Author Archives: John Cutrone

Jun 06 2017
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Book of Days Calendar

Circle of Days, or Your June Book of Days

It’s summer, so maybe I’ve begun to take things slow. Forgive me, then, for the slow-as-molasses posting of your June Convivio Book of Days calendar. The month, as Book of Days ceremonies go, has a slow start, with nothing much going on until the 13th. Once things get rolling, though, they do get pretty exciting. We start with the feast of St. Anthony, progress to Flag Day and Father’s Day. There are a couple of literary holidays in there, too: Bloomsday on the 16th honors James Joyce and his novel Ulysses, while St. John’s Eve on the 23rd is the night that William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place. It is the month of the solstice, and it is St. John’s Day on the 24th that is that Old Midsummer Day.

Midsummer? When summer’s has just begun? Yes, the almanac tells us that summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere with the solstice, but if that is the longest day, wouldn’t that day be the height of summer? Anyway, our ancestors thought so, hence that traditional monicker of Midsummer. There is some sense to their way of thinking, and we will explore that world view as the solstice gets closer.

Cover star on this month’s calendar: another of our native Florida plants, the Coontie, also known as Florida Arrowroot. Coontie the more common Seminole name. The leaves are just coming in as June arrives, bright green.

Even the coontie plants we thought were long dead in our yard (like the one beneath the bamboo, near the outdoor shower) have new growth. The plant is the source of an edible starch called arrowroot (as in arrowroot cookies) and is of supreme importance to the atala butterfly, for the atala lays its eggs on the coontie, and when the caterpillars hatch, the coontie leaves are what they eat. The plants get decimated by the caterpillars each year, but then they spin their cocoons on the same plants, and before you know it, atala butterflies are everywhere in the yard. The atala, a small black butterfly with irredescent blue spots and an orange tail, was thought extinct until not all that long ago, and I love that all of this goes on right here under our noses in our sandy Lake Worth yard. Circle of days, circle of life. That’s what this month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar is all about.

 

Top image: the lovely prehistoric looking seed cones of the coontie. Middle image: new growth on the plant. By the way, if you, too, have coontie plants in your yard, don’t go harvesting the roots to make arrowroot cookies; coontie is one of those plants that is poisonous until the extracted starch is prepared just right. It’s a complex process and an old Florida industry perhaps better left in the past. My advice? Buy your arrowroot cookies at the supermarket. Enjoy the coontie for what it is: lovely plant and host of the atala.

 

May 29 2017
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Birthdays & Anniversaries, Memorial Day, Transitions

Memorial Day

One of my favorite things about the Convivio Book of Days is when a reader shares with the rest of us their own traditions or memories in the comments section. To get any comments at all is a wonderful thing, as comments help us writers see that folks are actually reading and engaging. But I learn so much from you when you share what you do in your family or what you remember doing when you were a kid. And last year, in the comments section of the blog chapter for Memorial Day, Convivio pal Marilyn Pancoast wrote her memory of the day:

When I was young it was called Decoration Day and all the family’s and friend’s graves were cleaned and then decorated with flowers. Then in the late afternoon there was a parade and a ceremony after dusk. Someone, many times me, would play taps and small candlelit flower boats were released into the river. There was one for each soldier and sometimes more for others. The ceremonies and activities were quite moving and a way to involve and teach each new generation.

I think Marilyn sums up this day beautifully and I hope that someone on some river is still doing what she did when she was young. This is the day we remember our fallen heroes, those who gave their lives in service to their country. Memorial Day (or some version of it) is celebrated not just here in the United States, but in other countries, as well, and usually at this time of year, a tradition that harkens back to Ancient Rome. Our own Memorial/Decoration Day traditions in this country go back to the Civil War era. The original date, May 30, was chosen for it was believed that flowers for decorating graves would be in bloom in every state of the Union on that date. It’s since been moved to the last Monday of May. This year it falls on the 29th, which happens to be the same date as my mom and dad’s wedding anniversary. Those two good looking kids from Brooklyn tied the knot at St. Blaise Church on May 29, 1949––the Sunday, that year, of Memorial Day weekend. Today would have been their 68th wedding anniversary, but it’s the first time we honor the day without Dad’s physical presence. That will make for a bittersweet day, I know, but Memorial Day is kind of like this. It is our unofficial start of summer here in the US, but a somber one if we honor the day in its proper tradition. And so we decorate, and we remember. Flowers for remembrance, and flowers beckoning summer and the gentle time of year.

Image: Decoration Day. Photographic print from glass negative, 1917. From the George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress) [public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

May 26 2017
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Ramadan

Ramadan Mubarak

Once again, Ramadan has snuck up on me. This Book of Days is by no means perfect; we are all learning as we go. Perhaps I’m just saving the perfection for the time when it is a real book, printed and bound. Let’s hope so, anyway. For now, though, during this first night of feasting that followed the first day of fasting of this holy month, please accept this in good spirit: a reprint of last year’s chapter on Ramadan, as well as my greeting for a month of joy and happiness: Ramadan Mubarak! ~ John

 

My grandmother used to talk sometimes about a distant ancestor in our family line who was not Italian but Moroccan, and I loved that something so exotic could be part of the fabric from which we both were woven. It never crossed my mind back then to ask her more about this person, and now of course it’s too late to ask her. I’m older now and I’ve done a good bit of genealogical research on my family, tracing things back as far as the 1700s on my grandmother’s line, and the ancestor from Morocco has yet to turn up. But Italian records are notoriously muddy once you get further back in time than that. It’s a mystery I’ll most likely never solve, but chances are good that Grandma’s story is true, for the Southern Italian city from which our ancestors hail was once, in the 13th century, home to about 60,000 people of North African descent, all Muslims who had been expelled from Sicily by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. There have always been refugees, it would seem.

And so they left Sicily and traveled north and settled in Lucera, my maternal grandparents’ hometown, which became known then as Lucaera Saracenorum, or Saracen Lucera. They were Arabs and Berbers from Arabia, Tunisia, and Morocco. Sadly, things eventually did not end well for them, even in Saracen Lucera. We have always been terrible to each other, it would seem (consider much of the current political rhetoric today in our own country). Be that as it may, even if I never find that Moroccan ancestor in my lineage, the cultural influence of these people on the culture of my family and on families throughout Southern Italy is undeniable, especially in local dialects and in the foods we prepare, even after all these centuries.

If the ancestor from Morocco lived in Lucaera Saracenorum, then he would have celebrated Ramadan, which begins tonight, most likely, with the first sighting of the new crescent moon. The start of this month of fasting is never concrete, for it is based on that sighting and this can vary slightly from place to place. Ramadan commemorates the month when Mohammed received the first revelations of the Qu’ran, the holy book of Islam. The observance of Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, with fasting during the daylight hours throughout this month, as well as an increase in prayer and charity. And while Ramadan is a month of fasting, the meals that break the fast each night with the setting sun are known to be quite wonderful and very celebratory––meals that, in some places, can last through the night. Meals flavored, certainly, with some of the same flavors––mint, almond, vinegar, rose water––that were brought by Arabs and Berbers to the tables of Southern Italy in centuries past. A thread alone hasn’t much strength, but a woven fabric is a different story.

Image: One of Lucera’s most famous landmarks, the Castello di Lucera. The building dates to the time of Saracen Lucera, built in 1233. My grandparents and all their ancestors––Italian and Moroccan––lived near this castle. Photograph 2006 Creative Commons.

 

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