Monthly Archives: September 2019

The Sweet Things

Two holidays come this 29th of September: It’s Michaelmas, when we celebrate Michael the Archangel, and later, with the setting sun, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, will begin. Blackberries are traditional to Michaelmas and apples and honey, of course, to Rosh Hashanah. The apples and honey are purely symbolic: eat these sweet things to help ensure a sweet year ahead. You might also eat challah bread and Teiglach: small balls of dough that are baked in honey and mixed with chopped roasted almonds and candied cherries. My family discovered them one September in a local Jewish bakery. We were mesmerized by the tin plates of Teiglach, piled high into a cone, wrapped in cellophane. They reminded us so much of the struffoli we make each Christmas. We bought a plate and took it home and the teiglach was so good, we went back the next day for another. Something about the nuts and the cherries and the honey make for a sublime combination of sweetness and substance and texture. Eventually, we began making our own. The photo above is of my mom’s and sister’s Teiglach. They are so good (and not bad at all for a couple of Italian American Catholics!).

Blackberries for Michaelmas comes not from symbolism but from story, and I do love good story-based foodways. It is the story of Satan, the fallen angel, battling Michael the Archangel, and it is essentially thus: Satan fell to Earth and landed in a bramble patch––a blackberry patch. I love blackberries, but I can tell you––from well remembered experience––that they are a fruit that will make you curse and swear as you harvest them. So many thorns. They lay claim to your clothes and wound you. Satan cursed the bramble patch he landed upon, and legend has it that he returns each year to curse and spit upon that same patch.

Roast goose for dinner is traditional for Michaelmas, and it is one of the first traditional nut-roasting nights of autumn. In Scotland, there are Struan Micheil, Michaelmas bannocks, somewhat like a scone but a flatbread, basically, cut into wedges, typically made from equal amounts of oats, barley, and rye, traditionally made without the use of metal: wooden fork, wooden or ceramic bowl, baking stone. And served, of course, with blackberries or blackberry jam.

The day belongs to St. Michael the Archangel, but traditions have arisen in various parts of the world that honor other angels this day, too. Some will honor Gabriel and Raphael along with Michael. Others will include Uriel, Raguel, Ramiel, and Sariel. This is something I’ve written about in the past about Michaelmas, but will say it again: I love these names, for the further down the roster we go, the more mysterious the names become and we cross a fascinating linguistic bridge to ancient tongues. The “-el” suffix of these angelic names is Sumerian in origin, signifying “brightness” or “shining,” names that in their true form would be Micha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, Uri-el, Ragu-el, Rami-el, Sari-el. The list continues: Camael, Jophiel, and Zadkiel; Anael, Simiel, and Oriphiel; Metatron, Israfil, and Malak al-Maut. Their etymology connects to the Akkadian ilu (radiant one), Babylonian ell (shining one), Old Welsch ellu (shining being), Old Irish aillil (shining), Anglo-Saxon aelf (radiant being), and English elf (shining being). Speak these names aloud; immediately we are transported to an ancient time, a time when angels were perhaps more commonly seen.

Are they still around? Many folks think so, and I am not one to doubt them. In a few days time, on the 2nd of October, we’ll celebrate another angelic day, one even older than Michaelmas and one much more personal: the Feast of the Guardian Angels. Its roots are in the Fourth Century, when believers began setting up altars in their homes each October in honor of their angelic protectors. But today, we enjoy the sweet things in life. L’shanah Tovah.

COME SEE US!
We begin popping up a lot throughout South Florida these last few months of the year. Here’s where you’ll find us these next few weeks. To be kept apprised, follow us on Instagram or Facebook: @conviviobookworks

FLORIDA DAY of the DEAD: OFRENDAS EXHIBITION OPENING
Sunday October 6 from 11 AM to 3 PM
History Fort Lauderdale (inside the historic New River Inn)
231 SW 2nd Ave, Fort Lauderdale
We’ll be there with a mini pop up of our traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods. My family is also building one of the ofrendas in the exhibition.

FALL NIGHT MARKET at SOCIAL HOUSE
Saturday October 19 from 4 to 8 PM
Social House
512 Lucerne Avenue, Lake Worth
Social House is always a favorite venue of ours, and its magic is especially potent at night! Not sure yet what we’ll be showing, but count on anything we bring to be handmade by traditional artisans.

AUTUMN MAKERS MARKETPLACE
Sunday October 20 from 10 AM to 4 PM
Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton
Live music, family fun, and lots of great local makers. We’ll be there with a big boutique of traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods, Shaker herbs & teas, Seth Thompson’s Royal River pottery, and maybe even a little advent calendar preview.

REAL MAIL FRIDAYS: HALLOWE’EN SOCIAL
Friday October 25 from 2 to 6 PM
Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries, Boca Raton
It’s a special edition of the Jaffe’s popular Real Mail Fridays letter writing socials, this one with an All Hallow’s Eve theme. Expect good old fashioned autumnal fun plus a mini Makers Marketplace. We’ll be there with a selection of our traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods.

DIA de LOS MUERTOS LAKE WORTH BEACH
Saturday November 2 from 3 to 9 PM
Hatch 1121
1121 Lucerne Avenue, Lake Worth
Lake Worth’s homegrown Day of the Dead festival. Find us in our usual spot out in the courtyard near the dancing and the mariachi!

FLORIDA DAY of the DEAD
Saturday November 2 from 3 to 8 PM
Huzienga Plaza
32 East Las Olas Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale
One of the nation’s largest Day of the Dead festivals; current plans have us there for the first portion of the event in the park on the New River where the Skeleton Processional begins. (The event continues on in one form or another all the way through to 4 AM!)

 

Balance, & the Ember Months

I go through all the months of the year, content enough and present and engaged, but once we reach September, I perk up a bit more and grow really excited. These are the months I’ve long called The Ember Months, for they end that way in English: September, of course, and November and December. October counts, too; it’s not quite an “-ember” but still concludes in “-ber” and that’s close enough for me. Anyway, October may just be my favorite month of them all. These are the months that bring ripening pumpkins and apples, chestnuts and pomegranates; the months that hold my favorite days: these are the months of autumn. And in these earliest dark night hours of the 23rd of September, at 3:50 AM Eastern Daylight Time, autumn officially arrives by the almanac, as our planet reaches its moment of equinox, bringing autumn to the Northern Hemisphere and spring to the Southern Hemisphere.

It is, as well, a time of balance, bringing pretty much equal lengths of day and night to the entire globe for a few days. These are auspicious days for someone like me, who strives for balance but can never quite attain it. My problems attaining balance are based, I’m sure, on an inherent flaw within me: a seeming inability to say “no.” But I envision this great big earth we live upon, spinning on its axis on its elliptical orbit around the sun, and it is a great inspiration: if this great celestial being can attain balance, perhaps so can I. And certainly there is no harm in the striving. And even for Earth, the balance is fleeting: by tomorrow, night will be longer than day in our hemisphere above the equator. Soon, old friends will emerge in that longer night sky, like the constellation Orion, harbinger of winter. It’s always good to see him. And so I say welcome, old friends. Welcome, autumn. Welcome, Ember Months.

COME SEE US!
We begin popping up a lot throughout South Florida these last few months of the year. Here’s where you’ll find us next month. More possibilities are in the works for October… to be kept apprised, follow us on Instagram or Facebook: @conviviobookworks

FLORIDA DAY of the DEAD: OFRENDAS EXHIBITION OPENING
Sunday October 6 from 11 AM to 3 PM
History Fort Lauderdale (inside the historic New River Inn)
231 SW 2nd Ave, Fort Lauderdale
We’ll be there with a mini pop up of our traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods.

AUTUMN MAKERS MARKETPLACE
Sunday October 20 from 10 AM to 4 PM
Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton
Live music, family fun, and lots of great local makers. We’ll be there with a big boutique of traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods, Shaker herbs & teas, Seth Thompson’s Royal River pottery, and maybe even a little advent calendar preview.

REAL MAIL FRIDAYS: HALLOWE’EN SOCIAL
Friday October 25 from 2 to 6 PM
Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries, Boca Raton
It’s a special edition of the Jaffe’s popular Real Mail Fridays letter writing socials, this one with an All Hallow’s Eve theme. Expect good old fashioned autumnal fun plus a mini Makers Marketplace. We’ll be there with a selection of our traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods.

 

Image: A depiction of the constellation Orion from the Prodromus Astronomia, volume III: Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, 1690.

 

 

Drive Down Day, or Your September Book of Days

Hurricane Dorian kicked us a bit out of sync as we transitioned from August to September, but here, finally, is your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for September. We are fine here in Lake Worth, though that is not the case with our neighbors in the Bahamas. Just 75 miles east of us is the western point of Grand Bahama Island, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scanned the horizon at the coast when I was a boy, looking for the Bahamas because they’re right there, but 75 miles is a distance sometimes. Enough of a distance to see no sign of land from here, and enough of a distance for us to emerge unharmed by Dorian’s course.

That’s how I got to Maine the first time I went to that fair state. I was going to Penland, North Carolina, but I had some artwork to bring to a gallery in Vermont––my first non-academic art show––and, on the map, at least, Vermont seemed to be just a little further away. Why not bring the artwork there myself? And if I was going to Vermont, I figured, certainly I should go to Maine. This is the way my mind works. You can see how someone like me would be looking out over the Atlantic, hoping to see Grand Bahama from my tiny strand of sand.

Way over in Switzerland, it’s the time of year the cows come home from the Alpine meadows. They were there last July when Seth and I were driving along the Splügen Pass on the way from Austria to Italy, high in Alps, their bells ringing through the mountain air as we drove, and now that winter is setting in, it’s time for them to come down to the valleys. Typically this happens now, in early September, and especially on the 8th of September, which is the day we celebrate the Nativity of Mary, which is known as Drive Down Day in some parts of Switzerland. The return of the cows is not without some pomp and ceremony: they’re dressed up and decorated and so are their human companions. It’s a sight, I’m sure, but it’s the bells I love best. If you’ve never heard them, well… it’s the most peaceful sound. One of those bell-wearing Swiss bovines is the cover star of your September Book of Days… and while we’re at it, here’s a video we took when we were in Switzerland of the cows and their bells, not long before we reached the top of the Splügen Pass:

Across the border in Italy the folks like to eat blueberries today: blue, the color of Mary’s cloak, at least in Italian Renaissance paintings. Lights are illuminated in windows, and bonfires blaze. In France, Mary is celebrated today, in the midst of the grapes ripening on the vine, as Our Lady of the Grape Harvest. Bunches of grapes are brought to churches for the priests to bless and you’ll find lots of grapes this day in the hands of statues of Mary, placed there by Marian devotees and by lovers of wine and by traditionalists like me. This is September, the first of the “Ember” months. Seth and I, we wish you a fine one.

 

COME SEE US!
We’re popping up at Hatch 1121 in Lake Worth on Saturday for the big “Catrinas: The Festival” event and I’m teaching a workshop at the Armory later this month.

CATRINAS: THE FESTIVAL
Saturday September 14 from 4 to 9 PM
Hatch 1121 (the old Lake Worth Shuffle Board Courts)
at 1121 Lucerne Ave in Downtown Lake Worth’s West Village
Our favorite time of year is fast approaching! Here, to kick things off, Lake Worth meets L.A. in a unique festival that revolves around an exhibition featuring works by Lake Worth artist José R. Mendez and Los Angeles photographer Gus Mejia. Admission is free and plentiful parking is nearby. In the Hatch courtyard, live mariachi, food, crafts, and low riders… and we’ll be there in our usual spot with a preview of this year’s Convivio Bookworks Dia de Muertos collection. You’ll find your old favorites plus lots of new items not yet in our online catalog, all of them made by hand by artisans in Mexico. It’s all about authenticity.

WORKSHOP: INTRO TO BOOK ARTS
Saturday September 21 from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM
The Armory
at 811 Park Place in West Palm Beach
Printing and bookbinding are at the core of the Book Arts, and in this one day workshop, you’ll get a foundation in both. Learn a bit of letterpress plus the techniques behind a range of handmade book structures that you can create anywhere on your own without special bindery equipment. We’ll print one of our book covers from handset type, and you won’t just leave with blank books: one of the books you’ll bind is a letterpress limited edition story that was printed by your Convivio Bookworks boys in years past, and you’ll get to bind your very own copy.