Diniz Borges has asked me to provide a few words about my 2026 calendar, “O último calendário eletrónico ~ Uma síntese” (“The final online calendar ~ Summing up”), because each month this year the Filamentos blog plans to post that month’s page, along with my brief explanation of its contents. We begin with the cover.

But first, a brief history: We used to send yearly holiday form letters to family and friends, recounting our activities of the past year. But after my first trip to the Azores in 2002 to start my search for my hidden roots there — and in order to have an immersion experience in Portuguese, which I’d begun studying — the prospect of distilling my life-changing experience was more than a page or two of typescript could possibly contain.

Then one day that fall, while waiting for a photocopying order at our local office supply store, I noticed a counter display promoting custom calendar printing — and an idea was born. I scanned a few hundred trip pictures onto my hard drive, then began designing twelve pages of photo collages to depict my experiences in the Azores (a picture being allegedly worth 1,000 words). For the cover, I selected the most representative image from each month.

Two years later I took my next trip to the Azores, armed with additional family background and four more semesters of Portuguese studies — and that fall compiled a calendar,memorializing that trip. Ditto for my 2006 and 2008 trips.

Starting in 2009, I was traveling, primarily to the Azores or elsewhere for conferences every year, so I began producing a calendar yearly. It helped that also starting in 2009 my husband accompanied me, and being the superior photographer supplied better images for the calendars. This continued until we experienced difficulties with the business that printed our calendars, and with mailing them, so we decided the hassle was no longer worthwhile. Our final printed calendar was for 2018.

For 2019 I created a virtual calendar. I loaded it and the previous pages online in reverse order, inviting people to print them out, or to use a page a month as a screensaver, if they so desired.

Then with the onset of the pandemic we became homebodies, so we had to dip into our archives in order to produce the remaining travel-themed calendars. We also did two editions of Portuguese-inspired recipes. And this fall we decided the time had come to make one last calendar. Those pages will be posted here each month, along with a brief narration explaining the pictures in them. If you don’t want to wait, you can always just click here:

http://www.inolongerlikechocolates.com/calendars_contents.htm