Category Archives: Tanabata

Jul 01 2024
2 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Summer, Tanabata

Star Telegram, or Your July Book of Days

Now it is July, and summer enters its mature phase, which, for us here in Lake Worth, is summed up in a small vocabulary: hot, humid, languid, stormy. This is the time, for us, of daily afternoon thunderstorms: consistency. Nothing will change here very dramatically for several long weeks to come, and it will be October, most likely, before we feel any shift in the pattern.

In Japan, the Star Festival approaches: Tanabata comes on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month. A day for writing wishes on strips of paper that are then tied to the bamboo and given to the wind, to the elements, to the universe, in hopes that those wishes will come true. And it is a lovely old woodcut about Tanabata that is the cover star of your Convivio Book of Days calendar for July. The calendar is our monthly gift to you: a printable PDF that you may pin to your bulletin board or keep handy at your desk, and a fine companion to this blog.

It is the month of Canada’s national day (July 1) and of ours (July 4), and of France’s, too (le quatorze juillet), and a month of many saints’ days (Swithin, James, Ann, and Martha, mainly). The Dog Days of Summer will begin on July 3 as Sirius, the Dog Star, begins rising with the sun. And by month’s end, we will find ourselves at the eve of the cross-quarter day known as Lammas, and with its arrival, we will have our first true inklings of summer’s waning. Ah, but that is a story for a time yet to come, as summer’s verdancy only deepens in these early weeks of July, a richer green comprised of leaves and fronds and stalks that have weathered a few storms in their time. Already the youthful green of Midsummer is maturing.

As for Tanabata: the written wishes come down to us from an old, old story; a story descended from the sky: the story of Orihime (Vega, the Weaver Star) and Hikoboshi (Altair, the Cowherd Star). Orihime was the beautiful daughter of the Sky King, Tentei, and Orihime spent her days weaving beautiful cloth on the banks of the Amanogawa, the Milky Way. Her father loved the cloth she wove, and so Orihime worked very hard to make enough for him so that he would always a good supply of it. But she worked so hard at her weaving that she never had time for anything else. As much as Tentei loved the cloth Orihime wove, he knew she needed some balance, some time away from her work, and so he arranged for her to meet Hikoboshi, the Cow Herder, who lived on the other side of the Amanogawa.

Well, I don’t know if you believe in love at first sight but it’s been known to happen, and for Orihime and Hikoboshi, this was the case. The two were just crazy about each other, and very soon, Hikoboshi asked Tentei, with the greatest respect, if he could marry Tentei’s daughter. Tentei gave his blessing; the two lovers were married, and that was wonderful, but Orihime pretty much gave up her work at the loom, and as for Hikoboshi’s cattle, well, they were soon roaming all over Heaven. This went on for some time and it proved upsetting for Tentei, who grew angrier and angrier, until finally, he decided enough was enough. He separated the two lovers on either side of the Amanogawa and forbade them to see each other. Naturally, Orihime despaired over the loss of her husband. Moved by his daughter’s tears, Tentei relented. But he allowed the two lovers to meet only once each year, on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month. And so it goes each year.

There are variations of the story, and even variations of the day of celebration. In some parts of Japan, Tanabata is celebrated in August. Obon, another Japanese summer celebration, is also celebrated at different times in different parts of the country.

Here on Earth, below the heavens, we celebrate Tanabata by writing wishes on strips of paper and tying them to the trees. The trees at Tanabata are decorated not just with wishes on paper, but also with origami and other decorations made of paper. Bamboo is traditional, but any tree will do. And any wish will do. If the wish is yours, write it down, place it in the branches. Perhaps your wishes will be made known to the elements, and perhaps your wishes will come true.

VISIT OUR SHOP!
Our new shop is open on Saturdays from 11 AM to 4 PM, and by appointment, too (we’ll be happy to open for you). We’re located at 1110 North G Street, Suite D, Lake Worth Beach, FL 33460. From I-95, exit 10th Avenue North eastbound; make a left at the first traffic signal onto North A Street, then at the first stop sign, turn right onto 13th Avenue North. Cross the railroad tracks and turn right again onto North G Street. We’re a couple blocks down on your left side in a blue-roofed building. Plenty of street parking on G Street and there are a few spots in our little parking lot, too. If our OPEN TODAY sign is out, we are open.

NEW! IN-HOUSE WORKSHOPS!
One of our goals for our new Lake Worth shop is to create a space that is about community and a place where you can come learn new things. To that end, our first four workshops are now on the calendar. Over the course of this summer, you may come learn about linoleum block printing, paper quilling, non-adhesive bookbinding structures, and monoprints. CLICK HERE to learn more about these workshops and to register. We begin on Saturday July 13 with Monstera Leaf Linoleum Printing on a Canvas Tote with instructor Nicole Beatty, then on Saturday July 20 it’s An Introduction to Paper Quilling & Origami with instructor Allyson Daley. I’ll be teaching Pure Bookbinding on Saturday August 24, and instructor Kim Spivey will be teaching Exploring Monoprints on Saturday September 14.

SHOP OUR SUMMER SALE… both online and in-store!
At our online catalog right now, you may use discount code BLOSSOM to save $10 on your $85 purchase, plus get free domestic shipping, too. That’s a total savings of $19.50. Spend less than $85 and our flat rate shipping fee of $9.50 applies. CLICK HERE to shop; you know we appreciate your support immensely. And yes, you may use that $10 discount when you visit us in the store, too!

 

Image: “The City Flourishing, Tanabata Festival” by Hiroshige Ando. Ukiyo-e print on paper, 1857, [Public domain] via WikiMedia Commons.

Jul 07 2020
2 Comments
Tanabata, Transitions

Somewhere in the Stars: Tanabata

We are in the midst of summer and a period ruled by stars: Sirius, Altair, and Vega. Sirius, the Dog Star, entered onto the scene a few days ago: by July 3rd, Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, began rising with the sun. The sun occupies the same part of the sky as Sirius through the middle of August. It just so happens to be the hottest time of the year while all this is going on… and so we call these hottest days of the year, ruled by Sirius, the Dog Days of Summer.

That’s our story about Sirius in Canis Major. Meanwhile, here is an old story from Japan that relates to our other summer stars, Altair and Vega: It is the story of Hikoboshi, the Cow Herder, and Orihime, the beautiful daughter of the Sky King, Tentei. Orihime wove beautiful cloth on the banks of the Amanogawa, the Milky Way. Her father loved the cloth she wove, and so she worked very hard to make enough for him so that he would always have plenty of it. But Orihime worked so hard at her weaving that she never had time for anything else. And as much as Tentei loved the cloth Orihime wove, he knew she needed some balance, some time away from her work, and so he arranged for her to meet Hikoboshi, the Cow Herder, who lived on the other side of the Amanogawa.

And so Orihime and Hikoboshi met. They fell in love right then and there. The two soon married, and that was wonderful, but they became so enamored with each other that all else fell by the wayside. Orihime pretty much gave up her work at the loom, and as for Hikoboshi’s cattle, well, they were soon roaming all over Heaven. Tentei grew angrier and angrier over all this, until finally he had enough. He separated the two lovers on either side of the Amanogawa and forbade them to see each other. Orihime despaired over the loss of her husband and pleaded with her father. Moved by his daughter’s tears, Tentei relented. But he allowed the two lovers to meet only once each year, on the seventh day of the seventh month. And so the story goes each year, and here we are today: the seventh day of the seventh month. It is the Japanese star festival, Tanabata.

As stars, the lovers are Vega and Altair: Vega, the Weaver Star, is Orihime, and Altair, the Cowherd Star, is Hikoboshi, separated always by the Milky Way, except, as legend has it, for this one night each year when they are reunited. Beneath the stars, here on Earth, we honor Orihime and Hikoboshi by writing wishes on strips of paper and tying them to the trees. Bamboo is traditional, and that’s what I tied my wishes to last year, but I would think any tree would do. Heaven and the stars, I am sure, grant us a bit of leeway in these matters.

Two or three of my wishes from last year remain still on the bamboo outside our back door. The ink is long faded. I know I wished for protection, and for good health for us all, and especially for my father. His health gradually faded over the seven months that followed, until his death in February. But I am grateful he did not suffer terribly, and so perhaps that was the best manifestation of my wishes for good health and protection. Will I write some wishes on paper and tie them to the bamboo this year? Probably, though it most likely won’t be until after dark. There are no rules about that, either, and if there are, well, again: Heaven and the stars surely can be flexible with us mortals.

Perhaps it is all these thoughts of stars, but there is a song that popped into my head last night, a song I’ve not thought of in years. In 1982, when my grandpa Arturo died, Rosanne Cash released a record called Somewhere in the Stars. I know the title track is a sappy love song, but even so, I was able to reinterpret it for my own situation. It meant a lot to me then when I was missing Grandpa, and it suddenly means a lot to me tonight, too, missing him again, and my dad, and everyone else who is somewhere other than where I’d like them to be (like right here in front of me). If it’s a little sappy, so be it. I’m a little sappy sometimes, too, and there are nights when we need stories about dog stars and star-crossed lovers and reminders of all the ones we love.

 

This chapter of the Convivio Book of Days was originally printed on the 7th of July, 2017. Three years later, the sentiment is the same. Top Image: A very particular Somewhere in the Stars. This is a Hubble Telescope wide field image showing the “Summer Triangle,” a giant triangle in the sky composed of three bright summer stars: Vega (top left), Altair (lower middle), and Deneb (far left). Can you make out the triangle? [Public domain] via NASA, 2009.

 

Tagged
Jul 02 2018
6 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Tanabata

Floating Worlds, or Your July Book of Days

Here’s a sentence no one has uttered for a solid couple of centuries: Tensions are high right now between Canada and the United States. Be that as it may, I have nothing but admiration and goodwill for Canada, perhaps because I have only known really wonderful people from Canada or perhaps because an awful lot of my favorite music comes from Canada. Then again, maybe it’s because Canada Day, the national holiday of Canada, typically falls on my birthday. This year, though, since the First of July is a Sunday, Canada Day falls on July 2nd. Here below the 49th Parallel, Independence Day in the States is on Wednesday, and so for a lot of folks it’s going to be a weeklong celebration. (Why work Monday and Tuesday if we’ll be off on Wednesday? And then the weekend is right after, so why work Thursday and Friday?) As for me, I’ll be working most all week, preparing for a few events happening at the end of the week––events that maybe you’d like to come to, if you are local. More on that later.

But first: Here’s your Convivio Book of Days calendar for July. It’s a printable PDF as usual, and a fine companion to the blog. This month’s calendar is designed over a sheet of suminagashi marbled paper I made back in 1995 at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, just about the time that Seth and I first met. Suminagashi is a marbling process where sumi inks are floated on the surface of water and where patterns are created by your breath: by blowing gently on the water, the ink on the surface moves accordingly. By setting a piece of paper atop it, the ink pattern is printed on the paper. It’s a most lovely and organic approach to paper decoration, and one of the traditional ancient crafts of Japan.

I’ll be teaching a suminagashi workshop at the Armory in West Palm Beach on Saturday, July 7, which, as luck would have it, also happens to be the Japanese Star Festival of Tanabata. That fact, like suminagashi itself, is a happy accident… when we scheduled it, months ago, it didn’t even cross my mind that it would fall on the seventh day of the seventh month, but it has. Tanabata is celebrated by writing wishes on strips of paper and tying them to the trees… so we’ll be doing some of that at Saturday’s workshop (not to mention a little letterpress, too). It’s a morning workshop, just three hours, so you can learn a craft, make a few wishes, and be on your way by midday, leaving you an entire long summery afternoon to enjoy other things besides suminagashi. If it sounds like something you’d like to do, register here (you do have to register ahead of time, and probably the sooner the better).

The month continues through many saints’ days and at the end of the month, we come to Lammas Eve, another of the cross quarter days that usher us, by traditional reckoning of time, into a new season. Summer, though, was so late in coming this year, perhaps it’s best to say that Lammas is not so much a seasonal shift as a gentle reminder that summer is waning. Indeed, the days have been getting shorter and shorter each day since the Midsummer solstice of June… six weeks later, with Lammas, we are fast approaching the halfway point to the autumnal equinox of September. William Shakespeare, for good metaphoric reasons, chose Lammas Eve as the night that his Juliet was born, reasons we will discuss in the blog once Lammas comes. But we have a whole month of summer before that, so for now, let’s just enjoy it. To that end, here are all the events I’m involved in this coming weekend… I hope you locals might attend one or two (or three):

Real Mail Fridays: Campfire Social
Friday July 6, 2018, from 2 to 6 PM (an open house; come and go as you please)
This monthly letter writing social is at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries in Boca Raton. Donation: $10 at the door. This month we’re enjoying campfire-inspired foods, and we’re asking each person who comes to write a short letter of welcome to summer campers attending the two sessions of letter writing camps hosted by the Delray Beach Historical Society. Here are two info links: this one for the event’s webpage, and this one for the Facebook event page, where you can say, “Hey, I’ll be there!”

Cason Cottage Snail Mail Revolution Event
Friday July 6, 2018, 6 to 9 PM
The links above will provide information, too, for this event, a sort of After Party for the Real Mail Fridays Campfire Social. I’ll be speaking beginning at about 7 PM at the Delray Beach Historical Society’s Cason Cottage about the Jaffe Center’s Real Mail Fridays letter writing socials and showing some artists’ books… and you’ll get a chance to write a letter or two yourself. It’s a pot luck but you shouldn’t feel obligated to bring food. Just come.

Workshop: Floating Worlds (Suminagashi Paper Marbling)
Saturday July 7, 2018, 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM
And I’d love to teach you about suminagashi and Tanabata at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Advance registration is required; please register here.

 

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