Author Archives: John Cutrone

Jul 16 2026
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Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

July 16 brings the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and my mother’s name day––her Onomastico, in Italian. I will have to pull her earlobes today, as this is tradition for your Onomastico, at least according to Mom, though she does not remember why. Perhaps she never knew. Sometimes we just do what we do and don’t know why it’s done.

Be that as it may, July 16 and the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is, in fact, the name day for anyone called Carmela or any of the variants of the name: So, Buon Onomastico to all the Carmelas (spelled with one L or two), and to all the Camillas and Camilles, to all the Cammies, perhaps to all the Camerons, and to all the Millies, which is the name Mom typically goes by, and the name for which you know her best: she is the Millie in Millie’s Tea Towels, the hand-embroidered tea towels she makes that we sell here at the shop and on our website. I always assume it’s a good day to enjoy caramels, too, only because I don’t know how many years it took me, as a young boy, to grasp the difference between the words Carmel and Caramel. And perhaps it is a good day to be in Carmel-by-the-Sea in California.

What Mom 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.

I will also ask that you pray or put good energy into the universe on behalf of Mom: she had a fall a week ago and while she didn’t seem hurt at the time, she’s been having a good deal of trouble walking since. She’s been to the ER and there were X-rays, and she’s been to an orthopedic doctor and there is physical therapy to come, but not for another week, probably, which seems to us a long time to wait to get better when you’re 99, but maybe this is the state of medical care in the US these days? Today we got Mom a pedaling device she can use in her chair so her legs get some motion, at least. She has pedaled diligently twice tonight since the device arrived. And I’ve been here at the old family home helping out as much as I can. My sister and I help her get about, and we are working our best on getting Mom back to her old self again.

Other than that, she feels fine. A present arrived for her yesterday in the mail from a family friend, Joseph, in her old neighborhood. He sent her a scapular for Our Lady of Mount Carmel: a little devotional worn around the neck. And there Mom is, in the photo above, wearing her new scapular. She wore it all day when it arrived yesterday, and she wore it to bed, and she is wearing it now as I type this. Thank you, Joseph; your gift means a lot to her.

Each day brings a different Onomastico. Mine was just a few weeks ago, at Midsummer: St. John’s Day on June 24. No one wished me a buon Onomastico that day, but it’s ok. I’m not holding any grudges.

NEW SUMMER WORKSHOPS
We have two new workshops posted to our website at the WORKSHOPS page! The first is a new Convivio Cookery workshop: Ricotta Gnocchi, set for Saturday August 15, 2026. (That’s my Grandma Assunta’s birthday and she would love that we are teaching you how to make homemade pasta that day!) We’ll teach you how to make a lighter gnocchi; this recipe is from Grandma’s friend, Adeline, and it skips the heavy potatoes and instead uses fresh ricotta in the dough: a delicious and much lighter alternative.

The second workshop, in September, is a writing workshop that I am definitely participating in: True Stories Cleverly Told: Exploring Creative Nonfiction for Narrative, Essay, & Memoir with writer and literary agent Cricket Freeman, on Saturday September 19. Cricket is one of our favorite people in the literary world. You will learn a lot about writing and get a solid critique of your earlier work, should you wish to bring an example to class. The writing workshop is a full-day class that includes a delicious box lunch from one of our favorite local spots, Aioli in West Palm Beach. Class limit in each workshop is 8 people. Either workshop would make a fine onomastico present! Or a good day out of any sort for you and your friends or family.

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Jul 01 2026
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Book of Days Calendar, Summer

The Dog Days, or Your Convivio Book of Days for July

In case you’ve not noticed: It’s hot out there. Here in Lake Worth, we were doing pretty well up until about three weeks ago, and suddenly it was full-on summer, and this is it: we know it’s here and it’s going nowhere for quite some time. And so we accept our lot. It is the price we pay each year for mild winters.

As July begins, so soon will the Dog Days of Summer. Sirius, the Dog Star, in the constellation Canis Major, is about to begin rising with the sun each day. This happens each year around the Third of July 3rd, and the sun occupies the same part of the sky as Sirius through the middle of August. This annual astronomical event happens to coincide with the hottest time of the year for many places in the Northern Hemisphere. Hence: the Dog Days of Summer, ruled by Sirius.

And for your Convivio Book of Days calendar for July this year, we’ve found a penny postcard from Germany, circa 1904, that celebrates Hundstage, which is German for “Dog Days.” This is not the only one we found! It seems to have been a thing, this fascination, in Germany, with Hundstage. Here’s another one, printed a year earlier, in 1903 (click all the images in this post to make them larger):

I’ve only been to Germany once, and it was during Hundstage, the Dog Days, and well… it was pretty warm. Warmer than Lake Worth? No. But where we have the modern convenience of climate control, in Germany (and Austria, and Switzerland, and Northern Italy), at least six years ago during our visit, we did not. Perhaps it is that total immersion in the weather that made Hundstage so fascinating to penny postcard producers at the turn of the 20th century.

Enjoy this month’s calendar! It is, as usual, our gift to you; a PDF that you may print and post to your bulletin board. You may also share it online; we’d love that.

This First of July brings not just the calendar but Canada Day, the national holiday of our neighbors above the 49th Parallel, and we will soon be celebrating, in three days’ time, our semiquincentennial here in the States. 250 years of the American experiment and the times are interesting, are they not? We get stars and stripes that day, plus fireworks that night (stars, perhaps, of a different sort). And on the Seventh of July comes Tanabata, the Star Festival of Japan, celebrating not the dog star Sirius but two other stars: Altair and Vega, two lovers separated forever by the Milky Way, save for one night each year: the seventh night of the seventh month. It is traditional, on Tanabata, to write wishes on strips of paper and then take them outdoors, and tie the wishes to the trees, where they may speak to the wind, and perhaps find their way to the universe to be granted.

 

NEW SUMMER WORKSHOPS
We have two new workshops posted to our website at the WORKSHOPS page! The first is a new Convivio Cookery workshop: Ricotta Gnocchi, set for Saturday August 15, 2026. (That’s my Grandma Assunta’s birthday and she would love that we are teaching you how to make homemade pasta that day!) We’ll teach you how to make a lighter gnocchi; our recipe skips the heavy potatoes and instead uses fresh ricotta: a delicious and much lighter alternative.

The second workshop, in September, is a writing workshop that I am definitely taking: True Stories Cleverly Told: Exploring Creative Nonfiction for Narrative, Essay, & Memoir with writer and literary agent Cricket Freeman, on Saturday September 19. Cricket is one of our favorite people in the literary world. You will learn a lot! The writing workshop is a full-day class that includes a delicious box lunch from one of our favorite local spots, Aioli in West Palm Beach. Class limit in each workshop is 8 people.

 

 

NOISE BRUNCH
Finally, we invite you to join us for something completely different: The 2nd Noise Brunch, on Sunday July 12, from 1 to 4 PM. The Noise Brunch is, in fact, not brunch, but it is an afternoon of experimental music and sound moving between silence and noise. I’m not sure exactly what that means, either. But I will be there to find out. We’re all for trying new things! The Noise Brunch is a free event at Convivio Bookworks. Come and go as you please during the event; you know we have limited seating. The shop will be open that Sunday, too, for eclectic (and most likely noisy) shopping.

 

 

Postcard images are public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jun 23 2026
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Midsummer, St. John's Day, St. John's Eve

It Seems to Me that Yet We Sleep, We Dream

The Midsummer Solstice has come and gone here in the Northern Hemisphere, early this past Sunday morning, and with it, the longest day. The sun reached its most northerly point –– a trick of our old Earth’s tilt on its axis. It appeared to stand still for a day or two at that point and now, as the days have passed since the solstice, things begin to shift the other way. Today, this 23rd of June, will bring 3 fewer minutes of sunlight to our town than the day before. This is the constant shift back and forth, the constant rearrange.

On Sunday afternoon, after one night and two days of making floral crowns to celebrate the solstice with folks this past weekend at Convivio Bookworks in Lake Worth, Seth and I closed up shop, cleaned the place up a bit, then got in the car and headed south to my old family home where we mowed the lawn beneath threatening skies and then ate the dinner my sister prepared, and a homemade lemon meringue pie. After dinner, we went to the TV and watched the 1999 Michael Hoffman film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was very sweet and my mother’s first bit of Shakespeare (an amazing feat for someone who will turn 100 in October). I provided a few explanations at key moments to help keep her engaged and following along. It was my sister’s first bit of Shakespeare, too. They laughed at the funny parts and seemed to enjoy the movie. When it was done, Mom said, “That was different.” I’ll take that to mean she liked it ok.

It is one of my favorite movies; another of the movies I watch each year to mark the seasons. I make Seth watch it with me each St. John’s Eve or thereabouts, for this is where in the year Shakespeare set his play, and this year, I’m glad the family got to watch, too. I found it, as usual, warm and funny and mesmerizing and, this year, sitting next to Mom as the story unfolded, more touching than usual. I love these moments together.

And so the setting sun tonight will bring St. John’s Eve, and tomorrow, St. John’s Day. In the Round of the Year, we are at the polar opposite spoke from Christmas and Yuletide. And just as those celebrations follow the Midwinter Solstice by a few days, so happens here, too. The early Church placed the celebration of St. John the Baptist’s birth at Midsummer and the celebration of Christ’s birth at Midwinter. The metaphorical reasoning is powerful: St. John brings shortening days each year, and John himself tells us something to the effect of, “I must decrease so he may increase.” John prepares the way for Jesus. Six months later, we reach the opposite spoke in our wheel, and there we celebrate the birth of Christ, at the time of our darkest days, our longest nights… just as sunlight begins again its increase.

These are my favorite days and nights of summer. The season is long when you live in a place like the strange green land I call home: consistently hot and humid this time of year. The days, this past week, have been in the lower 90s, the nights, in the mid 80s. We typically have daily afternoon thunderstorms this time of year, but they’ve been inconsistent, and without them, the air does not cool down. We don’t get the extremes here that other places do: it’s extremely rare that we hit 100 degrees F. It is, however, the constant sameness that wears us down: the knowledge that it will never get below the upper 70s, even in the dead of night, not until October at best. But there is some magic to be found in a Florida summer, and this is the time we most seek it, and when we are often blessed to find it.

SHOP HAPPENINGS
We have a couple of new workshops that will soon be added to the WORKSHOPS page of our website. Not there yet, but will be in the next day or two, hopefully. The first is a new Convivio Cookery workshop: Ricotta Gnocchi, set for Saturday August 15, 2026. (That’s my Grandma Assunta’s birthday and she would love that we are teaching you how to make homemade pasta that day!) The second one is a writing workshop: “True Stories Cleverly Told” with writer and literary agent Cricket Freeman, on Saturday September 19. We’ll be exploring creative nonfiction for narrative and memoir in this full-day class that will include a box lunch. I’m looking forward to both workshops: teaching in the first and learning in the second!

 

Image: Even Pinocchio got a floral crown this past weekend at our Midsummer Solstice Market! Our niece Isabella fashioned one for him.

 

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