"The State Of Water: Understanding California's Most Precious Resource"

Oakland-based Obi Kaufmann is a kind of data-based poetic naturalist. 

In his new book he offers a guide to "The State Of Water: Understanding California's Most Precious Resource" ($20 in hardcover from Heyday; also for Amazon Kindle). Replete with the author's own water colors of birds and beasts, and hand-painted maps of the state waterways, the book is a paean of praise to "Water, always the commodity, rarely the honored vehicle of all life."

He adds: "If genuine restoration is the goal, the solutions of conservation and efficiency are at 

hand, reflected in our hearts that sing, have sung, and will always sing trust in this 

place." He believes that common-sense conversation and technological measures can reduce California's yearly water usage from 40 million-acre-feet down to 30. 

In other words, without building a single new dam (or enlarging Shasta), California would have not only enough water for its present population, but enough for decades to come.

"The aging dams are filling with silt," he writes, "and building more dams won’t 

help. With less precipitation and already an excess of storage, they will never fill." We already have what we need.

"The Oroville Dam crisis of 2017," he notes, "was an excellent and terrifying example of the paramount need to inventory the readiness of the entire system. Instead of building new water projects, our money would be better spent repairing our existing system and even identifying projects that can go. ..."

Kaufmann calls "the bravest of all opportunities" the removal of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park. He says that even without this storage, "San Francisco would still derive most of its water supply from the Tuolumne River. Constructing a new intertie at or below Don Pedro Reservoir would allow the city to have access to its supplies in the reservoir."

Then data yields to poetry: "I see a thousand cranes rise from the reservoir and on their wings, the valley empties. In the morning, the bears dream of their return with sapphire eyes uncut on salmon’s tooth." It is the freedom "of a restored landscape." 

"We are Californians," he writes, and we love "a good challenge."

"Rainbow: A History of The Rose In California"

To the delight of budding rose historians, master gardener Darrell g.h. Schramm has written the first account of the flower's arrival and propagation in the Golden State. In "Rainbow: A History of The Rose In California" ($24.99 in paperback from CreateSpace, createspace.com/7229975), the Chico State University grad and retired University of San Francisco professor, now living in Vallejo, writes for the love of the rose.

His book "begins with the first mention of roses by explorers and missionaries and continues through the first 75 years of statehood," up until about 1924.

The first rose in California? It's the controversial "Rose of Castile," a five-petal pink rose brought from Spain to California in the late sixteenth century. Or perhaps the earliest accounts (which are ambiguous) are really about a California native species to which Spaniards affixed a generic description. The "name of the rose" continues in mystery.

Chapters also deal with native species ("California boasts nine wild roses"), cultivars, and "Early Nurseries and Nurserymen," capsule descriptions of petal-pushers extraordinaire including John Bidwell. "We have the 1887 and 1888 Rancho Chico Nursery catalogues. Of the 47 roses listed, 34 are still in commerce today. Apparently Bidwell exercised a good eye for roses." Roses such as Baltimore Belle, Gold of Ophir, and William Jesse are all still available.

Bidwell's grounds keeper, Frederick Peterson, "opened a nursery in Chico in 1907 called Lindo Nursery," which then passed on to his son, George (1903-2001). Though George specialized in Camellias, he "was fond of roses and grew over 165 different kinds. In the 1950s George Peterson proposed a rose garden for the Chico State … campus. When the garden was ready in 1957, George donated 400 rose bushes of many varieties."

The book is replete with photographs of roses and detailed early catalog information in six appendices (including the Rancho Chico list).

"A rose," Schramm writes, "even if it does not repeat its bloom, pervades the senses, the memory. It moves far beyond a show or exhibit, going on and on beyond any season. If we love the rose, it lives on in who we are, becoming a part of us. The rose lives within."

"Louie, Take A Look At This!: My Time With Huell Howser"

Tennessee-born Huell Howser, who died in 2013 at the age of 67, left a remarkable legacy of television programs devoted to his adopted home state of California. Best known for "California's Gold," a staple on public television up and down the state, Howser's easy-going southern charm encouraged ordinary people to open up to the camera.

For a decade, starting in 1991, his cameraman was Luis Fuerte, the unseen presence but the subject of Howser's frequent exclamations--and now the title of a book--"Louie, Take A Look At This!: My Time With Huell Howser" ($22.95 in hardcover from Prospect Park Books; also for Amazon Kindle), by Luis Fuerte as told to David Duron. (Duron, a producer and writer, met Fuerte at KCET-TV in Los Angeles, the home station for "California's Gold.").

The book takes the reader behind the scenes of a professional partnership based on hard-won respect. "I was the technician and he was the star. The mutual respect we had for each other--and our respective positions--was the backbone of our relationship, and it allowed us to work so well together for so many years."

Howser wanted to know only the bare minimum about his guests so "he could make discoveries on camera. His trademark phrases of 'Oh, wow!' 'Golly!' 'Oh, my gosh!' and 'That's amaaazing!' followed by a friendly, 'Louie, take a look at this!' were genuine, and you heard them more and more as we continued to work together. Yes, it's true that Huell's astonishment bar was set pretty low, but … that was the real Huell…. There was a little Gomer Pyle in there, but it worked well for him."

The book's chapters focus on the origin of the series (it had a lot to do with the reuniting of an old man and an elephant), memorable shoots, Huell's illness and legacy. There's also a list of episodes of "Gold" Fuerte worked on, including trips to Bidwell Bar Days at Lake Oroville (1992) and Paradise's Gold Nugget Days (1997); trips to Chico would come later, after Fuerte retired from the show.

A complete streaming archive is housed at blogs.chapman.edu/huell-howser-archives. It's amaaazing!