Author Archives: John Cutrone

Jul 23 2015
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Neptunalia & Salacia

Salt & Water

CloudySkyMediterraneanSea

The Romans celebrated the Feast of Neptunalia and Salacia today, the 23rd of July. And why wouldn’t they? In these hottest days of summer, it is only logical that we would want to escape the heat, no matter to what age we belong. And so the Romans did just what we would do today: they would hit the beach. The sea beckoned then just as it does now, and the masters of that sea were Neptune, the sea god, and his wife Salacia, goddess of the salty sea. For their feast day, the Romans would go to the shore and enjoy the salt air and cool sea breezes. Water and wine were fundamental to the celebration.

If you are not landlocked, you would do well today to visit the sea. Dip your toes in the ocean nearest you. Breathe in the salted air. I can see the Atlantic if I stand on my rooftop, so we have an easy time of it here. If you are in the center of Kansas, far from the ocean, I’d say you can probably just as easily find your Neptunalia and Salacia in a pitcher of water. It is a good day to recognize our reliance on water, to honor its preciousness. Without it, we are nothing.

Salacia, of course, is a name derived from sal, the Latin word for salt, and we’d do well today to also recognize all that salt brings to our lives. We hear the constant warnings of the sodium in processed foods, how there is too much sodium in our diets, the threat it brings of high blood pressure… but if we connect with our food more directly––prepare our own meals from basic ingredients––we recognize immediately the importance of each ingredient, and salt is an excellent example of the need for moderation and balance in our lives: Too much salt will render your meal inedible; too little and your meal is mediocre. But the right amount of seasoning can make things downright sublime.

The Dog Days of Summer, these hottest days of the year, ruled by the dog star Sirius, remain with us until the middle of August. So get you to the beach today if you can and cool off some. The Romans would wish it so. More importantly, though, may your day today be one where the importance of common, ubiquitous things––things like salt and water––are understood and honored for their beautiful mystery.

Image: Cloudy Sky, Mediterranean Sea by Gustave Le Gray. Albumen print, 1857 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jul 02 2015
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Book of Days Calendar

Your July Book of Days

Liberty

My birthday is on the First of July and so that makes me, according to some of my Canadian friends, an honorary Canuck, for my birthday falls on Canada Day. I find this all very interesting, because I was supposed to be born on the Fourth of July, a “real live nephew of my Uncle Sam,” as the song goes, but I was early for something for once in my life, arriving three days early and on the national holiday not of my native country but of Canada. What is odder is when I speak in public, which turns out to be pretty often (and even this is odd as I’m a pretty shy guy, generally), people often ask me afterward where in Canada I’m from. Toronto? Alberta?

I chalk this up to a couple of things: First, as a shy guy, I am a quiet guy. My voice doesn’t carry well and I mumble a bit… so when I speak in public, I try to focus on projection and diction. Second, I listen to a lot of Canadian music. For no particular reason; it just so happens that a lot of my favorite artists are from there. You try listening to Jane Siberry for 28 years and see if her speech and diction patterns don’t infiltrate your head, too. (Not to mention all those prior years of fascination with The Smiths, UB40, and, when I was a kid, ABBA––not an American in the bunch.)

Put these things together (28 years of singing along to a quirky Canadian and attempting to focus on diction) and I am pretty sure this is the source of my apparently not-quite-American speech patterns. Or maybe it’s just that I was born on Canada Day. Nonetheless, I am pretty big on the Fourth of July, and the family will be coming to our house for the traditional cookout and for toasted marshmallows as the day closes, and come sunset, we will head to the lagoon to watch the municipal fireworks. And in pondering what or who should be the cover star of the Convivio Book of Days Calendar for July, it was a no-brainer: I went with something patriotic in honor of our nation’s 239th birthday. Click either of those two links above and you’ll have this month’s calendar, ready to print as a PDF document on standard US Letter size paper.

The image is from an old penny postcard from our collection. As the postcard says, 4th of July Greetings to you, and to yours. I wish you a month of wonderfully summery things.

 

Jun 23 2015
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Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Eve

On What Makes Magic

Viola Tricolor

St. John’s Eve, tonight, brings Midsummer. In the seasonal round of the year, we now sit directly opposite Midwinter and Christmas. The celebrations for both Midwinter and Midsummer are old celebrations, older than you or I or anyone can recall, older even than the events assigned to them by the early Church, for the Church early on recognized that honey draws more flies than vinegar, and in that spirit, old pagan celebrations continued but with new names and new focus. Hence the birth of Christ was set at the winter solstice and the birth of John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness, setting the path straight for the savior, was set at the summer solstice.

St. John is unusual in that he is remembered not just on the day of his death (which is the case with all the other saints) but also on the day of his birth. And as is often the case with traditional holidays, it is the eve the night before when the real celebration occurs. My take on this is that there is a certain magic to nighttime events: perceived magic if not real, though our ancestors thought nights like Midsummer and Midwinter full of real magic and open to the realm of fairies and sprites and other folks of parallel universes. You need only look to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set on this very night, to grasp the beliefs.

But no matter whether you give credence to these other realms or not, there is no denying the air of mystery that accompanies a celebration at night. We hang fairy lights in the trees, we light candles and beseeching fires, we walk amongst flowers that bloom only at night and spice the air we breathe. We take our celebration outdoors and the stars and moon are above us and this is infinitely more mysterious than the ceilings in our homes. This, too, is magic, as powerful as any other.

Midsummer and St. John’s Day are not much celebrated in the States, much to our loss. But in other places, this is a night to spend out in the open air. In Scandinavia, with the sun at its northernmost point in the sky, this is the time of the Midnight Sun (how magical is that?). It is a night there for bonfires and meals of pickled herring and new potatoes with sour cream. Further south in Italy bonfires are also part of the night, but the meals vary by region. In Rome, the Midsummer meal centers around snails; local belief holds that eating snails, horned as they are like devils, will protect you from Midsummer mischief. In the towns of Northern Italy, Midsummer is a time to break out balsamic vinegar, aged as long as a hundred years. Every part of the meal has some of this nectar of the gods in it, for the lore of the land says that this is the time of year when the must enters the grape on the vine, and it is the must that will eventually become both the wine and the balsamic vinegar (again, magic). The must is the juice, crucial to both, for good balsamic vinegar is made from must just as is wine. It is then aged all those years in casks of various types of woods: at least a dozen years, but, as mentioned above, sometimes a hundred years or more.

It is a night to go and gather plants for their magical properties: fern seed and St. John’s Wort. The latter will protect you from evil, the former, if gathered properly, is believed to confer the power of invisibility. But not without some peril: the seeds are fiercely guarded by the fairy folk who know more of these secrets than do we. The magical properties of plants also play into Shakespeare’s comedy. Have you ever wondered what is the “herb” (a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound) that Oberon instructs Puck to fetch and squeeze the juice of onto the eyelids of Titania and then of the lovers? Well, these are the things I wonder about. Oberon goes on to tell us that maidens call it “love-in-idleness,” but in modern terms it turns out the herb is a flower known as Viola Tricolor, also known as Heartsease or Wild Pansy. You may have some blooming now in your summer garden. So much magic, so close to home. Make the most of it. Happy Midsummer.

Image: Viola Tricolor, Plate No. 227 in Bilder ur Nordens Flora by C.A.M. Lindman, published in 1905. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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