Jul 01 2014
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Book of Days Calendar

Your July Book of Days

July14Watermelon

It’s the First of July, Canada Day, since it’s the First of the month the newest edition of the ongoing Convivio Book of Days calendar project is now available at our website. This month’s Book of Days calendar has a watermelon theme, because it is that time of year. If you live here in Florida, the truth is a mango theme may be more appropriate… but I am reaching mango saturation point and I don’t know if I can even look at one today. Watermelons seem so much more… patient? I think that’s a good word to describe them… than mangoes. It’s not often you’ll find yourself inundated with watermelons, whereas mangoes, well…. All things in their time, however. Enjoy the watermelons. And if you have a mango tree, don’t worry, chances are it’s almost done bearing fruit for this summer!

Here’s that link once more:
http://www.conviviobookworks.com/Images/July2014.pdf

 

Jun 29 2014
Ramadan

Ramadan Mubarak

Arabesque

I had dinner at The Pelican on Friday night. Those of you who know me well know this is my typical Friday routine. Tara and Sami are the Pakistani couple who own The Pelican. It’s a small place in Downtown Lake Worth, very easy to pass by unnoticed should you be driving down Lake Avenue, with just a few tables and a counter and shutters that open into the restaurant on cool nights. They’re only open for breakfast and lunch typically, but on Friday nights, they turn off the TV and the overhead fluorescents, switch on the spotlights and occasionally some Indian music and serve amazing dinners fragrant with the spices of their homeland.

This past Friday I went, knowing it would be the last dinner I’d have there for a while, for they’re never open for Friday night dinner during Ramadan. When it’s Ramadan, which began here on Saturday evening this year, Tara and Sami and their family fast all day, from sunrise to sunset. They break the fast each evening after sunset with a delicious meal, and during Ramadan, they like that meal to be at home, rather than at the restaurant, and I admire that they close up for this monthlong observance (even though I’ll miss those dinners).

Ramadan is the month when Mohammad received the revelations of the Quran. Its observance is one of the five pillars of Islam, and observance includes not just fasting but also increased prayer and charity and a general focus on goodness.

The start of Ramadan is based on the sighting of the crescent moon and so its beginnings each year are never concrete, and it can vary slightly from place to place. Even over the course of the month, it is fascinating, I think, that even the times of fasting each day vary, for it truly reflects the sun’s journey, now that the solstice has passed, toward the southern sky and helps us appreciate the ever changing shift in daylight hours. In Karachi, Pakistan, which could be where Tara and Sami are from, on the first day of Ramadan the sun rose at 4:17 AM and set in the evening at 7:26 PM. By the end of Ramadan, the amount of sunlight will have decreased by 24 minutes, mostly in the morning, as the sun rises later and sets earlier in the day. Ramadan is a lunar observance, but by its end we are that much closer to the balance of the autumnal equinox and the next solstice at Midwinter.

Ramadan may be a month of fasting, but the meals that break the fast each evening can be really wonderful and very celebratory. I remember an NPR story from many years ago about Ramadan in Iran; the foods that were being described, even over the radio, sounded so good, I wanted to taste them all. Some of these meals, they said, can last through the night. It is a month of patience, humility, and spirituality… but also a month of good food. “Ramadan Mubarak!”

 

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I shot the image above at the Morocco pavilion at Epcot a few years back. How very uninspired of me, to get my cultural experience about a place like that through a whitewashed corporate experience. Nonetheless, family lore says that my maternal grandmother’s lineage holds a distant mix of Italian and Moroccan, so I was pretty fascinated with what I saw there, even if it was Disneyfied.

 

Jun 24 2014
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Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Day

St. John’s Day

St_John_the_baptist_-_Leonardo_Da_Vinci

Solstice celebrations have a long history… all the way back to prehistory, in fact. And you can count on things like this, handed down through the generations, to be fiercely protected. And so it was with people and the early Church as entire empires and city-states began converting to Christianity in those formative years. Old ways persisted a long time and still do, but the early Church opted to rededicate many of these celebrations. The Church placed the birth of Jesus Christ at the winter solstice and the birth of John the Baptist, who prepared his way, at the summer solstice, keeping those solstice celebrations in place but repurposing them to the celebrations we honor today.

Consider the imagery: John is born at Midsummer, just as light begins to decrease. “He must increase, but I must decrease,” we read in John 3:30. Conversely, Christ is born at Midwinter, just as light begins to increase. Again, in John 8:12: “I am the light of the world.” No one knows for sure the exact dates of birth of these two historical figures, but the Church knew what it was doing when it chose these dates, there’s no doubt. The message is a powerful one, especially when you go back to simpler times, before electricity: We were much more attuned to the patterns of increasing and decreasing sunlight in the past.

Most of the Midsummer traditions have to do with St. John’s Eve, which was last night. Still, one tradition is to cut divining rods on this day. Hidden treasures are also thought to reveal themselves on St. John’s Day (perhaps St. Anthony’s influence from earlier in the month?). Explore lonely places, it is said, and there these treasures shall be, awaiting any lucky finder. The magic passes with the day.

St. John the Baptist is unusual in that he is the only saint for which we celebrate his birth (today) in addition to his death (August 29). So you’ll see his name come around again in late summer. St. John is sacred to Puerto Rico, Québec and Newfoundland. He is a patron saint of tailors, innkeepers, and printers like me. It is customary to eat strawberries on his feast day, and in Estonia and Finland, a special St. John’s Day cheese is made, flavored with caraway seeds. Luckily no one has made a tradition of eating the foods that St. John himself is known to have eaten: “And his meat was locusts and wild honey” (Matthew 3:4). Try serving that at your next Midsummer dinner and watch your guests clear out in a hurry.

As with Christmas at the opposite solstice, it is the eve of the feast that is charged with more magic and mystery. And especially so with St. John’s Eve. The fires of people across the planet were blazing last night, lighting the midsummer night, calling down the power of the sun, marking our celebrations across time and geography.

 

Image: St. John the Baptist by Leonardo DaVinci [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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