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.

 

Feb 22 2022
Concordia, Copperman's Day

Cast Sorrow Away

It’s the 22nd of February, and in Ancient Rome, this day would bring each year the Feast of Concordia: a feast of goodwill and harmony. It is perhaps a sign of our times (or of our natures) that the word concord does not get used very much these days, and even accord is a word we hear rarely; yet we are all too familiar with the word discord. Concord is agreement, harmony, unanimity… and discord? Well, we all know about that.

The concept behind Concordia is simple: gather family and friends for a meal and at that meal, settle all disputes. It is a day to make amends for wrongs done, a day to reconcile differences. To put discord to rest and to nurture concord. To do this over bread and wine is a simple, humble act.

If there is discord in your life, perhaps this is the ritual needed to turn that into concord, to activate peace and harmony. To be sure, the concord involves a willingness from both parties, and someone, of course, must have the courage to take the first step. But being willing to let go of bitterness and to activate concord is a dramatic change, and even if you find the other party unwilling, you have given yourself a great gift in releasing the power the discord has over you. That is the gift of this day, the gift of Concordia. And so we wish you harmony and goodwill. And perhaps it is auspicious that our annual Copperman’s Day print is finally ready, for the message, I think, has some relation to all this: there is no joy in discord, but there is plenty of sorrow to be found there. This year’s Copperman’s Day message is simple: Set sorrows aside. The text is from a song recorded by the Boston Camerata for their collection, An American Christmas, which was in heavy rotation here at Convivio Bookworks while this letterpress project was in the works. The song, called “A Virgin Unspotted,” is found in Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1820). There are two repeating, alternating choruses:

Then let us be merry, cast sorrow away:
Our Saviour Christ Jesus was born on this day.

Aye and therefore be merry, set sorrows aside:
Christ Jesus our Saviour was born on this ‘tide.

Though rooted in a religious text and song, our Copperman’s Day print message is truly universal and non-denominational. As for Copperman’s Day: it is an old Dutch printer’s holiday, falling on the First Monday after Epiphany each January. It was traditional on this day for printers’ apprentices in Holland to receive the day off to work on their own projects––usually small printed keepsakes that they’d sell for a copper. And though we began our print on Copperman’s Day, I didn’t finish the printing until a week or so ago, and the cutting was just done on Friday. We are belated for almost everything these days.

If you sent us a Christmas card, this print will soon be on its way to you in exchange. And if you’d like to purchase some of these or any of our other Copperman’s Day prints that we’ve made through the years, click here to shop. This is the seventh in almost as many years (I couldn’t quite muster the energy to create one in 2018 and 2019). These miniprints happen to be standard postcard size. Each is printed by hand from historic wood and metal types in multiple, separate print runs on the Vandercook 4 printing press in our Lake Worth studio on recycled French Speckletone papers.

SPECIAL DEAL! Order 3 or more of our mini prints (Copperman’s Day prints, B Mine Valentines, and our famous Keep Lake Worth Quirky prints) and use the code COPPERMAN when you check out; we’ll take $5 off your domestic order to help balance out our flat rate shipping charge of $9.50. Of course, you can spend $60 or more in our shop and earn free shipping, too! Click here to shop Copperman’s Day… and here’s to concord and to casting sorrow away!

 

 

Feb 14 2022
2 Comments
Carnevale, Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day

It’s Only a Paper Moon

I’ve recently become a bit enamored with old paper moon photographs: the ones that were taken at state and county fairs and at resorts and beach towns. Like the one above: that’s my Aunt Anne as a little girl, posing with the neighbor, who was more like a second mother than a neighbor. So much so, in fact, that both my mom and my aunt called her “Mamam,” just like Mama but with an extra M. And there they are, Mamam and Annie, a snapshot caught in time at the paper moon photo set at Coney Island.

I look at pictures like this and wonder what happened before and after this one moment was captured. They’re different than the thousands of digital photos we take with our phones nowadays and never think twice about. Someone––Mamam, probably––said, “C’mon, Annie, let’s take a picture!” She would have said it in Italian, and they went in and paid the photographer’s assistant and then they sat down at that paper moon set and sat still and perhaps the photographer’s flash exploded just as the camera’s shutter opened for a split second and there is that precise moment in time, set on paper. It astonishes me. And I get to see Mamam, whom I’ve heard countless stories about but who died when I was only 5 years old, and I get to see a version of my dear aunt that I never knew: the Annie that was a child.

It’s Valentine’s Day today and those paper moon shots have particular resonance. I look at the only one we have in our family history (this one), and I look at the ones I see online, too, and I wonder the very same thing about each picture, the same thing I wonder about the one of Mamam and Aunt Anne. With the folks I don’t know, I wonder, too, about the context, and about the relationships. Were the two dating? Did they get married and have kids and live to be a hundred years old? If it’s a paper moon photo of two men, or of two women, I wonder were they just friends? Were they in love? Was the photo a secret token of love that couldn’t be expressed openly? Each year on the Convivio Book of Days Calendar for February we say the same thing for Valentine’s Day: Where love takes root, let it grow. Whatever Valentine’s Day means for you: the love of friends and family, the love of a special someone… I wish that for you.

This year, Valentine’s Day is accompanied by the Carnevale Season, which began this past weekend in Venice and in other places that celebrate these days before the start of Lent. In Venice it is often a matter of masks and Baroque high fashion, and it will all lead up to its culmination on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins. The day is best known as Mardi Gras, celebrated in New Orleans and Mobile and Key West and other celebratory places. This year, Mardi Gras arrives on the First of March. On the Second, Lent will begin and a more somber, reflective period of 40 days will take the place of the revelry of Carnevale. But for now… we celebrate. It just happens to be the conclusion of the Chinese Lunar New Year festival, too: that comes tomorrow with Lantern Festival: the first full moon to follow the beginning of the lunar new year celebration.

Let’s wrap up with more paper moon photographs. Clicking on any photograph in this blog will make it larger so you can see it better, so feel free to click away. Thank you to all who sent paper moon photos in! I’m sorry, I didn’t get to use everyone’s, but I really appreciate all that were sent. Cross my heart. Happy Valentine’s Day.

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