“Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against The Far-Right Takeover Of Small-Town America”

“This is a story,” says Sacramento-based social-justice writer Sasha Abramsky, “about the forces tearing at America’s twenty-first-century fabric. It is about a country that, pushed to the emotional and political limits by Trump, by COVID, and by the endless misinformation and echo chambers of social media, has found itself on the edge of a precipice, with political violence normalized and with wild conspiracy theories too often framing public discussions.”

Abramsky, a correspondent for The Nation, wonders whether the “corrosive forces” of “the nativism and the xenophobia, the distrust of sexual and cultural and racial minorities” will “burn out in the face of growing public unease—and even repugnance—at all that is lost when extremists seize the helm.” 

He's convinced that “it is in local communities throughout America, in ordinary places such as Sequim, Washington, and Shasta County, California, that this challenge will be met….” Both areas are explored in depth in “Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against The Far-Right Takeover Of Small-Town America” ($30 in hardcover from Bold Type Books; also for Amazon Kindle).

He begins with the COVID crisis in Sequim (“pronounced ‘Squim’”) “a town of 8,000 residents on the Olympic Peninsula,” which becomes a center of anti-vax sentiment--to the consternation of public health officer Dr. Allison Berry, “scared of white supremacists and misogynists who want me dead.”

In Shasta County, “public health officer Karen Ramstrom, along with her supporters in county government, were facing a similar set of terrors.” The stresses of the pandemic, Abramsky notes, forced people to the extremes. If health officials erred in inconsistent masking mandates, some of those who were infuriated found a home in a Republican Party “larded with violent rhetoric.”

Some Shasta County supervisors also pushed back on California’s open-carry gun ban and its mandated machine vote counts. “By 2023,” Abramsky writes, “there was an omnipresent background hum of extremism and a growing presence both of disinformation and of paranoia in everyday life.” Yet by the end of 2023 Abramsky finds hopeful signs both in Sequim and Shasta County. 

It’s a complex and nuanced story, a plea for a measured response when “chaos comes calling.”

“Sometimes The Soul Needs Chocolate: Pandemic Odes”

“Sometimes the soul needs chocolate,” the poet writes, “when we’re flung towards chaos, and plagues./ Bigots, wildfires, and powerful fools/ leap our way. Cacao lifts us up,/ unbinds our tongues, helps us stand/ on the speeding ground. Food of the gods,/ keep us wild!”

The poet is Chicoan Paul Belz. Remembering 2020-2021, his poems acknowledge pandemic and political chaos but also the importance of simple pleasures and especially connection with the natural world.

“Sometimes The Soul Needs Chocolate: Pandemic Odes” ($7.99 in paperback from Vanguard Press; also for Amazon Kindle and available locally at Made In Chico) presents two dozen free verse poems beginning with “Ode To A Pencil”:

“Do you tremble when these sparks/ gather at your paper-scratching tip,/ tingle as we fill notebooks with song,/ wear yourself out with this frenzied work,/ then shout through my arm to my heart and skull,/ beg for more images, off-rhymes, beats/ you can place in a new-born poem?”

Belz is the author of “Bidwell Park,” also available locally, and it’s clear the author-poet is transfixed by nature’s expansiveness. In “Ode To Big Chico Creek” the poet imagines where the water rushing past has been:

“Other molecules streamed skyward through oaks’ roots,/ then waited for the sun to yank them up/ to chilled air, where they gathered as clouds./ They tumbled onto roses, mallards, pines./ Rain landed on people. Did some drench Darwin,/ who strolled on the Beagle’s deck and watched spiders/ cling to bits of webs and ride the wind/ over the sea, onto his nose?”

At the poem’s end, almost as an implied rebuke to the enclosed isolation wrought by Covid, the poet exclaims: “I watch you slide by,/ while heat takes water from my skin./ I’m parched. If I drink from you,/ I’ll take in multitudes.”

While “Hospitals turn the dying away,” the poet finds some measure of relief in camping. As so many suffer, there comes an almost guilty question: “Can I briefly claim the right to be sane?” 

In that regard, the “Election 2020 Ode” expresses a wish perhaps even more relevant today: “Maybe we’ll learn to think again,/ wrangle and argue without curses,/ semi-automatics or flames….”

“Religion And Public Health During The Time Of COVID-19”

“Our most basic contention,” write editors Joel Zimbelman and Andrew Flescher in a new collection of scholarly essays, “is that the pain of the pandemic in its first three years … was exacerbated by the disconnect between the public health, national political, and broad media discourse on the one hand, and the rich reflections and insights of various religious communities that span the globe, on the other.”

Zimbelman, from the Chico State Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities, and Flescher, a former Chico State colleague now Core Faculty in the Public Health Program at State University of New York at Stony Brook, have brought together ten essays (and their own introduction) all dealing with the role religious traditions played in the worldwide response to Covid.

“Religion And Public Health During The Time Of COVID-19” ($73.58 in hardcover from MDPI Books) is also available as a free open access PDF at mdpi.com/books/book/7780. Other Chico State contributors include Donald Heinz (“COVID-19 and Religion”), Daniel Veidlinger (co-author of “Exploring the Benefits of Yoga for Mental and Physical Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic”), both of the Comparative Religion Department, and Aaron Quinn, Department of Journalism and Public Relations (“The Arbitrariness of Faith-Based Medical Exemptions”).

The essays concern the humbling proposition of balancing religious freedom and individual liberty with public policy directives. Veidlinger asks whether the benefits of yoga outweigh risks of practicing in a tight-knit congregate setting, and Heinz, surveying the conservative evangelical resistance to mask mandates, wonders about the government’s “ability to bind the Christian conscience.”

“I was not immediately prepared,” he writes, “to interrogate these conservative oppositions to government further until I reflected on the unending calls for resistance and non-conformity in my own Christian leftism.”

Finally, Ellen Zhang, from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Macau, in China, focuses on “COVID-19, State Intervention, and Confucian Paternalism.” The Confucian ideal is not government treating adults as children, but government earning the trust of people. That can allow vaccine mandates since people live in relation to one another and questions of harm transcend the individual.

Those interested in public health policy should grapple with these essays.

"The Germ Who Got Tired Of Waiting"

"On a morning in March," writes Chicoan Emily Hajec in her new children's book, "A warm, bright, sunny day/ When the flowers were blooming/ In a spring kind of way// Something started to happen...."

Hajec is a copywriter for the Chico marketing company MC2 Design Group. She writes me that she's also a "mom to one very special seven-year-old. ... Her voice is featured in the book as the narrator. When the isolation and social distancing requirements began, children everywhere were faced with a very difficult and challenging new normal. ... Yet through the power of story, I wanted children to find comfort in knowing that there is a greater message of hope."

With MC2 colleague and graphic designer Alycia Jones, who provided the colorful illustrations, the message came to life. "The Germ Who Got Tired Of Waiting" ($20 in paperback, available at thegermwhogottiredofwaiting.com) explains that in the midst of March a "bad guy" showed up. "He was tiny and mean/ And he made people sick/ Although hand washing did/ Seem to be a good trick."

He was relentless, and that changed everything: "No more school, no more stores/ No more going out to eat/ No more play dates, no more parties/ No more people on the street." The message for kids, for everyone, was "Stay away and stay in." "That mean ol' bad germ/ Really ruined the fun/ I don't like that mean germ/ I don't like him a ton."

Then something begins to dawn on the narrator. "But ya see, what did happen/ When we all stayed away/ We actually spent more time/ Doing fun things to play// We made crafts and played cards/ We rode bikes and took walks/ We built forts and read books/ And had lots of fun talks."

And the germ? "He got tired of waiting// That mean ol' bad germ/ Couldn't get us no more/ When we all stayed away/ The bad germ was done for."

The power of a family. Together.

In email correspondence, Hajec notes that profits from the book go to local charitable organizations such as the North Valley Community Foundation's Covid-19 Rapid Response Fund and the Chico Children's Museum.