Gone to the Blogs: Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel's Hit List

There's such a churning Niagara of blogs out there -- I've been keeping an eye out for lists that might serve as a kind of filter. I spotted this list in Tom Engelhardt's 4/21/06 interview with Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation. (Read the whole enchilada here.) Engehardt asked vanden Heuvel what she read every day. She said:

"I begin the day by reading from three to five papers. By then I'm already so agitated… [She laughs.] Anyway, I start with the Washington Post, then I do the New York Times, then parts of the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian. Then I look at the Web. I'll read Tompaine, Commondreams, Romenesko, Tomdispatch, Juan Cole, Alternet, the Huffington Post, James Wolcott's blog, Jay Rosen's PressThink, sometimes Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo or the Daily Kos... Then I'll write a blog entry, or a short riff for our new magazine blog, the Notion, or something for the Guardian's new blog, Comment Is Free..."

Not very literary. Oh well. Madam Mayo is also quite agitated by the current political situation, but rather than join the political Clogosphere (to borrow a term from my amiga J.R.) she is channeling it into her novel, which is based on a true story in Mexico in 1865-1867. Tres triste. Today, which was March 5, 1866, under attack by insurgents on the highway, one of Madam Mayo's characters got the back of his skull shot off.

I think I'd better stop refering to myself in the third person. This is very wierd.

Dispatch From Palo Alto, California: First Yellow Rose of the Season

Pabu Mayo, my pug Picadou's big amigo, is the Tibetan spaniel to whom my sister, Alice, belongs. Being a typical Tibetan spaniel, Pabu is shy. Here he hides from the first yellow rose of the season. (For more pix of Pabu, click here.) My sister Alice, by the way, has some curious theories about the Mackintosh clan, and that we may be distant kin to Graham Mackintosh, the intrepid Baja California adventurer and author. (We are big fans of his books, most especially Nearer My Dog to Thee: A Summer in Baja's Sky Island.) Alice assures me that she will be sending some dispatches on this subject in the coming days. Pabu may be advising her. But he's not saying.

Gone to the LitBlogs: Beltway's List of Litblogs of DC and Environs

Kim Roberts, poet and editor of of Beltway, the wonderful on-line poetry journal, alerts Madam Mayo to the Beltway Resource Bank of Area Litblogs. Some of these are extraordinary. I was especially impressed by Baltimore writer Lizzie Skurnick's Old Hag-- a peculiar name for a really beautiful litblog. A good one, if like yours jam-packed with a gaba-zaba-bazillion nuggets 'o info, is Arts and Letters Daily. More peronal and laid back is DC poet E. Ethelbert Miller's E-Notes. There are Wendi Kaufman's The Happy Booker, Deborah Ager's 32 Poems, and my own (yay!) Madam Mayo (hey, click on that link and see what happens...) Some of the names are, shall we say, unusual: Home Schooled by a Cackling Jackal.

The Happy Booker Goes South of the Border-- Top Five Mexican Music Selections by Yours Truly

"If I Only Had an iPod..." This is DC area writer Wendi Kaufman's regular feature on her long-time and widely read litblog, The Happy Booker. And hey, c'est moi-- engaging in shameless promotional efforts apropos of the release of my own audio CD, "The Essential Francisco Sosa or, Picadou's Mexico City." (Yep, what I'm doing here is quoting The Happy Booker quoting myself. If this ain't blogging, what is?)

SOUTH OF THE BORDER, MUSIC SELECTIONS BY C.M. MAYO
Yo quiero Mexican music! It isn't all "para bailar la bamba" and the Jumping Bean song. I prefer certain categories. For instance, La Voz; Suave (Cool); Joyas (Jewels); Fresa (literally, "strawberry"-- the closest translation would be "princess"), and this uncategorizable phenomenon that everybody except the clinically depressed wants to raise their hands and clap to --- and dance to -- and shout out to! I am talking about Juanga. I love Juanga. Little grannies love Juanga. Hairdressers love Juanga. You, too, will love Juanga. "Viva Mexico!" sings Juanga.

Here are my top five, by category:

LA VOZ
Lila Downs: "Tengo Miedo de Quererte." Lila Downs has a voice that could float an elephant.

SUAVE
Santana:"Twisted." Carlos Santana's music is like a slithering snake crossed with a flock of birds crossed with a great big chocolate ice-cream birthday cake.

FRESA
Mecano: Descanso Dominical, "Laika" The disco ode to Laika the space dog. Acually, this group is Spanish. Ni modo. Wierdly mystical.

JOYAS
Chanticleer: Mexican Baroque: Music From New Spain, "Ignacio de Jerúsalem: Mass in D Major" Carved gilded roses of sound.

JUANGA
Juan Gabriel: Viva Mexico. Fiesta to the max. Think Paul McCartney x Elton John x Englebert Humperdink x Salma Hayek. But he doesn't look anything at all like Salma Hayek.

Sombreros off to la Booker Feliz!

Poetic Voices Without Borders

At the Arlington (Virginia) Arts Center last night I was privileged to read with poets Grace Cavalieri, Rei Berroa, and Jacqueline Jules as part of the celebration of Robert Giron's beautiful award-winning anthology, Poetic Voices Without Borders. The event was sponsored by the DC chapter of the Womens National Book Association. I read my poem, "In the Garden of Lope de Vega" and another poem -- not in this anthology-- "Man High". Over the years, I've been to more poetry readings than I could count -- never has any had such a gracious and charming moderator as Grace Cavalieri. Thanks to all of you guys.

At the Moment, Madam Mayo Is Peeved by Playaway (But No Doubt the Moment Will Pass)

Stop the Clutter! Revisiting the Playaway (see my last post). Well, now I don't know where to put the dang thing. It may be small, but it's ugly (a vile yellowish-green) and it has this messy tangle of cords (the earbuds, the lanyard). If I were to put it in a box, or the back of a drawer, I wouldn't see it, and then I would forget about it, and that would be $40 down the drain because by the time I would come upon it again, no doubt the pre-installed battery would be dead. So I put it in a plastic sandwich baggy. A nasty little package.

Playaway, $40 for 12 Hours

"Beyond the Book" is the title of a panel I'm proposing for next year's Associated Writing Programs conference in Atlanta. I had thought of of audio CDs, chapbooks, broadsheets, vidlit, blogs-- but not this. Imagine a stack of, say, seven credit cards. Not a big package; easy to palm. The fat end is the width of your thumbnail, the thin end half that. It weighs almost nothing. Behold Simon and Schuster's self-playing audio book: a wee machine with batteries already installed, with ear buds, a lanyard for wearing it round your neck, and one -- and forever only one -- recording: in this case, 12 hours of Khaled Hosseini reading his novel, The Kite Runner. I found it at Washington DC's Dulles airport, right by the cash register, ka-ching. Read all about it at www.playawaydigital.com

Madam Mayo Is On the Road to Fez

Yep, I'm in Morocco. En route I'll be reading Ruth Knafo Setton's novel, The Road to Fez. She's a very interesting and powerful writer who has also spent time in Mexico. Read an interview with her here.

Please check back with this blog on April 18th. I'll have news about some of the writers and translators in my new anthology Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion, information about my upcoming Revision Workshop at the Writers Center, and -- I would imagine -- something to "blog" about Morocco. Last time I was there was in 1983, to take a writing workshop with Paul Bowles in Tangier. Bowles was the author of some sublime short stories and several novels including The Sheltering Sky. But alas, I learned more from reading his work than from him personally. That's another blog post. Maybe.

Helipilot's Eye-Popping Pix of Mexico City

Check out these photos of Mexico City by a helicopter pilot. Total eye candy. This one is of a tianguis (weekly market) in Neza. His webpage has a slide show in both Spanish and English.

Viva Consuelo Hernandez!

I'm in Washington DC right now, where the Spanish language literary scene has been growing like a beanstalk in summer. Anyone around here who writes in Spanish ought to get plugged to Para Eso La Palabra. Their next big event features Colombian poet and American University Spanish Professor Consuelo Hernandez, who will be presenting her new book, Poemas de escombros y cenizas / Poems From Debris and Ashes (English translation by Maureen Contreni). It's this Friday April 7th at 6:30 p.m., Folger Shakespeare Library, 301 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, D.C., 2003, $5 admission. To learn more about the Washington DC Spanish language literary scene, check out my article, "Viva La Vida Literaria!"