Book of Days | from convivio bookworks

Sep 26 2023

Count Your Blessings

This chapter of the Convivio Book of Days comes with a soundtrack. So, before you even begin reading the essay, I’d suggest you click on the following link and then click play. What you’ll hear is the music of Marin Marais: a collection recorded by Hille Perl & Lee Santana in 2004, called Pour la Violle et le Théorbe. The music is important. So go on: click, then click play, and then come back to the essay.

Good? Ok, then. Here we go:

And so it is autumn. The sunlight is again streaming through the glass front door, and this, for 18 years, has been a favorite thing of Haden’s, our ginger tabby affectionately known to so many of you as “Haden the Convivio Shop Cat.” Dappled sunlight began to stream in through the glass window since the month began, a hint of things to come, and there she’d be each day: paws pressed up against the glass, in as much of the sunlight as she could squeeze herself into. That streaming sunlight gets stronger with each passing day each autumn with the best of it coming always in November, and by then, she’d sometimes get positively drunk on the stuff, on her back, paws akimbo, or on her side, sunning one flank or the other, her orange striped coat glowing in that sunlight with such radiance. And her utter and complete joy in that warmth would make us glow with warmth, too: to see such complete enjoyment: such a thing of wonder.

It is a little more than a week now that Seth and I are without her. 18 years old, going on 19, and she was doing wonderfully but was having a tougher time of it since Labor Day, which is when we celebrated 18 years together, the day she chose to adopt us. Seth and I, Labor Day Weekend 2005: We drove to Safe Harbor Shelter in Jupiter with the idea that we’d seek out an old lazy male cat to maybe bring home with us. A cat set in his ways, mellow, a bit tired. Instead, this feisty young tomboy cat with orange stripes decided we should all be together. And she was absolutely right. She was resting in a hammock made from a bandana strung up in a cage, where she was bunking with a few other cats, and when the attendant fetched her and put her in Seth’s arms, she set about climbing up his chest. She was about 6 months old and they called her Cheyenne, which didn’t seem at all a proper name for her. We took her home and didn’t quite know what to call her, but soon decided to name her after the mango tree in our backyard. Orange mangoes, orange cat: the choice felt right. We called her Haden from then on, though we probably called her Kitty even more than we called her Haden, especially in these later years.

Here’s another item on the list of things Haden loved: the music of French composer Marin Marais, which you are listening to right now. Seth’s twin sister had been living with us for a little while when we brought Haden home. Sarah had moved here from California in August, and we brought Haden home with us on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, and then on Sunday, Sarah’s husband arrived, along with their two dogs: an Australian Shepherd called Buddy and Buddy’s pal Zoey, who always reminded me of George Rodrigue’s blue dog paintings. The timing wasn’t so great for temporary canine guests, but we decided to put Haden in the print shop and close up the glass door that led to it from the kitchen pantry. She knew there were dogs about, and she spent a lot of time that day sleeping in the space between two stacked wooden type cabinets.

To help put her at ease, I thought some gentle music would be a good idea. And so I put a fairly new CD from my collection on continuous repeat for the entire day: the very same music you are listening to now. From then on, this was Haden’s music. I don’t know if cats generally have favorite pieces of music, but I do think Haden did, and I feel like she knew this music was hers.

Eventually that Sunday, the two dogs and the cat regarded each other through the closed glass door. Kitty paws would eventually swipe under the door from one room to the other. By nightfall, we opened the door. Haden was extremely territorial and never liked seeing other cats around her home, but dogs she seemed to like. Buddy and Zoey became her pals, though Zoey never liked to look at Haden directly; she usually gave Haden a sideways glance and always seemed a bit intimidated by that cat.

Oh but she was the sweetest kitty. She had a bit of a reputation at the vet’s office, and she was not one you’d call “cuddly.” Haden was feisty all her years, independent, wanting to be near you but not smothered by your attention. She had the best personality. We’d go to bed each night and that’s when she’d begin hunting her little stuffed animals, her favorite (again, another favorite thing) being one we call “Cat in the Hat.” She’d pick him up in her mouth and carry him around the house, making loud kitty hunting noises, announcing her triumph. Overnight guests always needed to be warned that there would be kitty hunting going on as they slept: don’t be alarmed. When our home was broken into several years ago, we installed cameras throughout the property, including two inside the house, and thank God for the break-in: thanks to those cameras we have hours of entertaining footage of Haden hunting Cat in the Hat, making those wild kitty hunting noises. What we didn’t know until the cameras were installed: She did this not just when we went to bed, but each and every time we’d leave the house. Sometimes even when just one of us would leave: one of us would drive off, the hunting noises would begin, getting louder and louder, and then she’d walk into the room where you were and see you there and abruptly end the noise, spitting Cat in the Hat out of her mouth, onto the floor, before walking away nonchalantly.

Towards the end, I thought we’d have a couple of weeks to ponder how things would go, but in the overnight hours of the 15th of September, she suddenly seemed to have had enough of this world. She was very tired, her breathing labored. Friday morning, she spent a little time where the sunlight would be at the front door, then on her side on the wood floor, and then she made her way up to a perch she had claimed as her own: a chair, temporarily on its side. The chair was meant to be given away but she loved it there on its side. There was a blanket on the chair that was also meant to be given away. She burrowed into the blanket. The hospice vet came at 11, and the three of us were there with her, petting her as she slept calmly. Just being with her. The vet, who was so very kind, explained what would happen, and Seth & I, we allowed it to happen. Haden’s passage was so peaceful, so beautiful, and so very sad. She was at home, another thing she loved, and we were with her, and Cat in the Hat was with her, and the music of Marin Marais was in the air to ease her. She had, I think, all the things she loved around her: her home, her cat, her music, her family. And so she gently left this world.

Nothing is the same since she is gone. We miss her terribly and we always will. We have her music, and we have each other. But gosh, I do miss snuzzling into her orange stripes. She smelled so good, and I miss that. And I miss how wonderfully fuzzy she was, and her lovely personality. There was no better cat for us.

One week later, last Friday, we received word from her vet that Haden’s ashes had been delivered, and so we went. Haden’s ashes are in a lovely wooden box, engraved with her name and with her paw print. We cried some more, with the staff, and we played with their two office cats, Sebastian and Richard, as we cried, and with the new puppy that Chris, who cared for Haden since the beginning, had just gotten. After a long while, Seth and I collected ourselves and the little wooden box and left. I started the car and looked at the clock: 11:40. The same exact time she had died a week prior. All the things that had transpired over the course of her passage: I’ve come to feel like she directed it all. From the place on the perch where she chose to be, to us all being together, to the delivery of the ashes. Her way of saying, It’s ok. All is well. I think of that sweet ginger kitty and I count my blessings.

This Saturday, Seth & I will be installing an ofrenda, dedicated to Haden, at Hatch 1121, our local community arts center where Lake Worth’s Dia de Los Muertos festival will take place on Saturday, October 28. If you come to the festival, be sure to come see us in the courtyard, and be sure to view our kitty’s ofrenda inside the gallery. And always count your blessings. Be kind and thankful for all the ones you love: the time we have together is never long enough, is it?

Sep 01 2023

2 Comments

Autumn, Book of Days Calendar, Harvest, Nativity of Mary

A Symphony of Bells, or Your September Book of Days

In the previous chapter of the Convivio Book of Days, the one about the Bartlemas Wayzgoose, I gave brief mention to the fact that the printers’ Wayzgoose festivities that come out of St. Bartholomew’s Day on the 24th of August are rooted in an acknowledgment of the waning days of summer giving way to fall. I know many of you were not keen on hearing that, and yet today we have a deeper acknowledgment of the turning of the wheel of the year, for it is now September, and once we get to these Ember Months, which is what I like to call these last few months of the year, since they all end with -ember, save for October (and even October ends in something much like -ember)… well, once we get to these Ember Months, there is no denying that summer’s days are few indeed and autumn will soon be made welcome: welcome or welcome not.

In the Swiss Alps, the cows who wear such distinctive sounding bells around their necks have been up in the mountain meadows all summer long, but come the Feast of the Nativity of Mary on the 8th of this month, they will begin their journey down to the valleys in a centuries-old cattle drive known as the Almabtrieb. The feast day, also called Our Lady of the Grape Harvest, for vintners are now beginning to harvest grapes and make wine, is also known as Drive Down Day, and the driving down is done with great ceremony as the cows are decorated with flowers and greenery and beautifully woven textiles and yes, there is a symphony of bells as they walk and lumber their way alongside their humans down the roads, down to their winter quarters in the farms and villages of the valleys.

Seth and I were in the Swiss Alps in 2019. Not for Drive Down Day––we were passing through in July, in the Alpine grass-grazing season of high summer, on our way from Austria to Lake Como in Italy. Seth was at the wheel and at one point he made a right turn off the main road and me, I thought we were stopping for ice cream, but no, he kept driving into the woods and suddenly we were ascending up and up and there we were, driving along a switchback two-lane road up into the mountains. We were on the Splügenpass. (That’s what it’s called on the German speaking side of Switzerland, and as you descend down toward the Italian speaking side, it’s called the Passo del Spluga.) I had no idea this would be happening, and instead of ice cream, I got to enjoy the most spectacular vistas. Every now and then, we had to pull over and stop and just take it all in. And what enchanted me most was the sound of bells. Each bell came from a single cow, grazing the green mountain meadow grass. A beautiful sound in complete harmony with the mountain we stood upon. I could listen to Swiss cows grazing all day long and never grow tired of it.

All this to say: Now it is September, and here is your Convivio Book of Days calendar for the month. It is, as usual, a printable PDF that you may print out and pin to your bulletin board or stick to your refrigerator or prop up on your desk, or just keep it handy digitally. It’s a fine companion to this blog and will give you more holidays than I will have time to write about… but even if I don’t write about them, you might find something about each of them if you do a search for each particular day on the blog page. Cover star this month: one of those lovely cows, dressed to the nines, at rest in a grassy field on Drive Down Day. Aside from Almabtrieb beginning on the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, it’s also the month of several important holidays in the Jewish calendar, and of Johnny Appleseed’s birthday (his 249th!), as well as Letterpress Appreciation Day on 9/18 and, of course, the autumnal equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere. CLICK HERE for the calendar.

COME SEE US!
Thanks to all who came to shop at the Wayzgoose last Sunday at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Now, pop-up market season is beginning in earnest! Here are a few of the markets we plan to attend in the coming months:

OKTOBERFEST MIAMI at the German American Social Club west of Miami. Two weekends: Friday October 13 through Sunday October 15 and then again the following weekend: Friday October 20 through Sunday October 22.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS LAKE WORTH BEACH at our hometown community art center, Hatch 1121, just west of the tracks between Lucerne Avenue and Lake Avenue (just west of City Hall). Saturday October 28 from 3 to 9 PM.

FLORIDA DAY OF THE DEAD in Downtown Fort Lauderdale on Saturday November 4. The Convivio Bookworks tent is usually at the gathering point for the procession, which is Huzienga Plaza (or Bubier Park), 32 East Las Olas Boulevard. Details still to come, but we are usually there from about 3:00 until the procession leaves to cross the New River.

You may also expect to find us at the German American Social Club’s Christmas Market in Miami on Saturday December 2, the Sankta Lucia Julmarknad in Boca Raton also on Saturday December 2, and the American German Club in suburban Lake Worth for their Krampusnacht celebration on Friday night, December 8, followed by their Christkindlmarkt on Saturday & Sunday, December 9 & 10…. and perhaps more than this.

Image: A cow dressed up for Almabtrieb, photographed by Evelyscher, 2014. [Creative Commons] via Wikimedia Commons.

Aug 24 2023

6 Comments

Bartlemas, St. Bartholomew's Day, Wayzgoose

Bartlemas Wayzgoose: First Shift toward Fall

If you are longing for cooler weather, here’s a celebration you’ll be pleased about: It’s Bartlemas today, St. Bartholomew’s Day, and his feast day is one that provides a nod of acknowledgment to the subtly shifting wheel of the year and, in particular, of summer beginning to yield to autumn. St. Bartholomew also happens to be a fellow of high importance to book artists like myself: he has his hands in all the major aspects of the Book Arts, these being hand papermaking, letterpress printing, and bookbinding. And it is through these crafts that St. Bart brings his reminder of summer’s waning. If it sounds like the makings of a good story, I’d say you’re right, and how I love a good story! Let’s delve into it, shall we? (I also have an invitation for the locals to an actual St. Bartholomew’s Day Wayzgoose (just a few days after his feast day) at the end, so do read on.)

First of all, St. Bartholomew is one of the patron saints of bookbinders. Not much is known about St. Bartholomew himself. He was one of the Twelve Disciples. He is thought to have traveled to India, but tradition says that he met his end in Armenia in the first century. His martyrdom was a gruesome one––one that by association made St. Bartholomew a patron saint of butchers (a common trade amongst my paternal ancestors) and of tanners and of bookbinders, who very often bind books in leather. I’ll leave the method of his martyrdom, based on those associations, to your imagination, but early bookbinders found it a worthy connexion, hence his patronage of their craft.

And then there is the connexion to papermaking, and for this, we need to go back to the days before glazed glass windows. Back then it was only the wealthiest people who could afford glass windows, while the rest of us, and I’m sure my ancestors are firmly planted in this group, simply had openings in the walls and shutters, perhaps, so that all summer long the shutters would be open, letting in the cool nighttime breezes. As we approach the end of August, though, you’d certainly be thinking about preparing for the chillier days to come in fall and winter, and it was the local papermakers who came to your rescue: they began making special waxed paper this time of year and it was this paper, heavily infused with beeswax, that you would install inside your shutters, to help keep the elements out and the warmth in, and the day to do this task was traditionally today: Bartlemas. Waxed paper windows: they didn’t offer much in terms of warmth, but certainly they were a better alternative than nothing at all. Once this St. Bartholomew’s window paper was made, the papermakers went back to making paper for the printers, clearing out the vats and recharging them with new pulp made from rags that had been retting all summer long.

And now for those printers: It’s the printers who really made a big deal of Bartlemas, especially in England, for it became a day of great celebration. (I might add: no surprise there. I’ve worked with hand papermakers, I’ve worked with bookbinders, and I’ve worked with letterpress printers, and it’s the printers who generally seem most ready to raise a glass with you.) For along with those waxed paper windows came the reality of less natural light. Suddenly it was time again to work by the light of candles and lanterns, and there was no more potent reminder, perhaps, that summer was waning and winter was on its way. And so, all good print shop proprietors would make a celebration of the day, and this celebration came to be known as a “Wayzgoose.” The reason for the name is, sadly, lost to time. But Randall Holme, in 1688, gave us this description of the Bartlemas Wayzgoose:

It is customary for all journeymen to make every year, new paper windows about Bartholomew-tide, at which time the master printer makes them a feast called a Wayzgoose, to which is invited the corrector, founder, smith, ink-maker, &c. who all open their purses and give to the workmen to spend in the tavern or ale-house after the feast. From which time they begin to work by candle light.

To be sure, there was a good quantity of ale consumed as part of the Wayzgoose. In some places, mead, the delightful intoxicating beverage made from honey, was the beverage of choice. Especially in Cornwall, where a Blessing of the Mead ceremony takes place even today at this time of year. Continuing the road of connexions, our friend St. Bartholomew is also a patron saint of beekeepers, and as we continue to gather our stores for the coming winter, it is traditional, too, to bring in the honey crop on his feast day.

My favorite bit of Bartlemas Wayzgoose lore is this: it was on August 27, 2010, that the Jerusalem Post reported that Johannes Gutenberg’s 42-Line Bible, the first book printed from moveable type, was completed on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1454. Some claim, too, that that first printed book explains why printing has a history of being called the Black Art and why we have personnel in print shops with names like Printer’s Devil. Here’s the story: Johannes Fust, Gutenberg’s business partner, took several of the printed bibles from Mainz, Germany, which is where Gutenberg had his shop, to France, where he sold them, without explaining how they were made. When it was discovered that the books were identical copies of each other, Fust was accused of witchcraft and was briefly imprisoned for that crime. This story always fascinates me!

Prior to the printing press, we mostly got our news through rumors: travelers bringing tales from far off places, neighbors discussing things, embellishing where they saw fit. It was the printing press, though, that ushered in an age of knowledge and literacy and enlightenment, kicking off what came to be called in European history the Renaissance. In the last few decades, we’ve moved beyond the printing press in terms of the dissemination of information and well… progress brings its own set of problems. Now we spread rumors through social media––especially people who hold positions of power––and trusted news sources are overridden, or deemed “fake,” and we find ourselves, nearly 570 years post-Gutenberg, no wiser than Johannes Fust’s accusers.

One thing is certain: if you are a book artist or if you are a book enthusiast, St. Bartholomew’s Day is a very auspicious day for you. For this Bartlemas Wayzgoose, then, certainly we have cause to celebrate books and the people who make them: the papermakers, the printers, the bookbinders, the book artists. This Bartlemas, let us raise our glasses to St. Bart and to all of these good artisans… and to celebrate the printed word and make a pledge to value its importance to good living and to good citizenship. My suggested toast: “Free the books!” We don’t need Big Government––and our Florida government is as big as it gets, folks: school kids here can’t even have nicknames now without their parents’ written consent on file with the School Board (yes, this is state law)––deciding what we should or should not be reading. A free press and the freedom to read and discuss what we see fit: More than ever, the Black Art might just be more important than we think.

CELEBRATE A WAYZGOOSE WITH US!
If you’re here in South Florida, I hope this Sunday you’ll join us at our local Wayzgoose: It’s Florida Atlantic University’s LIBRARY WAYZGOOSE FESTIVAL in Boca Raton, happening from 12 noon to 6 PM at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts and throughout the 3rd Floor East of FAU’s Wimberly Library, which is the Jaffe’s home base. Free admission, free parking. There will be print demos all day with Ellen Knudson of Crooked Letter Press, live music all day (Abasi Hanif and Livin’ the Rhythm drum circle from 12:30 to 2, followed by bluegrass and folk with The Lubben Brothers from 2:30 to close), and the Wayzgoose Makers Marketplace (we’ll be there offering some of our wares–– we’re thinking a shift to autumn in our offerings might be nice, too). There will also be a free paper moon photo booth, a telegraph office, an Exquisite Corpse story project inside a quilted contemplation tent, and doughnuts and coffee and tea. No ale or mead, sorry. CLICK HERE for full details and come see us Sunday!

CELEBRATE OKTOBERFEST WITH US!
While we’re on the subject of shifting toward fall, our next big event currently on the books after this Sunday’s Wayzgoose is Oktoberfest! This year, we are participating in OKTOBERFEST MIAMI at one of our favorite places: the German American Social Club in Miami. Two full weekends of fun: October 13 through 15 and October 20 through 22. We were there last December for their Christmas Market and everyone was so nice to us and we had such a lovely time, we decided to spend Octoberfest with them, too. (The fact that this is an indoor/outdoor Oktoberfest and that our Convivio Bookworks boutique will be located indoors, in air conditioned comfort, is an added perk.) It’s the longest continuously-running Oktoberfest in the country and the largest German cultural event in South Florida, and we’ll be there with tons (perhaps literally, and if not, it’ll certainly feel like it) of our traditional German handicrafts and specialty foods, plus my mom’s Millie’s Tea Towels. You also happen to have just 7 days left to purchase tickets at the reduced pre-sale price: CLICK HERE for details! I think it’s going to be grand!

Happy Bartlemas, everyone!