Showing posts with label guest-bloggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guest-bloggers. Show all posts

Guest-Blogger Historical Novelist Claudia H. Long on 5 Secrets About the Crypto-Jews of Mexico

Claudia H. Long
Delighted to once again host historical novelist Claudia H. Long, whose latest is The Duel for Consuelo. From her official bio: 
"Claudia Long is a highly caffeinated, terminally optimistic married lady living in Northern California. She writes about early 1700’s Mexico and modern day and roaring 20's California. Claudia practices law as a mediator for employment disputes and business collapses, has two formerly rambunctious–now grown kids, and owns four dogs and a cat. Her first mainstream novel was Josefina's Sin, published by Simon & Schuster in 2011. Her second one, The Harlot’s Pen, was published with Devine Destinies in February 2014. Claudia grew up in Mexico City and New York, and she now lives in California."


From the catalog copy of the new novel, The Duel for Consuelo:


"History, love, and faith combine in a gripping novel set in early 1700’s Mexico. In this second passionate and thrilling story of the Castillo family, the daughter of a secret Jew is caught between love and the burdens of a despised and threatened religion. The Enlightenment is making slow in-roads, but Consuelo’s world is still under the dark cloud of the Inquisition. Forced to choose between protecting her ailing mother and the love of dashing Juan Carlos Castillo, Consuelo’s personal dilemma reflects the conflicts of history as they unfold in 1711 Mexico. A rich, romantic story illuminating the timeless complexities of family, faith, and love."

5 SECRETS ABOUT THE CRYPTO-JEWS OF MEXICO
By Claudia H. Long

As practically everyone knows, the Jews were exiled from Spain in 1492, at the time of the Muslim expulsion. Persecution had gone on for centuries, of course, but Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived in an uneasy peace until the expulsion edicts finally put an end to co-existence.  

But not all Jews left the only homes they had ever known. Contradictory edicts made it impossible to leave, mandatory to leave, requiring conversion, denying the merits of the conversion, all with the drumbeat of confiscation of wealth behind the acts. So not only were Jews required to leave or convert, they often were prevented from exercising either choice. 

Conversos (those who converted to Christianity) and their descendants were fiercely persecuted. Any hint of Judaizing, or secretly practicing their old religion, was ruthlessly ferreted out by the Inquisition, which led Conversos to the practice of haciendo sábado, or "doing the Sabbath." This involved ostentatiously working on Saturday so the neighbors could see them, eating pork in public, and putting on other displays of Christianity. Nonetheless, many continued their Jewish practices in secret. 

If they were "lucky" they converted and eventually got out. Some went to the New World, including Mexico and Peru. Mexico was something of a haven for the secret Jews, or Crypto-Jews at first. With so much novelty there was less time to spend ferreting out Jews, and more emphasis on political alignment.

All that changed in 1642. The Archbishop of Mexico became the Viceroy, his edict brought an end to the relatively safe lives of the Crypto-Jews. 

One of the ways that Crypto-Jews were "caught" was through denunciation by family servants. 

 Clues to Judaizing included reports of special dishes being prepared on Friday before sunset, to be kept warm on banked coals through Saturday, or preparation of meats involving draining all of the blood from the meat before cooking. 
Even cleaning the house on Friday, or bathing by women on Friday before sunset, all could lead to a denunciation.  The meticulous records kept by the Inquisition are a fertile source for recipes and housekeeping customs for Crypto-Jews of the era.

Some Jews only knew one blessing, many knew no Hebrew at all. Knowledge was passed down in the family, and with each generation the practices became more idiosyncratic, further and further removed from their origins. Tortillas and chocolate replaced matzo and wine during Passover. Burial practices, such as adding a pillow of dirt to the coffin replaced a burial in virgin soil. Fasting on particular dates following a death, such as the eighth or thirtieth day, replaced the traditional periods of Jewish mourning. These were examples both of adaptation to the New World and a loss of understanding of the actual rituals and traditions. 

The Duel for Consuelo picks up the thread at this point, in 1711, when Consuelo, who only knows one blessing, is called to account by the Inquisition in its last gasps for power.

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Updated Guidelines for Guest-Bloggers

The guidelines for guest-bloggers have been updated here.

Just a few of my guest-bloggers:
Peter Behrens, Susan Coll, Nicholas Gilman, Sandra Gulland, Dylan Landis, Sam Quinones, and Joanna Smith Rakoff.

COMMENTS always welcome.
And you are most welcome to sign up for my newsletter.
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Guest-Blog by Gin Getz on 5 Best Ways to Slow Down

My fellow Women Writing the West member Gin Getz is a writer based out of the wild high mountains of southwestern Colorado. Born Virginia Tone in New Jersey, Gin Getz lives and works at her remote, off-grid guest ranch, far removed from town, telephones and traffic, alongside her husband, son and a bunch of four legged and feathered friends. Gin's website is www.GinGetz.com and her home/guest at www.lost-trail.com.

Well, how many writers can say they have published two books in one year? It's an exclusive club, to be sure! Here are the two that came out in 2014:
The Color of the Wild is the beautifully told story of one woman’s life, love, family, resolve and determination. More than a memoir, with stunning stories interspersed and intertwined with powerful poetry, prose, and stunning photographs, Gin’s captivating tone and intimate view bring to life the drama and trauma of one year on her family’s ranch, scenic and secluded, surrounded by and a part of the wild world around them. 


An intimate, intense personal account of the effects of our changing climate in her big back yard, Colorado’s majestic mountains and the Weminuche Wilderness, The Last of the Living Blue recounts a year of drought, fires, floods, and the healing of mountain and mind. 








 Well, as the saying goes, to hurry up and get a lot done, take your time. Over to Gin:

Summer is slipping away. A couple more weeks and the kids will be back in school, summer house closed down, swim suit diets a concern of the past. I still have this idyllic notion that summer should be spent sitting on the beach with a good book, long evenings by the camp fire with a tall glass tinkling ice in one hand and a grill fork in the other or running around barefoot playing kick-the-can. Reality, so it seems for most of us, is something altogether different. We’re way too busy! So, for all of us who find ourselves missing out on the lazy, crazy days of summer time, I present to you:
The 5 Best Ways to Slow Down – and the Links to Help You Do It.
 1. Read a good book. Not sure what to read next and looking for recommendations? Check out GoodReads.com. Part social media for the bookworm, part helpful resource for the real reader.
2. Get out in nature. Okay, that’s not always easy if you live in the city. This site, on National Geographic, has some great ideas.
3. Spend time with family. Here’s a good place to start, from a kids perspective:Top 10 Ways to Spend Time with Family.
4. Downsize. Simplify. A wonderful list of 52 reasons why and how to. 
5. Meditate. Right – easier said than done for some of us. There is hope. Try this: Tiny Buddha: 8 Ways to Make Meditation Easy and Fun.


COMMENTS are always welcome.
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Guest-blogger Heidi M. Thomas: A Roundup of 5 Things to Know About Old-Time Rodeo Cowgirls

As I plow on with my Far West Texas book and related "Marfa Mondays" Podcasting Project, I am also finding my way into a whole new literary subculture and, through Women Writing the West, meeting, if only on-line for now, some very accomplished novelists. One of them, who also manages the Women Writing the West blog-- bless you, dear-- is Heidi M. Thomas, who has just published her third novel, Dare to Dream, about a Montana cowgirl who dreams of becoming a professional rodeo rider. Based on the life of Thomas' grandmother, who rode rough stock in Montana in the 1920s, this sweeping saga parallels the evolution of women’s rodeo from the golden years of the 1920s, producing many world champion riders, and shows its decline, beginning in the 1930s and ending with World War II in 1941. Heidi’s first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, won an EPIC Award and the USA Book News Best Book Finalist award. Follow the Dream, a WILLA Award winner, is her second book, and Dare to Dream is the third in the series about strong, independent Montana women.



A Roundup of 5 Things to Know About Old-Time Rodeo Cowgirls
By Heidi M. Thomas
1. My “Dreams” series is based on my grandmother who rode bucking stock in Montana rodeos during the 1920s. Competing with and riding the same roughstock as men was not entirely socially acceptable, but there were a number of women who won world champion awards at New York’s Madison Square Garden Rodeo, in Canada, and in Europe. While Grandma did not become one of those famous cowgirls, she knew and competed with Marie Gibson of Havre, Montana (and won in a steer-riding competition in 1922). Marie won titles at Madison Square Garden in 1927 and 1931. She was killed in a freak rodeo accident in 1933.

2. Montana produced several bronc riding champions, including Fannie Sperry Steele, Alice and Margie Greenough, and Marie Gibson. The Brander sisters were two more of Montana’s rodeo sweethearts, often riding a bucking Brahma steer—double. They went on to establish a dude ranch and put on many rodeos for visitors. 
3. The Miles City Bucking Horse Sale has been a well-known horse sale and rodeo in Montana since 1914. I remember attending the big social event of the year when I was in high school. Although I grew up on a ranch and helped my dad round up cattle for branding and shipping, I did not follow my grandmother’s boot steps into rodeo. For some reason I preferred not to get on anything that was going to buck me off!
4. The Madison Square Garden Rodeo of 1941 was the last time a woman was allowed to compete on the men’s circuit. Vivian White won the women’s championship title that year. My character Nettie in Dare to Dream mentors two young neighbor girls and they have to opportunity to attend that world-renowned rodeo in New York City. 
5. The World wars had much to do with the demise of women’s rodeo competition. Rodeos in general declined because most of the men were off fighting and because there wasn’t money to put on rodeos or travel to them. The death of Bonnie McCarroll and Marie Gibson aroused the age-old question—Is rodeo too dangerous for women? The formation of the Rodeo Association of America also contributed, as the all-male organization did not sanction women’s events.
-- Heidi M. Thomas, author of Dare to Dream

COMMENTS always welcome. Send an email about this post and you're automatically entered in Heidi M Thomas's drawing for a free book.
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SURF ON:

Heidi M. Thomas is in the midst of a blog tour. Check out her other guest-blogs via her blog.


>Madam Mayo's previous guest-bloggers include the novelists:

Listen in anytime:
>Marfa Mondays: Cowboys Songs By Cowboys

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Guest-blogger Victoria Wilcox with 5 Sites for Scarlett Fans



Victoria Wilcox
I am delighted to host guest-blogger Victoria Wilcox who has just published what promises to be a fascinating read, a novel based on the true story of Doc Holliday-- one wild dentist, I'll say. Usually we think of Doc out west, slinging a gun, but he hailed from the Old South and had some surprising connections there, as Wilcox explains. And she ought to know: not only did she write the novel about him, but she is founding director of Georgia’s Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House Museum, the antebellum home of the family of Doc Holliday. It was her work with the house that led to eighteen years of original research and inspired her novel trilogy, Southern Son: The Saga of Doc Holliday. Inheritance, the first book in the Southern Son saga was published this month by Knox Robinson Publishing. 

Ghosts of Gone With the Wind: 5 Sites for Scarlett Fans
Who would have guessed, when I moved to Georgia hoping to find a few ghosts of Gone With the Wind, that my life would be forever haunted by Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel of the Old South?  I was just a fan like any other, having read the book a few times and watched the movie a few times more, the only exception between me and other fans being an interesting calendar connection: I was born on Margaret Mitchell’s birthday, November the 8th.   But when my love of history and a project to save a Gone With the Wind style historic site led to my novel trilogy, Southern Son: The Saga of Doc Holliday, the epic story of the South’s most famous Western legend, our shared birthday began to seem downright spooky – November 8th was also the date that Doc Holliday died.  
The historic site was the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House, the antebellum home of Doc Holliday’s cousins in Fayetteville, Georgia, a classic white-columned Southern mansion where Doc played as a child, and where he began a young romance with his cousin Mattie Holliday, the girl who would become the model for Melanie in Gone With the Wind.  The Hollidays were kin to Margaret Mitchell, and she was said to have visited the house and suggested it as a filming site for the movie version of Tara.  The place is even mentioned in the first chapter of Gone With the Wind, as Scarlett O’Hara attended the Fayetteville Academy, a private school once housed there.  
While Scarlett was fictional, however, there was a real Southern belle who really went to the school and had a lot in common with Scarlett: they both lived on big cotton plantations in neighboring Clayton County, they both had feisty Irish fathers named Gerald, they both had genteel mothers who had green velvet drapes in their parlor windows, they both went to Atlanta during the Civil War and survived with a little bit of grace and a whole lot of “gumption.”  The real girl was Annie FitzGerald, and she was Margaret Mitchell’s grandmother.  
It’s no wonder Gone With the Wind seems so real to its readers.  There was a lot of truth behind its story of the Old South, and a better-than-fiction link to the Wild, Wild West.  These ghosts have a great story to tell!      
For more real tales of Gone With the Wind, check out the following five sites:
The Margaret Mitchell House Museum, the Atlanta apartment when the author typed her epic tale.
Scarlett O’Hara’s Atlanta, an interactive map that takes you into the 1860’s city.
Gone With the Wind Scrapbook, a fun collection of all things Scarlett.
Gone With the Wind Online Exhibit, movie memorabilia from the David O. Selznik collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Gone With the Wind Background from the AMC Filmsite Movie Review, gives a complete synopsis of the movie for who haven’t watched it but want to sound like they have.



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>Recent guest-blogs include Joanna Hershon with 5 links from A Dual Inheritance that Traverse the Globe and Amy Kwei with 5 recommended books on China.

>Click here for the complete archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blogs.


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Guest-blogger C. Marina Marchese: 5 Surprising Facts About Honeybees, Pollination, and Your Food


Don't be surprised if fruit, nut and vegetable prices start a more precipitous climb later this year. Check out this scary news in the New York Times about honeybees. The culprit? It could well be the pesticide clothianidin. It doesn't take a PhD to figure out that all the pesticides we use -- now even genetically engineered into the crops themselves-- could also affect honeybees. The honeybee population counts have been plummeting for years and this year, whoa, an estimated 40-50 percent drop. Just the other day, C. Marina Marchese's Red Bee newsletter popped up in my inbox with this handy five point list:

5 Surprising Facts About Honeybees, Pollination, and Your Food
Posted by permission from Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper by C. Marina Marchese, published by Black Dog and Leventhal, 2009.

Did you know that much of the delicious, fresh food from your local farmer's market is dependent on essential pollination by the amazing honeybee? 

1. Honeybees are responsible for pollinating more than 100 agricultural crops in the United States. In fact, one in three bites of food we eat is dependent on honeybees for pollination.

2. Crops that have not been properly pollinated are often disfigured and underdeveloped. For example, cucumbers, squash, or eggplants that have not been fully pollinated with grow lopsided and curly.

3. Honeybees also play an important role in our supply of beef and dairy products. Farmers rely on honeybees to pollinate alfalfa, clover, and other grasses, which makes up a large part of the diet of livestock. Well-fed livestock means tastier meats, cheeses, milk and eggs.

4. Did you know that without honeybees to pollinate cotton plants, we would not have cotton t-shirts, blue jeans, and bed sheets?

5. The honeybee population is diminishing rapidly. Here is an eye-opening report by Dan Rather. Some say the beekeeping industry can only sustain itself for a few more years if these losses continue. Honey will become a rare luxury.

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>Be sure to check out her book, Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper and, over at Red Bee, her many varieties of artisanal honeys. 

>For a fascinating podcast interview about the bees of the Big Bend, listen in anytime to bee expert Cynthia McAlister on "Marfa Mondays."

>Archive of all Madam Mayo guest-blogs.

Comments on this blog have been disabled because of spam, but I am always delighted to hear from readers. Contact me here.

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Guest-blogger Ellen Cassedy on 5 Links to Learn Yiddish



Ellen Cassedy is the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, March 2012)

Ellen Cassedy set off into the Jewish heartland of Lithuania to study Yiddish, the language of European Jews, and connect with her forebears. Once there, however, old certainties began to dissolve, what had begun as a personal quest expanded into an exploration of how Jews and non-Jews in a land scarred by conflict are confronting their Nazi and Soviet past in order to move forward into the future.

Probing the terrain of memory, massacre, and moral dilemmas, Ellen asks: Can we honor our diverse heritages without perpetuating the fears and hatreds of the past? Her account shines a spotlight on fragile efforts toward tolerance, and finds reason for hope.

Learn Yiddish: 5 Links

When my mother was alive, I could count on her to keep hold of the old Jewish world. But when she died, all those who’d come before seemed to be slipping away. My mother had sprinkled Yiddish words into conversation only occasionally, like a spice, but once she was gone, I found myself missing them. I developed a craving to connect myself to my origins by learning the old mother tongue. Learning to speak Yiddish – and to understand, read, write, sing, and translate – has been a mekhaye, a great pleasure.





Even a taste of Yiddish feels delicious on the tongue. Here are some links to get you started:
Yiddish Twitter
Who knew? Twitter can help you find the Yiddish class or program that meets your needs.

Yiddish Farm
http://www.yiddishfarm.org/
You can even choose to learn the language while working on a farm.

Yiddish Primer
http://www.yiddishculture.org/basiclesson/index.html
An easy place to begin (without farm work) is the 20 simple online lessons offered by the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture. Start with the alphabet; sound is included to help you pronounce.

Yiddish Online Dictionary
It goes both ways, from kiss to kush and vice versa.

Yiddish Book Center
Check out the Yiddish Book Center to connect to a wealth of information about all things Yiddish.

Enjoy!
http://www.ellencassedy.com/

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.
Recent guest-bloggers include novelist Peter Behrens, translator Harry Morales, and New World heirlooms expert Steve Sando.
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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)
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