August is a time of abundance of the summery sort: peaches and plums, raspberries and sweet corn. It is a month of small celebrations and the August edition of the Convivio Book of Days Calendar is here to help you mark them all. The month begins today with Lammas, the celebration of the first harvest, our escort toward autumn. It is, in Italy, the time of Ferragosto, when folks leave the cities and head for the sea. It’s a tradition that dates back to Ancient Rome, and it matters not how much it confounds tourists to Italy (good luck finding open restaurants should you visit at Ferragosto).
In Maine on the 6th, at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, it is their celebration of the Arrival of the Shakers in America: one of their most important celebrations. Seth and I were privileged to share in that celebration once when I was a print intern there with Brother Arnold Hadd. It was one of the most magical evenings I have known, sitting there in the 1794 Shaker Meetinghouse and joining them in reflection and song as the sun set over the village. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but I swear the Shakers through the ages were present in that room with us.
It is the time of Obon in Japan, the beautiful outdoor festival celebrating and honoring the dead with street fairs, bon odori dances, and at the festival’s conclusion, thousands and thousands of illuminated lanterns set on the water, each carrying the spirit of an ancestor off to the other shore until next year’s return.
And for us printers and book artists, it is the month we honor St. Bartholomew, a patron saint of bookbinders and book artists and it is in his honor that the traditional printers’ Wayzgoose celebration comes, marking the day each waning summer when printers typically began setting type by lamplight and candlelight once again, for sunlight was no longer enough. Lammas, at the start of the month, reminds us that summer is ripening all around us; the Wayzgoose brings a more concrete reminder of the approach of winter.
This month’s calendar is, as usual, a printable PDF document designed for standard US letter size paper, 8 1/2″ x 11″, easy to print, easy to pin to a bulletin board, a nice accompaniment to the Convivio Book of Days blog. Enjoy.
Summer is swiftly passing by.
I bought some hard peaches and they quickly turned soft and juicy.
Looking forward to seeing more book art. Not that easy to ripen ideas and turn them into art.