Biblio File SHORT NOTICES

"One Hell of a Ride: The Life and Times of Lou Federico" ($24.95 in paperback from Adventure Publishing) is replete with black and white photographs. In a letter he writes that "I lived in the Chico area for many years during the waterfowl seasons, starting in 1967. . . . I am an outdoorsman and entrepreneur who pioneered Baja, California, in the 1960s and 70s in order to build resort hotels." He became friends with John Wayne in the last days of his life and remembers that in 1961 his Club Aero Mulege fly-in hotel was popular with influential Chicoans.

Marysville-Yuba City resident David Hobbs became a Christian in 1974 after quite an extraordinary pilgrimage, told in "Out of the Fire" ($15 in paperback from 4L Press). According to a news release, Hobbs worked for the U.S. Forest Service fighting fires starting in his college years. He "spent four years on helicopter crews, two years on tanker crews, and two years on the elite Rogue River Hotshots. He was also in the first group of college students busted for drugs at Humboldt State University . . . and spent the 'Summer of Love' (1967) in the drug scene in Berkeley."

UC Berkeley anthropologist Kent Lightfoot, and Otis Parrish, a member of the Kashaya Pomo Tribe, have just published "California Indians and Their Environment: An Introduction" ($19.95 in paperback from University of California Press). New research suggests "California Indians lived in vibrant polities" practicing prescribed burning. Not all was paradise. The authors note that "we have good evidence that in some times and places Native peoples experienced poor health and hardships brought about by periodic food shortages, parasites, endemic diseases, violence, warfare, and political manipulations." Lavishly illustrated with detailed accounts of how the Konkow, Maidu and others used plants and animals.

Former Yuba City resident finds freedom in Zen surfing

As a high schooler, Jaimal Yogis traded suburban Sacramento life for the call of surfing. He upped and ran away to Hawaii. Here today, gone to Maui.

Perhaps his "New Age-y" parents understood Jaimal's intense boredom and his growing spiritual need. His Air Force dad had been a gourmet chef, a "hippie trapped in a colonel's body," and "he and my mom lived in an ashram in the '70s." Jaimal and his sister Ciel practiced meditation and "I was even named after an Indian saint: Baba Jaimal Singh. And it couldn't have been just coincidence (I thought) that my Lithuanian grandparents' name was shortened to Yogis. I figured I was destined, like Siddhartha, for spiritual greatness." Prince Siddhartha became the Buddha. Jaimal became a writer for San Francisco Magazine. From a Zen perspective, pretty much the same thing.

Yogis' lighthearted yet serious-minded memoir is called "Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest To Find Zen On the Sea" ($15.95 in paperback from Wisdom Publications). In self-deprecating fashion the author (who lived for a time in Yuba City with his father and his stepmom) comes to understand that the quest for the perfect, blissful surfing experience serves only to stoke the illusion of an independent self. "Just as a wave cannot exist apart from water, what we mistake as 'our' minds are dependent on the one true mind, the Buddha mind."

Yogis quotes surfing hero Barton Lynch observing that surfers are "more cocky and judgmental than any group of people in the world." The Santa Cruz surf Nazis are maybe the worst, yet Yogis comes to realize that even surf Nazis "have Buddha-nature." Himself included.

Life is like catching a breaker. "The take-off is arguably the most scary and difficult part of riding a wave. Too far forward or back can be the difference between a smooth glide down the face or being pitched--what surfers call 'going over the falls.' . . . the surfer, like the Zen student, must constantly find the middle way."

Yogis' water color portrait of a young man who accepts "who I am," that he is not "the things I do" (though they, too, are), uses language that is by turns funny, reflective and salty. That was Zen. This is now.

Local writer delivers fast-paced Western novel

The American Civil War is over. In Texas, changes are coming even to the communities spared the smell of battle. Strangers are passing through: "Poor folks fleeing the destruction, avaricious Northerners and men with criminal intent, adventurers, and returnees hoping to find something of the homes they'd left." The little town of Three Corners, near the Big Thicket area in the southeast, is one such place. Elias Trace has come to settle here. He is "in his early twenties, of average height and somewhat lean" and, as Crabby Janes, his friend and unofficial town mayor, says, Trace is formerly "of Mosby's Raiders, late of the Confederate States of America."

Not far from Three Corners a group of emigrants has been massacred by a "gang of deserters, Mexicans, and renegade Indians" led by Gilbert Clayton. Farm wagons were burnt, bodies scattered. "Men's trouser pockets had been pulled out; women's fingers bent awkwardly or were cut off for the rings." Some of the bodies were desecrated; some of the women were missing. A burial detail from town finds devastation, and they return with guns ready. "All who lived on the frontier were familiar with death as a part of life, but the details of what lay buried behind them would have unnerved even the most hardened of men."

That's the setup of "From Hell to Breakfast" ($12.95 in paperback from iUniverse.com) by Chico area writer John Henry Lyons.

Lyons introduces quite a cast of characters, including a love interest in the young widow Emma Mann. The story is one of courage, but also of leadership. Trace's plan to surprise Clayton's gang draws on skills honed with Mosby, and though Trace had wanted to put battle aside it had come to him. Trace wavers, but Crabby puts it bluntly: "It's leadership here that makes for victory, that and some luck and dirty tricks."

Trace remembers what a compatriot had told him: "Men that believed in a leader . . . would follow such a man if only to reach down inside their souls and see if they really had the courage to match what they had come to expect of themselves."

It's a crackling good yarn, a page-turner leading inexorably to the final confrontation in scenes of intense, cinematic violence.

Take a whiff of Chico author's new children's book

"'Billy, you pig!' Mama Bear slammed her hand on the table. Flippy the Fly jumped up from behind Billy's ear mumbling '¿Que pasa?' Larry the Lamb barely stirred on his blanket by the fire. They all lived together in a cave on the banks of the Wannarana Creek." Billy is making a racket with the silverware. He's drooling. And he stinks. Says Mama Bear: "If that pig doesn't take a bath soon, someone's going to pass out from the smell."

Therein lies a tale and it's told in "Billy the Pig: The Stinkiest Cowboy in Town" ($14.95 in hardcover from Stinky Press Publishing, www.stinkypress.com) by Chicoan Natividad (Naty) Osa. The delightfully whimsical full-page color illustrations are provided by Osa's son, Javier Durá. Copies are available through the Web site or locally from Lyon Books and Avenue 9 Gallery in Chico; Back at the Ranch in Paradise; and Discover Earth in Red Bluff.

The story passes this reviewer's smell test for witty wording and nonsensical fun. One day in Happy Holler Billy buys a Durian, the stinkiest fruit there is, from his friend Monk the Monkey at Monk's Fruits and Veggies. The rodeo is coming up and Billy has a hankering to do some bee roping. Monk is in a quandary. He "knows people don't want Billy participating in the rodeo unless he takes a bath. He had heard that Mrs. Robinson fainted dead away from the smell when she was standing in line behind Billy at the Pony Espresso Cafe. He wanted to talk to him about it, but how do you tell your friend people think he stinks?"

Quickly, though, Billy, Larry, and Flippy are soon off to Warthog Harry's Saloon and Malt Shop for a little lunch when they are confronted by Fleevil, "the notorious gunslinger and all-around bad apple" who challenges Billy to a duel outside. "Billy was out in the street before you could say in a pig's eye." The swine flew into action. "Billy's right hand flew to his side and fired off the first banana. It stuck to Fleevil's forehead like a horn." Turns out this pig's got talent. Will he be able to rope bees? Will he take a bath?

"Billy the Pig" brings home the bacon.

Interrupted by tragedy: A Chicoan's history

Tony Nicosia is a familiar presence in Chico. He describes himself as a "community activist." "I still give good massages," he says, "and get rid of headaches and sore hands, feet, and backs. I have also worked for the American Red Cross at the Neighborhood Church, and I helped the people who evacuated from the Paradise and Concow fires. I gave them food and water and helped out feeding and watering their animals. This year I helped again with Bidwell Park cleanup and I worked on the projects around Horseshoe Lake and Chico Creek." He is also involved with various environmental groups as well as the Chico Peace and Justice Center, which helped him get his life story into print.

"Dreaming of Wolves" ($15 in paperback from Tony Wolf Productions) by Anthony David Nicosia is available at Lyon Books in Chico as well as the Chico Peace and Justice Center, where newsletter editor Steve Tchudi helped shape the manuscript. The short chapters are reminiscences of a life studded by misfortune. "I was married two times," Nicosia says, "and both turned out tragically. The first was my wife, Cathy, and my two children" who were all killed in an automobile accident. "Then there was Christy, who died of cancer. I was a good husband and a loving dad, and I think of those two women a lot."

Nicosia himself "had two motor vehicle accidents in the past ten years, and I still have memory problems. There are many wonderful men and women who are my friends. I appreciate all the people who knew of my head injury and memory loss and were very understanding as to why I have had a hard time remembering them." He faced a difficult childhood in Pennsylvania. His parents divorced and he came down with rheumatic fever. In the hospital he developed an interest in wildlife, especially wolves. "They really take care of family--if a mother wolf dies, other members of the pack will take over the cubs."

He served in Vietnam, returning home to hostility and discrimination. In the mid-1970s he wound up at Chico State University. He faced cancer, brought on, he says, by exposure to Agent Orange.

Yet Nicosia survives--and guess what? "I am still dreaming of wolves."

SHORT NOTICES

Roseville writer W. Bruce Pruitt is convinced that criticisms of Freemasonry are demonstrably false. In "The Truth About Anti-Masonry: Straightforward Answers to the Critics of Freemasonry" ($9 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing) Pruitt defends Masonry against charges that it causes family conflicts, that Masons in business show favoritism to other Masons, that it's secret, cultic, a religion, and that its punishments are severe. He concludes that Freemasonry is "religious" but not a religion, and that it is perfectly compatible with the author's own Christian faith. Its symbols of a square and a compass are reminders of a solid moral foundation.

Former California State Park Ranger David Carle provides a valuable "Introduction to Water in California" ($18.95 in paperback from University of California Press), one of a series of "California Natural History Guides." Published in 2009, the second edition takes note of California's drought and claims that "the greatest opportunities for expanding water supply in the coming years will be through conservation, recycling, and groundwater management, rather than the old 'concrete path' of the past, when dams and aqueduct construction were the first choices." Carle also reminds readers that "water flows uphill toward money." A colorful overview of nature and politics.

When Mount Shasta begins to smoke, folks take notice. Also taking notice are three space aliens, Stanley Cooper, Mickey Circle and Cynthia Clark, sent to earth to scare and astound the populace in order to jazz up sagging ratings for a reality show back home. The smoke turns out to be a hologram, but the shenanigans don't stop there. Drifter Sam Burton finds himself in the thick of things, all chronicled by Red Bluff novelist John T. Allen in "Real Planets: Sam Burton & the Alien Reality TV Show" ($24.95 in paperback from PublishAmerica). It's a salty tale for "adults."

Captivating "Black Bart" novel humanizes northstate stagecoach robber

Paradise author Lou Legerton, retired from Wells Fargo, is fascinated with the mysterious figure dubbed "Black Bart" by the press. He spent a dozen years researching the stagecoach bandit, the bane of Wells, Fargo & Company in the 1870s and 1880s, collecting documents and letters, visiting Civil War battlefields where he fought, even visiting his family's hometown of Plessis, New York.

But why did Charles E. Boles (a.k.a. Bowles or Bolton), a married man with three daughters, forsake his family and take to robbing stages in Northern California? He eluded capture for years, leaving doggerel as his calling card, served four-and-a-half years in San Quentin, was paroled in 1888, and then disappeared.

Legerton, together with award-winning writer Gail Jenner, a Chico State University graduate now living in Etna, California, have transformed the historical record into a novel, suitable for young adult readers, that attempts to take the "full measure" of the man. "Black Bart: The Poet Bandit" ($14.95 in paperback from Infinity Publishing), by Gail L. Jenner and Lou Legerton, is illustrated with line drawings by Glen "Lawrence" Harrington, and it's compulsively readable.

In the epilogue the authors quote from "the last known letter" to his wife, Mary Elizabeth, who had not heard from him in 15 years. "My Dear Family," Charles wrote, "how little you know of the terrible ordeal I have passed through, and how few of what the World calls good men are worth the Giant Powder it would take to blow them into eternity. . . ."

Boles is a man stung by financial hardship, a jobless veteran lured by the false promise of California riches, a rascal with good intentions. He relishes his dual existence as "gentleman" and "robber." "On July 25, 1878, he robbed the Quincy to Oroville stage, and unloaded more than $600 worth of valuables. He'd liked to have made more on the deal." And he left some verse, admired in the novel by Mary Vollmer, his mistress (though the record is unclear): "Here I lay me down to sleep, to wait the coming morrow. Perhaps success, perhaps defeat, and everlasting sorrow. Let come what will, I'll try it on, my condition can't be worse, but if there's money in the box, it's munny in my purse."

Russ Woody invents a world

Not satisfied with putting words into the mouths of Murphy Brown and Jeff Foxworthy, Hollywood writer/producer Russ Woody has birthed a world and populated it with a slew of two-foot-tall grumps.

Woody, a recent guest at Chico State University, his alma mater, envisions a world at the center of our own that is in some way responsible for keeping earth rotating. The upside-down tale--complete with exploding heads, quivering mucus and other gross-out elements designed to appeal especially to pre-teens--has a logic all its own. Call it "circular logic."

The story is told in "The Wheel of Nuldoid" ($15.95 in paperback from Pointless Ink) which includes marvelously quirky drawings and maps by Norman Felchle. Readers can taste the book ahead of time at www.nuldoid.com and if they start to get cramps the story is having its intended effect.

It begins in the 2060s. Old Grampa Worst tells his grandchildren the bizarre story of his son, Warren, back in the late 1980s, after the earth's rotation had begun to slow. People became more sluggish as gravity pressed in, so, writes Woody, ratings for such shows as "Murphy Brown" shot through the roof. And a couple of sinister beer-loving Nuldoids, Kyle and Morton, who never ceased to argue and swear ("murk fuddle!" "Ya stinkin' drobbs horkels!"), journey to the surface in search of the Crystal somehow connected to the fate of Hoidenall (earth).

Mind-blowing adventures soon begin for Warren and Leo, "a student in Warren's social studies class, a scruffy-looking kid of eleven," and Warren's friend Lily. The humans, "Crustoids" or just "Toids," must travel to Nuldoid via the region of the Oidenoids, the "wandering conformists" who think their interpretation of the sacred "Book of Lloyd" is the only correct one.

Nuldoid is a place "where north was south and great was mediocre, where conflict and dissent and bickering were good and welcome things and where spit was greasy." It's "Hib nobb del noid" (literally 'Within dat circular circle, circles all dat is to be moved in dat circle"), referring to the "belief that everything exists in a circle. Therefore happiness is next to unhappiness, evil is next to good, fat to thin." Argument produces essential movement.

In Woody's fast-paced upside down story there are, indeed, wheels within wheels.

Award-winning Oregon novelist to make Chico appearance

"In those days," writes Portland-based novelist Molly Gloss, "plenty of men thought nothing of being rough with horses. A horse had to have a his spirit entirely broken was what a lot of men thought, had to be beaten into abject submission." This was the "winter of 1917 and 1918" when 19-year-old Martha Lessen, horse whisperer and broncobuster, rides into rural Elwha County in eastern Oregon looking for work.

So begins a quiet tale of Martha's "gentling" horses ("I can gentle most anything that has four feet and a tail," she says) and in turn being "gentled" into community life, especially by George and Louise Bliss, with whom she signs on. This is the time when young men are going off to war and ranchers are short of help.

"The Hearts of Horses" ($13.95 in paperback from Mariner Books) is an engrossing story, full of poignant reminders of our contemporary world (in those days, sauerkraut was called "freedom cabbage") and expressing a feminist sensibility in the strength and dignity of its female characters, even as women's suffrage would become a reality not many years hence.

Gloss will be signing copies Wednesday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books in Chico. Her work has won the James Tiptree Award, appeared in the New York Times' "Notable Book" list, and was chosen a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Martha is a loner, dressed as if ready for a rodeo (one observer thinks she looks like Calamity Jane), tall, "big boned," with a wide smile and air of innocence. Her childhood dream is of freedom, galloping "bareback across fenceless prairies through grass as high as the horse's belly," a life of independence, "intimate with animals, intimate with the earth."

As winter surrenders to spring, the reader is drawn slowly, slowly into what happens to the dream, into the sometimes tragic lives of Martha's far-flung neighbors, into the human and animal cost of war, the scourges of cancer, ptomaine poisoning and influenza, and "the hard truth that loving someone meant living every moment with the knowledge he might die--die in a horrible way--and leave you alone."

Yet in the midst of pain this is a story of hope, one of "taming" the heart--but not domesticating it.

"Funny signs" travel author coming to Chico State University

Doug Lansky has backpacked in more than a hundred countries, and besides collecting travel smarts he's also collected photographs of funny signs, often in fractured English, presented in a series of full-color books. The latest is "Signspotting 2: More Absurd & Amusing Signs From Around the World" ($9.99 in paperback from Lonely Planet).

Lansky and freelance contributors to www.signspotting.com have found hilarious examples (some of them unintentionally naughty) and the author adds an explanatory caption for those who may not get the joke. Some of the signs are not exactly helpful. In Monroeville, Pennsylvania, there's a sign that says "Entrance Only - Do Not Enter." In Boulders Beach, South Africa, a prominent sign says: "Table Mountain National Park - Warning - Please look under your vehicles for penguins." In Darwin, Australia, there's an official sign pointing to "Lost City." ("Pssst," Lansky adds, "don't tell anyone.")

Lansky is scheduled to appear at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium this coming Tuesday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. His "Get Lost" presentation, billed as stand up comedy, only about travel, is free to the public as part of the "On the Creek Lecture Series." Though the presentation is free, a ticket is required from Chico Performances (www.chicoperformances.com) by calling (530) 898-6333.

The author uses humor to get at something deeper, an appreciation of travel that doesn't depend on seeing all the tourist attractions and taking pictures of friends standing in front of them. One can tread lightly on the earth and make travel a very personal project. Collecting funny signs is not about laughing at those whose English is poor (Lansky points out that English speakers would also be prone to gaffes putting their words into different languages). It is about connecting with a memory and enjoying the silliness.

In Bangkok, Thailand, the sign says "Milk Chocolate Covered Crocodile" ("Hold the whipped cream," says Lansky); in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the club sign says "Members and Non Members Only" and in New Brunswick, Canada you'll find the "Ha Ha Cemetery." In Kenya don't forget the "Joyride Driving School." And when you visit Colton, California, be sure to see the sign on the side of the building that says "Colton High School - Commited To High Standards."

Sign me up!

Sacramento poet celebrates his newborn daughter

Brad Buchanan's new collection of poems, "Swimming the Mirror" ($12 in paperback from Roan Press, roanpress@gmail.com) is a small jewel of a book that illuminates the dad perspective. He teaches English at California State University, Sacramento, and these accessible poems, almost sixty of them, are by turns poignant, funny, and thoughtful.

Inside the womb, with "the white noise of corpuscles seething," "the kidneys' minuet," and the "bladder's pulse," "The unborn child conducts her own / orchestral suite, until she is born / and the roar of the universe withdraws. / The silence hurts so much she cries // for the whispers of the breast, the lost / percussion of love, The Planets by Holst, / and the tiny chorus of kicks from within / that strikes the triumphal march up once again." Such is "The Music of the Spheres."

Now she is here. There is "Quiet Alert": "Not sad, but crying, / the baby is signaling / her newfound needs-- / the world's in a holding / pattern, and knows it. / We work the angles / of blankets and breastfeeding, / tilt at the windmills / of burping, navigate / the pink circumference / under a diaper, / discover the truth behind / rumors of new uprisings / from the south, / decode the morsels / that drop from her mouth, / and then relax all the way / back to delight / seeing her eyes open, / quiet, alert."

A newborn, though, can take its toll on parents. Sometimes tempers become short, accusations fly, there's "Spilled Milk." ". . . An unfair response / becomes a negotiating position-- / and then, at last, as talks break down / and we are reminded of why we were lovers / before we were mother and father to one / helpless human being, now sleeping again, / we find spilled milk well worth crying over, / since nothing else matters at 2 A.M."

Later, "Her Fall": "She tumbled, / but the tears didn't come / until we found her / lying on her belly, / and picked her up to see / what happened, / why she couldn't fly."

In "Activity Report," "Somebody found an open box of cookies and was very happy." The reader will be, too.

SHORT NOTICES

The "Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions" ($18.95 in paperback from University of California Press) identifies 130 species. Arthur Shapiro, Professor of Evolution and Ecology at UC Davis, covers the lives of butterflies and which garden plants attract them. The bulk of the guide is devoted to detailed species descriptions with full-color illustrations by Timothy Manolis. Tidbits abound: "The Anise Swallowtail is one of the very rare cases where a single species will feed both on herbs (carrot family) and trees (cultivated citrus in southern California and in Butte County). . . ."

Sacramento native Albert Hurtado, an historian at the University of Oklahoma, has produced a definitive scholarly biography of a California pioneer (who attended John Bidwell's wedding in 1868). "John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier" ($24.95 in paperback from University of Oklahoma Press) is a detailed warts-and-all account. "Sutter's financial management was not helped by his well-known addiction to drink. His friend Bidwell, a lifelong temperance man, worried about him and arranged for . . . a celebrated temperance lecturer" to visit Sutter. "It did no good. 'I told her, that she could not convert me,' Sutter explained."

In "The Purple and the Orange: A Tale of Defoliation" ($23 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing), Fair Oaks author Denis De Luchi has written a massive novel (569 pages) about an Air Force pilot named Tony Gyro (pronounced "hero") who volunteers to spray Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Though married, Major Hero has a number of sexual liaisons, and throughout the sardonic story searches for the war's meaning. He concludes: "We have it all wrong." An author's note says that De Luchi "is a retired Air Force pilot and college physics professor. For Lent, 1952, he gave up church."

Premiere book on slide presentations has Chico connection

The speaker looks out at the assembled audience and, like magic, the first PowerPoint slide appears on the nearby screen. Seemingly enamored of each slide, the speaker turns and reads it to the audience. One slide features six main bullet points, each with three sub-points and, in the smallest of type, a scattering of sub-sub-points. Another slide features a detailed spreadsheet and the final slide simply says "Questions?" As if to underscore the point, the question-mark is pictured by the cheesiest of clip art mined from the bowels of Microsoft's PowerPoint library. The first question one thinks of is, "Why are you inflicting this on us?" The second question is: "What time is lunch?"

The problem, writes Nancy Duarte, is not that slide presentations are evil, but that they "all too often reflect the agenda of the presenter rather than build a connection with the audience." Rather than simply reading their slides, presenters need to put in "the effort necessary to transform them into visual stories that support their message." Duarte shows how. She calls for a new "slide ideology," "a meaningful relationship between you, your slides, and your audience." It's all expressed clearly and beautifully in "slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations" ($34.99 in paperback from O'Reilly).

According to a note about the author, Duarte is "president and CEO of Duarte Design, one of the few agencies in the world that focuses solely on presentations, and in 2006 was responsible for the slides used in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film, 'An Inconvenient Truth.' Though it’s based in Mountain View, Duarte Design (http://www.duartedesign.com) has an office in Chico."

The book is superb and immediately useful. It's not another how-to on PowerPoint, but rather a guide to "best practices" in the use of any presentation medium--even if it's just paper flip charts used by John Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. A slide that "contains more than 75 words is a document. . . . True presentations . . . reinforce the content visually rather than create distraction, allowing the audience to comfortably focus on both." For Duarte the process starts with creating "ideas, not slides," using the visual medium to "tell the truth" and "get to the point."

So does the book.

Noted author to speak at Jesus Center benefit dinner March 26

Mark Scandrette, the co-founder of ReIMAGINE ministry in San Francisco, brings readers into a gritty, street-level Christianity with "Soul Graffiti: Making a Life In The Way of Jesus" ($14.95 in paperback from Jossey-Bass). "No matter our aesthetics," he writes, "there is something in the motivation of the graffiti artist that we can identify with, a guttural yelp to be heard and understood, to talk back to the universe or to God when we feel helpless, abandoned, or overwhelmed." Being an apprentice to Jesus Christ means becoming, in one's very life, an authentic embodiment of the "good news" Jesus brought.

Scandrette, along with his wife and three children, live in the Mission District, and the stories he tells of street people, down-on-their-luck neighbors, and "respectable folk" are sometimes shocking, sometimes heart-breaking, always unsettling. For the author, the "emerging vision" of the church is more than just correct belief. "Our culture allows us to claim belief without validating faith by actions. Our use of the phrase 'I believe' could more accurately be substituted with 'I agree' or 'That makes sense to me' rather than 'I act on this information with fidelity and trust.'"

Scandrette will be speaking during the Jesus Center benefit dinner Thursday, March 26 from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. at Chico State University's Bell Memorial Union. Tickets are $40 with tables for eight $300; they're available by calling (530) 345-2640.

"Soul Graffiti" looks at the "school of conversion" in terms of Jesus as companion, artist, healer, and mystic (that is, one who is "conscious of the transcendent reality of God, accessing power to love through contemplative prayer, mindful surrender, and the practices of silence and solitude"). He adds that "in the experience of the early disciples, the power of Jesus' resurrection brought the spiritual metamorphosis required to inhabit the kingdom of love."

Finally, "entering the kingdom of God is a lot like learning to dance again. Somewhere in the deepest part of ourselves we have heard the music of our Maker and long to get our groove on. . . . We repent and reimagine how we live in our bodies, knowing that revolutionary force, the Spirit of God, is at work in us, wooing us toward health, wholeness, love, and peace."

Tales of "Yana City" from Chico's Clark Brown

"Down in the Valley" ($11.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) is billed as "a collection of four stories and a novella set in a small college town." For retired Chico State University English professor Clark Brown, the fictional "Yana City" "exists somewhere in the imagination, though the stories themselves take place loosely from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s.

"Here now in Yana City," Brown writes in "Wilderness," about an English department fight at Yana State College, "you were aware of your surroundings all right--mountains and valley floor and the great slow river--and the sky, always, the sky--but the town seemed lost in space and time, as though it had drifted from its moorings or fled from its orbit. Really, it was like a secret village you stumbled upon in a fairytale, as astonishing little world going busily about its affairs, undiscovered and uncaring. Oh, but the heat!"

Brown will be braving the elements, signing books and reading from his collection tonight at Lyon Books in Chico at 7:00 p.m.

In "Cézanne's Fingers," the shortest of the pieces, Philip Moore has been deputized by his college department to ask American Studies prof Charlie Harris to leave the school after being caught passing off a student paper as his own. Charlie intertwines his hands. "'The painter Paul Cézanne,' he intoned, shucking off his gloves, 'used to link his fingers like this, to show how everything is locked together. You know?'"

"When Evildoers Come At Me" tells the tale of young Alan Maeghers, full time student at Yana State, who finds himself at the center of several affairs and a Religious Studies major to boot. "The advantage," he says, "of majoring in Religious Studies--'Rel Studs,' as the schedule has it--is that you can appear extremely sensitive without actually having to believe anything."

"A Thing Decided," the novella, is the gripping diary of one Harlan Fort, who discovers the previous tenant, Stephen Bard, had died under mysterious circumstances "the summer of '78." For Fort, "I meddle, therefore I am." The truth uncovered is unsettling, shocking even, though, Harlan muses, "isn't that what this whole adventure has been about--the unsuspected people within us?"

Brown evokes those "unsuspected people" within the reader as well. Meddler!

Chico pastor: The principles of jazz improvisation can change your life

Greg Cootsona is not only Pastor of Adult Discipleship at Bidwell Presbyterian Church in Chico; he's also a drummer and jazz aficionado. "Jazz improvisation," he writes, "illustrates some keys to a successful life. First of all, say no to chaos: By mastering your instrument and knowing the changes. Say no to overplanning: Life is not fixed. You cannot predict every detail. Relax, stay loose, and take in what life gives. Finally, say yes to improvising a life of spontaneity, creativity, and beauty." One's highest calling is to say yes to God.

That means removing the obstacles, such as submersion in technology or work, that hinder our flourishing. You'll find no better guide than "Say Yes To No: Using the Power of NO to Create the Best in Life, Work, and Love" ($12.95 in paperback from Doubleday). The book is addressed especially to those who may not have a religious identification but who are spiritually open. It's for those caught up in the quest for wealth, fame, position but who long for a life of integrity.

Cootsona (http://www.gregcootsona.com) will be talking about his book and signing copies at Lyon Books in Chico tonight at 7:00 p.m.

As a young pastor at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, the pressure of work and a series of family challenges began to affect his health. The chest pains, "a racing heart and shortness of breath, my head spinning with unfinished tasks at home and at work," led him, at age 38, into a doctor's care. That was in March 2001. Not many months later the church became a haven in the aftermath of 9/11. He realized the higher priorities in life required a series of nos to lesser ones.

Saying no, with grace and conviction, doesn't make one a negative person, but one who has the freedom to be "on the right road." That road includes Sabbath, the goal of which "is not idleness but a proper rhythm of work and rest." It's about finding the greatest yes of all.

"In Jesus," Cootsona writes, "I found the big yes to God. And that great yes now defines all my nos."

"Say Yes To No" is a practical companion to a vibrant, jazz improvisational life.

SHORT NOTICES

Dunnigan resident Cheryle J. Crockett writes that "it became my obsession" to understand her family heritage. "It is my belief that the hand of God led the way for me to see this remarkable phenomenon." Her book, "My Slade Phenomenon" ($9.00 in paperbck from Dorrance Publishing Company) traces her Irish, Choctaw, and African American ancestors. "Could my slave descendant Andrew (Slade) and Alex Haley's slave descendants have known each other? Quite possibly they did." This is a detective story, and Crockett details her research techniques in piecing together the many strands of her identity. Now, she says, she is content.

Brandy Lathrop of Chico has written a cool little children's book about a five-year-old girl who is reluctant to clean her room. "Jalen Goes To Mars" ($24.95 in paperback from www.PublishAmerican.com) features crayon drawings by the author. "Jalen looked at the aftermath of the phantom tornado that ripped through her room while she played dress up. Who knew such a mess could appear out of nowhere?" So Jalen climbs into her toy box and takes off for Mars. There she meets a three-eyed Martian girl and helps put away her space toys. "Mars was spotless." And so was Jalen's room!

The second edition of "Cutthroat: Native Trout of the West" ($34.95 in hardcover from University of California Press) by Patrick Trotter is the definitive guide to an "increasingly rare native trout characterized by two streaks of red pigment under its jaws" (which gives the species its name). The fish "resides in streams and lakes of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin west, and the Pacific Northwest coast." Trotter, a Seattle writer and fisheries consultant, provides detailed history and habitat for each of 14 subspecies. Full-color diagrams, maps and photographs, and a mention of the Bartleson-Bidwell party, complete this remarkable volume.

Noted environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert coming to Chico State University

Elizabeth Kolbert filed a series of reports on global warming for the New Yorker which won the National Magazine Award in 2006. Kolbert traveled to Alaska, Greenland, northern England, the Netherlands, and other locations "to convey, as vividly as possible, the reality of global warming." Her book, based on the articles, is clear that the issue is not merely academic. "Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change" ($13.95 in paperback from Bloomsbury) documents changes in the natural world as more and more carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere. She also examines "the complicated relationship between the science and the politics of global warming."

Kolbert will be speaking at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium Wednesday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the On the Creek Lecture series. Tickets are $15 for adults, $13 for seniors, and $10 for students and children, and are available through Chico Performances (www.chicoperformances.com) at (530) 898-6333.

A series of book club meetings to discuss Kolbert's work is being held at the Chico Barnes & Noble store, facilitated by Chico State University anthropologists, geologists, environmental scientists, and others. The final two meetings are on Wednesdays, March 4 and 18, at 7:00 p.m. The public is invited.

Kolbert traces the discovery of the effects of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and finds evidence of climate changes in the shrinking Greenland ice sheets, shifts in the genetic code of a certain species of mosquito, and the fact that "in the Sierra Nevada of California, the average Edith's Checkerspot butterfly . . . can now be found at an elevation three hundred feet higher than it was a hundred years ago."

Kolbert acknowledges that "many uncertainties exist" in predicting what may come of all of this. It's true that "humans aren't the first species to alter the atmosphere; that distinction belongs to early bacteria, which, some two billion years ago, invented photosynthesis. But we are the first species to be in a position to understand what we are doing." There may be a threshold beyond which greenhouse gases could usher in "a complete new climate regime, one with which modern humans have no prior experience." Her conclusion: We must act globally to reduce greenhouse gases. Now.

When pastors abuse spouses: A compassionate look from a Willows couple

The story is not easy to tell. Velva Holt was a church pianist and music teacher, a writer who published numerous poems and articles through Pacific Press Publishing Association, and a pastor's wife. Her husband, Al, was a singing evangelist. Handsome and talented, he found favor with various church officials and was soon ordained to the pastorate. As the years passed Velva and their daughter, Virginia, had to face the reality that Al was having affairs with at least two women from separate congregations. Eventually, after Velva, heartsick and confused, demanded a divorce, he would marry the one from Red Bluff.

Velva's story took on book form after she finished the manuscript in 1999 at the age of 88 and a series of providential events led to its publication. Virginia, whose first husband was taken by cancer, married Bob Coombs, now a retired social worker and abuse counselor still active in their Willows congregation. The couple added their own perspectives to Velva's manuscript, along with excerpts from the work of Mable C. Dunbar, a counselor for the Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

Though Al and Velva are no longer living, there is a legacy of painful memories. Perhaps the title says it all: "We Suffered in Silence: How a Pastor's Family Lived in Shame while Hiding Dark Spots on the Clerical Collar" (about $15.00 in paperback from Xulon Press; for more information visit http://www.preyerplanning.com/book/velva-holt.htm).

Virginia and Bob Coombs will be signing copies of their book at Barnes & Noble in Chico this Saturday from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.

The pressure to pretend all was well nearly tore Velva apart. Her husband's sexual addiction raged unabated despite all her prayers and his apologies: "All my efforts had been as futile as pouring water on an erupting volcano. But I had tried the impossible."

Virginia Holt Coombs writes about her parents in an extraordinary series of chapters. Her father, she says, had a background of bars and "gigs" before he married Velva, and, immature in his faith, was ordained with no formal education or theological training. This is not to excuse the man but to better understand him.

The book offers many resources for the abused Christian spouse. The silence has been broken.

One woman's view of Chico and beyond

Debra Moon, the author of "Chico: Life and Times of a City of Fortune," is a self-described "freelance photojournalist and educator." In her varied career she worked on the Hopi reservation in Northern Arizona to preserve native language and traditions, got her start in newspaper reporting with the weekly Chico Times almost thirty years ago, and now teaches language arts to high schoolers. The itch to write has never departed.

Moon's new book features more than three dozen vignettes that "were written from notes scribbled on napkins, maps, backs of flyers, or checkbook registers." She calls it "Parking Meter Blues" ($14.95 in paperback from Page 1 Press in Chico), a kind of "travelogue of my life." While some of the pieces have been published elsewhere, most of them are original with the book, and they reveal a writer with a thirst for the poetic and a talent for offbeat humor, especially when it comes to romantic relationships.

The author will be signing copies of "Parking Meter Blues" tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books in Chico; the public is invited.

The selections range from "Revisiting Robin Hood" (on the 2005 Bidwell Park centennial celebration which featured a showing of the 1937 Errol Flynn movie filmed in the park) to "Colors For a Hostile Nation" (a satirical proposal for hostile crayons, like "ambush apricot", "punch-out purple," and "bloody-knuckle red").

The Parking Meter Blues, she writes, "is is a melancholy song. It begins with the dirge to the space that was lost to the guy that was quicker, and moves on to the wailing stories of the meter that cheated. It rambles to the day without a dime, and ends with the time that paying the dues did no good."

Then there's "The Language of Love." In the midst of a romantic embrace, it's okay to say numbers. "'One more kiss.' 'Meet me in room 354. . . .' Don't say letters. . . . Do not start an outline process, or refer to anything by letter when feeling romantic. . . . Do say: Sugar. . . . Don't say: The Atkins Diet. The Atkins Diet can never be mentioned when trying to light a romantic spark."

Moon's own spark burns brightly.

Biblio File SHORT NOTICES

Red Bluff resident Ashley Lewis, now in her mid-twenties, traveled the rodeo circuit with her father since she was born. Raymond Lewis was a Sierra Circuit Champion Bronc Rider and an all-around cowboy. Some of Ashley's experiences are related in "Road To Rodeos" ($24.95 in paperback from www.PublishAmerica.com), which she illustrated with crayon drawings, in a simplified story for kids. As the tale begins, ten-year-old Ashley is loading her dad's calf roping horse into the horse trailer, and then it's off to rodeos in Idaho and Montana. Her dad ropes a calf in 10.2 seconds (no calves are injured). Skill!

"Art Towns California: Communities Celebrating Creativity--Festivals, Galleries, Museums, Dining & Lodging" ($18.95 in paperback from The Countryman Press) is by John Villani, author of "The 100 Best Art Towns in America." The California book features chapters on 27 venues, including Redding, Nevada City and Chico. The Chico chapter samples the expanse of arts in the city, from farmers' markets to theatre offerings to exhibitions. It spotlights comments from Chico artists Chunhong Chang, who "paints ethereal, soothing images capturing the essential beauty of atmospheres, wildlife, flowers, and fruits," and Richard Satava, "one of California's leading masters of contemporary glass art."

Chicoan Ishmael Raymon "loves birds, gardening, chocolate, and freedom." He calls himself "neither Muslim nor Christian but a seeker of truth who chooses to view this life as a valuable lesson that can be utilized to open a window into another existence after this one, where my true potential and understanding will be more freely manifest." His book of essays, "Ponder This . . . Another World Is Possible" ($20 in paperback from Simply Put Press), is "my attempt . . . to dispel the myth in religion and to encourage simple living " and "a high standard of thought."

Fighting the Cold War in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe): Chico author book signing

In his first book, "Special Agent, Vietnam: A Naval Intelligence Memoir," Chicoan Douglass H. Hubbard Jr., chronicled his experiences as a special agent with the Naval Investigative Service (now the NCIS) in Vietnam. Hubbard left Vietnam in 1972; he was 27. "I was alive after three years of madness and the angry scarred mountains of Vietnam were nearly behind me."

After a stay in Australia he traveled to Rhodesia in 1974, his "heart set on rural Africa." He found himself a member of the British South Africa Police, "Rhodesia's national police force." His was not a peaceful life. The story is told in "Bound For Africa: Cold War Fight Along the Zambezi" ($34.95 in hardcover from Naval Institute Press). Hubbard will be signing copies and presenting his experiences at Lyon Books in Chico tonight at 7:00 p.m.

Rhodesia was governed by a white minority. In 1965 white settlers declared independence from Britain and resisted efforts to negotiate a transition to a black majority government. As John Cann says in the introduction, "The political vacuum between the white minority's position and the majority black population's desire for a government elected by universal suffrage allowed the emergence of Robert Mugabe, a Marxist intellectual and leader of the Chinese-backed Zimbabwean African National Union."

Hubbard trained counterinsurgents. "Rhodesia was facing an apparently escalating war against terror--one with disturbing similarities to the conflict in Vietnam I had left. . . . " The author's account of his field training operations will be attractive to anyone interested in military history. But the story gets personal in a chapter modestly entitled "Unexpected Events." In field training one evening Hubbard lit the fuse of a charge he wanted to throw as a simulated grenade when, "midstep, there came an enormous crackling explosion that hurled me to the ground. In a millisecond, my life changed forever. The charge had detonated prematurely, taking with it my right hand and wrist."

Hubbard would leave Rhodesia, with "a wife to consider and a very uncertain future," but he never forgot the "ignorant intolerance that I had witnessed fueling African conflict." He mourns over a Zimbabwe that has "lost the last vestiges of democratic government through ethnic cleansing, arbitrary seizures, and state-sanctioned brutality."

Paradise educator publishes series of "how-to-do-life" books

Nancy Marie Barnes writes that "service to others" is her guiding principle. The retired Paradise educator has published a series of books "for sharing with and helping others . . . in assisting interested persons, young and old, in being the best they can be." The resonance with the new Administration's emphasis on service and responsibility is clear, and "old school" readers will be heartened with Barnes' conviction that traditional values are just as applicable as ever to the multimedia generation.

Barnes uses Amazon.com's print-on-demand "CreateSpace" service to publish her books, uniformly priced at $9.99 in paperback, which now include two series. The first is fictional conversations with "Great-Grandma-Nanny," written under the name of Nancy-Marie Van Stavern. "Secret, Magical Conversations" includes great-grandma-Nanny's advice on everything from manners ("Don't cuss!") to sex ("Have sex only with your spouse. Period. No exceptions.")

"As you can tell," Barnes writes about great-grandma's "politically incorrect manner," "she speaks her mind but please remember that she'd never hurt your feelings for the world. . . . She believes that poor decisions in life can be used to make better decisions in the future. " A second book, "The Art of 'Doing The Wash,'" discusses sorting, washing, ironing and mending, complete with step-by-step instructions.

"I Want to Learn! (How Do I Do It?)" is part of a second series that includes "Be Happy! A Guide to Happiness," "An Employment Primer: A Guide to Getting That Job & Keeping That Job" and "Can I Really Afford It? A Guide On How To Budget & 'Live Within Your Means.'" (For more information, write the author at P.O. Box 1503, Paradise, 95967.)

There's no shortcut to learning, Barnes writes. "The average person takes upwards of 11 times (or 'exposures') of studying something new and difficult to fully learn it. The above average person takes about 5 times, while a slower person could take 15 to 30 times. It just takes effort, patience, and perseverance." The key is determining one's learning style and setting up one's desk or room to take advantage of seeing, listening, or writing. She advocates the SQ3R technique: "Survey, question, read, recite, review." Review is especially important to master the material.

Along the way Barnes is straightforward and encouraging, sharing her teacher's heart.

Local writers featured in "poetry of recovery" anthology

When Tom Lombardo's wife lost her life in an auto accident in 1985, he was left "a widower in my early 30s. . . . Reading poetry gave me solace during the early stages of my grief." Later he turned to writing poetry himself. "My first poems dismantled whatever blocks I had constructed, and from that point, I visited my grief and wrote."

Lombardo--a WebMD founder who lives in Atlanta--created an anthology of contemporary poetry to aid in the journey. As editor, he writes, "I searched for poems in all categories that contained a message of recovery through the language of poetry: Grief, War, Exile, Abuse, Divorce, Addiction, Injury, Illness, Bigotry, Loss of Innocence."

"After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events" ($19.95 in paperback from Sante Lucia Books), available at Lyon Books in Chico, collects work from 115 poets and fifteen nations. Included are pieces by three northstate residents.

Skyway poet Joy Harold Helsing writes in "Turnabout" about an abusive relationship: "I scream without sound / till my throat burns // Imagine he's small / my therapist urges / the way you felt // I picture him shrunken / six inches high / a dictator doll. . . ."

Grass Valley poet Gail Rudd Entrekin, in "Michelle," writes of a woman who tells the story of a man she saw beat his child and of the police who didn't come "until after the two had driven away." She laughs "inexplicably." "Leaving the restaurant, someone / holds the door for her. People fall back / and away, avoiding her circle of despair. / But two women who know she has lost a child, / walk close, their hands gently touching / her back, taking her arms, leaning their / warm bodies into hers."

Patricia Wellingham-Jones, who helps direct the writing group at the Enloe Cancer Center in Chico (see http://tinyurl.com/9w5alr for an interview), writes in "Your Shoes," "Barbara the Hospice nurse / tossed your shoes / under my office chair / when we carried your body / wrapped in your sheets / out to the gurney / I feel comforted every time I look / at those shabby shoes. . . ."

Comfort, after shocks, may come in the smallest of ways.

Chico novelist's tale of university freshman hijinks is something more

The story takes place, the narrator says, "at the U- of C- at D- in the spring of the year 196-" but the name of the school is not important; more important is that "a War was going on. . . . It was going on overseas in jungles and rice paddies. But every day there was increasing evidence that it was a real War, even though it had never officially been declared."

For Roger Osborn and his gaggle of freshman buds the war is a distant reality, though not the fear that some of them might be whisked away to fight in it. They must keep the draft board at bay and learn how to live together in Glen House, "the university's euphemism for the World War Two army barracks set under the trees like rows of gray two-story shoeboxes."

Such is the setting of "DeLancey's Stapler: Love, Lust, Duty, Doom, Rage, Revelation and Pizza" ($17.98 from AuthorHouse) by Dave Veith. The author writes me that he's retired, in his mid-sixties, and "originally came to Chico in '53, attended Chico High ‘62 and UC Davis ‘66, worked primarily as a systems analyst in the Bay Area, moved back after 44 years, married with four grown kids. My father Donald Veith taught English at Chico State. My mother Lois McDonald wrote several books on local history, including 'Annie Bidwell: An Intimate History.'"

The publicity release captures the scene: "Professors profess from the pulpits of various disciplines, a neon mermaid throbs in the night sky at the apex of the business district, and the latest Girl of the Month appears like clockwork in brazen glory on the wall above Roger Osborn’s Love Candle." Stapled there, one might add, by Lawrence DeLancey's stapler. There's a late-bloomer kid called The Gnat, who feels like one when he sees the immensity of the night sky. There's knockout Shelly Wenceslas and the beauteous young housemother Susan Thurlby to stir things up.

The book is like one of those crude college movies without the crudity (though testosterone abounds) and in the end it's something more, a meditation on the importance of comradeship in the midst of war or the shock of random events. Veith is a writer to watch.

Chico author presenting free workshop on teaching kids about money

Chicoan Kristan Leatherman is the co-author, with Jim Fay, of "Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats?" ($24.95 in paperback from Love and Logic Press, Inc.). Fay is co-founder of the Love and Logic Institute (www.loveandlogic.com). Leatherman, a counselor, educator and facilitator, has taken the "love and logic" principles and applied them to the financial arena. The goal is to raise responsible children. "Love," the authors write, "allows kids the latitude to learn from their mistakes. Logic allows kids the latitude to learn from the consequence of those mistakes."

The book is available at www.MillionaireBabiesOnline.com or through the co-author at kristanleatherman@sbcglobal.net.

Leatherman will be presenting a free mini-workshop called "Raise Money-Smart Kids! Learn 3 Practical Ways to Get Started" on Thursday, January 15 at 7:00 PM at the Chico Christian School Multipurpose Room 401, 2801 Notre Dame Blvd. in Chico.

There are only two rules of "love and logic." In the first, "adults set limits without anger, lectures, threats, or repeated warnings." In the second, "When children cause problems, for us or anyone else, adults hand the problem back to the child in loving ways. We hand the problem back by replacing anger and lectures with a strong dose of empathy, followed by a logical consequence or by requiring the child to solve the problem he or she has caused."

The first part of the book is devoted to spelling out the principles of "love and logic" by teaching personal responsibility in the handling of money. The second part, "Raising Fiscally Fit Kids," builds on the first and examines spending, saving, borrowing, earning, investing, and sharing.

The book is replete with everyday examples of parent-child interactions and offers a wealth of sometimes surprising suggestions for handling money challenges.

Allowance, the authors suggest, is really about helping children spend money and shouldn't be given as payment for chores; chores, in fact, are renamed "contributions" and shouldn't be compensated if they're part of the daily family upkeep. If a kid flakes on cleaning his or her room, and mom has to do it, the child will receive a bill in the next allowance envelope. Think "consequence."

The bottom line? One day, when parents must rely on their children for care, those good fiscal habits will be invaluable.

The year in local books

Northstate writers and those with local connections were busy in 2008.

Novels reviewed included "Sweet Life" (Mia King), "More Truth Than Fiction" (Helga Ruge), "Love's Journey" (James Rozendaal), "Sylvia's Book" (Linda Kathleen Peelle), "The Cultivation of Weeds" (Emory Menefee), and "Fathead Goes To Chico" (Mitch Cox).

Poetry was well represented: "The Solipsist" (Troy Jollimore), "Places to Sit and Other Poems" (Tom Fuszard), "Donner: A Passing" (Shana Youngdahl), "Sustenance: Poems By Chico Poets In Celebration of the California Nut Festival," and "Walk Into the Wind" (Elizabeth A. Bernstein).

Memoirs? "Jailhouse Journal of an OB/GYN" (Bruce Steir), "Sweepings From Under the Rug" (Dick Cory), "Mourning Has Broken" (Jan Hasak), "Code Two 'N' A Half" (William W. Wilhelm), "100 Miles" (Daniel Thomas), “Flashbacks From Here and There . . . : Pages From the Journal of An Adventure Traveler” (Nick Ellena), "A Place in the Shower Schedule: 101 Favorite Columns" (Roger Aylworth) and "Travels With Cornbinder" (Robert Woods).

History, too: "Images of America: Durham" (Adriana Farley and Jan Holman), "Images of America: The Land of Orland" (Gene H. Russell), "Saga of a Mountain Meadow: A History of Bucks Ranch and Bucks Lake" (Scott J. Lawson), and “The Poetess of Song: The Life of Mary Shindler 1810-1883” (Linda Sundquist-Nassie).

For kids there were "Bigfoot and Joshua" (Bob and Peggy Bishop), "Engine Ed's Colorful Train" (Bonnie Worthington), and “To Grandmother’s House: A Visit To Old-Town Beijing” (Doug Keister).

In the religion/spirituality category: "Holy Cooperation!" (Andrew McLeod), "Animal Omens" (Victoria Hunt), "Together Under One Roof: Making a Home of the Buddha's Household" (Lin Jensen), "Children of Immortal Bliss" (Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan), and "Living As Ambassadors of Relationships" (James Wilson).

Photography? "Teardrops and Tiny Trailers" (Doug Keister), "Everyday: A Yearlong Photo Diary" (Byron Wolfe), and "Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers" (Byron Wolfe).

And, finally, the old grab bag: "The Seven Personalities of Golf" (Darren Gee), "Costa Rica: A Global Studies Handbook" (Meg Tyler Mitchell and Scott Pentzer), “America’s Choice, America’s Shame: The Reality of America’s War On Drugs: ‘Your Children, Your Family, Your Nation’” (James C. Bettencourt), “Amazing Birds: A Treasury of Facts and Trivia About the Avian World” (Roger Lederer), and “Does W Stand for Worst? The Record of G. W. Bush” (Francis X. Callahan).

Read on!

Sacramento writer on building the Christmas community

The carols proclaim Jesus Christ, the God-Man, has come into the world. What are the economic implications for the way we live with each other? One writer says it's about cooperation.

Andrew McLeod, a recent Chico visitor who works for the Davis-based California Center for Cooperative Development, explores the Biblical roots of cooperative living in "Holy Cooperation! Building Graceful Economies" ($17 in paperback from Cascade Books). McLeod writes that he became a Christian as a teenager but "lost interest in religion" in his college years. He even began to see the Church as a hindrance to the kind of democratic managed organizations he was becoming interested in, such as the New Riverside Cafe in Minnesota, a vegetarian restaurant he and almost thirty others co-owned.

Yet McLeod began to realize that some of what the Bible said about community supported his interest in cooperation. He noticed the "blossoming interest in community building" within the "primarily evangelical churches" he has been attending. That led to the development of a Web site (www.bookofacts.info) and his book.

He recognizes that "Christianity and cooperatives have much in common, but they are not identical, and any attempt to bridge those differences should not gloss them over." Though he is admittedly not a theologian, McLeod finds a provocative picture of cooperation in the Old Testament in the prophetical call for justice within human society. In the New Testament Gospel stories Jesus talked about loving one another, using one's worldly resources to help others in need. The early believers shared what they had for the good of the community and operated with decentralized leadership.

McLeod's book is not without controversy. "The United States' wealth is the result of centuries of injustice," he writes, "and some atonement for that is necessary" including finding ways "to make do with less. . . . The Bible clearly shows that God would prefer that we organize ourselves in ways that share power and resources much more broadly than our capitalist empire allows. . . ."

Examples include the Mondragon cooperative system in the Basque region of Spain, the Jesus People USA movement, and offshoots of the "new monasticism" such as the Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco's Mission District.

Christmas is here. How, then, shall we live?

New novel has a Chico connection

Darien H. Gee is married to former Chicoan Darrin Gee. Some years ago the couple moved to Hawaii where Darrin operates the Spirit of Golf Academy and Darien (writing under the name of "Mia King") balances life as a mother of three with her growing reputation as an author. Her romantic stories tell of modern love, won and lost and won again, and are leavened with a love of food and a special recipe section at the end.

"Sweet Life" ($14 in paperback from Berkley) , featured by several book clubs, is a hearty confection. Paul and Marissa Price both have good jobs in New York. He's 44, she's 41, and daughter Pansy is eight. When Paul gets the opportunity to manage a company-owned resort on the Big Island of Hawaii, he paints a glowing picture of Paradise to a reluctant Marissa. Eventually, realizing she's being selfish, she gives up her job as a consultant and agrees to the family move.

But Hawaii turns out to a bit short of idyllic. When Marissa meets Paul's young and voluptuous secretary, Malia, her suspicions are raised, and she has a hard time adapting to the role of a stay-at-home mom living in a many-roomed fixer-upper house. Marissa has a rather frosty encounter with the company masseuse, Kavena, and her only friend seems to be Jane, the barista at the local Kava Java shop ("a ten-dollar-an-hour glorified coffee waitress who was sixty years old"), who sets Marissa down and says, "Spill!"

When Paul tells Marissa (on Valentines Day, no less) that "I just need to find myself" and asks for a trial separation, her world is upended. Divorce? But, as King reminds readers, things are not quite what they seem, especially when Malia, Kavena and Jane end up renting some of the rooms in Marissa's house to help her stay afloat. And so begins a transformation in Marissa's life.

Marissa not only finds herself, but more than she bargained for. The central theme of "simplicity" runs throughout the novel. "All her years with Paul," muses Marissa at one point. "They hadn't been bad years, just busy years. Too busy, maybe. Too busy to notice the good things."

It's a sweet story (with a bit of salty language) seasoned to perfection.

Former Chicoan on golf's personalities

Though now living in Hawaii with his family, Darrin Gee writes that he grew up in Chico, attended Sierra View Elementary and Bidwell Junior High and graduated from Pleasant Valley High School. An expert in "mental golf," he operates the Spirit of Golf Academy on the Big Island. His new book is "The Seven Personalities of Golf: Discover Your Inner Golfer to Play Your Best Game" ($17.95 in hardcover from Stewart, Tabori & Chang).

Gee bases his list on his own observation and is careful to add that "there are more than just the seven generalized personality types" and that "the individuals mentioned as examples of each personalty type are not necessarily solely and totally defined as such. In other words, this is all in fun." But it's fun with a purpose. Each chapter is devoted to one of the types, complete with a "golf profiler" questionnaire, a list of the type's strengths and weaknesses, and how those players with different types can make use of the type in question to better their game.

Take the Gamesman, exemplified by Lee Trevino. "He approaches each shot as if he's on the craps table in Vegas. . . . It's not the money. It's about the thrill." The Gamesman may be easily distracted, but is fun-loving and goal oriented. How does this help a non-Gamesman? Gee noticed that one client, Erin, was so caught up in making the perfect swing that "her stomach would literally ache" if it wasn't. Gee told her to "stop playing standard stroke play and play 'Hit till you're happy.' In this game, she could hit as many shots from the same place until she hit one that she liked." Eventually she put aside the intricacies and just played the game. Erin began "to hit her first shot exactly the way she wanted."

Other types include the Intimidator (Tiger Woods, naturally), Methodologist (Nick Faldo), Swashbuckler (the "go-for-broke" Arnold Palmer), Steady Eddie (Tom Watson), the Artist (Steve Ballesteros), and the Laid-Back (Fred Couples). The Laid-Back personality adopts "relaxed intensity," a "complete balance of maintaining your normal level of relaxation while heightening your concentration and focus."

The book is illuminating, even for non-golfers, in part because golf is like life. You gotta bring the right personality to it.

Orland couple tells a Bigfoot tale for kids

Bob and Peggy Bishop of Orland have not exactly met Bigfoot, but they can dream, can't they? What they have done is write a colorful story for kids ages four through eight called "Bigfoot and Joshua" ($9.95 in paperback from www.bigfootgifts.com). The story features full-color illustrations by the inimitable Steve Ferchaud of Paradise.

According to an authors' note, Peggy Bishop "is a retired kindergarten teacher" and Bob Bishop "has created and distributed Bigfoot souvenirs/gifts for more than twenty years." When I accessed it, their Web site was a work in progress, but offered not only the book but a "Bigfoot lives" pin and decorated shot glasses.

The story begins with young "Joshua, his sister Emily, and his Mom and Dad . . . going on a camping trip to the mountains." Camp setup is fun, but "that night Joshua told his family that Bigfoot lived in the nearby forest. Emily laughed and said there is no such thing as Bigfoot. Joshua knew she was wrong and he was going to find Bigfoot."

The next day Joshua slips away into the forest. When Joshua's parents find him missing, they call a Forest Ranger. "Emily told the Ranger that she believed her brother went to look for Bigfoot. Emily asked the Ranger about Bigfoot. He told her that a lot of people believed they had seen Bigfoot in the nearby forest. They said Bigfoot was very big, hairy and smelled badly."

The search is on for Joshua. As others join, Joshua himself is lost and scared. Suddenly he hears a noise, and there's a terrible stink. "Joshua knew that Bigfoot . . . was sometimes called the Skunk Ape." And then there's a giant foot. Bingo!

Bigfoot gets Joshua safely back to camp under cover of darkness. No one believes his tale the next day, of course, and Joshua wonders if the whole adventure was nothing but a dream. But not so. There are those--footprints.

A section of questions and answers in the back of the book tells youngsters that the story is not true, but it could have been ("if there was a real Joshua and a real Bigfoot") and that no one knows for sure if Bigfoots are real. One can dream, can't one?

Darkroom magic: Turning good holiday pictures into excellent ones

Grass Valley fine-art photographer Seán Duggan, along with co-author Katrin Eismann, are both Photoshop experts. The image manipulation software, made by Adobe, is the key, they write, to making good pictures great. Their expertise is shared in "The Creative Digital Darkroom" ($49.99 in paperback from O'Reilly Media). Lavishly illustrated with "before" and "after" examples, the book contains detailed guidance and there are dozens of sample files that can be downloaded from www.creativedigitaldarkroom.com. Readers can work along with the authors in using Photoshop and other tools to produce the best images possible.

This is a book for serious photographers. Its focus is not on cropping techniques and the repair of damaged images, important as those may be, but rather on tone and contrast, exposure control, color correction, sharpening and focusing, and special effects. The first part of the book covers what's required for the digital darkroom and how to get images into the computer by using digital cameras or scanning. Once a good image has been selected, subsequent chapters deal with how it might be enhanced, so the "good" becomes "great." The many tutorials along the way are geared for Photoshop CS3, though the techniques will work with other versions and even other image editing software.

But the book is more than a step-by-step guide. Imagine sitting down in the company of two master photographers who care most of all about what a picture wants to be. "Listen to the image," they write. "As you look at the image and consider what you can do to improve it, try to think in broad concepts rather than in Photoshop technical terms. . . . Try to imagine how making certain areas lighter or darker or adjusting contrast might change the image. The human eye is attracted to lighter areas and to contrast. How can such adjustments help to guide the viewer's eye through the image?"

In another part of the book they caution against "the call of the Photoshop siren that tries to convince us that with enough time, effort, and layers, we can fix the flaws in any image and rework the barely adequate into a stunning photograph."

Pick the best, and make them better, and along the way be thankful for such wise words.