“Letters From The Shire: On Tolkien, His World, And A Better Understanding Of Ours”

“September 22 has, for years, held a special place in my heart,” writes Chicoan Matthew Distefano. “Not only is it the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins—two of the most famous Hobbits in the history of Middle-earth—but it marks the beginning of one of the greatest adventures ever told. Fittingly, then, I chose to complete this collection of letters around that date. But rather than releasing it on the 22nd itself, I’ve opted for September 23—the day Frodo leaves the Shire.”

The collection is “Letters From The Shire: On Tolkien, His World, And A Better Understanding Of Ours” (in Amazon Kindle format, published by Quoir in Chico, quoir.com). In pastoral language Distefano responds to 22 questions sent to him in response to two previous books, “The Wisdom of Hobbits” and “Mimetic Theory & Middle-earth.” 

Included are letters from his mom and his best friend, Michael Machuga; he and Matthew and their wives have created Happy Woods Farm on property next to Michael’s house in Paradise. Flowers and fruit abound. Hobbits would be pleased. 

As Distefano notes in one of the letters, “I take in many moments throughout the week, soaking in the naked now as often as I’m able. It’s always after smoking from my pipe, which is why I continually assert that I am a Hobbit in all but size.”

Some of the letters Distefano writes are theological. “Tolkien’s world is a monotheistic one,” he writes, but his mythology is not a Christian allegory (as are C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tales). The Hobbits are secular and yet what transpires in Middle-earth is guided by something beyond the halflings, and even the elves. Everyone has a different perspective on what that something is, Distefano says. 

For him, “When we turn inward, however, to our own communal and interdividualistic selves, we start to realize that God is everything and everything is God. That includes you. That includes me.” There are endless debates, but Hobbits get it right; for them, “Life is all about getting their hands dirty and cultivating crops and community.”

This cultivation, he writes, is nothing less than “slow magic.”

"Letters From A Korean Foxhole: Remembered Words Of A Forgotten War"

Elizabeth Venturini writes that when her dad, Louis Joseph Venturini, "turned 20 years old in December 1950 ... it was his turn to go and serve his country." Six months earlier "75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th Parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north, and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south."

Louie was "honorably discharged from the Army in October 1952" after serving in Korea and being severely wounded by grenade shrapnel. His almost daily letters home revealed few details of his experiences in-country, and when he returned he had terrible nightmares for a time and "wanted to forget what had happened."

He married in 1954 and after a few years, as the family grew, they moved to Chico from Los Angeles. Here Louie farmed almonds and prunes and, as "a licensed building and plumbing contractor, he established ... the L-V Plumbing Company."

Later, as Elizabeth read the hundreds of letters her dad had sent home, "I realized they would tell the story of the Korean War as he experienced it in 1951, not as portrayed by the Hollywood genre of films." He was "uprooted from his civilian life and home like thousands of other young men, to serve in a country no one had heard of, for people no one knew, and for a war nobody understood."

Those letters, including family photographs and careful notes Elizabeth adds for context, have become "Letters From A Korean Foxhole: Remembered Words Of A Forgotten War" ($14.95 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle with more at lettersfromakoreanfoxhole.com).

Most begin with "Dear Folks, Just a couple of lines to let you know that I am okay and hope you are all the same." Louie seems much more concerned with the well-being of those at home, and acknowledging salami Elizabeth's grandmother would send, than with the military challenges he faced. 

Poignantly, Elizabeth adds comments made seventy years later when she interviewed her dad. 

"A lot of good men died over there," he told her. "A lot of my buddies. Not much to say about that."

Dick Cory on "fiscal cliffs" and thunderstorms

"Much negotiation lies ahead before middle ground can be found," writes Chicoan Dick Cory in his new book, "Down To Earth" ($20 in paperback from the author--write to ubangarang@yahoo.com; also available at Made In Chico). Maybe Congressional seating ought to be rearranged. "Opposing parties should be seated next to one another. ... We must talk with each other rather than at one another. ... Let's make sure 'down to earth' progress is reached before we go over a fiscal cliff or another election occurs. That's my two cents worth. You decide if it's worth a plug nickel."

The retired teacher brings his small-town Nebraska heritage to bear on a multitude of observations. These reflections, the sixth collection of essays since he began writing more than a decade ago, consider "culture and environment" (Cory has been deeply involved in a group considering the disposition of Chico's Teichert Ponds); education ("I am a teacher!"); family ("life hasn't been without pitfalls, but it has never been pitiful"); and "nostalgia and wit" (whatever happened to the Chico "Community Bench" project?).

Cory writes that if he taught English instead of science he would use a thunderstorm as a way of teaching composition. "If you are lucky enough to live on the plains, you are able to watch as the storm approaches along a squall line. This is a slow moving curtain of water flowing from clouds at the front of a storm. Call this the topic sentence. As this shower line reaches you, the precipitation increases, barometric pressure drops, and lightning flashes and thunder courses the sky. This shows the brilliance of the storm and your paragraph. A funnel cloud, called a tornado or cyclone, adds exclamation to your paragraph!"

There are poignant moments, too, as Cory adjusts to life without his wife, Jan, who died in 2012 "the day after our twenty-six wedding anniversary. She was a pillar of strength and love."

The book contains daydreams, letters to the editor, sometimes crotchety observations, and a lot of "chewing the fat" (the term "in America may have arisen from having to chew salt port or fatback when food supplies were low").

As for Cory's views? "You may disagree, but remember I'm only shooting the breeze, gabbing, and chewing the fat."

Letters from wartime California

"For over 50 years," writes Gridley resident Joan Brock, "Rigmor, my grandmother's niece, lovingly kept Helga's notebooks safe in her home in Copenhagen." Those notebooks contained letters that Helga, then living in Palo Alto, wrote to her family in Denmark during World War II. Because of the Nazi occupation the letters could not be mailed, but Helga continued to write them anyway, filling five notebooks during wartime. "Rigmor told me she had saved these letters and wanted to give them to me, but she just could not bear to part with them." Eventually she made copies and sent them to Brock "in 2005, just prior to her death. I found the letters so compelling, I published them."

The collection, lightly annotated, is called "My Dear, Dear Rigmor: Helga's Letters Written During WWII" ($19.99 in paperback from Xlibris; also in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook e-book formats). Nancy Wiegman interviewed Joan Brock for Nancy's Bookshelf, which airs on KCHO (Northstate Public Radio, 91.7 FM) Friday mornings at 10:00 a.m.; the archive is found at http://goo.gl/BMMB0.

Helga's letters are a profoundly human mix of family minutiae and geopolitical reflections. "Coffee goes on rationing next week--one pound per person from 15 years old and up--every 5 weeks. That's still enough" (November 25, 1942). "For the first time, millions of people in the U.S. are paying income tax" (March 12, 1944). "All the years I lived here, I can't see a good-looking head of cauliflower, that [I] don't want it, and every time I do buy it, I am disappointed. It never did taste good like they did at home" (May 14, 1945).

She grieves for her family in Denmark. Her characterizations of the Germans and Japanese (especially the Japanese) are brutal. December 7, 1941 is seared in her memory. "But that was their first mistake, that unforgettable sneak punch, because it united every man, woman, and child in the United States. And believe me, nobody in the world can fight us down. This is still the land of liberty, the land of the free, and will always be so." Her surviving son, Ralph, is fighting overseas; her thoughts are never far from him.

Helga is by turns resolute, cranky, tearful, opinionated, patriotic. In this book she still speaks.