“California Inside Out: Mapping An Ecology Of Mind”

Naturalist, painter, and poet Obi Kaufmann, based in the East Bay and author of the California Field Atlas series, contends that too much forgetting is going on. Forgetting the “Indigenous land fire that sustained ecosystems,” it shows itself in “conifer forests across the state,” where fires have been suppressed for so long that now, “cascading trajectories of megafire after megafire have established themselves, and in many cases have overridden the evolutionary conditions that these forests are adapted to.”

Prescribed burns are good, certainly, in lessening fire’s danger, but Kaufmann calls for a more fundamental change of mind. “Without fire,” he writes, “California is not California.” The key is finding what he terms the Goldilocks zone; “too much fire, and the habitat is threatened with collapse. Too little fire, and the buildup of fuel can summon a high-severity fire….”

This mind change focuses on our mutuality with what he calls our “more-than-human world.” In “California Inside Out: Mapping An Ecology Of Mind” ($20 in hardcover from Heyday; also for Amazon Kindle), replete with dozens of his paintings of the natural world, Kaufmann invites readers to understand that “California is fire,” then to “think like a watershed” and recognize “the mind of the forest.”

Kaufmann rejects both the “settler culture,” which sees nature as mere resource, but also the excesses of the environmental movement, “which began to collapse philosophically under the weight of what can be called an anti-human ethic. Have you not heard the refrain, ‘Humans are the problem’?”

Instead, he advocates “a land ethic that is born of the scientific method and informed by Indigenous tradition….”

He wants readers to imagine a watershed (“a coherent topography of ecosystems inside a common drainage basin”) that “behaves as a kind of mortal body,” interconnected in all its systems. “Although there isn’t a brain … there is a collective effort that resembles or can be thought of as thinking. The watershed can be imagined as an ecological body, one whose lifespan is measured by the succession of ecosystems across thousands of years.”

“When harmony is present in the ecological processes of the land,” he writes, “it is beautiful, and the people thrive.” 

“The Resurrection Institute”

“A government directed primarily by algorithms, focused above all else on maximizing measurable outcomes,” writes retired Butte College administrator and West Point grad Les Jauron, “might become remarkably efficient. It could also become remarkably indifferent to the individual.”

Just what that might look like takes Jauron from his Author’s Note to the chilling tale of “The Resurrection Institute” ($9.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle). It is the near future, and democracy in the United States has been preserved (by a hair) after President Ron Rich’s attempted a coup, though “in the aftermath of the instability, several new states were created. Two of these were in eastern Oregon and eastern Washington. These new states were called Lincoln and Jackson.”

Lincoln is unique. Run by Lincoln Company employees, “the legislature meets for two weeks each year to consider laws recommended by LincolnAI which the Lincoln Company implements by using algorithms developed by the Foundation. And the churches run the K12 education system and all social services…. Judges use LincolnAI to develop their rulings” and the police use the system to determine the likelihood of a person being guilty. Most everyone who goes to court is convicted.

The Foundation? It’s “the small group of billionaires behind the creation of the software that enabled … government by algorithm” and massive surveillance.

The Resurrection Institute is a place where state residents can bring mementos of departed relatives and receive audiobooks read in the AI voice of the deceased. Yet when New York Times investigative reporter Sam Stone is commissioned to write multiple laudatory stories about Lincoln (the owner of the Times is on the Foundation), he discovers beneath the shiny surface of public service the Institute is embarked on an audacious plan to extend the life of a select (rich) few, at the expense of hundreds of unwilling human guinea pigs.

Those who find out the truth tend to disappear mysteriously, and Sam and a small group of friends must figure out how to spirit themselves out of the state, away from certain death. Jauron takes delight in detailing the machinations of the Foundation—and the Mission Impossible-like counter-machinations of our heroes. 

What could go wrong?

“The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype And Create The Future We Want”

The Book in Common for the current academic year at Chico State and Butte College lands in the middle of contentious claims from employees (and ex-employees) of OpenAI and Anthropic, Google Gemini and xAI, that autonomous AI agents will either cure cancer or destroy humanity.

But the authors of “The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype And Create The Future We Want” ($32 in hardcover from HarperCollins; also for Amazon Kindle), linguist Emily Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna, call foul on both claims. With careful analysis and a conversational (and sometimes sardonic) tone, the authors inveigh against both the Boosters and Doomers. 

They are “two sides of the same coin … the belief that the development of AI is inevitable and that that resulting technology will be both autonomous and powerful…. One shows a utopian world of abundance, the other a dystopian hellscape.” And, pointedly, “Neither depicts the real harms of actually existing automation, at best dismissing them as less important than the imaginary existential threats.”

Though the authors are writing at the end of 2024, their critique of AI (“a marketing term”) remains surprisingly relevant despite the debut of increasingly powerful frontier systems. (The authors refuse to anthropomorphize chatbots, calling them instead “text synthesis machines.”)

Though there is certainly good automation, the authors say, the examples of companies misusing AI (like insurance companies determining whose claims get rejected) are legion (they cite hundreds of examples). The focus on “AI safety” deals with “fake scenarios” whereas those “working on issues of concrete harms of AI systems” (dealing with “racial and economic equity, freedom of movement across borders, personal safety from state violence” and more) are interested in the here and now.

AI is high on its own supply. So fight the AI hype which “helps others get rich by giving them cover to collect (e.g., steal) and then launder massive amounts of data.” Ask questions about what is being automated, resist using the “tools” at work, demand accountability, create and enforce current legislation protecting civil rights, engage in collective action.

No AI was used in the writing of this column. 

“Tales From Tehama, Vol. 1”

On February 3, 2024, the Red Bluff Daily News featured the first of a weekly 600-word column celebrating Tehama County’s history. Its author, Josie Reifschneider-Smith, longtime board member of the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society, has now collected the first fifty-two columns in “Tales From Tehama, Vol. 1” ($20 in paperback from Tehama County Genealogical And Historical Society, an imprint of Heidelberg Graphics).

The columns are historically accurate, but far from stodgy. Reifschneider-Smith asks readers to “get ready for a rollicking trip into Tehama County’s past,” and so it is. “Is that an ostrich swimming across the Sacramento River, twice? … While paying respect to a man’s lonely grave in the Paskenta Cemetery, are those war whoops and gunfire you hear riding in the wind?” All the answers are found within.

“Gerber’s Saxophone Field Day” in 1927 had me laughing out loud. A newspaper in Illinois noted that “They are threatening to make it a national event; isn’t there some law to compel them to quarantine it and keep it?” 

More than 500 saxophone players showed up and, Reifschneider-Smith writes, “there was even a saxophone throwing contest where ‘grown men will pitch a saxophone with the bell filled with lead. If the horn hits a “gobbler” (saxophone player) and kills him, the thrower will be given a free ticket to the inquest’ (Red Bluff Daily News, August 18, 1927).”

“On May 20, 1914, the same day Ranger Abbey from Mineral watched in disbelief as Lassen Peak awoke with a blast of ash and steam, 20-some miles to the northwest, an 18-year-old sawmill worker stared in wonder from the porch of the crew’s bunkhouse as Lassen erupted. The young man’s name was Floyd Tipple. Two weeks later, he would find himself scrambling for his life during an eruption while visiting the crater.” Historical photographs complement the text. 

Personalities obscured by time are brought to life, like J. Granville Doll who in 1853 pretty much owned Red Bluff. 1950 brought “the naked lady of Vina.” And in 1954, Annie Wilkins passed through Red Bluff, the “last of the saddle tramps.”

“Tales From Tehama” is a wonderful guide, a history book with sax appeal.

“Babylon Must Fall: Children Of Heremone Trilogy, Book 3”

The Botswana Free Press newspaper lards unbridled praise on the country’s Interior Minister, Sir Bitrus Bitrus Ghirmai, who provides free electricity for its citizens and, through the Botswana Academy for Science and Technology (BAST), is engaged in animal DNA manipulation so all animals might “live in peace and harmony with each other.” 

And yet a letter writer claims Lord Ghirmai’s manor “concealed a sex trafficking operation under the pretense of helping orphaned children.” Enter the New Freedom Warriors, led by a young Botswanan woman named Esi Ada Ogolla, guided by the true Light of the Almighty One, who together with a small group of believers set out to destroy Ghirmai’s evil.

The story plays out over three novels by longtime Chicoan David Dirks, now living with his wife, Karen, in Brentwood. “The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane” tells of Elijah’s coming to the Light; “The New Freedom Warriors” details Esi’s imprisonment. 

Now, “Babylon Must Fall: Children Of Heremone Trilogy, Book 3” ($12.99 in paperback from Resurgam Books; also for Amazon Kindle), by David Henry Dirks with Zeek Payen, brings a miraculous release to Esi and probes the source of Ghirmai’s malevolence, requiring breaking into the secret basement of Ghirmai’s manor. 

Which turns out to be the synagogue of an ancient Jewish sect, and the place where they “defeated King Eshun, Watcher Heremone’s avatar” by singing a hymn called “Arise O Lord” (Dirks and Payen provide the words and music). The evil Heremone was “pushed back” for two thousand years—until now.

Lord Ghirmai established a kind of portal, as Esi describes it, “a supernatural passageway between dimensions.” The Warriors’ weapons against Ghirmai are a shofar, lyre and drum; “we are the instruments of the Almighty,” one of the Warriors says, “whom we trust will use us to release the supernatural against Ghirmai and Heremone.” Ghirmai’s “Babylon” must fall.

“The stories may be fiction,” Esi’s father points out in an insight that goes beyond the novel. “The principles are real.”

Dirks brings matters to a thrilling conclusion, though that isn’t the end. Is there a yet more sinister force behind Heremone? That, he writes, leads to the next trilogy.

“Backyard Circus: The Life And Times Of Grace Jr. And Arvel Victor Allread”

“I know that everyone has a unique childhood experience,” writes Terry Tim Allread in a unique remembrance of his growing up years, “but it wasn’t long before we figured out that not everyone had an elephant, a pony, twenty monkeys, and a Malaysian sun bear in the backyard.”

It was a circus, all right—a real one. Allread, the sixth of seven kids, was  born (along with twin Perry) in 1952 “on his grandfather’s Red Bluff, California, sheep ranch amidst his parents’ Great Pan-American Zoological Exhibit’s wild animal menagerie….”

The story is told in “Backyard Circus: The Life And Times Of Grace Jr. And Arvel Victor Allread” ($32.99 in paperback from Memoir Books), replete with historical photographs. 

Grace and Arvel took their children to any passing circus within 200 miles and toured with a circus of their own. In 1950, their Robinson Bros. Circus wagon debuted in Greenville “with Susie, their new Indian elephant,” or, as the local newspaper put it, “Susie, a ponderous performing pachyderm of prestigious repute, accompanied by Tiny, the prancing Pinto Pony….”

In 1953 “the Clyde Beatty Circus returned to play Chico on the grassy Hann Field lot at 5th Street and Oak. Arvel got to sit in with the band while Grace and the kids played in the backyard.” Musician Arvel became a music teacher, directing “high school programs at Hamilton City, Orland, and Willows, and taught at Princeton in Colusa County.”

In the mid-50s the family settled in Chico at 1430 Bidwell Avenue, a venue “where they could relocate their circus wagons, the rest of the Great American Zoological Exhibit’s equipment, and animals. They could put up the Main Tent” and even install a “makeshift ring.”

As a kid, Arvel wanted to join the circus. The book is a fitting tribute to that dream.

The public is invited to the following book signings:

• Tehama County Museum, 275 C Street in Tehama, on Saturday, September 12 from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM.
• Chico Chai House, 1441 Park Avenue, Sunday, September 27 from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM.
• Chico History Museum, 141 Salem Street, Saturday, November 14 from 10:00 AM till Noon.

“Our 2nd First Date”

Chicoan Pamela Dean, “raised in Redding and later escaping to Chico for college … writes the kind of love stories she grew up on: a little messy, a little nostalgic, and a lot more fun without Wi-Fi.” 

It’s the mid-90’s in the little (fictional) town of Bower, which is near the (real) town of Gridley. A thriving farming community back in 1985, something had happened. “Farms that once thrived have folded. Processing plants are shuttered.” Unbeknownst to our 28-year-old hero, Sam Ford, his family had a big part to play.

Wounded in “Desert Shield, first wave,” Sam’s tank unit hit an IED. Though there are burns, it’s his mind that needs healing. So he returns to his hometown of Bower, taking a job as a bus driver for a group of special ed kids.

There he encounters Tammy Little, his “first crush” in high school ten years earlier. Tammy had returned to Bower as well when her father died. She’s now an aide at the special ed school.

That crush rekindles in “Our 2nd First Date” ($14.99 in paperback from Boyer Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), a “messy,” sexy-sweet romance sprinkled with (mostly) good-natured f-bombs (101 by my count). Sam and Tammy narrate alternating chapters, and what brings them together is love of an almost nonverbal autistic child, Donny, age 7, whose home life is hardly a life at all.

Tammy wants to stay in Bower and take care of him. Sam—well, he wants to take care of Tammy. “After last night,” he says in one of his chapters, “my hands and lips all over her, the way she touched me, kissed me. There is no denying now; I am an inferno.” He wants a special “second date”: “I figured we could go into Chico,” Sam tells her, “get burgers at The Bear, or if you want fancy, we could go to Basque Norte, or R Fish and Company.”

But then Sam learns his family’s secrets; his life begins to unravel once again. And Tammy believes that high school date was only because of a dare. The two are headed in opposite directions. 

But, dear reader, you know there’s more to come.

“Jeddy’s Teddy: The True Story Of A Boy And His Teddy Bear”

“Growing up,” we’re told, Jed Bernard’s “best friend was Tommy Teddy Bear, a constant source of comfort and support.” Now, the Chico Stare Business Admin grad is sharing the simple story with other kids who may find that things are not going as planned.

He’s come a long way from his birthplace in Yuba City. His Internet Movie Database bio says Jed “is an American actor known for portraying tough, driven characters with a grounded physical presence and emotional intensity. Based in Los Angeles, Bernard has built a career playing law enforcement officers, soldiers, and conflicted authority figures across film and television.”

He speaks four languages and “appeared in the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning drama Clemency opposite Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard, as well as Aldis Hodge, Richard Schiff, and Michael O'Neil, portraying a Death Watch Officer in the powerful prison drama.”

Early on Jed learned that “when plans fall apart, love, friendship, and the joy of a special companion can make everything right again.” And that’s the message of “Jeddy’s Teddy: The True Story Of A Boy And His Teddy Bear” ($14.77 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).

With sunny and colorful illustrations by Carlos Escudero, the read-aloud story is easy to follow. “Jeddy was so excited. In just a few days, he would turn four years old! His Momma Sue and Daddy Darryl had planned an amazing birthday party for him at the park. All of Jeddy’s friends from school would be there with presents.”

But then, “two days before his big party, Jeddy woke up feeling strange. His forehead felt hot, and he was sweating through his pajamas. He felt miserable.” Uh, oh. Jeddy would have to stay home until he felt better. The big party was off. “Jeddy burst into tears.”

“Momma hugged Jeddy close. ‘I know you’re sad, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Sometimes life doesn’t go the way we plan, and we have to work around it. But I promise we’ll make your birthday special, even if it’s different from what we planned.’” 

That’s a cue for Tommy Teddy Bear to enter the scene, and for hugs all around.

“Flip the Script: A Teen Novel About How Today’s Choices Unlock the Power of a Skilled Career”

Norm Nielsen, the former CEO of Chico Electric, has teamed with retired journalism and communications instructor Mark Powers to tell the story of three ninth-graders on the way to making life-changing career decisions.

Nielsen and Powers have established a nonprofit, Industry for Education (industryforeducation.org), which establishes partnerships with local high schools. The goal is to bust the stereotype that the trades are for those who can’t measure up to college work.

“Flip the Script: A Teen Novel About How Today’s Choices Unlock the Power of a Skilled Career” ($12.99 in paperback from deTello Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) shows what happens when the trio find themselves in a course called CTE (Career & Technical Education) Foundations. 

Kai Cruz just sort of reacts “as life comes.” His best friend, Zoe Martin, is highly disciplined with a top college in view. Her rival, Ethan Cole, has an air of condescension about the whole trades thing. Their teacher, Ms. Maddox, wants them to think about “flipping the script.” Instead of just living day to day, hoping something will work out, “what if you start by asking: What kind of life do I want?” 

As you develop an answer, “you can work backward to make choices now that get you there. That’s what I mean by flipping it. Instead of just reacting to life as it comes, you start designing with intention.” The choice isn’t either/or: “college and the trades are tools, not labels.”

The book focuses on a field trip to “Everline Electric.” Electrical provides entry-level, technical, and professional careers. These are whole-person careers—you have to know reading, writing and math—and there’s no college debt. (Each chapter includes thoughtful questions and helpful resources.) The story takes the trio step by step into appreciating (or, in Ethan’s case, at least acknowledging) that the trades are a viable choice for those who want to put in the work. 

In the end, as Zoe says in her presentation, don’t “confuse prestige with purpose…. Purpose is knowing why you get up every morning, knowing your work matters, knowing you’re building a life that fits you.”

“MAGA vs. The Bible: The Unbelievable Contradictions”

In the summer of 2025 a little book of quotations appeared that sparked a two book response by a Chico publisher. With a provocative title, “Jesus And Trump: The Parallel Sayings” aimed to show (as the Amazon page notes) that “Donald Trump and Jesus Christ have brought similar teachings to their contemporaries.”

Among the examples given: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23) and “I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big” (Donald Trump, Facebook, November 21, 2016).

Presuming the book’s message is intended “unironically,” the two co-publishers of Chico’s Quoir Publishing (quoir.com), Keith Giles and Matthew Distefano, have fired back with quotation books of their own. The first, “Trump vs. Jesus: The Unparallel Sayings” (published December 2025), asks the question: “What if we placed the words of Donald Trump and the words of Jesus side-by-side and simply paid attention?”

The second book, just published, is “MAGA vs. The Bible: The Unbelievable Contradictions” ($10.99 in paperback from Quoir Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), which puts quotes from MAGA adherents alongside passages from the Bible. For example, “Saying no to President Trump is saying no to God” (Trump spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain in 2025); “To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him” (Deuteronomy 4:35).

Trump’s Truth Social post from April 2026, in which he used an expletive to warn Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz (or else), is contrasted with one of of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

For Distefano, the real mission of Jesus (as told in the Gospels) centers on “revolutionary love”; “championing the least of these”; being a “servant-leader”; and “anti-wealth” (the wealthy must not oppress the poor). 

“To my mind,” he writes, “Jesus Christ and Donald J. Trump could not be further from each other in philosophy, ethics, morals, or basic human decency…. If we care about resisting the antichrist distortions infecting our national life, then we cannot ignore what is being spread in Christianity’s name.”

“Cruisin’ The ‘Nade: Coming Of Age In The 1960s In Northern California”

For longtime Chicoan Michael Halldorson, “my ‘coming of age’ began in September 1959 when I, and other Chico Junior High School graduates, moved on to Chico High School to begin our sophomore year. It ended in June 1969 upon my graduation from Chico State College.”

In between, “a three-year hitch in the Navy in the mid-1960s, serving aboard a destroyer off the coast of the Republic of Vietnam, marked an interlude in my studies at Chico State.” He adds, in a winsome memoir, that “one of my first priorities upon returning to college was to learn how to do all the new dances with all the bitchin’ moves that had come out while I was overseas. This would also be, I believed, a good way to get a girl.”

Though he played sports at Chico High, he mostly focused on “cars and girls”; his co-author, prolific Chico writer David Bruhn, supplies background material on some of the great athletes who emerged (like MLB pitcher Nelson Briles) and offers historical insight. Together they make “Cruisin’ The ‘Nade: Coming Of Age In The 1960s In Northern California” ($23 in paperback from Heritage Books) a must-read for those who want to know what makes Chico Chico.

Chapters cover the explosion in 1962 which “destroyed a Titan 1 missile and caused extensive damage to its silo … north of the Chico Municipal Airport.” 

There were the hot rod races by high school kids on the Esplanade. Halldorson and others “tooled around,” “honking at girls and honking at friends. Once downtown, the typical route was to start by the college and cruise out to the A&W Drive-in and back.” His first car “was a 4-door 1953 Chevy.” His second: “a 1950 Olds painted metallic blue. I got in in 1963….” 

The book covers the Chico draft protests in 1968, concerts at Chico State (Lou Rawls, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash), and more.

Halldorson studied art at Chico State under world-renowned printmaker Janet Turner; spent time in the Netherlands with M.C. Escher; and was named a Chico State University distinguished alum in 2019. 

Took some time, but he “came of age.”

“Unmasked: A 90 Day Journey For The Traumatized Heart”

Chico Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Natalie Stromberg (natalierstromberg.com), with a Master’s degree in Psychology from Chico State, knows the reality of trauma. During a missions trip to Thailand for her church, she spoke with human trafficking survivors. “I encountered a familiar brokenness in their stories,” she writes, “one that mirrored my own wounds from years of silenced trauma, cycles of revictimization, and a childhood marked by sexual abuse.”

In “Unmasked: A 90 Day Journey For The Traumatized Heart” ($15.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), Stromberg has written a deeply insightful Christian devotional filled with compassion, gentleness, and love. Each short entry offers a reflection on a key Bible verse and a prayer for the day. Slowly, slowly, day by day, the reader is asked to “look beneath the masks that once kept you alive.”

She writes “to the wounded inner child who walked these ninety days with trembling hands and guarded hope—you did not walk alone.”

“Trauma,” Stromberg writes, “often convinces us that we are invisible, unheard, or unworthy of care. Yet God turns that lie on its head. He does not dismiss your wounds or rush you past your grief. He bends low, draws near, and honors the depth of your sorrow. His presence does not erase your past, but it redeems it, weaving even your most hidden anguish into His story of love and healing.”

Trauma, Stromberg says, lives in one’s mind, body, and spirit. In a personal reflection, she notes that “Therapy became a sacred place for me to gently challenge” the lies trauma tells. “The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. I discovered that healing required movement, breath, gentleness….” And her spirit—“the deepest place—needed permission to trust again. Scripture, prayer, and honest conversations with God reminded me that I was never abandoned, even when it felt that way. God met me not in perfection, but in presence.”

The book focuses on that deepest place. “The chains of trauma, shame, and fear do not have the final say—Jesus has set you free, and now,” she writes, “you walk in the unstoppable power of that freedom.” 

“Lilith And The Holey Man”

Sam Smith, computer programmer, finds himself at Museo del Prado in Madrid viewing Hieronymus Bosch’s extraordinary triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights—“full of naked figures, fantastic creatures, and giant strawberries and birds which were symbols of sexuality, and imagery that has entertained and confounded viewers across five centuries.”

He notices a young woman on a nearby bench. “It was hard to ignore what was obviously very long red hair stacked atop her head like a malformed mound of cotton candy held together with a trio of chopsticks.” And, Sam adds, “I have an attraction—my friends say fatal—to red haired women.”

So begins the propulsive story of “Lilith And The Holey Man” ($13.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) by Chico writer/photographer Doug Keister, his forty-ninth book. It is love at first sight; a kind of lightning bolt hits them both, and soon the mysterious woman, whose name may be Lilith, is in Sam’s hotel room, lying atop him, as both experience transcendent sex.

Earlier, looking at the section of the Bosch painting depicting Hell, Lilith tells Sam, “I think human beings are full of holes. All of us…. I think a lot of people are afraid of loving someone then being rejected, so they fill their love hole with things like money and power and control…. And random sex.”

The two are drawn to the legend of Lilith from a medieval Jewish text called the Alphabet of Ben-Sira, where God creates Adam’s first wife, Lilith, not from his rib but from the dust of the earth, like Adam. The two are equal, but soon quarrel, and Lilith disappears. Legend makes her the “other,” Eve the subservient one.

Lilith leaves Sam’s room to attend to an errand, but never returns. What follows are alternating chapters as both Sam and Lilith attempt to find each other with little to go on. Years pass, but Keister has a lightning bolt or two left to throw. 

Afterward, the author chats with the reader, showing how Bosch’s painting may point to Lilith; opening up the legend all the way to Cheers; and how the holey in all of us might be filled.

“Midstream: A Life Remade In 50 Swims”

Sacramento writer Kate Washington (kawashington.com), who grew up in Chico, detailed in her book “Already Toast: Caregiving And Burnout In America” how suddenly, unexpectedly, she had to become the caregiver for her husband Brad, whom she married in 1999, after he faced aggressive lymphoma in 2014; in his mid-40s, he needed a stem-cell transplant. 

Now the rest of the story. Though Brad survived, the marriage did not. A year-and-a-half away from her 50th birthday, Washington writes that her life “felt constrained and constraining, dull and joyless, full of doing for others while neglecting myself.”

So she “hatched the idea for what I came to call the 50 Dunks Project. My plan was to get in fifty different natural bodies of water before turning fifty in October 2022…. However I got in the water, I hoped it might dissolve my midlife stagnation.” The liberation process is told in “Midstream: A Life Remade In 50 Swims” ($27.95 in hardcover from Beacon Press; also for Amazon Kindle).

Both Kate and Brad were PhD’s with English degrees and they had two daughters. Kate was devastated when her mother died by suicide, and Brad’s new job meant Kate had to take on childcare responsibilities. And Brad’s cancer did not so much as change everything, but revealed a dark truth: “Our tendrils were diverging well before Brad was sick, with separate interests and the pull of careers, but afterward it was like we were strangers.”

During the Dunk Project (and counseling) it became clear the marriage wouldn’t survive. All 50 swims are listed, though only some key encounters with the freeing waters are given in the chapters. Dunks include Salmon Hole in Upper Bidwell Park; Bear Hole; One Mile; Butte Creek. “I had become embodied again,” she writes, “after years of alienation.”

With great insight, Washington confronts “my fears and dissatisfaction with myself and my choices.”

Kate Washington is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, July 15 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, July 19 at 8:00 p.m. The Bookstore in downtown Chico will be holding a creekside book launch party and author signing July 23; contact the store for details. 

“Race To Resurrection: A WWII Historical Thriller”

Northstate author Doug Aiken “started writing in his sixties…. His father served in WWII and while he returned home, he died a few short months later,” leaving Aiken, according to an author’s note, with “a ghost for a parent and a lifetime of unanswered questions.” So, over almost a decade, he imagined the fragments of history he had about his father showed not a mythical hero but rather a complicated man far removed from myth.

The invasion of Normandy in June 1944 did not end the war in Europe, yet D-Day was a turning of the tide toward an Allied victory. Aiken imagines a young man, Lieutenant Henry Anderson, contributing his part in a super-secret operation beginning in 1943. He abandoned his pregnant wife for the good of the cause and, decades after the war, returned to Wisconsin under the strangest of circumstances to introduce his son, now grown, to the father he never knew.

The story is told in “Race To Resurrection: A WWII Historical Thriller” ($14.99 in paperback from RO Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). Germany’s V-2 rocket program at Peenemünde, being developed by scientists including Wernher von Braun, threatens the Allies with destruction. Security at the facility is overseen by SS-Oberführer Wolfgang Korbach and, it turns out, Henry Anderson, who speaks fluent German taught him by his grandmother, looks exactly like Korbach.

The plan is Mission Impossible audacious: Spend weeks training Anderson to “become” Korbach, matching all his little behavioral quirks, and then, since Korbach was recovering from shrapnel wounds at a facility in Portugal, switch him out, so that the Korbach that returned to Peenemünde was really Anderson. Against all odds, it works. Though Korbach is a notorious womanizer, Anderson vows to remain true to his wife and son, though she had been told he had been killed. Yet all bets are off when he meets 23-year-old French national co-worker Angelique Dubois.

The ethical quandary will hold readers spellbound in this mesmerizing tale which, 45 years later, will see Henry, and Wolf, show up in Wisconsin at Henry’s grandson’s wedding, each claiming to be the real Henry. 

Full of surprises, Aiken has written an unputdownable tale.

“Ode To Hemingway: Three Stories And Ten Poems”

Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, made his literary debut in 1923 with “Three Stories And Ten Poems.” He was unable to accept the Prize in person after surviving “two plane crashes in two days in the elephant country of Uganda,” resulting in a concussion from which he never recovered.

Retired Chico State business professor Curt DeBerg (curtdeberg.com) has spent decades on Hemingway’s trail, visiting the writer’s haunts around the world, detailing his many demons. Now living in Hendaye, France, DeBerg, 70, suffered his own plane crash in 2016: “I was pulled from the wreckage with a leg that would never fully heal.”

Rather than a memoir of the crash, DeBerg has crafted what he calls “a ledger of survival,” an homage to his favorite writer. “Ode To Hemingway: Three Stories And Ten Poems” (available in Amazon Kindle format from Paul Adrian Books), with sketches by Tony Ridgway, expresses not disillusionment with a world war (as Hemingway did), but rather with “the polarization of modern political rifts and the slow, grinding recovery of the body.”

The stories are very short, dark, death imbued. In an Interlude DeBerg defends his love of Hemingway’s writing, despite what critics might say (“Don’t let others tell you what should make you happy”). The poems (with explanatory notes) evoke emotional moments in DeBerg’s life, like when his brother, who he felt “small” around, showed up for him after his plane crash, which “changed something between us.” 

“Then the sky fell./ The plane went down in a Polish field./ The twisting carnage of the cockpit/ Broke the bones but hardened the spirit./ And you were there….”

In 2021, DeBerg “discovered that a Franciscan sister had preserved a copy of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ bearing what are believed to be the last words Hemingway ever wrote—a personal inscription to the nun who cared for him in his final months.” DeBerg carried the book to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm “and spoke at the ceremony” covered by the New York Times.

Two lives, intertwined, but with a significant difference. DeBerg’s “Ode” refuses to follow the way of despair.

“Tell The Chickens It’s Time For Bed”

“Grandma Nancy” (Nancy Pattison) has deep roots locally. She grew up in Chico and writes me that her father Bill worked with Sierra Gold Nurseries and her mother Maggie worked at Chico State Student Government. Nancy graduated Pleasant Valley High School in 1973. 

Now living in Talent, Oregon she has written “The Norse Prophecy Series” under the name Anna Pattison and, for kids, “Grandma Nancy’s Red Barn” coloring book and the picture book “Tell The Chickens It’s Time For Bed” ($13 in softcover from Berkano Books LLC), whimsically illustrated by Gwendolyn Janke, whose muted colors suggest the sun is going down.

The book uses the idea that all sorts of animals “who bring eggs into the world” need time to rest. In just a few bold words on each page, Pattison aims to snare young readers (or listeners) with the rhythm of the words, over and over, helping them see that night is approaching for them as well. They can act like all these other curious creatures and welcome sleep. 

“Tell the chickens it’s time for bed,” the book’s first page begins, with the second continuing: “they laid their eggs, now they can lay their heads” (flip to the next two pages) “Dow-Ow-Own Upon their feather beds.”

Sure enough, the full-page drawing shows a simple bed with a chicken roosting on top, obviously snoozing, with a few feathers (okay, a lot of feathers) wafting in the air. Colors are in the darker shades. You can see the moon and stars.

Next, the salmon, “having laid their roe” can now lay their heads “Dow-Ow-Own Upon their water beds.” The full page water bed never looked so inviting.

Then follow the bees, the seahorse, the cobras, the chameleon, the toucan” and—well, the kids: “Tell the children it’s time for bed. They’ve played today, now they can lay their heads “Dow-Ow-Own Upon their night-time beds.” (The little beds under the big tent seem quite cozy.)

There’s also a translation of the first four pages into musical notation, written by Nancy Chew, arranged by Chuan Choy, encouraging children to go “Dow-Ow-Own” into bed. All in all, an egg-celent idea, pairing giggles with bedtime. 

 

“The Psychic On The Jury: A Mel Walker Story”

When I met Sacramento-based writer and software engineer Brian C.E. Buhl at the Paradise Chocolate Festival, I figured he’d already know my name—not because of my fame as a columnist (ahem), but for his chronicling of a group of psychics called The Society of Supernatural Investigations—maybe he was one of them. If so, he held that fact close to his vest. Actually, upon further investigation, the group turned out to be fictional, emanating from Buhl’s novel called “The Repossessed Ghost.”

A key character from that novel is central to “The Psychic On The Jury: A Mel Walker Story” ($5.99 in paperback from Water Dragon Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). Mel (short for Melchizedek) is a psychic, one who can see the past (unlike another psychic he meets who can see the future—with devastating consequences, but that’s looking ahead). 

When Walker gets a jury summons to appear in a Sacramento courtroom, “I spent the weekend worrying about it…. Serving on the jury itself isn’t such a big deal, but I had run-ins with the law. I had been a ‘person of interest’ in a murder, which I think is just a fancy way of them saying I was the suspect. What if showing up brought all those legal headaches back to the surface?”

That doesn’t happen but maybe something worse does. Walker is seated, Juror Number One, in a capital murder case. “They had me, a psychic that can talk to ghosts, sitting as a juror in a murder case. Incredible…. If they had the murder weapon and they let me touch it, I could pull a vision from it and tell them not only who the murderer was, but what they were thinking as they were doing it.”

One David Gomez is charged with stabbing his best friend to death after an argument. Long story short (the book is really a long short story), Mel can “see” who actually did it (not Gomez) but can he convince the jury? And what about the actual perp, who is in the courtroom? What will happen?

There’s not a ghost of a chance I’m going to tell you.

“Fault Lines: The Geography Of Love”

Susan Tchudi, retired English professor and co-host of KZFR’s Ecotopia, lives in Yankee Hill. A keen curiosity about the dynamics of blended families led to her multigenerational novel about Mark and Hannah Abbott, tracing their early years and then the lives of their children as both Mark and Hannah turn 70 in 2015.

In “Fault Lines: The Geography Of Love” ($15.99 in paperback from TurkeyTail Media Farm; also for Amazon Kindle), family members narrate their own chapters as the decades go by, though Mark’s chapters are conveyed by third-person narration since, Tchudi writes me, “it’s Mark’s growth and change we come to understand/focus on.”

Hannah says in 1997, age 52, “Honestly, it’s not been that easy, being married to Mark. It’s gotten easier. But he came into this marriage so fragile. I think in some ways, that’s what attracted me to him…. But that vulnerability was accompanied by huge insecurity, neediness, a hole in his heart that couldn’t be filled.”

Mark had become a psychotherapist in Sacramento. Hannah was a renowned artist. By 2015, “Mark and Hannah had been married for over thirty years and had come into the marriage with two teenagers each—Isla was his; Sarah was hers…. Richie was Hannah’s oldest child, one who had gradually, over time, come back into the fold.” Then there was Marcus, “Mark’s son, the drug addict.” 

Isla, age 42, puts it this way in 2011: “Sometimes I think our family is coming together and sometimes I think it’s falling apart. And I guess that at different times it’s both of those things.” Hannah is the moral center of the family—calm in the face of family chaos—but will face devastating news. Mark must come to terms with a family secret hiding from him in plain sight.

In her immersive story, Tchudi treats the triumphs and heartbreaks of family life with honesty and compassion. 

The public is invited to the book launch party on Sunday, June 7 from 4:00-7:00 p.m. at TurkeyTail Farm. In addition to readings from the book light refreshments (and wood-fired pizza) will be provided as well as music from the Blue Oaks Saxophone Quartet. Write susantchudi@gmail.com for directions.

“Three Fire Mountains: Stories Of Wildfire And Recovery In California”

“Wildfire traumatizes a community all at once,” writes Katie Simmons, former Disaster Recovery Director for the Town of Paradise, “leaving everybody reeling with shock and dealing with one another and themselves in a heightened emotional state.”

Now Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Butte County, Simmons was part of the first Policy Fellowship with Stanford University Impact Labs over the course of two years, beginning in late 2023. “When I started the fellowship,” she says, “I didn’t plan to talk about suicidal thoughts, or my dad’s death,” or her chronic illness. Instead, “I planned to talk about fire through the narrow lens of data…. As it turns out, reckoning with fire is indistinguishable from reckoning with life, because fire touches every part of life.”

Simmons reckons with both fire and life in her extraordinary memoir, named for a Camp Fire memory her youngest daughter had as she saw it from Chico. “Three Fire Mountains: Stories Of Wildfire And Recovery In California” ($37.99 in hardcover from Springer) is a heart-rending account of recovery’s messy reality, told through individual stories as well as from a professional vantage point that contends with agencies at odds with each other.

Simmons presents a recovery triage tool, a host of questions dealing with the aftermath of a fire both for individuals and the community. She feels rage when Federal and State agencies don’t seem to understand the vast difference between urban and rural recovery (and what does recovery even mean?) and intact and destroyed communities.

There are some victories. “For both the Camp Fire and North Complex fire,” she writes, “I worked with staff to build cases for time extensions on FEMA Individual Assistance and we were successful.”

When the fire is out, “except for the destruction it has wrought and the landscape it has altered, the sky turns blue again and life goes on.” But trauma remains. “Fire recovery is like putting together a delicate puzzle wearing a blindfold and heavy gloves.”

“As we await the start of another fire year I wonder … how do we keep going?” We keep going, she writes, because of love. “My definition of recovery is love.”