Category Archives: Spring

Mar 21 2022
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Equinox, Spring

Spring Reset

This old earth has reached its moment of balance, of equinox, less than a day ago. Day and night pretty much of equal length now, no matter where on the globe you stand: North Pole, South Pole, Equator, all points between. So much balance.

I have felt not at all balanced, for several weeks now, over situations near and far. Perhaps you are feeling this way, too, what with all that is happening in the world. If you have 30 minutes to spare to maybe fix this imbalance, I have something to share: it’s my friend Jane Siberry, with a guided Spring Reset:

I think you’ll find her voice calming, balancing; her wisdom and approach balancing, too. For me, it was just what I needed to return to the world again and feel less discord, more accord. It’s a good investment of 30 minutes.

John

 

COME SEE US
We’ll be popping up at a couple of local markets and celebrations in the coming weeks:

VINTAGE ROOTS MARKET is the first one, and it’s happening Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26, at Yesteryear Village at the South Florida Fairgrounds. 9 to 4 on Friday, 10 to 4 on Saturday. We’ll be there in an outdoor tent with our spring collections of artisan goods for Easter from Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Ukraine, and our Shaker herbal teas and culinary herbs, hand embroidered tea towels from my mom Millie and hand printed towels and other textiles from Kei & Molly Designs, and lots more. It’s our first time out in the world again since last Christmas, and we’re excited to see you again!

And then on Saturday, April 9, it’s Lake Worth’s inaugural TACO FIESTA at Bryant Park on the Lake Worth Lagoon from 3 to 10 PM. We’ll be there in an outdoor tent with lots of our traditional artesanías mexicanas: artisan goods from Mexico for Dia de Los Muertos and all the year through, hand embroidered Otomi textiles… and we’ll bring our spring collections of artisan goods for Easter, too, from Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Ukraine.

SHOP ONLINE at take $10 off your order of $75 on Easter goods and everything else in the shop with discount code BUNNY. You’ll get free domestic shipping, too, for a total savings of nearly 20 bucks. I will write more soon about the things we’re offering, and especially about the hand painted pysanky eggs from Ukraine, and our friend Kyrylo, who sends those eggs to us. Kyrylo lives there in Lviv, and he sends us news when he can. I want to share his stories with you. We’re trying our best to help him out by buying the traditional artisan goods from Ukraine that he sells, and we’re going to send him the profits from the sale of those Ukrainian pysanky eggs, too. And you can help, too, by just buying some.

Like I said, I’ll write more about that soon. For now, I’m focused on balance and reset, and offer you the same.

 

Mar 01 2022
Ash Wednesday, Book of Days Calendar, Lent, Shrove Tuesday, Spring, St. David's Day

Spring Excursion, or Your March Book of Days

The First of March brings St. David’s Day, sacred to Wales, and this year it also brings the moveable Shrove Tuesday, which goes by many names: Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Pancake Tuesday. It is the final day of Carnival, the day that ushers in the solemn forty days of Lent that begin with Ash Wednesday. It is the night we traditionally eat pancakes or crepes for supper –– this, to use up the last of the eggs and the last of the milk and sugar before the restrictions of Lent kicked in.

This First of March also brings you the latest Convivio Book of Days Calendar. It’s a printable PDF, and a fine companion to this blog. This month’s cover star: a 1903 oil painting by Hungarian painter Béla Iványi-Grünwald called “Spring Excursion.” This is the month, after all, of the vernal equinox. We began our anticipation of spring at the start of February with St. Brigid’s Day, but in March, the season is made manifest. Days and nights will be of equal length for a spell, all across the globe, while here in the Northern Hemisphere light will continue to increase until the Midsummer solstice of June. Ever changing, ever the same.

The name Shrove Tuesday comes from Shrovetide, which is the time we’ve been in in recent weeks: this time after Christmas ends and before Lent begins. Ash Wednesday will bring its time of fasting and penance and reflection. Which is perhaps something we need every now and then. Well certainly once a year, it was thought, and why not now, when the larders were getting empty. Back in the days when food was not as plentiful and easily procured as it is now, Lent was crucial to help get everyone through to spring and renewal.

There are many traditions in foodways for Shrove Tuesday. The Polish bakeries will have pączki today, a rich filled doughnut, and the Swedish bakeries will have cream filled buns called semla. If they’re doing things right they’ll be selling them today but definitely not tomorrow and not again until next Shrovetide. In Germany, it is Fasnacht, and folks will be making doughnuts for the occasion this night (nacht) before the fast.

Seth and I, we will eat our pancakes tonight with festivity and in good spirit, and in the morning, if we have it in us, we will approach that altar to have ashes smeared on our foreheads with the spoken reminder: Remember man that thou are dust and to dust you shall return. We are made of the stuff of this earth and we shall return to it. But the stuff of this earth is made of the stuff of the stars, too, and that is something to ponder. If nothing else, these forty days that follow tonight’s pancake supper will hopefully remind us that life is short, and we would do well to live the time we have with compassion and kindness for our fellow human beings, and to love each day, and, as we like to say here, to live the ceremony of each day, too.

Image: “Spring Excursion” by Béla Iványi-Grünwald. Oil on canvas, 1903 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Mar 20 2021
2 Comments
Equinox, Spring

Spring’s Arrival

It is a time of balance today as all parts of the planet receive equal measure of day and night: it is the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, the autumnal equinox in the Southern, with a 5:37 AM arrival time here in Lake Worth, which is currently in Eastern Daylight Time. Tomorrow––since change is the only thing that stays the same––things shift yet again, and day will be just a bit longer than night here in the North, while night will be just a bit longer than day in the South. And on it goes, until the next moment of extreme in June, when the Midsummer solstice brings the Northern Hemisphere’s longest day, and the Southern Hemisphere’s longest night.

With the spring equinox comes Nowruz, the Persian new year, celebrated by people in Iran and many other places throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans. Nowruz preparations revolve around a thorough cleaning of the home: a spring cleaning, you might say. Families calculate the equinox moment and then begin their celebrations, which involve an abundance of good food and go on for several days.

Other springtide holidays are fast approaching: Passover will begin in the Jewish calendar on the 27th at sunset, and in the Hindu calendar, Holi, the Festival of Colors, comes the next day. That same day in the Christian calendar brings Palm Sunday, setting off the events of Holy Week on the approach to Easter. But not before we celebrate Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation, on the 25th… and that is a day for eating waffles, thanks to a bit of linguistic confusion in Sweden. Every one of these celebrations is tied, in one way or another, to the start of spring and this balance of day and night. This old earth, meanwhile, just does what it does: it spins around each day and spends a year circling around the sun on its tilted axis, giving us our seasons and all the love and celebration we place in them.

Image: March Equinox 2021, a projected Earth daylight distribution on the March Equinox (Northern Spring; Southern Autumn) as seen on SpaceEngine [Creative Commons, via Wikimedia Commons].

 

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