“Happy-Go-Lucky”

David Sedaris (Amy’s brother) brings his mordant wit to life’s upheavals, both large and small, in “Happy-Go-Lucky” ($19.99 in paperback from Little, Brown; also in ebook and audiobook, read by the author), a collection of essays taking readers through the Covid era and beyond.

Inspiration often comes from quirky conversations at his book signings. Lockdowns shut that door, and took away the audiences. “Without a live audience—that unwitting congregation of fail-safe editors—I’m lost,” he writes.

“It’s not just their laughter I pay attention to but also the quality of their silence. As for noises, a groan is always good in my opinion. A cough means that if they were reading this passage on the page, they’d be skimming now, while a snore is your brother-in-law putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.” His partner, Hugh, is no help. “Hugh and I have vastly different senses of humor—this is to say that I have one and he doesn’t.”

Yet he considers himself “Lucky-Go-Happy,” the title of the final essay; lucky not to get Covid, and lucky audiences returned. Though one essay is full of jokes he hears at book events (most of which would not garner prudish Hugh’s approval), Sedaris is also lucky to have family cohesion in the wake of the suicide of one of his sisters and the death of his father, who had ceaselessly ridiculed his son almost until the end. 

“By the second half of his ninety-seventh year, the man was a pussycat, a delight. Unfortunately there were all those years that preceded it. … As long as my father had power, he used it to hurt me.”

Sedaris marches for Black Lives Matter, then skewers the excesses of wokeism—and social distancing. “‘Back off!’ a certain type of person would snarl if you stood only five feet and eleven inches away from them.” 

There’s a kind of wistfulness here, a yearning in his seventh decade for a time (now lost?) when we can laugh at our foibles without sending one another into exile.

Chico Performances presents “An Evening With David Sedaris,” Thursday, November 6, 7:30 p.m. at Chico State’s Laxson Auditorium. For ticket information visit tinyurl.com/bdfryuz5.

“The Virtue Of Loyalty”

How far should loyalty extend? As Chico State philosophy professor Troy Jollimore writes, “The very notion of being on some side or other, and being ‘true’ to that side through thick and thin, seems in tension with the idea that one should always strive to be on the right side, to join and support those whose actions are morally justifiable and supportable.”

Being loyal—to a spouse or country—would seem to be a virtue, contributing “to the goodness of human life or the functioning of human societies.” But, as Jollimore points out in his introduction to a series of essays on the subject, it’s a “contested topic.” What would it mean to stay loyal to a family member or political figure caught up in wrongdoing?

“The Virtue Of Loyalty” ($35.00 in paperback from Oxford University Press; also for Amazon Kindle), edited by Jollimore, includes ten chapters, by philosophers and others, which consider how family loyalty arises, the sting of betrayal, love and loyalty, and more. The writers, Jollimore notes, address “whether loyalty can motivate and justify actions which have horrific consequences or which are inherently morally awful….”

A key chapter by Jollimore, one of recipients of the University’s Professional Achievement Honors “as a philosopher, teacher, and poet,” asks whether loyalty is indeed a virtue, whether it actually gives us reasons for acting. 

Loyalty (too often?) would seem to lead to pernicious behavior: If a soldier is ordered to massacre women and children out of “patriotic duty” loyalty plays no role in determining the morally right thing to do; it impedes it. And if a soldier is ordered to save women and children, loyalty is irrelevant to knowing that’s the right thing to do.

Jollimore pushes back against these objections in a thoughtful and accessible essay, pointing out that loyalty doesn’t exist in a vacuum: “A loyal friend need not always overlook your imperfections, but they will not seize immediately upon them as a reason for abandoning you and ending their relationship with you.” As for political loyalties, he writes, the greatest “expression of patriotism” might lie in refusing “blind devotion or unconditional subservience.” 

Loyalty is a virtue, but a profoundly complex one.

 

“Fully Alive: The Apocalyptic Humanism Of Karl Barth”

Chicoan and substitute teacher Max Feiler graduated from Duke Divinity School in 2019, where he struck up a friendship with one of his professors, Stanley Hauerwas, born in 1940. 

A theologian and author of dozens of books, Hauerwas’ vision of the Christian life is perhaps most accessible in “Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony,” co-authored with Will Willimon, a retired United Methodist bishop who, Feiler writes me, “told me recently that I reminded him of a ‘young Hauerwas’” in his constant awareness of human sinfulness and possession of a rather wicked sense of humor.

The abiding question for Hauerwas is the place of the Christian church in light of Easter’s resurrection reality, when the temptation is to succumb to narcissistic impulses or to take over the reins of secular power.

Now, in a series of lectures and occasional pieces entitled “Fully Alive: The Apocalyptic Humanism Of Karl Barth” ($29.50 in paperback from University of Virginia Press), Hauerwas reflects on key themes from a controversial career, influenced by many, but especially Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). For Barth, as for Hauerwas, the “humanism” of liberal theology, which focuses on the human response to God, must be rejected.

In its place is the humanism revealed in Jesus Christ who in taking on our humanity revealed what it means to be fully alive, fully human. It is “apocalyptic” since Barth lived  “through an apocalyptic time but also because he saw the world as forever changed by a Galilean peasant.”

Though the book isn’t the place to start with Hauerwas, it is full of trenchant observations: The capitalist system “destroys human attachment to, and affections for, relationships and institutions by embedding them in impersonal exchanges.” More sarcastically, he writes that the American story is one called “freedom”: “That story produces people who think they have been wounded by being born.”

Hauerwas considers how the Kingdom of God made manifest in Jesus Christ ought to display a new kind of politics, showing an alternative to narcissism and power that can befriend “the least of these.” His is a provocative view, but, as he observes, “Few sins are more deadly than making God boring.”

“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.

"I'm Not Ready For This (Everybody Just Calm Down And Give Me A Minute)"

"We drove together," Anna and her mom, "from Omaha, Nebraska, to Chico, California, in my cute little Volkswagen Passat. … I was hired at Chico State University as an assistant residence coordinator" and there Anna would be completing her MA in Communication Studies. 

Her first date with Rob, her future husband, was at Chico's Olive Garden. Time passes, the couple returns to Nebraska to raise two daughters, and Anna becomes humor writer and personal essayist Anna Lind Thomas (AnnaLindThomas.com).

Skilled in making mountains out of molehills, and then realizing she's been sweating the small stuff, Thomas' first collection, "We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays On Taking Life A Smidge Too Seriously," is now joined by a companion volume. 

"I'm Not Ready For This (Everybody Just Calm Down And Give Me A Minute)" ($18.99 in paperback from Thomas Nelson; also for Amazon Kindle and in audiobook format read by the author) reflects on life's challenges.

That includes Rob's vasectomy (and his use of frozen vegetables as ice packs); oversleeping on the first day of sixth grade (and "our Indy 500-style ride to school"); and running a 10K (no runner's euphoria; "instead, my subconscious mind conjures up every injustice I've experienced since birth and lets me dole out insults I'd never say in real life"). 

Training for the run "was enlightening. I learned things about myself I'd rather not know. For instance, I have incredibly poor bladder and, on occasion, sphincter control. My legs and hips jiggle, but not all at once, or in sync…."

At times outrageously honest, Thomas is at her best describing the bittersweet moments, like her friendship with Cindy, an older student in her master's program at Chico State, who rolled "her own cigarettes. She was fast and efficient, licking and rolling and smoking them down before moving on to the next thing." 

The "next thing"? Being in Chico didn't seem a good fit; Cindy breezed through the material but "didn't give a crap…. Her fierce and gritty independence drew me in. And I felt safer and less vulnerable knowing her."

In a way, that's also Thomas' gift to the reader.

"We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays On Taking Life A Smidge Too Seriously"

Anna Lind Thomas (AnnaLindThomas.com), now living in Omaha with husband Rob and their two daughters, graduated with an MA in Communication Studies from Chico State. While there she met Rob through Match.com and they agreed to an in-person date at Olive Garden. 

That date would change her personal and professional life and result in a fart heard around the country. 

When Anna and Rob first locked eyes, "I don't know how to explain it," she writes, "other than to say when I saw him, I saw my husband." It was love at first sight for him as well, and it's a good thing. They drove over to the mall to do some shopping. And then it hit.

"Gas strikes in two different ways--uncontrollable toots or sharp, shooting pains that feel a lot like dying. I thought I was dying." She made some kind of excuse about not feeling well, but as Rob was driving her home it happened. "A horrific fart cloud. Not in an 'Am I smelling something?' sort of way. More like an 'Is someone dead and rotting in your trunk, and am I in hell?' sort of way."

The tale went viral and Thomas left Chico to take up humor writing fulltime. Her first book is full of common scents, so to speak, as she takes up raising two daughters who want to know about mommy parts, body image ("I'm almost forty now and the chubby girl is still there") and coming to terms with overlarge fears. Does that late night thump mean there's a murderer in the house? Rob, go see!

"We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays On Taking Life A Smidge Too Seriously" ($18.99 in paperback from Nelson Books/HarperCollins Christian Publishing and for Amazon Kindle) also comes in an author-narrated audiobook. (Thomas hosts the "It's Not That Serious" podcast.)

Thomas faces multiple miscarriages and a falling out with a business partner. But God gave her a dream even "as a little girl.... I wanted to make people laugh, see themselves in my words, and have hope."

She's not tooting her own horn. The dream really did come true.

"10 Years Of Spreading The Dirt!"

Remember when telephones had operators? Chicoan Dick Cory does. "Fern was the operator in our rural community of Alexandria, Nebraska, population around two hundred fifty in the late nineteen forties and fifties. She efficiently kept everyone in touch. Her knowledge of where people might 'hang-out' helped make connections when they couldn't be reached by phone. Ike Bowker and I were hired for a nickel to 'run them down' when an urgent call was waiting."

Cory is a retired junior high teacher, proponent of the revitalization of Teichert Ponds, and long-time columnist for a local seniors publication. The columns form the basis of a massive new collection called "10 Years Of Spreading The Dirt!" ($30, spiral-bound, self-published, available at Made in Chico or from the author at ubangarang@yahoo.com). 

The more than 130 pieces, including poetry, date from 2008 to 2017, dedicated to "Ruthie Crane and our collective merging families" and to "those directly affected by the Camp Fire of 2018." (A portion of the proceeds from the book and Crane's paintings will help the Covered Bridge restoration project.)

About his email address: "Most of my ex-students remember me as the chief preserver of the ficmythicus ubangarang," an endangered species (ahem) that has become his trademark.

About small town cafés: "Many of these rural communities have lost their newspaper.... Stories, gossip, and serious decisions are made hand-to-mouth (excuse the pun) at these cafés. These cafés take the place of town halls and civic centers."

Dirt (he loves dirt!) plays an active role in Cory's life. In the 1970s he created a company to do the dusty job of hand knocking almonds, calling it Knutes Kneighborly Knut Knockers. "Being too clean can be a sign of poor work habits." So there!

He closes the book with tributes to his mother and father. "I am thankful for being born to caring parents late in their lives at a time and place making me a member of the luckiest generation."

Like the telephone operator of old, Cory chases down memories and makes connections, bringing small-town wisdom and not necessarily politically correct observations to illuminate life in the twenty-first century. Readers will find him a genial companion.

"The Camp Fire: Dreams, Nightmares, Hopes"

"In an instant," writes J.R. Henson, "the Camp Fire wiped out the community I lived in." He traces his emotional journey through poems and essays until "I reach a more settled location with the feeling of still being displaced from my home town."

"The Camp Fire: Dreams, Nightmares, Hopes" ($10 in paperback from Valley View Press) starts months before the fire; life is good, especially with "Gabie, the small curly-haired poodle." 

Yet during this time, Henson writes, "I kept seeing everything in my house through a cracked lens." The haunting vision subsides, not to return. 

Later, after the fire, Henson sees a picture of his house, and it's hard to believe. "I focus and enlarge the picture on the single object in the backyard. Now I can see the object to be a concrete birdbath with a concrete squirrel sitting at the top. That's when I know the burned down house is mine."

His escape on the day of the fire is more harrowing because his truck is low on gas. "I climb halfway up the last hill before reaching the main artery out of town. The feeling is like being stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel. All I want to do is get off this amusement park ride." 

He imagines Nature "intent on scorching every last home and big building.... Weeks later, Nature's rage slips away. Cleanup crews chop down healthy and unhealthy trees.... Finally, after many years, Nature wakes up just to see that nothing has changed for the better, and many of the human beings are just as inhospitable as they have been in the past." 

"God takes away the stewardship from human hands for being incompetent," the poet writes; "White hot flames cleanse the Paradise because of the promise that has been broken."

"It's hard for me to imagine hope's return," Henson writes. But it does, and with it the prospect of love. Maybe humans have been given another chance.

The author will be presenting his book at the Chico Library Meeting Room on Monday, November 11 from 7:00-8:00 p.m. and Saturday, December 7 from 4:30-6:00 p.m. Meetings are free and open to the public.

"Calypso"

Humorist David Sedaris is now in his sixties, and that is cause for taking stock. His new collection of personal essays, "Calypso" ($28 in hardcover from Little, Brown and Company; also for Amazon Kindle) does just that. He wonders if he will someday be like that old guy on the plane who pooped in his pants. He tries coming to terms with an alcoholic mother (gone for three decades), a father in his nineties (a man of few words and very conservative views) and the suicide of his sister Tiffany in 2013. 

When Sedaris remembers some of the things his mother said about him to others in the family, he writes that "it was hurtful the first few times her criticism got back to me. ... Then I realized that it didn't mean anything. Opinions constantly shifted and evolved, were fluid the same way thoughts were. ... It was all just storytelling." 

That's key to understanding the Sedaris clan, from his longtime boyfriend Hugh, to David's siblings, Gretchen, Lisa, Amy, and Paul. The essays evoke a quirky family constantly on the move (especially David in his Fitbit obsession), with opinions flying and bouncing into each other, morphing sometimes into silliness and sometimes into sentiment: storytelling binds them together. 

Wry, rude and gross (like when, after surgery to remove a non-cancerous fatty tumor, he feeds it to a turtle), Sedaris is also funny. He names the family beach house he buys on the coast of North Carolina the "Sea Section." 

He describes in detail doing public readings while suffering intense gastrointestinal distress. He inveighs against everything being "awesome" these days, and learns the giant snapping turtle with a growth on its head actually has a name. "I felt betrayed, the way you do when you discover that your cat has a secret secondary life and is being fed by neighbors who call him something stupid like Calypso."

Chico Performances is presenting an evening with David Sedaris on Monday, January 14 at 7:30 p.m. at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium. Tickets from the University Box Office (csuchico.edu/boxoffice or call 530-898-6333) are $60 Premium, $50 Adult, $48 Senior, $40 Youth and $15 Chico State Students.

Now isn't that awesome?

"Reflections And Dark Truths"

"The rain falls silently in the middle of the night," writes Paradise resident J.R. Henson in his recently published book. "Old oak trees are like a canopy in my backyard. Some drops of rain read the wrinkles in the old oak trees as a blind person reads braille from a book. If the rain keeps up through the night and into the morning, it will mean a hearty breakfast for the trees." The piece is entitled "Paradise," and the rain takes the author back in memory to his days as a ten-year-old playing in the sprinklers on a hot summer's day.

Much has been lost in Paradise, and the book, featuring almost three dozen short essay-stories, explores personal loss in a way that resonates deeply just now.

The book is called "Reflections And Dark Truths" ($10 in paperback from Valley View Press, Paradise) and as the title suggests it's divided into two sections. The reflections hearken back to the narrator's childhood, his "emotional journey growing up." Then the "dark truths" consider aging grandparents, the "crumbling" of his own hopes and dreams, estrangement from loved ones, having to face the tremors of the real world, and almost yearning "to be cradled once again back in the mental hospital."

There is yearning, too, for redemption. In "Can You Hear What I Hear?", the narrator senses a connection with something joyful, something divine. "I pray for my brokenness. I pray for forgiveness. Moreover, I ask God to enter my heart." But that doesn't make the reality of loss go away. There are losses of the natural environment, losses of love.

The biggest loss is of Smokey. "The smooth curly dark-haired dog that slept in my arms and rested his head in my right hand just yesterday is now gone. Gone from this world, and my heart aches for his return."

Henson writes in an email that he and his family members escaped the Camp Fire just before a planned book release party that had been set for Paradise Library. Signings are still scheduled at the Chico Library for Sunday, November 18 from 4:30-5:30 p.m. and at the Oroville Library on Saturday, December 1 from 4:00-5:00 p.m.

"Melville Among The Philosophers"

A quarter century after Herman Melville published "Moby-Dick" he published a whale of a poem, some 18,000 lines, called "Clarel: A Poem And A Pilgrimage." It draws its inspiration in part on a trip Melville had made to Palestine which turned out to be wholly uninspiring.

Chico State University philosophy professor Troy Jollimore, a nationally-acclaimed poet himself, takes up "Clarel" as the first essay in "Melville Among The Philosophers" ($100 in hardcover from Lexington Books; also for Amazon Kindle), edited by Corey McCall and Tom Nurmi, with an afterword by Cornel West. 

Melville frames philosophic questions in literary form, and the philosophers contributing to the volume view his work through the lenses of feminism, race, beauty, religious studies, and more.

Jollimore's study of Melville's epic is a model of clarity. "The poem," he writes, "describes a journey undertaken by its title character, a young divinity student who is attempting to find grounds for faith, in the company of a group of pilgrims who seem to represent diverse outlooks one might take on various disputed topics." 

The primary topic is the possibility of religious faith in the midst of nineteenth-century science, especially the work of Charles Darwin, which seemed to "disenchant" the universe, reducing it to mere mechanism.

For Clarel, coming upon a group of lepers, human nature expressed itself "In voiceless visagelessness" (the title of Jollimore's essay) waiting for a God who is all too silent.

Melville's friend Nathaniel Hawthorne said that Melville "will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief." Clarel finds the land of Palestine desolate, an expression of Melville's own sense of God's hiddenness. What can one believe, and why?

Jollimore reads the poem through the lens of American pragmatist William James. For Melville belief must not be theoretical, dreamed up in the captain's cabin, but practical, connecting with life out on deck. Jollimore suggests that for Clarel, and Melville, "the notion of evidence ought itself to be understood not abstractly but in terms of lived experience: one discovers what can and ought to be believed not abstractly, but by living a human life."

Can intellect and spirit be reconciled? Clarel, and Melville, find no easy answers.

"Diverse Minds: North State Journal 2017"

According to its website, the Iverson Wellness and Recovery Center in Chico "is a group of men and women challenged by a variety of mental health, alcohol and drug issues." Iverson is a program of Northern Valley Catholic Social Service, supported by the Mental Health Services Act and Butte County Department of Behavioral Health.

Outreach Coordinator and Peer Assistant Andrea Wagner, with a degree in journalism from Chico State University, facilitates a writing group and a yearly compilation of work.

That project has expanded to encompass sixteen Northern California counties. "Diverse Minds: North State Journal 2017" ($7.10 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle), edited by Wagner, presents readers with the work of over fifty writers and artists who are living lives "of wellness and recovery."

"Life can be challenging for people on the autistic spectrum," writes Paloma Blanca. "I often have to script my conversations. So don't treat me worse because I can come off as awkward." Jonathan Roy Martin cultivates gratitude: "I'm grateful for good people/ In my community/ I'm also grateful for/ Those who heard my plea."

The book includes "frank discussions of suicide, domestic violence, and substance use." Donna C. writes that "my writing is a step to my recovery. … Slowly I'm learning that life can be lived without violence and abuse. It's hard for me to live this way. For me, I've come to expect being hit."

Drawings and photographs, fanciful, serene, or stark, add resonance. Autobiographies at the end open up the meaning of the contributions. A section presents work by Shelby Wright, submitted by her mother after "Shelby completed suicide in 2011." "And although I am fighting with all my heart and soul," Shelby wrote, "my road is still long and hard." Her legacy of hope mixes with the sadness.

The road can be hopeful, but it is not safe. Kadjain Troi: "When you come to a fork in the road, remember, the paved road is an easy way home, but the other path will get you there with a story to tell."

Submissions are being accepted for the 2018 Journal at nvcss.org/diverseminds. Publication and an art show are scheduled for November.

A journal for local naturalists

Scott Huber of Chico, and his young photographer son Liam, have issued an invitation for readers to step outside and look—really look—at the world of nature. And then to write down their experience. The invitation takes the form of “NorCal Naturalist: Journal And Calendar” ($16.75 spiral bound, self-published, available at Lyon Books in Chico as well as local nature centers).

The format is simple. On the right-hand side are seven numbered blank boxes (each week of the year gets an undated page) so you can turn to the appropriate week of the month and start writing. The left-hand side may contain one of the 24 color photographs (most taken by Liam) or one of Scott’s 48 short nature essays. Huber’s stories of his and Liam’s encounters with the natural world exemplify the work of a true amateur—a lover of nature (and words) with a keen eye and intense curiosity.

As the reader’s own journal takes shape, Huber recommends comparisons, month-by-month and eventually year-by-year.

The essays are miniature excursions into the natural world, one graced by hummingbirds, butterflies, bobcats, deer, wild turkeys, newts, Black-headed grosbeaks, and more. Here are photographs of White-whorled lupins and a Humboldt Lily from Chico Creek Canyon, curling manzanita bark in Butte Creek Canyon, a Blacktail deer in Forest Ranch, and a bobcat hunting voles in the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve.

“As avid birders,” Huber writes, “my son and I have spent countless hours listening to recorded bird songs and practicing the recognition of birds using only our ears. … My friends will confess that it’s not uncommon to see me suddenly hush them, cup my hands around my ears and tilt my head towards some sound no one else has noticed, and then exclaim, ‘Did you hear that?’”

In March 2013 it was Lawrence’s goldfinch. “There, just thirty feet away, swaying on the arcing stocks of fiddleneck flowers was not one, but a male and female pair of these striking little yellow and gray birds with dark black masks.”

My observation? It’s good to share the love. Get the book.