Author Archives: John Cutrone

Aug 06 2021
Arrival of the Shakers in America, Book of Days Calendar, Summer

Chosen Land, or Your Convivio Book of Days for August

A few days late letting you know about your Convivio Book of Days calendar for August, but, nonetheless, here it is, a printable PDF as usual, and a fine companion to this blog. Our cover star for the month is an 1867 painting by Winslow Homer, called Haymakers. As I mentioned in a Convivio Dispatch from Lake Worth just the other night, Homer’s painting reminds me of being a printing intern at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine back in the late 90s, for there were many days when I was not in the Dairy Cellar printing but rather in the garden weeding, or out in the fields, helping to bring in the hay. We’d load the bales onto the hay wagon, ride the wagon to the big red barn, and there, I would get to do my favorite thing: look up at the ceiling and at all those beautiful wooden boards, nailed in place in 1830, nearly half a century before Winslow Homer painted his haymaking scene. Looking up from inside, that barn looked to me for all the world like a vast cathedral, one filled with the sacred smell of animals and newly cured hay, sunlight streaming in on slanted rays through small clear windows.

I’d go home later each haymaking day with a stuffy nose and the worst sinus headache. A little too much hay. But I’d do it again if I could.

And here we are, at the Sixth of August: one of the most important days of the year in the Shaker calendar. I’ve heard it called Landing Day, but Brother Arnold and Sister June and Brother Andrew there at the Community, they always call it the Glorious Sixth, this annual summer occasion that marks the day in 1774 when the founder of the Shaker movement, Mother Ann Lee, arrived in New York Harbor after setting sail from England. Mother Ann was following a vision from on high that told her to bring her small band of followers from Manchester to the New World, and so she took that leap of faith. The passage was not smooth, and there is a tale of a great storm that roared up and caused a plank to tear loose from the ship, and the ship began taking on water, but Mother Ann had another vision that night, one of an angel telling her to be not afraid, all would be well, and then another great wave crashed upon the ship and forced the loosened plank back into place. The ship stopped taking on water, the storm quelled, what water was taken on was pumped out, and Mother Ann and her followers arrived in safety and began their quiet work. Work that continues to this day at Sabbathday Lake in Maine, the place they call Chosen Land.

My friends there will be first and foremost in my mind today, and especially at sunset, when they will celebrate with song and prayer this special day. Blessings on them, and on us all.

SUMMER HIGH FIVE SALE
Here in our neck of the woods, my mom, Millie, has been embroidering each and every day and is anxious to get back to it when she’s not. She’s having a ball making Millie’s Tea Towels, and they’ve turned out to be a big hit! Each one is embroidered by hand by my Mom, and since we introduced them last month, she’s made a few new collections that you’ll find now at our website: in addition to the original Baking Day, Kitchen Wisdom, and Java Jive collections, there are new collections of flour sack tea towels for beachgoers, for campers, for wine lovers, and a new seven towel set––one for each day of the week––all about PIE (one of our favorite things).

All summer long, use discount code HIGH5 at checkout for $5 off your purchase of $35 on everything in the shop. Take it to $50 and earn free domestic shipping, too. Click here to shop! You’ll find Millie’s Tea Towels under our new Linens & Textiles category.

Mom gets the full amount of each sale of her embroidered tea towels; it makes me very happy to see her happy in this new venture and that’s what matters to me (plus it pretty much takes her a whole day to embroider each towel!). That’s my mom in the photo you’ll see when you start shopping, in a fishing boat, circa 1950. Seeing that picture is reason enough to click.

 

Image: “Haymakers” by Winslow Homer, which also happens to be the cover star for this month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar. Oil on canvas, 1867 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jul 31 2021
2 Comments
Lammas, Lughnasadh, Summer

My Native Nut Brown Ale

July is ending, August beginning. And with the setting sun this last night of July, the wheel of the year shifts another cog and we take a subtle, decisive step, by traditional reckoning of time, anyway, toward autumn. Subtle, because the shift is most certainly a gradual one. Summer’s heat will persist for many more weeks, especially here in Lake Worth. But the change is undeniable: days have been steadily growing shorter since the June solstice, and here, at this late summer juncture, as July shifts into August, we find ourselves nearing the halfway point between that solstice of Midsummer and the upcoming autumnal equinox in September.

This cross-quarter day on the First of August is known as Lammas (or Lughnasadh (LOO-na-sa) in the Celtic tradition). It is perhaps the least celebrated of the old cross-quarter celebrations, and that is too bad. It is the first of the harvest festivals, and on this day it is traditional to enjoy the things of that harvest: to bake bread and to partake of the more spirited things that emerge from the grain that gives us bread: a pint of ale, a dram or two of whisky. The name John Barleycorn is one you may hear these Lammastide days. It comes from many an old song praising the personification of ale and whisky. Some are sad and some are jolly, but all understand that John Barleycorn must be cut down in order to be born again in the form of bread and alcohol. (Well, to be honest, the folks singing these songs weren’t much concerned about the bread. They are old drinking songs, after all.) John Barleycorn is that sacrificial first harvest.

Our friend William Shakespeare understood this well, perhaps because Lammas was a widely celebrated holiday in his time, and in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet, we learn, was born at Lammastide, on the 31st of July. “On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen,” says her nursemaid in the first act of the play. The action all takes place in these last few days of July, and poor Juliet never makes it to that birthday; she, too, is like a sacrificial first harvest.

Lammastide marks for us the subtle transition of summer to autumn, and this is the value of Lammas. A holiday certainly of our agrarian past, but so useful for us today. A gentle coaxing, an acknowledgment of our days growing shorter and darker, and a hint of bounties to come. If you can bake a loaf of bread in the next day or two, wonderful: do so, and take delight in that. A crusty loaf from your local baker would do just as well. And if you take a drink, then please raise your glasses to each other and to me, if you will, and to old John Barleycorn.

Give me my native nut brown ale,
all other drinks I scorn,
For English cheer is English beer,
our own John Barleycorn!

Summer is waning, autumn approaching, and we begin to turn our thoughts toward gathering in. John Barleycorn brings a bit of melancholy but a bit of warmth as well––warmth in his crusty bread, warmth in his spirits, warmth in the ones we gather with to celebrate. Happy Lammastide. I’ll write again once the Convivio Book of Days calendar for August is ready for you; it may be Sunday, but it most likely will be Monday or Tuesday.

SUMMER SALE
Our Summer High Five Sale continues through this Lammastide and through late summer! Use the discount code HIGH5 at checkout for $5 off your order of $35 or more. Take it to $50 and you’ll earn free domestic shipping, too. That’s on everything in the shop. And what’s new in the shop? Well, Millie’s Tea Towels are a hit! Mom has been embroidering up a storm and she’s made lots of great new hand embroidered tea towel collections for us: tea towels for beach homes, tea towels for campers, tea towels for wine lovers, and even a set of seven towels, one for each day of the week, all about PIE! Visit the new Linens & Textiles page of our catalog to see all her handiwork. Click here to shop!

 

Photo: Mark Fuller (center) and George Wickens (right) enjoy a pint at the Tiger Inn, Sussex, with a Canadian soldier on leave in the village. 1943 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. Were there some drinking songs sung that night, perhaps to John Barleycorn? I don’t know. But I hope so.

 

Jul 15 2021
4 Comments
St. Swithin's Day, Summer

Summer Rains, Weeping Saints

St. Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain, for forty days it will remain. So the story goes for today, the Fifteenth of July. It is St. Swithin’s Day, a very British traditional weather marker concerning rain, based on the old story of St. Swithin, the weeping saint. St. Swithin was a 9th century Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester. The source of the weeping comes from after his earthly life, for it was the good bishop’s wish to be buried in the churchyard and not in the chancel of the church, as was the custom for bishops. His wishes were followed when he died, but after his canonization, the monks decided the open churchyard was a rather disgraceful place for a saint to be buried, and so on the 15th of July in 971, they planned to move the relics of St. Swithin indoors to the choir, in a solemn procession. A great downpour began during the procession, though, and continued for forty days. The monks took this is a sign from St. Swithin himself, and so they let him be there in the churchyard, although they did eventually erect a chapel over his grave.

Of course, it could very well be sunny today. The weather lore for the day, in its entirety, is actually this: St. Swithin’s Day if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain; St. Swithin’s Day if thou be fair, For forty days ’twill rain nae mair. As in: “for forty days, it will rain no more.” Here in Lake Worth, where we are knee-deep in the summer rainy season, rain is a safe bet today and certainly for the next forty days and more. And while mango season has ended and we grow no apples here, there is, as well, another old belief that when it rains on St. Swithin’s Day, the saint is blessing the apple crop. Here are a few lines from Poor Robin’s Almanack, July 1697:

In this month is St Swithin’s Day;
On which, if that it rain, they say
Full forty days after it will,
Or more or less, some rain distill.
This Swithin was a Saint, I trow,
And Winchester’s Bishop also.
Who in his time did many a feat,
As Popish legends do repeat:
A woman having broke her eggs
By stumbling at another’s legs,
For which she made a wofull cry,
St Swithin chanc’d for to come by,
Who made them all as sound, or more
Than ever that they were before.
But whether this were so or no
‘Tis more than you or I do know:
Better it is to rise betime,
And to make hay while sun doth shine,
Than to believe in tales and lies
Which idle monks and friars devise.

Poor Robin was not a fan of the monks and friars (or the Catholics), to be sure, and obviously valued hard work more than a good story. One last mention of the legend: John Gay, in his poem “Trivia,” gives a few lines to our weeping saint:

How, if on Swithin’s Feast the welkin hours,
And every penthouse streams with hasty showers,
Twice twenty days shall clouds their fleeces drain,
And wash the pavements with incessant rain.

He certainly had a way with words, John Gay did. He was known to have labored incessantly, much like St. Swithin’s rain, over his poems, searching for just the right words, searching for beauty. Which is why he is a great poet, and I am a reporter, giving you the news of the day, news that involves a saint who weeps. But that is my pleasure and my joy.

Back in 2014, when I first wrote about St. Swithin’s Day in this Book of Days, reader Laurie Jo Wright left a beautiful comment on the post, which makes me think that she, too, labors over words searching for beauty. Laurie Jo was welcoming the rain, but was pleading with the good saint to let her get the hay in first: Just let me get the hay in first – we had a couple of very light sprinklings this morning so I am not quite sure what to make of that in terms of the 40 day forecast, but fingers crossed – lets hope for mild clear skies. At least until Friday when the baling is finished and hay off the fields. But these are the best weeks’ sleep of the entire year: that sweet drying smell of freshly mown hay somnolent – if Angels wings had a scent this would be it!

She is right about the smell of freshly mown hay, and if I could find a way to use the word somnolent more than I do, I would. Now, lest you think this all is hogwash, there actually is some truth, it is said, to the weather lore for St. Swithin’s Day, for the jet stream over Britain tends to follow a regular pattern at this time of year, dictating the weather patterns for the next five to six weeks. Should the jet stream lie north of Britain, the weather will typically be clear and mild. Should the jet stream lie across or south of Britain, stormy weather may be expected as rain moves in from the Atlantic. And so science seems to confirm the weather lore. Or else St. Swithin really does love a rainy day.

SUMMER SALE
A rainy day is a perfect day to shop our Summer High Five Sale, in which you can use the discount code HIGH5 at checkout for $5 off your order of $35 or more. Take it to $50 and you’ll earn free domestic shipping, too.

That’s my mom in the Summer Sale photo (click the photo to make it larger). It’s her name day tomorrow: the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel; her name is Carmela, but most often she goes by Millie, which I think is a great name. Thoroughly modern and all that. And at 94, Mom has begun a new cottage industry at home this past spring: each day she hand embroiders a flour sack towel. Millie’s Tea Towels (that seems to be the company name) are now on our website, available for purchase. They’re adorable. I’m so proud of Mom’s efforts. They are part of a brand new part of our online catalog we’re calling “Linens & Textiles.” Millie’s hand embroidered tea towels focus on three different themes: there are a whole bunch that deal with coffee (“Java Jive”) and more that deal with baked goods (“Baking Day”), and then another whole bunch that offer bits of wisdom of a culinary nature (“Kitchen Wisdom”). And she’s been working on more. Check back after this weekend and you’ll find towels with beach and tropical themes, another collection that’s perfect for your summer lake home and camping trips, and a whole lot more related to wine (you spoke, she listened).

I think you’ll be as impressed as I am with Mom’s handiwork. Her tea towels make wonderful gifts for yourself or someone else and Millie’s getting every penny we sell them for. I figure I owe her at least that for all the effort she put into raising me. You’ll find other lovely hand embroidered textiles there, too, from the extended family in Chiapas who make the protective face masks we’ve been selling since last summer. Prices on those masks, by the way, are reduced to $10. We got our last shipment of masks from them a few weeks ago, and now, I’m happy to report, they are focusing again on their traditional wares. (Hurrah for science and vaccinations!)

Everything in the catalog is part of the Summer Sale, so go, have some fun there: Click here to shop.

Image: “Spring Rain” by John Sloan. Oil on canvas, 1912 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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