Chico author's medieval journey to Compostela Cathedral in Spain

It's called "furta sacra," holy theft, and when a warrior knight steals two thorns, relics of Jesus' Crown of Thorns, from a monastery in the Pyrenees, a young man undertakes the task of recovery. He is eighteen-year-old Xavier Elgorriaga of Pamplona, "tall, slender, and handsome with the tawny skin of a Basque," a reverent and good-hearted soul eager to test his manhood on the Way as he journeys to the fateful meeting with the knight, fighter of Moors.

The "Way" is the Way of Saint James or Camino de Santiago, "the 500-mile medieval pilgrimage route from the Pyrenees across northern Spain to the Compostela Cathedral" where pilgrims venerated the bones of Sanctus Jacobus, hoping to find "remission of sin and induce the saint to intercede with Christ or Mary on their behalf." The trek was fraught with danger from bandits, disease and inhospitable weather.

Chico writer Neal Wiegman, an expert on Spanish literature, traveled the Way with his wife, Nancy (the host of Nancy's Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, KCHO, who recently interviewed your humble columnist for an upcoming program). "Walking the Way: A Medieval Quest" ($17.95 in paperback from WingSpan Press) by Neal A. Wiegman uses the fictional Xavier to paint a detailed picture of life along the Way in 1160. It is travelogue filled with exalted churches and spiritual epiphanies, stork lore, true love, jousting, a disquisition on dung and, later, a pirate attack.

Wiegman will be presenting a slide show and book signing tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books in Chico.

The author imagines Xavier as a jongleur, "a teller of tales," gifted with a facility for languages and a prodigious memory, allowing him to recite sections of Beowulf, the Chanson de Roland, and tales of El Cid, the Spanish hero, and portions are included in the narrative.

Xavier also carries with him the Liber Sancti Jacobi, The Book of St. James, which includes a guidebook for the Way, enabling Wiegman to blend period sources with his own observations. The resulting account, each chapter of the novel devoted to one of the dozens of stops along the Way, offers a nuanced and captivating tour filled with sights, sounds and smells.

It's a tasty stew, good with wine.

Three Chico-area poets

Lyon Books in Chico is hosting a poetry reading and book signing tonight at 7:00 p.m. featuring Chico artist Bob Garner, Magalia poet Lara Gularte, and Chicoan Sanford Dorbin.

"Paper Dolls" (from fakepublishing@csuchico.edu) features a dozen Bob Garner poems, several of which first appeared in Watershed and the California Quarterly. The poet takes the reader to places of the mind, "deep / into the country of night" ("The Dream"), to the "kaleidoscope / of broken bottles / just below the pier" ("Memory Loss"), "when death bangs on the door / with both hands and feet, / reasonably tired and irritable / from another day of pointless conversation. . . ." ("Learning"). No pointless words here.

Lara Gularte's "Days Between Dancing" ($10 from The Poet's Corner Press) is about hard things, tragedies, people "grateful for the night, / the black hole / that swallows up the glare of the day. . . ." ("Night"). In "The Haunting," the poet writes of her mother: "Her ghost still hovers, / reminding me that I slept / and drank from her body. / I fear she will come back, / hook me with her nails, / try to pull me back inside her." There is "Aunt Louisa Amaral": "She was like skim milk, / pale and thin. . . ."

Sanford Dorbin is a "septuagenarian, mobile division" and a retired academic librarian. Dorbin's acerbic perspective is on full display in "Saying Goodbye to Babylon" ($5.00 from The Singlefooter). Here's "Nomenclature": "'You must be,' he said / mouth foaming with disgust, / 'one of those--relativists // and I reply with a smile / dazzling as ice, / 'Absolutely.'"

But there's celebration as well. The poet, hapless dad, helps deliver "Bozo Supreme," who, later, "so verbally dexterous at two-and-a half-- / this little linguist laughs, and running the changes / like the bebop king he is, laughs again and allows / 'Bozo Sucreme' to appear. And he's right, / he is the cream--the top. He'll turn sour / when it suits him. . . ."

In "Weekend Out of State" two lovers "dress and descend / to the lobby, and breakfast, fitting like silk / into the echo of other people's chatter." A fitting way to end a book, and this review.

Rock novel from Paradise writer hits all the right chords

According to an author's note, Chad Peery played "bass guitarist for John Kay & Steppenwolf, and Fleetwood Mac's Bob Welch." His rock reminiscences appear on his Web site, www.chadwrite.com, and it's clear that Peery has had an exceedingly full life. Now he can add "novelist."

With a rock sensibility and unbounded imagination, Peery takes his characters into uncharted territory, and back. In "Smoking Jimi" ($14.95 in paper from CreateSpace, available locally at Lyon Books and Made In Chico) former "Jammies" 70's guitarist Brad Wilson (now a photographer) is sucked back into playing by a most bizarre offer.

It's 1999. Ex-band-manager Mitch Damian shows up with a million dollar offer to get the band back together and play for an eccentric millionaire in South America. Wilson is skeptical, since thirty years ago Damian had absconded with the money from the band's record deal. Part of the fun in the first half of the novel is how ne'er-do-well Damian, with Brad's reluctant assistance, actually gets the group together--or what's left of it. One had committed suicide (no help there); another had become a monk and a third, whacked out on drugs, had joined a survivalist compound in Colorado.

Wilson picks up a guitar: "I pressed the whammy bar to dip the pitch of the strings, and it snapped back into perfect tune, unlike my old Stratocaster. . . . What a thrill to play again, and to have a reason for playing again." Later, when the band actually makes it to Pablo Lupa's estate, the music flows (Lupa has spiked the punch), and Wilson looks for words: "How I had forgotten the magic, when your body, mind and soul become the music, flowing in a beautiful ribbon. . . . Finally, I hit one last, sustained note, and then allowed it to descend slowly like a waterfall over a bridge of rainbows."

Pablo Lupa takes "smoking Jimi" literally and all seems over for the band when Lupa's real intentions are revealed, the compound is engulfed in military conflict, and Wilson mourns a lost lover. But the story is not yet over, and Peery has produced a hilarious, improbable stew of oddball personalities enmeshed in music, madness and mystery, and love that rocks the world.

Paradise photographer contributes to Dashiell Hammett book

"Samuel Dashiell Hammett arrived in San Francisco summer 1921 and left in the fall of 1929. He began writing in this city, finishing . . . what stands today as his single most famous work, The Maltese Falcon." So writes Don Herron, the author of an engaging new book, "The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook" ($19.95 in hardcover from Vince Emery Productions).

Revised and expanded from the original edition, the book features maps by Paradise resident Mike Humbert as well as ten of his black-and-white photographs of present-day San Francisco, including the building at 891 Post Street where Hammett lived in apartment 401.

The book also includes a new preface from Hammett's daughter, Jo (who calls her father "Da-SHEEL" rather than "DASH-ull"); "On the Trail of Sam Spade" by detective novelist Charles Willeford, and an entertaining biography of Hammett by Herron himself. Most of the book is taken up with a leisurely look at more than thirty Hammett sites, including Burritt Street. Humbert provides a close-up of a bronze plaque at the same location that says "On Approximately This Spot, Miles Archer, Partner of Sam Spade, Was Done In By Brigid O'Shaughnessy."

Hammett, born in 1894, lived sixty-six years, long enough to consume vast quantities of alcohol, to be consumed by tuberculosis, to marry and beget two daughters, to carry on a three-decades affair with playwright Lillian Hellman, to write pulp stories about a detective known only as "Continental Op," to invent hard-boiled detective Sam Spade and the booze-guzzling team of Nick and Nora Charles, to be labeled a Communist, incarcerated and blacklisted, and to become one of the most famous writers of his time with novels such as The Thin Man and Red Harvest.

Herron writes that "the San Francisco of Spade and the Op is literally built of truths, rumors, and lies: places like John's Grill that are as real as a dime; . . . places such as the Alexandria Hotel or Eddis Street which have never appeared on any map of The City. Hammett's detectives move across this imagined grid of reality, rumor, and falsehood--a mysterious and dangerous San Francisco created in the pulp magazines of the 1920s that has not lost its fascination or its hold on our imagination."

Chico couple views westward migration through the eyes of contemporary diarists

The Englishman William Woodhams, more recently from Michigan, crossed the Missouri River on April 28, 1854, arriving in Sacramento in August. On August 6 he wrote in his diary: "We of course (ragged in the extreme, unshaven and unshorn, knives and pistols at our belts) were rather wild looking even for California."

Those who journeyed west in the mid-nineteenth century were a motley crew, but many of them kept diaries. In fact, write Chicoans Andrew and Joanne Hammond, "it has been estimated that one out of every 200 emigrants kept a diary or journal of some sort."

The Hammonds have skillfully excerpted the diaries of "eleven women and twenty-six men who recorded their experiences while en route to Oregon, California and Utah" to form a roughly chronological account of the way west. The result is "The Look of the Elephant: The Westering Experience In the Words of Those Who Lived It 1841-1861" ($18.95 in paperback from the Oregon-California Trails Association, www.octa-trails.org, or from the authors at awham25@aol.com).

The authors write that "to have 'seen the elephant' meant that one had not only endured the rigors of the trail, but had survived as well. The expression still symbolizes the indomitable spirit of the emigrants and their ability to view extreme hardship with a sense of humor."

There were dangers along the way, not always external. "Less than a month after setting out, John Bidwell reported that 'a young man by the name of Shotwell while in the act of taking a gun out of the wagon, drew it, with the muzzle toward him in such a manner that it went off and shot him near the heart.'" The diarists include not only Bidwell but "querulous J. Goldsborough Bruff, considered by many to be the greatest diarist of all; the captious Joshua Variel; the upbeat but frequently ill Alonzo Delano; . . . the unfortunate Mary Rockwood Powers, whose physician husband appears to have been insane. . . ."

The Hammonds provide maps of each stage of the journey, black and white illustrations, and biographies of each diarist, along with insightful commentary. This is a treasure of a book, one that touches the heart of those long ago days before ever there were blogs.

Redding-area authors tell first-hand story of "Li'l Smokey"

The sky was studded with lightning. It was June 20, 2008. "Dry leaves and grass smoldered, then burst into flames. Fire crawled along the ground and into the brush and trees. . . . By sunrise the next morning over 2,000 fires blazed across Northern California. In the following weeks, wildfires would destroy more than one million acres, leaving at least 300 families homeless. Thousands of wild forest animals fled their homes. Many would not survive."

So begins the extraordinary story of "Saving Li'l Smokey" ($11.99 in paperback, www.lilsmokey.net) by Adam and Celeste Deem, with full-color illustrations by Ryan M. Lamb, a freshman at Redding's Foothill High School. Adam works for Cal Fire; on July 17, 2008 he was driving "deep into the forest" past Whiskeytown Lake "up the mountains to Shoemaker Bally." Suddenly he saw a bear cub whose paws "looked melted." It was no easy task getting the frightened and injured cub into his truck, but as the story unfolded in the media Li'l Smokey melted the hearts of people around the country and across the globe. The terrible fire season had a face.

Adam and Celeste will be reading their book this Saturday at 2:00 p.m., during the All Ages Storytime, at Chico's Barnes and Noble store. Afterward they'll sign copies and talk about what happened to Li'l Smokey after his rehabilitation with Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care (which will receive a portion of the book proceeds).

According to an authors' note, Celeste, raised in Alaska, first met Adam "while hiking in Northern California. Her motto was 'Love me, love my dog," and upon meeting Adam, he immediately began tossing a stick for Kody. They were married ten months later."

Back at headquarters, Li'l Smokey sat on Adam's lap "while the medical team examined the cub. Melisa gave the cub a cherry lollipop, much to his delight. He tried to eat the whole thing in one bite!" It was a sign of hope: "Maybe the cub would survive." Eventually, at Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care, the bear, paws wrapped in bandages, "feasted on special milk, peach nectar, and all the food he wanted, from blueberries and what grass to pieces of fresh salmon."

In the midst of destruction, these are the paws that refresh.

Shy Chico writer masters world travel on the cheap

The last decade has been an eventful one for Chicoan Brian Ward. It began with his enrollment in the study abroad program at Chico State University (which took him to Queretaro, Mexico), and ends with the publication of "Single Abroad: Tales of the Boyish Man" ($18 in paperback from lulu.com). Well, not ends, really; he writes that "my dream is to open a hostel in Latin America or work as a travel writer." He's in no hurry to settle down.

Ward's account of living on the cheap in Europe and Latin America is self-deprecatingly funny. He is shy around girls and can hardly find the courage to pucker up when one of them leans forward "within kissing range." Yet he craves traveling to new places and meeting people (he stays at the Flying Pig Hostel in Amsterdam's Red Light District to meet his cousin, Simon, from the Canary Islands). He just has a difficult time with women people.

Ward is home for a time and will be signing books at Cafe Flo, 365 E. 6th St. in Chico on Tuesday, August 25 from 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. Those with wanderlust and a hankering for new-climes-on-a-dime are especially welcome.

For a while Ward worked at Club Med Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo in Southern Mexico. A quarter century ago Club Med was synonymous with the swinging lifestyle, but now it caters more to families. His Club Med interview is quintessentially Wardian. Each potential employee had to demonstrate a talent since Club Med staff are encouraged to mingle with the guests as "gracious organizers."

"My name was called," he writes, "and I walked up to the front of the conference room. I didn't know what to say so I stated that I had gone to Chico State; everyone started cheering and pounding on the desks. . . . The recruiter (Amy) was smiling at me the whole time and asked me what classes I had taken at Chico State. I admitted that during my last semester I had taken Tae Kwon Do, Softball, and Jujitsu. The whole room started laughing." So he did some martial arts rolls and explained he used them "whenever I was thrown off my bicycle in order to avoid breaking my back."

He got the job.

Mia King's new novel debuts with book signings in Chico

"Mia King" is Darien Hsu Gee, married to Chico native Darrin Gee and mother of three. The couple lives in Hawaii where Darrin operates the Spirit of Golf Academy and Darien is working on her fourth book. The family is in Chico visiting relatives and celebrating the publication of Darien's new novel, "Table Manners" ($14 in paperback from Berkley Trade), a sequel to "Good Things."

Both Darien and Darrin (who has published several golf guides) will be signing their works at Lyon Books in Chico on Wednesday, August 19 at 7:00 p.m. and at Chico's Barnes and Noble on Saturday, August 22 at 2:00 p.m.

In "Good Things" forty-year-old Deidre McIntosh meets the man of her dreams, Kevin Johnson, the son of a very wealthy Seattle couple. At the end of the story she has received a commission from Jamison Cookies and Confections to produce a signature line of baked goods. Kevin takes her in his arms and calls her "sweet Deidre." And so a brand is born.

"Table Manners" (picked up by Rhapsody, the Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club) finds the harried Deidre facing cookie meltdown. Focus groups say her creations are less than splendid, and the company is demanding new recipes--in a matter of days. Her personal life is complicated by Marla Banks,"Seattle's prominent fiftysomething socialite and star of At Home with Marla Banks," and, oh yes, Kevin's sister. Marla schemes at every turn to undermine the growing romance. The reader is transported into a world of haute couture, gourmet foods, and sophisticated cattiness, especially when Kevin's ex-fiancée, "Tabby," makes an entrance.

Did I mention food? The reader will encounter "tarte tatin--puff pastry with crystallized caramel apples and cream. . . ." and les macarons Ladurée, featuring "delicate domes of almond meringue. . . ." There's a large recipe section at the end of the book highlighting "summer beef bourguignonne skewers" and "summer tomato-olive-caper salad."

As usual in a Mia King novel there are twists and turns, especially involving Deidre's friend, Lindsey, owner of a small but popular restaurant in Jacob's Point, a rural getaway beloved by both Deidre and Kevin.

In the end it's a story about finding your passion, especially when you're about to lose your cookies.

Local novelist delivers riveting crime novel

Imagine Newton, a "college community of approximately 150,000 people, although the number drastically reduces in the summer months due to the mass exodus of the student population. . . . But for all the splendor and beauty of this Northern California city, scratch just beneath the delicate surface of superficial tranquility to discover a dark murderous evil prowling the city." It is 2004 and there is a serial killer on the loose whose gruesome calling card can hardly be described in a family newspaper.

Area author Sherry Long, a hair stylist, mother and grandmother, probes the psychological depths of the "malevolent evil" stalking Newton in a fast-paced, violent and shocking tale, "What If You Hadn't?" ($29.95 in paperback from PublishAmerica). She will be signing copies of her novel this Saturday from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Chico. The public is invited.

When reformed hooker Bianca Fugate becomes one of the victims, Homicide Lt. Brad Belser finds himself falling head over heels for her friend, Teagan Chandler, right at the start of the interview. She is deeply attractive to the twice-divorced Belser, and Teagan is equally taken with him, a Russell Crowe look-alike "with seductive Johnny Depp eyes." She, too, knows the loss of love. Her college-days romance with her current employer, Alan, ended suddenly when she discovered him to be a faithless cad. Now he wants to renew the relationship, but she has eyes only for Brad.

Love, as it so often does, complicates the proceedings until Brad and Teagan are ensnared in a web of horrendous secrets.

There are lighter moments. Early on, Long has Belser "reading a book he couldn't put down. . . . 'The Truth About Jacob' was written by a first time published author. He'd read her bio on the back cover because he'd wondered to himself, what kind of woman could think of those twists and turns in the plot?" Sherry Long is that kind of woman, and she doesn't disappoint in her new novel, either. The language is raw and it comes mixed with sex and grisly death. The reader is drawn into the story, in spite of or maybe because of its ghastly scenes, and the emotions will not rest until the killer is found.

SHORT NOTICES

Who are the Signmakers? Los Angeles English teacher Kathleen Kaufman creates a near-future world in which Las Vegas and other cities become ecologically self-sustaining, but only because the mysterious Signmakers "permanently remove" anyone who does not go green. "The Tree Museum" ($14.95 in paperback from The Way Things Are Publications) traces the collapsing marriage of Nate and Rosemary. The delusional Nate, convinced he is directing a "dystopic love story," trails his wife across across transformed territory from Southern California to Colorado. The tale, stocked with paranoid wanderings and f-bombs galore, asks what price we might pay for a tyrannical harmony.

Chico State University philosophy professor Troy Jollimore won a National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. "At Lake Scugog" appears in the July 27 issue of The New Yorker. At the southern Ontario lake the poet observes that "up on the bank, who I am / maintains an uneasy truce / with who I fear I am. . . . // Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were / gingerly trades spots / with the person you are // and what I believe I believe / sits uncomfortably next to / what I believe. . . ."

Cover by Gahan Wilson. Copyright The New Yorker.

Cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham teaches psychology at the University of Virginia. He writes that "People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking." That suggests an answer to his book's title, "Why Don't Students Like School?" ($24.95 in hardcover from Jossey-Bass). Teachers assume students can learn principles in the abstract and then apply them to specific situations, and that "learning styles" are important considerations. The author disputes both of those claims. His conclusion? "Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work."

Novelist Barbara Kingsolver's family tackles "living locally"

A few years ago Barbara Kingsolver, her husband, Steven Hopp, and their two daughters, Camille and Lily, moved from their home in Tucson, Arizona, to a farm in southern Appalachia. One of the reasons for the relocation was, as Kingsolver puts it, a desire "to live in a place that could feed us: where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground."

For a year the family endeavored to grow what food they could, shop at local farmers' markets, and in general eat only what had been raised no more than, say, an hour or so away. There were exceptions: Steven had to have coffee and Barbara needed tumeric, cinnamon, and cloves, so they used fair trade channels. The result is chronicled in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" ($14.95 in paperback from Harper Perennial) by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. (Lily, Barbara notes, was too young to sign a book contract.)

Enloe Medical Center is sponsoring a brown bag lunch and discussion of the book on Monday, August 10th, from noon until 1:00 p.m. at the Enloe Health Learning Center, 1465 Esplanade at 5th Avenue in Chico. The public is invited.

Barbara writes that "we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew. We tried to wring most of the petroleum out of our food chain, even if that meant giving up some things. Our highest shopping goal was to get our food from so close to home, we'd know the person who grew it. Often that turned out to be us, as we learned to produce more of what we needed, starting with dirt, seeds, and enough knowledge to muddle through. Or starting with baby animals and enough sense to refrain from naming them."

Barbara writes the main narrative, while Steven provides sidebars dealing with social and political considerations, such as issues surrounding factory farms (which he calls "concentrated animal feeding operations") or becoming a "locavore." Camille adds a teenager's take on eating spuds or free-range animals (and Barbara makes a case against the vegan movement). There are many recipes, with more resources at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com.

All in all, for the family, and readers, a growing experience.

A pictorial history of the Chinese experience in California

Historian Hannah Clayborn, based in Walnut Creek, writes that "Word of the 1848 gold discovery in California first spread on ships, and the people of Guangdong Province, burdened at home with political corruption, war, and floods, were some of the first to hear of it." By 1852 some 25,000 Chinese were listed on the California census. "Their countrymen called them Gam Saan Haak (guests of Gold Mountain). . . . The typical Chinese argonaut was young, single, and uneducated. He intended to return to China with his fortune made."

Clayborn tells the story of a century of immigrant experience in "Historic Photos of The Chinese in California" ($39.95 in hardcover from Turner Publishing). It features nearly 200 images drawn from such collections as the Oroville Chinese Temple and Museum, UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, and the Library of Congress.

"Despite violence and discrimination," the author writes, "the Chinese clung tenaciously to Gold Mountain, taking jobs on road crews, reclaiming marshlands in the Sacramento Delta and Central Valley, digging reservoirs and wells in new towns, and piling stones for property line fences." And they worked on the railroad, "doing the most hazardous tasks involved in laying track over the Sierra Nevada."

One photograph shows a procession of some sort down Montgomery Street in Oroville ("City of Gold") around 1890. Clayborn notes the town "was once the center for a population of Chinese miners, railroad workers, and agricultural laborers reportedly numbering above 10,000."

Another image, from 1895, shows Chun Kong You, "the most prosperous Chinese businessman in Oroville." He owned the "Fong Lee (Big Profit) store, which sold herbs and was a licensed gold purchasing agency. His descendants . . . helped preserve the Oroville Chinese Temple."

With the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the city's "old Chinatown, home to an estimated 14,000 people" became "a muddy mash of crusted pottery, ash, twisted metal, and an untold number of charred bodies." But in a twist of historical fate, the destruction of the birth records meant that "Chinese men could now claim citizenship and therefore the right to bring their families from China." A new Chinatown was built, families began to arrive--and so did the tourists. The story doesn't end there, and Clayborn's book repays repeated visits.

Chico novelist ponders how the Bible speaks

Retired Chico State University English Professor David Downes has written a series of novels reflecting on the meaning of life and love. His latest story takes up the matters of death and God, but there is no easy piety here. "The Mysterious Furies of the God In a Tent" ($19.99 in paperback from Xlibris), written under the name David Anton, presents the reader with an aging Aaron Steinmetz, brilliant brain scientist and secular Jew.

Steinmetz has been diagnosed with cancer and his son,David, also an agnostic, thinks his father might benefit in his last days from connecting with his Jewish heritage. It's arranged that Rabbi Calev Soloch will visit Aaron and together the two will read the Hebrew Bible. Aaron, who studies how brain neurons might produce consciousness, can hardly abide what he considers stories of a mercurial and vindictive God.

Aaron tells his son: "I have been reading the Hebrew Bible about how God chose us as His people. It was a calamity for Jews from the beginning, David, to be so chosen. The Bible is full of this racial grief and now we read it with a piety that belies its deepest meaning--punishing alienation. We were chosen to be God's sacrificial lambs to be burned in hatred ever since. We accepted God's wish and so it has been until this day."

David, meantime, has developed a deep friendship, love even, for his lab assistant, Hannah Richter, a Catholic with a German heritage. The novel is a series of dialogues as David tries to understand Jesus and why most Jews reject him as the Messiah, and Aaron and Calev wrestle with "the Jewish God" whose biography, Aaron says, "ends as a closed book . . . as if God has left his tent or is asleep in it, has finished his active adventures with the descendants of Abram." For Aaron, God is silent.

Can faith grow in Aaron, self-described as "a philosopher of neuroscience, an amateur historian, a reader of the newspaper"? Is there another kind of language, mysterious as human consciousness, through which one might come to terms with the "mysterious furies"? Anton does not give simple answers, but the hint is clear that we are more than solitary selves. The heart knows.

Memories of Hungary from a North State Voices columnist

"Hungary was not a happy country in 1956," writes Miklos Sajben. "People had had enough of being told what to do and say. They were tired of being forced to mouth party dogma. The Poles and the Czechs were stirring, and the fires of discontent spread like a forest blaze after a six-month drought. They reached Budapest and I watched the country burst into flames."

There are some eerie parallels between the recent events in Iran and the ferment in Hungary back then. The Russian occupiers "lowered the boom" by executing some members of the Hungarian cabinet and installed a new cabinet that "declared to the world that everything was under control." The revolts in the streets, Sajben writes, were at first "in the hands of students and intellectuals" but soon became disorganized. In just a few weeks, the revolution was all but crushed.

Sajben managed to escape and emigrate to the United States. His compelling story is told in "Dancing Boots and Pigs' Feet: Memoir of a Refugee from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956" ($14 in paperback from lulu.com). The book is available locally at Lyon Books in Chico.

Focusing on his growing-up years in Hungary, the author, who received a doctorate from MIT and who now lives in Chico, recalls the importance of family life. His working-class father obtained pigs, and pork became a staple. "Some parts of the feet," Sajben writes, "became the main ingredients of a dish called kocsonya. Pieces of the pig's feet were boiled in spiced broth for a long time and eventually allowed to solidify into a jelly-like substance. The dish was served cold, with paprika sprinkled on top." But what was "stupendously tasty": "Cubed kidney with brain sauce."

Sajben became a talented folk dancer in eighth grade with the encouragement of a new teacher, but turned away from the stage to pursue engineering. The book includes the author's drawings and family photographs and it's replete with Sajben's dry humor: One doesn't stand in line in Hungary to get precious goods; one forms a "circular queue" to get as close as one can using one's knees and elbows. In America it's hard to tell "when the movie stops and the commercial starts."

An amazing life, well told.

Honoring Durham's military service members

The stories of 318 men and women who served, or who are now serving, in the military, are told in "Durham Honor Roll (Volume II): Military Service From 1946 - 2009" (spiral bound, available through Durham Friends of the Library, P.O. Box 505, Durham, CA 95938). Compiled by Adriana ("Rian") Farley, the mini-biographies form a companion to her "Durham's World War II Honor Roll" published in 2005.

Published as an ongoing fundraiser for the Durham Library, the two books chronicle 522 service members with some connection to Durham High.

Many of the entries in Volume II are drawn from the ongoing "Now Serving" column, which began in 2005. "Some individuals and their families were very interested in the project," she writes, "others, less so. Some individuals wanted to reflect on their time in the military, others sought to forget those days." Each page is devoted to a single name (with photographs if available) and, where biographical information is sparse or non-existent, Farley has added research information from relevant Web sites.

There are sections on the Navy SEALs, the Marine Corps values, the U.S. Army in Vietnam and hundreds of other entries connecting the military experiences of those from Durham with the larger service community.

Walter "Mark" Bender, who served in the Marine Corps from 1974 through 1979, "has been an English teacher at Durham High School since 1997." Robert Allen Cooke, who served in the Army, "died in Vietnam War action during a Tuesday night patrol" in 1969; his name is on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, "The Wall." Katherine Draper's Army career spanned thirty years, beginning in 1965, and she writes that "it was a great life and I loved personnel work."

Also in the Army: Sean Farley, son of Rick and Rian Farley, who served in Iraq beginning in 2004. Greg Mortell served in the Navy from 1996 through 2001, and received the NATO medal for Kosovo operations. Chris Raabe began his career in the U.S. Air Force in 2002 and has logged more than 1500 hours "in prone position at the aft of" a refueling tanker; he calls it "the tube of pain."

The "Honor Roll" is an extraordinary tribute to those whose pain, and sacrifice, help ensure our freedom from one generation to the next.

SHORT NOTICES

John, called "the Man" by his followers, came to the valley to escape the world's chaos, which no philosopher had been able to fix. The valley is the Kalalau on the Na Pali Coast of Kauai, in Hawaii, and John's answer is to walk the treacherous valley trail, backwards, so that he will not forget this land of spirits. Peter McDonald, the atheist hired as the official photographer, has more in store than picture-taking in this novel of self-discovery from Chico author Stephen McMillin. The title? "The Man Who Walked Backward Down the Na Pali Coast" (paperback, available from www.themanwhowalkedbackward.com).

The California Coastal Commission has just published "Beaches and Parks in Southern California" ($24.95 in paperback from University of California Press). This full-color comprehensive guide covers Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties (a guide to the North Coast was published several years ago). Edited by Steve Scholl, the book lists more than 450 sites including "beaches, public access ways, parks, campground, nature preserves, world-class aquariums, and museums." Maps show biking and hiking trails and articles provide details such as "open hours, food and beverage services, wheelchair accessibility, rules about dogs," and more. An ideal guide for the getaway season.

It's World War II, and Serge, the product of an East Prussian family that had emigrated to America, "enlists in the U.S. Marine Corps and learns the rudiments of military undercover work." He becomes an aeronautical engineer and then, ready to practice some high-level military-industrial espionage, "becomes the darling of the German High Command." In "Codename: Beowulf" ($16.95 in paperback from Dorrance), Serge escapes from the Gestapo but must return to occupied Europe to save his great love, "trapped in a ghetto in Belgium." Reno, Nevada writer Paul Hewen bases his story on family history, though "names have been changed."

Richvale's Dennis Lindberg remembers "my hunting years"

Lifelong rice farmer Dennis Lindberg, born "at home in Richvale" in 1924, was an expert hunter in his time. His experiences form the heart of "Hunters and the Dogs of Hunters I Have Known" ($30 in hardcover from The Community Foundation of Richvale). "These are my memories," he writes, "of hunting upland game birds and waterfowl in northern California and big-game species in Canada, Alaska, Utah, Oregon, and California."

The beautifully illustrated book will be available during this Saturday's Richvale Centennial Celebration at Richvale Park. A pancake breakfast begins at 8:00 a.m. followed by a presentation of Richvale history. Lindberg has lived through most of it.

The book is divided into four parts. "The Lindberg dogs" include Patsy, his favorite, an English Pointer acquired around 1950. "I will never forget the day we were hunting quail in the rock piles left by early-day gold dredgers south of Oroville. When she was a three-month-old pup, I took Patsy along with my older dog so she could experience what was going on. . . . At one point, I suddenly noticed she was carrying a quail in her mouth that apparently had fallen out of my hunting coat. The little bit of retrieve training I had done with her at home had already paid off handsomely. I remember picking her up, hugging her, and giving her words of encouragement for bringing me the quail. As a result, we bonded together unlike any other dog I've had before or since."

The second part features "the dogs of my hunting friends" and the third includes accounts of "guided hunting trips," like the 1962 Canadian adventure in which Lindberg took a wolverine, "the athletic mascot of my alma mater, Biggs Union High School. I had the head mounted and it was placed in the basketball gymnasium."

The last part features contributions from hunting friends; a picture of Greg Stephens' yellow Lab, Clyde, is shown on the cover.

At the book's writing Lindberg and his wife, Charlotte, were celebrating more than six decades of marriage. Hunting is over now, but the author notes that "there may be some truth in the saying I have heard many times: 'A man's time spent hunting and fishing does not count against his time on earth.'"

Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H returns to Chico

In May of 2008 activist and M*A*S*H alum Mike Farrell embarked on a month long car tour to promote his autobiography, "Just Call Me Mike." Farrell and his wife, actress Shelley Fabares, had been scheduled around the country for book signing events sponsored by local social justice organizations. But just as the tour was about to start, Fabares suffered a mishap and subsequently underwent hip replacement surgery. Rather than cancel the long-scheduled events, she urged Farrell to continue on, solo. He rented a Prius (which he nicknamed "Mule") and he was off.

Farrell's dispatches, which first appeared on the Huffington Post blog, have now become a book, "Of Mule and Man" ($15.95 in paperback from Akashic Books). The author and the Prius became fast friends. "I sometimes refer to Mule as a 'he' and sometimes as a 'she.' That's not an error. Mule is a hybrid, after all, and sometimes he seems to be a he and sometimes she seems to be a she. And I've become accustomed to both.")

Farrell, who was in Chico last September, returns for a signing and discussion at Lyon Books in Chico this coming Tuesday, June 23, at 7:00 p.m. Cosponsored by the Chico Peace and Justice Center and Death Penalty Focus, the talk will highlight some of the ups and downs of the tour and emphasize the human rights issues to which Farrell has devoted his life.

In New Mexico he spends time with former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. In Maryland a woman asks him to list the "three most critically important things we had to do to get this country back on track." Farrell replies: "Elect Barack Obama, elect Barack Obama, elect Barack Obama." (He calls George W. Bush a "pathetic, smirking narcissist.")

Eventually Mule had to go back to the rental lot. "But I do want her to know," Farrell writes, almost wistfully, "how grateful I am for the way she has taken care of me. How do you say thank you to a critter who carried you 8,882 miles, through twenty-nine states, through deserts and mountains, heat and cold, sunshine and downpour, dancing around tornadoes and floods, all in just under five weeks' time?"

Candid, salty, and passionate. That's Mike Farrell.

Nevada County author and "Audacious Aging" contributor to appear in Chico

Patt Lind-Kyle, born in 1937, has been a dental hygienist, health science professor, and psychotherapist. Throughout her careers she has honed the art of meditation and writes that "I now have an audacious passion for working with individuals and groups in silence." Her essay, "Building Community from the Inside Out," is included in "Audacious Aging" ($29.95 in hardcover from Elite Books), an anthology edited by Stephanie Marohn.

A resident of Nevada County, Lind-Kyle will be appearing at the Chico Barnes & Noble store Saturday, June 27, from 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

She writes in her contribution that two decades ago she was hit with chronic fatigue syndrome. Doctors were of little help; "I had to discover how to heal myself. Through many starts and stops, I discovered how to do so by focusing on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of my life . . . using meditation to remove the negative thoughts about myself and help bring my body back into a natural balance." "Mind," she writes, "heals the mind."

"Audacious Aging" features more than three dozen chapters, some drawn on previously published sources, some from well-known figures, to help readers, in the words of the editor, "rise to the challenge of transforming our society from a youth/appearance-worshiping culture into one that fosters the values of the heart, supports the evolution of consciousness, and leaves to future generations a legacy of which we can be wildly proud." Contributors include Deepak Chopra, Helen Gurley Brown, George McGovern, Andrew Weil, Gloria Steinem, and Patch Adams (described as "a political activist for ending capitalism and creating a value system based on compassion and generosity.")

Lind-Kyle writes that meditation can help "change habitual patterns, reduce stress reactions" and enable those "sitting together in silence" to create trust and "build a community of heart from the inside out." (Her forthcoming book is called "Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain.")

Though I'm less sanguine than the editor about the transformative potential of the approaches chronicled in the book, I imagine readers will agree with Marohn when she writes that "many baby boomers thought the revolution would take place in the Sixties. Now they are awakening to the reality that it may take place in their sixties!"

New novel from former local television news director

 

Bruce Lang's long career in television and radio news includes a stint at KHSL-TV, Channel 12 in Chico, where (according to Wikipedia) he was news director from 1986 until 2003. So when Geoff Mann, the central character in Lang's new novel, "Newsman" ($18 in paperback from Klamath Press), takes a job as news director for a similar station in Northern California, it's tempting to play the match game. Which fictional characters are based on real-life persons?

Indeed, in some cases the correspondence is apparent even to outsider observers. The fictional KTBK's Chief Meteorologist is one Wendell Lumpus, "an excellent weatherman. . . . He was very knowledgeable about computers, long before it was fashionable, and devised computerized weather graphics for many television stations around the country." But "Lumpus seemed to have no sense at all how his comments might affect fellow workers or members of the public, and would be genuinely surprised at their reaction." There are other characters of similar wattage, and Chico insiders may revel in the snarky references.

Readers can be forgiven this diversion since the book reads like a memoir disguised as a novel, replete with Mann's dark thoughts about egos in journalism; young, attractive reporters and why they're so abundant in television; penny-pinching owners; and the triumph of quantity over quality in broadcast news. "It used to be people were valued for what they knew," Mann muses; "now they were valued for what they thought. Opinion became more important than knowledge."

The story traces Mann's career, beginning with work at a weekly tabloid sometime in the mid-1970s in the coastal town of Founders. Mann eventually moves to radio news, then to a Founders television station, and finally to the valley town of San Ide (home of San Ide State University) and KTBK.

Along the way Mann is manifestly unlucky in love, married for a time, going through a succession of girlfriends, haunted by a mysterious female voice asking for help. Stress produces heart palpitations, an old friend takes his own life, and he is forced out as KTBK news director when the station merges with another in San Ide. The mood is bleak, the sex oral, the language foul. For the author, it is the story of America in decline.

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."