Marfa, Marfa & More Marfa

Oh, this country has such beyond splendid skies! Apropos of my book-in-progress, World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas, I recently returned from my latest journey through Marfa, Van Horn, Presidio, Terlingua, and the Big Bend National Park, and will be posting scads more "Marfa Mondays" podcasts...

Pending: an interview with Enrique Madrid of Redford; interview with Dallas Baxter, ex-editor of Cenizo Journal; a journey up Pinto Canyon Rd and another up Casa Piedra Rd (a branch of the old Comanche war path); a visit to Cíbolo Creek Ranch, a trek over Burro Mesa (ayyy, 3 hours each way, no shade) to Apache Canyon and a very remote arrowhead quarry; and a bit about the strange battle of Zapato Tuerto (Spanish vs Apaches); and (yep), "Cowboy Is a Verb."

Oh, and more about the glorious Chisos and Spanish painter Xavier González.

>Listen in to the latest podcast, A Visit to Swan House
>The archive of all the "Marfa Mondays" podcasts  is here. Listen in anytime.

From Pinto Canyon Rd
www.cmmayo.com

Lone Cloud, Paisano Hotel, Marfa
www.cmmayo.com

Pinto Canyon Rd
www.cmmayo.com

Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center, Fort Davis
www.cmmayo.com

>Listen to the podcast with Chihuahuan Desert pollinator expert, Cynthia McAlister

Waiting at the Marfa Lights Viewing Station
www.cmmayo.com

>Listen to the podcast "We Have Seen the Lights" about the Marfa Lights

Near the Cubes, Marfa
www.cmmayo.com

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Podcast #10 A Visit to Swan House (C.M. Mayo Reading for PEN San Miguel de Allende)

Recorded live, my lecture for PEN San Miguel on January 29, 2013 in San Miguel de Allende's Teatro Angela Peralta, about literary travel writing in the digital age and-- starting at about 15:00--  "A Visit to Swan House," my article in the current issue of Cenizo Journal, about adobe visionary Simone Swan's mysteriously beautiful teaching house near Presidio, on the US-Mexico border in Far West Texas.

"A Visit to Swan House" is #10 in the 24 podcast series.

#9 Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend
#8 A Spell at Chinati Hot Springs
#7 The Marfa Lights: We Have Seen the Lights
#6 Marfa's Moonlight Gemstones
#5 Cynthia McAlister, the Buzz on the Bees
#4 Avram Dumitrescu, An Artist in Alpine
#3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony
#2 Charles Angell in the Big Bend
#1 Introduction and welcome

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A Review of Rubén Martínez's DESERT AMERICA

What is the West? That cross-borderly mashup of music, footwear and haberdashery known as “cowboy cool”? Or is it indigenous? The Big Empty, healing refuge, Hispano, Chicano, Mexicano? Or is it now found in the scrim of “underwater” water-sucking tract houses? What is this landscape, if not seen through millions of different eyes each with its own needs, lusts, filters and projections? And how is it changing? (Radically.) In Desert America Rubén Martínez tackles these immense and thorny questions in a narrative of multiple strands masterfully braided into a lyrical whole. . .  

CONTINUE reading C.M. Mayo's review in the Washington Independent Review of Books

"A Visit to Swan House" in Cenizo Journal

My article about adobe visionary Simone Swan's teaching house in Presidio, TX (on the US-Mexico border, about an hour's drive south of Marfa), "A Visit to Swan House," appears in the winter issue of Cenizo Journal. 

Download the complete issue as a PDF here.

Learn more and view photos of Swan House at www.adobealliance.org

UPDATE: A family emergency has knocked back my monthly podcasting schedule, but I will resume. There will be 24 podcasts and I have several interviews already recorded, so stay tuned.



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>Listen in anytime to all Marfa Mondays podcasts



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Podcast #9 Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend

Just posted: My October 2012 interview with painter Mary Baxter about her luminous landscapes in her Marfa, Texas studio. This is #9 in the 24 podcast series, "Marfa Mondays."

>>Listen in here.

Mary Baxter came to Marfa years ago for the horses and cattle business and stayed to paint the sky-haunted landscapes. Recently returned to Marfa after a decade in (relatively nearby) Marathon, Texas, Mary Baxter talked to C.M. Mayo in her sun-filled studio in October 2012.

The Marfa Mondays podcasts are apropos of a work-in-progress about far West Texas.


Recent Marfa Mondays Podcasts include:

>A Spell in Chinati Hot Springs

>We Have Seen the Lights (about the Marfa ghost lights)

>Marfa's Moonlight Gemstones, an Interview with Paul Graybeal

>The Buzz on the Bees, an Interview with Cynthia McAlister

>Avram Dumitrescu, An Artist in Alpine

>Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony

>Charles Angell in the Big Bend

>Ye Olde Introduction and Welcome

Read all about the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project here.

Not sure what a podcast is? Want to know why I'm doing this? Want to learn to make one yourself? Click here.

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Lonn Taylor's TEXAS, MY TEXAS: Musings of the Rambling Boy

Though a collection of columns as "The Rambling Boy" for the Big Bend Sentinel, Lonn Taylor's Texas, My  Texas: Musings of the Rambling Boy is far from the usual mashed potatoes newspaper fare.  Taylor is a wise and lyrical writer with a background as a professional historian and his mammoth love for Texas is infectious. This is a book to savor in a rocking chair on a hot day with a tall glass of spiked lemonade at your side. Get ready to howl with the one about the in-law aunts's oodles of poodles.

(This one made my top 10 for 2012.)

September Update

A family emergency, but I'll be back podcasting as soon as possible.


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