Author Archives: John Cutrone

Sep 22 2026
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Autumn, Equinox

Celestial Sphere; Autumn is Here

Twenty-three and a half degrees: that’s the tilt of our planet as it makes its way around the sun and this tilt, this 23.5 degrees, is the key to our seasons and our constant shifting, each day a bit different from the one before and the one after. And come 8:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time this evening, summer officially gives way to autumn: it is the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, with the opposite being true in the Southern Hemisphere, for there, this is the moment that spring begins. Things will be more or less balanced for a short time, but as we continue past this day, from this point forward we here in the Northern Hemisphere will have more darkness each day than light, while folks in the Southern Hemisphere will have more light each day than darkness.

And so the sun about now is rising pretty much due east and setting pretty much due west. We are in a brief time of balance: directional (east/west) and also in amount of day and night: both are pretty much the same for a spell, no matter where we are on this great planet. It always seems to me, too, that this balance is worth emulating in our own lives and perhaps worth seeking at least twice each year as the two equinox periods come and go. Not an easy task, to be certain, but worth a shot, no?

It may be the first day of autumn by the almanac, but in traditional reckoning of time, the equinox is the midpoint of autumn, which began with the first of the harvest festivals, Lammas, at the start of August. Again, balance, as we find ourselves at the center of the season, half of it in the past, half of it yet to come, both sides of it on either side of where we stand now.

What we know for certain is that here in the Northern Hemisphere, the nights will soon grow longer than the days, and the air will get cooler. It is always most welcome to us here in Lake Worth. I was struck, though, the other day, reading an article in the New York Times by an author who saw things differently. Her perspective so vastly different from my own: how she was holding on to every last grasp of summer as tightly as she could for as long as she could. We’ve had quite enough of it here, thank you very much, but it’s all relative.

 

Image: “Celestial Sphere with Ecliptic,” a diagram showing the Celestial Sphere with ecliptic and equinoxes, by N Sanu, 2020. Courtesy Creative Commons.

 

Sep 01 2026
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Autumn, Book of Days Calendar

Angels & Michaelmas, or Your Book of Days for September

With August’s passing we enter into the first of the months named for numerals: September. Sept, for seven, for it once was the seventh month of the year. What follows is October, named for eight, November, named for nine, and December, named for ten. Which was all well and good for a long time, but we have twelve months in our year now. Things don’t mean what they once did, but that can be said about a lot of things, no?

These months are also known as Ember Months, which I like. One etymological theory is they are called Ember Months for they end mostly with “-ember,” though October is a bit of a stretch… but still, you can sense the “emberness” about it. And that, perhaps, dips into the other etymological theory of the Ember Months: Much like the embers that glow as a fire is going out, so the relationship to the closing months of the year, which are fast approaching.

All of this is difficult to fathom when the daily high temperatures are still in the 90s, but here in Lake Worth, at least, it’s lately no longer mid-90s, but low-90s, and sometimes it’s even in the 80s. Summer is not long for this world, and we get pretty happy here about that around this time of year. We are all a bit punch drunk on summer by now, those of us who live in this strange green land.

And so it is September and here is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for the month. It is, as usual, a printable PDF, so you needn’t look at it just on a screen. You can print it out on paper and tack it to your bulletin board, to your refrigerator, to the cellar door. Our cover star this month is an 1895 painting by Benjamin Haughton. It’s called Michaelmas, which is the old celebration that comes near the end of the month: St. Michael’s Day, the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel. It opens a time of angelic pondering, for it’s not just Michael the Archangel we remember, but all angels. And angels exist in cultures around the globe. I always think of this day, too, as the start of a bridge that ends with October 2 and the Feast of the Guardian Angels. This transition from September to October is a good time, I think, to read books about angels (like this one, or perhaps this one), and to watch films about angels (like Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire), and to listen to music about angels (like Jane Siberry’s Calling All Angels––which, though it be her most famous song, hasn’t an official video). A good time, too, to meditate and ask who is your guardian angel. I did once, and the name Pedro was revealed to me. I think of Pedro whenever someone pulls in front of me as I’m driving, forcing me to slow down. The initial thought of course is to shake my fist and shout an expletive or two, but then I think, “No. Perhaps this is Pedro, keeping me from some unknown danger ahead.” A danger only my guardian angel knows. And if I think of it further, I nod an acknowledgment ahead. “Thank you for that grace. Thank you for keeping me well. Thank you for watching over me.”

*

OPEN SHOP DAYS
Thank you to all who came to our Third Annual Bartlemas Wayzgoose two weekends ago and on Monday night, the 24th of August. It was a really wonderful time. Our first time opening the shop on a Monday and I was truly amazed at how many of you showed up. Thank you. It means a lot.

We’ve no set dates yet for our next open days at the shop, but certainly we need to hold an early Boo Bazaar for Hallowe’en shopping in September, and perhaps one in October, though you know things get crazy for us come October, as we set up our annual Convivio Bookworks pop-up shop at the German American Social Club in Miami for Oktoberfest Miami. We always have a grand time with our friends there! It’s the oldest Oktoberfest in the State of Florida: the 69th annual this year.

SEPTEMBER WRITERS’ WORKSHOP
There are just two seats left in our next workshop: 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. She and I met several years ago at a weeklong writers’ workshop in Gainesville and Cross Creek, Florida, at the home of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, called “Writing the Region.” The experience of both the workshop and meeting Cricket transformed my writing. You will learn a lot! Cricket’s 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 is 8 people; just 2 seats remain. If you love writing, I encourage you to do this.

 

Image: Michaelmas by Benjamin Haughton. Oil on canvas, 1895 [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons].

 

 

Aug 20 2026
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Bartlemas, St. Bartholomew's Day, Wayzgoose

Our Third Annual Bartlemas Wayzgoose

If you are longing for cooler weather in the midst of this long hot summer, I’ve got some good news: Bartlemas comes on Monday. St. Bartholomew’s Day. His feast day is a most literary one but it also provides a nod of acknowledgment to the subtly shifting wheel of the year and, in particular, of summer beginning to yield to autumn. We’ll be celebrating Bartlemas with a traditional Bartlemas Wayzgoose at Convivio Bookworks beginning this weekend and on Monday evening, too. If you’re local, please come! It’s an open invitation. We’ll have a print project on the press for you to print (a good quote from John Adams) and my sister is making not one, not two, but three different flavors of pizzelle (a cookie made in a press), and we’re serving our own Horn & Hardart Automat Coffee and we’ll see what other fun we can conjure up. And the shop, of course, will be open for fun, eclectic shopping… and our Autumn Preview (Hello, Spooky Season!)

So, what’s all this bookish Wayzgoose fuss over St. Bartholomew, anyway? He’s a saint with a connexion to all the disciplines of the Book Arts. He is, first of all, one of the patron saints of bookbinders. Not much is known about St. Bartholomew himself. He was one of the Twelve Disciples. He is thought to have traveled to India, but tradition says that he met his end in Armenia in the first century. His martyrdom was a gruesome one––one that by association made St. Bartholomew a patron saint of butchers (a common trade amongst my paternal ancestors) and of tanners and of bookbinders, who very often bind books in leather. I’ll leave the details of his martyrdom, based on those associations, to your imagination, but early bookbinders decided his patronage of their craft was a natural fit.

There is a connexion to papermaking, too, and for this, we go back to the days before glazed glass windows. Back then it was only the wealthiest people who could afford glass windows, while the rest of us simply had openings in the walls and shutters. All summer long the shutters would be open, letting in the cool nighttime breezes. As we approach the end of August, though, you’d certainly be thinking about preparing for the chillier days to come in fall and winter, and it was the local papermaker you went to, for he had been making special paper at this time of year, paper heavily infused with beeswax, that you would install inside your shutters, to help keep the elements out and the warmth in, and the day to do this task was traditionally––you guessed it––Bartlemas.

It’s the printers who really made a big deal of Bartlemas, especially in England. One result of putting waxed paper on your windows is a reduction in natural light. And so the window paper went up in the printing offices and out came the candles and lanterns so typesetters and printers could see what they were doing. A good print shop proprietor would make a celebration of this day. This celebration came to be known as a “Wayzgoose.” The reason for the name is, sadly, lost to time. But Randall Holme, in 1688, gave us this description of the Bartlemas Wayzgoose:

It is customary for all journeymen to make every year, new paper windows about Bartholomew-tide, at which time the master printer makes them a feast called a Wayzgoose, to which is invited the corrector, founder, smith, ink-maker, &c. who all open their purses and give to the workmen to spend in the tavern or ale-house after the feast. From which time they begin to work by candle light.

To be sure, there was a good quantity of ale consumed as part of the Wayzgoose. In some places, mead, the delightful intoxicating beverage made from honey, was the beverage of choice. Especially in Cornwall, where a Blessing of the Mead ceremony takes place even today at this time of year. Continuing the road of connexions, our friend St. Bartholomew is also a patron saint of beekeepers, and as we continue to gather our stores for the coming winter, it is traditional, too, to bring in the honey crop on his feast day.

And so we raise our glasses (or our tankards) on Bartlemas, and especially in print shops, as we ponder candlelight, and the coming end of summer, and books and paper and the power of the press. I do hope you’ll join us if you live nearby. We’re in lovely and quirky Lake Worth Beach at 1110 North G Street, Suite D, Lake Worth Beach, FL 33460. Hours of our Wayzgoose celebration: Saturday & Sunday August 22 & 23 from 11 AM to 4 PM, and Monday Evening, August 24 (St. Bartholomew’s Day) from 5 to 9 PM.

Dark of night grows longer
as Summer slips away;
Whilst books & prints & paper
honor old St. Bartlemy’s Day!

SEPTEMBER WRITERS’ WORKSHOP
I, myself, have signed up our next workshop: 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. She and I met several years ago at a weeklong writers’ workshop in Gainesville and Cross Creek, Florida, at the home of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, called “Writing the Region.” The experience of both the workshop and meeting Cricket transformed my writing. You will learn a lot! Cricket’s 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 is 8 people; 5 seats currently remain. If you love writing, I encourage you to do this.

That’s all for now. If you’re a Convivio Book of Days reader and you come to our Wayzgoose, please do say hello! I’ll most likely be the one showing you how to operate the printing press. We can eat cookies together!

Happy Bartlemas!
John

 

 

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