National Geographic writer to speak Tuesday on Charles Darwin at Chico State University

In March of 1837, some 171 years ago, Charles Darwin became an evolutionist. But, writes David Quammen in a new biography, Darwin “didn’t announce his apostasy” from the prevailing Anglican view that God had created each separate species as “natural kinds.” Darwin suffered most of his life with “chronic bad health,” but his distress was not the only reason he refrained from publishing his findings, in which he marshaled evidence of what he called the “transmutation of species” (only years later would he use the word “evolution”).

The story is told in “The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution” ($14.95 in paperback from W. W. Norton) by David Quammen. The author has succeeded in his purpose of creating “a concise treatment, part narrative and part essay, accurate but pleasantly readable, of this huge and deeply complicated subject” and what he calls Darwin’s “difficult, scary materialism.”

Quammen is a National Geographic contributing writer, has won the National Magazine Award three times and has published 11 books, fact and fiction. He holds the Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies at Montana State University. He will be appearing in a free public presentation next Tuesday, March 11 at Chico State University’s Laxson Auditorium as part of the On the Creek Lecture Series. Sponsored by Chico Performances (www.chicoperformances.com), the College of Natural Sciences and the Natural History Museum, Quammen’s lecture on Darwin begins at 7:30 p.m.; a book signing is scheduled afterward.

Though the lecture is free, tickets are required for admission. They are available at the University Box Office at 2nd and Normal Streets in Chico (898-6333).

Quammen writes that “Darwin was a complicated man . . . selfish and ruthless . . . in some ways, but selfish and ruthless mainly in service to his work. He was also sweet-spirited and dutiful, with a strong sense of personal morality grounded only in his materialistic notions of how human social behavior had evolved.” But for the threat of another naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, usurping his work, Darwin might not have published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

By then Darwin had identified the mechanism of species change—natural selection—and his idea altered the face of biology forever and spurred intense debate about its religious implications. Quammen writes, “The existence of God . . . is not what Darwin’s evolutionary theory challenges. What it challenges is the supposed godliness of Man. . . .” The discussion continues, 171 years later.

A history of Orland told in vintage photographs

The picture on the book’s cover, taken in 1947, shows Orland volunteers collecting clothing for overseas relief. It’s one of 220 “classic Orland photographs” contained in “The Land of Orland” ($19.99 in paperback from Arcadia Publishing, www.arcadiapublishing.com) by Gene H. Russell for the Orland Historical and Cultural Society (which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2007).

Part of the publisher’s “Images of America” series, the book tells Orland’s story through photographs from the Alta Schmidt House Museum and other local collections, carefully annotated by Russell, who also provides a historical introduction. The back cover tells readers that “the Land of Orland dates from the pre-Gold rush 1840s when Granville Perry Swift selected the area for the adobe headquarters of his vast cattle operation. The naming of the town took place in 1875 when three men—who could not agree on a name—put their choices on slips of paper and the name ‘Orland’ was drawn from the hat.”

In his introduction, Russell notes that “much of the Old West had vanished from view and was lost before the first cameras came to capture pictures of the Orland area. The earliest photographs in this book . . . date from the 1880s and 1890s.” Orland’s best years were yet to come. The key word was water. “In February 1906, the Orland Unit Water Users’ Association was formed, and by that July, a survey party was busy at work in the western foothills on Little Stony and Big Stony Creeks. Four months later, the East Park Dam site 60 miles southwest of Orland had been selected for the first federally funded irrigation project in the West. Boom times were just around the corner.”

Orland’s population “increased from 600 in 1910 to 2000 in 1912. The farm population increased almost 250 percent as land values (and land speculators) increased dramatically.”

The book is divided into 8 chapters (including Early Years, Orland Irrigation Project, Business Enterprises, Schools, Churches, Entertainment), each introduced with a line drawing of a prominent citizen, such as Prof. Jerome B. Patch, “founder and president of Orland College (1882-1891). . . . Patch’s famous standoff incident with Constable Gifford took place in the college in January 1884, and he was relieved of his teaching duties. When he died . . . he was remembered for his unreasonable stubbornness and erratic, impulsive, and obstinate behavior.” He was also a good organizer and a man of zeal, “Orland’s most enigmatic character.”

“The Land of Orland” is a delightful trip to earlier days, Russell’s tribute to a land he loves.

Paradise author tells the story of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s great-great-grandmother

“O, those were the halcyon days, those days of youth!” the poet wrote. “That sun-bright, dewy morning of my life, / When all around wore the bright garb of truth; / Before I knew that earth with woe was rife.” Woe was to come in great measure to this 19th-century writer, whose life is now chronicled with great intensity by longtime Durham school teacher Linda Sundquist-Nassie of Paradise.

“The Poetess of Song: The Life of Mary Shindler 1810-1883” ($14.95 in paperback from WingSpan Press) weaves together the author’s research among family records with Shindler’s own poetry, much of which was designed to be sung as hymns.

Eventually the research took the author to Texas. “In reading her original poems, stories and articles,” she writes, “many of which have never been previously published, I discovered that here was a soul bolstered and preserved only by an incredible personal faith and strength of character . . . who had found purpose out of tragedy and resolve in the face of complete isolation.”

Mary’s minister father, who began the first Sunday School in South Carolina, was loving but doctrinally demanding. In 1832 she married Charles Dana from Vermont (a cousin, Richard, wrote “Two Years Before the Mast”). Tragedy struck in 1839 with the death of Mary’s brother and then, within two days, of her husband and son. Two years later Mary published “The Southern Harp,” 43 poems and songs “to cheer the heart.” It sold 20,000 copies.

But her “inner turmoil continued.” At the age of 36, “widowed, childless, and uncertain about what to do” her father’s faith had seemed to fail her, and she converted to Unitarianism. In 1848 she married Robert Doyne Shindler, trained in ancient languages, and became an Episcopalian. But he is restless and can’t hold a job. He dies, perhaps from self-inflicted wounds, in 1874.

Earlier, Mary had become intrigued by spiritualism and, facing immense loss with the death of so many loved ones, composed “Mrs. Shindler’s Spirit Band,” a list of those now departed who Mary believed were “watching over her, guiding and guarding her.”

She spent the last years of her life in Nacogdoches, Texas, where Robert had been rector of Christ Church. Her tombstone bears words from her own writing: “Cease from your sorrow and crying / Jesus will wipe every tear!” As Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison writes in her foreword, “Mary lived through plagues, heartbreak and financial difficulties—but left a legacy depicting the indomitable spirit of the women in early America and early Texas.”

The story of Not in Our Town Glenn County by a former “drug dummy”

As Willows resident James C. Bettencourt tells it, he was oblivious to the rampant abuse of alcohol and methamphetamine among young teenagers. Then it happened.

“The horrific nightmare exploded as I entered the emergency room. This was the first saturation of illegal drug reality into my drug-dummy brain. I witnessed my then-15-year-old son having a grand mal seizure induced by an illegal drug, his underweight, frail body rigid, shaking violently and eyes rolled back in his head. It was only at this point I truly understood what was at stake; it was at this point I really understood my son could die. As the EMT’s desperately tried to control my son’s body, I told the ER doctor that we needed life flight to Chico, a larger, better-staffed hospital, right now.”

So began one parent’s drug education, the hard way. The story is told in “America’s Choice, America’s Shame: The Reality of America’s War On Drugs: ‘Your Children, Your Family, Your Nation’” ($19.95 in paperback from AuthorHouse). A picture of Bettencourt’s son, Joe, appears on the cover. Inside, in the rough-hewn prose of a concerned citizen, Bettencourt lays out not only his son’s use of meth and its insidious pull, but the larger social issues that seem to give young people tacit consent for abuse.

“In our family,” the author writes, “our house did have hard liquor in the cabinet and a beer in the refrigerator. This was just as good as promoting alcohol. I saw marijuana as something for adults. I thought it harmless, but my personal use had been reduced to very seldom. . . . I might as well have waved banners urging our kids to use illegal drugs and alcohol.” (The second half of the book presents, verbatim, a lengthy report on alcohol use and abuse from the US Department of Health and Human Services.)

With deep parental support Joe eventually recovered and made plans for entering Chico State University. Many other kids have not been as fortunate, and that led Bettencourt to set up the “Not In Our Town Glenn County” coalition which focuses on drug abuse prevention. But his efforts, he writes, were not universally welcomed. “Drug education takes a back seat to special interest groups. . . . If you take into consideration many agencies and businesses are profiting annually, sharing $650 billion to deal with the devastating aftermath of drugs and alcohol, it is understandable why the solution of effective substance abuse prevention is not promoted.”

That, he says, is “America’s shame.”

How tweet it is: An anthology of ornithology from a Chico State University Professor

Roger Lederer, Emeritus Professor of Biological Sciences at Chico State University, and the school’s first Jack Rawlins Professor of Environmental Literacy, has just published a full-color compendium of bird lore that’s a must-have for kids and adults. “Amazing Birds: A Treasury of Facts and Trivia About the Avian World” ($18.99 in paperback from Barron’s) will kindle wonder in any budding bird-lover. (More information is available at Lederer’s incredible www.ornithology.com site.)

On just one two-page spread the reader learns the following: that the 3-pound raven is the largest perching bird; that “although birds do occasionally drift or get blown off course by the wind, studies of radio-tagged Canada Geese demonstrated that they are able to maintain a constant ground speed as well as a straight track over the ground by compensating for changes in the wind direction and speed”; that “in the last century, over 60 million birds were banded in North America”; that among birds with penises, the longest (over 16 inches) is on the Argentine Lake Duck (“nearly as long as its body”); and that the term “stool pigeon” “derives from the French estale or estal, referring to a pigeon used to lure a hawk into a net.”

Lederer explains in an introduction that he wrote his book because, though “everyone is familiar with birds, . . . not many of us really know birds. We recognize birds because they are the most uniform of all animal groups—all have feathers and lay eggs, many sing, and most fly. . . . But as homogeneous as they appear to be, they and their habits have diversified in amazing ways, from penguins that incubate their eggs on top of their feet to brush turkeys that do not sit on their eggs at all. . . .”

He adds that “this book answers puzzles like why some birds defecate on their legs, why they fluff their feathers, why baby birds fall out of their nests, and how to attract birds to your feeder and keep them from flying into your windows.”

On another page Lederer takes up the controversy about whether the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is still alive. “There have been several claimed sightings in Florida and other U.S. states over the past half century, even recently, but scientists do not agree as to whether the species still exists.” Accompanying the text is a beautiful full-page painting of several Ivory-bills—and it’s clear to this observer at least that whether they are still around is, uh, a matter of a pinion.

Chico writer, no friend of the President, says “W” is the worst

Once a Republican candidate for the US Congress, Francis X. Callahan, Chico State University professor emeritus in the Department of Finance and Marketing, retired from full-time lecturing as a Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore. Fed up with the present U.S. Administration, he has published a blistering indictment of the current President. And he calls Vice President Cheney “devious and duplicitous.” It’s clear George W. Bush will receive no Valentine this year from Frank Callahan.

“Does W Stand for Worst? The Record of G. W. Bush” ($14.95 in paperback from butterflypress@att.net or 1-866-712-8883) argues that though “corruption and incompetence” have tarnished many presidencies, “until Bush, no administration was linked to torture. No other presidency was marked by secret prisons. No previous administration stood for the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”

Other presidents have made bad judgments (Lyndon Johnson with Vietnam, Nixon with Watergate, Clinton with sex, and the list goes on). But, Callahan says, “though there are historical arguments that can be made to defend Bush,” the President has taken “malfeasance,” “mismanagement” and “sheer obstinacy” to unprecedented heights (or depths). Callahan charges that Bush 43 has deprived Americans “of the benefits of scientific inquiry” (with the restrictions on stem cell research) and propagated lies “leading to the absolutely needless deaths and maiming of so many of our young men and women . . . (and) of the absolute disregard for the Constitution.”

Cheney is not the only name Callahan excoriates. Others include Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Alberto Gonzales, and infamous FEMA Director Michael Brown. “Many Americans voted for Bush in 2000 (though not as many who voted for Al Gore) and did so again in 2004, even though he was a draft dodger and shirked his National Guard duties in Texas while running against true American heroes, McCain in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.” Bush was “appointed” in 2000 by the “Gang of Five” on the Supreme Court, led by Antonin Scalia.

Callahan concludes that “no presidency has been so inept” in Bush’s “mishandling of the treasury, taxes, the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the disrespect for the US that he has engendered for his go-it-alone stubbornness and, truly, a frat boy so out of his depth as to cause anguish in hundreds of thousands of families.” (Callahan’s own solution to the “civil war” in Iraq is to create states, like “Sunnistan, Kurdistan and Shiastan,” like the United States, each responsible for its own security.)

Readers, of course, must judge for themselves the cogency of Callahan’s case.

Chico writer-photographer’s delicious new children’s book features old Beijing

Time was when Chico’s Doug Keister loped around the country photographing buildings for his books on Victorian or Storybook styles. But in recent years, as he has honed his writerly voice (his blog is at http://www.redroom.com/blog/douglas-r-keister), his photographic subjects have become impressively eclectic—from classic travel trailers to cemetery symbolism and now to the hutongs, the older neighborhoods of Beijing.

“To Grandmother’s House: A Visit To Old-Town Beijing” ($15.95 in hardcover from Gibbs Smith, Publisher) is a simple documentary told in both Mandarin and English. Featuring Keister’s full-color photographs, the story begins with Zhang Yue: “Today my cousin Han Li and I are going to visit my grandmother and learn something special. In Beijing, the grandmother on our mother’s side is called Laolao.”

The author is scheduled to sign copies of his book at Lyon Books in Chico on Thursday, February 7 (the start of the Chinese New Year, the “Year of the Rat”) from 4:00 – 6:00 PM. Children and other people are invited.

Keister also includes a pronunciation guide for key words. Zhang Yue is pronounced “zang whee”; Laolao “rhymes with cow-cow.”

Grandmother lives in one of the hutongs (“hoo-tong”), “some of the oldest neighborhoods in Beijing. Some houses are more than three hundred years old.” Zhang Yue and her cousin take a pedicab and along the way stop at various shops, some featuring intricate paper cutouts, others selling candies. They visit a drum tower, “more than seven hundred and fifty years old. In the old days, drums were beaten at certain times in the day so people knew what time it was.” The ritual practice continues today.

When Zhang Yue and Han Li arrive at Laolao’s house, they find “she is going to make us special dumplings we call jiaozi (“jee-oh-zee”). . . . Laolao tells me she has another surprise for me. She says we are going to make the dumplings together.”

There are pictures of rolling the dough, adding the filling, pinching the ends. At the end there’s a detailed recipe for the dumplings, as well as dipping sauce, and an invitation from Zhang Yue for readers to visit Beijing and explore the hutongs.

In an author’s note for teachers, Keister notes that “Beijing is a city with a long, rich, complex history. There is a special texture to Beijing. It’s an intoxicating blend of old traditions, beautiful scenery, and stunning architecture.” Though modernization has cost a number of hutongs, others are being preserved. They reveal a different Beijing, one well worth visiting. “And have some dumplings when you’re there!”

Literary controversy swirls around the late Ray Carver, one of Chico’s own

In 1958 Raymond Carver moved from Yakima to Paradise. Enrolling at Chico State College, he was guided by John Gardner, who was also on his way to fame as a writer. But it was not until he met editor Gordon Lish, in 1967, that Carver’s skill began to be refined. Two years later Lish became the fiction editor of Esquire where he published Carver’s stories over the next decade.

Before his death in 1988 Carver was a star in the literary firmament. The critic Frank Kermode wrote that “Carver’s fiction is so spare in manner that it takes a time before one realizes how completely a whole culture and a whole moral condition is represented by even the most seemingly slight sketch.” His first collection, “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” (1976) as well as “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1981) heralded the advent of a master of minimalism.

Those stories had been edited by Gordon Lish. In the New Yorker for December 24 & 31, 2007 (www.newyorker.com) the editor lays out the controversy. Just before “What We Talk About” was to go to print, Caver frantically wrote to Lish asking him to suspend publication. “Carver had been up all night reviewing Lish’s severe editorial cuts—two stories had been slashed by nearly seventy per cent, many by almost half; many descriptions and digressions were gone; endings had been truncated or rewritten—and he was unnerved to the point of desperation.” Carver “feared exposure before his friends, who had read many of the stories in their earlier versions.”

The magazine prints a series of Carver’s letters to Lish and the original text of the story (then called “Beginners”) that became “What We Talk About” (giving the title to the collection).

Did Lish “create” Ray Carver’s voice? The Lish-edited story is static; the characters (two married couples) remain around the table as the sun sets. It’s a bleak story that fades to black.

The longer version feels embellished, more sentimental, more spelled out. The characters move around. At the end the narrator stares out the window, making contact with the outside world. Near the end Carver had written: “Herb finished his drink. Then he got slowly up from the table and said, ‘Excuse me. I’ll go shower.’ He left the kitchen and walked slowly down the hall to the bathroom. He shut the door behind him.” As Lish edited it: “Herb finished his drink. ‘Gin’s gone,’ Herb said.” No getting up. No shower.

So who is “Ray Carver”?

Paradise poet on the hard realities of life—and death

The poetry of Paradise author Elizabeth A. Bernstein is not exactly sweetness and light. Words from just two pages of her newest collection include “cursed,” “famine,” “bitter.” Somber words that match somber times. The winds of chaos engulfing the world (only a slight exaggeration) need those who can imagine something better to push against the force. But it requires great fortitude.

“Walk Into the Wind” is a little paperback from Pine Cone Ridge Press. (For information on price please write the publisher at P.O. Box 94, Paradise, CA 95967-0094.) The first selection gives the book its title and even a kind of hope:

Walk into the wind

Conquer fear

as it flees the storm’s mouth

drowns the deep ocean’s roar.

Watch light

drink its last breath

as the mind’s eye goes dark.

Heed the star

that illuminates wisdom

stirring the far reach of thought. . . .

There is much that requires our fortitude. In “Suicide Bomber” the poet writes: “I bequeath you, O world, a spiraling / rage that spreads like cancer // From violated space / fueling pain and more pain. . . .” In “Baghdad,” the focus is on the “city of a thousand gardens”: “Falsehood batters down your doors, / forked tongues deny rumors of greed, // Rivers flee firestorms of iniquity, / palm trees tremble even as they sleep. . . .” Yet the city will “triumph over destiny” as “The Faithful reach out their hands, / welcome you to the banquet of tomorrow.”

No one in this panoply of misery is spared, yet even in the midst of “demons dancing frenzied killing fields” (in “Tibet – A Tribute”) there is something “Beyond the melted edge of memory - / healing the wounds of blasted innocence - / your prayer wheels turn on singing silences. / You breathe again the deep, blue Infinite / where your spirit soars another sky.” In “Volcano,” “A spirit issues / from the throes of death // Becomes life.” In “On Eating Flesh,” there is “One cell / Countless galaxies / One Great Spirit.”

The poet remembers the songs from the old country (“Melodies carried in suitcases”), even (in “Time Passing”) in “The splintered hours / and the cries that fall from them.”

And now, at the end, the wind is a friend. In “Last Request,” “Let me / Cling to the last sense / That leaves us as we leave // Hearing - / Hearing the wind / That oldest keening // Hearing / Sibelius / Finlandia . . . // Hearing eternity.”

Nick Ellena’s travel columns now in colorful coffee table book

If St. Nick had to do a lot of traveling this holiday season, the Enterprise-Record’s own Nick Ellena is not far behind in frequent flyer miles. Retired after 44 years with the paper, Ellena’s “Flashbacks” column has been a popular weekly feature; now, some 63 of them have been collected between hard covers and profusely illustrated with Ellena’s color photography.

“Flashbacks From Here and There . . . : Pages From the Journal of An Adventure Traveler” ($32.95 in hardcover from www.nickellena.com) takes the reader from the Vietnam War to the carvers of Kenya; from a Bolivian yo-yo craze to “Whymper’s Ghost.” As Tonya R. B. Dale says in her introduction, “Nick’s stories capture a place and time—as well as a thinking person’s perspective on what he’s seen.”

On the same page with these words is a photograph of Ellena “at base camp for Mount Everest.” Though Ellena has been pretty much everywhere, it’s clear from his accounts that mountains are his “peak” experience, reflected in his glorious photographs of Mt. Tocllarahu in Peru; Mt. Kolahoi in Kashmir; Lassen and Shasta; and many more. But he didn’t just look at mountains; he climbed them. Since his marriage to Gina, the couple has traipsed the world (and Gina herself contributes several chapters).

The columns are not arranged in chronological order, and several pieces of connected stories are scattered throughout the book. After several articles about South America early on, the reader learns later in the book that “in 1972 Mike Ramsey, then a cub reporter for the Oroville Mercury and now our acclaimed district attorney, hitchhiked, boated, trained and bused with me through Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. We parted ways in Sao Paolo when Ramsey preferred to show a young lady the lights of Rio than visit Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina with me.” Go figure.

Three years later Ellena was in Udaipur, India writing that “for some weird reason that may merit psychological analysis, I’d been enthralled by ancient arms and deeds of derring-do. In travels to places where they figure prominently in local history, it was fun to prowl the bazaars and dusty shops where an old piece of cutlery might be lurking at a bargain price.”

In June 1990 he filed a report from Gilgit, Pakistan covering, of all things, practice matches for a polo tournament between two local military units “in the thin air of Shandur Pass at an altitude of 12,238 feet.”

“Flashbacks” chronicles an amazing life of travel and the author’s sheer delight in people.

The year in local books

This column began back on March 4, 1987 and celebrated two decades of weekly reviews this year. We were graced with an Annie award as well, for which we are grateful. Most gratifying, of course, are the notes over the years that have indicated the column has been of some small service in bringing readers and authors together.

In the history and memoir department, this year’s featured works included “Too Many Irons in the Fire: The Life and Times of Charles F. Stover and the History of the Ranching Families of Tehama, Lassen and Plumas Counties, 1850-2006” (Cheryl Conard Haase); “You Too Could Go to Federal Prison!” (Dorothy J. Parker); “Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The U.S. Navy’s Ocean Minesweepers, 1953-1994” (David D. Bruhn); “After the Dust Has Settled” (Dick Cory); “Towns of Mount Lassen” (William Shelton); “The House at 5th and Salem” (Chico’s Stansbury home) by Frederick S. Clough; and “85 Years – Durham High School” (Adriana Farley).

I reviewed two scholarly but accessible works from Chico State University professors, “Interfaith Encounters in America” by Kate McCarthy and “The Altruistic Species: Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives of Human Benevolence” by Andrew Michael Flescher and Daniel L. Worthen.

There were inspirational works, too: “Foolsgold: Making Something From Nothing and Freeing Your Creative Process” by Susan Wooldridge (a hardcover selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club); “Power Stories: Everyday Women Creating Extraordinary Lives” edited by Cara Gubbins; “The Seven Principles of Golf: Mastering the Mental Game On and Off the Golf Course” by Darrin Gee; and “Becoming the Kind Father: A Son’s Journey” by Calvin Sandborn.

For young people: “Grand Canyon: Tale of the Scorpion (Adventures with the Parkers series)” by Mike Graf; “The Legend of Boomer Jack” by Tim Martin; and “Gracie’s Big Adventure With the Misfits” by Debbie Cobb.

This year also saw reviews of the Convergence Web magazine (www.convergence-journal.com) co-edited by Lara Gularte; and the humorous picture book “Animals Thinking Out Loud” by Mike and Nancy Agliolo.

The column featured two works by local poets: “Poem Pudding” by Archie Dan Murphy and “End-Cycle: Poems About Caregiving” by Patricia Wellingham-Jones.

Finally, there were the 9 novels (well, 8 novels and a collection of short stories) from area writers: “Sailing: Inside Passages – The Mysteries of the Inner Sea” (David Downes); “Flyboys—Risky Business” (Dean O. Talley); “Good Things” (Darien Gee writing as Mia King); “Quad” (Carrie Gordon Watson); “Happy Valley College” (Dick Carlsen); “Cutthroat” (Steve Brewer); “Paradise Stories” (Dustin Heron); “Lawrence of Vietnam” (Michael M. Peters); and “The Culverts of Humboldt County” (Tim Martin).

It was a good year.

Image by Bill Husa, Chico Enterprise-Record

The Christmas story made new: fresh words from a pastor’s heart

Eugene H. Peterson, seminary teacher and Presbyterian pastor, spent a decade working from Greek and Hebrew texts to produce the Message, a Bible paraphrase in contemporary English. Long an advocate of what he calls “spiritual theology,” Peterson has taken excerpts from his sermons and devotional writings, added them in appropriate places in the Message, and published the result as “Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator” ($39.99 in hardcover from Navpress).

The conversations, he writes, “are more casual than formal. . . . We’ll travel a lot of terrain together, some of it breathtakingly scenic, some of its ploddingly plain, and some of it precariously uncertain. Here and there along the way I’ll point out details in the biblical landscape, drawing attention to a particular word, pointing out a pertinent piece of historical background, pausing a moment to talk with you and to lead you in prayer.” This is not a study Bible, though; it is a reading Bible, and Peterson’s turns of phrase can sometimes be sharp and startling. Familiar passages are made fresh and shake the reader awake.

Mary’s Magnificat in Luke’s Christmas story is street-wise: “I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Savior God. God took one good look at me, and look what happened—I’m the most fortunate woman on earth! . . . His mercy flows in wave and after wave on those who are in awe before him. . . . The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold.”

The first chapter of John’s gospel speaks of the Incarnation: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” Peterson’s comments are set off from the biblical text by a different type face; at this point he asks, “Do you want to see God present among you? Do you want to come into the presence of God and worship him? Here he’s making himself at home among you: Jesus—pitching his tent, building his home, and moving into the neighborhood. Your neighborhood.”

Two thousand years ago, “there were sheepherders camping in the neighborhood.” The second chapter of Luke’s gospel goes on to say, in Peterson’s paraphrase, “Suddenly, God’s angel stood among them and God’s glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A Savior has just been born in David’s town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. . . .’”

Christmas. Here.

Debbie Cobb’s second children’s book just in time for giving

If Debbie Cobb is best known as the weekend anchor for Channels 12 and 24, she’s making a new name for herself among young readers. First came “Gracie’s Big Adventure With Augustine the Beaver,” published in 2006, and now, this year, “Gracie’s Big Adventure With the Misfits” ($10.95 in paperback from Laurob Press). Both books are available locally at Barnes and Noble, Bird in Hand, the A.S. Bookstore at Chico State University, Made In Chico, The Creative Apple, and Lyon Books. For online information about the books readers can go to dcobbconsulting.com.

The author will be signing copies at the Redding Library on Saturday from 10:00 a.m. until noon and at Lyon Books in downtown Chico this Sunday from noon until 1:30 p.m. The public is invited for a kid-friendly presentation.

The full-color, full-page illustrations by Steve Ferchaud for “The Misfits” are particularly vibrant. They draw the reader into the fun, and young Gracie’s wide smile is not a little reminiscent of Cobb’s own.

Who are the misfits? There are three: Freeman the duck doesn’t like water; Alan the mouse is missing a tail (thanks to a crafty cat); and Tony the turtle has lost his shell. Gracie adopts them all and writes up a fix-it list. It turns out that Tony the turtle really likes water, and Gracie turns on the sprinkler. “It wasn’t long before Alan scurried across the lawn and got all wet, too. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Freeman took one bold step forward, then another and another. This duck no longer had a fear of water.”

Spurred on, Gracie decides to look for Tony’s shell and eventually finds it after a long search. “Gracie had almost completed her mission. She had one more thing on her list to fix.” Where to get Alan a tail? Could Grammy sew one on? Could one be glued on?

But then Gracie realizes something. Though Alan had no tail, “Gracie loved him just the same.” The moral of the book, Cobb writes me, is “about accepting others despite their differences and knowing even if you are different, you’re still loved.”

Cobb’s first book had hidden “G’s” (for Gracie) in each illustration; in “Misfits” there are hidden M’s. And, she writes me, “There’s also a park scene where the bench says ‘Bidwell Park’ with a cat in the scene. It’s total Chico for the locals.” (Just a hint: in that picture, the M is in the tree!)

It’s an old fashioned story with a moral, a simple tale with resonances in the wider world.

From McKinleyville author: A “love-‘em-and-leave-‘em” story for rednecks

Retired engineer Timothy Martin has written books about running and dogs, but “The Culverts of Humboldt County” ($16.95 in paperback from PublishAmerica, available through amazon.com), is something else entirely. It’s a politically incorrect “romance for men” that wallows in redneck culture even as it’s being satirized. It’s “The Bridges of Madison County” for those with an “affinity for fried food, the NRA, John Deere tractors, ruined vehicles, and anything that explodes in a really, really big way.”

The story is pretty simple (presumably out of respect for its readers). Told to the author by one Ruby Harmon, now of Redding, the tale takes place in 1982. Earl Perkins of Ukiah is “the last of a dying breed, a hard-drinking, pickup-driving man at the end of an era, confused by a time of dwindling timber resources and the fading dignity of sweat and physical toil.” He’s a culvert repairman who leaves his plus-size wife after having “cheated on Elvira no less than a hundred times during their marriage.” But, “being the kind-hearted soul that he was, Earl left Elvira almost everything he owned. He left his matched set of World Wrestling Federation beer coolers, his eight track Marty Robbins tapes and his velvet Elvis painting. . . . Earl took his K-Mart tools, a quart or two of whiskey, and nothing more.” Generous.

Eventually on his travels he encounters Charlene Bickle, also unhappily married, “a tall, good-looking, long-legged woman with a tiny naked Smurf tattooed between her breasts who subsisted on tobacco smoke and beer.” They eventually wind up dirty dancing at the Nasty Place, a bar that is “dimly lit and decorated in typical white trash fashion with bowling trophies and posters of girls in tight jeans, bending over,” and, when the inevitable brawl breaks out, they escape only to find ecstasy in each other’s arms. Then comes a chapter called “A Bounce on the Bedsprings,” if you get what I mean.

Martin is clear that “this is not a tale of love and confession among the rich and unethical. . . . This book is a tacky testimonial to bad hangovers, cigarette burns, and anyone who can belch and say their name at the same time.” It’s also “not for the faint of heart. . . . It’s a reader’s equivalent of a steel splinter from a flywheel striking you in the face. . . . It’s a skinned knee, a nosebleed, and a concussion from a car slipping off the jack and landing on your head.”

So why did I laugh out loud?

85 years of Durham High School

By Dan Barnett

Adriana Langerwerf Farley of Durham is an indefatigable compiler. Local historians will be much in her debt as will decades of Durham High School grads whose names (almost 4,000 of them) are now between covers.

Copies of "85 Years — Durham High School" (146 pages, spiral bound) are sold at cost for $10. To order a copy, contact Farley at atfarley@hughes.net or call 894-3163.

Farley writes me that in 2004, while she was working on a book about World War II, she found three names on the Durham Honor Roll that she couldn't identify. "Two names turned out to be former administrators, and one was a teacher. When trying to find information on these three, the high school office and the DUSD district office seemed to be the place to go for help. Neither could provide information, even the years they'd been employed. With permission from Principal Paul Arnold, and a lot of help from Yolanda Prentice, all the copies of the Durham High's annual The Corona were borrowed from the DHS archives (the vault in the office) from 1923 through 2007 and scanned, copied, transcribed."

That produced the following lists, all of which are included in the book:

1. "All trustees 1921 through 2007, and dates they served, including newspaper clippings and photographs of individuals from their family members."

2. A similar list "of all superintendents 1950-2007 including pictures and signatures scanned from The Corona, with a one-page biography for each."

3. "All principals (there are 18) 1921-2007. Each principal has a one-page biography, although a couple have only scant information, alas."

4. "All faculty (certificated staff) and their service dates, along with a chronology of school and building changes from 1921-2007. The teacher's full name is provided and the year he or she was added to the staff," as well as the yearly dedications to faculty and staff that appeared in The Corona.

5. Finally, "with the assistance of present day DUSD staff member Pat Smith, a list was compiled of all classified staff 1953-2007." (No record exists for classified employees before 1953.)

A message from one of the principals, Harold P. Hill, is particularly striking. "We have been told by our coaches that we are changing from a defensive style of play to an offensive attack. We won't let the team down... The head coach in Washington has said, 'With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.'"

— From The Corona, 1942.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Growing up in Oroville with an alcoholic father, a law professor struggles to learn kindness

By DAN BARNETT

Calvin Sandborn graduated from Chico State University and is now a member of the University of Victoria law faculty, supervising that school's Environmental Law Clinic.

He writes me that his new book, "Becoming the Kind Father: A Son's Journey" ($15.95 in paperback from New Society Publishers) is "a story of growing up in Oroville with an angry alcoholic father. The book has become a best-seller in Canada, and sales are beginning to rise in the U.S."

That suggests it's meeting a need for men trapped in a system of patriarchal expectations summarized in the "Boy Code" delineated by writer William Pollack and others: Be stoic and don't show weakness; don't show emotion, unless it's anger; be macho; and in a world of winners and losers, don't be a loser.

Sandborn writes that "my own father was a harsh, hard-drinking, hard-swearing, tattooed man's man. He drilled the Boy Code into me, and insisted I wear the Masculine Armor. But this book is the story of how, in mid-life, I abandoned the armor and took off the mask. As I passed from hero to mortal, I began to feel again. After decades lost in man's deep sleep, trapped in patriarchy's tragic script, I reestablished a relationship with my self."

Unable to escape the inner voice of his late dad ("Can't I count on you for anything?" "Don't cry!"), Sandborn turns to a counselor who helps him replace the voice of the Harsh Father with that of the Kind Father. The author also learns "an emotional vocabulary," so rather than exaggerating a difficulty ("I'm furious!") or falsely minimizing it ("It's nothing!"), he learns to talk about being irritated, frustrated, peeved or sad. It was a liberation in terms of his physical health and the simple enjoyment of life.

There is strong language here as Sandborn recounts the self talk of the Harsh Father. The Kind Father is affirming and supportive; Sanborn's claim that "we all merit grace" is less a theological statement than a plea to give each other a break since everyone makes mistakes.

Chapters in the book deal with the problem of chronic anger and how to forgive oneself. Mixing insights from group therapy, Christianity, Buddhism, Greek myth, anger research and his own experiences, Sandborn comes to understand his father, someone who had no one to tell him the good things about himself.

"The fact was," the author writes, "he didn't have to die alone in the Country of Resentment. There was room for him in the Country of Love."

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Kids should bee-hive themselves - Children's books on bees for the California Nut Festival

By DAN BARNETT

The annual California Nut Festival, centered in Chico, takes place Feb. 16-23. Sponsored by the Far West Heritage Association, stewards of the Chico Museum and Patrick Ranch, the focus is on "bees and almonds."

In addition to mall walks, lectures, almond blossom tours and museum exhibits, discussion groups are being formed around the "city-wide" book "Letters From the Hive" ($14 in paperback from Bantam Books) as well as several children's books selected for the occasion.

One of those books, "The Magic School Bus: Inside a Beehive" ($5.99 in paperback from Scholastic), part of the Magic School Bus science series, offers youngsters busy pages full of colorful drawings (by Bruce Degen) and a simple but beguiling story line (by Joanna Cole). Ms. Frizzle's pupils (they call her "the Friz") embark on an extraordinary field trip to visit a beekeeper. Along the way their school bus turns into what looks like a hive; the children all resemble bees.

"'We'll have to visit flowers and get bee food in order to gain entrance to the hive. Follow that bee!' shouted the Friz."

And that is the start of a tale that includes a bear, a beekeeper and a queen bee that "lays up to 1,500 eggs per day." "Eggs-cellent!" shouts one of the students.

The last two pages of the tale give readers a reality check. One butterfly remarks, "This book shows bees making honey in a few minutes. It actually takes them many hours." Then there's a bug chorus at the end: "And this book shows insects talking in words." "Anyone knows we can't do that." "We can't?" "Aw, shucks ..." "We'd better be quiet, then."

"Buzzing Bumblebees" ($5.95 in paperback from Lerner Publishing), by Joelle Riley, uses close-up color photography and simple text to chart the life of a bumblebee. The book also includes a "hunt and find" exercise that encourages readers to look for eggs and more in the photographs.

Finally, "Hooray for Beekeeping!" ($7.95 in paperback from Crabtree Publishing), a Bobbie Kalman Book, uses photographs, drawings and short narratives to show the parts of an apiary hive and to explain how honey is extracted and why migratory beekeepers are becoming popular. The bees' round dance shows how near the food is, and the "wagtail dance" shows its direction. There's even a recipe for a "sweet and sticky apple sandwich."

Just remember, money can buy a lot, but (to rip off a line from Rocky and Bullwinkle), the bee stings in life are free!

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

All the buzz - Chico-based California Nut Festival selects its featured book for discussion groups

By DAN BARNETT

The California Nut Festival, which will take place Feb. 16-23 in Chico, is sponsored by the Far West Heritage Association, stewards of the Chico Museum and Patrick Ranch.

Planned are art exhibits, almond blossom tours, a mall walk (in partnership with the American Heart Association), merchant events, special speakers and more, all in celebration of bees "and their tremendous value to our almond trees in Chico." They even got Jerry Seinfeld to release a movie about bees — at least that's the rumor I'm spreading.

In advance of the festivities, discussion groups are being formed to talk about the "city-wide book" which this year is "Letters From the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind" ($14 in paperback from Bantam Books) by Stephen Buchmann with Banning Repplier.

Buchmann is a Tucson, Ariz.-based associate professor of entomology and amateur beekeeper, and Repplier is a New York writer.
The book is an homage to all things bee-utiful as it tells the story of prehistoric honey hunters; the craft of beekeeping; secrets of the bee; honey in myth and legend; varieties of honey and its medicinal uses (honey contains hydrogen peroxide that can kill bacteria); cooking with honey; and how to make mead ("water sweetened with honey and allowed to ferment").

"Letters From the Hive" was published in 2005. A year later, reports began to surface from the United States and other parts of the world that honeybees were abandoning their hives. The syndrome was named "colony collapse disorder" and, in a recent article in the New Yorker ("Stung," by Elizabeth Kolbert) and a PBS documentary ("The Silence of the Bees") it appears that a virus is the culprit. Not only is the beekeeping industry threatened, but so are the crops that depend upon pollination, and that includes almonds.

"Letters" is especially valuable in taking the reader into the world of the bee. "If we could shrink ourselves down to bee size and enter the inner world of the nest, we would find it an alien place, dark, crowded and oppressively hot and humid. But bees are not humans, and presumably they feel comfortable in the hive, which is home to a queen, tens of thousands of her daughters, and a few hundred or so of her sons. Double-sided hexagonal combs line the walls, floors and ceilings of the nest. ... The waxen cubicles serve a multitude of functions, from storage pantries and nurseries to dance floors for the waggle dancing of successful foragers."

It's a honey of a tale.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Two Chico State University professors publish book on altruism, speak Friday

By DAN BARNETT

It's likely that within a short distance of where you are there are people who could use your help. Maybe those people are in your own family.

Helping them would cost something: in time, treasure or emotional involvement, and it's tempting to think that genuine self-giving is the province of those moral saints we can never hope to emulate. But, according to two Chico academics, we'd be wrong.

Associate professors Andrew Michael Flescher (religious studies) and Daniel L. Worthen (psychology) contend that altruism (a regard for others in which their well-being becomes "the ultimate object of one's concern") is practiced by more "everyday" people than we might think. For the past several years the two instructors have taught "What Motivates Altruism?" to groups of honors students, taking a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the phenomenon. But it's not just theory. Each student is asked to shadow certain Chico residents who are "directly engaged in social advocacy, welfare, and service." Students report back how ordinary these people are. And they begin to see that altruism is not just for the Mother Teresas of the world.

Flescher and Worthen have now published a book based on the class. "The Altruistic Species: Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives of Human Benevolence" ($34.95 in paperback from Templeton Foundation Press) will be the subject a talk given by both authors 3­4:45 p.m. Friday in Trinity 100 on the Chico State University campus. The event, sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies and the Humanities Center, is free and open to the public.

Though the book delves into biological kinship systems and Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, the writing is clear and accessible. In its calm way of demolishing objections to the authors' contention that most all of us have the capacity — and moral obligation — to become more altruistic in our character (as part of what Aristotle called human flourishing), the book is also revolutionary.

Two examples will suffice. Chicoans Farshad Azad, whose Basket Brigade helps feed people during the holidays, and Matt Jackson, "who launched Chico's Boys and Girls Club" and volunteers with the NAACP, "stress not only that there is little special about them ... but also that the effort they exert should not be confined to themselves alone. The 'work' of becoming altruistic can and should be shouldered by many."

It's a matter, the authors say, of "practicing ... moral skills" which become part of the "stable character" of altruism. It is a measure of the genuinely happy life.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Poet, activist Brenda Hillman speaking tonight in Chico

By DAN BARNETT

As part of the On the Creek Lectures series, writers Brenda Hillman and Forrest Gander will speak tonight at 7:30 at the Rowland-Taylor Recital Hall/PAC 132 on the Chico State University campus. Sponsored by Chico Performances and the Institute of Sustainable Development, the presentation is free to the public but tickets are required. They're available at University Box Office or by calling 898-6333.

Hillman's latest work, "Pieces of Air in the Epic" ($13.95 in paperback from Wesleyan), is the second of a poetic tetralogy focusing on the primal constituents of the world: earth, air, fire, water. Her poetry is experimental, bending and chopping meanings, pulling apart lines as if to let the air in (or out), using symbols and repeated letters and coining words in Hopkins-like fashion, sometimes drawing the reader's attention to how the words sit on the page, sometimes pushing images together that don't make sense, but do.

The book is difficult, in part because its author inhabits a kind of gnostic world only a few can enter. Those who know her work well have written short essays on individual poems in "Pieces of Air," available online at www.jacketmagazine.com/33/ and they are immensely helpful as an entrance into a dizzying world that insists, despite war and more war, that the song (the quintessential breath) will go on.

Air is part of the natural world; it is life, spirit, wind, invisible. The epic is something human made, telling of fighting, violence, conquest (think of Homer's "Iliad" or Virgil's "Aeneid"). What happens when the two come together? In "Nine Untitled Epyllions" (an epyllion is a short epic, usually with a romantic theme) the first line reads: "Something about breathing / The air inside a war." This group of poems is "dedicated to all who have suffered & died as a result of the war in Iraq."

"Embedded with Bechtel McDonald's" the words read, "With Daddy War — or Starbucks' floating voice / Over e-e-e-each / Exploded body into third forever / News briefs with short particulars." But "In the malls ... The war is forget forgot forgotten. ... The mall is a square with bumps like a small epic. / Through vents, winds swirl: / 1) a sort of sweet lite rock 2) faded popcorn / 3) infinity 4) a breezy o in the word world."

There is more, from oddnesses in libraries (the wind stirs the dust motes) to Altamont Pass ("the breeze turns and turns"). Not warfare; airfare.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Chico novelist takes a wry look at the Vietnam War

By DAN BARNETT

An author's note for Chicoan Michael M. Peters says he was a sergeant during the Vietnam War, "working on F-105s, F-111s and C-130s."

His novel, "Lawrence of Vietnam" ($14.95 in paper from Stansbury Publishing, www.HeidelbergGraphics.com) "is a teenager's view of the war."

The story is told by a young man named Broadleaf, stationed somewhere in Vietnam. At one point he's asked how he got his name. "I was born in the South." "How'd you wind up here?" "I'm in Vietnam avoiding the draft." So why did he really join? To forget a girlfriend? "I dunno," Broadleaf replies. "Maybe I'm a mercenary. Maybe I joined up for the 25 bucks a week."

Broadleaf and his compatriots, Turnly, Dortmunder and Weirdo, share plenty of beer and leaf. Broadleaf becomes a sergeant, is sent home to the states, encounters a war protest at the local university, meets a coed named Cyndi and impresses her with his talk of "secret missions," and is shipped back to Vietnam. Broadleaf is associated with all kinds of planes and helicopters, but it's unclear just exactly what he does. He's always being asked that question and doesn't have much of a reply.

There's the mission "to fly a cargo plane into a besieged airbase and rescue everybody there that was on our side." At one point Broadleaf is left on the airstrip while he waits for rescue himself. "I walk to the side of the runway and lean up against a wooden shack. ... I sit down on the ground to make a smaller target and light up a joint." When he's picked up the crew chief notices that Broadleaf "had all kinds of fun shooting your rifle. We watched you from the plane. You like it out here. You're Lawrence of Vietnam."

Broadleaf survives and returns to college but can't stand the profs who think they know all about the war. "I disagreed with them, trying to explain that we left South Vietnam in 1972 and three years after we left, the South Vietnamese lost, not us. This upset their way of thinking and made them confused and rather than admit they were wrong and that their lives were useless, they flunked me."

As for Broadleaf, he's still trying to figure out his own life. The book ends with some of his poetry, most better left unpublished, though there is this line: "His wives were of such variety / He had no time for piety." Not much piety in the book, either. Cynicism will have to do.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Is Dawkins deluded with his denial?

By DAN BARNETT

Robert Bellah presented a public lecture at Chico State University in September, sponsored in part by the school's religious studies department.

He is the lead author of "Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life" ($18.95 in paper in a just-published third edition from University of California Press) and a sociologist who has focused on the place of religion in public life.

During his talk, Bellah, an Episcopalian, acknowledged that there are those, like evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who believe religious discourse has no place in the "public sphere." Bellah, with a twinkle in his eye, characterized Dawkins and his kin (such as Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett) as "Enlightenment fundamentalists."

In effect Bellah was saying that if religious fundamentalists can sometimes be intemperate and irrational, so can, well, atheists.

Dawkins' best-seller is "The God Delusion" ($27 in hardcover from Houghton Mifflin). Though I read parts of the book, I was put off by Dawkins' claim that if folks could just get their consciousness raised they'd drop the whole God business forthwith.

But that amounts to little more than saying "if more people saw things the way I see them, more people would be atheists." Well, duh!
Alister McGrath, who did research in molecular biophysics before becoming professor of historical theology at Oxford University, has more patience. Together with his wife, psychologist Joanna Collicutt McGrath, the two have written "The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine" ($16 in hardcover from IVP Books).

In their brief treatment, the McGraths conclude that "the total dogmatic conviction of correctness which pervades some sections of Western atheism today — wonderfully illustrated in 'The God Delusion' — immediately aligns it with a religious fundamentalism that refuses to allow its ideas to be examined or challenged."

The McGraths agree with Dawkins that the world has seen too much violence in the name of religion. But they note his refusal to consider counter-evidence to his claim that, as Alister McGrath writes, "the God Dawkins does not believe in is 'a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.' Come to think of it, I don't believe in a God like that either. In fact, I don't know anybody who does."

The McGraths discuss four questions: Is someone who believes in God deluded? Has science disproved God? What are the origins of religion? Is religion evil?

Their answers are a nuanced corrective to Dawkins' excesses and offer reasons to think that Bellah knew exactly what he was talking about.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Former Paradise resident offers short-story collection

By DAN BARNETT

"Paradise Stories" ($15 in paperback from Small Desk Press, www.smalldeskpress.com) by Dustin Heron begins in 1994 with 10-year-old Billy, whose parents, Ant and Stan Wright, live in a trailer in Paradise.

One day their septic system backs up and floods the yard in front of the trailer and Billy is confronted by a giant pile of living, talking excrement that asks Billy if he wants to live forever. Then things really get interesting.

San Francisco-based Small Desk Press publishes talented new writers who push the literary envelope. Heron, who comes from Paradise, has crafted a series of 10 interconnected stories set in Paradise and Chico that takes the reader on a journey into the abject lives of the working poor. The stories are by turns revoltingly funny and sickeningly sad. The reader, like Billy, comes face-to-face with poop in all of its forms from the very first line in the book. Yet rather than fashion a grade-B comedy, Heron has done something quite extraordinary.

Even as this reader at least is reeling from the machine-gun assault of the S-word, Heron transforms the utterly incredible into a gimlet-eyed view of the human condition, and hope in the midst of excrement. Sucker-punched, I couldn't stop reading.

Old Roland Gary (Ant is his niece) is in front of St. Thomas More in Paradise, half drunk, cynical and sarcastic, about to attend his late wife's memorial service. He spies the Gold Nugget Parade on the Skyway. "Floats, designed by children and other half-wits, rumbled down the street affixed to rusty old Fords spewing clouds of black exhaust to a raucous soundtrack of fiddles and beer-addled shouting. Grubby-faced children, smeared from head to toe in cotton candy, tugged on the floral petticoats of their grandmothers for money to buy one of the pieces of low-quality garbage housed under those white tents on the hill. ..." There was "a proliferation of fool's gold ... necklaces and bracelets, figurines — any and everything glittering with the same false promise the whole town had been founded on."

Then Dan, the winner of the Donkey Derby, appeared. The Derby "simulated the founding of Paradise, wherein one lucky group of miners found a 50-pound gold nugget in the river & and lugged it up the hill on the back of a donkey and started the town of Paradise, where the hopeful swarmed, staked their claims, fought and loved and killed and began lives — only to discover that the Feather River contained exactly 50 pounds of gold, and it had already been spent."

There. You have been warned.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Adventure crime novelist displays wisdom of Solomon

By DAN BARNETT

Steve Brewer of Redding made his mark with the Bubba Mabry mystery series and stand-alone titles such as "Whipsaw" and "Bank Job."

From the looks of it, he's starting a new series featuring 33-year-old Solomon Gage, all brains and brawn stuffed into a handsome package that everyone says looks like "Mr. Clean." You know, from the commercials.

Gage is introduced in "Cutthroat" ($14.95 in paperback from Bleak House Books) as a fix-it man for billionaire Dominick Sheffield and his family enterprises headquartered in San Francisco. Gage's mother worked for Sheffield as an executive assistant until she was killed in a car wreck. "I was 14," Gage tells Lucinda Cruz, the beauteous divorce attorney, "and Dom took me in, put me through school, trained me to be his assistant."

It was no ordinary training. As Brewer writes, "Solomon was educated in business, the humanities and the special skills (martial arts, firearms, evasive driving, risk analysis, etiquette) that made him the perfect right-hand man."

The word "cutthroat" has multiple meanings in the book. Cutthroat Lodge is the name of the Sheffield family sanctuary deep in Mendocino County. The nearby creek, of course, is full of cutthroat trout. And then there is Robert Mboku, a hired killer who wields a mean machete.

The plot has rat-a-tat action to match the gunfire in the book. Dom's two ne'er-do-well sons are mixed up in some nefarious back-room deals with none other than Gen. Erasmus Goma, Supreme Military Commander of the Republic of Niger. Michael Sheffield (who was "bald and wore a mustache") and his brother Chris are poster boys for all that's wrong in the world.

As Dom muses, "What is it about the children of the rich? & Why do they so easily succumb to vice? Look at Chris, with his gluttony and his greed. Michael, with his infidelity. & A man works hard all his life to provide for his family. The money turns around and destroys those he loves. & So different from Solomon. Sometimes, Dom felt Solomon could read his mind."

Early in the story Abby, the strung-out child of Dom's daughter, doesn't understand the biblical reference to Solomon. "What was he?" she asks. "A wise king." She snorts. "That's you? You're wise?" "I'm trying."

"Cutthroat" is a tad darker and the stakes higher than some of the other recent Brewer novels. The satisfying ending opens the door for more Solomon Gage adventures. Be on the lookout.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Author and environmentalist Paul Hawken coming to Chico State University

By DAN BARNETT

Paul Hawken, who lives on Cascade Creek in Marin County, has for years chronicled the growth of what he calls a new kind of social movement, one that combines environmentalism, concern for social justice and an affirmation of the rights of indigenous peoples.

His research bears fruit in "Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming" ($24.95 in hardcover from Viking). Hawken says there is no name for this movement, but it likely encompasses more than a million nonprofit organizations around the world that are working, mostly on the local level, not to "save the world" but to "remake the world."

Hawken is scheduled to appear at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium as part of the On The Creek Lecture Series. Sponsored by Chico Performances, tickets are $15 for adults and seniors, $10 for students and children. Tickets are available at the University Box Office at 2nd & Normal Streets; call 898-6333.

The first half of "Blessed Unrest" offers a brief history of the movement's development, and he is optimistic. "The as yet undelivered promise of this movement is a network of organizations that offer solutions to disentangle what appear to be insoluble dilemmas: poverty, global climate change, terrorism, ecological degradation, polarization of income, loss of culture, and many more. ... If you examine its values, missions, goals, and principles ... you will see that at the core of all organizations are two principles, albeit unstated: first is the Golden Rule; second is the sacredness of all life, whether it be a creature, child, or culture."

The combined work of these organizations acts almost like an invisible hand, transcending the excesses and selfishness that creep into any group, helping the world heal itself: "Specifically, the shared activity of hundreds of thousands of nonprofit organizations can be seen as humanity's immune response to toxins like political corruption, economic disease, and ecological degradation."

The second half of the book is a taxonomy of the organizations in the movement, thousands of which are presented on the WiserEarth (www.wiserearth.org) site, which lists dozens of nonprofits in the Chico Area, including the Butte Environmental Council and the Chico Peace and Justice Center. Anyone can add to the database online.

For Hawken, the movement is one of cooperation and compassion, dedicated in all its forms to sustainability, "stabilizing the currently disruptive relationship between earth's two most complex systems - human culture and the living world." He adds, "I believe this movement will prevail."

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Story of Chico's Stansbury home begins with Mississippi culture

By DAN BARNETT

The Stansbury Home museum is one of Chico's favorite wedding venues, but those who don't know its history can visit "The House at 5th and Salem" ($7.50 in paper, commissioned by the Stansbury Home Preservation Association) through the eyes of Frederick S. Clough, the grandson of Dr. Oscar Stansbury.

Originally published in 1978, the reprint includes numerous black-and-white historical photographs of the house and its inhabitants, an overview map of Chico in 1871, and a Stansbury family tree.

Sorting through family possessions, Clough found hundreds of medical notes and letters (one from 1793) which he used to create "an informal account of my grandfather's life — his beginnings in Mississippi, his boyhood experiences during the Civil War, his college days, his journey west and highlights of his life in Chico from his arrival in 1875 until his death in 1926. But how to go about it? After some reflection, I decided to present the story in the form of a series of simulated interviews with Grandfather."

The portrait of O. Stansbury (he never liked "Oscar") that emerges is that of a person with a keen sense of humor and, according to his wife Libbie, not much business sense. Stansbury was the product of the Old South; Clough has his grandfather say the following: "If you are ever going to understand me as you put together these reminiscences, you will have to accept the fact that, as repugnant as it may seem to you, we Southerners avoided the moral judgment as to whether slavery was good or evil. It was simply a way of life." A publisher's note in the book asks readers to consider the story in the context of its times.

The house, of "Italianate design," was completed in 1883 at a cost of $7,273, with a thousand dollars more for the property.

The book not only details everyday life in Chico, but also Stansbury's experience in San Francisco in 1906 when, on April 18, just after five in the morning, "I was suddenly awakened by a terrifying rumble like the sound of 50 railroad engines bearing down on me. The bed began to tremble and lurched partly across the room. ... The next six days, while the city burned ... I spent in Golden Gate Park taking care of the injured with what medical supplies were issued to me, still wearing the few clothes I had managed to put on when disaster struck."

Stansbury's story is part of the warp and woof of Chico, woven into our past, illuminating our present.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Writer recalls Chico State College in the mid-'60s

By DAN BARNETT

Dick Carlsen, who with his wife, Cathy, lives in Virginia Beach, Va., writes that he "graduated from Chico State College in 1968, received my master's from Indiana University in 1973, and have been working for the Navy as a government civilian employee for 34 years."
He recently published his first novel, which takes place at the college in the years 1964-1967, called "Happy Valley College" ($17.99 in paper from www.authorhouse.com).

Carlsen says the book "has a strong undercurrent of the Vietnam War and military draft." The author adds that "the reader will also pick up some similarities between the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq, where my son is currently serving."

Carlsen's twin brother, Don, is a Chico resident and NFL official.

The story is told by Dave Pederson, whose parents drive him to meet his twin brother Dan at "Happy Valley College" north of Yuba City. What follows is a chronicle of free-spirited guys in their natural element: keggers, rowdiness, romances, sports, spring break, keggers and, on occasion, classes. Actually, the group of guys who formed the "Raiders" (a kind of alternative to the fraternities on campus) ended up doing pretty well in school, but that's not the focus of the book. Transition is.

The prologue takes place years later, when Dave Pederson visits the portable Vietnam War Wall set up at a Naval base in Maryland, and maybe such an event was the catalyst for Carlsen to write his account.

The book reads more like memoir than novel, and I found myself reliving my own time at Chico State during those same years. Carlsen remembers the "CAC," the student center later replaced by the Bell Memorial Union. But for some reason he renames the nearby park "Sutter Park & named after General John Sutter, the founder of Happy Valley whose beautiful Victorian mansion sat off The Boulevard and adjacent to the college property, and was used for a 1930s movie 'Robin Hood'."

The language is sometimes rough, and swearwords abbreviated in the first half are spelled out in the last.

When the draft becomes a reality there is little talk of fleeing to Canada or becoming conscientious objectors. Everyone wanted to get into the reserves, and through a chance encounter Dave succeeds. Later, though, when his drill sergeant is lost in the war, Dave applies for active duty.

Maybe his reason suggests the "outrageously crazy days" at Happy Valley were bought with a price: "I want," he says, "to make up for my indifference toward the war and our soldiers when I was in college."

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, e-mail dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Explicating Shakespeare and Snyder - A critic takes on William and Gary, more

By DAN BARNETT

Camille Paglia, professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, made a name for herself in the larger culture with "Sexual Personae" and a series of books that examined, to use the title of another, "Sex, Art, and American Culture."

Always the provocateur, Paglia is saddened by "poetry's declining status" which "has made its embattled practitioners insular and self-protective." Desiring to reach a wider audience, she has produced a volume of explications of individual poems in English that is humbling in its bravura performance and depressing in its worldview.

"Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems" ($12.95 in paperback from Vintage) takes its title from one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets (and one of the 43): "That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend / Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new."

Paglia writes that "Donne is appealing to God to overwhelm him and compel his redemption from sin. My secular but semimystical view of art is that it taps primal energies, breaks down barriers, and imperiously remakes our settled way of seeing. Animated by the breath force (the original meaning of 'spirit' and 'inspiration'), poetry brings exhilarating spiritual renewal."

But Paglia's worldview belies the wonder-working power of poetry. In Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73," the first work she considers, the bard reminds us "to love that well which thou must leave ere long."

"Whatever we seek or crave," Paglia writes, "a person, a profession, a high ideal — is evanescent. Nothing survives the ash pit of the grave. & Our sense of life's transience intensifies its pleasures."

At the end of the book, Paglia finds Joni Mitchell's performance of "Woodstock" "a harrowing lament for hopes dashed and energies tragically wasted."

In between, she calls Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" ("Before the indifferent beak could let her drop") the greatest poem of the 20th century. She notices that in Gary Snyder's "Old Pond" "a busy nuthatch & is & the modest, flutelike substitute for the authoritarian boom of the Judeo-Christian God" and all that is available to us is to subordinate our little selves to nature, "the here-and-now salvation of (Snyder's) 'naked bug.'"

The more contemporary poems Paglia picks are fairly thin gruel (such as Rochelle Kraut's "My Makeup," just one short sentence). Paglia finds sex everywhere, and she may well be confusing its drive with the more modest work of poetry, which only begets words.

Yet Paglia's line-by-line readings draw us in. This is a book to learn from, after all.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Redding writer contributes to 'Comfort' series

By DAN BARNETT

The "Cup of Comfort" Series (www.cupofcomfort.com) features short, true stories, mostly by freelance writers, organized around a variety of interests.

Colleen Sell, based in Eugene, Ore., has edited 19 of the volumes, including one of the newest, "A Cup of Comfort For Writers: Inspirational Stories That Celebrate the Literary Life" ($9.95 in paperback from Adams Media).

She says in her introduction that "it took a while for me to realize that writing is not just something I do; it is an essential part of who I am." Storytellers understand that writing is not opposed to living; it's part of living. "It is important," she adds, "for us writers to share our experiences and emotions, to tell of our trials and our triumphs, and to speak our truths about the writing life."

Some of those lessons emerge in the chapter called "Potty Talk" by Redding resident Marla Doherty (who has also contributed to the volumes on mothers and daughters, women in love and dog lovers). A note on the 50 contributors says that Doherty "coordinates the Northern California Authors' Fair. & Her creed in writing and in life: live, love, laugh and embrace failure."

"Potty Talk" is about "growing up a wallflower in a family of yakkers. & It made me an observer of life lessons that I later carried to my writing. & Special honor goes to my favorite, Aunt Pauline (passed from this world and conveniently silent, unable to defend herself), because she smoked."

Smoking was off-limits in Doherty's family, so Aunt Pauline "pretended she didn't smoke. For love of his daughter, Grandpa pretended to believe her." At holiday gatherings, "Aunt Pauline would periodically withdraw to the bathroom — trailed by her younger, nonsmoker sisters — to sneak a cigarette or two and gab. & For years, we kids could only wonder at the secrets behind the bathroom door."

Then one day Doherty was allowed into the sanctuary. She found "my aunts and mother, away from the men, had a different way of talking. & Stripping pantyhose, picking a hangnail, using the toilet, peering in the mirror to remove bits of spinach wedged between their teeth, they described embarrassments, boasted victories, admitted mistakes, rehashed failures — stories they rarely divulged to anyone outside their circle."

That could be the coda for the book. From cancer survivors whose writing sustains them, to stories of rewrites, rejections, procrastination, love letters and writing groups (the "Inklets"), the writing life gets personal. The "Comfort" series is both an outlet for writers as well as a market. Maybe that's the best encouragement of all.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.