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For the majority of human civilization, calendars were more than glossy packages full of 365 sexy models, airplanes, kitty cats or pug dogs a year. Agricultural civilizations needed to know the separation of the seasons as a matter of life or death, and numerous cultures worldwide independently developed methods of charting the time of year. The most famed surviving solar calendar is Stonehenge in the North of England, where it’s often cold, moist and foggy. 

It’s also cold, moist and foggy on the Berkeley Marina, where plans are under way to construct a solar calendar at Cesar E. Chavez Park. Santiago Casal, a sociologist who has worked in both the academic and corporate worlds, says the idea for the Cesar Chavez Memorial Solar Calendar came to him almost two decades ago. 

“I was in Guatemala, at a place called Uaxactún, where you could align the solstices and equinoxes,” recalls Casal. “I was taken by how intricate the sun/moon/earth system was, and how I didn’t understand it at all. I’ve long been an admirer of Cesar Chavez, and this seemed perfect – something rooted in agriculture. Plus I always used to walk here (at the marina), particularly at sunrise, so it all came together.” 

In the last couple of years, Casal contacted scientists and educators about the educational benefits a working solar calendar would offer to local schoolchildren, and additionally talked to architects and designers. At sunset of the summer solstice on Tuesday, scientists, astronomers, architects and 30-odd other onlookers braved fog, cold and Wrigley Field-like winds for a solstice workshop on the calendar’s possible future site. 

The educational benefits of the workshop were very nearly dashed by persistent fog, but, fortunately for all, the fog burned off right as the sun set on the longest day of the year, and returned immediately thereafter. 

“There are two components (of the calendar’s construction) – physical construction and curriculum development,” says Alan Gould, planetarium director at the Lawrence Hall of Science. “The science of the seasons has cultural connections, especially considering Cesar Chavez and Hispanic culture, but really all cultures.” 

LHS instructor David Glaser led the group – which included a good number of children – through a number of activities explaining the astronomical explanations behind solstices and equinoxes. As the day ended, the crowd watched the sun set between a wooden fork Casal set up where a small gap in the future calendar’s walls would be. Similar gaps would mark the sun’s setting point for all other solstices and equinoxes. 

“The (wall) height on the sunrise side would be seven feet high to frame up against the East Bay hills,” says landscape architect Lisa Howard, who assisted John Northmore Roberts in his design of the baseball infield-sized calendar. 

“On the other side it would be lower. It would still give you the sense of being enclosed, but you would be able to look over the walls and see the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Tam.” 

The Berkeley City Council has reserved the site for the calendar, but Casal estimates that raising the roughly $500,000 needed for the project may take several years. Considering the marina’s former usage as a waste dump, careful construction practices may raise that figure. 

Labor unions, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, local governments and other public and private foundations are just a few of the places the calendar’s supporters will search for funding. 

“People will be able to come by any time of the day and experience the sun/moon/earth system,” says Casal. 

“And it will be a naked-eye observatory, so you will be in the same shoes as your ancestors.”