Book of Days

Welcome to October. The harvesting, the gathering in, is in full swing. The Convivio Book of Days calendar for October is so special to us, and we hope you find it pleasing, too. Our friend Shin Yu Pai, who is a poet that we’ve collaborated with on projects in the past, has delved into a beautiful project this summer and fall in which she has been printing on apples in an orchard in Seattle. It is a project that conjures autumnal magic. We’re so delighted that Shin Yu has let us share it with you, too. The photographs are by Katy Tuttle, and they are just as exquisite as the poetry project.

So go on, print the calendar and pin it to your bulletin board, or simply enjoy it on your computer monitor. Also, learn more about Shin Yu Pai’s Heirloom project by visiting her website. Seek magic this month. Enjoy.

And now it is September. Our perspective changes as we shift into September; we begin to look and gather inward. Seth and I think of this time of year as the Ember Months, these closing months of the year, all of which end in “-ber” and most of which end in”-ember”… fitting for these months where summer turns to fall and winter and we return once more to the hearth, whose embers warm us.

Your Convivio Book of Days calendar for September is here, ready for you to view or to print (it is a printable PDF, after all, on standard US letter size paper). The images on this month’s calendar are from Graue Mill in Oak Brook, Illinois, a working historic grist mill. My cousin buys the best cornmeal from Graue Mill.

My own fascination with grist mills began with a field trip to Philipsburg Manor, near Tarrytown, New York, when I was a boy. I had never seen a grist mill before, and I loved watching the old machinery slip into motion, powered by water. I had never stepped back in time before, either, and both Philipsburg Manor and Graue Mill offer this experience. I returned to Philipsburg in 1989 on my first big road trip. It was autumn. Grist mills still remind me of northern climes and autumn.

LOCALS: Join Seth and me tomorrow, Wednesday September 2nd, at Social House in Downtown Lake Worth for their second Maker Meet. We’ll be there with letterpress printed cards and postcards (including our Keep Lake Worth Quirky print) and we’ll also have our new Nolan tabletop press with us. We’re using it for the very first time at the Maker Meet. Come print your very own Maker Meet take away (hopefully the prints turn out good!). 6 to 9 PM at Social House, 512 Lucerne Avenue in beautiful Lake Worth, Florida.

August is a time of abundance of the summery sort: peaches and plums, raspberries and sweet corn. It is a month of small celebrations and the August edition of the Convivio Book of Days Calendar is here to help you mark them all. The month begins today with Lammas, the celebration of the first harvest, our escort toward autumn. It is, in Italy, the time of Ferragosto, when folks leave the cities and head for the sea. It’s a tradition that dates back to Ancient Rome, and it matters not how much it confounds tourists to Italy (good luck finding open restaurants should you visit at Ferragosto).

In Maine on the 6th, at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, it is their celebration of the Arrival of the Shakers in America: one of their most important celebrations. Seth and I were privileged to share in that celebration once when I was a print intern there with Brother Arnold Hadd. It was one of the most magical evenings I have known, sitting there in the 1794 Shaker Meetinghouse and joining them in reflection and song as the sun set over the village. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but I swear the Shakers through the ages were present in that room with us.

It is the time of Obon in Japan, the beautiful outdoor festival celebrating and honoring the dead with street fairs, bon odori dances, and at the festival’s conclusion, thousands and thousands of illuminated lanterns set on the water, each carrying the spirit of an ancestor off to the other shore until next year’s return.

And for us printers and book artists, it is the month we honor St. Bartholomew, a patron saint of bookbinders and book artists and it is in his honor that the traditional printers’ Wayzgoose celebration comes, marking the day each waning summer when printers typically began setting type by lamplight and candlelight once again, for sunlight was no longer enough. Lammas, at the start of the month, reminds us that summer is ripening all around us; the Wayzgoose brings a more concrete reminder of the approach of winter.

This month’s calendar is, as usual, a printable PDF document designed for standard US letter size paper, 8 1/2″ x 11″, easy to print, easy to pin to a bulletin board, a nice accompaniment to the Convivio Book of Days blog. Enjoy.