Introducing 1954.

In 1993, for the end of my senior year in high school and the beginning of my freshman year in college, I kept an open journal in a blank datebook from 1954. I found it in a used bookstore in Stratford, Ontario, in 1991, and realized that the days of the week would correctly match up with the dates in 1993 — so I held onto it for more than a year before writing in it. It became one of my most treasured objects, not only as a peek into my experiences during that awful and wonderful transition period from high school to college, but also for its glimpses into the lives and thoughts of so many friends, acquaintances and strangers. Whenever I’ve come across it in the past 17 years, it’s been impossible to resist looking up what happened on that day, what I or somebody else was writing about or experiencing.

That magical alignment of dates and days of the week occurs again this year, so I’ve begun a yearlong project of posting scans of the book on the web and writing about each day. Reflections, explanations, the rest of the story… you’ll find them in 1954.