Author Archives: John Cutrone

Nov 09 2020
Advent, Book of Days Calendar, Christmas

Blackbirds, or Your November Book of Days

Most every evening these days, Seth and I watch the blackbirds fly from west to east, from the mainland to the mangrove islands of the Lake Worth Lagoon. They do this in vast flocks, emerging from the western sky as far as the eye can see. Thousands and thousands of birds, moving both individually and as one great pull of life, not so unlike the massive school of fish that my neighbor Earl saw when he tells the story of the day he saw the Santa Margarita, the legendary Spanish galleon that sunk off our shores in the 1500s, from his boat above the surface of the Atlantic. As above, so below. While Earl’s fish were silent, the blackbirds flap and squawk. Yet both the fish and the birds move together in a great ballet as they ascend and descend in wondrous swoops. It’s an amazing thing to see.

And so the blackbirds are our guides these mysterious autumnal days, and they are our cover stars for the (finally!) published Convivio Book of Days calendar for November.

I won’t even bother to apologize for being so belated. When it’s on time, I like to think of the calendar as a companion to this blog. Well, ok… even when it’s late. It is a PDF document, printable on your home printer, on standard letter size paper. The photo for the month does not capture a vast blackbird flock, but rather a few stragglers that lighted above us on an Australian Pine, close to their nightly destination. The calendar comes to you in time for Martinmas this week, our point of closure to this annual time of remembering our beloved dead, and it comes to you in time for Thanksgiving later this month, and for Stir-Up Sunday, which leads us to the First Sunday of Advent at the end of November. Of course, that means that Christmas is not all that far away.

We love the anticipation of Advent as much as we do the joyous days that follow. And since typically at this time of year you’d find Convivio Bookworks locally at wonderful events like the Sankta Lucia Festival in Boca Raton that’s put on by the Swedish Women’s Educational Association, and the Christkindlmarkt at the American German Club in Lantana––events that are canceled this year––we’ve decided to shift our Autumn Stock-Up Sale to a Christmas Stock-Up Sale and instead, in a virtual way, bring these street fairs to you. Here’s the deal (and if you click the picture, you’ll make the visual larger):

So yes: at our catalog, take $10 off your purchase of $75 or more across our catalog, plus we’ll ship your domestic order for free. That’s a savings that totals $18.50, which is not too shabby. And there are so many fine things to choose from: traditional sparkly Advent calendars from Germany and handmade daily Advent candles from England to help mark daily the transition to Christmas; winter incense and traditional wooden artisan goods for Christmas from Germany and Sweden and Italy, including ornaments and incense burners and pyramids and nutcrackers (some vintage GDR!); sparkling painted tin ornaments and nativity sets from Mexico (one of them is a pop-up!), and our popular embroidered protective face masks from Chiapas (they make fine stocking stuffers); handmade soaps for Hanukkah and Christmas from our local soap maker Kelly Sullivan; fir balsam pillows that smell for all the world just like Christmas itself––they are from the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine, who also offer you bags of their homegrown culinary lavender and their full selection of herbal teas and culinary herbs; letterpress printed books and broadsides that we make here in our workshop… oh and how about a Day of the Dead themed nativity set handmade in Mexico (one of our most popular items ever)?

Take a look around our catalog and see if we can’t help fulfill some of the shopping on your list (while saving you a bit of cash, too). Your transactions translate into real support for a very small company AND for other small companies, real families, local friends and family, and as for the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, well… they are the only remaining active Shaker Community anywhere, and America’s oldest religious community, established in 1783. All of the folks we work with are deserving of your support on this transactional basis, especially now, in strange, more challenging times. Companies like Amazon are enjoying record-breaking sales and profits right now… but it’s the little guys that are struggling to make ends meet. The small companies and artisans we work with appreciate every sale, like you wouldn’t believe. It’s just like voting. Purchasing what they make is your vote for them; it means you believe in what they do. Please consider supporting what we do so we can continue to support the artisans we know. And please take a look around at the small businesses in your area, too. Especially small family-run restaurants. They need your business to make it through to the other side of this.

My promise to you is to write Convivio Book of Days blog posts that describe, as best I can, the street fairs we’re missing this year, and we’ll keep that sale, with discount code STREETFAIR, going through the Christmas season, too.

Here’s a link to our catalog. Thank you for your support!

 

Nov 03 2020
2 Comments
Day of the Dead

Dear Friends & Gentle Hearts

As the story goes, when the great American songwriter Stephen Foster left this earth in January of 1864, a scrap of paper was found in his pocket. On it, he had written five words: Dear friends and gentle hearts. They are the last of his words that we have. Of course, not all Stephen Foster’s lyrics have proven politically correct, but then again, an awful lot has changed in the world since 1864, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find, even today, a person who is not moved by at least one Stephen Foster tune or another. Mr. Foster understood longing, and he understood melancholy, and we feel still what he felt then. That is part of the universality of the human experience, and why those five words written on a scrap of paper and stuffed into his pocket have such resonance. Especially now, during these autumnal days when we remember our beloved dead. It is the time of year when our thoughts burrow beneath the earth, just as some animals do, and just as trees now shift their growth toward roots. Firm foundations. We are connected to our ancestors, to our friends and family who have gone before us. We are here because they were here. The tree growing both above and below the earth. The circle that remains unbroken.

This, when you get right down to it, is what these mysterious autumnal days are all about. This is the root of Hallowe’en and its welcoming of All Hallows Day on November 1 and All Souls Day on November 2. These are the Days of the Dead. And while we never stop missing the ones who leave before we do, the thing to remember is that these days are meant to hold joy as well as sorrow. We remember those who have gone, we welcome them back, we keep them close at heart and we keep the channels open, in whatever form fits your belief system. It is not a religious or a secular thing so much as a time of putting things back together: remembering in its purest sense (re-membering: putting the members together again).

The days have been busy. I am sorry for not writing sooner, but I am writing now, on this late night of Día de los Muertos, this Festa di Morti. How two guys who take Stay at Home recommendations about as seriously as is possible (we rarely venture anywhere these days) can be so busy is beyond me, yet we are. But my mom and sister came up for a socially distant dinner on Hallowe’en, and then I taught a Calavera Prints virtual workshop for our local Día de Muertos celebration on Sunday, and here we are today. Earlier this evening, I made pan de muertos: a delicious cinnamon and anise bread, and I got Seth out for a stroll through Hillcrest Cemetery in West Palm Beach just before night fell. No big community celebrations this year, no Dia de Muertos Street Fairs, and we’re so wistful for those wonderful events. But that’s ok. As folks are saying lately: we stay apart now so when we come together again, no one is missing.

A few items of the nota bene sort: Your Convivio Book of Days calendar for November is drastically late. But it will come. And won’t you join me Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern for Book Arts 101? This one is the last in a trilogy of Book Arts 101 broadcasts devoted to the mysteries of autumn, and it will focus on Día de los Muertos. It’s a Zoom event that you’ll have to pre-register for. Sign up here. If you miss the live broadcast, don’t worry, you’ll find the video at the Vimeo Channel of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts soon after the broadcast is done.

Finally, our Autumn Sale continues: $10 off when you spend $75, plus free domestic shipping… that comes to a total of $18.50 off your order. Shop here and use discount code STREETFAIR when you check out. Or spend $50 and we’ll give you free domestic shipping with no discount code required. Shop our traditional artesanías mexicanas for Day of the Dead, traditional advent calendars from Germany, Christmas artisan goods from Sweden and Germany and Italy, Shaker herbs and teas and soaps, and our own letterpress printed books and broadsides, and lots more.

Oh, ok, two more nota bene items: If you did not receive this year’s Convivio Dispatch for Hallowe’en and would like to read it, here it is: just click here. It is one of my favorite Dispatches ever. And since I baked a seasonal bread, perhaps you’d like to, too. Here is our family recipe for Pan de Muertos, published in a Convivio Book of Days post in November, 2017 (that year the monthly calendar arrived in a timely fashion). The bread is easy to make, and so delicious. It’ll be our breakfast in the morning, before we go cast our votes on Election Day. I’m voting for decency, integrity, and respect.

 

Oct 31 2020
4 Comments
Halloween

Enter Hallowe’en

Hallowe’en! It’s late as I write this, past midnight, and we’ve just finished watching Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. Haden, the Convivio Shopcat, who had spent the evening atop the bookcase in the print shop, has a way of knowing when movies are over. She strolls in usually as the credits are rolling, which was the case tonight, and she leapt up on the desk during the haunting Nightmare instrumental music, making Seth and me both shriek at the same time. She likes doing that, too. The film rolled from credits to DVD bonus feature, and we got to see something we had never seen before, even though we’ve had the DVD for years: the short film of the original Nightmare Before Christmas poem that Tim Burton wrote, narrated by Christopher Lee, and Haden stayed to watch some of that, too, and there, above, is the photograph Seth snapped, and now here we are, you and me, at this late and witching hour. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is a Hallowe’en house if there ever was one, and Haden, I think, appreciates the pumpkins and the orange lights, orange like she is. She revels in that warm orange glow. Once Seth hangs the black paper bat mobile from the pendant lamp above the kitchen table, as he does each Hallowe’en, she will revel in the bats, too, and we will, no doubt, find her often on the table, beneath them. The bats that dangle low will brush her ears on occasion, making them twitch, which only reminds me of the poem Hist Whist by e.e. cummings and its line about “little twitchy witches and tingling goblins.”

As holidays go––and you know me, I love them all––Hallowe’en is one of my favorites. I remember every costume I wore when I was a boy: astronaut, scarecrow, Charlie Chaplin, hobo. The hobo was an old standby. When we couldn’t figure out what I would be, Grandma would start to sewing patches on my CPO coat, Mom would put a beard on me with makeup, and we’d pull a crushed hat from the closet. Then off I’d go, trick or treating. And maybe we love Hallowe’en so as adults because it is filled with vibrant memories like this.

We’ve got a busy few days ahead as Hallowe’en ushers in All Saints Day and then, on the 2nd, All Souls Day: Dia de Muertos. Our time of remembrance of those who have come and gone before us continues through to Martinmas on the 11th of November. I’ll write more about these things as they unfold. For tonight, though, a simple wish for a warm and spirited Hallowe’en. And if you’ve not received this year’s Convivio Dispatch for Hallowe’en (it would’ve come to your inbox as an email late last night), I’ve figured out a way you can read it without being a subscriber. It’s magic. All you have to do is click here.

Happy Hallowe’en from all of us at Convivio Bookworks: Seth, Haden, and me.
John

 

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