, "the year of someone else's Lord" is one of the best ways to make the imperialist elephant in the room, visible, visible, visible, visible. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the year of someone else's Lord and nerds. This is the section in which I get mad that it's the year 2022 At the time of recording. That's it, I'm just mad that it's this year, it doesn't make sense. But bear with me, so good when when I grade, I get really finicky about when students write B.C. or A.D. And frankly, I can always tell the kids that came up through Catholic school because they all right, BC and AD. But I'm also not thrilled with the secular beat like, allegedly secular, BCE/CE, labeling, it's like a new label on an old can "before the common era" is somehow more insidious to me than "before Christ" and"Anno Domini" or "the year of our Lord" in Latin. Which we most associate with the Catholic Church, quite frankly.
Megan Goodwin:Speaking of imperialism!
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Uh huh uh huh, way to see the road ahead of us. But like when we say before the Common Era, it's like, okay, common, to whom? Who decided that? And when?
Megan Goodwin:Yeah, the BC. Yeah, the BCE/CE thing is a thing that I insist that my students do and then also I throw a small tantrum about it when we're having that conversation because, and you'll have to forgive me for quoting Louis CK, who is a gross human, but this bit lives in my head where he talks about how we measure time and how you can tell Christianity won because our sense of time itself is Jesus plus one. Yeah, Jesus plus two.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Exactly. But the thing is, we also know when it became common and not just the church, because Pope, Pope Gregory the 13th, introduced it in 1582. That fucking guy... Smack dab, in that weird moment. Weird historians like me would label early modernity, which is also smack dab at the start of European colonialism, civilizing missions and the transatlantic slave trade. We call our calendar Gregorian because the literal Pope Gregory decided on this calendar. And that decision is straight up located in a framework of expansion, imperialism, Race Theory and religious oppression.
Megan Goodwin:Yep. Yeah. I mean, this all fits, right? If you're going to be
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:like it does, like they just like yes, it tracks
Megan Goodwin:It should track. Like, you're going to be an institution that divides the entire world in like dibs. That's, dibs is it. It's like, hey, Spain and Portugal. Go nuts. I joke. Sure, sure. This this tracks to be true about Catholicism, I as an institution, but also with the way that Catholic small-c Catholic works in the world, right. "Small c-catholicism" Catholic means universal or all encompassing. It is obviously an argument about the correctness of Christianity and Catholicism specifically, although, particularly at this time, but also in most of the times Catholics, don't super acknowledge that other Christianity's are happening because they kind of think that everybody else is kidding. So. So the Gregorian calendar, which is our calendar, starts from the very beginning, in an assumption about whose years, whose time is even valid. Even if the move to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian one was just about standardizing time, allegedly, and bringing more people into agreement? Sure, with an eye toward, frankly, the science of how long an actual year is. And I think you already mentioned this, but it's not exact, which is how we got leap years. Yeah, believe it to imperialism to be like this is the truth, kind of, but don't ask me questions and just add a little bit every
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Yeah, I mean, and this wasn't adopted year. overnight by everyone, right? It's not like Pope Gregory is like, "everyone on this calendar". And everyone's like," Yes, sir". At first, it was Catholic led countries that adopt this calendar, and later Protestant ones and Eastern Orthodox ones. And I'm thinking of Europe here. And, of course, the colonies and imperialized States after that, right, because it's not long after the 1580s that we start to see the like alleged New World, Africa and Asia be divvied up by these exact nations. Yep. So my point here is that this standardized calendar gets standardized right at the historical moment where"standards" become a thing ie modernity, but also when Christian Europeans are running around the world fucking shit up. However, Megan, and this is where my grump comes in. Because calendar has never been the only calendar it has not only ever been the year of someone else's Lord, and for many folks, even those of us who use this calendar and think in time like this, it is not the only or exclusive way that we experienced dates, years, months and time.
Megan Goodwin:All right. Okay. All right. All right. I love you. And of course, you have made a list of years and ways of measuring time, and it is delightfully long. So I'm just I'm just gonna read you some of these this is great. At the time of our recording kinds of of year measuring: Assyrian
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Let's play, "what year is it?"
Megan Goodwin:All of them apparently at the same time. So if we were using an Assyrian calendar, it would be the year 6771 Jewish or Hebrew calendars 5783, Chinese calendar 4720, Buddhist 2563, Islamic 1443 Persian 1400. And I think it's 2022 here, but at this point, I'm honestly not really sure. And I'm going back to time is fake again. Okay, I'm going to assume that you know stuff about this because you're smart. And also you made the list. But why is the Buddhist measurement of time separate from Chinese measurements of time? I know there are Chinese Buddhists I assume there's a Confucianism in there somewhere. Do Hindus not care about time numbers? What how? How is there no South Asia in here, you love it best of all.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:So without going into too much detail. And without saying that, quite frankly, there are so many calendars that in the doing of the research for this bit. I was like, oh boy, there's too many calendars. Even for me who thought joke was "hey look how many calendars"
Megan Goodwin:hey, well welcome No doubt.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:So anyway, the reason I didn't include Hindus is because the Hindu eras are cyclical. So there's a semi mostly definitely Brahmanical understanding that time counts up and down from the last age, the worst age, otherwise known as the Kali Yuga. Hmm. So to be honest, I didn't include a Hindu year, because there are more important things happening about South Asian calendars. And the year is only one part of it. The more important thing about South Asian calendars is that there's so goddamn many of them, because South Asia has been both United and not. So it wasn't until there needed to be one calendar nationally that the Indian national calendar was adopted, and then reformed, all these other calendars from all over South Asia. So there's like a Tamil calendar, a Malion calendar of Bengali calendar I could go on. So this internal diversity seems like a more interesting point than trying to explain that. The Kali Yuga is the fourth era. And it's the worst era and it counts up and down. So like it counts from zero and goes forward, like 0123. But also when it gets to its end time, it just kind of starts over again. So Hindus might be in a, in a year that like starts with a 19. But their time counts back like 6000 years because of these cycles, really more like 10s of 1000s of years because of these cycles.
Megan Goodwin:I like this much better. This makes way more sense to me, for me, like I feel comforted. It feels a little bit like time and an MC Escher painting
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:does it like 100% That's how I describe it when I teach it. But I also want people to hear that this internal diversity also exists in these allegedly like places that seem the same, but they only seem the same. Because?
Megan Goodwin:imperialism, I knew this I got it, hooray. Okay. Wow. So things like Indian Standard Time existing is a way bigger, complicated thing that I realized, huh?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Yeah, like as like a brief primary source. I have a friend and colleague that I've known since the early aughts, whose family owns a jewelry store, and they always send me a calendar, you know, it's like one of these advertising calendars you get from like your realtor or something or like the bank, and it's a jewelry calendar, it has all the months but the month, okay, so it's a Gregorian calendar with a Hindu calendar overlaid, but the jewelry store is in Chennai, a city in Tamilnad, and the Tamil calendar is also on it. So on the right hand top, like the right top corner of each box, is like March 123. Then on the left hand, top, it will be in Hindi, like the Indian national calendar in Hindi with you know, like all the Holiday National Holiday Indian national holidays, but also like Hindu holidays that are recognized across and then on the bottom right hand side is the Tamil month and date and those regional specific holidays or Tamil, like almost Tamil nationals, but not really nationalist. I'm not gonna get into it, holiday. So it's like three calendars in one. And that goes next to my radical Jewish calendar, which is what it sounds like. It's a calendar made by radical Jews that you send the money and they send you a calendar, and it's great. And that has like the Gregorian calendar, and then the Hebrew months and the Hebrew dates, and it's very confusing, and my children really love these calendars. Because what day is it? What month is it? There are five options right here?
Megan Goodwin:Okay, so this is better to me. I like the system entirely better good. To all admit time is fake. Evne though, it controls our lives. And so let's just call it a bunch of things. This Yes, this is
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:your takeaway from there are five real things happening here, or four real things happening here is it's all fake. Instead of there are four real options. No,
Megan Goodwin:no options are real. Okay, so to sum up, it is 2022 for Christians because they're winning. Since that is the number of years Christians agree since Jesus their literal God was born. Except pause because not even Christians agree that anymore. I know that minus five. None of this works. Everything is made up. And yet, and yet. I still have to show up for things on time. Rude. Anyway. All right. So we're calling this now the common era because of Pope Gregory making it standard just as imperial expansion started happening. So which is to say that the quote unquote, whole world talks about February or November in 2022 on a standard calendar, and that is inherently Christian imperialist.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:So stop asking me why I'm mad about it. You know the answer.
Megan Goodwin:The answer is imperialism. And the moves
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Yes. But okay, aside from just the year of someone else's Lord, I want to underline that for you, the most important thing I know in managing your calendar is that I have to keep explaining that there are real world effects like if you are late, people might be grumpy or February's real how else we know it's your birthday month? Yeah,
Megan Goodwin:that's important. That part is real. My birthday is real even if time is fake. Yeah. So
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:let's talk about real world effects. Yeah, okay. Sure.
Megan Goodwin:So we talked about school calendars. And we talked about sports teams because of course we did. And we talked about sports teams not paying attention to school calendars. We talked about how easy it is to run your meetings and classrooms and book clubs while thinking about religious difference because just get some more calendars. And and and yet, despite the fact that we have been talking about all of these things for A) As long as I've known you and be three years on the pod now, I definitely tried to schedule you for Rosh Hashanah like a week ago. Because Because imperialism because my calendar didn't say it was Rosh Hashana, despite me knowing you talking to you true AdWords, somewhere between 15 and 75 times every single goddamn day. Ah, can we run a podcast on religious literacy? And so still, my bad
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:way to oppress me, Megan. But also listen, we all make mistakes. This is actually the violence inherent in the system. Even someone like you who thinks about religion all the time, who talks to me 75 times a day. And that's conservative as an estimate. You have to take extra steps to think about being accommodating to me, which means that there's a barrier for access for those of us who need others to do more, I inherently need you to take that extra step in order to see me. And if you haven't taken that extra step, I become invisible, or I have to advocate for myself and say, Please stop oppressing me, comma, my best friend.
Megan Goodwin:What if you didn't do violence to me on my calendar? Thanks. Hey, um, fun question. Are you ever not going to be mad about this? No. I knew that.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Absolutely. Not. I mean, look, I'm understanding I, I often and I fully admit this nerds hand on heart, I have to check the internet several times before I know which day is a holiday for my own religion, depending on the digital platform, because Because depending on the digital platform, we don't even agree on how to how to talk about Jewish holidays, some places let's Jewish holidays, on the first full day of that, but just to make time more frustrating. And because Jews like to be edgy. Our day ends and starts at sunset, not midnight, which Yep, again, to me makes a lot of sense. Yeah. But when you're quickly looking at a calendar, and it says Yom Kippur is on a Monday, for example, you have to do American eyes. Or maybe if I could push it maybe even decolonize your brain a little bit and think, Okay, it's listed for Monday, which really means the evening prior. So now I gotta go back in and block my calendar for Sunday sunset through Monday sunset, in order to make sure that no one throws a meeting on my calendar for like 5:30 The day before Yom Kippur, because they were looking at a calendar. And they noticed that the day after was Yom Kippur war, so 5:30 would be fine. And that is literally the story of how the faculty senate almost got scheduled on Yom Kippur, but because Dr. Borchert, former guest is the president of Faculty Senate. He said, What is the real Yom Kippur? So I don't schedule this meeting. But not everybody has a Jew in their pocket to be like, I know when the real Yom Kippur is.
Megan Goodwin:not pocket Jew
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Anyway, we've learned
Megan Goodwin:I'm sorry, but that's, that is going to be the name of our first app.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:And it's just me being like, Yo, motherfucker, fucking Yom Kippur. Just blasphemous. Yeah,
Megan Goodwin:yeah
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:have you called your mother? Yes, yes. Anyway, we've learned how to be in the world using time the way "we" use it. So I also have to deprogram the like, Monday Yom Kippur does not mean Monday Yom Kippur, it means the day before or the evening before. So for Jewish folks and Muslim folks and for so so many others who juggle these multiple times, years, months, or even how we conceive of the day. To me, one of the reasons I'm never not gonna be mad about it, it's just another way minoritized people have to account for difference. And again, Goodwin I want to make sure that the podcast listeners hear me say that I'm not mad at you for flubbing a holiday this one time.
Megan Goodwin:Thanks, friend.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:In fact, I'm grateful that the second I was like, Oh, shit, it's Rashanna. You said Fuck, I'll fix it. You didn't make me do that labor. You didn't make me apologize to the other person. We were scheduling for having a non normative need or a religious accommodation. You made the mistake. You fixed it. That is excellent solidarity work, even if it wasn't perfect, because guess what?
Megan Goodwin:Perfect. Yeah, or you know who's it's Maya Angelou right who said that, "when you know better thenn you do better". So just trying to know better and then do better. Yeah, yeah. Calendars are also weird for witches because we do this Wheel of the Year thing, where some of the dates are fixed in the Gregorian calendar, and then some of them are Solstices or equinoxes. But also if you're practicing with other people, then you have to account for other people's schedules, many of whom don't get the days off for those holidays. So you're kind of approximating an astronomical event, but also close to a weekend and when can people make casseroles? So anyway, time is fake. One of the questions we got up top is, is it possible to have non imperialist calendars like you're talking about decolonizing your brain by rethinking even what a day is? Oh, can we do calendars outside imperialism? I feel like probably not. Right. Because? Well, I mean, standardizing time is one of the ways that a globalized world manages functioning, like flights and business practices, right. And also, this is already inside legacies of imperialism. But I guess I'm curious if we can aim for plurality and flexibility rather than just allowing capitalism and trade to dictate how we use our time.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Here, here? And that seems like enough, right?
Megan Goodwin:I think so. That, you know, so let's take her home.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Calendars are not neutral. They can't be. They are about establishing one way of thinking about the world. And we focused on Christian imperialism, because Hi, you've met me, but ordering things, whether it's time, or anything else is never neutral. Never know, in any scenario, it is also just Christian imperialism out loud. Literally, Jesus plus one minus five for somebody's calendar, we can't escape that being Christian imperialism, I just meant like, even if you are making a list of categories in your like, like if you're ordering something in your refrigerator, like how you choose to set that refrigerator up, has a politic to it, even if you are not aware of it, or even if it doesn't affect anybody else, right? Like, where we put the milk so that the kids can reach it is a choice to prioritize our children's accessibility to the milk. That's a political choice. I want my kids to have access to the milk. I've ordered my refrigerator in that way. So ordering things is never neutral. Ordering time is not neutral under any system. But the calendar that we use, which is Jesus plus one is Christian imperialism, period. The end? Yes, correct. Yes. All of that, which means that the calendar you're using nerds isn't neutral because the whole world has been forced some places consensually in other places not to use this calendar.
Megan Goodwin:I am definitely never using a calendar consensually just so that we're clear like this is always well aware. I'm well aware. No, you know, I just need the world to know and want the world to know that when we say like whose labor is it calendar label for you is my labor. It's like begging I know you need to be here right now. Have you left?
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:And I love you so much. I'm willing to do that work.
Megan Goodwin:I know. I know. And it feels like love, even as it also feels like oppression. I'm sorry, that I'm oppressing you. I don't think you're oppressing me. You're just forcing me to live in this oppressive system so that I can like go places and do things. And I appreciate you. Thanks. Yeah,
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:your calendar is not neutral, your fridge might not be neutral having meetings after business hour is not neutral working through your lunch is not neutral. How we use our time is never neutral, how we order our time is never neutral and how our time has been ordered for us on a calendar certainly what's not and is not now neutral so nerds I'll never not be mad about it. shits imperialist.
Megan Goodwin:Perfection. Hey, don't pack up your stuff yet know. You've got homework homework. It's, it's time in fact.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:We have a non neutral list of assignments for you today. So Megan, I'm just going to read through these I threw together my top four or five articles that I had in my bibliographies that I keep on my computer about time. These are not exhaustive. These are things I liked. So Vanessa Ogle has one called the global transformation of time 1870 to 1950 with Harvard University Press in 2015. There's also a podcast on that on the new books network that I'll link everybody to in the show notes. Nice. See, Philip Nothaft has an article called duking it out in the arena of time chronology in the Christian Jewish encounter 1100 to 1600 in this journal called "medieval encounters, Jewish Christian and Muslim culture and Confluence and dialogue". It's an open access journal
Megan Goodwin:spoilers, the Christians when do they do but it's a really
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:great honor Um, I Liked this article because it was about like debates and stuff Ehsaan Kashvi has an article called "The politics of calendar state appropriations of the contested Iranian past", which as you might hear nerds in the title, this is about Iran, which uses its own calendar, even though most most Iranians are Muslim. And so there's also that calendar operating side by side, but Persians have kept their own calendar. So that's an interesting one. And then there's an oldie but a goodie, this is I think, I read this in college, Susan drecker, brown, quote, The politics of calendars, rural, simple, super publicly accessible. It's just on the internet. And it's in an anthropology journal, and it's all just from 1989. But it lays out the issues that we've talked about. Now for practical matters. I will also link folks to one or two interfaith calendars that you can load onto your phones handout in your schools. Nothing made me happier my kids first first my elder and now my younger had the same kindergarten teacher who sent me an email on like the second day of school being like, I thought of you when I handed out an interfaith calendar to every member of the staff this year because I'm a podcast listener, and I was like, ah, mazing so props to Rachel Barone for doing the hard work.
Megan Goodwin:Yes, Miss Barone, we love her.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:Shout out to Evie Wolfe, Rachel Zieff and Juliana Finch to the KI101 team whose work makes this pod accessible and therefore awesome, listenable, socialmedia-able, calendar-able and other things for which we are grateful.
Megan Goodwin:You can find Meghan that's me on Twitter pretty much anytime at @mpgPhD and Ilyse @profirm or the show at keepingit_101. Find the website at keepingit101.com Find us on Insta and now the tiktoks Drop us a rating or review in your pod catcher of choice. And with that, peace out nerds do your homework it's on the syllabus.
Unknown:20 million years ago, an ape like creature inhabited the earth. The ape stood and became man
