Monthly Archives: June 2016

Tony Tony Come Around

SaintAnthony

I was just a kid when my family moved from New York to Florida. There are lots of things we left behind that, to this day, my mom laments. The square redwood picnic table in the patio. The midcentury modern backlit frieze of a dancing couple on the living room wall. The statue of St. Anthony in the backyard.

Each June, Grandma would spend a good part of each day sitting on an upright beach chair in front of that statue, saying her novena to St. Anthony, for June is his month, and today, the 13th, is his day. In old family photos, from before my time, the statue of St. Anthony is white, but at some point my dad painted it in full color. He painstakingly chose the colors and painted the statue with small brushes, down to the tiniest details, including facial expressions on St. Anthony and the Baby Jesus in his arms and the pistils and stamens of the flowers. Dad also painted St. Anthony’s hair and the top of his head all the same color brown, even though he is always depicted with a tonsure haircut, where the crown of the head is shaved bare. So our St. Anthony had a cap on his head. Dad also painted the little enclave in which the statue resided; it was pale blue, and I’m pretty sure he blew gold dust onto the wet paint behind the statue, so that there was some lovely golden illumination behind him, too. This is the St. Anthony I remember in our yard, and I remember thinking that I liked ours better than any other St. Anthony statue I had seen, and I had seen a lot of them, for Tony is a big deal amongst my people. He makes his appearance in the yards of many Italian American families, along with the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph. Perhaps it goes back to our Roman roots: we like our statues.

And so when we moved away, that statue of St. Anthony stayed behind. Chances are good he’s still there in the backyard on Victor Street; my dad and grandfather built that home, and my folks sold it to the son of another Italian friend who helped build it (a paisano, as we say). Now the house belongs to that man’s son and his family. That’s a long line of Italians, and I like to think that Grandma’s statue of St. Anthony has been watching over all of us the whole time.

For years we had no statue of St. Anthony at our new home in Florida. But one Christmas we had a brilliant idea: We would get Grandma a St. Anthony statue for her Christmas present. And so that year her present could not go under the tree (it was too heavy) and when it came time for her to open that present, we led her outside with her eyes closed and told her to open them at just the right time. As I recall, it was one of the best gifts we had given her (better than all those slippers she usually got). She was a little Italian woman with dark olive skin who didn’t care for much besides her family, what was for dinner, her stories (Another World was her favorite), and her saints, St. Joseph and St. Anthony especially. And for the rest of her life, she was able to sit in that upright lawn chair and say her novena to St. Anthony each June. Novena as in “nine,” nine days of prayers to St. Anthony, with her prayer books and rosary. She muttered the prayers under her breath, eyes fixed lovingly on St. Anthony in his little house. Grandpa would sit with her sometimes, and earlier on, again before my time, so would her best friend, Cummara Filomena. Filomena couldn’t read, so Grandma would read the novena aloud, and Filomena provided the “pray for us” response at the appropriate time.

As for St. Anthony himself, he was born in Lisbon in the late 12th century, but he spent most of his life in Italy. He was an early follower of St. Francis, and as a Franciscan, he wore the iconic brown cowled habit with that tonsured haircut that left the crown of his head bare, a clear portal, perhaps, from head to heaven. He is a populist saint, and is called upon for many reasons, but he is best known as the saint who helps you find lost articles. And so when we misplace our glasses or our keys, we say Tony Tony come around, something’s lost and must be found, an old children’s rhyme. And more often than not, it works. Perhaps because he is here, a presence we Italians like to talk to, like an old paisano.

 

Image: Detail of the St. Anthony statue we gave to Grandma for Christmas years ago. Dad eventually painted this one, too, though perhaps with not quite the attention to detail as the one that was left behind on Victor Street. You’ll notice that Tony is still wearing a cap on his head. Some things never change.

 

Ramadan Mubarak

Castel of Lucera

My grandmother used to talk sometimes about a distant ancestor in our family line who was not Italian but Moroccan, and I loved that something so exotic could be part of the fabric from which we both were woven. It never crossed my mind back then to ask her more about this person, and now of course it’s too late to ask her. I’m older now and I’ve done a good bit of genealogical research on my family, tracing things back as far as the 1700s on my grandmother’s line, and the ancestor from Morocco has yet to turn up. But Italian records are notoriously muddy once you get further back in time than that. It’s a mystery I’ll most likely never solve, but chances are good that Grandma’s story is true, for the Southern Italian city from which our ancestors hail was once, in the 13th century, home to about 60,000 people of North African descent, all Muslims who had been expelled from Sicily by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. There have always been refugees, it would seem.

And so they left Sicily and traveled north and settled in Lucera, my maternal grandparents’ hometown, which became known then as Lucaera Saracenorum, or Saracen Lucera. They were Arabs and Berbers from Arabia, Tunisia, and Morocco. Sadly, things eventually did not end well for them, even in Saracen Lucera. We have always been terrible to each other, it would seem (consider much of the current political rhetoric today in our own country). Be that as it may, even if I never find that Moroccan ancestor in my lineage, the cultural influence of these people on the culture of my family and on families throughout Southern Italy is undeniable, especially in local dialects and in the foods we prepare, even after all these centuries.

If the ancestor from Morocco lived in Lucaera Saracenorum, then he would have celebrated Ramadan, which begins tonight, most likely, with the first sighting of the new crescent moon. The start of this month of fasting is never concrete, for it is based on that sighting and this can vary slightly from place to place. Ramadan commemorates the month when Mohammed received the first revelations of the Qu’ran, the holy book of Islam. The observance of Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, with fasting during the daylight hours throughout this month, as well as an increase in prayer and charity. And while Ramadan is a month of fasting, the meals that break the fast each night with the setting sun are known to be quite wonderful and very celebratory––meals that, in some places, can last through the night. Meals flavored, certainly, with some of the same flavors––mint, almond, vinegar, rose water––that were brought by Arabs and Berbers to the tables of Southern Italy in centuries past. A thread alone hasn’t much strength, but a woven fabric is a different story.

Image: One of Lucera’s most famous landmarks, the Castello di Lucera. The building dates to the time of Saracen Lucera, built in 1233. My grandparents and all their ancestors––Italian and Moroccan––lived near this castle. Photograph 2006 Creative Commons.

 

Your June Book of Days

MidsummerNight

New month, new Book of Days calendar… and here is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for June. It’s a printable PDF on standard US Letter size paper. It’s June, the month of Old Midsummer, and for this month our cover star is Queen Titania from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as illustrated by Arthur Rackham in 1908.

I have loved this Shakespeare play since I was forced to read it in college. Once I read it, I realized it wasn’t half bad and being made to read it by Dr. Pearce was maybe not so bad, either. Not long after that, I saw a production of it, outdoors at Carlin Park near the beach in Jupiter, Florida, on a nighttime stage in the balmy warmth that persists well into the night of a Florida summer. The performance was dripping with magic, assisted completely by the fact that I was seated on a blanket on the sandy ground with the stars above me; I could look ahead and see the actors or I could look up and see the stars, much like the lovers who fall asleep in the wood in the play. Dr. Pearce had this wonderful way of describing plays as worlds, and then when there were plays within plays, like there is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, well then it was our world looking into a world looking into a world. It’s the sort of thing that begins to boggle my mind, like the Universe or the layers of an onion, and anything that makes us step back and see the Wonder-ful (another Dr. Pearceism) is a very good thing.

I encourage you to read the play this month as Old Midsummer once again approaches, or to find a production of it, or even to watch one of the many film versions. My favorite of those is the 1999 adaption by Michael Hoffman, starring Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania and Rupert Everett as Oberon. Old Midsummer is the night of St. John’s Eve, the 23rd of June, just a few days on the other side of the solstice; a night with a very long history of bonfires, feasting, storytelling, divination, magic, and revelry. It is a night to go out and experience the wonders of this world. As is most of June. Get out and enjoy it.