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.

New Podcast-- A Traveler in Mexico: A Rendezvous with Writer Rosemary Sullivan

Just uploaded a new podcast: my reading of my article for Inside Mexico, "A Traveler in Mexico: A Rendezvous with Writer Rosemary Sullivan." Sullivan is the author of Villa Air-Bel: WWII, Escape, and a House in Marseilles, a beautifully written and deeply researched work which tells the harrowing stories of several refugee artists, including many who came to Mexico. (Fans of Leonora Carrington, P.K. Page and Remedios Vario, this is for you!)

Surf on:

>>Read the original article on-line at Inside Mexico
>>Visit Rosemary Sullivan's webpage
(and you'll find there "The Road Out," a documentary about Villa Air-Bel)
>>Read "Three Traveler's in Mexico," by Rosemary Sullivan in Literal
>>Listen to all C.M. Mayo podcasts on podomatic or on iTunes
>>Podcast page http://www.cmmayo.com/podcasts.html

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.

Links Noted: Katrina in Vermont, Mrs Easton, Richard Goodman, Pix of Pyongyang, BibliOdyssey, and More

Just back from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Their very interesting Historical Museum has just moved into spiffy new digs.

James Howard Kunstler's blog, Clusterf*ck Nation
Check out what he has to say about Katrina in Vermont

Mrs Easton
Industrial design blog

Richard Goodman's Bicycle Diaries in the New York Times
P.S. Read Goodman's guest-blog post for Madam Mayo.

Design Your Own Cat Tree
Because... why not?

Pix of Pyongyang
Grayly creepy and creepily gray

The History Blog
16th Century Bronze Found on Baja California Coast

BibliOdyssey
An ever-amazing blog, Check out this post on the Chikanobu woodblock prints.

Bookworm on KCRW: John Sayles interview

Cute Overload: How to Find the End of the Universe

Katrina Denza
Literary blog of note

Guest-Blogger App Designer Julia Sussner on 5 Fabulous Apps To Explore for Yourself

My amiga Julia Sussner is a never-ending inspiration to me. Fresh out of grad school (Cambridge University) with a degree in narrative architecture, she set up her own Palo Alto, California-based company, Parsing Place, and started producing wonderfully original apps and ebooks, among them, the series of Impressionist Paris Walking Tours and, with Katarina Sussner, the children's book Chubby Puggy -- if you've been following this blog, you know anything with pugs rocks my world! (She also did my first book trailer, for my novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. I still have no idea how she got that butterly to fly...)

In her own words, Sussner "approaches the digital realm as an inhabitable space – one which requires design, clarity and comfort in use." I can attest to that: her Paris walking tours are a wonder, utilizing GPS to allow the user to stroll to the exact spot a painting was made and to instantly compare paintings to contemporary photographs (and insert one's own). The apps also include recommended shops and cafes en route (and Julia's recommendations are the best). Parsing Place has just released a Movie Lover’s Paris app for the recent Woody Allen charmfest of a film, "Midnight in Paris." By overlapping the fictional world onto the map of Paris, the narrative from the movie provides a unique portal through which to explore the city. Don't go to Paris, whether by airplane or armchair, without it!

Top 5 iPhone Apps to Explore for Yourself
By Julia Sussner

Versailles Garden App
With little to no interest in developing the city of Paris, Louis XIV improved the gardens of Versailles as if they were an urban complex. The landscaped alleys and avenues lend themselves well to an interactive application. The maze was not a garden motif for nothing…

Terminus Interactive Science Fiction App
There was a period when interactive narrative meant ‘choose your own adventure’ books – while the concept remains timeless, it’s refreshing to see this mode of storytelling reappear.

Star Walk – Astronomy Guide
The sky is not the limit, it’s just the beginning with this app. The celestial landscape is reconfigured according to your place and time. Exploring billion-year-old formations with an iPhone is oddly beautiful.

Our Choice Interactive Book
(Watch the Ted Talk video) This digital version takes the physicality of a book and evolves the components into objects with functions. The reader is now an interactor.

Camera +
Having a camera in your phone means you can capture and save moments as a visual archive. Image processing apps, such as Camera +, let you take better pictures and enhance them – giving a handcrafted edge to the images. But most important are the chemical-free darkroom thrills, right at your fingertips.

--Julia Sussner

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--->For the complete archive of Madam Mayo guest blog posts, click here.
--->Recent guest-bloggers include Eva Schweitzer on the Berlin Wall, Sam Quinones on true tales, and Eric D. Goodman on train stories and, way back when, Nancy Levine on pugs.

The Beekeeper's Lament by Hannah Nordhaus

Here's one for my top 10 books read list 2011: the beautifully told The Beekeeper's Lament by Hannah Nordhaus. Think of it as an update (circa the Apocalypse) to Douglas Whynott's Following the Bloom.

Read Nordhaus' interview with The Millions here.

(I think we need to change the way we think about honey: it shouldn't be marketed so much as a commodity as an artesanal product, like wine. We need beekeepers to add more information: origin, flora, breed, methods of care, processing, etc. How do you know the honey you buy at your local grocer isn't adulterated with antibiotics and corn syprup? Well, in many cases, you don't. Is it really from Vietnam --or laundered there, originally from China? I would love to see more information on the labels and more informative producer websites. One of the beekeepers who is making some very interesting efforts in this direction is Marina Marchese, author of Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper.)

More anon.

Guest-Blog Wednesday: 5 + 1 Guest-Blog Posts for a European Tour

If you've been following this blog you know I blog more often about Mexico than any place else. But horizons do expand and more than occasionally, in part, and with heart-felt thanks, to my guest-bloggers. This week's guest-blog post, by Berlinica's Dr Eva C. Schweitzer about the Berlin Wall, ran earlier than usual because last Saturday was the 50th (ayyy) anniversary of the building of the wall. So herewith a shout-out to her fascinating guest-blog post, as well as to a five others about Europe:

Novelist Roberta Rich on 5 + 1 Top Books to Inform a 16th century Historical Thriller (The Midwife of Venice)

Translator and writer Kyle Semmel 5 Links "Out of Denmark"

Poet and translator Alexandra van de Kamp 5 Inspiring World Museums

Novelist Dianne Ascroft 5 Novels Featuring Children in WWII

Poet and translator Moira Egan 5 Fun Things to Do Next Time You're in Italy

More anon.


(Photo courtesy of DuBoix at MorgueFile.com)

French Feast: A Traveler's Literary Companion, edited by William Rodamor

One of the loveliest things about having published Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion with Whereabouts Press is that I get to hear right away about their new titles. The latest is a fresh departure from the standard collection of fiction and literary prose as a portrait of the country (e.g., Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Ireland, Australia, France, Isreal, etc): French Feast. From the press release:

When food and fiction intertwine, the pairing can be a delight to the literary palate. And where better than France to explore culinary literature? ... Prize-winning writers gather around our banquet table to offer up appetizers, entrees, and of course desserts."

Sounds tres yummy.

Read more here.

On the 50th Anniversary of the Building of the Berlin Wall: Guest-blogger Eva C. Schweitzer on 5 Links to Learn More about the Berlin Wall

I must be getting old but it really does seem like yesterday that I walked into my office and, from a tinny radio, heard the first absolutely astonishing news about the fall of the Berlin Wall. For those of us born in the early 60s, the Berlin Wall, had seemed a feature of the European landscape as immovable as any mountain-- and then, in a blink, it was smashed to rubble and carted off, in part, as souvenirs.

Guestblogs usually run on Wednesdays but this week I had to make an exception, for August 13th is the 50th anniversary of the buidling of the Berlin Wall and apropos of that, I am delighted to run this post by Berlinica's founding editor, Dr. Eva C. Schweitzer. Berlinica is one of the most unique small presses in the US. Based in New York, its niche is Berlin: books on Berlin as varied as guides, histories and novels, as well as music and movies.

Links to Learn More About Berlin
By Dr Eva C. Schweitzer

The other day, I visited Zwingli Church in Berlin; a protestant church in the Eastern district of Friedrichshain. The church is a museum today, it has a new exhibit about the Berlin Wall. It is fairly close to where the Wall has been, at Oberbaumbrücke, today a fancy riverside strip with many restaurants. The Wall has been built fifty years ago on the day, on August 13, 1961. There is a lot of rememberance going on in Berlin in these weeks, exhibits, speeches, debates, architectural models, but this one I found especially touching, because my father was baptized in Zwingli Church.

The exhibit showed a dozen people who were living in the area in 1961; black-and-white pictures, and memories. It tells stories about families that were torn apart overnight, young men that were shot or jailed trying to rescue their girlfriends, children stuck in the wrong part of town. It seemed so long ago, with those children dressed in lederhosen, and women wearing buns, and aprons. My father could have been one of them, but he left Berlin in 1944, due to the war, and never returned. Actually, after the Wall was built, most people in the Western part of Berlin left.

Now, living in New York, I'm part of that huge wave of memories that is sweeping Berlin. I have founded a Berlin-themed publishing company, Berlinica Publishing LLC that brings Berlin books, music, and movies to America. Our newest book is The Berlin Wall Today, a color picture guide about everything that is left of the Wall, in English and German. There are only three long stretches left, at Bernauer Straße, the Museum of the Topography of Terror, and the East Side Gallery. But there are smaller parts as well, hidden within Prussian cementaries, in back yards, or guarding train tracks or lofts. There is also a Berlin Wall Trail, which leads the visitor to interesting spots. Two slabs of the Wall are also standing in front of Zwingli Church.

So, check out the book, and also, some of the exhibits if you are in Berlin!

Berlin Wall TodayThis is our book at Amazon. It is also available at Barnesandnoble.com, and you can order it in an Barnes and Noble bookstore (or so I hope!)

This is the exhibit in Zwinglikirche, near S- and U-Bahn Warschauer Straße. It is open from Thursday to Sunday, 4 pm to 7 pm.

This is a clip on YouTube about where the Wall has been, posted by the city agency Berlin Partners. It is architectural model of Berlin in the 1960s and later.

The German Historical Museum in Berlin Unter den Linden has a photo exhibit about surviving with the Wall, by Thomas Hoepker and Daniel Biskup.

This is an exhibit at the New Museum in New York City, Ostalgia; about people who miss the East and living in the GDR.


Dr. Eva C. Schweitzer

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P.S. Check out Berlinica's fascinating forthcoming titles also.
---> For the archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.
Recent guest-bloggers include Sam Quinones on true tales, Eric D. Goodman on train stories, and Susan Coll on comic novels.

Guest-blogger Sam Quinones on 5 Books of True Tales

It's a very special honor to host Sam Quinones this Wednesday because he is one of the writers I most admire. Some years ago, I gave his book True Tales from Another Mexico a heart-felt rave review in the Wilson Quarterly. Later, when his collection Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream came out, I placed it on my top 10 list for 2007. Quinones writes about Mexico and Mexican immigrants, and with more originality, insight and sheer grit than anyone else out there. (As someone who is married to a Mexican and has lived in and written about Mexico for 25 years, I'm not an easy customer in this department.) Sam Quinones's writing is something very special, so waste not a minute, go read his books-- after you read his guest-blog post, that is. And send him your true tale.

FIVE BOOKS OF TRUE TALES
by Sam Quinones

Hey there C.M. Mayo readers:

Hi there. I’m Sam Quinones. I’m a reporter and author of two books about Mexico and Mexican immigration.

I’m guest blogging to introduce C.M. Mayo readers to my storytelling experiment.

Tell Your True Tale is me trying to get folks to write true stories and send them in. I put them on my website. The latest postings, for example, are two women’s crime stories, Monah Li's "Speed Kills", and Carrie Gronewald's "The Green River Camp Fire". (Many others are up as well.)

Storytelling is the idea here— something that happened, a moment, an event. Something small; something big. Could have happened to you, or a friend, a coworker, relative, or someone you met at a café. Just needs to be true.

Like C.M., I don’t pay. But I do edit, and sometimes rather vigorously, rewriting being the essence of writing.

I encourage you all to think about stories you might have. Put ‘em down and send ‘em in.

Tell Your True Tale page: http://www.samquinones.com/category/true-tales/
My website: www.samquinones.com
My email: samquinones7@yahoo.com


FIVE GREAT BOOKS OF TRUE TALES

American Stories by Calvin Trillin
Amazing stories from the master storyteller in U.S. journalism. Trillin tells the story of Edna Buchanan, ace crime reporter for the Miami Herald; of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream; of the battle surrounding the estate of doo-wop crooner Frankie Lymon. The story on John Zeideman, a young man who died in China, is terrific.

Killings by Calvin Trillin
Stories of how people died violently, by the master again. “Todo Se Paga,” about the Casa Blanca neighborhood of Riverside, California, is fantastic.

The Heart That Bleeds by Alma Guillermoprieto
Stories from Latin America by a great reporter. Her story on the trash boss of Mexico City is a gem.

Stories by Anton Chekhov
Okay, it’s fiction, but the kind of stories to read when you’re writing true tales. What we’re after is nonfiction stories that read like fiction.

My books. They’re great. Stories of the Michael Jordan of Oaxacan Indian basketball; of the Henry Ford of velvet painting; of the Tomato King and the Popsicle Kings; of a lynching in a sweltering backwater; of how opera emerged from Tijuana’s broken and cacophonous streets; of Chalino Sanchez, the most influential musician to come out of Los Angeles in the last generation; And, finally, of my escape from Mexico, chased out by wacky, drug-smuggling old world German Mennonites from northern Mexico.

-True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx

-Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration*

www.samquinones.com
(*I’m selling this one myself, hardcover, signed, for $10 apiece. Write me at samquinones7@yahoo.com)

That’s all folks. Really would love to see some stories. This is getting fun. What I’ve seen up to now is great and I can’t wait to see more.

--Sam Quinones

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Recent recent guest-blogs include novelist Eric D. Goodman on train stories; novelist Susan Coll on comic novels; and poet and translator Richard Jeffrey Newman on the Shahnameh.

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