Cyberflanerie: Writers and Writing: Sam Quinones on the Mennonite Mob, the Daily Skimm, Write On!

Debra Eckerling's Write On! August newsletter is out. (Thanks, amiga, for the mention of my "30 Deadly-Effectve Ways to Free Up Bits, Drips & Gimungously Vast Swaths of Time for Writing" and the new gumroad.com edition of From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion.") Lots of useful information in there for writers. Take note, those of you looking for some inspiration, Eckerling is offering Purple Pencil Adventures, her Kindle of writing prompts for free on specific dates. Read the newsletter to find out all about it.

Sam Quinones, who I admire more than I can say, has just posted on his blog about the Mexican Mennonite Mob. Whoa.

Something I find charming, useful and yet totally appalling: The Daily Skimm.

How to Rank Well in Amazon. Uh, for all one's spare time. 

James Somers asserts: You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary.

The always elegant and thoughtful Pat Dubrava on Discovering Indians in 1951.

COMMENTS always welcome.

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SURF ON:

Madam Mayo:

>Why Aren't There More Readers? A Note on Curiosity, Creativity and Courage

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

>My Little Gumroad Shop

And on the home page, www.cmmayo.com:

>Review of Sam Quinones' True Tales of Mexico

>Giant Golden Buddha & 364 More Free 5 Minute Writing Exercises: August

>New Workshop: One One Day Writing Workshop at the Writer's Center on Literary Travel Writing, Saturday October 11, 2014.

Cyberflanerie: Mexico City, Patzcuaro, Tijuana & Tulum Edition

You're Eating Fake Tacos and Diana Kennedy is Pissed About It  by Daniel Hernandez
P.S. Diana Kennedy is a true treasure: teacher, caretaker, visionary. Her name may not be hispanic, but she knows Mexican cuisine better than anyone, including, yes, the Mexicans.

The always excellent and informative Exploring Colonial Mexico, lately on Enrique Luft Pávlata.

Sam Quinones doesn't like Tijuana, he loves it! (Yes, Yours Truly has visited and had quite a bit to say about it, too. But I didn't get to the opera.)

Victor: Artes Populares Mexicanas, now in new digs near the Claustro Sor Juana, upstairs from Librería Madero. I was about to blog about this charming rinconcito, but my amigo, artist and travel writer, Jim Johnston, beat me to it in his blog, Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler. 

Speaking of rinconcitos, Mexico Cooks! has another bodacious post about the new market in Col. Roma. Nicholas Gilman chimes in on his blog, Good Food in Mexico City.

My amiga the ever adventurous DC-based writer Judy Leaver is learning Spanish in Tulum.

David Lida says Federico Gama is the best photojournalist working in Mexico City today.

Burro Hall is still reporting on the usual wackiness. (Hey, karma police, the guy has an elderly pug.)

COMMENTS always welcome.

Cyberflanerie: Better Books, Books of Note, Decluttering Books, Rare Books

The NYT's Charles M. Blow says, Reading Books is Fundamental.

Making Better Books:

The Book Designer's archive of articles "practical advice to help build better books"

Chronicling America in the Library of Congress (newspaper archives)

Book Aesthete Tumblr

Books of Note:

Sam Quinones' Tell Your True Tale East Los Angeles

The Daily Beast's Ted Gioia says The Smartest Book About the Digital Age Was Published in 1929. (José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses.)

My book! Updated edition in Kindle, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual.

>see also recent Madam Mayo posts on Gregory Gibson's Demon of the Waters and Bruce Berger's The End of the Sherry.

>see also lists of recommended reading on Mexico; creative process; craft of  creative writing; literary travel memoir.

Decluttering Books: 

Early Retirement Extreme on How to Get Rid of Books

>see also Madam Mayo's easy-peasy 10 Question Method

Rare Books:

Mexico Desconocido on Mexico City's antiquarian bookstores (en español)

>see also recent blog post,  Una ventana al mundo invisible (A Window to the Invisible World) or, Master Amajur and the Smoking Signatures

COMMENTS always welcome

Cyberflanerie: The Voynich Manuscript, Books, Used Books, Rare Books, and the Future of Bookstores Edition

Totally huge news: The mysterious circa 15th or 16th century Voynich manusucript might be of Mexican origin: Arthur O. Tucker and Rexford H. Talbert make a very interesting case in, of all places, HerbalGram, the Journal of the American Botanical Council, issue 100, 2013, in their article "A Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Minerology of the Voynich Manuscript." Could the strange, supposedly cipher, language have been simply a dialect of Nahuatl?

To see the Voynich manuscript on-line, check it out at the website of Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. 

Sam Quinones, a most original and intrepid journalist, who hosts the Tell Your True Tale website, has just brought out the Tell Your True Tale: East Los Angeles, in both paperback and Kindle.

Novelist and blogger Carmen Amato has asked Yours Truly and other "influential bloggers" to pontificate on the Future of Bookstores. (For some visuals, try this.)

The Rambling Boy of the Big Bend Sentinel, Lonn Taylor, goes browsing for bargains at used bookstores.

Find books with Bibliopolis.

Here's a cool new venue for selling books: Gumroad. Stay tuned on that front.

More anon.

Cyberflanerie: Nuts Edition

James McWilliams talks about The Pecan: A History of America's Native Nut (University Texas Austin) with podcaster extraordinaire Chris Gondek.

UK newspaper reports Mexico leads the world in death by . . . lightning strikes. (Who knew?)

Sam Quinones on the Mexican Roma
(No, not Colonia Roma. Just when you think you've got Mexico figured out, Sam Q spins it topsyturvy. Who else would watch giant snake movies in the campo?)

Nut Wizard (Boy howdy! This gives me renewed faith in the ingenuity of the human race. I am not kidding.)

Human Sacrifice in Olde St Louis.

And on a rather drastically lighter note, check out Chubbs the Totally Awesome Pug!!

COMMENTS

Cyberflanerie: Michael Ventura, Macaulay Library's Coyote Calls, John Wells' Field Lab blog, Sam Quinones on the Dinastia de El Hamlet

3D printer du jour

The Revolution Will Be Printed, according to Austin Chronicle columnist Michael Ventura, by which he means 3D printed. Buckle up, it's going to be a Mr Toad ride! (So when people don't have jobs anymore, what will they do? Why, what people without jobs have always done! Some grow potatoes and stuff, while others glue themselves to the sofa and watch TV, while others give elaborate dinner parties featuring piles of foie gras! Only it will be printed foie gras, I guess.)

PS Get your 3D printer here.

Via Delia Lloyd's Real Delia blog's Friday reading links, Cornell University's Macaulay Library of sounds, an uber-amazing archive of bird and animal audio. (Love the selection of coyotes.)

Over on his Field Lab blog, John Wells once-upon-a-time-of-New-York-now-of-Terlingua offers his one wise cent. P.S. Catch his podcast interview on Tiny Revolution. PSS Related: H20 Rainwater Harvesting Community.

One of my favorite writers writing on Mexico, San Quinones, offers this fascinating blog post about the dynasty of "El Hamlet."

(Coming soon: printed burgers and robot waiters?)

>Comments off due to spam, but your comments via email are always welcome.

Sam Quinones Podcasting on Oystein Baadsvik and the Tuba

Delighted to find Sam Quinones, one of my favorite writers, podcasting.

>>Check out his latest report on Oystein Baadvik and the tuba.

Links Noted: Yayoi Kusama, Kevin Kelly, Thumb Thing, Sam Quinones, Ken Ackerman, Joy of Books, Ken Gordon

The World According to Yayoi Kusama
(The Financial Times)
A very unusual elderly artist whose polkadotted pumpkins fetch the price of a ski condo.

The Art of Endless Upgrades
(Kevin Kelly's kk.org The Technium blog)
I was thinking just the same thing the other day when I had to upgrade my operating system for the second time in a year.
(KK's latest book, What Technology Wants, is on my Top 10 Books Read 2011)

The greatest pug picture ever
(Burro Hall)
By someone who has a highly strange sense of humor.

The Thumb Thing
The Spoonsisters
(Did they just come up with this in the 21st century? I think I need one of these.)

Sam Quinones' True Tales
Cool, generous, amazing, engaging, and frequently updated.

Viral History
A blog hosted by historian Ken Ackerman
Highly recommended. Sign up for the free newsletter.

The Joy of Books Video
Yikes, 2 million plus views already!

People Who Claim to Communicate / Have Communicated with Disembodied Consciousnesses
My updated list for surfers in the more esoteric waters. (Apropos of my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual of 1911. Stay away from those Ouija boards...)

CleanSlateNow.org
Hopping freaked about about that 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission? Ken Gordon is doing something about it and so can you.

More anon.

Blogs Noted: Reading War and Peace, Sam Quinones, Sophy Burnham, Sandell Morse, and More

Supercut.org
Check out the "supercut" video riffing through Nicholas Cage's wiggy and not so wiggy hairstyles. Read what Kevin Kelly has to say about the so-called "supercuts" genre here.

Reading War & Peace: A Novelist's Notes
Yes, it's by Yours Truly, and I'm just catching up with the blog posts-- I am actually now about half way through this "loose baggy monster," right after the fall of Smolensk, and on schedule to finish the whole enchilada by December 31. Yes, dagnabbit, 2011 is the year! I welcome fellow readers' comments. As a writing workshop leader I am always telling people to "read as a writer"-- herewith, taking my own advice.


Marfa Mondays
Which starts up in January 2012. Follow on twitter @marfamondays. Watch the two trailers, "Where is Marfa?" and -- featuring plastic bags and dancing peas-- "Where the Buffalo Is Marfa?" here.

Sophy Wisdom
Mystic, essayist, historical novelist Sophy Burnham's new blog.

Sam Quinones' True Tales
An amazing journalist, hosting amazing true tales by others.
P.S. Check out his guest-blog post about this for Madam Mayo.

Sandell Morse
A new blog by a thoughtful and articulate writer of creative nonfiction

Richard Seymour on TED
How Beauty Feels

Another wingsuiting video
Whew (maybe for the next interplanetary reincarnation)

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.

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

Monday Miscellanea

The Astral Plane by C.W. Leadbeater
And so many more once very rare and now free ebooks at Project Gutenberg

Book xylophone
A charmingly energetic image of the Apocalypse.

"When the Nile Runs Dry" by Lester R. Brown, NYT
This brings to mind some of what happened under Mexico's "Porfiriato" (late 19th c up through the 1910 Revolution).

"Emerging Economies Are Ready to Lead" by Agustin Carstens, Financial Times

Tell Your True Tales to Sam Quinones

Peter Behrens blogging on John Brinckerhoff Jackson

"It's Rainmaking Time" with Angela Thompson Smith

Time Slips: Twidders

Walden Font
Purveyors of old and historic fonts

Butch Anthony's Museum of Wonder (etsy blog)

Feltmaker Jean Hicks's Slideshow of Hats

Lisa Carter's Intralingo translation blog