Eat Food. Not a Lot. Mostly Plants.

Michael Pollan's new In Defense of Food is a bodaciously good book. Check out his website, with excerpts, articles, and more, here.

Related post: King Corn.

Break the Block and Get a Bread Book

Paula Whyman, aka "curious writer," who recently guest-blogged here and was featured in a very cool Washington Post article on bread, is running a "creative jump-start" contest on her brand new blog: check it out and enter to win a beginner's guide to bread baking. Here's my entry in the contest:

Wash something--- yourself, the dishes, the dog--- anything. The act of washing calms the mind so that creative ideas, no longer repelled by turbulence, float in... to glide.... swanlike... One then proceeds to the desk....

Flash Fiction Workshop in Mexico City

It's filling up fast but there are still a few places available for my one day (10 am - 2 pm) "Flash Fiction" workshop via Dancing Chiva in Col. Roma, Mexico City on Saturday May 31st. What's a flash fiction? A story as short as six and as long as, say, 1,000 words. Though a genre with a distinguished tradition, flash fiction is perfectly suited for blogging and podcasting. For both beginning and advanced writers, this workshop will focus on improving your fiction-writing craft and generating new material. Suggested reading prior to the workshop: Dinty W. Moore, ed., Sudden Stories: The Mammoth Book of Miniscule Fiction. ---> Read more about this workshop here.

Finding Art, Making Art

Now, not in the future. A few artists who inspire me, not only for the quality of their work, but its range and sense of joy:
--->Christine Boyka Kluge--- who has a new blog post up, by the way;
--->David Rothenberg--- whose reading / whale & clarinet concert I caught last night at DC's Olssen's Bookstore;
--->Alvaro Santiago--- Mexican artist whose orange and gray art-box sits on my desk (must get a photo). If you're anywhere near DC, check out his "I Rent Myself to Dream" at the Mexican Cultural Institute.
More anon.

Happy Birthday

To Pabu, the world's greatest Tibetan Spaniel.

Guest-blogger Sanda Gulland's 5 Top Research Sites for Historical Novelists

I met today's guest-blogger, historical novelist Sandra Gulland at last February's San Miguel Writers Conference. She's a dynamo--- not only a fun conversationalist and fellow Mexico aficionada, but she's admirably prolific (a new novel plus the Josephine Triology) and--- this is also close to my heart--- keen on the whole Web 2.0 thing for books. ("Thing?" you say... well, I'm still trying to figure it all out, never mind the vocabulary.) Check out her website, www.sandragulland.com, read her latest newsletter, go ahead and sign up for it here, and check out her blog. Apart from all of that, be sure to check out her latest novel, based on the true story, Mistress of the Sun. It's forthcoming June 3rd in the US; already it's been a best-selling novel for many weeks in Canada. Over to you, Sandra.

As a writer of historical novels, I increasingly rely on the Net for both research and inspiration. Here are five outstanding historical sites:

#1. The Medici Archive Project, Document Highlights
This is a site I go to for inspiration, to refresh my delight in all things historical. As the workers who toil in this dusty realm of historical documents put it, every now and then a document comes along that casts a spotlight into that far-away realm and demands to be shared. From this site I’ve read the historical accounts of a rain of frogs, disemboweling kisses, and the sexual crimes committed under cover of the rite of the Tenebrae-— or "The Darkness"-— during Holy Week.

#2. The Diary of Samuel Pepys
I enjoy reading Pepys delightful diary on almost a daily basis. It gives me the feeling of life in the 17th century. The annotations are informative and well worth reading, as well.

#3. BibliOdyssey: Books—Illustrations—Science—History—Visual Materia Obscura—Eclectic Bookart.
There are many, many delights in the realm of historical research, and coming upon unusual and captivating illustrations is one of them. This amazing blog revels in the unusual, the charming, the beautiful. Not all of the images are historical, but most are. I could linger on this site all day.

#4. Google Book Search Google wasn’t the first to put digitized books on-line (the French on-line library Gallica was an early pioneer), but it has quickly become the best, in my view, and certainly the easiest to use. If you specify “full view only” in your search, you will be shown books in the public domain, often published some time ago. If you go to Advanced Book Search, you may even specify the time of publication. You may also begin to build up your own on-line library.

I use it for research, but I also love to search for old expressions — for example, how someone in the past might have completed the phrase: “as hot as a ... “ A Google Book search reveals these tasty possibilities: “as hot as a turnspit,” “as hot as a plum pudding,” “as hot as a melon bed.”

#5. Oxford English Dictionary
If I want to know if a particular word or expression was used in the 17th century, this is where I can go to find out. If I want to know what words were used for—say—”pretty” before the 18th century, the OED on-line will tell me (comely, quaint, jolly...). The site, however, is restricted: one must use it through a library that subscribes or pay. I couldn’t do without it.

--- Sandra Gulland

--->For the archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.

11 Cool Beans

I hereby share the links...

Brother Labeler
David Allen was not kidding, this gizmo will change your life. I realize that sounds really wacky. But I am not kidding, either.

Nubrella
For those who must text at all times.

Beautiful Beast Pet Portrait by Julie Feingold
She did Picadou's portrait with the monarch butterflies.

Derek Buckner UFO Painting

Holographic Portrait
Wouldn't it be interesting to keep one behind a little red velvet curtain?

Mexican Secretaire
Muy sofisticato.

Micro Expression Training Tool
But, actually, I think we were all born with the software installed.

Mutt Mitts Pinkies
The Cadillac of you-know-what bags! Read the poem!

Twike
This needs REALLY LOUD Scottish bagpipes. I think. Anyway, do the math, Sports Club LA dues + gas > Twike.

Vintage Turban
Dolley Madison a la Trailer Parque. Hon, why wait until you have to have the chemo?

Walking Wall Art
Can I have this in purple pugs?

More anon.

Hoy a las 17:00 hrs Konrad Ratz

Conferencia de Konrad Ratz sobre el Padre Fischer. Uno de los colaboradores mas destacados de Maximiliano en Mexico fue el sacerdote, presunto jesuita de origen aleman, Agustin Fischer. Entrada libre. Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Republica Salvador 49, Col. Centro, Mexico DF, Mexico.

DC Event May 6th @ 7 pm with Leslie Pietrzyk and Matthew Klam

Flirting with the Masters: Fiction Writers on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Tuesday, May 6, 2008, at 7 PM, the Arts Club of Washington will host acclaimed fiction writers Leslie Pietrzyk and Matthew Klam as they talk about the personal impact of reading F. Scott Fitzgerald, then share selections from their own work. This event is affiliated with the 2008 NEA "Big Read." Free and open to the public, reception to follow. The Arts Club of Washington is at 2017 I Street NW, near Foggy Bottom/GWU and Farragut West metro. Headquartered in the James Monroe House, a National Historic Landmark, the Club was founded in 1916 and is the oldest non-profit arts organization in the city. The Club mission is to generate public appreciation for and participation in the arts in the Nation's capital, through ongoing educational programs that include literary events, art exhibitions, and musical and theatrical performances.

Helmut Answers A Couple of Qs

Phronesisaical, or the "Phron," is one of the first blogs I ever read-- and after more than two years in the "blogopshere," I'm still checking in on an almost daily basis. Founding blogger "Helmut," (not his real name) is a DC friend, a professor of philosophy and an expert (he's edited an anthology for Johns Hopkins University Press and testified before Congress) on the philosophy of torture. Apropos of the workshop I gave last Saturday on writers's blogs for the Maryland Writers Association, I asked "Helmut" for his thoughts on blogging.

Madam Mayo: Do you read any writers's blogs?

Helmut: If fiction, I don't really read many unless I e-stumble upon them. I find McSweeney's, for example, really annoying in its overly self-conscious and preening cleverness. So, I assiduously avoid the site. My dislike there has more to do with the writing itself than with the fact that it's blog-based. It may be that writers' blogs and their drawbacks/assets have as much to do with the medium of blogs rather than writing itself. Part of this has to do with market. For example, I like James Wolcott as a writer and urbane wit, but I tend to check his blog more often than he posts. In some cases with other writers, this would doom them to blog oblivion (under the blogoid assumption that you continually have to post new content)-- that is, supply not keeping up with demand. In the case of Wolcott, however, he has the institutional heft of Vanity Fair behind him, but also individually has a large-ish market of readers. They'll come back, like me, to check for new posts.

Madam Mayo: What do you think attracts readers to a writer's blog?

Helmut: Given the vastness today of the blog world, readers tend to congregate around those blogs that either established themselves early on or have had the good luck to have some basic quality or particular product discovered by some other well-established blog. But to keep the readers, the blogger has to post fairly often. That need to post (if one wants readers and to retain those readers) is going to be in basic tension with the quality of the writing at some point, I would think. If one doesn't care about the readers, I have no explanation for why they're blogging in the first place... Frankly, I have no idea about these things regarding my own blog; otherwise, I wouldn't have given it the ugly name it has and wouldn't have committed myself-- on a whim-- to posting fruit photos.

Madam Mayo says: check out the latest fruit photo on the Phron here.