Book of Days | from convivio bookworks

Sep 01 2025

Luminous Goose Berries, or Your September Book of Days

Labor Day comes early this year, as early as it can, and with it comes September, which has a different resonance as it falls from the tongue, different from July or August. It is not a word of summer, September: it is a word of transition, a word tinged with gold and brown, a word of fall. Indeed, autumn arrives this month, by the almanac. The year is waning.

To mark the shift, here is your Convivio Book of Days calendar for September. It’s a printable PDF, as usual, and this month, we’re featuring luminous goose berries. When I was a boy, I’d pick goose berries at one of the neighbor’s houses, the Gruenthallers, where they grew as a sort of hedge between their house and their neighbor next door. I’d never had goose berries before, nor since, but if memory serves well, I’m pretty sure they were delicious.

It is not goose berries but grapes that we’ll celebrate on the 8th of September for the Nativity of Mary, only because she is known at this time of year as Our Lady of the Grape Harvest in the places where vintners now begin their wine making. It’s not unusual to find bunches of grapes placed in the hands of statues of Mary on this day. And it is the apple that will take center stage this month, dipped in honey for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year that begins this year on the same night as the autumnal equinox (September 22). It’s also the birthday of John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, on the 26th: another auspicious day for eating apples.

It is the humble blackberry, however, that gets the best story of the month. It is traditional to eat blackberries on Michaelmas, the 29th of September… and also ill-advised to eat them after this day. It was St. Michael the Archangel who battled Satan and in the battle, Satan fell to Earth and landed in a bramble patch. Have you ever been in a bramble patch? I have. A bramble patch would make even the pope curse and swear and this is exactly what Satan did, and legend has it that he returns each year on Michaelmas to curse and spit upon the brambles… which is why some people will not eat a blackberry after Michaelmas. They are taking no chances.

At the shop this month we have the first of our Convivio Cookery workshops, which I am so excited about. For the first one, I’ll be teaching you how to make one of my very favorite things to eat: Mambricoli, a most unusual pasta that is specific to my maternal grandparents’ region of Italy, la provincia di Foggia. You’ve probably never tasted anything like mambricoli, and they are a delight to make. If you’re local, you should come! CLICK HERE for details and registration.

We’re open next on Saturday September 6 from 11 to 4. (That’s this coming Saturday, when we are opening because our friend Hazel is coming in from San Antonio to visit the shop, and if Hazel’s coming, well, you should, too.) After that, you can expect a few Boo Bazaar events where we’ll turn our attention to pumpkins and Hallowe’en, and then, believe it or not… we’ll be setting up our pop-up market at the German American Social Club in Miami for two weekends of Oktoberfest Miami plus the German International Parents’ Association (GIPA) Oktoberfest before that on October 4.

We’ve also got a Gift Basket Making workshop on Saturday October 4 at the shop, and another Convivio Cookery workshop in November where my whole family will teach you how to make Cavatelli, another traditional Italian pasta (one much more well known than mambricoli). By then, even the weather here in this strange green land will be cooler, and our transition from summer to fall will feel more like reality, and less like a fairytale.

Image: “Gooseberries on a Table” by Adriaen Coorte. Oil on paper, mounted on wood, 1701 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Aug 01 2025

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Book of Days Calendar, Lammas

Late Summer, or Your August Book of Days

And now it is August. And with its first day comes Lammas, an old agrarian holiday meant to mark the subtle transition as summer begins its inevitable shift toward autumn. It is a cross-quarter day, meaning it marks a halfway point (roughly) betwixt a solstice and an equinox, and there are four of them each year. Lammas is the third. We are well past the halfway point of the year now, and the long days surrounding the Midsummer solstice in June are rapidly heading toward the balance of day and night we’ll achieve in seven weeks’ time, at the next equinox.

The Celtic name for the day is Lughnasadh. But the English name, Lammas, is essentially derived from “Loaf Mass,” for this was the time of the first grain harvest of the year, and it was and is customary to bake a fresh loaf of bread today (preferably with that newly harvested grain).

Here in Lake Worth, it is the height of our summer stormy season, though this year things have been a bit dry for us. Still, we have had several dramatic days where the afternoon sky turns dark and stormy, and this is the theme for your August Book of Days calendar. It is, as usual, a printable PDF and a fine companion to this blog.

Summer lasts long here, so we’ve begun conjuring ideas of cooler days by scheduling our next open shop event: an Autumn Preview on the weekend of August 9 & 10, where we’ll be showing off all the great new items arriving for fall and for the spooky season. (We’ve got new arrivals daily right now, in the shop and at the online shop!)

Two weeks later, towards the end of the month, comes St. Bartholomew’s Day and our Second Annual Bartlemas Wayzgoose! We’ll have a commemorative print on our 1950s Nolan Tabletop Press and you’ll be the printer, and we’ll be serving homemade pizzelle (naturally, as they are made in a press). The Bartlemas Wayzgoose is a big deal for hand papermakers and letterpress printers and bookbinders, too… and I’ll gladly tell you the story of why while you’re enjoying your pizzelle and admiring your handmade Wayzgoose print.

Our two newest workshops at the shop are now posted to the website, too, and they are perhaps a natural extension of this blog: We’ll be teaching you how to make two wonderful traditional pastas. One of them has its origins in my maternal grandparents’ region of Italy. We’re so excited to offer these classes for you. You’ll make your pasta in-house with us and then take the fruits of your labor home to serve for supper that night.

Happy August. Happy Lammas.

Image: “Houses, Clouds, Late Summer” by József Rippl-Rónai. Pastel on paper, circa late nineteenth century to early twentieth century [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Jul 16 2025

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Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Buon Onomastico to Mom and All the Carmelas

If there are Carmelas in your life––and there may be even if you don’t realize it––today is their name day, their Onomastico, as we say in Italian, for July 16 brings the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It’s my mom’s name day today. She was named Carmela, after her grandmother, but we only hear her answer to that at the dentist’s office or doctor’s office. Usually she goes by Millie, and when I say you may not even realize you have a Carmela in your life, this is why: there are so many variants of the name. You might have a Millie, like I do, or you might have a Cammie or a Camille. My dad would sometimes call Mom “Mildred,” which was usually as a joke, but then (go figure) he actually put “Mildred” on his retirement plan papers at work.

Of course you know Mom from Millie’s Tea Towels, her hand-embroidered tea towels that we sell here at the shop. That’s the name she’s gone by all her life, 98 years now. But she is named for her grandmother, Maria Carmela Giuseppa Esposito, who in turn was named for her grandmother, who was not a blood relative, but simply the kind woman who, in 1834, found and adopted an abandoned infant boy. That Maria Carmela Esposito raised the boy as her own, and called him Moses, for she found him in a basket, covered in leaves and rags, just as the Moses in the Old Testament was found in a basket by Pharaoh’s daughter. That Moses is my grandfather’s grandfather, and these are the stories I find so fascinating in family history. The adoption papers filed with the Comune di Lucera, our ancestral city in Apulia, even mention the leaves and rags. Life was slower in 1834; there was time, I imagine, to note such poetic details on official documents.

As for Mom, what she remembers most about her name day is the feast in her old Brooklyn neighborhood: a feast that went on for many days each mid-July in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and still does to this day. Sausage & pepper sandwiches, fried zeppole, elaborate towers carried on the shoulders of strong men… mostly Mom remembers admiring the cute boys in the bands who played the old Italian songs.

Your Onomastico is today, then, too, if you are a Carmela or any of its variants. Each day brings a different Onomastico. But if your name is Hunter, or Chase, or Parker, or Jayden… well, I think you’re out of luck. My Onomastico was just a few weeks ago, at Midsummer: St. John’s Day on June 24. Mom told me that day that she had to pull my earlobes. She didn’t remember why. Do any of you know why? If so, let me know. I’ll pass the information along to Mom… right after I pull her ears.

COME SEE US AT THE SHOP!
We’ve got Kim Spivey teaching a new session of Collagraph Printmaking on Sunday July 27. Kim’s a great teacher and this is a wonderful class… it’s the second time she’s teaching it for us this year. The workshop would make a wonderful Onomastico present (or fun thing to do for any reason) for yourself and your friends and family. Come learn something new!

Image: a Happy Name Day postcard from Italy, circa 1940s.

Tagged Name Day