Author Archives: John Cutrone

Jul 01 2025
4 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Summer

Summer Fruits, or Your July Book of Days

Watermelon has been on my mind! We’ve gone through two watermelons in two weeks, and I can’t even begin to tell you how many peaches (most of them sliced up into small pitchers of Chianti to accompany dinner), plus mangoes and lychees and cherries, and the apricots have been wonderful this year, too. I tend to think there is nothing like summer fruit, but then of course autumn comes and so do the apples and the pomegranates, and then winter brings all the citrus and stuffed dates… and maybe I’m just a little in love with fruit, in general. I am my father’s son, after all. When I was a boy, I’d accompany Dad to the market, where he would buy summer fruits by the wooden crateful. This, I assumed, was how fruit was sold, and I thought everyone did this.

And so it’s July and we find ourselves firmly in the midst of all those summer fruits… and in the second half of the year. North of the 49th Parallel, it’s Canada Day today (la Fête du Canada), which, I imagine, will be celebrated with greater gusto and enthusiasm this year, for reasons I shan’t mention. The Dog Days of Summer will soon begin, too, once Sirius, the Dog Star, begins rising with the sun as it does each early July. They’ll be with us for about five weeks before the two stars go their separate ways again. And the Fourth, of course, brings our own national holiday here in the States, and there will be fireworks at the Lake Worth Lagoon.

Your Convivio Book of Day Calendar for July lists all the celebrations of the month. It’s a free printable PDF, as usual. CLICK HERE for yours. It’s the month, too, of Tanabata, the Japanese Star Festival, and of St. Swithin’s Day and several other saints’ days, too, and when we reach month’s end, already we will have a first inkling of fall, for the month ends with Lammas Eve. It is the night when Shakespeare’s Juliet was born, and it is heralds the day when, in our agricultural past, the first grain harvest would be brought in. Hence, a good day to bake a crusty loaf and to enjoy the first fruits of our labor.

This is summer. Enjoy its warmth and sweetness.

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. Come learn something new!

Image: Still Life with Watermelon by Rubens Peale. Oil on canvas, 1865 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jun 23 2025
6 Comments
Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Day, St. John's Eve

Midsummer Greetings

The longest day has come and gone, and here we are, on its heels, with an old celebration known as Midsummer. The opposite spoke of the wheel from Yuletide, Midsummer tends to get short shrift here in the States. But if we look at our Wheel of the Year, and if we were to place the two solstices at the poles, top and bottom, one would be the June solstice and the other would be the December solstice. For us here in the Northern Hemisphere, the June solstice brings summer, and the December solstice, winter. Our ancestors called these Midsummer and Midwinter, and with good reason: for Midsummer, light increases daily up until the solstice, and then begins to diminish. And of course the opposite happens with Midwinter: darkness increases daily up until the solstice, and then begins to diminish. It’s the Constant Rearrange we talk about, each day slightly different than the one before and the one to come.

The early Church chose these highly metaphoric celestial events as the birth dates of Jesus and his cousin, John the Baptist. No one knows, of course, when these two historic figures were actually born. But how powerful, no, to place the birth of Jesus at Midwinter and the birth of St. John at Midsummer. 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. Hence the old hymn, “Jesus, the Light of the World“.

Transitional periods like this in our wheel have long been considered magical times, too. We know all about Christmas Eve magic (ask any young child and perhaps the young-at-heart, too). St. John’s Eve has a healthy dose of this, as well. William Shakespeare set his comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on this night. Talk about magic and mayhem. This is a wonderful time of year to read Shakespeare’s play, or to watch one of the film versions. It’s also a wonderful time of year to be outdoors in the twilight as our longest days transition to our shortest nights. Happy Midsummer.

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. Come learn something new!

Image: “Midsummer Eve Bonfire” by Nikolai Astrup. Painting, 1915. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Jun 01 2025
6 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Midsummer, St. John's Eve

The Spiced Indian Air by Night, or Your June Book of Days

Summer arrived here in Lake Worth about three weeks ago: where it had been warm but dry all through April and early May, suddenly one morning it was warm and humid and not dry and while I was hopeful for about a week that the dry air might return, by now I’ve stopped checking the weather forecast. There’s no longer any point to that. It’s Florida and this is our burden for the next four or five months: heat and humidity, of the constant sort. If you like predictability, you will love a Florida summer.

Summer sets in here and it takes a bit of getting accustomed to but then not long after comes St. John’s Eve and Old Midsummer, and these are days and nights I look forward to. We can count on a Midsummer bonfire at the Finnish-American Village west of town, and sometimes we will pick up a Midsummer feast to go from Johan’s Jöe, the Swedish coffee shop in West Palm Beach. I might read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and we will sit down and watch some version of it, too, and the music from Felix Mendelssohn’s ballet will be on heavy rotation in our house. I’ll watch for nighttime blooms from the Guiana Chestnut tree in the backyard, blooms that pop open with a small explosion at about 9 in the evening and fill the thick humid air with fragrance: spiced, the same spice I imagine the Fairy Queen Titania described as she spoke about “the spiced Indian air, by night” in that same Midsummer Night’s Dream. If there’s magic to be found at Midsummer, it is found here in this strange green land, as easily as it is found in the Nordic lands where twilight runs its course through what little night there is in June.

Once Midsummer passes, I am pretty much done with a Florida summer… but alas, I make do, for what else can I do? There is beauty about it, to be sure. It’s just not always easy to remember to look for it.

For now, we are on the approach to Midsummer’s arrival: June has arrived, and the Midsummer Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere comes in three weeks’ time, followed quickly by its accompanying holidays of St. John’s Eve on the 23rd and St. John’s Day on the 24th. All of these days are part of your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for June. It is, as usual, a printable PDF, a fine companion to this blog, and our gift to you. Cover star this month: an 1886 oil painting by Christian Skredsvig, called “Skt. Hans Aften i Norge” (or, in English, “St. John’s Eve in Norway”). In it, four folks are out on a boat on the still, reflective waters. It may very well be midnight, but there is no darkness, only light. How magical is that?

 

COME SEE US AT THE SHOP!
We’re open for Father’s Day Shopping (not to mention gifts for grads, too) TODAY: Sunday June 1, from 11 AM to 4 PM. Locals, please come visit: the shop is at 1110 North G Street, Lake Worth Beach 33460. We won’t be open very much in June, so this will be one of your few opportunities to come by this month. In the Creative Workshops department, we’ve got Kim Spivey teaching a new session of Collagraph Printmaking on Sunday July 27… this also happens to make a great gift. We love a gift that is an experience!

 

Top Image: “Skt. Hans Aften i Norge” by Christian Skredsvig. Oil on canvas, 1886 [Public domain via Wikimedia Commons].

 

 

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