Book of Days | from convivio bookworks

Apr 30 2025

Sumer is Icumen In

We were in Maine one month ago, Seth and me and our niece, and during our visit we had not one but two big snowstorms. There’s a very high likelihood that we were the only three people in the State of Maine at the time who were excited about the snowfall. We went sledding, snowmen were built, there were snowball fights, and there was a great deal of cheerfulness and laughter coming from the three visitors from Florida, whilst everyone we ran into there was thoroughly sick of winter. Spring, however, comes slowly to the Pine Tree State. Surely it has arrived there by now. Let’s hope so, anyway, for here we are now at April’s ending and with its close, the start of May. Tonight manifests another of the old stories –– the stories we tell each other year after year, and which never grow old, for the wheel of the year turns and each spoke is new and yet is the old familiar, too. And so here is tonight’s story: it is Walpurgis Night, the Eve of May. And with it, we reach the first step toward proper summer: tonight, we spring into summer.

The night is named for St. Walpurga, a saint who, in medieval times, had not one but two (like our Maine snowfalls in March) feast days each year: February 25, which is the day she left this earthly life, and the First of May, which was the date of her canonization in the 9th century. Her May feast day has actually not been celebrated in the Church for centuries now; nonetheless, St. Walpurga is forever tied to the transition from spring to summer, and we are the richer for it, for still we get to wish each other a Happy Walpurgis Night as we welcome May, and why would we deprive ourselves of saying words filled with such wonder? This night is particularly loved in Sweden, Finland, and Bavaria. In Sweden, this is a night for bonfires, for gravlax and sparkling wine outdoors under the stars. In many places, historically, this was a night, especially for the young and hearty, to stay out til dawn as winter becomes but a memory and as we enter into the gentler time of year.

In the Celtic tradition, it is Beltane. It is the cross quarter day that helps us spring to summer here in the Northern Hemisphere. In the wheel of the year, Beltane is the direct opposite spoke of the cross quarter day that comes as we fall into winter, which is Samhain, or Halloween. The fall into winter brings descent, life burrowing down beneath the earth, while the spring into summer brings ascent, life springing forth from the earth. It is an aspect of the everlasting mysteries of the planet and its place in the universe: we know these things so well, for we witness them each year with the planet’s revolution around the sun, and yet how these things have all come to pass still has the power to leave us breathless. (Again, the old stories.) The very names given to these days are shrouded in mystery, too, for their pronunciations are, for most of us, not of our tongue, and what seems apparent is not: Beltane is pronounced bowl-tan-a; Samhain is pronounced sah-win. Like the names of angels in ancient tongues, to speak the names connects us to a long forgotten past whose embers smolder still in the bonfires we light in the countryside, in the fire bowls we light in our yards, and even in the candles we illuminate in our homes.

I’ll be back tomorrow with your Convivio Book of Days calendar for May. For tonight, though, we wish you a good and warm Walpurgis Night. Welcome May! “Sumer is Icumen In,” as the medieval English carol goes. The days are getting longer and longer and lighter and lighter. There is no snow in the forecast.

Image: Seth recently purchased a couple of handmade ceramic tiles from artist Paul Bommer in the United Kingdom, whose work we’ve admired for a very long time. This tile is sitting in the corner cupboard in the kitchen tonight for Walpurgis Night and the Eve of May. You can find Paul’s more recent work (which is a bit more irreverent than his work in the 2012 link above) at Paul’s Instagram page: @paulbommer. (Seth also bought the tile of the bearded swimming man.)

COME SEE US AT THE SHOP!
We’re open for Mother’s Day Shopping (not to mention gifts for dads and grads, too) on Saturday May 3 from 11 to 4, and on Sunday May 4 from 11 to 3, and again on Saturday May 10 from 11 to 4. We’ve got two creative workshops coming up, too (which require registration in advance): I’ll be teaching Pure Bookbinding on Sunday May 4 (only two seats remain), and Kim Spivey will be teaching a new session of Collagraph Printmaking on Sunday July 27.

Apr 21 2025

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San Jacinto's Day

Eggnog for San Jacinto’s Day

I hope you had a lovely Easter. It’s now Eastertide and it’s Easter Monday today, a national holiday in many countries (not here in the States) and it’s San Jacinto’s Day: a state holiday in Texas (a fact somewhat well known, especially in Texas), and an excellent day to enjoy eggnog (a fact much lesser known, even in Texas). A few years ago, I took an online month-long course in Food Writing with author Nicholas Gill. My favorite of the pieces I wrote for the class was this reverie on eggnog (and zabaglione) that I wrote just before San Jacinto’s Day, the 21st of April. I really don’t think I can write anything better for San Jacinto’s Day, so I am reprinting it here this year. Enjoy!

As for the image above: Seth and I recently drove past a gas station on Lake Worth Road, west of town, with a street sign featuring eggnog (you may even get it at the drive-thru). The proprietor, I figure, is either excited for San Jacinto’s Day, or too lazy to have changed the sign since last Christmas. In my head, of course, it’s the former and not the latter. –– John

We Italians have a delicious dessert (imagine that!) that we enjoy throughout the year and which tastes for all the world like the best eggnog you’ve ever had. You may have had it, as it is nothing terribly unusual; we call it zabaglione. At its most traditional, it’s a custard, but set foot in any good gelato shop on a hot summer day and you’re likely to find zabaglione there, too, as a gelato flavor. And like any great centuries-old dessert, it has its origin story. Actually, origin stories. There are many. But the one I like best comes from the region of Emilia-Romagna, where in the late 1400s, the mercenary Condottiere Giovanni Baglione, after a day of pillaging the countryside, is said to have sent his troops foraging for ingredients for a meal. Their takings were meager: they came back with eggs, honey, white wine, and some spices. We might assume that the commander then prepared an egg white frittata for his troops, for he saved the honey, the wine, and the yolks of the eggs to prepare dessert, which he whipped up––perhaps with a fork, perhaps with his saber––and flavored with nutmeg, et voilà: the now famous custard was born. His men were so elated with the result, they named it after their condottiere: Zabaglione!

The custard itself is delicious, and the story: not half bad. Whether it is true or just the stuff of legend, I cannot tell you. Be that as it may, I think of zabaglione each year around the 21st of April, for it is San Jacinto’s Day, and David Wondrich, in his spirited book Imbibe!, tells us a story for the day that involves a recipe with similar flavors but featuring another commander in a military adventure on a different continent. The scene is Mexico, or possibly Texas, or maybe it’s no matter for Texas was once part of Mexico so let’s just call it Mexico, shall we?

The story revolves around eggnog, the old time Christmas drink that became such a distinct part of American Christmas culinary tradition once the recipe reached this side of the Atlantic from Britain. The rich concoction of eggs beaten to a froth with sugar, then added to milk and spirits and topped with freshly-ground nutmeg, was first mentioned in a Philadelphia newspaper in 1788. That’s a solid three hundred years after our Condottiere’s supposed invention of zabaglione, but certainly folks were drinking eggnog well ahead of its debut newspaper mention. Wondrich’s tale revolves around what is perhaps the most famous non-Yuletide celebration involving eggnog (and this does not necessarily mean you know about it): it was on San Jacinto’s Day, 1843.

So, we remember the Alamo, of course, and in Texas they remember the Battle of San Jacinto, which took place a few months later on San Jacinto’s Day, April 21, 1836: It was the decisive 18-minute battle that won independence from Mexico for the Republic of Texas (so, perhaps, let’s go back to calling it Texas). But tensions on the border remained high between Texas and Mexico, exasperated by numerous Mexican raids over the years on Texian territory. The response by the fledgling republic, six years later in November of 1842, was the ill-fated Mier Expedition, an invasion of Mexico by Texian troops. Things for the Texians did not go very well, and about 160 soldiers of the Army of the Texas Republic quickly found themselves held prisoners of war at the Fortaleza de San Carlos by the Mexican General Santa Ana (also of Alamo fame).

They say everyone’s got their price… and the following April, to mark the seventh anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, the Texian prisoners were successful in bribing their Mexican captors into smuggling in for them all the necessary fixings for a celebratory eggnog. The milk came not from a cow but from a donkey (leche de burra), and the spirits were not rum or whisky or brandy but mezcal. Then, as now, the best of us work with what we’ve got.

Texian General Thomas Green, recollecting the event two years later in his Journal of the Texian Expedition Against Mier, writes that with thanks to their Mexican collaborators, his men were able to get their hands on “seven gallons of vino mascal, and as many of ass’s milk, thirty dozen eggs, [and] a large loaf of sugar.” Add to that list an assortment of accoutrements smuggled in from the prison kitchen, with General Green himself supervising the production while three of his officers beat the eggs and another pounded the sugar, as another of his men stood by singing old songs like “Long, Long Ago” and “The Soldier’s Tear.” The resulting beverage, Green writes, was “such egg-nog as never before was seen or drank under the nineteenth degree of north latitude.” Green’s men filled their cups, the mezcal warming their spirits as the leche de burra filled their bellies, and they sang more heartfelt songs that night. General Green makes special mention of the Thomas Moore song “Will You Come to the Bower?” –– perhaps the one most poignant as the men raised their cups and missed their Texas homeland and the wives that awaited their return.

Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you?
Our bed shall be roses all spangled with dew.
Will you, will you, will you, will you
Come to the bower?

There, under the bower, on roses you’ll lie,
With a blush on your cheek, but a smile in your eye.
Will you, will you, will you, will you
Smile, my beloved?

It was, we might add, nowhere near Christmas. And still to this day the 21st of April, San Jacinto’s Day, is a state holiday in Texas, though I suspect very few make eggnog to celebrate. Perhaps we should. I, for one, am all for more eggnog days in our wheel of the year, and a bit more zabaglione, too. A few more poignant songs to grip the heart? I am all for that, as well.

David Wondrich, for his part, offers the following recipe for a proper Texian eggnog for San Jacinto’s Day: he begins by shrinking the recipe down to one that starts with one bottle of good mezcal (rather than 7 gallons of the stuff). Then there are 3 cups of milk (cow’s milk will do), 10 eggs, and one cup of sugar. First, separate the eggs, beating the yolks with the sugar until creamy, then beating the whites separately until stiff peaks form. If you can, have someone nearby, singing a sad song (my addition). Stir the booze into the yolks; follow up by folding the whites into the mixture. Stir the milk in slowly, then chill for two or three hours to allow the flavors to meld.

COME SEE US AT THE SHOP!
Here’s a list of our upcoming events: Independent Bookstore Days on Saturday & Sunday, April 26 & 27, from 11 to 4 each day; Mother’s Day Shopping on Saturday May 3 from 11 to 4 and on Sunday May 4 from 11 to 3 and again on Saturday May 10 from 11 to 4; and creative workshops, too (which require registration in advance): I’ll be teaching Pure Bookbinding on Sunday May 4, and Kim Spivey will be teaching a new session (the April one sold out) of Collagraph Printmaking on Sunday July 27.

Apr 18 2025

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Easter Triduum, Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Maundy Thursday

Pilgrimage

We went to Holy Thursday Mass tonight, Seth and me and our niece. We went to the grand basilica on Palm Beach, a church that feels a bit like I imagine the Vatican might feel like. My niece and I both had the same thought at precisely the same moment: as the pipe organ belted out the Gloria, full choir in the loft behind us, the altar boys ringing the bells continuously for the duration of the triumphant hymn: We both stood there, singing and thinking, “This is not at all like the Shakers.”

We had brought the kid with us to Maine last month where she did, in fact, experience Shaker Sunday Meeting. It was the Third Sunday of Lent and the theme of the readings was suffering. But even with that drudgery, Meeting was lovely and beautiful in its simplicity. Everything about Shaker Meeting is beautiful that way. And everything about St. Edward’s Basilica is beautiful in the opposite way: in its richness and opulence. I love them both. It was a joy to be at Shaker Meeting that Third Sunday of Lent, and a joy to be at Holy Thursday Mass at St. Edward’s tonight.

St. Edward’s was the first stop on our annual nighttime Holy Thursday pilgrimage to three churches, a tradition my grandma taught me. We went to St. Ann’s next, the old church on the mainland, and then back across the lagoon to Bethesda by the Sea, but the Episcopalians let us down this year: the church was locked and there was no keeping watch there, no vigil. But we wandered the grounds, and we commiserated with other pilgrims in this world who, too, were trying all the doors to the church, only to find them locked, as we had, too. We’re counting the wandering around the grounds as a visit to the church all the same… and so we completed our pilgrimage. By the time we got home, it was well past 11: a night well spent with two of my favorite people.

Lest you get the wrong idea about me, you should know that church and Shaker Meetings are rare occasions for me. I pray to myself (and sometimes out loud, as I’m driving –– it helps cut down on my swearing) and I sing hymns and Shaker songs as I go about my day (because I like to sing and I like old songs like this). But my attendance at formal religious ceremonies is spotty, at best. I don’t necessarily want it to be so, but it is. And perhaps this is a great disservice to myself. Another thing that drifted through my head, through the readings and the hymns, the ones that dealt with love and respect and the dignity of the people around us, was the realization that the people running the country lately were most likely not at a Holy Thursday Mass tonight. I don’t see how they could be listening to the Gospel According to John –– where Jesus humbly washes the feet of his disciples, then asks them, Do you realize what I have done for you? –– or singing the same hymns we were singing at St. Edward’s –– the ones about compassion –– and still continue to act as they do. And I acknowledge that perhaps that is the old Democrat in me thinking, but gosh, I do have to believe that that is the human being in me thinking, sans political affiliation.

This Holy Thursday, this Good Friday, this Easter Triduum: may we ascend from darkness and suffering to light and compassion and greater understanding, and to integrity once more.

Visit our Instagram page (@conviviobookworks) for photos from our Holy Thursday pilgrimage. I’ll post them some time on Friday. Visit our shop in Lake Worth Beach this Saturday, from 11 to 4, for last minute Old World Easter shopping. And visit our shop the weekend after Easter for Independent Bookstore Days, April 26 & 27: We’ll be printing on our 1950s Nolan Press and I’ll teach you how to make a simple book, too.

Image at top: Ceilings and angel at St. Edward’s Basilica, Palm Beach.