“Life In Transition: Essays And Diversions”

“I was born in Chico,” author Karen Gilden writes me, though she spent most of her public school career in Willows. Her dad worked for the U.S. Forest Service there and “Mom was the secretary at the grammar school in Willows for years.”

She went to Chico State for a year, but really wanted to travel. In 1970 she and her husband, Ray, moved to Eugene, Oregon and in 1977 spent six months journeying through Europe and the USSR. They lived in Turkey and southern France. She became a freelance writer, blogging (“Random Vectors” on Substack) and writing books.

After Ray passed away early in 2018, Gilden began compiling some of her and Ray’s favorite travel pieces. “Life In Transition: Essays And Diversions” ($12 in paperback; also for Amazon Kindle) is a celebration of cultures and the natural world, and a poignant account of caregiving and loss.

“The poet John Berryman once said, ‘We must travel in the direction of our fear.’ He was speaking, I think, about the fear that nibbles away at our self assurance, the fear that cramps our gut, inhibits creativity and risk-taking, and denies us the right to shine in front of strangers. And somehow I find that, unaware and without forethought, I have followed Berryman’s advice. … There is nothing better I think, than putting yourself in a difficult position and coming out of it whole, and travel is an engaging way to do that. It may even be addictive.”

In 1996 they moved to a small town in Turkey. “Nothing mechanical ever seems to be junked here, it gets rebuilt and repainted and repaired and resold and recycled and redeemed.”

Now, without Ray’s voice, Gilden must find her own way. “There is no pattern to grief,” she observes, “and that lack of pattern makes it confusing and difficult. Just when you think things are looking up, down you go.” Her heart “makes room for boundless love and seemingly endless grief.” It is a painful transition, as one year, one era, gives way to the next. But it is also a hopeful time because, she writes, “there’s still so much to see.”

"Traveling The World With Hemingway"

When Curtis DeBerg retired from Chico State as a business professor in 2020, he had already been bitten by the Hemingway bug. It was less about Illinois-born Ernest Hemingway the Nobel laureate in literature (he was awarded the prize in 1954) and more, much more, about the places he lived that shaped him even as he shaped them.

"I tracked, trudged, limped, drank and slept at the places that were meaningful in his life--from Oak Park to Petoskey, from Paris to Pamplona, from Madrid to Venice, from Bimini to Uganda, from Montreux to Schruns, from Rapallo to Santiago de Compostela." DeBerg adds: "I wanted to 'feel' where he lived, read, wrote, ate, drank, fished, hunted, fought, loved and died."

Drawing on archival and contemporary photographs, and partnering with publisher Tom Pero, who provided images from previous visits to the Hemingway residence outside Havana, Cuba when travel became impossible because of the pandemic, DeBerg has created a feast for the eyes--and food for thought.

"Traveling The World With Hemingway" ($75 in hardcover from Wild River Press, wildriverpress.com) is a spatial, not chronological guide, to Hemingway places, including Ketchum, Idaho, with his fourth wife, Mary, where, paranoid, drinking excessively, Hemingway killed himself with a double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun on July 2, 1961. He was 61.

DeBerg's book is not hagiography; early on, as an ambulance driver at the Italian Front in World War I, Hemingway "wasn't yet 19 years old, and he was dying to be a hero, even if it was of his own fiction." A serial womanizer, emotionally abusive to his wives, he always seemed to have someone new in the wings when his marriages deteriorated. He cultivated the larger-than-life masculine image portrayed in press accounts. He popularized bullfighting, though "Hemingway came to regret how he, almost singlehandedly, brought Pamplona to world fame." (Too many tourists.)

DeBerg mixes history with travelogue, and each page in his gorgeous coffee-table book is a wonder, unpacking details of Hemingway's life (like the series of concussions he suffered and his insatiable appetite for alcohol) that dig beneath the hype to show a very troubled man, searching for happiness, who changed the shape of American literature.

"Rudy's Rules For Travel: Life Lessons From Around The Globe"

Mary Jensen (marykjensen.com) describes herself as a "recovering grants writer"; after retiring as Professor Emerita from Chico State University she kept a promise to her late husband, Rudy, to tell the story of their marriage.

The memoir, beautifully and sensitively written, is a self-deprecating account of what happens when an uptight adventurer marries a frugal World War II vet who, as a new American citizen, flew US Air Force missions over his German homeland and who now can hardly wait to explore the world. On the cheap.

"Rudy's Rules For Travel: Life Lessons From Around The Globe" ($16.95 in paper from She Writes Press; also for Amazon Kindle) shows how a "marriage of opposites" can have its hilarious moments. Mary's own rules ("Expect the worst"; "Remain alert. Always") contrast mightily with Rudy's spontaneous approach.

Late in his life Rudy tells neophyte travelers: "You may wonder about going to politically unstable places. Well, there are two ways of looking at them: one, they are dangerous now. Two, they may be more dangerous later. … You have to remember that you'll never be younger. And you'll probably never be healthier. You've just got to grab that brass ring when it comes by."

And therein lies a tale, many of them, from Mexico City in 1976 to France in 1994. "Adapt," says Rudy's very first rule. "Never shower alone" ("position the day's dirty clothes under your feet, add soap, stomp, as in crushing grapes"). And: "Relax. Some kind stranger will appear."

Indeed so. From Rudy showing up at someone's house (he thought it was a bar) to a poignant quest to connect with his German roots (with the "wounds of war" still fresh in memories), this is a book of laughter and tears. 

And very small suitcases.

"Rudy's Rules" will appeal to readers of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love"; Kirkus reviews selected it as an Indie Best Book of the Month. 

The author is hosting a book launch event on Saturday, April 28 from 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. at ABC Books in Chico. Proceeds from event sales will go toward the local American Association of University Women scholarship fund.

"Maraschino Cherries: Travel Stories Of A Teacher Abroad""Maraschino Cherries: Travel Stories Of A Teacher Abroad"

When her granddaughter Michelle asked Chicoan Elisabeth Stewart for a story, she stopped short. "I don't have a story," she said. But Michelle insisted: "How is that possible, Oma? You have been around the world and lived a very long time. You must have a story!"

And indeed she does. In the early Eighties Stewart had completed fourteen years teaching Home Economics at Paradise High School and needed a change. She got it--with the help of the Department of Defense.

The tale is recounted in "Maraschino Cherries: Travel Stories Of A Teacher Abroad" ($6.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). It's a personal story of overcoming fears, reaching out to strangers, and finding love, told with kindness and simplicity. Stewart was witness to history (such as the fall of the Berlin wall), confronted sadness and even death along her own journey, but a quiet optimism prevails.

It began with a phone call to her apartment one hot Chico afternoon in July.

The representative of the Department of Defense Dependent Schools had an offer to teach home economics in Frankfurt, Germany. Betty Thompson (her name then) had applied weeks earlier, holding her ground as the interviewer announced that sixteen applicants would be questioned. She was number seventeen. It took a bit of old-fashioned resolve, but she got an interview, too.

Later that summer she found herself in Frankfurt with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Barb, ready to settle in. First, though, was the "new teacher processing procedure" from the Office of Personnel Management. "The OPM person had a stack of folders on her desk easily five inches high. She opened the first folder and we began the work…. My head filled with a fog as sound blurred and drifted away from me, vision faded, and I dozed."

Word got around about an American woman who fell asleep during the orientation. Then she met Robert Stewart, a science teacher, who was also part of the program. It's safe to say her eyes were opened.

Saying "yes" to a proposal "was the easy part"; turns out that getting married in Germany was "a whole nother kettle of bratwurst" and only the beginning.

"China Caper"

Here's the setup: "Valuable artifacts are getting out of China into markets in Europe, South America, and the U.S. The Chinese authorities, with help from London's Scotland Yard, have decided it must be via an innocent-seeming tourist or a small team of so-called tourists." Who better to join a tour group herself and ferret out the bad guys than Briana Fraser, owner of Let's Travel in Ashland, Oregon? Did I mention that she's "a former courier for a U.S. spy agency"?

So begins "China Caper" ($17 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), a diverting tale by Redding author Chloe Ryan Winston (chloeryanwinston.com).

It's the third travel adventure novel featuring Bri Fraser (after "Argentine Assignment" and "Belize Barter"). "China Caper" takes readers to London, Moscow, Beijing, and Hong Kong. And sure enough, some mysterious goings-on within the group have Bri convinced that an artifact-thief is among them. But who?

At one point the group is gathered in their London hotel's public room during a heavy storm and Bri, who narrates the story, looks around. "As I gazed at the faces of my new friends, I mentally ticked off what I knew about each one as a possible thief. But for each possibility, I cancelled the silent accusation with a heartfelt 'it can't be so.'"

Bri is joined by Derry Lloyd, the tall, self-described "Montana cowboy" who works, as did Bri, for Phillips, "a popular professor at a prestigious eastern university" who sought "people who were smart and somewhat daring to join his team of government couriers."

Ron, a member of the tour group, quips to Bri and Derry, "You guys look like a bunch of folks gathered to hear Miss Marple reveal the guilty one in some cozy murder mystery." A good characterization of the present novel, though a bit more complicated than that.

Bri's investigative work is not without peril. Her own touristy purchase of a jade camel seems harmless until Bri learns the old woman who sold it to her met an untimely end soon after. The novel is made even more intriguing when the flirtatious banter with Derry becomes something more. Their story continues in the next adventure, "Peru Paradox."

“48,000,000 Colombians Can’t Be Wrong: Finding Love In The Land Of Shakira, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fernando Botero And Sofia Vergara”

As he tells it, former Chicoan Brian Ward was a single man in search of love. So why not find it in Bogotá, Colombia? His life there is, as he puts it, “the true adventure story about a 37-year-old socially-awkward man who decided that the best way he could deal with a life sentence of microwavable burritos and 10-hour Facebook marathons was to look online for a girlfriend in Colombia and then to hop on a flight to Colombia’s capital in pursuit of a woman he has never met.”

He chronicled those experiences in his blog (singleabroad.wordpress.com) which has become the basis of his new book, “48,000,000 Colombians Can’t Be Wrong: Finding Love In The Land Of Shakira, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fernando Botero And Sofia Vergara” ($9.99 in paperback, self-published, available through Amazon).

Before he went to Colombia, he decided to use an online dating site to line up some prospects there. “Once I got registered, a standard question I was asked by the female members on ColombianCupid.com was, ‘What is your job?’ I always made a point of answering this question the following way, ‘I paint fences for a living.’ No matter what your employment status is, the best strategy is to never to make yourself sound rich or important. This is a highly effective way to reduce the number women emailing you who are just looking for a sugar daddy.”

One of those contacts became his girlfriend in Bogotá, and that’s just the start of the story. Along the way the author finds lodging at a hostel in the La Candelaria section of the capital, where “walking the streets of Bogotá at night is hazardous, mainly because of the enormous amount of potholes, uneven sidewalks and missing manhole covers.”

He earns some money by being an extra in TV shows and movies, getting fifty dollars for a 3-second walk-on as a cop. “It is a job,” he says, “that is easily done (and probably preferably done) while drunk.”

He not only finds a gig teaching English, and writing for a newspaper--but marriage as well.

A Chicoan in Paris

Prolific Chico writer and photographer Doug Keister went to Paris--to study its cemeteries. He got an Eiffel! (Gustave Eiffel is buried in the Levallois-Perret Cemetery, a towering figure indeed--whose mausoleum is “out of alignment with the other tombs in the cemetery” so Gustave could face his masterpiece.)

The result of Keister’s study, aided by a number of dedicated taphophiles (“lovers of cemeteries”), is rather, shall we say, monumental. “Stories In Stone Paris: A Field Guide To Paris Cemeteries and Their Residents” ($24.99 in hardcover from Gibbs Smith, Publisher) includes hundreds of color photographs detailing cemetery symbolism, architecture, and cemeteries themselves.

Though designed as a guidebook (including GPS coordinates) for those touring the monuments, Keister’s eye for detail and the telling tale will keep armchair travelers engrossed as well. Tidbits abound. “A word,” he writes, “about the permanence of burial in Paris--Americans are often shocked to find that, unlike in America, where burial is permanent, burial in much of Europe is often a temporary affair.” In fact, “many graves are essentially rented for various periods of time.”

Jim Morrison’s grave in Père-Lachaise (he the “lead singer for the late 1960s/early 1970s rock group the Doors” who “visited Paris in March 1971 and never left”) was almost given to someone else in 2001 after the rental period expired but, fortunately for fans, he’s still there.

Marcel Proust is there as well, but Napoléon is in Les Invalides (“a rambling complex of buildings relating to France’s military history”), born “in Corsica, the second of eight children of noble Genoese parents.” Asked if he could conquer Europe, he was said to have said, Corsican! (Well, not really, but I couldn’t resist.)

From dogged puns to a true dog cemetery: “The Paris Dog Cemetery, which bills itself as the world’s oldest public pet cemetery,” was established in 1899. Know who’s there? Rin Tin Tin. Rinty died in 1932 but helped popularize “the German shepherd breed in the United States.”

Then there’s Saint-Denis, where lies Marie-Antoinette, who didn’t quite say “let them eat cake.” The word was actually “brioche,” “a type of egg and butter bread," still unkind words to starving citizens. Only, "there is no evidence whatsoever that Marie-Antoinette ever uttered those now infamous words."

See? Keister leaves no stoned unturned.

Two codgers on horseback from Paradise to Idaho's Snake River

Back in June 1990 Loyal McCammond and his friend Bert Lefevre told their wives they'd be making a 700-mile horseback ride from Paradise to Glenns Ferry (where Bert's brother-in-law lived) near the Snake River in Idaho. Loyal was 50-years-old, Bert 70, and the two set out with three mules and two horses and not many smarts.

When it was over, Bert wanted to write the story of the 27-day trek but passed away before the project could be completed. Loyal took up the task, recounting their misadventures in Bert's voice and in so doing introducing readers to a plain-spoken man with an eye for beauty, given to understatement and deadpan humor. Bert comes alive in "We Poked A Hole In The Wind: The Story of Two Old Codgers Fulfilling A Dream" ($10.95 in paperback from JADA Press) by Loyal McCammond.

McCammond, who now lives in Orland with his wife, will be signing copies of his work at Lyon Books in Chico this Wednesday, June 29 at 7:00 p.m.

The trekkers "crossed the Skyway at the Lovelock Inn," says Bert, "and, oh man how I wanted to stop for a beer. I've always been a very reliable beer drinker, and I sure wanted a beer mighty bad." But it was not to be. There were deserts to cross and parts of four states to traverse. So no beer--until they, uh, pulled into the Inskip Inn.

But now onward! Along the way the travelers meet a succession of nice folks, people who provide a place to crash, food for the animals and the adults, and a bit of trail guidance. Bert and Loyal don't hew to roadways if they can help it, and sometimes there's not much of a trail. Here and there they find lonely windmills still pumping fresh water, abandoned barns in which to take shelter, and even places that serve beer.

Preparing to cross into Nevada, they spend the night in an empty cabin. The next day, says Bert, "when we were about five miles out from Wemple's cabin, I made a terrible discovery. I had either lost my teeth or left them in the cabin."

Intrepid, Bert soldiers on, leaning forward, living the dream, poking a hole in the wind.

Writer Philip Yancey scheduled to speak in Chico Sunday morning

Though he bills himself as a journalist, Philip Yancey manages in his many books not only to ask searching questions about God but to put the church on notice that superficial answers will not do. Yancey is an editor-at-large for Christianity Today; his books include "What's So Amazing About Grace?"; "Disappointment With God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud"; and "Where Is God When It Hurts?: A Comforting, Healing Guide For Coping With Hard Times."

His latest is a response to the "new skeptics" who question God's goodness and very existence. "What Good is God?: In Search of a Faith That Matters" ($23.99 in hardcover from FaithWords; $10.99 in Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble Nook e-book) puts it bluntly: "Often when people pose a question like 'What good is God?' they are asking why God doesn’t intervene more directly and with more force. Why did God let Hitler do so much damage, or Stalin and Mao? Why doesn’t God take a more active role in human history?"

Yancey is scheduled to speak at all three morning services this Sunday at Bidwell Presbyterian Church (located next to Chico State University). He'll give one message at 8:30 and 9:45 in the sanctuary, and a second at the El Rey Theater in downtown Chico at 11:11. The presentations are free and open to the public; best seating is at 8:30 or 11:11.

"What Good is God?" is arranged in ten parts, each recounting a trip in search of answers, each presenting a talk Yancey gave. "This book," he writes, "relates stories from places like China, where the church grows spectacularly despite an atheistic government; and the Middle East, where a once-thriving church in the heartland now barely hangs on; and South Africa, where a multicolored church picks through the pieces of its racist past. In the United States I have visited not only Virginia Tech and a convention of prostitutes, but also a group of alcoholics in Chicago and two enclaves in the Bible Belt South."

Yancey's book is not a logical defense of Christianity, but a picture of God at work in the trenches. The author is convinced that "for whatever reason, God chooses to make himself known primarily through ordinary people like us."

Chico couple's cross-country journey mixes social activism and vegetable oil

In July 2007 Chris Nelson and her spouse Michael Pike celebrated retirement from nursing careers by setting off on a nine-month journey. Their transportation of choice: "An '87 Ford F-250 four-wheel drive 3/4-ton pickup with a 8' cab-over camper," a "multi-fuel vehicle able to run on diesel fuel, bio-diesel, or straight vegetable oil." They called it the Veggie Voyager.

Nelson kept a blog along the way (http://veggievoyagers.blogspot.com) and now its content, including some stunning landscape photographs, has been published as "The Veggie Voyagers: An Eco-Friendly, Low Budget Loop Of North America's Wild Places Powered By Used Cooking Oil" ($26 in paperback from Are-We-There-Yet Press) by Chris Nelson with Michael Pike.

The couple will be sharing their "adventures in mobile homelessness" tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books in Chico.

"This is a book about retiring on $40 a day," Nelson writes. "It's a book about loss of habitat and environmental threats. Most of all, it's a book about the beauty of the natural world." The couple sometimes bought vegetable oil from Costco, but often along the way obtained the used variety from fast-food chains. Any water had to be removed from the oil. The filtration process involved a modified juicer and a contraption that looked more like a still or meth lab. It took hours, and more than once local law enforcement asked them to move along.

Nelson and Pike (along with Sasha, the dog, who learned repeated lessons about porcupines) traversed some twenty states and three Canadian provinces. "I figured out we'd stayed 16 times at Walmarts and 67 days with friends, family or under the wing of New Orleans folks. We've stayed at gravel pits, casinos, . . . hot springs, dumps, roadside turnouts, BLM land, campgrounds and four motels."

During their trip they participated in a rally in New Orleans on behalf of public housing, made tense with abundant police presence. In Utah they visited the town of Monticello where the "uranium and vanadium processing plant" "had created a legacy of cancers." They walked among the Bristlecone Pines on the Eastern Sierra and took a "walking meditation. The trees had one voice. It was a low, slow, deep, muted sap hum."

And they showered every four days, needed or not.

Mount Shasta guide writes guide to Mount Shasta

Chico State University graduate Robin Kohn now lives in the city of Mount Shasta. She's worked for the California State Park System, is a certified wilderness guide, and knows what to do to avoid avalanches. She conducts guided tours on and around the 14,162-foot mountain, "the second tallest volcanic mountain in the Cascade Range." She's an advocate of "Leave No Trace Principles": "Take only pictures, steal only time, leave only footprints."

And she knows how to have fun. Lots of it. Her "Mount Shasta Guide to Fun" ($15.95 spiral bound, self-published, available at Lyon Books in Chico and online at www.mountshastaguide.com) embodies not only wise advice but sheer enjoyment--especially of sheer cliffs.

The guide encompasses "hiking, backpacking, bicycling, cross-country and back country skiing, rock climbing, driving tours and scenic waterfall walks" and includes many black and white photographs and almost two dozens helpful maps. After the introduction and a chapter on Mount Shasta itself, the book moves out to McCloud, the Dunsmuir and Castella areas, Weed, the Lower Klamath Basin, Yreka, and Scott Valley.

For those who want a scenic drive, Kohn recommends a loop around the mountain which is about "80 miles in circumference. You will see the ancient volcanic flows of Mt. Shasta, pass the historic Emigrant Trail now know as Military Pass Road, and observe geological and glacial wonders."

For those on two wheels, Kohn describes a 20-mile round trip bicycle tour of the McCloud area. "Beginning at the McCloud Ranger Station right off highway 89 . . . head south to Squaw Valley Road. . . . Along the way you will see the McCloud Golf Course, a 9-hole course which is the oldest in Northern California. One and a half miles on your right is the former site of the Warmcastle Resort and soda springs, now known as Beaver Ponds." The springs were thought to cure most any ailment (except rotten puns--see next paragraph).

The "Guide to Fun" is less formal than commercial travel books, yet each paragraph packs plenty of information, such as contact numbers. Kohn is writing about what she loves and is careful to offer suitable cautions (especially to those who travel in avalanche areas). There's something here for everyone. And that's no snow job.