Cyberflanerie: James McGrath Morris, Mexican Baby Jesus, Maps, Tiles Stoves, Hang, The Umbrella Man

James McGrath Morris's "Type A" Column for the Santa Fe New Mexican, including E-books: the legerdemain of tomorrow?

Morris also has a new book out, Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, First Lady of the Black Press. 

Check out the book's trailer—it's well worth watching (especially for the bit about President Eisenhower.)

And check out his article about writing this biography, "Reporting Across the Color Line," in The Daily Beast.

Mexican Baby Jesus in the "Mexico Cooks!" blog. (No worries, BJ does not get broiled.)

BBC: Maps That Shaped the World

The Billfold: Real Life As a Pastry Cook

Número Cinq Magazine's Virginia Woolf: Voice and Pictures

Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais - His Life and Work

Interesting Low-Techerie: Tiled Stoves 

From ye olde soundworks category: Hang: A New Instrument 

Utterly fascinating op-doc: The Umbrella Man 

How to Reduce Your Mail To Almost Nothing

>More Madam Mayo Cyberflanerie

>Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

May 15th Biographer's Conference in Boston

Here's a message from from biographer James McGrath Morris (author of many, most recently, Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power) about a wonderful gathering for biographers on May 15th in Boston:

In a little over two weeks the first ever Compleat Biographer Conference will open at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Sponsored by the new Biographers International Organization (BIO), it will feature at least six Pulitzer and National Book Award prizewinners as well as best-selling authors who are joining other writers, agents, editors, archivists, and librarians in workshops and panels geared to the practical aspects of the craft.

The registration deadline is rapidly approaching. Would you take a moment and think of writing friends who should know about this conference and pass on the word.

All the details may be found at our website: http://www.biographersinternational.org/conference.html

More anon.

Washington Independent Writers Conference: Authors, Agents, Books & Blogs

Still in recovery after the Washington Independent Writers Conference last Saturday--- for which I chaired the panel on travel writing with Sara Mansfield Taber, who is about to lead creative writing workshops in southern France and Mendoza, Argentina, and L. Peat O'Neill, who, as I write these lines, is on board a plane for Shanghai....signed my books, pitched the almost-finished novel to literary agents, scarfed down canapes and did the meet 'n greet with more writers than you could shake a Mont Blanc pen at--- among them, David Taylor (The Divine Root), Monica Jacobe, founder of Capitol Hill's fabulous "A Space Inside" reading series, Elaina Loveland, whose books on "creative careers" I recommend to all my friends with highschool-age kids, James McGrath Morris, biographer and editor of the spectacularly successful new blog/ newsletter, "The Biographer's Craft", Ann McClellan, author of the perennial Washington area airport and museum best-seller The Cherry Blossom Festival, Mary Kay Zuravleff (The Bowl is Already Broken), Doreen Baingana (Tropical Fish), Linda Leer (Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature), John Curry, Cara Seitchek, Lisa Daniels, Beryl Lieff Benderly... Also chatted with several fellow litbloggers, among them, biographer Ken Ackerman ("Coffee With Ken"), novelist Leslie Pietrzyk ("Work in Progress"), and freelancer Kristen King ("Inkthinker"). Came home with a shoulder-sagging bag o' books--- all by conference participants: Francine Prose's Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles; Rosemary A. King's Border Confluences: Borderland Narratives from the Mexican War to the Present; Peter Miller's Author! Screenwriter!; and Library of Congress librarian Thomas Mann's The Oxford Guide to Library Research. Not for nothing did DC Mayor Adrian Fenty declare June 9th "Washington Independent Writers Day"! More anon.