Category Archives: Transitions

Mar 16 2021
9 Comments
St. Joseph's Day, St. Patrick's Day, St. Urho's Day, Transitions

One Year In, Three Saints’ Days Return

It is a year ago now that our Covid-19 isolation began, and when I sat down today to write about St. Urho’s Day, which comes each 16th of March, I got reacquainted with the Convivio Book of Days chapter I sent out on this day last year. Reading it again reminds me of just how far we’ve come to get here today. It made me feel like we’ve learnt so much, like we’ve done so much… so I decided to share that same story with you here today, too, in hopes it makes you feel a bit of triumph as well. 

You’ll read about the Kibble Game, but in the year that’s passed, Haden the Convivio Shopcat has decided she’s not so crazy for kibble, and so we no longer play that game. She’s 15 now and though she’s in great health, she does have an underlying condition that requires us to give her 200 ml. of fluids each day, subcutaneously, and a dose of compounded liquid medicine. The medicine is chicken flavored, but still she hates it. And while we may not play the Kibble Game any more, last night was kind of like a game of professional football: Seth at one end of the kitchen, me at the other, Haden running back and forth between the goal posts until Seth finally dove and tackled her at the end zone. Never a lack of excitement here. (The picture above, by the way, is Haden, content, in one of several favorite napping spots in the house––she is her good old self as long as she has her fluids and meds to keep her gut feeling well. If you know a way we could successfully explain that to her, perhaps she’d come around willingly for her treatments.)

The bookstore downtown that we almost bought? That’s closed now. Lots of my friends who own small local restaurants still are struggling. But there is light in the future, we all feel this. Things are looking better.

Most everything else, though, is the same, right down to my working on everyone’s taxes for the past few weekends. I guess we always have been well, even when things last year were looking bleak. We wish that same wellness for you. Read on, then. Allow yourself to feel a bit of nostalgia for when this weirdness all began, then read further for news on a couple of virtual events this week where we can all see each other again (at least on screen, and for now, I’ll take that). If you could join us, I’d like that a lot. ~ John

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Convivio Book of Days, March 16, 2020:
St. Urho, St. Patrick, St. Joseph, and Tax Season

I’ve been working on taxes for the better part of several weekends now––my own, and my mom’s, and my sister’s. It has fallen upon me to do this––me, the most disorganized, least mathematical person in the family. But I find there is a certain satisfaction that comes each year with accomplishing this task; it appeals to the part of me that likes to cross things off lists. As in, check. Done. And though I do strive for accuracy, there comes a point each spring where I just decide that it is ok if the federal government receives a little more from me than it is entitled to. A bit of a well being tax, if you will. If it means I can stop thinking about numbers and depreciation and amortization, I feel it is money well spent.

And so it has come to pass that this afternoon, even in the midst of all the files and receipts and checkbooks spread upon the kitchen table, I have just finished playing the Kibble Game with the cat (I toss kibble, she chases it and hunts it down) and I have poured myself a tea bowl full of water, one of Seth’s fine pottery creations, spiked with lemonade, and I’ve put the oven on to reheat some leftover lasagna that my mother made. Seth is outside, working on a garden project. Not a bad Sunday afternoon, after all, despite taxes, and all that’s going on in the world.

It’s a strange time, isn’t it? We are celebrating this week’s saints’ days––days we would normally celebrate as extended family––apart, for the sake of preserving good health. Last night’s early St. Patrick’s Day dinner was canceled, but I did pick up from my mom and sister––while maintaining 6 feet of distance and touching no surfaces in the house––some of the corned beef and cabbage they made, and Marietta’s famous Irish Soda Bread. Not a drop of Irish blood in her, and yet my sister makes the best soda bread I’ve ever had. Each year, it just gets better and better. Seth and I had it with dinner last night and with breakfast this morning, warmed and buttered, and someday, when there is a Real Book version of the Convivio Book of Days, her recipe will be in it. Oh, maybe I’ll just give it to you today, so you can make it this week. We need things to celebrate, no? Even if we can’t these days gather together as much as we’d like, still it is important to appreciate the importance of that gathering. If we can’t do it together, perhaps we can do it virtually. We see these days so many reasons why the Internet and social media are unhealthy for us: the wholesale spread of rumors and bad information, the politicizing of tragedy, the fanning of flames of panic. I try my best to step away from all that, to not participate, and to focus on what is inherently good about contemporary modes of communication: we can, for instance, Skype with our loved ones while we have our own smaller, in-home celebrations. My mother and her sister are on Skype with each other most every night: a beautiful connexion from Florida to Illinois, the two DeLuca girls from East New York Avenue, in their 90s and still chatting with each other before bed. I love this. Sometimes they’re up way into the darkest hours of the night, my cousins and my Aunt Anne and my mom and my sister taking turns watching each other as they doze off on couches thousands of miles apart from each other. They don’t even have to talk. They just keep each other company. How wonderful that we can do this now, just be there for each other, even while apart.

And so what do we have this week to celebrate? To begin with, St. Urho’s Day on the 16th. Urho is the fictional saint of Finland, the Finns’ tongue in cheek answer to the infinitely more famous St. Patrick, whose day follows. St. Urho is said to have driven all the grasshoppers from Finland, saving the vineyards from certain destruction. It’s a holiday and a story you won’t know unless you live amongst Finns, as I do. To be honest, I don’t think you’ll find many vineyards in Finland, but St. Urho’s Day has become a day to celebrate the wine that comes from the fruit of vineyards, so go on, enjoy responsibly.

The next day, of course, brings St. Patrick’s Day. The celebrations this year will be considerably quieter than they typically are. A fine day to appreciate all things Irish. And then on the 19th, it’s St. Joseph’s Day. Father’s Day in Italy, a day when Italian bakers will be serving up zeppole and sfinci, the traditional pastries for San Giuseppe. This year for St. Joseph’s Day, it will be very quiet in Italy. If you do venture out here in the States, stop at an Italian bakery and get some pastry for the day. The bakers will appreciate it, and so will you. Just please, wash your hands after handling the bakery box. Take the advice of the Italian Nonna on YouTube (and yes, even my mother has had to give up the Kleenex she keeps in her sleeve).

So much has changed in our lives in such a short time. Socially, economically. For about a year now, Seth and I have been searching for a just-right public space for Convivio Bookworks, as it was feeling like time to move this small business out of our small house and into the broader world. We had been looking high and low through Lake Worth and West Palm Beach. If you had checked with us even just a month ago, we were giving serious consideration to a location on Lake Avenue, a sort of marriage of an existing bookish business with our own, creating a new spin on both, perhaps. We’ve put all these plans on hold, I suppose indefinitely. Making a business move like this is an expensive step, and we don’t have much to work with. Whenever we do make that leap, rest assured it will be a highly calculated move (there are those numbers, again).

And so we continue to do what we do. When you get right down to it, it’s kind of exciting to live in a tiny house and run a business out of it. Open up a closet and you’ll find bed linens and Dia de Muertos ofrenda figures. In the cupboard in the living room, there’s the china and the cutlery… oh and all the handpainted pysanky eggs from Ukraine. It can get dicey at times when someone orders something and I forget where it is. The only guarantee is that when I stored it away, I put it in a very logical place. It’s the logic that is fleeting and ephemeral, for me, anyway.

Please stay well, act wisely, mind your way in this world. And wash your hands (addendum March 16, 2021: And wear your mask!). Much love to you all. Now go. Bake some soda bread.

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.

The image for last year’s version of this chapter featured Haden the Convivio Shopcat, snoozing atop some of the boxes of Convivio Bookworks inventory we keep in the house. I figured I’d update the image this time around, so here’s a new favored place for her catnaps: between the wall and a cupboard in our bedroom is where we stack duffel bags, winter clothes, and four chair cushions, to within three feet of the ceiling. (It’s a small old house with hardly any closet space, so we’ve got to be creative in our storage solutions.) These days, Haden likes to sleep atop the cushions, close to the ceiling. We call this “smooshin’ the cushions.” The image just above: one of four (!) Irish Soda Breads my sister Marietta has baked this week.

Please join us, virtually!

Addendum March 16, 2021: You are cordially invited to gather with us virtually for two events this week: On Wednesday, March 17 at 3 PM Eastern, I’ll be broadcasting Book Arts 101: Urho, Patrick, Giuseppe live from the studios of Convivio Bookworks. I’ll be chatting and showing artists’ books from the Jaffe Center for Book Arts that are related to Finland, Ireland, and Italy. You have to register to watch the live broadcast on Zoom… click here to do so. It should also be simulcast live on our Convivio Bookworks Facebook page (fingers crossed).

And then on Friday, March 19, join us for the Jaffe Center’s weekly virtual Real Mail Fridays letter writing social. This week’s social is a special one for St. Joseph’s Day with a theme influenced by the 1987 Norman Jewison film Moonstruck… for these are my people. I relate to them. I’ll be playing a setlist of Italian music while we gather to do whatever it is we need to do: it’s a letter writing social, but the folks who join in are not necessarily writing letters. Some are binding books, some are doing homework, some are baking. People come because it is a chance to get together and feel part of something. It’s an amazingly calming and heartwarming way to wrap up your week. Click here to join us (it’s the same Zoom link each and every Friday).

Springtime Stock-Up Sale continues at the Convivio Bookworks online catalog! $10 off $65 on anything in the shop when you use discount code BUNNY, plus free domestic shipping. We appreciate your support!

 

Feb 25 2021
12 Comments
Concordia, Transitions

Father Seamus

It was Concordia this past Monday: a feast of Ancient Rome in which folks would gather for a meal with the express purpose of resolving all disputes. A lovely idea, I think, but since we are not encouraged to gather these days, I didn’t bother to write about it. Still, Concordia remained at the back of my head all that day: the concept of goodwill behind it felt like the kind of holiday my friend Seamus Murtagh could really get behind.

The weekend before, we got the news that Father Seamus had left this earthly life. If the name sounds familiar, perhaps you are a subscriber to the other bit of writing I do, the Convivio Dispatch from Lake Worth. In the Dispatch, years ago, I made Father Seamus the pastor at St. Bernard’s here in town. The thing to understand about the Dispatch (and I think most of my readers understand this) is that it is an exercise in creative nonfiction: a bit of local reality peppered with some things I’ve made up. When I was a boy, my grandmother, Assunta, an immigrant from Apulia in Southern Italy, would accuse me of “telling stories” whenever she caught me in a lie, and it’s kind of funny that she was right: this is what I do. I tell stories and after a while no one knows what is fiction and what is not, not even me. I mean no harm by it; I just like a good story.

Here’s what is fact: Father Seamus was a great guy. He was the pastor at St. Ann’s in West Palm Beach, the oldest Catholic church in the county, which is the very last church that John F. Kennedy attended, the Sunday before his trip to Texas, and which looks nothing like most churches in Florida for it was built back when this place was a pioneer town, in the very early 1900s. My first visit was for the Feast of the Assumption, my grandmother Assunta’s birthday, on the Fifteenth of August one year soon after we got our home in Lake Worth. Father Seamus was not there then; St. Ann’s was run by Jesuits at first and they were there that first visit. Seamus came not long after the Jesuits left. What a fine man he was. Seamus always warmly welcomed me, and Seth, too . . . which is not the typical response a gay couple get at a Catholic church. He reminded us that it was our church as much as anyone else’s, and that we should always feel welcome.

I’d bring my entire family to Seamus’ special services: to communal reconciliation, to Holy Thursday Mass, to Easter Vigil Mass. Between Adriana Samargia’s beautiful singing and Father Seamus’ moving homilies, the experience was always sublime. He’d tell great stories. And he’d recite poetry. Out of nowhere, it would seem: standing before the congregation, holding the inside sleeves of his vestments as he recited––a habit, you could tell, that he picked up as a schoolboy. He was Irish through and through, born in the old country in County Roscommon, and when he told jokes his accent would grow thicker the nearer he got to the punch line. Father Seamus made us all feel so good about being human and striving for connection with others and with God. And I will always remember him, too, quietly launching into these words at every Mass, after communion:

Lord, I believe in you: increase my faith.
I trust in you: strengthen my trust.
I love you: let me love you more and more.
I am sorry for my sins: deepen my sorrow.

I worship you as my first beginning,
I long for you as my last end,
I praise you as my constant helper,
And call on you as my loving protector.

I want to do what you ask of me:
In the way you ask,
For as long as you ask,
Because you ask it.

Let me love you, my Lord and my God,
And see myself as I really am:
A pilgrim in this world,
A Christian called to respect and love
All whose lives I touch.

Amen. It is the pilgrim in this world part that always touched me, and I think it resonated with him, too. And now he has moved on, from this world, on another pilgrimage of sorts. I can count on one hand all the times I’ve been back to St. Ann’s since Father Seamus retired and the day I decided it just wasn’t the same welcoming place for me as it had been whilst in his care. Be that as it may, Seamus and I will still get together at St. Bernard’s in those Convivio Dispatches. He’ll always be the pastor at St. Bernard’s, and Sister Kathleen, the Reluctant Organist, she will always be in charge of the music ministry. Seamus will still come round for bacon and peanut butter sandwiches at Minnie’s Diner, and he will inevitably bump into my neighbor Margaret on occasion. Margaret, too, has been known to recite a poem when the mood strikes. The Great Seamus v. Margaret Poetry Showdown that happened as they sat side by side at Minnie’s counter still is the stuff of legend in this town. We all remember it as the fine spring morning when Margaret got Seamus flummoxed with one of the sexier stanzas of Robert Herrick’s Corinna’s Going a Maying:

And as a vapour, or a drop of raine
Once lost, can ne’r be found againe:
                     So when or you or I are made
                     A fable, song, or fleeting shade;
                     All love, all liking, all delight
                     Lies drown’d with us in endlesse night.

And so Father Seamus will live on here in Lake Worth. I will keep him here with us, for this is my job, this is what I do. No one else will be the wiser, but you: you will know the real story. That this good man really did walk this earth for a spell, and made it a welcoming place.

Father Seamus as Uncle Seamus in a family photo shot by his niece, Christina. Top photo: the original St. Ann’s Church, West Palm Beach, built in 1902.

†

Feb 08 2021
24 Comments
Birthdays & Anniversaries, Transitions

Cutrone Auto Service Co.

My cousin Al came to visit us this past weekend. He’s been here from New York for a few weeks and he wanted some time to pass between his travels and his visit with Mom, just for the sake of caution, but Saturday he came to the house and the five us had a good meal and shared a lot of laughs and stories, too. Essentially, it’s the thing my family loves best, and especially Mom, and it’s probably what Mom misses most these days: just sitting down at a big table groaning heavy with food and eating and laughing. Card tables with people far apart from each other is just not my mom’s style, but we do what we have to do to stay safe. Dinner with Al was wonderful all the same.

Al’s father and my father were brothers, and when Dad was looking to open an auto repair shop in Brooklyn, he asked my Uncle Al to be his partner. And so they were, for thirty years, from 1948 when they opened the shop until the day they closed it, in 1978. Al is a little older than I am, so while I spent my early summers at the beach, Al got to go in to work with his dad to earn some money. Neither Al nor I took after our dads––our combined mechanical knowledge doesn’t extend much past how a screwdriver works. But Al, at least, got to spend time at the shop, and he got to see the Cutrone Brothers doing what they did, and I envy that.

My dad was not the most patient of teachers, but I think Dad got a bit of a kick out of the things I put him through. I can remember he and I setting up my Aurora HO Thunderjet 500 slot car track on the billiard table in the basement when I was a kid. I was probably 7 or 8 years old. We worked and worked on it (well, Dad did, while I fiddled around), and when it was time to try it out, Dad told me to “give him some juice.” I went to the kitchen and poured him a glass of orange juice. That event pretty much set the stage for my mechanical abilities for the rest of our years together.

It seems my cousin Al did not fare much better; nonetheless they took him in to the shop each summer when he was a teenager, and it was pretty wonderful Saturday night to hear Al’s stories about working with the guys, including the Cutrone Brothers’ methods for tire disposal (let’s just say it was another time) and how they ended up with so much ice cream one summer that Aunt Marie felt the need to buy a new deepfreeze.

The stories were good, and the company was good. And while I did not wake up this morning planning to write about this, something about the stories reminded me about the picture in the photo album of Dad and Uncle Al in front of their shop and this is how it is to be a writer. One thing leads to another and memories start kicking around in my head, and one thing I will always remember about Al is that four years ago, in early February, Al visited my dad in his hospital room after his stroke. Dad was so animated when Al was there. It seemed like the best night he’d had in a while. A few days later, Dad was gone. It surprised all of us. And still at night before bed I turn out the lights and I say goodnight to photographs of the ones I love and very often I have to remind myself that Dad is not here, not in the same way. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe it’s good I usually feel like he is.

I remember pretty much everything about the way the 8th of February played out four years ago, from the time I left work early because I felt I needed to get to the hospital to check on Dad, to my journey, right after I arrived, walking behind his bed as he was rolled down to ICU, to the long wait while I was not allowed in, and all of the other things that led to the way things turned out in the overnight hours that followed. It is, perhaps, the day of the year I dislike most. We all have these days when we are reminded of what we would rather forget. But they, too, are part of the round of the year, and we have no choice but to take them as they come. It has been a tough time for so many, this year and last. If you’re having a rough go of it right now, I can tell you that I get it, and I can tell you that you are walking in good company. We’re all there with you. And while, when it comes to loss, things never get easier, they do change. You will always miss the ones no longer physically with you, but the way you miss them will change. Every now and then, though, a jolt will come. Expect this. It’s part of the path, and there is no right way to deal with it. You carry on. You get through.

Today, chatting with Mom, I learned some new things about the garage. Before it was Cutrone Auto Service Co., it had been a millinery, and Phyllis Caputo, the woman who set up the blind date that was my mom and dad’s first meeting, worked there making hats. Next door to the millinery, back then, was an Italian merchant who made all kinds of pasta. Records show that earlier on, the shop was another garage: the photo below is from 1915.

I look at the picture of Hawthorne Garage, and I know that at some point, in 1947 or so, Dad and Uncle Al saw that same empty garage that’s in the 1915 picture and thought, Yeah, this place has some potential. And then I look at the picture of Cutrone Auto Service Co., circa 1948. Dad and Uncle Al are smiling, their trousers are mucky… they are two men happy in their work. That shop looks like a great old building. Seth and I drive by old garages these days on Dixie Highway and sometimes we think, Now THAT would be a great place to set up a Convivio Bookworks shop. I didn’t get much mechanical knowledge from Dad, but I did get that ability to dream. And some pretty great stories, too. And even more of them now that Cousin Al has come to visit and reminisce with us.

Love to you all.

 

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