Author Archives: John Cutrone

Feb 11 2017
27 Comments
Beginnings, Transitions

My Father

My dad passed away peacefully not long past midnight, the 9th of February. He’d had a rough few weeks, but we all got to spend some time with him that night, my mom, my sister, and Seth and me. We each got to kiss him goodnight, we each got to say I love you, and he told us he loved us and he thanked us. “Thank you,” the words most constant on his lips lately, and I realize that this is one of many things I’ve learnt from my father. Three hours later, while he was sleeping, his heart stopped beating, and so he left this world.

Up until this afternoon, it never crossed my mind to share this news with you here. But there was an event at work today––one of many through the year that my mom and dad and sister have often participated in. Even a few days ago, Dad talked about going to this one today. And today’s was a big one. I had set too many wheels in motion and I couldn’t not be there, I couldn’t leave all the tasks to my coworkers. And to my surprise, my mom and my sister decided they wanted to be there, too. And this was good. We three were together, and we saw so many people we know, and we spent the day crying a bit, but mostly laughing and telling stories. And eating. The coffee was good, and there were doughnuts, really good ones. And this is what we do, after all, in my family: we laugh, we cry, we talk, and very often the coffee pot accompanies this. This is why there are easily over a dozen percolators and coffee pots in my mom’s kitchen, and almost as many in mine.

I spoke with so many people today who are Convivio Book of Days readers. We spoke about my dad. I realized we are family, too, you and me. (My great grandparents, Raffaele and Maria, welcome all of you at our ABOUT page: How can we not be family?) It became apparent that I had to tell you. And so I will: Dad entered this world in peace and he left it in peace, and who can ask for more than this; this and the blessing of love and understanding at home. Home and family were everything to him, the greatest riches, and he had these things abundantly. We miss him and we will miss him always. But rest assured there will be stories. Dad loved to tell his stories, and always he told them as if it was the first time anyone had ever heard them. That used to bug me sometimes, back when I was less appreciative. But as we all grew older, I loved that about him, that he could be excited about old old stories and tell them over and over again with fresh enthusiasm each time. And now I guess it’s up to me to make sure you hear them. I’m sure you will, if you keep reading: I won’t be able to stop myself from telling them, especially if you put the coffee on.

And so we keep the embers burning, we keep the wheel of the year turning, we keep the ones we love always at our side. We celebrate together. No matter what.

Angelo John Cutrone
May 18, 1926 – February 9, 2017

 

The photo above is by Charles Pratt. It was taken on my wedding day. You’re stuck with us, I guess: My sister, me, Seth, my mom, and my dad… and all the ones who came before us.

 

Feb 01 2017
4 Comments
Book of Days Calendar

Your February Book of Days

Hello Everyone. It’s February, and here in Lake Worth, where our town motto back around the turn of the last century was “Where Summer Spends Winter,” this lovely flower, the Amazon Lily, is blooming in our yard. I got its parent plant when I was a student at New College in Sarasota in 1986, and while the original is still blooming at my parents’ home, the one at our house came from a time when Seth divided the original bulbs. Our Amazon Lily is the cover star of this month’s Convivio Book of Days Calendar, chosen for the way the pure white blooms capture the sunlight as it streams through from the Southern sky. Even if February is cold and dark where you are, my hope is that this Amazon Lily brings you light.

Light is on our mind these days as we transition tonight and tomorrow toward Spring. It is a long ways off, it might seem, and yet we are now halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is St. Brigid’s Day today, Imbolc, and Groundhog’s Day tomorrow, Candlemas. If you have vestiges of yuletide greenery still in your home, it should be taken outside by Candlemas, lest you wish to invite goblins into your home. St. Blaise’s Day on the Third, St. Agatha’s Day on the Fifth. All have their customs.

I apologize for my absence of late; I’ve been a bit preoccupied with some other matters of importance. But please consult the calendar (which is printable, by the way, on standard 8.5″ x 11″ paper), and diligent Convivio Book of Days readers may also wish to search the various days I might miss writing about in the search feature of the blog (below), where you can find posts from past Candlemasses and St. Brigid’s Days and St. Agatha’s Days. All are fascinating, and some may even make you blush (and there’s nothing wrong with that).

As for me, I promise Seth and I are honoring each day as best we can right now, and I promise, too, that I’ll write more soon. Very soon, I hope. We are conscious more than ever of our mantra to Love Each Day.

 

Jan 07 2017
Book of Days Calendar, Christmas, St. Distaff's Day

Every One to his Owne Vocation (and, Your January Book of Days)

Just when you thought you were rid of me, after all those Twelve Days of Christmas chapters… I am back again like a proverbial bad penny. Christmas may be over but the celebration in a way continues, just in a different light… for though we may indeed be back to our ordinary workaday world, our ancestors liked to make this transition with a little fun and ceremony. (One gathers that our ancestors were not as work-weary as we like to think; perhaps they would take pity on us with our hectic contemporary schedules.)

And so on this day after Epiphany, this first day back to ordinary time, comes St. Distaff’s Day. There are plenty of saints’ days through the year, but St. Distaff is a bit extraordinary, for there never was an historical St. Distaff. The day, rather, is named for a tool: the distaff is a tool that is part of the process of spinning wool or flax into thread, which is the first step to making cloth. When we think of spinning, we think of spinning wheels, but the distaff and spindle are earlier tools that preceded the spinning wheel. It is a tool traditionally associated with women and with women’s work, and to be sure, St. Distaff’s Day meant back to work for the women, always on this 7th of January. The men get their own back-to-work day soon enough, though, on the first Monday after Epiphany: Plough Monday, which this year will be on the 9th.

Spinning was so associated with women’s work that the word spinster, which is happily not much used these days, once was a recognized legal term in England to describe an unmarried woman, and the terms spear side and distaff side were also legal terms to distinguish the inheritances of male from female children. Any woman who spun thread (and that would have been most women in earlier times) would know the distaff well.

St. Distaff’s Day was a day for mischief: yes, the women were trying to get back to their spinning, but the men were still underfoot in the house. Their job on St. Distaff’s Day was a mischievous one, with the goal usually being to set fire to the flax the women were spinning. The women were wise to this custom, though, and typically kept several buckets of water nearby. Very often, it was the men who got the worst of it: to have a bucket of water dumped on you in the cold of January… for sure, St. Distaff’s Day lent a bit of excitement to the idea of returning to ordinary time.

There is an old saying for this Seventh of January that comes, actually, from the first two lines of a famous poem by Robert Herrick. It’s a poem from his 1648 book Hesperides, called “Saint Distaff’s Day, or the morrow after Twelfth Day.” The saying goes:

Partly worke and partly play
Ye must on St. Distaff’s Day.

This is good advice even for us today. We begin now the shift from Christmastide, which stood outside ordinary time, to our regular routines. Why not make the transition more interesting?

Give St. Distaff all the right,
Then bid Christmas sport good night;
And next morrow, every one
To his owne vocation.

Speaking of transitioning to ordinary time… your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for January is finally ready. The calendar is our monthly gift to you, a nice companion to the the blog… and sometimes it takes me a while to get around to it, and for that I apologize. It is a printable PDF on standard US letter size paper. Enjoy. (I should probably start working on February’s calendar now!)

 

Our illustrative image, both here and on January’s calendar, is an old lead printer’s cut of accord in a peaceful shake of hands. It’s a 19th century cut that we’ve used for the past three years in our annual Copperman’s Day prints. Come Monday, it’ll be time for another Copperman’s Day print, for Monday brings not just Plough Monday but also Copperman’s Day, an old Dutch printer’s holiday. These are all holidays signifying a return to ordinary time after Christmas and all take on this attitude of “partly worke and partly play.” More than likely I’ll be telling you about Copperman’s Day (and honoring it) come Monday. For now, though, “Give St. Distaff all the right.”

 

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