Author Archives: John Cutrone

Apr 27 2020
4 Comments
Ramadan, St. Mark's Eve, Transitions

Rounding Out April

April is soon coming to a close, and I apologize, I’ve definitely fallen off the ball with Book of Days updates since Easter. Since then, St. George’s Day has come and gone, as has the mysterious St. Mark’s Eve and his day, too, and hopefully the people of Venice were able to make risi e bisi, their traditional meal for the day, a risotto of rice and peas with pancetta and onion. I, for one, have been cooking up a storm (Sunday I made tomato sauce and a cardamom pear coffee cake) and one big question is once I switch back from trousers with drawstrings to trousers that have actual buttons and zippers, will I have to leave that top button open? The cat seems to like us being home, too; she now takes an additional meal at 2 in the afternoon.

Ramadan began this past week, too. A central aspect of this month-long celebration is daytime fasting. The fasting is a reminder of the many people who are less fortunate than ourselves, and in this strange time of home quarantine and isolation, it is good to remember this. It is so very easy to get caught up in our own troubles, no? Chances are extremely good that there is always someone having a much rougher day than we are. Why not then be kind and patient with everyone? This is a central aspect of Ramadan, but it should just as well be a central premise of living for us all.

Ramadan continues until the next crescent moon, when Eid al-Fitr, the Sweet Festival, begins. Beautiful Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr cards, all by our friend Manal Aman of Hello Holy Days! in Canada, are available at our online catalog, and right now they are all 15% off with code SPRING15 (through April 30). Other spring and summer items are included, as well as all of our handmade soaps. Plus free domestic shipping when you spend $50 across our catalog.

One last thing today: working from home has meant finding creative solutions to new challenges. One of my challenges as Director of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries is to maintain a connection with our students and our book arts enthusiasts, and so last month, despite my stage fright, I began a weekly Facebook Live broadcast called Book Arts 101: Home Edition, which airs live on the Facebook page of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts each Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time. We talk books and craft and stories and the broadcasts originate here, at the Convivio Bookworks studio. Basically, if it’s in my home or on the premises, it’s fair game. This Wednesday’s episode is going to be a love letter, of sorts, to Lake Worth, the quirky town we call home. I’ll be showing and talking about things in our home that were made in Lake Worth or that delve into its history. If you’re a fan of my Convivio Dispatches from Lake Worth, you’ll probably enjoy Wednesday’s broadcast. And if you’re not familiar with the Dispatches, you can check one out by clicking here. The Convivio Dispatch is quite a different animal than this blog. The Dispatches are more based in story, and they are not collected in a blog, but rather come to you as a very occasional email, as they always have.

Anyway, won’t you join us on Wednesday? If you can’t make it at 3 Eastern, worry not, the videos are later available at the Convivio Bookworks Facebook page. There have been four so far, and we’ll continue them for as long as they feel needed.

 

Apr 09 2020
4 Comments
Easter Triduum, Holy Thursday, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday

Pilgrimage

My grandma Assunta taught me her tradition for this night, being Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday. It is the night before Good Friday, and it was her tradition to visit three churches by dark of night. It is the Night Watch that begins after mass is celebrated. By then the sun has set and night has fallen. The Pange Lingua, the beloved song of St. Thomas Aquinas, has been sung, the statues have been covered in purple cloth, the blessed sacrament set on display amongst lit candles. The lights in the church are dimmed, and the crowds have gone, leaving but a few hardy souls who will sit and hold their vigil. Their pilgrimage, like my grandmother’s, will include three churches, or perhaps even seven. Grandma’s number was three. Seth and I do this each year, bringing the memory of all our loved ones with us, and this year we can’t, of course. But we have memories, and we have photographs of the pilgrimages we’ve made on Holy Thursdays in years past. It is always a night charged with mystery and magic and I always feel welcome in these churches, welcome like a weary traveler or a long lost son for whom all is forgiven, no questions asked. And so, purposefully, this chapter of the Convivio Book of Days is short on words, and heavily laden with images: to provide a pilgrimage of sorts for any of you who wish to join us, for these are the sights we see each year on this night, with the wind blowing off the ocean and the moon shining brightly, way up in the sky, beyond the towers and steeples of the churches, beyond the palm trees, beyond the clouds that drift like continents afloat on tectonic plates. And so we bid you peace on this night watch, and the hope that all will be well.

 

Apr 08 2020
Passover

Next Year in Jerusalem (or at least together)

Here’s a reprint of a Book of Days post about Passover from a few years back. This year will be odd in that most families won’t be able to celebrate the holiday together. It’ll be the same on Easter Sunday for my family: many smaller celebrations in houses far apart, rather than one big table together. But this night still is different from all others, and the foods are still rich with symbolism, and the story continues to be told. Happy Pesach.

With tonight’s setting sun comes Passover. A friend explains it best: “We are traveling through the desert with our ancestors via a table filled with metaphor and symbolism.” This moveable springtime holiday in the Jewish calendar commemorates the liberation of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. The celebration of Passover (or Pesach in Hebrew) is a meal, the seder. Unleavened bread is a central part of the celebration, for the Israelites had to leave Egypt so quickly there was no time to let the bread rise. Instead, it had to be baked immediately. There is traditionally a place at the table reserved for Elijah, the prophet, and the words “Next year in Jerusalem” are a common refrain.

At the table is a book, the Haggadah, which tells the Passover story. Those gathered around the table read from the book in the midst of the seder plate, filled with foods rich with symbolic meaning. They say you can’t celebrate the holiday without a haroseth, which is a mixture of chopped nuts and apples, wine, and spices. It sounds like a celebratory part of an autumnal meal, but it is here in the springtime, symbolic of the mortar used by the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt.

Family and food, rich in meaning, celebrated since time immemorial: these are the roots of Pesach, a festival of freedom.

Image: Preparing for the Seder in the Kitchen of the Community House, Biloxi, Miss., April 13, 1949. Digitized by the Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History.

 

Tagged
← Older posts
Newer posts →