Monthly Archives: June 2018

Jun 22 2018
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Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Eve

Glad Midsommar

No matter what we humans do through our policies and laws and actions to each other and to our planet, still that planet keeps to its tilted-axis spinning and keeps its course around the sun. Yesterday morning at 6:07 Lake Worth time, which is currently Eastern Daylight Time, we reached the point where that tilt translated to the greatest amount of sunlight for the Northern Hemisphere. Longest day of the year, longest amount of sunlight: the Summer Solstice. It was the opposite situation in the Southern Hemisphere, which experienced its longest night. This vast celestial clockwork of tilted planet orbiting its star amongst the billions of heavenly bodies orbiting other heavenly bodies: this is what creates our seasons and our understanding of life as we know it on our small planet. Our lengthening and shortening days a manifest distillation of all the mechanics of the universe.

Bringing things back home, we find ourselves at an auspicious juncture of the year. Although we don’t do much here in the States to celebrate the Summer Solstice (we are not, by and large, a very celebratory people), in other places these are very important days, especially in Europe, and especially in Scandinavia, which is no wonder: there are places near the Arctic Circle that are bathed these days in almost continuous sunlight. The Church early on understood the significance of these days and their rich symbolism, and so the birth of John the Baptist was assigned to the Summer Solstice and the birth of Christ was assigned to the Winter Solstice. No one knows for sure when exactly these two historical figures were born, but placing the birth of Christ at the Winter Solstice is potent symbolism for the darkest nights of the year (a light in the darkness) and placing the birth of the prophet who would pave the way for that light at the Summer Solstice reaffirms that symbolism. Both events occur just a few days after their respective solstices, and here now comes St. John’s Day on the 24th of June, with a celebration that begins with St. John’s Eve on the 23rd. It is the mirror in the wheel of the year to Christmas. And just as the magic that accompanies Christmas is focused primarily on its Eve, so the same with St. John’s Day. It is long considered in popular folklore a portal night, a night when the pathways between worlds is most permeable. It is the night of William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for this, by traditional reckoning of time, is Old Midsummer, just as Christmas comes at Old Midwinter, for although the solstices bring the start of summer and winter by the almanac, our ancestors in their particular wisdom saw light increasing each day until the Summer Solstice and then decreasing afterward, as it does. To them, the solstice was the height of summer, and so they called it as they saw it: Midsummer. We are on the downward side of the solstice from here on out. Each day a little bit of sunlight will be shaved off our daily tally… by the equinox three months from now day and night will be balanced; three months later at the solstice of Midwinter, we will experience our darkest night. I contemplate all these things and find beauty in the symbolism as well as in the logic.

As for the portals: our mostly logical 21st century minds don’t subscribe much to magic, but magic can take many forms and can mean different things to different people. If you want to think of magic in terms of calling down joy to your life, in transforming the events of each day into positivity through an open and giving attitude, well, I am all for that magic. This is a powerful alchemy, a magic we all have access to. There are places, though, where folks insist they run into magic of a more ethereal kind, still today in this logical world we live in. Those in Ireland and Britain have their faeries; the Icelanders have their Huldufólk; the Finns, who are so prominent here, have their Haltijas. I feel as if I’ve caught some glimpses of this particular kind of magic in my day, perhaps through the view that is available through a sideways glance, which maybe is one available portal. And if a night like St. John’s Eve can make those portals more open, well, again… I am all for bridges and understanding. I’ve been on a mission these days to read books in my bookcase that I bought over the years and never opened, and one I am reading right now is about parallel universes. The book was printed in 1988 and so a lot has progressed since then in the realm of quantum physics, but as I read each chapter I am reminded of how vast and truly bizarre our universe is. At this point, I am pretty much open to anything.

 

Image: “Glad Midsommar” is Swedish for “Happy Midsummer.” That’s a card I designed and printed letterpress for some midsummer event or other. Nearby to us this St. John’s Eve we’ve our choice of a midsummer bonfire at the Finnish American Club west of town or a Midsommar celebration and Smörgåsbord at the Swedish coffee house in neighboring West Palm Beach. I’ll have spent the afternoon teaching the first of two Book Arts 101: Midsummer Night’s Dream workshops at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, so I will, most likely, be beat, and Seth will probably light a fire in the copper fire bowl in the backyard and we’ll sit there shirtless in the summer heat, with a glass of something, watching the flames as they illuminate the brief and breezy Atlantic night. And that’s not so bad, is it? Seats are still available in the workshops, by the way. You should join me.

 

Jun 19 2018
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Juneteenth

Emancipation Day

There was a movement a few years back to make Juneteenth a national holiday, but it hasn’t happened yet. It is a public holiday in Texas, where this holiday has its origins: the day was first celebrated there in 1865. The Civil War was over; Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomatox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865. But things were not resolved throughout the land that day. It took a long while for Union forces to bring all the states that had seceded back into the fold. In Texas, this process began more than two months later, on the 18th of June. Union troops arrived on Galveston Island and the next day, June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger read a proclamation from a Galveston balcony:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

This is what Juneteenth is all about. It became a celebration of hard-earned freedoms, and a celebration of African-American culture. A day for family and friends to gather. The road has not been an easy one, and so it is as well a day to reassure each other against adversity and challenge. The fact that the road is still being forged is all too evident these days, as we continue to work through our troubled history and find paths forward, paths toward complete equality.

One thing I love about Juneteenth is that I get to remember each year that the word is a portmanteau of the words June and nineteenth. The English major in me gets really excited about a holiday in which I get to use the word portmanteau. It’s such an exquisite word, no? The day is also known, perhaps more properly, as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day. The earliest Juneteenth celebrations brought folks out in their finest clothes for parades and barbecue and music, like the Emancipation Day Celebration Band in the photograph above, from a Juneteenth celebration in Texas in 1900. But when you get right down to it, Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom, pure and simple. Each year on Juneteenth I am reminded not just of the word portmanteau, but most especially that we should never become complacent about our liberties and our freedoms. We realize there are times in our history when this importance has particular resonance. Join me in celebrating today.

 

Image: “Emancipation Day Celebration Band, June 19, 1900, Texas USA” by Mrs. Charles Stephenson (Grace Murray). Photograph, 1900 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jun 17 2018
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Father's Day, Transitions

Monte. John Monte.

I couldn’t tell you why, but my dad had a pseudonym that he used for things like dinner reservations or those occasions when you’d get to a restaurant and have to wait for a table. “It’ll be about 20 minutes. Name please?” “Monte,” he’d say, sometimes adding on, “John Monte.” Where the name came from I have no idea, and why he needed it is anyone’s guess, too. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that “Cutrone” is sometimes not an easy name for folks to spell here in the States, so that might be the reason, or it may have had something to do with a calculated disassociation from a more infamous John Cutrone, a Mafioso in Brooklyn who met his untimely end in 1976. Whatever the reason, like an actor or sports star attempting to throw off the paparazzi so he could just have a quiet meal, it was accepted fact that when we went to a restaurant, my dad, the auto mechanic from Valley Stream, was John Monte.

I think about that sometimes when I make dinner reservations or call in to order a pizza. I half expect the name “Monte” to come out of my mouth someday, as I become more and more like my dad as the years pass. A good example: telephones. I hate calling people on the phone and I greet incoming calls with suspicion. This was my dad, too. To this day, my mom calls people up, just to chat. Dad, on the other hand, would announce whenever the phone would ring, “I’m not home.” Back then phones had no caller ID; they just rang and you picked up the receiver and said hello and if it was you who picked up the phone and if the person at the other end of the phone line asked for Mr. Cutrone or for your dad and if you caved, if you said, “Hold on a minute,” and motioned to him, Dad would glare at you and then after he got off the phone he’d give you hell. No one ever just called to chat with Dad; they called because they wanted him to help them do something, like fix a roof or move a wall. It’s no wonder he disliked the phone.

Dad worked up until he was almost 90. We worked at the same university, and sometimes I’d call his extension, usually because I needed something, and sometimes just to say hello. I’d dial 7-2295, and if he didn’t pick up in two rings, I knew he wasn’t at his desk. But when he did pick up, he’d answer with a somewhat singsongy hello, where the first syllable went up as the second syllable went lower. And then I’d say hello, and then he’d say what he always said when we were at work: “Hi guy.” He never said this at home, just at work. It’s what he said to all the guys who worked with him, and at work, I was just one of the guys. The guys who worked with him thought he was in his 60s, maybe 70s. He certainly did not look like he was 89. It was probably a decade or two that Dad would tell his fellow workers, if they asked how old he was, that he was 65. Sometimes that’s just how Dad was. He’d tell you what he thought you wanted to hear. That he was 65. That he felt fine. That his name was John Monte.

It’s our second Father’s Day without him. Days like Father’s Day are never easy when your dad is no longer here to wish a happy Father’s Day to. But we’ll gather all the same, my mom and my sister and Seth and me, and we will eat together. At the table, I will sit in Dad’s seat, because this is what I do now. I’ve done it since the day he died, and it felt odd then, and sometimes still does, but I know I am meant to sit there, and that I am meant to remind everyone that whenever we wished Dad a happy Father’s Day he’d always reply, “You mean Jack Ass Day,” and we will laugh. This year will be not as bad as the year before. Each year, some measure of sadness is replaced by a greater measure of… not sadness.

In Italy, Father’s Day is celebrated on the 19th of March: St. Joseph’s Day, and there is something particularly beautiful about that, as we celebrate a saint who cared for his family, protected them, provided for them, taught his son good, practical things. It is a perfectly logical day to celebrate all fathers, those we were given and those we have chosen. It certainly was the model that my dad followed. Perhaps if we celebrated on that day, too, when we wished Dad a happy Father’s Day, he would have simply said, “Thanks.”

That’s my dad and me at the Photobooth at Nunley’s Amusement Park in Baldwin, New York, probably about 1967 or 1968.

 

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