Category Archives: Transitions

Mar 15 2020
14 Comments
St. Joseph's Day, St. Patrick's Day, St. Urho's Day, Transitions

St. Urho, St. Patrick, St. Joseph, and Tax Season

I’ve been working on taxes for the better part of several weekends now––my own, and my mom’s, and my sister’s. It has fallen upon me to do this––me, the most disorganized, least mathematical person in the family. But I find there is a certain satisfaction that comes each year with accomplishing this task; it appeals to the part of me that likes to cross things off lists. As in, check. Done. And though I do strive for accuracy, there comes a point each spring where I just decide that it is ok if the federal government receives a little more from me than it is entitled to. A bit of a well being tax, if you will. If it means I can stop thinking about numbers and depreciation and amortization, I feel it is money well spent.

And so it has come to pass that this afternoon, even in the midst of all the files and receipts and checkbooks spread upon the kitchen table, I have just finished playing the Kibble Game with the cat (I toss kibble, she chases it and hunts it down) and I have poured myself a tea bowl full of water, one of Seth’s fine pottery creations, spiked with lemonade, and I’ve put the oven on to reheat some leftover lasagna that my mother made. Seth is outside, working on a garden project. Not a bad Sunday afternoon, after all, despite taxes, and all that’s going on in the world.

It’s a strange time, isn’t it? We are celebrating this week’s saints’ days––days we would normally celebrate as extended family––apart, for the sake of preserving good health. Last night’s early St. Patrick’s Day dinner was canceled, but I did pick up from my mom and sister––while maintaining 6 feet of distance and touching no surfaces in the house––some of the corned beef and cabbage they made, and Marietta’s famous Irish Soda Bread. Not a drop of Irish blood in her, and yet my sister makes the best soda bread I’ve ever had. Each year, it just gets better and better. Seth and I had it with dinner last night and with breakfast this morning, warmed and buttered, and someday, when there is a Real Book version of the Convivio Book of Days, her recipe will be in it. Oh, maybe I’ll just give it to you today, so you can make it this week. We need things to celebrate, no? Even if we can’t these days gather together as much as we’d like, still it is important to appreciate the importance of that gathering. If we can’t do it together, perhaps we can do it virtually. We see these days so many reasons why the Internet and social media are unhealthy for us: the wholesale spread of rumors and bad information, the politicizing of tragedy, the fanning of flames of panic. I try my best to step away from all that, to not participate, and to focus on what is inherently good about contemporary modes of communication: we can, for instance, Skype with our loved ones while we have our own smaller, in-home celebrations. My mother and her sister are on Skype with each other most every night: a beautiful connexion from Florida to Illinois, the two DeLuca girls from East New York Avenue, in their 90s and still chatting with each other before bed. I love this. Sometimes they’re up way into the darkest hours of the night, my cousins and my Aunt Anne and my mom and my sister taking turns watching each other as they doze off on couches thousands of miles apart from each other. They don’t even have to talk. They just keep each other company. How wonderful that we can do this now, just be there for each other, even while apart.

And so what do we have this week to celebrate? To begin with, St. Urho’s Day on the 16th. Urho is the fictional saint of Finland, the Finns’ tongue in cheek answer to the infinitely more famous St. Patrick, whose day follows. St. Urho is said to have driven all the grasshoppers from Finland, saving the vineyards from certain destruction. It’s a holiday and a story you won’t know unless you live amongst Finns, as I do. To be honest, I don’t think you’ll find many vineyards in Finland, but St. Urho’s Day has become a day to celebrate the wine that comes from the fruit of vineyards, so go on, enjoy responsibly.

The next day, of course, brings St. Patrick’s Day. The celebrations this year will be considerably quieter than they typically are. A fine day to appreciate all things Irish. And then on the 19th, it’s St. Joseph’s Day. Father’s Day in Italy, a day when Italian bakers will be serving up zeppole and sfinci, the traditional pastries for San Giuseppe. This year for St. Joseph’s Day, it will be very quiet in Italy. If you do venture out here in the States, stop at an Italian bakery and get some pastry for the day. The bakers will appreciate it, and so will you. Just please, wash your hands after handling the bakery box. Take the advice of the Italian grandma on YouTube (and yes, even my mother has had to give up the Kleenex she keeps in her sleeve).

So much has changed in our lives in such a short time. Socially, economically. For about a year now, Seth and I have been searching for a just-right public space for Convivio Bookworks, as it was feeling like time to move this small business out of our small house and into the broader world. We had been looking high and low through Lake Worth and West Palm Beach. If you had checked with us even just a month ago, we were giving serious consideration to a location on Lake Avenue, a sort of marriage of an existing bookish business with our own, creating a new spin on both, perhaps. We’ve put all these plans on hold, I suppose indefinitely. Making a business move like this is an expensive step, and we don’t have much to work with. Whenever we do make that leap, rest assured it will be a highly calculated move (there are those numbers, again).

And so we continue to do what we do. When you get right down to it, it’s kind of exciting to live in a tiny house and run a business out of it. Open up a closet and you’ll find bed linens and Dia de Muertos ofrenda figures. In the cupboard in the living room, there’s the china and the cutlery… oh and all the handpainted pysanky eggs from Ukraine. It can get dicey at times when someone orders something and I forget where it is. The only guarantee is that when I stored it away, I put it in a very logical place. It’s the logic that is fleeting and ephemeral, for me, anyway.

We are supposed to be at the Social House Spring Night Market here in Lake Worth on Saturday March 21… but to be honest, I am thinking of canceling our spot. I am at heart a homebody, and these days are giving me an excuse to be just that. If you’re local and are curious if we’ll be there, keep apprised on our social media pages (Instagram and Facebook @conviviobookworks). There, another good thing about social media. If you’re sitting home and you’re looking to support small companies like ours, we have some wonderful things available for the spring season (including all those handpainted pysanky eggs we just bought from Ukraine). Your Convivio by Mail orders support real people (Seth and me and the cat and the artisans who make the things we sell). And just think about all the space in our little house you’ll help us attain once we ship your order out! Spend $50 and you’ll earn free shipping on your domestic order. And we almost always throw little bonuses in your orders, too. I think we provide a shopping experience you can feel really good about… and this is a really good time to do it, for the benefit of all the artisans and crafts people we work with.

Please stay well, act wisely, mind your way in this world. And wash your hands. Much love to you all. Now go. Bake some soda bread.

MARIETTA’S IRISH SODA BREAD

5 cups flour (plus up to an additional cup, depending on stickiness of dough)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons butter or shortening
1 cup raisins
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (optional)
2 eggs, beaten (reserve 1 tablespoon for later)
1 ½ cups milk (or buttermilk, if you have it)

If you’re using a stand mixer, place all ingredients in the mixing bowl (except for reserved tablespoon of egg) and mix. Start with 5 cups of flour, adding up to an additional cup, if necessary, if dough is sticky. Next, using dough hook, knead in bowl for a minute or so.

If, like me, you have to mix things by hand, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl. With a pastry blender, cut in butter or shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in raisins and caraway seeds. Add beaten eggs (be sure to reserve 1 tablespoon of beaten egg for later), and then add the milk or buttermilk. Mix well. If the dough is very sticky, add up to 1 additional cup of flour, a little at a time.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 F and butter a 2-quart round casserole; set aside. Flour a board and turn out dough onto it; knead for about a minute. Shape into a ball. Place the dough in the casserole, and in the center of the dough, with a sharp knife, cut a cross about 4” long and ½” deep. Brush dough with reserved egg.

Bake about 1 hour and 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out dry. Cool in casserole on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the casserole and cool further on rack.

 

Image: Haden the Convivio Shopcat, snoozing atop some of the boxes of Convivio Bookworks inventory we keep in the house. It’s certainly an interesting place to live if you’re a cat.

 

UPDATE MARCH 16: Convivio Bookworks will be opting out of the Spring Night Market at Social House. We’ll see you at pop-up markets later this year. (Later Update: Social House has canceled the Spring Night Market. This is good!)

 

 

Jan 22 2020
2 Comments
Copperman's Day, Transitions

Be of Good Cheer

Here it is: Our Copperman’s Day print for 2020. We are both slightly late (Copperman’s Day was a week ago Monday) and it’s also been a while since we last printed one of these annual prints. This time of year can be a little rough on me. My dad had his stroke on MLK, Jr. Day in 2017, and the last Copperman’s Day print I made, which was that year, conveyed the words Wes Hel: an older version of Wassail, the old drinking toast that essentially means Be of Good Health. My small way of helping to insure Dad’s good health. A year later––a year after Dad’s passing––I began setting type for Copperman’s Day, 2018. But I didn’t quite have it in me to print it. Same in 2019. But here we are today, in January 2020. I worked on Copperman’s Day resetting that same type I had begun to set two years ago, finished setting it a day later, and each night after I printed a different color by hand on the Vandercook 4 in our shop. By Friday I was done. I guess you could say this print took three years to make. I like it very much, and I feel like my father approves of it, too, and wants us all to take its advice to heart, and to Be of Good Cheer.

Copperman’s Day falls on the Monday after Epiphany each January. It’s an old Dutch printer’s holiday celebrated mainly by the apprentices, who would have the day off to print whatever they wanted. The resulting prints would be sold for a copper. We sell ours for 300 coppers (3 bucks), but, you know, paper and ink don’t cost what they did centuries ago, and a week’s worth of labor doesn’t cost what it did back then, either. 300 coppers is a real bargain, if you ask me. And we have an additional special running, too: order three or more of any of our letterpress mini prints––all of our Copperman’s Day prints to date, our B Mine Valentines, and our famous Keep Lake Worth Quirky prints––and we’ll take $5 off your domestic order. This, to help balance out our flat rate $8.50 shipping charge, because even though a flat rate shipping charge of $8.50 is pretty damn good, we know it’s not such a bargain if you’re buying just a few small flat paper items. If you’re doing some Valentine shopping, though, or picking up a few other things, we do, as usual, offer free domestic shipping when you spend $50 or more. (Folks in Canada and Mexico and elsewhere on the planet, write us at mail@conviviobookworks.com and we’ll figure something out for you, too.)

Over the course of a week of printing nights, I was accompanied by a sleepy cat always nearby and some pretty wonderful music: Valse de Noël: An Acadian-Cajun Christmas Revels, and Elizabeth Mitchell and friends singing and playing on The Sounding Joy: Christmas Songs In and Out of the Ruth Crawford Seeger Songbook. Copperman’s Day is very much an extension of the Yuletide season for me, tied as it is to Epiphany, and for a couple of guys who just decorated their tree on Christmas night, well… we are subscribing this year to the old tradition of keeping the greenery up until Candlemas. Our tree is still glowing on this cold Lake Worth night, and all here remains calm and bright. The cat is asleep on a wool sweater, and here I am, connecting with all of you. We are, most definitely, of good cheer.

 

May 17 2019
24 Comments
Birthdays & Anniversaries, Transitions

The Last of the Famous International Playboys

Two unlikely things have happened in the last two weeks, both of which make me think of my father, and just in time for his 93rd birthday, which would be tomorrow, on the 18th. First of all, I bought my first pair of boxing gloves. If you’d have suggested just a month ago that I’d be wearing boxing gloves, let alone owning a pair, I’d have laughed at you. But Seth and I keep active and our trainer of many years up and left a few months ago on a whim, moving on to New York or L.A. or lord knows where. We were left floundering about for a few weeks, making some half hearted attempts at going to a regular gym mixed with periods of sitting home eating popcorn and binge watching Project Runway. But we have of late gotten involved in another training situation and it’s good, it’s varied… and we’ve been finding ourselves in group fitness classes with names like Fight Camp and Kickboxing Camp and well, one thing has lead to another and now we both own boxing gloves. I think of my dad every time I wrap my hands and struggle to get the gloves on. I’m not sure if he’d be impressed or if he’d be laughing at me. His son is about the unlikeliest boxer you’ll ever meet, and he knew that and eventually (I think) came to be at peace with the fact that, despite his best efforts, I could never quite connect bat to ball or figure out left hook from right or understand how to get that blasted oil filter wrench going in the right direction. (I would more often than not be under the car tightening the filter even more while he was explaining to me––well… yelling, swearing––from above how to loosen it.)

But anyway, here I am these days: in boxing gloves, hitting punching bags hanging from chains, bags that are probably heavier than I am. I couldn’t wait for the hour of my first Fight Camp to end because no one had shown me how to wrap my hands properly and so I did it my way––the way a bookbinder would wrap a leather bound book he’s just covered––and wrapped them so tight, I soon couldn’t feel my fingers. I kept hitting things even though I really wanted to just stop and cry, it was so painful. But I mustered on (another trait I inherited from my dad) and did a lot of swearing under my breath instead, and every now and then stepped outside for a breath of air and to shake out my gloved hands. The second time, our trainer showed me how to wrap my hands properly. That made a big difference, and I was beginning to think I was getting a grip on this boxing thing.

The third time, Seth and I were late for Fight Camp, so we ended up being the only two people to show up for Kickboxing Camp, which was scheduled after. It was a Friday night––last Friday night––at 7 PM. I had a feeling that if it wasn’t for us, the trainer might probably be off on a Friday night date, but instead José, who looks like he is no stranger to the ring, was stuck with two goofs in boxing gloves. What ensued was, I could only surmise, punishment. We stretched, we ran two laps carrying dumbbells, and when we got back, José set us on our path for the night: 10 jabs to the big bag, 10 hooks left and right, 10 knees, 10 kicks, then down for 10 push-ups, then 30 seconds of intense cardio. No rest. And then up the ladder: 20 jabs, 20 hooks, 20 knees, 20 kicks, 20 push-ups. Then 30. Then 40. And finally, 50. If you’ve ever done 50 push-ups in boxing gloves, let’s talk. José pushed us and pushed us. Come 8:00, when our session was done, José was gone, nowhere to be seen, and Seth and I emerged near broken, but triumphant.

Which brings me to the second of the two unlikely things that have happened that make me think of my father. My triumph from Kickboxing Camp carried through that night and the next day until about 1:30. I couldn’t decide if my biceps were sore or if it was my triceps, but it was Saturday––Cleaning Day––and I was cleaning house and I was pushing through the soreness just fine. I cleaned the bathrooms, I got out the vacuum, but then I thought I’d change the cat’s litter before doing the floors. I emptied the old litter, cleaned the box, replaced it with fresh litter––such a satisfying thing. When I went to set the litter box in its place, I could feel a little twinge in my lower back, just the slightest thing, but you know, I do have that Dad trait of mustering on, and so I did muster on, and it was right there, in that process of mustering, that the twinge escalated into something more like twisting dagger. I found myself on the floor and spent a good part of the day there. Seth gave me my lunch there on the floor (I was still hungry, after all) and I had a devil of a time getting up off the floor but eventually I did. Since then, ice packs, massage, and acupuncture, all have been helping. On Sunday we went to the family’s for Mother’s Day dinner and when I walked in using a broomstick to help me walk, Mom said, “Here, use this.” It was my dad’s cane. He never used it, because he was amazingly stubborn about things like that, but my cousins in Chicago sent it to him, with the best intentions, when he began having trouble walking. It’s pretty fancy: sturdy black wood with a crystal knob. It’s made in Italy. When I use it, I feel like Fred Astaire, like I should have a top hat. It’s not quite my style, but it’s so much better than the broomstick I was using, and it, too, like the boxing gloves, reminds me of Dad. Which is perhaps just right as we approach his birthday. It’s the third one we are marking since he’s been gone. But in the past couple of weeks, I have all these reminders of Dad, and they make me happy, in spite of the pain. I wouldn’t trade them if I could.

 

For those of you wonder if physical fitness is bad for us, well, you may be right: the week before buying my boxing gloves Seth and I were in a regular, non-punching bootcamp class. One of the stations involved slamming a medicine ball to the ground. I picked up the wrong kind of ball. Medicine balls land with a thud on the ground, but mine did not. It bounced. It was a 20 pound ball, and I slammed it good and hard to the ground, from up over my head, and was completely dismayed when it bounced up and hit me square in the jaw. I did, in fact, see stars. I was impressed with myself for not passing out. I thought of my dad then, too, and could picture him shaking his head and laughing at me. After Friday night’s Kickboxing Camp, before José ran off, I told him that story. He laughed. “Oh, I’m definitely checking the security cameras for that,” he said.

 

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