On the Occasion of "Madam Mayo's" 2nd Anniversary: Five Lessons Learned About Blogging (So Far)

So, it's the end of March; I've been blogging steadily for two years. Why did I begin? For a bit of an adventure, and to promote my then-hot-off-the-presses anthology of 24 Mexican writers, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. So, like most literary bloggers, I waded in somewhat naively and self-servingly (if promoting an anthology of 24 Mexican writers can be called self-serving... humph... no, I think not. Would somebody please award me the Aztec Eagle now?) Here are the five lessons learned--- thus far:

#1.Blogging isn't necessarily "blogging"
By which I mean, a lot of people, especially literary types my age and older, have set ideas about what blogs and the so-called "blogging culture" are--- and they are missing the whole point. It's a literary genre, kindasorta, but it's also a delivery system, the whole Web 2.0 social networking technology-phenomenon--- in sum, we do not yet have the precise vocabulary to describe this. I've told writer friends who resist blogging (with that inevitable oh-so-subtle curl-of-the-lip), if you have a newsletter--- and many do nowadays, as adjuncts to their websites--- you already are "blogging." Just call your newsletter a blog. And if you have some resistance to that, well, then, call your blog a "newsletter." Call it a cupcake, whydoncha! Apropos of which: "To Blog or Not to Blog, That is Not the Question".

#2. Good blogging is more than flogging.
I don't read "flog blogs"--- the thud of "me, me, mine," is deadly. The best blogs offer quality writing and quality information--- however quirky a combination (e.g., Phronesisaical's politics, philosophy, international affairs & fruit) or specialized (e.g., Seth Godin's Blog on marketing). (That said, um... why take ads when I can advertise my own books? Yes indeed, look over to right side of this screen for all relevant links.)

#3. My blog is not a log or diary of my life; neither is it a forum or a community bulletin board. It's a filter.
You want to know what blogs to read? Come see what I recommend here and here and here. Want to find out about some extraordinary books? Try this 1,000-year-old apparently true adventure that almost defies belief and Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and all 10 of these. And how about this mind-blowing (literally) video, this Icelandic movie and this sleep-inducing CD and the magic Baby Muse... I blog about my books, events and workshops (yeah, I'm flogging) but also, generally, my interests, my tastes, what I want to share (e.g., "All Hail E.T., Minister of Information!") and celebrate (e.g., Mexico's beloved English eccentric's masterwork, "Las Pozas"). If you don't like it, fine, there is an ocean of blogs out there, wade in. Why not start your own?

#4. Blogging (and balancing blogging with my other writing, and the ever-roaring cascade of e-mails, etc, etc.) requires increasingly advanced time-management skills.
As I noted in my recent post, Time to Blog & Read Blogs & Everything Else Everywhereallthetime, apropos of writers' blogs, "...it seems to me that, as artists--- artists who live in this world of unimaginable quantities of information 24/ 7--- we need to develop a set of skills we never knew we needed." I've learned a lot about organization and productivity (two of my gurus are Regina Leeds and David Allen) but I know I have yet to learn more than I can probably imagine--- and this would be true whether I were blogging or not. That said, I rarely watch television or use a cell phone, and I've moved this blog to a more regular (if flexible) schedule: posts on Mondays and in-between more often than not; guest-bloggers generally on Wednesdays.

#5. Lists are good. Links are even better. Lists of links, yay!
I love my guest-bloggers. Check 'em out. (Coming up in the next weeks: Leslie Pietrzyk, Graham Mackintosh, Daniel Olivas, and more...) Like I said, it' all about Web 2.0. More anon.

--->For the archive of Madam Mayo's posts on blogging, click here.

Edward W. Vernon's Las Misiones Antiguas: The Spanish Missions of Baja California

This book should be available in Spanish! Despite the title, the text is in English--- and it is so large, so packed with a multitude of maps and four-color photographs, it might be too heavy to lift were it in both languages. No "Baja buff" should be without a copy--- and, seriously, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to books on Baja California. There are a number of books on the Baja California missions, but none offers the detail and original research and meticulous documentation that Vernon's does. The author not only visited every single Baja California mission (physically, and financially, no small feat), but he also went to several visitas, which are not missions proper but visiting chapels established by the missionaries). From the jacket text:

...and the position of each was recorded using a GPS instrument. In addition to photographing each site, oral history was taken from the area's residents. Sketches record the configuration of sites not previously mapped, and in the case of the largest Baja California mission, Comondu, the foundation was traced and old photographs utlized to computer-generate three dimensional architectural drawings...

The book is available from Santa Barbara's Viejo Press as well as Baja Books and Maps. More anon.

Russell Targ Has a New Book

I'm a big fan of Russell Targ's work, which is way out beyond the cutting edge--- check out his newest, about to be published this May: Do You See What I See? Memoirs of a Blind Biker.

Guest-Blogger Isabella Tree's 5 Favorite Books About Mexico

To travel, if only by armchair, from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende, Juchitan, Chiapas, Lake Patzcuaro and Huichol Country with travel writer Isabella Tree--- what a treat! In the grand tradition of British travel writing comes her Sliced Iguana: Travels in Mexico, first published in the U.K. in 2001 and now available in the U.S. in a paperback edition from Tauris Parke with an new introduction. For her guest-blog post here, I've asked her for her five favorite books about Mexico.

Mexico has inspired some of the greatest writers in both the Spanish and English languages. From D.H. Lawrence to Laura Esquivel, from Graham Greene to our own C.M. Mayo-- jumping in amongst them while I was travelling around Mexico researching Sliced Iguana was a daunting but thrilling experience. Here are my desert island favourites:

# 1. Sibyl Bedford's A Visit to Don Otavio
A journey taken in the 1950s but rediscovered by Eland Press in the 1980s, this book encapsulates, for me, the essence of good travel writing. Never one to shy away from describing the frustrations and discomforts of travel, Sibyl Bedford is nonetheless quick as a hummingbird to suck the sweetness from every experience. Typically, she confesses she chose Mexico because she wanted "to be in a country with a long nasty history in the past, and as little present history as possible" but it's her idyllic stay with Don Otavio, a bankrupt squire living in a colonial mansion in a forgotten backwater with seventeen servants, that becomes the highlight of her travels. Her hilarious, pithy dialogues are pure genius. Not your average tourist experience but a wonderful insight into Mexico's colonial past and how to travel in style.

# 2. Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude
By the master himself, this rich, deep, dark searching into the very psyche of Mexico gets closer, I think, to the heart of 'Mexicanidad' than anything else. This is by no means a comfortable read -- "We are alone", he says, "Solitude, the source of anxiety, begins on the day we are deprived of maternal protection and fall into a strange and hostile world..."-- but Paz's passionate, tortured honesty winds an illuminating path around Mexico's painful and bloody past, shedding light on what it really means to be born a Mexican.

# 3. Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano
A cult novel of self-destruction that hooked me long before I was seduced by my first taste of mescal.

# 4. Bernal Diaz's Conquest of New Spain
Written by the last of Cortes' conquistadors fifty years after the event, and therefore to be taken with the necessary pinch of salt, this swashbuckling account of the Spaniards' first steps in the New World and their encounters and battles with the Aztecs and other 'Indians' nevertheless has all the adrenaline-rush of history in the making and reads-- in the masterfully edited Penguin Classics version-- like an Homeric epic.

# 5. Carlos Fuentes' A New Time for Mexico
A brilliant collection of essays exploring Mexico's present and its future in a delightfully frank and accessible way. It's a wise and beautifully written collection, of course, as captivating as any of Carlos Fuentes' novels, but these essays are also-- refreshingly-- full of hope.
---Isabella Tree

--->For more guest-blog posts, click here.
--->Up next Wednesday: novelist Leslie Pietrzyk

Alvaro Enrigue

It's been a while since I've done any translating--- after translating a large part of and editing Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion and the first Tameme chapbook, a short story by Agustin Cadena, I had to put translating aside for a while in order to finish my novel. But I recently finished a translation of a devastatingly good short story by Alvaro Enrigue, one of Mexico's most talented young writers--- about, of all things, the last years of the life of Ishi. Most California school children know the haunting story of Ishi--- one of the saddest of the continent. (If you don't know it, check out this teacher's guide from the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology.) What Alvaro Enrigue made of it in his fiction is surprising indeed. The story--- "On the Death of the Author"--- is not for Tameme, alas; it is to be included in an anthology of Mexican fiction selected by Alvaro Uribe forthcoming--- I'm not sure, but I understand it's very soon. More anon.

Feng Shui Expert Carol Olmstead's New Monkeysee Video

The first time I heard about feng shui (from a realtor who had a Japanese client who couldn't buy a house because the geomancer claimed the entrance faced an inauspicious direction) I thought it bizarre. Since then, however, I came upon Carol Olmstead's very grounded, common-sense approach to this ancient Chinese art of placement--- well, that and The Holographic Universe--- and I have developed a profound respect for feng shui. (By the way, a while back, Carol sent me 10 feng shui tips for writers--- posted here.) Without further ado: check out Carol's new Monkeysee video, "Feng Shui Home Tips for Attracting Wealth" in which she gives you a quick overview of the basic principles. More anon.

Madam Mayo's Sleepy Doggie

This is not a frivolous product, way-out as it might seem. It's not only been psychoacoustically designed by none other than music producer and sound researcher Joshua Leeds, but it's also been clinically tested on 150 subjects by veterinary neurologist Susan Wagner. And it's very beautiful... classical selections played by concert pianist Lisa Spector. Through a Dog's Ear: Music to Calm Your Canine Companion, is like a cup of valium for the furry ones... I tried it on my pug, Picadou, and we got some major zzz's...

Guest-Blogger Steven Hart's 5 Top Sites at the Crossroads of History, Industry, Commerce and Art

Guest-blogging today is New Jersey writer and journalist Steven Hart, whose first book, The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway ,was published in June 2007 by The New Press. He was introduced to Madam Mayo's readers via the estimable guest-blogger Jeff Sypeck, and today he speaks to us directly.

The subject of my book--- the construction in the 1920s and early 1930s of America's first major highway project, and its most visible remnant, the Pulaski Skyway crossing the New Jersey Meadowlands--- appealed to me because it was a neglected piece of history, in which new technology (the automobile and its transformation of America) ran headlong into old-style urban machine politics, touching off a vicious labor war that led directly to a sensational murder trial, and indirectly to a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. When I wasn't dabbling in biography and political science to describe labor unions and the long reign of political boss Frank Hague, I was trying to get my brain around bridge design and the developing science of traffic engineering, all while contemplating industrial archaeology and the unlikely aesthetic appeal of a gigantic pile of black steel crossing some of the ugliest real estate on the eastern seaboard.

Since I am termperamentally incapable of doing only one thing at a given time, it was a hugely enjoyable project. In the same spirit, here are five highly recommended sites that sit at the crossroads of history, industry, commerce and art.

#1. Modern Ruins
Photographer Phil Buehler's site is a showcase for his images of industrial archaeology, such as the old World's Fair site in New York and the defunct Greystone facility in northern New Jersey. Among the most striking images are interiors from the derelict Alcoa factory in Edgewater, a New Jersey community huddled along the Hudson River at the foot of the Palisades -- not far from Jersey City.

#2. The Biographer's Craft
Just a year old this month, James McGrath Morris' monthly newsletter offers news of upcoming and recently sold biographies, shop talk on writing and research, and links to reference sites (many supplied by readers) that will surprise even the most wonkish of Web surfers. I'm always delighted to see the latest issue pop up in my in-box.

#3. Librarians' Internet Index
Happy surprises and unexpected bits of information are the lifeblood of research, and this is a great place to find them. A frequently updated, constantly churned collection of links to "Websites you can trust," on topics ranging from U.S. history and gardening to international law and film history.

#4. History of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Engineering failure is one of the themes of The Last Three Miles, and this site maintained by the University of Washington showcases one of the most notorious bridge failures in U.S. history.

#5. Dark Passage
It was through the beautiful site Detroitblog that I learned about the subculture of urban infiltrators, those freelance archaeologist-adventurers who love nothing better than to explore long abandoned buildings, factories and facilities where the detritus of modern life is still turning into history. I really and truly admire the combination of intellectual curiosity, thrill-seeking and sheer balls-to-the-wall spelunking nerve involved in exploring sealed-off buildings and tunnels that are ignored by the rest of the world.

--- Steven Hart

--->To read more Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.
Up next week: travel writer Isabella Tree

Interesting Timing

Hmmm.

Jill Bolte Taylor's Video on TED

Via the ever-whimsical Booklust (one of my favorite blogs), a video of a talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor that will, in more than a manner of speaking, blow your mind. Read more about "Dr. Jill," her amazing experience, book, her appearances, and her art, on her website.