Author Archives: John Cutrone

Jun 16 2021
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Bloomsday

yes I said yes I will Yes

Join me today if you can: Wednesday June 16 at 3 PM Eastern on Zoom Webinar: It’s a Book Arts 101 broadcast we’re calling Bloomsday for it is Bloomsday today, and I am in the midst this summer of reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, and it has me bewildered and amazed, and since my show is about books and Ulysses is thought of as perhaps the greatest of them in the English language, I figured yes I said yes I will Yes. Folks follow the June 16, 1904 journey of Leopold Bloom for Bloomsday, and my approach is this: I’ll take you on a Bloomsday-inspired journey through artists’ books from the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, that strange place where I work.

I’ve put a solid week into growing a suitable Edwardian mustache for the occasion, though, to be honest, I’m not sure it’s going to make it to the broadcast. A week, it turns out, is not long enough to make substantial progress but it is just long enough that I stop short as I catch glimpses of myself in the mirror and think What the… ? As with most things in my life: we shall see what we shall see. To watch this Book Arts 101 broadcast live on Zoom, you’ll need to register. It’s free, it’s simple. Do so by clicking here. If you can’t make it at 3:00, you can catch the video once the broadcast is done at our Facebook page.

Bloomsday is part of what I love about June, a month of holidays captured in books and stories. It’s the month of midsummer and William Shakespeare gave us A Midsummer Night’s Dream for St. John’s Eve on the 23rd. Ralph Ellison, he gave us his unfinished novel, Juneteenth, for that sacred day on the 19th. And James Joyce, he gave us this day when we are transported to Dublin, 1904, and all week already the lovely Kate Bush has been singing her Sensual World song in my head. It is a rich time of year for bibliophiles and English majors and all of us who find our breath taken away by the things of this world.

So here: whilst I gather my books and check once more on my mustache, read, if you will, last year’s Convivio Book of Days chapter for Bloomsday. It will give you a bit of history and some suggestions on how to make the day perfectly grand. And if you’re watching at 3, well, you know I’m glad you’ve come to visit. There’s no question about it.

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June 16th and now it is Bloomsday, a holiday born of a book. Some consider it the greatest book written in the English language: Ulysses, by James Joyce. The book takes place all on the 16th of June, 1904, in Dublin, following the lives of Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom. Notoriously difficult to read, full of Joyce’s invented Stream of Consciousness writing technique, Ulysses is an affirmation, a yes, of the everyday. And here I am, a guy who encourages you to say yes to the ceremony of each day. An English major, to boot. Of course I love Bloomsday.

And so Joyce enthusiasts the world over today will dress in Edwardian garb and quote Joyce and if they are in Dublin, they will follow the June 16, 1904 route of Leopold Bloom. Our celebration here is a simple one, and I encourage this. My suggestions: Read some Joyce; it doesn’t have to be Ulysses. You might try instead something shorter, like The Dead, the story that closes Joyce’s short story collection titled Dubliners. Ulysses may get the accolades for best book written in the English language, but The Dead may just be its best short story. It takes place at midwinter, not midsummer, but still you get that beautiful James Joyce way of telling a tale. And if you’d rather not read, there is an excellent film adaptation of that same story. It’s directed by John Huston (1987). Music for the day: something Irish and Edwardian would be appropriate, but each year at this time of June the soundtrack inside my head inevitably turns to Kate Bush and a song she recorded in 1989, called “The Sensual World.” It’s based on the closing words of Ulysses, a soliloquy by Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife.

… and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Love this day. Like all others. Yes.


The Sensual World, 1989

Jun 04 2021
Book of Days Calendar, Midsummer

Midsummer, or Your June Book of Days

June begins quietly each year. My theory about this? Well, historically speaking, June is the height of planting season in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere, and so there just never was much time for celebrating. The first somewhat major thing to come up on the calendar each June is the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua toward the middle of the month. I always figure, then, there is no rush to load the month’s calendar, and but here it comes now, a few days late… but that is by design. And so, here you go: your Convivio Book of Days calendar for June. It is, as usual, a PDF document, ready to print on standard letter size paper, and a fine companion to this blog.

Our cover star this month is a painting from 1900 called “Midsommar.” Eva Bonnier (1857–1909) is the artist, depicting a scene perhaps common to June in Sweden a century ago, and, I’d like to think, still today. The old midsummer celebrations that come around the summer solstice and St. John’s Eve are important to a land of midnight suns. And why wouldn’t they be? Come solstice time the sun will rise over Stockholm at about 3:40 AM and not set again until two hours before midnight. That’s a good 19 hours of daylight. Of course, at midwinter the opposite is true. Stockholm and Oslo and Helsinki and Lapland and all the areas around the Arctic Circle are places of extreme when it comes to darkness and light. It’s only natural that these auspicious solar demarkations are met with celebration. It is something that has always fascinated me, here at the 25th parallel, where things are on a much more even keel throughout the year.

It is the month of Bloomsday and of midsummer night’s dreams, and the month we honor our fathers here in the States. It is when the first mown hay is brought in, and when the water is finally warm enough for swimming. June is our welcome to the gentle time of year.

SUMMER SALE
At the catalog, all summer long, we’ll take $5 off your purchase of $35 when you enter discount code HIGH5 at checkout: it’s our Summer High Five Sale. Get your total to $50 and you’ll earn free domestic shipping, too, for a total savings of $13.50. We’ve also received our last shipment of protective face masks from Chiapas and reduced the price, too: Originally $16.50, now $10. Three cheers for science! Hurrah for vaccinations! Vaccinated though we are, we are still wearing our masks in public settings. It’s been awfully nice not catching even a simple head cold this past year. We’ve been adding other new things, too, mostly new embroidered textiles from that same family in Chiapas, as they transition from mask-making to their more traditional woven and embroidered wares. There are new loom-woven market bags with their signature Otomi hand embroidery, and embroidered table runners, and a delightful new pom pom garland that makes us so happy to behold. Everything they make is really beautiful. Click here to shop!

Convivio Book of Days cover star image: “Midsommar” by Eva Bonnier. Oil on canvas, 1900 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. Summer High Five Sale image: my mom, Millie, fishing on a lake.

 

May 30 2021
14 Comments
Birthdays & Anniversaries, Memorial Day, Transitions

Memorial Day Weekend, 1949

Memorial Day has always come prepackaged with bonus material for my family, for it was the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, 1949, that my mom and dad got married––two good looking kids from Brooklyn, tying the knot in the company of their family and friends at St. Blaise, the Italian neighborhood church, with a football reception afterward at Livingston Manor in Downtown Brooklyn: piles and piles of sandwiches, “football” referring to the idea that folks would toss the waxed paper-wrapped sandwiches across the room. “Hey,” someone would shout, “send me a capocolla!” and indeed, someone would toss a capocolla sandwich his or her way. How great is that? Sandwiches flying (and maybe being intercepted), mountains of homemade cream puffs, and trays and trays of Italian cookies, mounded in pyramids, wrapped in cellophane. There was beer and soda and Grandpa’s homemade anisette. “We didn’t want a fancy reception,” Mom said, “but we wanted good music.” And so the Roy Rogers Orchestra played all evening and people danced and danced and certainly at least one or two of those dances were traditional Italian tarantella dances, and they played the Grand March, too, as everyone got up off their seats and marched around the hall. Mom and Dad’s wedding song was an old tango called Jealousy. I asked if they learned to dance the tango before the wedding; they did not. They just heard the song in a movie, and despite the name, knew it was theirs. There was a big fight between them the night before the wedding––it was something about mustard––but all was smoothed out by morning and the rest, as they say, is history. No wedding planners, no destinations, not even a cake; just mountains of waxed paper-wrapped sandwiches and homemade cream puffs and Italian cookies. Now that’s a wedding.

This year their anniversary fell on Saturday, the day Seth and I often head over to help out with chores. And though my dad is gone these four years now, still, when my phone conversation on Friday with my mom and my sister turned to What should we eat tomorrow? a decision came quickly: Let’s have sandwiches, and let’s have Italian cookies, and my sister said, “I’ll make the cream puffs.” It was a just right day. My nephew and his family happened to drop in just as we were finishing our sandwiches. We put two big pots of espresso on. We laughed, Mom told stories about the wedding, we listened to the Harry James version of their song, Jealousy, and we pictured Mom and Dad dancing to the song at the Livingston Manor while imagining Morticia and Gomez Addams dancing to it, as well, Morticia clutching a red rose in her teeth, because it starts with that tango sound before moving into fox trot territory. We had such a nice time. And when I kissed Mom goodnight and gave her a hug, she said, “Thank you for my anniversary party.” 72 years ago and still these things warm our hearts.

Memorial Day is special to my family, but it is special to many. As a nation, it is the day we remember our fallen heroes, those who gave their lives in service to their country. But it is one more day where we just remember, plain and simple, all who have come and gone. Memorial Day (or some version of it) is celebrated not just here in the United States, but in other countries, as well, and usually at this particular time of year. It is a tradition that harkens back to Ancient Rome. The day here in the States was known earlier on as Decoration Day, and the Memorial/Decoration Day traditions in this country go back to the Civil War era. The original date, May 30, was chosen for it was believed that flowers for decorating graves would be in bloom in every state of the Union on that date. It’s since been moved to the last Monday of May. This year it falls on the 31st, the very last day of the month. It is our unofficial start of summer here in the US, but a somber one if we honor the day in its proper tradition. And so we decorate, and we remember. And we tell stories. And for some of us, we eat sandwiches and cream puffs. Flowers and stories and all these things for remembrance, beckoning summer and the gentle time of year.

Image: Johnny & Millie. It’s their engagement photograph, 1948… a year before their Memorial Day Weekend wedding.

 

 

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