Author Archives: John Cutrone

Springtide, and Your April Book of Days

April First now and here is your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for the month. Cover star this time around: a rainy Easter Eve (in Paris, is my guess), painted in 1907 by John Sloan. We just reached Midlent this past Sunday, or Laetare Sunday, which means we are halfway through our Lenten journey, on the road to Easter, which this year comes on April 20. These are all movable days in the calendar, based on the timing of the full moon that follows the Vernal Equinox. I’ve never quite had the wherewithal to sit down and learn the calculations that determine the date each year of Easter. All I know is Lent began late this year and, following course, Easter comes late, too. I like when things are late, as I don’t feel so rushed.

Today, of course, is the First of April, which brings All Fools’ Day, and that is not a movable holiday. The origins of the day’s shenanigans are tough to pin down. Most signs point to the fact that March 25 was once New Year’s Day, making the First of April the Octave of New Year and the end of the new year revels, and it is thought that perhaps the foolishness of the date goes back to very old new year customs. The tricks and practical jokes traditionally end at noon, but not everyone understands this and so I think it’s a good day to remain generally wary and on guard.

April also brings Passover this year, and all the days of Holy Week that lead us to Easter, including one of my favorite nights of the year: Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, when we visit three churches to sit in the close and holy darkness, together with other pilgrims doing the same. It is always such a lovely night: candle-lit, peaceful, a night when you can hear each old church’s creaks and groans. Our niece comes with us now on this pilgrimage, and I don’t even know if she realizes we do this each year because my grandma, Assunta, taught me to do it when I was a boy, the same age as my niece is now.

April also brings a springtime excuse to drink eggnog with San Jacinto’s Day on the 21st, and romantic divination a few nights later, on St. Mark’s Eve, and then comes Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday April 26. I’m generally not one for these newfangled holidays, but this one has new meaning for Convivio Bookworks now that we fancy ourselves a bit of an independent bookshop. We’ll be making a weekend-long celebration of it at the shop, where you may come print on our 1950s Nolan Tabletop Press and learn how to make your own book, too. Walpurgis Night wraps up the month, as the night of April 30 drifts into the morning of May the First, and May Day, an unoffocial first day of summer.

If you live in the South Florida area, please consider joining us at the shop for any of these upcoming events pictured below. The workshops require advance registration. Our Springtide Saturdays are perfect days to gather what you need for Easter. And Independent Bookstore Days are just going to be a whole lot of fun as we celebrate these things we love so much: books and reading. Click on any of the images to make them larger for easier reading, and find more details by visiting our Convivio Bookworks catalog pages. The shop is easy to find but off the beaten path at 1110 North G Street, Suite D, in Lake Worth Beach, Florida 33460.

 

Top image: “Easter Eve” by John Sloan. Oil on canvas, 1907 [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]

 

Approach of Spring, & San Giuzeppole

It’s the 19th of March: St. Joseph’s Day. And what St. Patrick’s Day is to the Irish, so St. Joseph’s Day is to the Italians. In Sicily, folks will be eating Pasta con le Sarde: very often Bucatini, and always with chopped sardines and anchovies, with chopped fennel, raisins, and saffron: flavors which nod to the Arabic influence upon Sicily and the rest of Southern Italy (from where my family hails). This pasta dish, which is topped with toasted breadcrumbs (to symbolize St. Joseph’s carpentry sawdust) is particularly Sicilian.

My Grandma Cutrone, who was from Palo del Colle, in Apulia, near Bari, would build an altar to St. Joseph in her home each March, and to all the visitors who came to see it, she would give oranges and boxes of animal crackers. This was before my time, so I never got to see the altar, save for in poorly-lit silent 8 mm home movies, nor did I ever get to ask why the animal crackers, though I can guess why the oranges: oranges, for centuries before they were commonplace, were beautiful, valuable gifts that symbolized the golden sun and its promised return after a long winter. Oranges made lovely gifts at Christmastime, and, I imagine, were just as welcome at the start of Spring.

St. Joseph’s Day is also Father’s Day in Italy, which is fitting, as Joseph was Mary’s husband and foster father to her son, Jesus. One of my favorite songs for the day is an old carol for Christmas called “The Cherry Tree Carol.” In it, Joseph is so very human and he comes across as a real jerk until he comes to understand, thanks to the cherry tree’s bowing down, the greater mystery he has become part of. It’s a song that’s been sung for many centuries, but I have two favorite recordings of it. One is by Emmylou Harris and is just so beautifully done. The other is from a Christmas Revels performance called Ribbon of Highway. It’s sung by Charmaine Li-Lei Slaven and I just love her emphasis on Joseph’s standing around while Mary gathers cherries… Joseph’s grumpiness and humanity really shines through in Charmaine’s version.

We call St. Joseph “San Giuseppe,” and while my family does not make Pasta con le Sarde (we are not Sicilian, after all) for St. Joseph’s Day, we will enjoy Zeppole di San Giuseppe. We make zeppole at New Year’s Eve, too, but Zeppole di San Giuseppe are different: these are delicious pastries that are filled with custard and Amarena cherries. They are Lenten treats that are meant to be eaten just on and around the 19th of March, though some Italian bakeries now bake them all year long (which, as you might imagine, I do not approve of). Seth has come to call the day San Giuzeppole Day (and that I do approve of). If you do nothing else today to celebrate, find yourself an Italian bakery and buy some Zeppole di San Giuseppe (or Sfingi di San Giuseppe, which are filled with sweet ricotta cream (like cannoli), rather than custard) and be sure to serve your pastries with strong espresso. Perfetto!

This year, as is often the case, San Giuseppe welcomes us to Spring, for the next day, March 20 at 5:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time, will bring the Vernal Equinox to the Northern Hemisphere and a brief period of roughly balanced sunlight and darkness across the globe. It is the start of Spring by the almanac for us, while in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the start of Autumn. The Wheel of the Year never ceases its slow turning, and now, once we pass this equinox moment, our Northern Hemisphere days begin to log more daylight hours than night. We are halfway between the Midwinter Solstice we left in December and the Midsummer Solstice we approach in June. But San Giuseppe, he begs us to put the Moka pot on the stove, brew an espresso with a nice crema, perhaps, and sit at the table and visit with friends and family and some zeppole. There is plenty of time for work, and plenty of time for Lenten austerity. Today, we get to enjoy ourselves.

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Those are my sister Marietta’s homemade Zeppole di San Giuseppe in the photo above. So good!

A reminder that our shop will be closed for the rest of March, but we will reopen again on the First Saturday of April, and indeed all the Saturdays of April, for our Springtide Saturdays series. Your online orders are still welcome, and we will be filling orders this week, but orders placed on March 20 or later won’t be filled until the first week of April.

We also have two in-house workshops coming up this spring! Collagraph Printmaking with instructor Kim Spivey is on Sunday April 6, and I’ll be teaching a workshop called Pure Bookbinding (these are books made without adhesive) on Sunday May 4.

 

St. Patrick’s Day: A Recipe & a Poem

For St. Patrick’s Day this year, I come bearing gifts: a quick and easy recipe for my sister’s Irish Soda Bread, and a poem to read whilst the bread is baking, or to improve upon your enjoyment of the bread later this evening with tea, toasted, with butter and perhaps a bit of Orange Saffron Preserve (which has been my favorite way to enjoy my soda bread this past week). And that’s it. Just simple, comforting stuff, which feels like just what we need these days. Nothing elaborate, nothing too celebratory, as that’s a mood I’ve just not been feeling lately. But good bread and poetry: these are things that bring me a bit of joy. Maybe they’ll help you feel better, too.

MARIETTA’S IRISH SODA BREAD

5 cups flour (plus up to an additional cup, depending on stickiness of dough)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons butter or shortening
1 cup raisins
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (optional)
2 eggs, beaten (reserve 1 tablespoon for later)
1 ½ cups milk (or buttermilk, if you have it)

If you’re using a stand mixer, place all ingredients in the mixing bowl (except for reserved tablespoon of egg) and mix. Start with 5 cups of flour, adding up to an additional cup, if necessary, if dough is sticky. Next, using dough hook, knead in bowl for a minute or so.

If, like me, you have to mix things by hand, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl. With a pastry blender, cut in butter or shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in raisins and caraway seeds. Add beaten eggs (be sure to reserve 1 tablespoon of beaten egg for later), and then add the milk or buttermilk. Mix well. If the dough is very sticky, add up to 1 additional cup of flour, a little at a time.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 F and butter a 2-quart round casserole; set aside. Flour a board and turn out dough onto it; knead for about a minute. Shape into a ball. Place the dough in the casserole, and in the center of the dough, with a sharp knife, cut a cross about 4” long and ½” deep. Brush dough with reserved egg.

Bake about 1 hour and 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out dry. Cool in casserole on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the casserole and cool further on rack.

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The Stolen Child
by William Butler Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

*

Mike Scott and the Waterboys set the poem to music late in the last century, and that is worth a listen today, as well. And so, Céad míle fáilte. A hundred thousand welcomes. St. Patrick’s Day blessings upon you and yours and upon us all.

Take note that our shop will be closed for the rest of March, but we will reopen again on the First Saturday of April, and indeed all the Saturdays of April, for our Springtide Saturdays series. Your online orders are still welcome, and we will be filling orders this week, but orders placed on March 20 or later won’t be filled until the first week of April.

We also have two in-house workshops coming up this spring! Collagraph Printmaking with instructor Kim Spivey is on Sunday April 6, and I’ll be teaching a workshop called Pure Bookbinding (these are books made without adhesive) on Sunday May 4.