Guest-Blogger John Scherber, Author of Into the Heart of Mexico: 5 Expat Meccas

My San Miguel de Allende-based fellow-American, fellow writer and bodaciously successful publisher of San Miguel de Allende Books-- if you're lucky enough to attend this year's San Miguel Writer's Conference, look for him in the conference's bookstore-- John Scherber has a new book out, timely and informative reading for anyone considering a move south of the border: Into the Heart of Mexico: Expatriates Find Themselves Off the Beaten Path. 

Herewith his guest-blog for Madam Mayo, featuring five of the several places he went to speak with expats for the insider story:

Everyone has been to Cancun. Everyone has heard of the large expat colonies in San Miguel de Allende and Lake Chapala. Exploring the expat phenomenon, I wanted to do a book about those living in places without much support from their own kind. Was this a different kind of expat? Or only one with better Spanish? The towns they lived in would each be a character in this story. Here’s where I went to talk with them:

1. Mineral de Pozos, Guanajuato. A near ghost town, with a population that fell from 75,000 in 1900 to 200 in 1950. Now it lingers around three to four thousand, with two dozen expats. Its ambience is crumbly chic, as most of the ancient town continues to dissolve into the soil. On the hill above, the hulking remains of the old mining buildings await their apotheosis.
2. Patzcuáro and the lake villages. An unknown number of expats reside in this small city among an exuberance of native crafts and arts. An alpine setting rich with tall trees and unsuspected joys.
3. Puebla. México’s Chicago-style town. The expats are from all over, drawn mainly to its industry. English speakers are a small minority of this group and are not close. At the edge, the volcano lives and breathes.
4. Zacatecas, another mining era charmer. At nine expats and a gorgeous urban fabric, I wondered when it was going to be discovered.
5. Oaxaca. The jewel of the south. A larger expat community, but I spoke with three people who weren’t much connected. Sixteen ethnic groups ply their ancient, magical trades.

-- John Scherber

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>Find all Madam Mayo guest-blogs archived here.

COMMENTS

Cyberflanerie: Kid Lit Edition by Mary Lynn Patton

Mary Lynn Patton

My Tepoztlan amiga Mary Lynn Patton offers another guest-blog, this one her report on the recent Kid-Lit jamboree in Austin, Texas:

The Kid’s Lit Conference was held in Austin, Texas on November 8 & 9, 2013 with keynote speaker Cynthia Leitich Smith of the blog Cynsations noting aspects of a great blog. Her first recommendation is to have a central mission or philosophy to your blog. Hers is “diversity” which ties to her YA books on native Americans and other culturally diverse characters. Cynthia woke me up to the theme that runs through my writing of “believing in Mexico” and wanting to share the passion I have for my adopted country. This is what keeps me motivated and brings me energy and rewards for making stuff up for a living.

Pam Coughlin, conference organizer, contributor to the Cybils, and KidLit blogger at Mother Reader also did a session on blogs that reminds us to have our names clearly stated at the blog site no matter what our blog tag may be, like Madam Mayo (...don’t miss her November 11 post on self-publishing at the Writer’s Center).  Additionally, a reader should be able to find what books the blogger has written. And finally, post dates on blogs to give the reader an idea of how current is the writing. The rule for posting is “better to be regular than frequent”. Don’t miss Pam’s wonderful book giving ideas for the holidays on her website.

Biggest take away from attending a conference of bloggers in my writing genre was real connections with new friends. Exposure to a picture book reviewer like Rosemond Cates at Big Hair and Books  provided a wealth of new children’s books with excellent reviews.

My website blog at http://www.marylynnpattonbooks.com will see revisions that reflect these new ideas shared at the conference. I highly recommend attending a bloggers’ conference, especially in your writing area of interest.

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>Check out Mary Lynn Patton's previous guest-blog, iWorld is Upon Us.

>Complete archive of Madam Mayo guest-bloggers, including Lisa Carter, Joanna Hershon, David Lida, and many more, here.

COMMENTS

Guest-blogger Children's Author Mary Lynn Patton with 5 Links on Mexico and E-Publishing

Mary Lynn Patton

Delighted to see Mary Lynn Patton's first two children's books, Sounds of Mexico and Sounds of Mexico Maya, up in the iBookstore with links from www.MaryLynnPattonBooks.com. As Mary Lynn writes:

"These two bilingual books star my canary, Pavarotti, who loves to sing along with the sounds of Mexico. He takes the reader on adventures set in the magical mountains of Tepoztlan in the first book and the sacred land of the Maya people in the second. I recall with a chuckle my first plea for your help in finding a publisher for these books and your suggestion to self-publish as an iBook (books with sound require a connection to iTunes so the Amazon/Kindle combination was not possible). My collaborators, illustrator Margarita Sada from Mexico City, Salvador Espinosa, sound engineer, and Judith Segura, translator, and I (all from Tepoztlan, Morelos home to the Canadian Mexican Literary Festival), worked together to publish. It was thrilling. By the second book we were becoming increasingly interactive in our presentation and for the third book we are considering the Read Aloud feature available in iBooks. I want a hard copy published book to hold in addition to these e-books but as the Madam herself asserts (Seven Reasons Why E-Books Will Be Big in Mexico) this works to reach readers here and now. A bit of research revealed the phenomenal escalating sales for e-books, $1.3 billion in 2012 (No, E-book Sales Are Not Declining). Mexico City has a new eBook publishing company called editorial-ink for digital books (www.editorial-ink.com) and a new digital library (http://goodereader.com/blog/most-popular-news/largest-childrens-library-in-mexico-opens-and-uses-3000-ebooks/). Children the world over from middle and upper class homes are receiving iPad minis in child-proof cases as their birthday surprise to download interactive books."

> Recent guest-bloggers here at Madam Mayo include novelists Victoria Wilcox, Amy Kwei, and Joanna Hershon. 
> Check out the complete archive of guest-blogs here.
P.S. My embryonic and to-be-frequently-updated list of recommended reading on Mexico is here.

Guest-blogger Amy Kwei, author of A Concubine for the Family, on 5 Recommended Books on China

Guest-blogging today is my fellow Women's National Book Association member, novelist Amy Kwei, author of the just-released A Concubine for the Family, which is based on an amazing true story of her own family. Here's what she has to say about it:

Imagine a wife lovingly gives a younger woman to her husband as a birthday present! A Concubine for the Family is a fictionalized account based upon this “true-life” event of my Chinese Grandmother's gift to ensure a male heir for the family. This is a story of feminine solidarity and heroism. 

The main characters belong to the Confucian elite and share the same family dominated values as many present-day leaders of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Simply written, the novel is divided into three “books”, and follows the fortunes of the “book-fragrant” Huang family from Hangzhou, China to Shanghai and Hong Kong in 1937 — 1941, when China was emerging into Westernization, the Sino-Japanese war and WWII.

The daily life and society of this household are steeped in the traditions of decency, nobility, loyalty and cunning maneuvers for survival. They give the reader an instant understanding of Chinese culture and how they differ from our own. Poetry, silk cultivation, foot-binding, acupuncture and opium addiction are intertwining threads throughout the book. The daughters bring comic relief. Two Americans, a children’s tutor and a visiting reporter, introduce conflicting Western values. 

The novel’s second “book” highlights episodes of great glamour, shrewd business and political intrigue occurring in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. Book Three details the Huang family living in Hong Kong, under British colonialism. The novel holds promise to become a Chinese Downton Abbey. 

Want to learn more about China? Amy Kwei has recently read and warmly recommends:

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolo Guo.  A quick read and an edgy story of how the Chinese and Westerner differ in the concept of love. 

Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Live, Love and Language by Deborah Fallows. Humorous insights into the Chinese language.

China Airborn by James Fallows. Gives a good understanding of how China is investing a huge sum to jump-start its aerospace industry.  

Mother on Fire, by Sandra Tsing Loh. A fast, fun story that will irritate her parent. 

Busy working on the sequel to A Concubine for the Family — Under the Red Moon. Research readings include The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang.

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Amy found out my blog after reading my note in the WNBA newsletter about my dad's book, Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam, by Roger Mansell-- which does have quite a bit to do with China and she was kind enough to recommend it, also. 

Speaking of Iris Chang, my #1 book read in 2010 was Finding Iris Chang, a memoir by her close friend and fellow journalist / writer, Paula Kamen.

Interested in guest-blogging for "Madam Mayo" blog? Guidelines here. Archive of all previous guest-blog posts here.

Guest-blogger Joanna Hershon: 5 Links from A Dual Inheritance that Traverse the Globe

Delighted to host the widely-lauded novelist and cyber amiga de Todos Santos, Joanna Hershon, guest-blogging about her novel-- pub date yesterday!-- A Dual Inheritance (Ballantine Books). Here's the catalog description of what promises to be fabulous read:

Autumn 1962: Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard. Ed is far removed from Hugh’s privileged upbringing, yet his drive and ambition outpace Hugh’s ambivalence about his own life. These two young men form an unlikely friendship, bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances. But in just a few short years, not only do their paths diverge, but their friendship ends abruptly, with only one of them understanding why. Can a friendship define your view of the world? Spanning from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present-day stock market collapse, A Dual Inheritance asks this question, as it follows not only these two men, but the complicated women in their vastly different lives. And as Ed and Hugh grow farther and farther apart, they remain uniquely—even surprisingly—connected.

Five Links from A Dual Inheritance that Traverse the Globe

By Joanna Hershon

1) A Dual Inheritance starts in 1962 at Harvard, and this article about an iconic restaurant (and the site of a scene in the novel) and it's closing, evokes both the place-- so international and campus-glamorous-- and a sense of nostalgia, which seems appropriately representative of this book.

 
2) This film, The Nuer by Robert Gardner, is the inspiration for Chapter Six. Hugh Shipley graduates from Harvard in 1963 and goes to Africa with a film crew to assist his mentor. It's there in Ethiopia where his career path changes focus and takes a surprising turn. Writing about a young man on a precipice of his life, in the middle of the bush, so vulnerable to not only the elements, but to his own fragile psyche, was challenging, and while I was writing this chapter, I'd watch this film over and over and revel in its beauty and its otherness. 

3) My Pinterest board for A Dual Inheritance. What a pleasure it was to dream visually about the worlds of my novel. It didn't occur to me to even look at Pinterest until long after I was finished writing, when my imaginary worlds were so much more real than any photographs. 

4) Chapter Sixteen is set in Shenzhen, China in the late 1980's. There's very little online about this part of the world during this particular time, which was fascinating, in itself. I found a great deal on Chinese delicacies. Here's a gateway into that culinary world. 

5) Here is a link that's sure to amaze and inspire. Make sure to spend some time watching the incredible film footage. I went to high school with Dr. Amy Lehman, who happens to be an extraordinary thinker, doctor and leader. She is building a floating health clinic on Lake Tanganyika, which makes up 18 percent of the world's fresh water supply. The lake's surrounding communities (spanning four countries – Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Zambia) are currently without basic healthcare. Dr. Lehman and her ideas continue to influence and inspire. 

--Joanna Hershon 

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Recent Madam Mayo guest-blog posts include C. Marina Marhese with 5 Surprising Facts about Honey, Pollination, and Your Food  and John Kachuba on 5 Literary Ghosts.

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

Guest-blogger Ellen Cassedy on 5 Links to Learn Yiddish

Ellen Cassedy is the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, March 2012)

Ellen Cassedy set off into the Jewish heartland of Lithuania to study Yiddish, the language of European Jews, and connect with her forebears. Once there, however, old certainties began to dissolve, what had begun as a personal quest expanded into an exploration of how Jews and non-Jews in a land scarred by conflict are confronting their Nazi and Soviet past in order to move forward into the future.

Probing the terrain of memory, massacre, and moral dilemmas, Ellen asks: Can we honor our diverse heritages without perpetuating the fears and hatreds of the past? Her account shines a spotlight on fragile efforts toward tolerance, and finds reason for hope.

Learn Yiddish: 5 Links

When my mother was alive, I could count on her to keep hold of the old Jewish world. But when she died, all those who’d come before seemed to be slipping away. My mother had sprinkled Yiddish words into conversation only occasionally, like a spice, but once she was gone, I found myself missing them. I developed a craving to connect myself to my origins by learning the old mother tongue. Learning to speak Yiddish – and to understand, read, write, sing, and translate – has been a mekhaye, a great pleasure.

Even a taste of Yiddish feels delicious on the tongue. Here are some links to get you started:

Yiddish Twitter

https://twitter.com/#!/yiddishclasses

Who knew? Twitter can help you find the Yiddish class or program that meets your needs.

Yiddish Farm
http://www.yiddishfarm.org/
You can even choose to learn the language while working on a farm.

Yiddish Primer
http://www.yiddishculture.org/basiclesson/index.html
An easy place to begin (without farm work) is the 20 simple online lessons offered by the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture. Start with the alphabet; sound is included to help you pronounce.

Yiddish Online Dictionary

http://www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com/

It goes both ways, from kiss to kush and vice versa.

Yiddish Book Center

http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/

Check out the Yiddish Book Center to connect to a wealth of information about all things Yiddish.

Enjoy!

http://www.ellencassedy.com/

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.
Recent guest-bloggers include novelist Peter Behrens, translator Harry Morales, and New World heirlooms expert Steve Sando.

Guest-blogger Peter Behrens on 4 Canadian and 1 Irish Writers You Must Read

St Patrick's Day edition! My guest-blogger today is my Yaddo and VCCA amigo, Peter Behrens, whose most recent novel is The O'Briens (Pantheon, March 2012), which has been garnering glowing reviews as he takes it on a coast-to-coast tour. Behrens is also the author of the historical novel The Law of Dreams, and he blogs about trucks, cars, highways, aesthetics, and good writing at autoliterate. Where does he get his inspiration? Maybe it's from hanging out part of the year under the starry skies of Marfa, Texas. The New York Times recently profiled Behrens and his family in A Moth to Marfa's Flame: At Home with Peter Behrens by Penelope Green, along with a slide show, A Winter Home in the West Texas Desert. That said, the best novelists always draw inspiration from other novelists; here are five Behrens recommends.

Four Canadian and 1 Irish Writers You Must Read
By Peter Behrens

Alistair Macleod. His novel No Great Mischief won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1999. The novel is superb but the best of his short stories are transcendant. They were originally published in 2 collections: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun. (The 2 volumes were collected and published in the United States as ISLAND in 2000. There are any number of Checkhov-calibre Macleod stories: two of my favorites are "Vision", and "The Closing Down of Summer". "The Tuning of Perfection" belongs right up there as well. Macleod was born in Saskatchewan, into a family of expatriate Nova Scotians. They soon returned to NS, and MacLeod grew up in Inverness County, on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. The culture he grew up within was shaped by Catholic Highlanders and Islandmen who emigrated from Scotland in the middle of the 19th century. It's a world much involved with the sea, and with fishing and coal mining; where Scottish Gaelic is still a common language (more common on Cape Breton than in Scotland, in fact.) The ancient world infuses Macleod's stories, but they are anything but quaint, sentimental, or bucolic. The stories operate like novels: they contain worlds; they are often open-ended. They resonate.


Joseph Boyden so far has published two remarkable novels, Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce. Three Day Road is about Cree solidiers serving in the Canadian Army during WWI. Through Black Spruce which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2008. It's protagonst is a legendary bush pilot, son of one of the characters in the first novel. Boyden has Mètis heritage and his characters come out of that rich, impoverished, complex northern world of mixed race and mixed identity. Sometimes they choose between the northern world and the world "away"; sometimes the choice is made for them. They engage with the history of their time. This guy knows how to write. Beautiful sharp sentences.

Alice Munro. Why hasn't this writer won the Nobel Prize? Call me paranoid, but could it be because she's Canadian? Canada is too safe, white, and familiar to be exotic, but does not have the heft and presence on the international literary stage that say the US, Britain, and France do. There has been a spectacular "naissance" (as opposed to renaissance) of Canadian literature in English over the last twenty-five years, and I believe that the clear, weird, dangerous, beautifully constructed, and deceptively simple Munro stories that over the last four decades have been appearing in The New Yorker and in collections like Lives of Girls and Women, The Moons of Jupiter, and The Progress of Love are part of the reason why. The best Munro stories operate as very dense, very rich, compact novels. Nothing gets tied up neatly. Try her story "The Albanian Virgin", for example. Nobel judges please sit up and take notice: there are few writers who have created such a brilliant body of work over a long career. The title of her 2001 collection was Hateship Courtship Friendship Loveship Marriage but Munro's no miniaturist: her themes are the major ones.

Clark Blaise Blaise is finally getting (overdue) attention this year, thanks to the success of his recent story collection, The Meagre Tarmac. I'm happy to consider Blaise a Canadian writer even though he was born in North Dakota, attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop (during the illustrious Ray Carver era), and has lived and taught in the United States for most of his life. His parents were both Canadians, from opposite sides of the cultural divide (English/French; Western/Quebecois; middle class/not middle class). Blaise grew up mostly in the Deep South, and in the Midwest, where his French Canadian father, Leo Blais, recreated himself as Lee Blaise, furniture salesman extraordinaire. Clark Blaise lived and taught in Montreal for a ten-year period, and that era produced some of his most remarkable fictions: (the stories in Tribal Justice, for example) I think Blaise found the city a perfect setting for stories that sift through the complexities of identity, heritage, the immigration experience, and the power and style of family myth. I wrote an introduction to his collection Montreal Stories. Blaise is married to the American novelist Bharati Mukherjee and has long been familiar with Indian expatriate culture in North America: the world of middle class Indian professionals is the universe he explores with deftness and panache in The Meagre Tarmac.

John McGahern Okay here's the Irish corner of my post. For me, McGahern's novel Amongst Women is about as perfect as a novel gets. McGahern is mostly known as a short story writer, and the stories are brilliant, but Amongst Women seems to draw deeply from the well of family background, and it is perfectly constructed and intense. A slender volume, it makes a reader realize that other novelists--particularly contemporary American male novelists--ought to think about leaving a lot more out of their tomes. McGahern's Irish men and women, in the hinterlands of Counties Monaghan and Roscommon, usually in the 1950s, live with ghosts and echoes and silences. His portrait of the father in Amongst Women--a bitter old man, once a rebel and a gunman--is stinging and humane. I haven't read his memoir, All Will be Well, but I'm going to.

-- Peter Behrens

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UPDATE:
Peter Behren's St Patrick's Day op-ed for the New York Times, "It's About Immigrants, Not Irishness"
The O'Briens on National Public Radio
Marfa Public Radio: Talk at Ten interview with Peter Behrens


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---> For the complete archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.
Recent posts include translator Harry Morales on Gregory Rabassa's 90th Birthday; Steve Sando on 5 Beans You're Not Eating; and novelist Andrew Dayton on 5 Books to Get Your Head Inside Iran. Last year's St Patrick's Day edition was Michael Hogan on the Irish soldiers of Mexico.

Guest-blogger Harry Morales Celebrates (As Should We All) Literary Translator Gregory Rabassa on His 90th Birthday

If you're picking up this blog on RSS feed, facebook, or amazon.com, please note that this (below) is the correct text for Harry Morales' guest-blog post. (I mistakenly posted a basic bio a few hours ago. -- C.M.)

Friday March 9, 2012 is the 90th birthday of literary treasure, translator extraordinaire, Gregory Rabassa. In honor of his birthday, my amigo and fellow Spanish translator, Harry Morales, contributes this guest-blog post about his mentor.

IN CELEBRATION OF GREGORY RABASSA

By Harry Morales

"Since Kindness be the Venus-star of Friendship and that Bright Star doth Light the Lowest Hill, May Praise be Worthy of the Highest Good.” -Jack Kerouac, November 18, 1949

Today, Friday, March 9th, is the 90th birthday of my mentor, friend, surrogate padrino, and cronopio de primera clase, Gregory Rabassa. Greg, the modest dedicatee of this celebratory post, is the venerated Spanish and Portuguese literary translator of the finest Latin American authors in the world, including Julio Cortázar-- with whom he formed a deep and special friendship-- Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel Angel Asturias, these three winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jorge Amado, J.M. Machado de Assis, José María Eça de Queirós, António Lobo Antunes, José Lezama Lima, and Clarice Lispector, among many others.

In my estimation, he is the finest Spanish literary translator in the world, whose art is rivaled only by his enduring and unburdened skills as an educator. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the National Medal of Arts-- which “is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people,” and presented by the President of the U.S. to only a dozen or so individuals per year across the country-- and most recently, the inaugural Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator from Portugal. He has translated over 50 books from the Spanish and Portuguese, starting in 1966 with Rayuela (Hopscotch) written by his beloved friend, Julio Cortázar.

I salute you Greg, on bent knee and enduring love and respect for your guidance and unconditional friendship in this work of ours. I would not be the translator I am by a shaky third if I had not attended-- by conscious design-- your Literary Translation Course at the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Since those two weeks, soon approaching 22 years ago, I have attempted to live up to your ideals and everlasting respect for the written word. Perhaps this post appears a little too formal and calculated, but alas, the sentiments herein indeed drop many miles away from what I dearly mean. In the end, I happily acknowledge the following poem, “Das Lied um die Guten Leute” (“The Song About the Good People”) by Bertolt Brecht, the subject of which can justifiably and easily be you, Greg, perhaps multiplied:

“One knows the good people by the fact that they get
better when one knows them.
The good people invite one to improve them - for
how does anyone get wiser?
By listening and by being told something.
At the same time, however, they improve anybody
who looks at them and anybody they look at.”

-- Harry Morales

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>> See Harry Morales' previous guest-blog post for Madam Mayo, on translating Mario Benedetti.

>>Morales' translation of an essay by Alberto Ruy Sánchez appears in my anthology, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 2006).

>>Listen to the podcast of the PEN Conversation with Gregory Rabassa, Edith Grossman and Michael F. Moore in which they discuss magical realism and the problem with “isms” the overwhelming influence of Cervantes; President Clinton’s favorite book; disastrous moments in translation; getting lost as a translator; the instinct of choosing the right words.

>> See the NYT article about Rabassa, "A Translator's Long Journey," May 25, 2004.

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

Guest-blogger Steve Sando: 5 Beans You're Not Eating

Steve Sando, founder of Rancho Gordo, may well be the most out-of-the-box bean farmer in the world. He's the author of Heirloom Beans, a beautiful book packed with information and recipes. I can highly recommend his blog and free newsletter, which you can signup on the blog or the main page. Click right here to shop on-line for Steve's hierloom beans and more. Over to you, Steve!

Five Beans You Aren’t Eating
By Steve Sando
I grew up eating pinto beans almost exclusively. My family enjoyed no Mexican heritage but the Mexican influence is hard to contain in California and my family’s “easy” food wasn’t mac and cheese but tacos. Ground beef, orange cheese, corn tortillas, Victoria salsa (with the meaningless picante thermometer) and of course Rosarita brand refried beans. My father would always claim to “doctor them up” but he never told us his secrets and I suspect it was something mundane like a pinch of onion powder or a few drops of olive oil. Whatever it was, it sold me at the time and I had a passion for beans.

Later, I discovered black turtle beans and these seemed about the most exotic and delicious thing I’d ever encountered. How could such a simple thing be so wonderful? For years, these two beans seemed to fit the bill. I learned to cook them from scratch, which at first seemed insane. How could I take something so hard and make it soft and dreamy? It turns out all it took was a little practice.

I had a career crisis as I rolled into my forties and the obvious answer to me was to take up gardening. It made little sense but I had the feeling that as long as I tended a small home garden, it didn’t matter so much which direction my career took. I could have made worse decisions. I would study the seed catalogues and plan the new year’s garden accordingly. By chance, I planted a bean called Rio Zape. I cooked many of them as a green bean and was happy but it’s when I let them dry and cooked them like a dried bean that my world changed. They reminded me of my beloved pintos but with much more depth and interest. I could detect a distinct chocolate flavor and wait, was that coffee, too? How is it that this bean was unknown and yet it was so easily superior to pintos?

Ten years later and the rest is history. I’ve made a career out of eating rare and wonderful beans and I think bland, commodity beans have their place in feeding a hungry world a cheap protein, but what a shame that we’ve barely scratched the surface with heirloom beans. There are dozens of great heritage varieties worth discovering but here are five, somewhat accessible, that you should know about.

1. Rio Zape
As I mentioned above, this pinto-like bean has hints of coffee and chocolate and is very easy to prepare. I love them with just an diced onion, a smashed garlic clove, water and the beans. The result is heady.

2. Ayocote Morado
Runner beans are in a different family than most common beans. They generally produce large, starchy beans that can be waxy or even buttery. Sophie Coe mentions them as one of the first cultivated crops in Meso-America in her seminal book, America’s First Cuisines. You see them in all sorts of colors at the markets and tianguis in Mexico and yet it’s super rare to see them on any kind of menu, even in Mexico. I like the purple ones (Morado) but the golden colored ayocotes from Puebla are also especially delicious. You may hear from an old Mexican grandmother that they are harder to digest than other beans but you should just smile and try them when she’s not around.

3. Vallarta
Presumably from the state of Jalisco, this bean was fancied by Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in Napa Valley and Per Se in New York. It had never been a very popular bean but because Chef Keller loves it, we grow it and now this bean that was on the brink of obscurity is being grown commercially and is well-loved by chefs. It’s very rich and I think it needs some bitter greens to offset its dense texture.

4. Christmas Lima
If you remember limas primarily as a member of the frozen food staple, “vegetable medley”, you probably hate them. If you have an open mind, you will love these lima beans, also known as Chestnut Limas. They have a chestnut texture and meaty bean broth. Try them tossed with sautéed wild mushrooms and just a little too much garlic and you will swoon.

5. Mayocoba
If you live in central Mexico, you probably have had Mayocobas, also known as Peruanos and sometimes Canario beans. They’re versatile, quick cooking and thin-skinned so they can be used in dozens of different ways, from soups to salads. Most Mexicans will cook them with a little onion and lard but if you cook them in a more European style, with finely diced mirepoix (celery, carrot and onion) and garlic with a little olive oil, they almost taste like you’ve cooked them in chicken stock. They also make a fine refried bean.

--- Steve Sando

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---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here. The most recent is Andrew Dayton on 5 Book to Get Your Head Inside Iran.

Guest-blogger Jim Johnston on Mexico City’s Centro Histórico: Five things to see with your feet off the ground

Born in New York City, Jim Johnston grew up in the woods of New Hampshire. After studying architecture at the University of Virginia and graphic design at the School of Visual Arts, he worked as a professional artist and potter in New York City for 27 years. He moved to Mexico in 1997, where he continues working as an artist and writer. A few years ago, I was fortunate to make his acquaintance through our mutual friend, the writer Janice Eidus, and I've been a fan ever since.
I follow and warmly recommend his blog, Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide, which has the same title as his book. If you're going to visit Mexico City or, especially, if you happen to live here, get your copy from amazon.com.

Mexico City Centro Histórico:
Five things to see with your feet off the ground

By Jim Johnston

My first visit in 1989 to Mexico City's Centro Histórico was scary. Teeming with manic energy in the daytime, the streets became eerily empty at night. Scars from the 1985 earthquake were evident: tall buildings stood abandoned, gaping holes in the pavement defied you to pass. There were rumors of thieves lurking in doorways and kidnappers prowling in taxis. But as a rule, I like any town that's more than 700 years old and still cookin’. So, of course, I fell for Mexico City, hook, line and molcajete.

Mexico is a city that wears its age well. It’s got Aztec splendor and ruin, Spanish majesty and bombast, 50’s modernism, quirky time-warp shops, smoke tinged cantinas, excellent museums, and street life that never stops.

In the past five years, the Centro Histórico of Mexico City (A UNESCO World Heritage Site) has been transformed. It's busy night and day, and looking better than ever. There are increased security measures, new paving and lighting; hundreds of old buildings have been plastered and painted (gracias a Carlos Slim). New museums, hotels, restaurants, outdoor cafés and shops have opened. Several streets are now traffic-free pedestrian zones (check out 5 de Mayo, Motolinia, and Regina). You can now ride your eco-bici to the centro. New bars and dance clubs are drawing young crowds on weekend nights. It seems like every time I visit (about once a week) I see something new. But one thing hasn't changed-- the intense level of energy on the street, which can excite and exhaust in equal measure.

What to do? I like to take my feet off the ground.

Here are a few tips for keeping above the fray--5 places in the Centro Histórico that are above street level, semi-hidden places I’ve discovered over the years that you are sure to enjoy.


1. Sears Cafe
Go up to the 8th floor of the Sears store, just across from the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The coffee is good and the view is great.

2. Museum of Architecture
Take the elevator to the very top of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (separate ticket required). The changing exhibits on Mexican architecture are OK, but the real treat here is the surprising view you get of the building itself.

3. Pasteleria Ideal (16 de Septiembre #18)
Upstairs, this ‘world of cakes’ is one of the city’s great surreal spots.

4. Shoe Museum
Bolivar #27) Above the venerable Borcegui shoe store is this entertaining mini-museum.

5. Studio of Joaquin Clausell
(Museo de la Ciudad, Pino Suarez #30 at El Salvador). Tucked away on the second floor of this exquisite colonial mansion is the former studio of Joaquin Clausell (1866-1935), a Mexican impressionist painter. For years he used the walls of his studio as a sketchbook, and the result is a delightful mural of overlapping paintings and sketches.

Above and beyond the Centro Histórico you can tour the major attractions in Mexico City on the Turibus. The open top deck affords great views and a wonderful feeling of being above all the hustle and bustle. Click here for information.

-- Jim Johnston

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

Guest-Blog Archive On-Line

The Wednesday guest-blog will resume next week with a very fun piece by my amigo, the Mexico City-based artist and travel writer Jim Johnston. Meanwhile, check out some of these other guest-blogs on Mexico:
>Nicholas Gilman 5 Funky Foods and Where to Find Them in Mexico City
>Claudia Long 5 Delicious Links on the Food of Baroque Mexico
>Trudy Balch on 5 Things Gaby Brimmer Loved, or Would Have
>David Lida on 5 Secrets of Mexico City

---> Visit the archive here.

Guest-blogger Claudia Long: 5 Delicious Links on the Food of Baroque Mexico

Growing up in the United States, I never once, that I can recall, heard of Sor Juana. But once in Mexico—- I arrived some 25 years ago-- I found her to be ubiquitious, literally. She's on the 200 peso bill right now. You cannot visit a bookstore in Mexico without finding something by or about her. Back before Mexico was Mexico, that is, when it was still a Spanish colony, Sor Juana, which means "Sister Juana," was a nun and a literary prodigy taken under wing by the vicereine, and given a provocatively promininent place in court. One might imagine how this went over with the grimly-bearded Church fathers who were, now and again, busying themselves with burning people at the stake. Once the vicereine returned to Spain, things did not go swimmingly for Sor Juana. Hers was one of the great intellectual tragedies not only of Mexico but, one could argue, of humanity.

Josefina's Sin, by Claudia H. Long, is a story of love, poetry and the Inquisition. A sheltered land-owner's wife goes to the vice-royal court in colonial Mexico, in 1687, and meets the famous poet, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Sor Juana teaches Josefina about the terrors and joys of writing, loving, and living life to the fullest, under the cruel and watchful eye of the Holy Office.

Claudia grew up in Mexico City, and lives in California. Her book has received critical acclaim and can be bought at bookstores, and the usual on-line sources, including Amazon.

As an historical novelist myself (The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, set in the 19th century), I can well imagine some of the struggles Claudia must have faced in getting the details just right. And because, in Mexico anyway, Sor Juana is such a major figure, anything inauthentic, ayyyy ... No doubt every historical novelist loses sleep over this (I know I did).

Over to you, Claudia.
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5 Delicious Links on the Food of Baroque Mexico
By Claudia Long

When I was writing Josefina's Sin, which takes place in Mexico from 1687 to 1690, I thought feeding one's literary characters would be a simple task, but that's far from the case! Did you know that rice did not originate in Mexico? It was brought during colonial times. Sometimes, what seems so "typically" Mexican is really an import.

Josefina goes on a picnic with the ladies from the court. A tree with large, dark green, glossy leaves and hanging green fruit provided shade. Ah, a mango tree, I thought. Not so fast, said the editor at Simon & Schuster. Mangoes weren't introduced into Mexico until 1775! My mistake—- it was a papaya tree!

It's not hard to find out what food was available to the indigenous people of Mexico before the European colonization:
www.foodtimeline.org/foodmaya.html

And it's not hard to figure out which foods were ultimately imported to Mexico:
www.backyardnature.net/m/food/foodhist.htm

But it's really a question of "When?" What did they have? And what could they have had? If the first mention of mangoes was in 1775, they could well have had them in 1750, but there wouldn't be a mature tree sitting conveniently near my ladies in 1687!

Once I had the ingredients, I had to prepare them. Some of our favorite Mexican foods are easy to make, and were likely done the same way.

Take "agua de jamaica," or hibiscus tea. Jamaica flowers originated in Africa, and came to Mexico during the colonial era. The refreshing tea became popular for its great taste and medicinal value.

Here's a fun, timeless recipe for jamaica water.

One ingredient we know with certainty was native to Mexico: Chocolate—- amazing, wonderful, and powerful.

In 1519, when the first Spanish conquistadors entered the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, where today Mexico City stands, they found chocolate. Today, we may sweeten it with sugar (sugar cane came later. . .) but we enjoy it as much as Josefina did.

And now, back to our papaya. Papaya is native from Southern Mexico through the Andes of South America. We love it cut up, sprinkled with lime. But some things have definitely changed since Josefina's day. Enjoy this entertaining suggestion for preparation of a papaya for modern times:
www.mexconnect.com/articles/1055-magnificent-mexican-papaya

"First, you need to soak the outside of the papaya for 20 minutes in water with "microdine" iodine drops to kills any latent bacteria." I know Josefina never did that!

--Claudia Long

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Further surfing:

> Claudia Long's Shelf Awareness profile

>Claudia Long's page at Simon & Schuster, which includes an informative brief video.

>Octavio Paz's book, Sor Juana Or, The Traps of Faith, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden.

>Sor Juana's Poems, Protest and a Dream, selected and translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, introduced by Ilan Stavans.

>Sor Juana's The Answer / La respuesta, translated by Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell

>Guest-blog post here at Madam Mayo by Russell M. Cluff to celebrate his musical CD of Sor Juana's poetry.

---> For the complete archive of Madam Mayo guest-blogs, click here.
Recent guest-bloggers include midwife and memoirist Patricia Harman; traveling (to some strange places) reporter Gerry Hadden; and spiritual reporter Mare Cromwell.

Guestblogger Midwife and Author Patricia Harman on 5 Sites to Help You Go Green

To the average reader this might seem silly, but we writers tend to obsess about publishing-- so should it be any suprise that what first caught my attention about Patricia Harman's books was that they are published by Beacon? For those of you don't know Beacon, it's one of the finest small literary presses in the U.S. (it also happens to be the publisher of my amiga Sara Mansfield Taber's splendid Bread of Three Rivers.) So I knew Patricia Harman's memoirs, based on her many years of caring for women as a lay-midwife and later, as a nurse-midwife, had to be something very special. Harman's first book, The Blue Cotton Gown, is about her patients; her second, the recently published Arms Wide Open: A Midwife’s Journey, tells the story of growing up during one of the most turbulent times in America and becoming an idealistic home-birth midwife.

From the dust jacket text:

Drawing heavily on her journals, Arms Wide Open goes back to a time of counter-culture idealism that the boomer generation remembers well. Patsy opens with stories of living in the wilds of Minnesota in a log cabin she and her lover build with their own hands, the only running water being the nearby streams. They set up beehives and give chase to a bear competing for the honey. Patsy gives birth and learns to help her friends deliver as naturally as possible.

Weary of the cold and isolation, Patsy moves to a commune in West Virginia, where she becomes a self-taught midwife delivering babies in cabins and homes. Her stories sparkle with drama and intensity, but she wants to help more women than healthy hippie homesteaders. After a ten-year sojourn for professional training, Patsy and her husband, Tom, return to Appalachia, as a nurse-midwife and physician, where they set up a women's-health practice. They deliver babies together, this time in hospitals; care for a wide variety of gyn patients; and live in a lakeside contemporary home--but their hearts are still firmly implanted in nature. The obstetrical climate is changing. The Harmans' family is changing. The earth is changing, but Patsy's arms remain wide open to life and all it offers.

Her memoir of living free and sustainably against all odds will be especially embraced by anyone who lived through the Vietnam War and commune era, and all those involved in the back-to-nature and natural-childbirth movements.

"There are more honest, revealing moments here than in many memoirs. Harman, whose prose is sparse but not simple, covers a span of decades, deftly revealing her own youthful struggles with identity through the children we witnessed her raising earlier in her book, revealing, in short, a full life." —Publishers Weekly

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Five Great Websites to Help You Go Green, A Little Bit at a Time
By Patricia Harman

Once, I confess, I was a total eco-freak. Forty years ago, I lived in a cabin without electricity and running water. We used hand tools because we didn’t want to waste non-renewable resources like oil and gas. We tilled the soil by hand, grew our own food organically, canned it in mason jars and stored it in a root cellar we dug into the side of the hill.

Looking back, I wonder at our extreme life, but at the time we were worried about pesticides like DDT killing the eagles and power plants polluting the air. We were looking for a way to live lightly and sustainably on the earth.

Then for thirty years, in the rush of raising kids, going back to school and working as a midwife 70 hours a week, I forgot all that. We moved up in the world, started our own OB-Gyn practice, got a house on the lake, two gas-guzzling vehicles and a jet ski. My youthful ideals receded to an amusing antidote about my past.

Lately, however, my conscience has bothered me. The world we face now seems so much more dangerous than in 1970s. With climate change, extreme weather, the disappearance of honey bees and wars in the Middle East fueled by competition for oil, my concerns about the environment have returned

Now, I’ll admit, I’m not interested in returning to a life without running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing, but I’m worried enough to begin altering my ways. Maybe it’s time, for all of us, to again consider how we can live more sustainably. Maybe it’s time we all think about what we can do to save Mother Earth. Maybe it’s time we all consider how we can be a little more green.

Here are some websites I’ve found helpful and inspiring on this, not so extreme, journey.

1. Natural Life Magazine
(35 years of inspiring articles about green family living.)

2. Mother Nature Network
(Recycling, home renovation, sustainable communities)

3. Mother Earth News
(Guide to Living Wisely, how to do it)

4. The Green Grandma
(Homey and witty)

5. Sustainable Communities
(The big picture…world view)

--- Patricia Harman CNM, midwife and author


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--> For the archive of Madam Mayo guest-blogs, click here.
Recent guest-bloggers include travel writer and reporter Gerry Hadden ; master gardener and spirituality reporter Mare Cromwell; and narrative arquitect and app designer Julia Sussner.

CLICK HERE.

Guest-blogger Gerry Hadden on 5 Great Places to Visit that You'd Probably Never Find (and 5 links to learn something more)

Gerry Hadden is the author of a book just out from HarperCollins that, as a long-time resident of Mexico City-- the very navel of the Americas, IMHO-- I am especially anxious to read: Never the Hope Itself. It's been garnering rave reviews, including from Publisher's Weekly, which calls it, "Offbeat, gripping....It's the rare journalist who shows such a mystical bent, but Hadden's quirks and openness give his book a rare charm."

Here's the catalog copy:

A former NPR correspondent takes you into his own ghost-filled life as he reports on a region in turmoil. Gerry Hadden was training to become a Buddhist monk when opportunity came knocking: the offer of a dream job as NPR’s correspondent for Latin America. Arriving in Mexico in 2000 during the nation’s first democratic transition of power, he witnesses both hope and uncertainty. But after 9/11, he finds himself documenting overlooked yet extraordinary events in a forgotten political landscape. As he reports on Colombia’s drug wars, Guatemala’s deleterious emigration, and Haiti’s bloody rebellion, Hadden must also make a home for himself in Mexico City, coming to terms with its ghosts and chasing down the love of his life, in a riveting narrative that reveals the human heart at the center of international affairs.
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Five Great Places to Visit That You’d Probably Never Find
Gerry Hadden

1. The shaded stream that circumvents a Garifuna village near Punta Gorda, Belize.
I was floating in it with a young Garifuna known as “the Jamaican” among the drug dealers in Queens. He was back in the village, trying to start over. He had seven bullet scars. “Look,” he said. I turned my head. Inches from my nose began an endless floating field of tiny white flowers, stretching upstream. I don’t know how they all ended up in the water. They moved passed us like silent boats, tickling our necks.
-->Learn to speak Garifuna.

2. The forest brothel along another river, Veracruz state, Mexico.
Sitting in the open shack, under Christmas lights strung in trees, talking to the girls, waiting for my interviewee. A mean guy showed up first, put a knife and a bottle on the table, made me drink with him. The sugarcane worker I was waiting for arrived. “Leave the Gringo alone,” he said. The mean guy stood, smashed his bottle and pointed it at me. I ran like hell. Then I turned back. I didn’t want to leave my contact behind. But when I reached the brothel all the lights were out, the music turned off. I ran again.
-->Hear some music from Veracruz(search Graciana Silva).

3. A ridge in the sierra outside San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
A shaman showing me his garden: plants to staunch bleeding, to help with birthing, to cure the chills or the fear of walking alone in the dark. The view looked West down a sloping valley crisscrossed with hills fading one into the next. Foreigners were coming to steal the shaman’s medicinal secrets. I never wanted to leave.
-->Take a canoe ride through Chiapan culture.

4. A field behind a voodoo temple, Western Haiti.
They were holding the ceremony so that Jean Bertrande Aristide would win the presidency and be a good leader. That was a lot to ask. A bonfire burned. Women circled it dressed in white and blue, singing something beautiful. We men formed an inner circle. The priest danced close to the fire and then let a goat have it with a machete. The rest is history.
-->See some of the best photos of Haiti.

5. A wooden meditation hut in the highland rainforest outside Xalapa, Veracruz.
I’d complained to the Buddhist monastery’s abbey that I couldn’t concentrate. The constant traveling had my mind racing. But after a week of solitude I began to feel grounded again. Upon returning to Mexico City that peace evaporated quickly. Okay, this last place you can find.
-->Here’s the link (in Spanish only).

-- Gerry Hadden


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

Guest-blogs on travel in Mexico include David Lida on 5 secrets of Mexico City; Nicholas Gilman on 5 funky foods in Mexico City and where to find them; Stephanie Elizondo Griest on 5 glimpses into the Mexican underworld; and Isabella Tree on 5 favorite books about Mexico.

Guest-Blogs on Wednesdays...

Except when not. Alas, the one I'd hoped to post today didn't come through-- although already in line for next week, still-to-be-formatted, there's a fascinating guest-blog post from travel writer Gerry Hadden. So herewith, five of my favorite guest-blog posts (ask me tomorrow and I might make a different list):

App designer Julia Sussner: 5 apps to explore for yourself

Organizer Regina Leeds: 5 + 1 resources to make a writer happy in an organized space

Poet Christine Boyka Kluge: 5 sites for hybrid writing, collaboratiopns, and experimental work

Writer Paula Whyman: 5 + 1 sites for books on baking -- for writers and other breadheads

Writer Sheila Bender: Top 5 books on writing

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

More anon.

Guest-blogger Mare Cromwell on 5 Telephone Numbers that Have Emblazoned Themselves Across Our Cultural Consciousness

I met Mare Cromwell, one of the most interesting writers I know, at the Maryland Writers Association's annual conference.* A master gardener, Cromwell is the author of an audaciously original book based on her interviews with a Cheokee Medicine Woman, a Death Row inmate, an Afghani Sufi Mystic, a Catholic, a Jew, and several praying kids: If I Gave You God's Phone Number... Searching for Spirituality in America. A finalist in ForeWord Magazine's 2003 Book of the Year Awards, it has just been reissued as an e-book, which you can find on both amazon.com and smashwords (and iBook and Nook very soon). The hardcover edition is also available here. Read an excerpt, an interview with poet John Terlazzo, here.

If the idea of being able to telephone God is amazing, well, certainly, so is the telephone itself. Isn't that something to contemplate? Over to you, Mare.

5 Telephone Numbers To Remember
by Mare Cromwell

Ever since the invention of the telephone, thanks to the brilliant Alexander Graham Bell, we’ve been able to dial a number on a piece of gadgetry and hear a voice on the other end. What was considered a miracle in the 1870’s, we now take for granted. Today we even carry phones with us wherever we go – a technological umbilical cord that keeps us connected where we go.

Over the decades some telephone numbers have emblazoned themselves across our cultural consciousness. Some we can rattle off without thinking. Others made their mark and then faded away. Here’s a list of famous telephone numbers, most known for more than just dialing.

911
The number you hope you never have to call for police, fire or ambulance.

867-5309/Jenny
Tommy Tutone released this song in 1962. Apparently, Tommy Heath, the lead singer of the group, had a girlfriend with this actual number.

Beechword 4-5789
Cowritten by Marvin Gaye and two other men, this song was sung by the Marvelettes, a Motown group in the early ‘60’s.

Pennsylvania 6-5000
For those whose music memories go back further, the Glenn Miller Band composed and played this song in 1940. It is the phone number of Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City where the Glenn Miller Band played. The telephone number will still ring at the Hotel and is considered the oldest continuing phone number in the city though now you need to add the area code ’212.’

Bruce Almighty’s Number to God
In the film Bruce Almighty, God (Morgan Freeman) pages Bruce (Jim Carrey) and the pager reveals a seven digit phone number that is not one of the fictional 555 exchange numbers traditionally used by Hollywood. As soon as the movie aired, people started calling the number in their own area code and requesting ‘God.’ Serendipitously, a pastor named Bruce in North Carolina possessed the number. Those whose phones were the number experienced weeks of grief from the countless calls to God across the nation.

-- Mare Cromwell

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*So you beginning writers wondering, "how can I meet other writers?" -- Go thee now to a writers conference. Seriously, joining your local writers association and showing up at their meetings, whether small get-togethers, open mics, or a conference (name tags, keynote speaker, rubber chicken, and all), is one of the best things you do for yourself as a writer.

-->Read Cromwell's For the Earth blog, and her recent guest-blog post about her book for The Journey: Not About the Striving But the Opening.

-->For the complete archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.
Recent guest-bloggers include Julia Sussner on explorable apps, Eva Schweitzer on Berlin, Sam Quinones on true stories, Eric D. Goodman on train stories, and Susan Coll on comic novels.