Mar 21 2022
1 Comment
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.

 

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!

 

 

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