Category Archives: Transitions

Jun 01 2020
2 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Midsummer, Transitions

Midsommar, or Your June Book of Days

Here is the sixth month of the year, June. Late in the month comes the midsummer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere: the longest day of our year, the day with the most sunlight. This is an important time in places like Sweden, where, near the Arctic Circle, the sun will be above the horizon for most of the day––the other side of the coin from midwinter in December. Seth’s cousin married a Swede; when she got to the States, this may be what she missed most from her homeland: the celebration of Midsommar around St. John’s Day, the 24th of June. All these years later, perhaps Ulrika still misses this each June.

Be that as it may, here is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for June. We rarely use Convivio Bookworks products as cover stars in our calendars, but this month we did. Our photo this month is of the little tableau we’ve created in the corner cupboard in our kitchen. It features a pine tree candle and the new midsummer ornament we sell in our Convivio by Mail catalog. It’s handmade in Sweden of painted wood and ribbon.

I hope you’re doing well enough as we come to welcome summer. The times are challenging, this is for sure. Lake Worth has become a hot spot for new Covid-19 cases in the past week or two, but Seth and I: we go nowhere, really. The governor says it’s fine to be out and about, but we’re not paying attention to politicians in general these days. These same politicians are also not helping things much in that our country is suffering not just from a new virus but from a much older disease, one that goes back to its history of being built on a foundation of slavery. A century and a half later, we still can’t shake the inequality that is its legacy; it only grows worse. As much as I like to close each Convivio Book of Days post with something positive and uplifting, for the time being, I don’t think I can. The people in charge are divisive, concerned only with casting blame, which gets us nowhere. Violence, I feel, is never a good idea, and yet I see that the people who want to affect change find themselves cast as thugs, or undermining American ideals, even if they take a peaceful approach. What are American ideals? Equality, I think. And being able to live our lives without fear. These are the basics, and yet an entire segment of Americans do not have these luxuries.

 

Join me if you can each Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern time for a live, unscripted broadcast on our Facebook page of Book Arts 101: Home Edition––a weekly ramble through the book arts, craft, design, and whatever else drifts through my head. You can watch later (again, at our Convivio Bookworks Facebook page) should you not be able to watch at 3.

 

May 27 2020
4 Comments
Summer, Transitions

Still Here

The month of May has flown, hasn’t it? And with not a word from me. I’m still here, though, quarantining at home, doing well. Each day is full, what with working from home and tackling some dormant projects and adapting to the cat’s new feeding schedule. She seems to require meals beyond her traditional breakfast, dinner, 9:30 snack, and midnight snack. Now there is also lunch, the 8:30 snack that precedes 9:30 snack, and the 2 AM snack, too, should I be up that late. Most nights I am.

Most of the projects I am working on I am not quite ready to talk about. At least one of them I’d classify as something I never thought I’d ever do, and yet here I am, doing it, and it’s been a bit all-consuming in the nighttime hours when I am not working.

Another is something I’ve been doing for work, since March, I think: it’s a live broadcast each Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern time on our Facebook page. It’s called Book Arts 101: Home Edition––a weekly ramble through the book arts, craft, design, and whatever else drifts through my head. The broadcast this Wednesday will be about that place where the book arts intersect with the culinary arts, and I’ll be talking a lot, I’m sure, about the things that influence me to write this blog. The fact is Book Arts 101 is unscripted and only loosely planned and most weeks I do it by the seat of my pants. Seth likes to show me bloopers of live news casts just before each episode. I do have a healthy dose of stage fright before each broadcast, but the fact is that 3:00 comes and there is nothing to do but click “GO LIVE.” Each week I promise I’ll be there, and so I do it.

And so tonight I have nothing to remind you of, no holidays, no holy days. I just wanted to check in, say hello, how you doing? Very well, I hope. If you can join me Wednesday at 3, I’d love it if you could. You can watch the video later, too; it’s usually posted to our Facebook page right after the live broadcast ends. You can also view the first eight broadcasts in the archive that’s kept at the Facebook page of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Clicking that link now makes me realize I wear an awful lot of plaid. So be it.

Image: Some of the books that have had a major influence on me (and this blog), as well as one of my first handmade books: U Cutto: An Old Family Recipe, which I printed and bound in an edition of 65 copies in 1996. The title reflects my grandparents’ regional dialect. They were Italian, but the language they spoke was Lucerine, an Arabic influenced dialect from their region of Puglia.

 

Apr 27 2020
4 Comments
Ramadan, St. Mark's Eve, Transitions

Rounding Out April

April is soon coming to a close, and I apologize, I’ve definitely fallen off the ball with Book of Days updates since Easter. Since then, St. George’s Day has come and gone, as has the mysterious St. Mark’s Eve and his day, too, and hopefully the people of Venice were able to make risi e bisi, their traditional meal for the day, a risotto of rice and peas with pancetta and onion. I, for one, have been cooking up a storm (Sunday I made tomato sauce and a cardamom pear coffee cake) and one big question is once I switch back from trousers with drawstrings to trousers that have actual buttons and zippers, will I have to leave that top button open? The cat seems to like us being home, too; she now takes an additional meal at 2 in the afternoon.

Ramadan began this past week, too. A central aspect of this month-long celebration is daytime fasting. The fasting is a reminder of the many people who are less fortunate than ourselves, and in this strange time of home quarantine and isolation, it is good to remember this. It is so very easy to get caught up in our own troubles, no? Chances are extremely good that there is always someone having a much rougher day than we are. Why not then be kind and patient with everyone? This is a central aspect of Ramadan, but it should just as well be a central premise of living for us all.

Ramadan continues until the next crescent moon, when Eid al-Fitr, the Sweet Festival, begins. Beautiful Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr cards, all by our friend Manal Aman of Hello Holy Days! in Canada, are available at our online catalog, and right now they are all 15% off with code SPRING15 (through April 30). Other spring and summer items are included, as well as all of our handmade soaps. Plus free domestic shipping when you spend $50 across our catalog.

One last thing today: working from home has meant finding creative solutions to new challenges. One of my challenges as Director of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries is to maintain a connection with our students and our book arts enthusiasts, and so last month, despite my stage fright, I began a weekly Facebook Live broadcast called Book Arts 101: Home Edition, which airs live on the Facebook page of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts each Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time. We talk books and craft and stories and the broadcasts originate here, at the Convivio Bookworks studio. Basically, if it’s in my home or on the premises, it’s fair game. This Wednesday’s episode is going to be a love letter, of sorts, to Lake Worth, the quirky town we call home. I’ll be showing and talking about things in our home that were made in Lake Worth or that delve into its history. If you’re a fan of my Convivio Dispatches from Lake Worth, you’ll probably enjoy Wednesday’s broadcast. And if you’re not familiar with the Dispatches, you can check one out by clicking here. The Convivio Dispatch is quite a different animal than this blog. The Dispatches are more based in story, and they are not collected in a blog, but rather come to you as a very occasional email, as they always have.

Anyway, won’t you join us on Wednesday? If you can’t make it at 3 Eastern, worry not, the videos are later available at the Convivio Bookworks Facebook page. There have been four so far, and we’ll continue them for as long as they feel needed.

 

← Older posts
Newer posts →