Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

This the longform essay I read for the Marfa Mondays podcast, which will be available for listening for free on both iTunes and Podomatic next week. In the meantime, you can listen in to the other 20 podcasts anytime via ww.cmmayo.com/marfa. 

C.M. Mayo has written widely about Mexico, Texas, and the US-Mexico borderlands. Among her works are Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, which won the Indie Excellence Award for History, and The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which was named a Library Journal Best Book of 2009. She is also a noted translator of Mexican literature and the editor of Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. A native of El Paso, in 2017 she was elected a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. 

GREAT POWER IN ONE:
MISS CHARLES EMILY WILSON 

BY C.M. MAYO

We tell our stories not just to rehearse the past 
but also to condition the present and, thereby, 
to prepare the future.
Bruce Jackson, The Story Is True

PART I

In our screen-enthralled world with entertainment at a click, how easy it is to underestimate the transcendent power of an oral historian such as Miss Charles Emily Wilson of Brackettville, Texas. 

 Picture her as she appears in Jeff Guinn’s Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro: an elderly lady on her garden-chair throne on her float in Brackettville’s Seminole Days parade. It is the year 2000. Her face bright below the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat, she wears a double-strand of pearls, a flowered skirt. A big purse balances on her knees. Two children, perhaps first graders, sit each in their folding-chair on either side of her. Even today, after books and articles by anthropologists, historians, and journalists, and after TV reports, documentaries, YouTube videos, websites, and swirls of social media posts have appeared about the history that she preserved by telling the stories of her ancestors again and again, decade after decade, to students, to anyone interested, not many people in Texas, never mind beyond Texas, have heard of her people, never mind of her. But everyone watching that parade on that day, as she sailed by, waving, would have known exactly who she was.

>> CONTINUE READING THIS POST ON THE NEW SITE WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Q & A at Madam Mayo Redux

This week I've been traveling in Far West Texas. Marfa Mondays podcasts to resume shortly. Herewith, dear reader, may you find some fascinating Q & As-- some on Far West Texas, some not-- previously posted, but that you might have missed:

Shelley Armitage on Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place

Carolina Castillo Crimm on De Leon: A Tejano Family History

Paul Cool on The Salt Warriors

John Kachuba on The Savage Apostle

Karen Benke on Write Back Soon!

Sonja D. Williams on Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom

Roger Greenwald on Translating Poet Gunnar Harding

Stephan A. Hermann on Francisco I. Madero as Medium

Michele Orwin, Founder of Bacon Press Books, on Independent Publishing

Alan Rojas Orzechowski on Diego Rivera's Professor, Santiago Rebull


Plus you can find oodles more interviews on my Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Exploring Marfa, Texas & Environs in 24 Podcasts and my occasional series Conversations with Other Writers. Just to mention three faves:

Marfa Mondays # 9 Mary Baxter on Painting the Big Bend

Marfa Mondays #13 John Tutino on Looking at Mexico in New Ways

Conversations with Other Writers #7 Rose Mary Salum on Making Connections with Literature and Art

And if you want to read or listen to interviews with me about my books, you can find them all right here. 

Many readers have been asking me about my current book in-progress. No, it is not all interviews, but it will include excerpts from numerous interviews, very similar in style to my previous travel memoir, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico.

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Raymond Caballero on Mexican Revolutionary General Pascual Orozco and Far West Texas

My latest Marfa Mondays podcast, #20, "Raymond Caballero on Mexican Revolutionary General Pascual Orozco and Far West Texas" is now live and with show notes: 

>> Listen in anytime on podomatic or on iTunes here<<

Raymond Caballero is the author of Lynching Pascual Orozco: Mexican Revolutionary Hero and Paradox, the first major biography in over 40 years of one of the most important figures of the Mexican Revolution. Caballero is also the ex-mayor of El Paso, Texas and, in his words "a recovering lawyer"-- a background that no doubt helped him unravel the conspiracy he found revealed in the one hundred year-old records of the Culberson County Courthouse, apparently intended to cover up what really happened to Pascual Orozco and his men in the High Lonesome Mountains south of Van Horn in 1915. Caballero's Lynching Pascual Orozco is an important contribution to the history of not only the Mexican Revolution, but of the state of Chihuahua and of Far West Texas. 

Quote from the interview:

"There were a lot of Mexicans very upset over the killing of Pascual Orozco... it was a huge controversy... In El Paso, in San Antonio, in Mexico City even President Carranza was asking for explanations... they wanted an investigation. So what happened was, 'whoa! We didn't kill some ordinary horse thief, we killed General Pascual Orozco, the biggest military hero of the early part of the Revolution! And what happens if the Mexicans in El Paso are able to pressure officials and they start a grand jury investigation there?' As a result of the concern that they had, the sheriff of Culberson County did something very unusual..."  

-- Raymond Caballero

Listen to the Corrido del General Pascual Orozco sung by Los Tremendos Gavilanes on YouTube:

> Listen in anytime to all the Marfa Mondays Podcasts


Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Greg Kaminsky interviews C.M. Mayo for Occult of Personality 

about Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book

Book review by C.M. Mayo:

The Pecan: A History of America's Native Nut by James McWilliams

"Translating Across the Border"

Transcript of My Talk for the American Literary Translators Association Panel, 

"Translating the Other Side"

Marfa Mondays Podcast #13

Looking at Mexico in New Ways: An Interview with John Tutino

Big Hike in the Big Bend: "Over Burro Mesa and into Apache Canyon" now in the Fall 2015 Issue of CENIZO JOURNAL

I am in deepest Mexico for the moment and so haven't yet put my paws on the new issue of the Far West Texas' always-lovely Cenizo Journal, but my on-the-spot informers tell me it is out and it does contain my essay, "Over Burro Mesa." Herewith:

OVER BURRO MESA 

AND INTO 

APACHE CANYON

By C.M. Mayo

I had ghosts on my mind—not in a spooky way, just stray thoughts about long-gone people on a bright, hot morning in the Big Bend National Park. In the foothills of the Chisos, I parked on the road-side. My aim was to hike over Burro Mesa west into Apache Canyon, to a corral where Apaches stashed stolen horses, and to explore an arrow quarry. 

The week before in this canyon, two Italian women fended off a mountain lion. Apparently it was a young lion and their screams caused it to scramble off—but that wasn't the kind of adventure I was looking for. I figured my guide, Charlie Angell, could handle any critters better than I could. 

Sun blasted down. The only clouds were wisps, as if from a paintbrush dipped in milk. Thorns snagged my jeans. The trail became so faint, I surely would have lost it on my own. Just when the hill dipped, then came another trudge up another rise through whips of ocotillo, lechugilla, biznaga, beargrass, stunted soap trees... Many had been incinerated, probably from lightning strikes. 

No sign of burros on Burro Mesa. In two hours in this merciless landscape, we had seen no animal tracks, no scat; one lizard; one butterfly; two ravens.

It began to seem we were hiking not so much to a place but into the past, for this was a soundscape deeply strange to me. I live in Mexico City, one of the biggest in the world, where the thrum of traffic surges and fades, but never ceases. On myriad saint days, firecrackers pop like popcorn; weekends, the thump-a-thump-a of parties. Helicopters roar; dogs bark. 

Less than two centuries ago, Burro Mesa and Apache Canyon, indeed, the whole of the Big Bend, were Mexican territory—Mexico City the capital. But notionally. Maps of the period tell the truer story, a blank space with a name that was a shrug of ignorance or, for those who had heard the stories of kidnappings and scalpings, a drum-beat of horror: LA APACHERIA.

Finally, not that there was anyplace to sit, we sat down. 

"Drink up," Charlie insisted, handing me another bottle of water.

And this was when, suddenly as that mountain lion must have appeared, a lone figure carrying a pole taller than he was, loomed above us. A Texan in expensive-looking drab olive gear. He'd been hiking for several days, he said brightly—yesterday, the Mesa de Anguila. Mighty surprised to see us. We were the first hikers he'd encountered in the past three days.

And the pole?

For scaring mountain lions. But it didn't weigh much; it was bamboo. After twenty years, its bottom was starting to split-he lifted it to reveal a mass of duct tape. From his flask, he drank water, but he did not sit down. In a moment, he and his fabulous pole had disappeared down the hill.

We found the dry stone corral tucked against the mountain, blanketed in shade. It was filled with rubble and brush. Beyond a waist-high forest of creosote, the arrow quarry would have been easy to miss. It was not a hole in the ground, but a cliff of flaky-looking dark rock. Broken arrowheads lay all about: bone white, pink, orange, some tinged lavender. Before I put it back, I held one in my hand. Who knew how old it was, a hundred, five hundred years? 

I tried to conjure an image of the hands that had chipped, so expertly, until this triangle, a form at once unfathomably ancient, life-giving, and deadly, emerged. It was probably a man, probably older than most in his tribe— let's say he had an arthritic knee. A claw strung onto his necklace.

# # #

> Listen in to "Over Burro Mesa" (plus "The Kickapoo Ambassadors") in Marfa Mondays #14

> Watch my mini-clip video of Apache Canyon:



> Big Bend National Park: This Video Could Save Your Life!

> Listen in to (or read the transcript of) my interview with founding editor of Cenizo Journal, Dallas Baxter: "This Precious Place." 

> Listen in to (or read the transcript of) my interview with the immensely talented and daredevil photographer Paul V. Chaplo, author of Marfa Flights, "On Finding Composition in the Landscape"

> Listen in to the whole enchilada! Nineteen podcasts so far.

12 Tips for Summer Hiking in the Desert

(How to Stay Cool, Avoid Actinic Keratosis, Blood, and Killer Bees)

La Chora Interminable Goes to Marfa

Top 10 Books Read in 2014

CLICK HERE.

Writing and (or?) Digital Fun

I may be an old-school literary writer and die-hard fan of paper books, but ever since I started my webpage in 1999, I have been enchanted by the empowering and creative possibilities of digital media. 

BLOGGING: I started this blog, Madam Mayo, in 2006, and have kept at it steadily ever since, although the why of it has undergone significant evolution.

[Writers Blogs (And My Blog): Eight Conclusions After 8 Years of Blogging]

PODCASTING: In 2009, I started making podcasts with Apple's GarageBand-- and now host two series, Marfa Mondays and Conversations with Other Writers.

[Listen in to my podcast about how I started podcasting.]

DIGITAL PUBLISHING (KINDLES): Shortly thereafter I wrangled my way through an open-source program called Sigil and made some Kindles. 

[Here is everything I can tell you about that particular odyssey.]

VIDEO: And I took up making videos with iMovie. Apart from a few book trailers and whatnots, I mainly think of my videos as a souped-up GIFs, that is, visual appetizers, meant to enhance a text. 

My two latest videos are Scenes from the West of the Pecos Rodeo (3 minutes) and of Calera, Texas (1 minute 20 seconds), a Trans-Pecos ghost town that, surprisingly, has a nicely kept nondenominational chapel. Both videos are apropos of my book in-progress about Far West Texas.






IN SUM: HUH? Yes, making these pages, posts, podcasts and videos is more fun than playing with Play-Do. Yes, my blog, podcasts and videos bring me a larger audience and more visibility for my books. And yes, these endeavors steal time from writing. 

Instead of making two videos the other evening, I could have worked on my book. But just when I am about to feel crummy about that, I remind myself: if you're going to use GarageBand and iMovie, it really helps to do small projects on a frequent basis, or else you'll get rusty and lose the ability to do any at all. 

Or is that just a pretzel of an excuse?

On the other hand, I really do believe it's crucial for me as a writer to be able to handle digital media. (I've had it on my to do list for over year to make a proper trailer for my latest book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution and its Spanish edition,  Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana. And I really should put my Marfa Mondays podcasts onto YouTube as well. Oh, and... suffice it to say that it's a long to-do list that's just getting longer there in my fat little FiloFax...)

In sum, after more than two decades at this "business" of being writer, I'm still figuring it out. 

OH, AND SOCIAL MEDIA: At least I got off FaceBook. (It's been a few weeks since I deactivated my account and whew, that is still a palpable relief.) 

I still haven't made my mind up about Twitter. Most of it strikes me as drivel. But I don't find it as addictive as FaceBook and once, maybe twice a week something blink-worthy does happen in there.* (Follow me @cmmayo1.)

*For instance, I tweeted that I loved the cover of Cluff Hudder's book, so he sent me a copy! Here are my writing assistants with Pretty Enough for You. (Yep, I tweeted that.)

> Your comments are always welcome.

30 Deadly-Effective Ways to Free Up Bits, Drips & 

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Pitmaster Israel Campos at Pody's BBQ in Pecos (Marfa Mondays Podcast #19)

For the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Exploring Marfa, Texas & Environs in Far West Texas, I have just posted #19, an interview with Israel Campos, the award-winning pitmaster and owner of Pody's BBQ in Pecos.

 Yes, Pecos is an hour and forty minutes' drive from Marfa. Never mind, go there, grab a plate of brisket at Pody's BBQ, and you will ring the bell!




>>Listen in to this podcast anytime<<

>>Read the Transcript<<

(Wondering where to eat in Marfa? I can recommend breakfast at Squeeze Marfa, lunch at The Food Shark, and --if you still have both the room and the clams-- dinner at Cochineal. If there is a good BBQ in Marfa that I have overlooked, I ask your indulgence; I am writing a literary travel memoir, not a guide book. That said, please send me your recommendations, because, like Arnold, I'll be back.)

About the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project

You can find all the Marfa Mondays Podcasts on my webpage here. They are all free; listen in anytime. There are now 19; there will be more until there are 24. These podcasts are apropos of my book in-progress about Far West Texas, that is, the blazingly gorgeous and utterly fascinating Trans-Pecos. 

Check out the maps of this surprisingly little-known region here. (P.S. there are two typos on the maps... if you can find more and let me know, I shall be eternally grateful.)

> Your comments are always welcome. 

Marfa Mondays #10: A Visit to Swan House

La Chora Interminable Goes to  Marfa

Richard Parker's 

Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America

Lonn Taylor's 

Texas People, Texas Places

Sarah Cortez and Sergio Tronocoso's anthology 

Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence

Marfa Mondays Podcast #18: Lisa Fernandes, Barrel Racer at the West of the Pecos Rodeo

Just posted: Podcast #18, Lisa Fernandes, Barrel Racer at the West of Pecos Rodeo, as part of my Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Exploring Marfa, Texas and Environs in 24 Podcasts.  

> Listen in anytime to my interview with barrel racer Lisa Fernandes.

> Or, get it from iTunes (also free)

> Read the transcript

> Listen in to all the previous Marfa Mondays podcasts, which include:


#17 Under Sleeping Lion: Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis
#11 Cowboy Songs By Cowboys and an interview with Michael Stevens
#9 Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend
#7 We Have Seen the Lights (on the Marfa Ghost Lights)
#3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony

Guest-blogger Heidi M. Thomas: A Roundup of 5 Things to Know 

About Old-Time Rodeo Cowgirls

Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West by Rubén Martínez

Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America by Richard Parker

A US-Mexico Border Memoir: Lisa G. Sharp's A Slow Trot Home

Two New "Marfa Mondays" Podcast Transcripts: "Charles Angell in the Big Bend" and "Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony"

You can listen in to all my podcasts anytime, but I know some of you read at a faster clip than you can listen, so I've been posting the transcripts bit by bit. As of last night, new on the website are two more transcripts of Marfa Mondays podcast interviews, both of which provide excellent introduction to the topic at hand, adventure in the Big Bend and the "lost colony"-- of artists who came to this spectacularly scenic region well before Donald Judd.

Marfa Mondays #2 Charles Angell in the Big Bend

"I just love to be in the river. It's like the best seat in the house for the Big Bend, I think. You can see canyon walls. You see desert. You see riparian zones. There's more wildlife there than anywhere else, and even if it's a really, really hot summer day, you can stay cool." [READ MORE]

Listen now




Marfa Mondays #3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony

"Julius Woeltz is my favorite... He was really known as a fine muralist. I think he painted well over 30 murals in his lifetime. He very much was influenced by Rivera and Orozco. He and his very good friend, Xavier González, spent many summers down in Mexico and Mexico City looking at the muralists..." [READ MORE]

Listen now


There will be more Marfa Mondays podcasts until there are 24. The latest, #17, is Under Sleeping Lion: Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis

Your comments are always welcome.

Indian Head in Terlingua

"La Chora Interminable" Goes to Marfa

Cyberflanerie: Solitario Dome Edition

Book Review: Desert America

Indian Head in Terlingua, along the US-Mexico Border in the Big Bend of Far West Texas

If you've been following this blog and/or the Marfa Mondays podcasts you know I'm a nut for rock art sites. Indian Head, which I visited back in February of 2013, is one of my favorites. It's only a short drive behind Terlingua's main gas station, but it feels as far away as Mars (and it's that quiet, too).

Here's my mini-clip video, starring my expert guide, Charles Angell (who, by the way, I highly recommend for any adventures on and along the Rio Grande and around the Big Bend).

The soundtrack is courtesy of the phabulous Phizmiz, Ergo, that is.





> Marfa Mondays #2, "Charlie Angell in the Big Bend"

> Marfa Mondays #15, "Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams, Executive Director of the Rock Art Foundation, on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands"

> More of my mini-clip rock art and other Far West Texas videos
(What's a "mini-clip"? It's my term for a very short, edited video-- basically, a pirouette up from a GIF. They're intended to be watchable accompaniments to a text and/or podcast.)

Your comments are always welcome.

CLICK HERE.

Rock Art Adventure in Far West Texas

The book in-progress about Far West Texas is turtling along.... meanwhile, I've posted a few new videos from the travels. All my videos are extremely brief, edited, and with soundtracks. The idea isn't to be the next Ken Burns --though I do love that "Ken Burns" option in iMovie-- but to simply illustrate the text. (Think of them as a pirouette up from GIFs.)

From a recent outing with the Rock Art Foundation (to a site about an hour from Comstock, on the banks of the Pecos River):


LEWIS CANYON PETROGLYPHS




BANKS OF THE PECOS RIVER; 
LEWIS CANYON PETROGRAPHS AND TINAJA




MEYERS SPRING





Sound tracks on all three are courtesy of English composer Ergo Phizmiz.

Listen in anytime to my interview with Greg Williams, the director of the Rock Art Foundation, "Marfa Mondays" #15

 All Marfa Mondays Podcasts

About the book in-progress

 More of my mini-videos of Far West Texas

A TV news clip about some of the fascinating cutting edge research going on at the Shumla School in Comstock

Your comments are always welcome, and I also welcome you to opt in to my every other month-ish newsletter.

Avram Dumitrescu, An Artist in Alpine (Transcript now available on-line for Marfa Mondays #4)

Transcript now available for 
ye olde podcast #4
Avram Dumitrescu, 
an Artist in Alpine

The Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project proceeds.... as those of you who follow this blog well know, the most recent of the projected 24 podcasts is #17, an interview with Texas historian Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis. 

Meanwhile, I've been working my way back to the beginning, posting transcripts of 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and now... drumroll.... 4, Avram Dumitrescu, an Artist in Alpine. About his chicken portraits, Dumitrescu says:

"When we moved to Alpine, our landlords had about 30 chickens. Patty and Cindy, they're on the west edge of town...that's where I had my first experience being around chickens, because until then it was just stuff I'd eat. They're basically mini-dinosaurs. Every time I go in, I'm always worried if I fall, and they start pecking me to death like in some horror movie... because they see red, they run to it and attack it. They're very interesting characters, and I think what really made me laugh was Patty and Cindy had named them after characters from "The Sopranos." 


> Read the complete transcript of this podcast or, better yet, listen in to "Avram Dumitrescu, an Artist in Alpine" (on either podomatic or iTunes, both free).

> All Marfa Mondays Podcasts (and most transcripts)

> Your comments are always welcome. The newsletter will go out soon; to opt-in, click here.

Lonn Taylor's Texas People, Texas Places

Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America by Richard Parker

Q & A with "Listen Well" podcaster Margaret Dulaney

Marfa Mondays Podcast #17 Under Sleeping Lion: Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis

From the "secret historians" to the Propeller Man to the Filippino restaurant: you'll learn about a myriad unexpected people and stories of the Big Bend and Marfa, Texas in my interview with historian Lonn Taylor, the "Rambling Boy" columnist for the Big Bend Sentinel. Recorded in Fort Davis in March 2015.

> Listen in anytime right here.

> Read the transcript

"Everybody kind of has a stereotype of Marfa either as the cattle town where they filmed “Giant” or a contemporary art center. I like discovering things that don’t fit into that stereotype. "                                                                --Lonn Taylor

> Marfa Mondays home page with all 17 podcasts (of a projected 24)

> Your COMMENTS are always welcome, and you are also most welcome to sign up for my newsletter which goes out every other month-ish.

Mary S. Black interviews Yrs Truly about the Marfa Mondays Project

Marfa Mondays Blog

Casa Piedra Rd (C.M. Mayo's video, 1 minute)

Book Review: Richard Parker's Lone Star Nation