“Create More: Lessons Learned From A Life At The edge Of Entrepreneurship, In Five Acts”

Len Jessup thought of returning to Chico State as a professor. After all, he had received an MBA and bachelor’s degree in information and communication studies from Chico State, so it seemed logical. Though that didn’t happen, he did become a business professor, served two stints as a university president (most recently of Claremont Graduate University in Southern California), and two as a business school dean.

He realized his great joy was fostering innovation, leading change-oriented teams, and encouraging business startups. As managing partner of Desert Forge Ventures, which uses venture capital for just those purposes in the Las Vegas area, Jessup could write a book about the qualities needed for someone leading innovation. 

He did write it; it’s called “Create More: Lessons Learned From A Life At The edge Of Entrepreneurship, In Five Acts” ($19.99 in paperback from Entrepreneur Books; also for Amazon Kindle). He draws on his own experiences and those from leaders like Steve Jobs in each of the five chapters.

“Child’s Play” encourages childhood creativity; “Innovating at Work” introduces the idea of the “intrapreneuer,” one who innovates from inside an existing company; then there are the qualities of “The Transformational Leader”; “The Leader as A Creative Visionary”; and “The Leader We Need” (“We’ve got to continue to support and incentivize our young entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.”)

Jessup notes developing five characteristics of an entrepreneurial leader (creativity, vision, charisma, drive, and resilience) “won’t amount to much if you lack one essential personality trait: your tolerance for risk…. Successful entrepreneurs must become comfortable taking risks, and nearly anyone can learn to do this.”

Risk taking is not a random dice throw but flows out of the leader’s “core competencies,” creativity, adaptability, discernment, foresight, and “pattern recognition” (seeing common factors in organizational problems). Throw the dice, but with educated intuition.

Jessup lays out practical strategies to help the budding leader “see around corners.” “A leader with a strong ethos doesn’t just tell people what to do—they inspire trust because of who they are and how they lead.” Readers will find inspiration to “create more” by helping others achieve their own dreams.

"Free Bird"

It’s just after midnight, January 1st, 1990. Molly Kristen Sparrow, 33, is about to leave San Diego, and her husband, forever. Isaac is not home; clueless and unfaithful, he’s the scion of a wealthy family and Molly will be giving up much—including her son Grant, not yet 18, because the family will pay for his education. She hopes Grant will understand—someday. Six months later she will find herself in Mendocino, a medical assistant to Dr. Potter at a small clinic.

There’s a bar in Mendocino called The Floppy Fish; every summer owner Lyle takes off while his friend Tom, fresh from teaching archeology and grant writing at a prestige university in Connecticut, takes over as barkeep and fixit guy. Tom is Thomas James Hemingway (“no relation”), 38, and one day his woodworking skills fail him at the bar and a huge splinter impales itself in his rear end. So off to Dr. Potter.

As Molly helps Tom get undressed—Tom is in a very vulnerable position—he is stunned by Molly’s beauty, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. In his life. Molly thinks he’s cute, but soon, when they begin seeing each other, her stomach does flip flops in his presence.

Readers know this because Molly and Tom alternate chapters in “Free Bird” ($14.99 in paperback from Boyer Publishing; also available for Amazon Kindle) by Chicoan Pamela Dean. It turns out to be a spicy romance, tastefully explicit, from phone sex to passionate love play (but is it … love?). Even the kisses summon eros. “When Tom kissed me,” Molly writes, “the earth seemed to move under my feet. The way his big hands cradled my face so gently, reverently almost, was more sensual than anything I have ever experienced.”

There’s a special charm to this novel because Chico State, Madison Bear Garden and even the Oy Vey Bagel Company (remember, it’s the 90s, folks) play key roles. 

But is all of this just a summer fling? Will Molly become her own person after being in thrall to Isaac’s family? If she falls for Tom, is love a trap as well? Lovers of spice will find the meal cooked to perfection.

“Outer Space Is Closer Than Antarctica: And Other Things I Learned While Falling In Love At The Bottom Of The World”

In four work trips to Antarctica’s McMurdo Station from 1999 through 2007, Chicoan Michelle Ott’s life changed dramatically. In Antarctica, she writes, “I have experienced the sadness of a long-distance breakup. I have scrubbed dirty pots and pans for ten hours a day, and I have witnessed the bright-green aurora australis at -30 degrees Fahrenheit; it was so beautiful I cried, and my tears froze my eyes shut. I have had my breath knocked out of me by a gust of Antarctic wind.”

A metaphorical wind knocked her breathless when in 2004 she met Sean, also bound for Antarctica via Christchurch, New Zealand. Sadly saying goodbye to her New York boyfriend, Ott found love at McMurdo, and the story is told in her unconventional memoir, “Outer Space Is Closer Than Antarctica: And Other Things I Learned While Falling In Love At The Bottom Of The World” ($19.95 in hardcover from Chronicle Books; also for Amazon Kindle).

It’s unconventional because it blends the author’s inner exploration with the science she learned (and experienced) at McMurdo. In her time there she worked as a dining attendant and baker (included is the round cookie recipe for 1000 people; think 10 pounds of butter and 40 eggs), later as a janitor, and still later as Administrative Coordinator in the galley.

Antarctica—coldest place, windiest, driest. And then there’s “the Kármán line,” the place “where outer space begins, 62 miles above sea level; it is the border between earth’s atmosphere and outer space. When we cross this threshold, we leave the conditions of aeronautics and enter the conditions of astronautics. We can no longer fly airplanes; we need spaceships.” Ott notes the distance from Chico to McMurdo Station “is 8,496 miles. This means that outer space is closer than Antarctica!”

Ott’s whimsical drawings make the science accessible as she describes katabatic winds, the polar vortex, an ice cube neutrino detector, and the thirteen pieces of clothing needed for extreme cold.

Her 47-year-old self looks back two decades, “yearning for a different feeling…. That which I thought was far away has arrived.”

“Why Am I Still A Christian?”

The Advent season, with its glitter and good tidings, has a dark side. The promised one who will loosen the stranglehold of death has not yet come. “In 2025,” writes Ricky Hayes in his spiritual autobiography, “the headlines have been littered with assassinations and murders. I didn’t know the victims, but I know they didn’t deserve it. That’s the sickening part about Death: it doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t ask, it doesn’t care. All it does is take.”

Hayes, born and raised in Chico, found Death “would pop up again and again—sometimes as a shadow in the corner of my room, sometimes in hospital corridors, sometimes in the faces of people I loved.” So, he asks, why did God “let me carry this fear like an uninvited passenger for my entire life?”

Hayes explores that question (and many more) in “Why Am I Still A Christian?” ($13.99 in paperback from Publishers Brew, publishersbrew.com; also for Amazon Kindle). The story is “messy, it’s raw, it’s sometimes irreverent, but it’s real.”

The first half of the book is Hayes’ spiritual odyssey, and it’s messy indeed. “It’s about how grief, doubt, porn, legalism, cult-like religion, and plain old despair nearly convinced me to leave Christianity behind. But it’s also about how, through all that chaos, Jesus kept showing up. Not the Jesus of fire insurance, shame, and performance, but the Jesus who refuses to let go, even when you’re screaming at Him.”

The second half focuses on specific theological issues, with a biting critique of the modern American church which all too often, Hayes writes, suggests “salvation depends on our performance instead of Christ’s finished work.” In fact, “what I have learned most of my life from Christians, both Fundamentalist and Charismatic, is how not be be a Christian…. We’re supposed to influence people to be reconciled to God by loving one another, not by fighting a cultural war.”

The promise has been fulfilled: “The cross is about God revealing the greatest love one can give through the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Whatever blackness hinders our souls from seeing his beauty, God will shine through if we desire him to do so.”

“Core Samples: Poems”

“On the New Year,” writes Chico poet (and retired Butte College instructor) Phillip Hemenway, “the day/ standing sharp and clear/ in invitation to a California/ walk despite the glassy wind/ nipping hard from the north,/ we succumbed, the dog and I,/ to a basal need for motion,/ and from the road’s edge I saw,/ back among bare walnut trees,/ the swoop and slash of blue toes,/ a girl in her rope swing, flying/ barefoot in wide flashing arcs/ as she broke winter’s first law,/ her radiant joy the purest/ of all potions against the cold.”

But before the new year, the poet takes stock, looking decades back, here in “Core Samples: Poems” ($15 in hardcover, self-published, available at The Bookstore in downtown Chico and MONCA, the Museum of Northern California Art).

A trip to San Diego Zoo (seeing “the muscles flow like liquids through/ those tiger-black stripes”), a train ride across the country (“There is no snow/ this year there is/ no snow in Colorado”), a trip to Viet Nam (in Hanoi, a Brit “tells us over/ beer in the Metropole bar/ ‘Figure anyone here who ain’t/ working is watching’”). And there’s a gallimaufry of miscellaneous poems.

Death haunts many of the poems, such as in the sonnet sequence about the stuff left behind after the death of the poet’s grandfather Merle in 1985. And the Vietnam Memorial: “I must claim my war the one/ I did not choose to fight in….// I sing of Disobedience/ of Mom and Pop’s shame/ of all the dead ones you know/ that bullets gave a name// Where agent Orange and FBI/ stand cheek by jowl with CREEP/ A big black wall in Washington/ where the living go to weep.”

“All of us are fatally human,” the poet says elsewhere. “We must never rush out to prove it.” 

Does the poet’s walk foreshadow the future?

“And so at some distant New Year,/ I will walk all the dogs I’ve ever known,/ I will step out of my ancient shoes,/ I will find a rope swing and work myself/ into a spectacular blue-toed arc,/ and on the apogee of a January One,/ I will howl once and expand forever.”

“Father And Son: The Hitler Loyalist And The US Airman”

Mary Jensen, a “recovering grants writer” and Chico State Professor Emerita, told the story of her marriage in “Rudy’s Rules For Travel: Life Lessons From Around The Globe.” Her late husband had flown US Air Force bombing missions over his homeland in Germany.

In 1999, faced with difficult medical news, they became caregivers for each other, Rudy writing his long-delayed memoir and Mary acting as editor. “Rudy wrote quite unceasingly,” Mary recalls, “easily capturing the perspectives and voices of himself as toddler, adolescent, and young man, as each took his turn living with Papa.” 

The beautifully crafted story is told in “Father And Son: The Hitler Loyalist And The US Airman” ($16.95 in paperback from Astoria Books; also for Amazon Kindle) by Rudy Jensen with Mary K. Jensen. 

“Papa was 100 percent Danish but a German loyalist,” Rudy writes, “who had moved heaven and earth (and a pregnant wife) to have his son born a German citizen.” Born May 17, 1921 in Hamburg to Papa’s wife, Francisca, Rudy lost his birth mother to gallbladder disease just after turning two.

Papa (a seafarer) and Rudy settled in Washington, DC; eventually there was a new “Mutti” (“‘Mutti’ is a German endearment, much as ‘Mommy’ is in English”), Anna Weber, “a southern German whose family had been deeply scarred by World War I.” Papa became a waiter at the fancy Willard Hotel restaurant, which catered to official Washington, and there he met J. Edgar Hoover and the two became friends.

Rudy wanted to become an American citizen and Papa was adamant that the German occupation of France was “positive progress” (it took a long time for Papa to accept the truth). With American’s entry into the war in 1941, “overnight the entire Jensen family became designated ‘Enemy Aliens.’”

“War does strange things,” Rudy writes; in 1943 he began “a 27-month journey … being drafted into the American Army Air Force, not only as a German citizen, but also as an Enemy Alien.” (He soon became an American citizen.) The bombing missions he describes are deeply poignant. 

And yet Rudy survived. His subsequent decades with Mary testify to an extraordinary life.

“Rancho del Llano Seco: Northern California’s Last Rancho, Butte County, California”

“Rancho Llano Seco … is a historical 17,767-acre multi-purpose family ranch located in southwestern Butte County … ten miles southwest of Chico. The property is bounded by Ord Ferry Road to the north, 7 Mile Lane to the east, the Butte/Glenn County line to the south, and the Sacramento River to the west.”

While the physical location of the Rancho is clear, the location of documents regarding its history was not; material in “local museums and archives” proved elusive. Then the manager of the Rancho, which is private property, pointed researchers to Rancho Headquarters on Hugh Baber Drive. 

Here there were “tons of documents stored in archive boxes, in original magazine files, on wood shelves and in steel bins, along with photographs, aerial photos, communications and maps covering” (from 1874 to modern times) the almost 3000-acre “riparian and flood plain restoration project” within the Rancho started in 2019 by The Nature Conservancy.

The archeological and historical report produced for the project, now beautifully edited with dozens of digitized historical images and maps, is available through ANCHR, the Association for Northern California Historical Research (anchr.org) located in Chico. “Rancho del Llano Seco: Northern California’s Last Rancho, Butte County, California” ($19.95 in paperback) is from Gregory White (Archeology and Paleontology, Sub Terra Consulting) along with B. Arlene Ward (Mechoopda Tribe of Chico Rancheria) and Adrian Frediani (The Nature Conservancy).

Sections cover the natural environment, Native American cultures, and the history and ownership of Rancho del Llano Seco. In 1870 John Parrott completed ownership of the ranch, and his descendants “still own and continue to steward the land to this day.” 

One of the previous owners, Sebastian Keyser, who claimed the ranch in 1843, is of special interest as his path crossed the history of John Sutter and John Bidwell.

Keyser “apparently took part in the Bear Flag revolt of 1846, where he lost part of his left hand in a munitions accident.” He lost his wife in divorce and in 1847 notified newspaper readers that “he will not be accountable for any debts of her contracting….”

Readers today are in debt for this careful illumination of local history.