"The Disappearing Theatre"

Heather Altfeld (heatheraltfeld.com) teaches in the Honors Program and for the Humanities Department at Chico State University. Her book of poetry, which won the Poets at Work Prize, draws on childhood memories within the context of a world hellbent on brutalizing itself.

In a blog post she writes: "Like many Jewish children of the post-war era, I was instructed in Holocaust studies at a very young age, and learned that nearly any amount of suffering could be endured so long as you were not on the train."

And yet we must not "disqualify any sorrow or grief that cannot measure up to the death camps." Thus, poetry: "Poetry attempts to weaken the despair of loss and to document it with beauty and presence in a kind of archive that does not simply disseminate information."

In "The Disappearing Theatre" ($12.95 in paperback from Poets @ Work Press) the poet notes that "I learned as a child not to speak much of happiness.// … What good is it, after all,/ to gather treasures in each room of childhood when all our pockets/ are filled with holes? What good is it to swing/ from a rope up into the trees when somewhere children/ are swinging from ropes beneath trees?"

The poet takes readers into the "country of fallen things" where "the dybbuks climbed out/ from under all the beds/ of all the little children/ to kiss their dreaming foreheads…." (The dybbuk, we're told, "is a disembodied Jewish ghost wandering among the living and thought to have some unfinished business in the world.")

"I was present at these events," one poem says, "and now I tell them to those who listen./ If they had not happened, dreamers,/ this news would not have to be told."

Heather Altfeld is scheduled to lead a poetry workshop at the WordSpring creative writing conference on Saturday, April 28, on the Butte College main campus. It's entitled "The Beginning Of Terror: The Question Of Beauty In Modern And Contemporary Poetry."

WordSpring is sponsored by the Butte College English Department with help from a number of local businesses. Registration is $45 for students and educators and $75 for community members. For details, visit buttewordspring.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And very small suitcases.

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

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

"The Murderer's Maid: A Lizzie Borden Novel"

It's 2016 and the first day at the coffeehouse job for twenty-something Brooke. "She's adjusted her speech and her clothing to look like the illegal immigrant she's posing as, so she can be paid under the table. This is what she's had to do to avoid being tracked: she changes her name every few years, moves, and finds a job where an employer is happy to look the other direction in exchange for paying a pittance."

Her mother had been murdered and she fears for her own life. But is Brooke, a devotee of true-crime stories, simply being paranoid? Her psychology and unsettling family history are explored in a cracking-good yarn by Erika Mailman. 

"The Murderer's Maid: A Lizzie Borden Novel" ($25 in hardcover from Bonhomie Press; also for Amazon Kindle), as the title suggests, also intertwines the death (by hatchet) of Lizzie's father Andrew and her stepmother Abby on August 4, 1892. 

At trial Lizzie was acquitted, perhaps because the jury didn't think her strong enough to twice wield the murder weapon. Yet doubts remain. Did her maid know more than she's telling?

The novel begins, in fact, in 1889, with the Irish maid, Bridget, newly hired by the Bordens. The story hopscotches between Bridget's time and Brooke's, as Brooke and her friend, Anthony, make plans to stay at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast (a real place) in Fall River, Massachusetts. She has discovered Lizzie is a relative. And now Brooke's life is really at risk. 

An author's note explains what's real and a novelist's invention in Lizzie's puzzling case. 

Mailman (who has also written a neo-Gothic trilogy under the name of Lynn Carthage), is scheduled to lead two workshops for WordSpring 2018 on Saturday, April 28, at Butte College. 

One is on writing young adult fiction; the second recounts the research process into the Borden family and how the novelist can "create a character that bends known history but still adheres to historical authenticity." 

Registration for the creative writing conference is $45 for students and educators, and $80 for community members. 

It's sponsored by the college's English Department, Associated Students, and local businesses; details are at buttewordspring.org.

"Cross Roads"

The startling success of "The Shack," by Wm. Paul Young, sparked discussions about forgiveness and the nature of God. The central human character in the novel was Mackenzie Allen Phillips. True to his initials, he helped "map" in story form how God's love might work itself out in the midst of tragedy.

Now, in a subsequent novel no less imaginative, Young takes on the self-centeredness of one Anthony Sebastian Spencer. In "Cross Roads" ($15 in paperback from FaithWords; also for Amazon Kindle), readers learn that Tony Spencer wants control.

When Loree, his wife, "bowed out gracefully" after Tony's inattention, he wooed her back, married her again, threw a big celebration, and then promptly divorced her. A product of a failed foster care system, disbelieving the "God stuff" he had heard as a child, he "had quit crying about it. He had made mistakes and hurt people, but who hadn't?"

Then Tony is hit by a medical trauma that puts him in a coma, and as he lies dying at an Oregon hospital he "awakens" to an outdoor setting with hiking paths and a number of oddly caring strangers.

Jack makes clear the difference between real and true: Not believing God's love for Tony "becomes what is real to you, and you then create a world that holds not believing the word of this God, or the love of this God, or even in this God at all, as a fundamental cornerstone of your life's construction…. Does your inability to believe the word of this God make what this God has said not true?"

A Jesus-figure enters, giving Tony the ability to physically heal one person. A woman called Grandmother helps Tony see himself for what he truly is.

Who will he choose to heal at the hospital? On that hangs the fantastical tale, by turns funny and full of tears, of what it means for selfishness to be transformed into self-giving love. There is hope, the novel says, for us all.

Wm. Paul Young is the scheduled guest at the Jesus Center's third annual spring luncheon fundraiser on Saturday, April 21 at the Lakeside Pavilion in Chico. Tickets are $55 with more information at jesuscenter.org/events.

"Amulet"

Jason Bayani (jasonbayani.com), now headquartered in the Bay Area, has been a National Poetry Slam finalist and is one of the founders of the Filipino American spoken word troupe Proletariat Bronze.

His printed collection of poems, "Amulet" ($15 in paperback from Write Bloody Publishing), cries out to be read aloud. Sometimes it just cries out as the poet attempts to make sense of the power of words and the seeming powerlessness of his lived experience (especially in Texas).

In "Pulling Threads," "Everything in my head is the sound, word/ without shape. …/ I'm not dreaming this. Poems are what happens/ when you close your eyes. Stars are fathomable.// Yesterday she asked what must 'happy' look like for me? I gave her/ the answer I thought should go on my epitaph. This is why, she tells/ me, I can only speak in front of a microphone. … I owe something more than poems. Maybe a really good/ chili recipe, or a second word for thunder…."

In a series of sonnets the last line becomes the first, expansive, line of the following poem, encountering bar fights, hip-hop, and turntablist DJ Qbert: "The thump is the beat, the beat is a wild zephyr,/ that must be why the creation of Art/ feels like caging the wind. …"

"I hold every unruly poem inside my skin," the writer says in "Continuum," and in "God of Misplacements," the question becomes: "What is the speed of living? Too much/ wanting lining over the base. The difference between/ needing to know, and knowing my place. The line/ keeps moving over us. You can't see it. The line keeps/ moving over us and every time we push, the push back/ comes harder. We can say it shouldn't be there anyway./ All I got is to work with what is until it isn't anymore."

Bayani is the scheduled keynote speaker for WordSpring 2018 on Saturday, April 28, at Butte College. Registration for the creative writing conference, which features workshops in poetry, fiction, and more, is $45 for students and educators, and $80 for community members.

The conference is sponsored by the college's English Department, Associated Students, and several local businesses. More details are at buttewordspring.org.

"Mere Science And Christian Faith: Bridging The Divide With Emerging Adults"

Greg Cootsona, who pastored for many years at Bidwell Presbyterian Church in Chico, has a deep concern for "emerging adults," those between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They marry later and often don't fit in to church activities geared to couples or families.

Many also feel estranged from what evangelical churches say about science (if science is even addressed) and withdraw from Christianity, becoming the "nones" and "dones." This is especially acute in Oakland-San Francisco-San Jose, but also in the Chico-Redding area.

Cootsona, now teaching at Chico State University, is also administering a grant project through Fuller Theological Seminary that seeks not only to find out what this group thinks about science and religion but to develop guidance for churches seeking to engage emerging adults.

"Mere Science And Christian Faith: Bridging The Divide With Emerging Adults" ($17 in paperback from InterVarsity Press) is, writes Cootsona, "both a manifesto and a field guide. As a manifesto, it's designed to convince you that the church must embrace mainstream science for its future."

As a guide, it shows how churches can enter with emerging adults into the conversation about human origins, climate change, the findings of cognitive science, the meaning of technology, and questions about sexuality and gender.

"Emerging adults," Cootsona writes, "hear about conflict, but they seek collaboration or independence." He focuses on integrating science and faith, where possible. "This means that no discovery can dictate our theology or ethics, but also that no form of human insight and knowledge is outside of Christ. Put simply, God knows far more about science that Albert Einstein."

Accessibly written, personal and even poignant at times, the book is essential to any who are interested in emerging adults. It goes a long way toward achieving the goal of weaving "together mainstream science and the good news of mere Christianity into a narrative that's truly beautiful and beautifully true."

Cootsona is scheduled to present a "Mere Science" seminar, based on his book, on Saturday, April 7 from 8:30 - 10:30 a.m. at Bidwell Presbyterian Church. Cost is $10 per person with childcare and a continental breakfast provided. To register, visit bidwellpres.org/events.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have Your Cake And Be Happy, Too: A Joyful Approach To Weight Loss"

Weight loss coach Michelle Hastie of Paradise is convinced that most diet programs get off on the wrong foot. They're all about limits and can't-haves. Her alternative "asks you to lose weight while living your life. In fact, this method of weight loss requires you to be so incredibly full of life that your body has no choice but to transform."

What that means is spelled out, encouragingly, in "Have Your Cake And Be Happy, Too: A Joyful Approach To Weight Loss" ($14.95 in paperback from Absolute Love Publishing, AbsoluteLovePublishing.com; also for Amazon Kindle). "You are going to lovingly step inside of your body and communicate with the deepest version of yourself," Hastie writes. "You become an expert not in nutrition or exercise, but in you and your body."

There are seven "steps" in Hastie's program (totalbodyhealthsolutions.com) which focus not only on "total body transformation" but "total life transformation." "Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full," but do so in a context of living "connectedly, intentionally, joyously, truthfully, abundantly, deliciously, fully."

It's easy to indulge in pity parties and excuses when one "blows it." "If you feel like you can't tell the difference between excuses and truth, listen to your feelings. In yoga, there is an emphasis on body communication. The belief is that your body sends you messages through symptoms and feelings. … Always follow what makes you feel better. … If you are feeling lazy, either get up and move or be lazy and proud!"

Meditation and spirituality are important. "Whatever higher power or universal law you decide to trust … you can be assured that this higher power believes that you don't have to struggle. … When I don't know how to solve a problem, I close my eyes, breathe, and thank the universe for sending me the answers I am seeking."

In listening to the body's call for balance, moving from "can't have" to "choose not to have," "the body responds to your intentional and clear actions by loosening the waistline of your pants once again."

For Hastie, that's the bottom line of the bottom line.

"Going Out In Style: The Architecture Of Eternity"

With books such as "Stories In Stone: A Field Guide To Cemetery Symbolism And Iconography" and "Forever L.A.: A Field Guide To Los Angeles Area Cemeteries And Their Residents," Chico writer-photographer Douglas Keister has unearthed extraordinary tales of the dearly departed. His interest in funerary art began with a ground-breaking collaboration with Xavier Cronin, an editor at American Cemetery magazine, in a book first published in 1997.

A new edition is now available. "Going Out In Style: The Architecture Of Eternity" ($24.95 in hardcover from Echo Point Books & Media, echopointbooks.com) features an introduction by Cronin and hundreds of Keister's full-color photographs and captivating captions. As a blurb notes, "mausoleums, statues, and memorials are a connection between the modern world and the generations that went before us."

"The word mausoleum," Cronin writes, "is derived from the name Mausolus, king of Halicarnassus, a great harbor city in the kingdom of Caria in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), whose tomb was a huge fortress build in 353 B.C. by Mausolus's wife Artemisia (who happened also to be his sister)." Some years later, in 1831, "the rise of the American mausoleum begins with our first 'rural' cemetery--Mount Auburn, just down the street from Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

Keister's chapters focus on architectural styles, what's inside the tombs, the depiction of humans in the cemetery, public buildings in the cemetery, and creative funerary arts (such as the Cogswell Monument in Oakland, a "70-foot granite obelisk crowned with a 10-inch rose crystal star and surrounded by curious carved stone sculptures" depicting Faith, Hope, Charity, and Temperance; dentist Henry Daniel Cogswell, who died in 1900, "was an ardent foe of demon rum").

Inside the Blocher Monument at Forest Lawn Cemetery in New York one can find a statue of Nelson Blocher, who passed away in 1884, "resting peacefully on his back," carved from "gleaming white Carrara marble." It's said Blocher died of a broken heart when his philanthropist father fired Blocher's true love, a maid who worked for ol' dad, who, "perhaps motivated by guilt," honored Blocher "with this eccentric memorial."

Who better to bring these stories to light than Keister, Chico's premier "crypt-ographer"?

"Diverse Minds: North State Journal 2017"

According to its website, the Iverson Wellness and Recovery Center in Chico "is a group of men and women challenged by a variety of mental health, alcohol and drug issues." Iverson is a program of Northern Valley Catholic Social Service, supported by the Mental Health Services Act and Butte County Department of Behavioral Health.

Outreach Coordinator and Peer Assistant Andrea Wagner, with a degree in journalism from Chico State University, facilitates a writing group and a yearly compilation of work.

That project has expanded to encompass sixteen Northern California counties. "Diverse Minds: North State Journal 2017" ($7.10 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle), edited by Wagner, presents readers with the work of over fifty writers and artists who are living lives "of wellness and recovery."

"Life can be challenging for people on the autistic spectrum," writes Paloma Blanca. "I often have to script my conversations. So don't treat me worse because I can come off as awkward." Jonathan Roy Martin cultivates gratitude: "I'm grateful for good people/ In my community/ I'm also grateful for/ Those who heard my plea."

The book includes "frank discussions of suicide, domestic violence, and substance use." Donna C. writes that "my writing is a step to my recovery. … Slowly I'm learning that life can be lived without violence and abuse. It's hard for me to live this way. For me, I've come to expect being hit."

Drawings and photographs, fanciful, serene, or stark, add resonance. Autobiographies at the end open up the meaning of the contributions. A section presents work by Shelby Wright, submitted by her mother after "Shelby completed suicide in 2011." "And although I am fighting with all my heart and soul," Shelby wrote, "my road is still long and hard." Her legacy of hope mixes with the sadness.

The road can be hopeful, but it is not safe. Kadjain Troi: "When you come to a fork in the road, remember, the paved road is an easy way home, but the other path will get you there with a story to tell."

Submissions are being accepted for the 2018 Journal at nvcss.org/diverseminds. Publication and an art show are scheduled for November.

"Recapturing The Wonder: Transcendent Faith In A Disenchanted World"

The rhythms that shape our lives, Mike Cosper writes, are often profoundly secular--and commercial. From Super Bowl Sunday to Valentine's Day and beyond, our lives are full of commodified sentiment. They have become "disenchanted."

Cosper, founder of Harbor Media and a former pastor in Louisville, Kentucky, says that for many there is "a subtle-but-strong resistance to faith and a skepticism toward anything that veers toward the supernatural. … A disenchanted world is a material world, where what you see is what you get." Religion becomes a personal take-it-or-leave-it affair.

His new book invites readers into a different set of rhythms, into a Cosmos ("an orderly creation full of meaning, … full of mystery, a place where … an unseen spiritual realm is constantly at work….").

As Christians prepare for Ash Wednesday and Lent, a time of contrition, the book's message, about rethinking the stories we tell ourselves, seems fitting. Those from different faith traditions will find much to savor as well.

"Recapturing The Wonder: Transcendent Faith In A Disenchanted World" ($17 in paperback from InterVarsity Press; also for Amazon Kindle) focuses on seven "pathways" or spiritual disciplines to aid readers in "embracing a different story and, with it, a different set of habits and practices."

Cosper notes the importance of the rhythms of the Church year and introduces "breath prayers" to mark the shorter moments of our lives. This is not a life of "spectacle and hype" (he contrasts the "glory cloud manifestations" at Bethel Church in Redding with the idea that God's presence "is often much simpler, quieter, and more subtle").

There are big moments, of course. Easter is coming. "Who needs a greater drama than death, resurrection, and scandalous grace?"

At times we need to enter into solitude with God, but then into solidarity with others. Gifts we give should reaffirm "bonds between people." There is a time of feasting and fasting (and Cosper provides practical help).

Such a life "oriented around the spiritual disciplines is not a pathway to pleasing God but a pathway to experience the joy of God that is already ours in Jesus." It is to live in an enchanted world.

"Life Talks Wisdoms"

Peggy Jennings-Severe, a retired Butte College administrator, has created a series of books and workshops designed around what she calls "Life Talks" (lifetalksbook.com). People want to share their "view of the world" with us if we would but ask the right questions. One can ask elders about their most cherished memories or a graduate about what's scary up ahead.

The first Life Talks books were about questions; the new one is about answers. "Life Talks Wisdoms" ($15 in paperback from CreateSpace; also planned for Amazon Kindle) is by Jennings-Severe and her son, Ben Severe, "with contributions from our grandfather and great-grandfather Earl Dickinson." It's a collaboration in answering the question "what have you learned so far in life?"

"Wisdoms" is plural in the book's title because, as Ben writes, "Wisdom is relative…. Different life experiences can filter the meaning of what it is to be wise. Please do not take this as us telling you what wisdom is but as what wisdom means to us. We challenge you to think independently, to apply your own biases, and--most importantly--to talk with your family, friends, and peers about them!"

There are three lists of life lessons, with reactions from Peggy and Ben throughout, and the reader is taken inside the hearts of three generations. Just before "Grandpa Earl" died, in 1965, he gave thirteen suggestions "to his very fine grandchildren" especially for their teenage years. Peggy wrote her list of twenty-five lessons for a keynote presentation on campus, when she was 57. Ben, 28, wrote his list for his parents' retirement party.

Speaking of parents, Grandpa Earl said: "Your parents are not old 'fuddy duddies' or 'squares,' and don't let anybody tell you they are." From Peggy's list: "You are more important than you think. You are less important than you think." For Ben: "Live with integrity."

The extended comments in the book from mother and son are poignant and thoughtful, a testament to the purpose--and wisdom--they have found in their lives.

Peggy Jennings-Severe is the scheduled guest on Nancy's Bookshelf, with host Nancy Wiegman, on Wednesday, February 7, at 10:00 a.m. on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org (KCHO 91.7 FM on air).

"Louie, Take A Look At This!: My Time With Huell Howser"

Tennessee-born Huell Howser, who died in 2013 at the age of 67, left a remarkable legacy of television programs devoted to his adopted home state of California. Best known for "California's Gold," a staple on public television up and down the state, Howser's easy-going southern charm encouraged ordinary people to open up to the camera.

For a decade, starting in 1991, his cameraman was Luis Fuerte, the unseen presence but the subject of Howser's frequent exclamations--and now the title of a book--"Louie, Take A Look At This!: My Time With Huell Howser" ($22.95 in hardcover from Prospect Park Books; also for Amazon Kindle), by Luis Fuerte as told to David Duron. (Duron, a producer and writer, met Fuerte at KCET-TV in Los Angeles, the home station for "California's Gold.").

The book takes the reader behind the scenes of a professional partnership based on hard-won respect. "I was the technician and he was the star. The mutual respect we had for each other--and our respective positions--was the backbone of our relationship, and it allowed us to work so well together for so many years."

Howser wanted to know only the bare minimum about his guests so "he could make discoveries on camera. His trademark phrases of 'Oh, wow!' 'Golly!' 'Oh, my gosh!' and 'That's amaaazing!' followed by a friendly, 'Louie, take a look at this!' were genuine, and you heard them more and more as we continued to work together. Yes, it's true that Huell's astonishment bar was set pretty low, but … that was the real Huell…. There was a little Gomer Pyle in there, but it worked well for him."

The book's chapters focus on the origin of the series (it had a lot to do with the reuniting of an old man and an elephant), memorable shoots, Huell's illness and legacy. There's also a list of episodes of "Gold" Fuerte worked on, including trips to Bidwell Bar Days at Lake Oroville (1992) and Paradise's Gold Nugget Days (1997); trips to Chico would come later, after Fuerte retired from the show.

A complete streaming archive is housed at blogs.chapman.edu/huell-howser-archives. It's amaaazing!

"Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans At War"

What would it be like for sailors to hear the words "release of nuclear weapons has been authorized"?

Science writer Mary Roach (maryroach.net) is ravenously curious, previously exploring the icky parts of the alimentary canal (in "Gulp"), cadavers (in "Stiff"), and what science knows about sex (in "Bonk"). Now she's turned her attention to military science--not as in battlefield strategies but in the behind-the-scenes work to protect bodies and minds on the battlefield.

"Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans At War" ($15.95 in paperback from W.W. Norton and Company; also for Amazon Kindle and in audio format) brings the reader into U.S. military laboratories and the lives of researchers who address "automotive safety for people who drive on bombs" and the healing efficacy of maggots in combat.

Roach would be quick to point out that the maggots are not the ones doing the fighting. The key for the military is keeping flies out while harnessing their offspring for duty in wounds, maggots lunching on dead skin.

Roach will present a free-wheeling talk as part of the President's Lecture Series on Monday, February 5, at 7:30 p.m. at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium. Tickets are $25 for adults, $23 for seniors, $10 for youth and Chico State students. For ticket information call (530) 898-6333, or visit the Chico Performances website (csuchico.edu/upe/performance).

The book explores efforts to create a universally hated smell (harder than you might think; 14% of one group said Sewage Odor "made them feel good"); genital transplants; diarrhea prevention ("Leaky SEALs"); better sleep in a submarine.

One study "showed that people who'd slept six hours a night for two weeks were as cognitively diminished as people who'd been up for forty-eight hours straight." The problem is that the "routine six-hours-a-nighters see no need for caution. They've felt mildly exhausted for so long it's become their normal."

Her trademark humor (especially in the footnotes) makes it safe even for the squeamish to get answers to questions never asked in polite company. She asks those questions. "In military slang," she notes, "there's a friendly epithet for everyone. I, for example, am a 'media puke.'"

Roach lights up the page.

"Mexican Marimbas"

Travel writer Chloe Ryan Winston (chloeryanwinston.com), who lived in Mexico, uses her knowledge of the country to fashion a fast-paced novel which features unpleasant encounters south of the border with drug cartel baddies, including Joaquín ("El Chapo") Guzmán.

Winston, who now lives in Redding, has created a series of books, including "China Caper," telling the tale of a small band of unofficial "couriers" working for a U.S. Government spy agency. The new novel is called "Mexican Marimbas" ($15 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle).

The unlikely group is composed of Phillips, a professor at an east coast Ivy League university, and his recruits: Derry, Jude, and Briana (who tells the story). Briana Fraser owns Let's Travel in Ashland, speaks fluent Spanish, and spent growing-up time in Mexico. She is able to get the group out of numerous scrapes as they travel to outposts in Mexico, known to be drug lord habitations, in an effort to photograph those responsible for the flow of drugs into the U.S., especially Chicago.

That city, says Phillips, "is now the transfer hub of drugs in our country. It's within a day's drive to about seventy-five percent of our population, plus it's a railroad axis for half of our nation. This is why Chicago has such a high rate of gang violence and murders today."

Bri notes that many in Mexico have a "love-hate-fear relationship" with the cartels. "And, with no one knowing who is friend and who is foe--even sometimes among relatives--they just mum up." That makes the mission all the more difficult, but even worse, a strange young woman named Amaria keeps showing up at many of the towns they stop at. Friend or foe?

The cartels are on to them, and the group has to keep renting vehicles after they explode or don't fare well in gunfights, or are pushed off the road by big trucks. It's a miracle that they survive.

But when Bri is thrown into a Mexican prison, the jig seems to be up.

Part mystery, part thriller, part travelogue, the novel makes the reader glad that the real El Chapo is in the hands of the authorities. Isn't he?

"How To Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom For The Second Half Of Life"

As the old year gives way to the new, some of us (ahem) remain in the "old" category. We can't seem to shake advancing age. Now, thanks to translator Philip Freeman, we have an opportunity to examine some old words by an old man, one who saw the weight of years not as a burden but as the fruit of one's character.

Freeman teaches classical languages at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, but he holds his learning lightly in a fizzy new version of a book by the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. "How To Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom For The Second Half Of Life" ($16.95 in hardcover from Princeton University Press; also for Amazon Kindle) was written "just before Caesar's murder on the Ides of March in 44 BC."

Cicero "was in his early sixties and alone." His daughter had died the previous year and, not able to support Julius Caesar, he "had retired to his country estate. There he remained, far from Rome, an old man in his own mind useless to the world."

But just as Cicero's last act seemed over, he began to write a series of treatises that endure today, including one on old age. His fictional dialogue featured the aged Roman leader Cato "from the previous century" in which "Cato shows how old age can be the best phase of life for those who apply themselves to living wisely."

The Latin text in Freeman's book is followed by his translation (with notes identifying all the names), and he summarizes Cicero's points in the introduction. Key: "A good old age begins in youth," Freeman writes, with habits of "moderation, wisdom, clear thinking, enjoying all that life has to offer."

"Cato" tells his young questioners that "older people who are reasonable, good-tempered, and gracious will bear aging well. Those who are mean-spirited and irritable will be unhappy at every period of their lives." He's realistic. "It isn't a light burden if a person, even a wise man, is poor. But if someone is a fool, all the money in the world won't make aging easier."

Words that will never grow old.

"Prison Vocational Education And Policy In The United States"

"It's a custody world." Spoken by an administrator of a prison vocational education program, it sums up the challenges faced by three Chico State University researchers contracted to help the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) determine whether new basic and vocational education programs instituted in 2007 were reducing recidivism. Back then, some 66% of those released were re-arrested within three years.

The idea was to assess the situation, modify behavior, prepare prisoners for re-entry into society, and follow up. All very logical, all very numbers-based. And, it turns out, all very misguided.

The story of the final report, and the behind-the-scenes reality, is told with wry wit by the three professors, a curriculum consultant and two sociologists: William Rich, Tony Waters, and Andrew J. Dick (who died in 2012). "Prison Vocational Education And Policy In The United States: A Critical Perspective On Evidence-Based Reform" ($100 in hardcover from Palgrave Macmillan; also for Amazon Kindle) sounds dry. Far from it.

The book presents the report in the context of prison bureaucracy and the inherent limitations of gathering data. (In the prison system, the researchers are warned, everyone lies.) Eight vignettes provide personal reflections from the white professors ushered into a world of mostly black and brown faces.

In the end, the report went nowhere as the Great Recession hit hard and vocational programs were abandoned. Yet lessons abound. "A class may be well conducted, teachers well trained, and a curriculum well chosen, but the fact that the students may have to submit to anal cavity searches before and after class has consequences for how much learning occurs and the quality of that learning."

The authors "still think that vocational education in prison is a good idea," especially for those with limited sentences, "but this is no longer all we think. We know that prison populations are far more difficult than spreadsheets at the main office may indicate…."

Prison is about punishment and restriction of freedom. "Classes will always be disrupted" for "lockdowns, sudden transfers, gang segregation, safety training, tool checks, and many other routines that trump the educational goals specified by the Legislature."

It's a custody world.

"Joy: 100 Poems"

Christian Wiman is Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. A few years ago he was diagnosed with an incurable blood disease, underwent a bone marrow transplant, and through days of treatment and a measure of recovery wrestled with a fundamental question, expressed in a 2012 interview: "What might it mean for your life--and for your death--to acknowledge the insistent, persistent call of God? … My work--prose and poetry--is still full of anguish and even unbelief, but I hope it's also much more open to simple joy."

It is the season of joy, but "what might that one word, in these wild times, mean?" That question appears in an extraordinary introduction to a poetry anthology, edited by Wiman, that attempts not to define but to inhabit its subject.

"Joy: 100 Poems" ($25 in hardcover from Yale University Press) "is aimed against whatever glitch in us or whim of God has made our most transcendent moment resistant to description. … The great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai once wondered why it is that we have such various and discriminating language for our pains but become such hapless generalizers for our joys."

Wiman's essay drives the reader beyond the safe bounds of mere happiness. Joy "is a homesickness for a home you were not aware of having." Richard Wilbur knows: "Joy's trick is to supply/ Dry lips with what can cool and slake,/ Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache/ Nothing can satisfy."

"But," Wiman writes, "there's no forcing it. Clamoring after joy leads only to fevered simulacra, … the collective swells of manipulative religion, the manufactured euphoria of drugs. … So what does one do with this moment of timelessness when one is back in time?"

The answer comes from experiencing the poems, mostly from our own time, whose diverse voices are sometimes hard, profane (there's an ode to urination), but also comprehending something about our lives that can't be said flat out.

It's like, writes Lisel Mueller, the sadness that comes when we are transported by music. "Joy, joy, the sopranos sing,/ reaching for the shimmering notes/ while our eyes fill with tears."

"How To Think: A Survival Guide For A World At Odds"

Former Paradise resident John Wilson (@jwilson1812) was for twenty-one years the editor of the now-defunct literary journal "Books and Culture." He published many pieces by his friend Alan Jacobs (@ayjay), Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University in Texas.

Jacobs  makes significant use of social media and that got him thinking about thinking, especially in a connected world where we can craft our own ideological cocoon. While some writers seem pessimistic about our ability to overcome biases, Jacobs is more hopeful.

The problem is not so much about biases but about "an orientation of the will: we suffer from a settled determination to avoid thinking. Thinking troubles us; thinking tires us. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits. … Who needs thinking?"

Well, we all do. In "How To Think: A Survival Guide For A World At Odds" ($25 in hardcover from Currency; also for Amazon Kindle), Jacobs focuses not on the fallacies of argumentation but instead attempts to reach the reader at an emotional, self-reflective level.

We do not actually think for ourselves. "We think in active feeling response to the world, and in constant relation to others. Or we should." And we need to recognize how important those relationships are in our thinking and at times push ourselves to connect with the "other." ("People who like accusing others of Puritanism," he writes, "have a fairly serious investment … in knowing as little as possible about actual Puritans. They are invested, for the moment anyway, in not thinking.")

Some groups stifle thinking by insisting we conform. Instead, we should strive for "true membership in .. a fellowship of people who are not so much like-minded as like-hearted. … Learning how to feel as we should is enormously helpful for learning how to think as we should. … You have to be a certain kind of person to make this book work for you: the kind of person who, at least some of the time, cares more about working toward the truth than about one's current social position."

As we approach a new year, there is perhaps no better resolution.

"Conversations With The Past"

Ruby English was Annie Bidwell's maid, and later also secretary, from 1914 until Bidwell's death in 1918. In an interview recorded in 1964 English remembers: "I was beside her when she died. I was right at the side of her bed when she breathed her last breath. She didn't say anything except, 'My head feels like it's full of piles of grass.' She would say that over and over. What kind of pain that was, I don't know."

English added: "Of course, before Mrs. Bidwell was cold, people were trying to get me to work for them. I never had to have a reference. Everybody said, 'If Ruby could please Mrs. Bidwell, she could please anybody.'"

Oral history from English and sixteen other interviewees is captured in "Conversations With The Past" ($16.95 in paperback from the Association For Northern California Historical Research, anchr.org), superbly edited by David Brown, Nancy Leek, Josie Reifschneider-Smith, and Ron Womack. Past president Dorothy Hill, now deceased, began the interview project in the mid-1970s.

Subtitled "Vibrant Voices From Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta And Tehama Counties," the book is available at The Bookstore and Bidwell Mansion in Chico; Discount Books and the Butte County Historical Society in Oroville; My Girlfriend's Closet in Paradise; and Gridley Museum. Footnotes and historical photographs provide helpful context, and there's a list of a dozen contributing local museums at the end, all to spark a reader's further exploration.

The voices include Adolph "Ad" Kessler with a firsthand account of his discovery of Ishi. Llewellyn Gay remembers pioneer life in Orland and Newville, in Glenn County, and a letter to President McKinley that was answered by the bunkhouse muleskinners instead.

The book ends with retired Lassen Volcanic National Park Chief Ranger Lester Bodine, interviewed by Ruby Swartzlow in 1979. He talks about all the preparations necessary for the visit of President John F. Kennedy, who stayed the night at the park and then dedicated Whiskeytown Dam and lake. (Kennedy is shown on the cover feeding a deer.)

It was September 1963, and a chilling editor's comment concludes the book, noting that this "was Kennedy's last official act before heading to Dallas two months later."

"Nancy Kelsey Comes Over The Mountain: The True Story Of The First American Woman In California"

The new children's picture book from retired librarian Nancy Leek of Chico is called "Nancy Kelsey Comes Over The Mountain: The True Story Of The First American Woman In California" ($15.95 in paperback from Goldfields Books; goldfieldsbooks.com). It's available on Amazon and locally at Bidwell Mansion, Made In Chico, and ABC Books. Each page features a full-color drawing from Paradise's own Steve Ferchaud.

In a postscript Leek tells the story in greater detail, noting that Kelsey "thought that she was the first American woman in California. In fact, when she got to Sutter's Fort, Mary Walker, the wife of explorer Joel Walker, had already arrived from Oregon. But Nancy was the first woman to come to California by the perilous route over the Sierra Nevada."

Kelsey and her ever restless husband Ben "joined the Bidwell-Bartleson Party for California" in 1841. "It was a hazardous trek," Leek writes in the postscript. "Nancy was pregnant during this six-month-long journey, and gave birth to a boy at Sutter's Fort after arriving there in December 1841. The baby did not survive." She eventually had eleven children (two died in infancy). Kelsey herself died in 1896.

The children's story starts with Kelsey left alone in the mountains while the men of the party scouted ahead. She "sat on her horse, holding her little girl, Martha Ann, on her lap. She was afraid to dismount her horse. Who knew what stranger, what bear or mountain lion, might come on her suddenly?" The story quotes Kelsey's own account: "I was left with my babe alone, and as I sat there on my horse and listened to the sighing and moaning of the winds through the pines, it seemed the loneliest spot in the world."

The story then picks up the start of the journey, the arrival in California, and in 1846 Kelsey's part as the "California Battalion" helped "take California away from the Mexican government." Perhaps she helped sew the original Bear Flag.

It's been almost two centuries since Nancy Kelsey was born. This captivating book keeps alive for a new generation the life of an extraordinary woman.

"Roads Not Taken"

Chicoan Emily Gallo is exploring the lives of a group of unlikely friends who frequent the famous Venice Beach boardwalk in Southern California.

Her first novel, "Venice Beach," introduces writer Finn McGee who comes to stay with his daughter, Kate, and who befriends the mysterious Jedidiah Gibbons, an escapee from the Jonestown massacre; in San Francisco Jed becomes caretaker of the Columbarium (the title of the second book).

"Kate And Ruby" takes up the story of McGee's daughter whose marriage to Martin breaks up when he comes out to her. Ruby, Martin's mother, resents the interracial couple and then "practically disowned Martin for being gay." Unexpectedly, Kate becomes Ruby's caregiver, and life's dailyness changes them both.

The theme of sexual identity is foregrounded in Gallo's newest story, "Roads Not Taken" ($12.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle; an Audible.com audio version is narrated by the author).

Kate had taught a young man named Malcolm Washington in high school. Malcolm now waits tables at Café Gratitude in Venice but everything changes when he applies for a second job at Marie Moss Senior Housing.

Savali, a Samoan, is on staff, and Malcolm is smitten. Though the novel intertwines the stories of the residents, the focus is on Malcolm's coming to terms with Savali's "non-binary" gender identification. Savali is Fa'afafine, a third gender in Samoan society.

Malcolm is straight and prefers to call Savali "she." Savali was born male, telling him that "I realized that I was, in fact, comfortable in my body and my mind in both genders. I also realized that I could wake up on any given day and prefer to dress or behave in one or the other. In other words, I identify as both and I identify as neither."

What does it mean for Malcolm to love Savali, and how does one navigate the "gender spectrum" and the desires that may be incompatible with being a couple? Though not explicit, the story delves deeply and respectfully into what is for Malcolm a new world of sexuality.

Gallo (emilygallo.blogspot.com) is scheduled to be interviewed by Nancy Wiegman on Nancy's Bookshelf, Friday, December 1 on mynspr.org (KCHO 91.7 FM) at 10:00 a.m.

"California Standoff: Miners, Indians And Farmers At War 1850-1865

"Incomplete accounts," writes historian and retired Political Science professor Michele Shover,  "are a common problem in local history. For example, Butte County's violent clashes between settlers and Indians were treated as random 'one-off' events--intermittent atrocities sprinkled among accounts of Victorian-era 'happy talk.'" John Bidwell himself "suggested the effects of such events were peripheral distractions, not core experiences."

Over the last two decades Shover has worked with original sources in an attempt to tell a more nuanced story, analyzing "underlying causes, political issues, conflicts of interest, cultural assumptions. …" The result is a magisterial work of scholarship that is also immensely readable. "California Standoff: Miners, Indians And Farmers At War 1850-1865" ($24.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) challenges assumptions and develops new historical understanding.

Meticulously detailed, with fifty pages of endnotes, the book's dozen chapters provide a riveting picture of the competing interests swirling around the community Bidwell founded. As Shover notes, "Politics was personal in nineteenth-century Chico, influencing social life and where residents spent their money." There are contemporary resonances everywhere.

Shover disputes what she calls Theodora Kroeber's "misanalysis of Maidu culture" and historical "distortions" all of which have implications for Kroeber's "Ishi In Two Worlds."

Shover also concludes that the Mountain Maidu raided the Mechoopdas working on Bidwell's ranch in the mid-1850s because they likely considered this "collusion."

Shover's research shows that many more Indians than the standard account of 32 died as they were resettled to Round Valley in 1863. "Primary documents disclose that close to 200 … died on the climb up the Coastal range mountain to the reservation." The record, she says, was "manipulated to shield the Army from its failure to deliver the Indians."

For the first time, Shover explains that these Indian deaths were not caused by the Army, but by "the most mortally dangerous type of malaria" that infected the group "while camped near Big Chico Creek in the summer of 1863."

The story Shover tells is one of violence since there were "no effective institutions in place that protected … against abuses." Her study, giving all sides their due, breaks new ground. It is indispensable.

"Shane The Shamrock Tries To Find Luck"

Retired teacher Cynthia Hutchinson lives with her husband in Bieber, about fifty-five miles north-northwest of Susanville. She has begun writing a series of children's books, filled with colorful sketches, aimed at the younger set.

The first is "Shane The Shamrock Tries To Find Luck" ($16 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). The sixteen-page tale is followed by fourteen questions about events in the story ("What was the first thing he tried to do that the ladybug suggested?"; "What did Shane hope to try someday?").

It all begins "with this little shamrock named Shane who only had three leaves. And he thought to bring luck to anybody that he must be a four leaf clover. He decided to set out on a journey to see if anybody could help him find luck."

The plants and animals in the forest try to help, and near as they can figure Shane had to become more like them in order to find luck. That ladybug? Well, she said, "You don't need four leaves to bring luck to anyone. You just need to be able to fly like me to have luck. Why don't you climb up on that tree branch and try to fly?"

That doesn't quite work, and Shane hits the ground, only to hear laughter from a nearby rose bush. The rose advises Shane he doesn't have to fly to be lucky; he just has to look beautiful. But decorating himself with fallen rose petals doesn't make much difference. He's still Shane, the three-leaved shamrock, only now covered with rose petals.

A butterfly explains that Shane can grow another leaf if we wraps himself up in a leaf cocoon, but that doesn't work, and a daisy has him stand near her by a stream in a windstorm.

Nothing changes until he meets his four-leaf-clover friend Sissy, and though Shane doesn't grow another leaf he gains something more valuable: an understanding that even a four-leaf-clover can't actually bring luck to anyone. Instead, he learns, what counts is standing by one's friends, especially when they are in need.

As luck would have it, the next story may give Shane that opportunity.

"Jake And The Hot-Air Balloon"

Paradise resident Maurice "Big Mo" Huffman is known in the music scene for his melding of blues, Southern rock and funk with his award-winning Big Mo And The Full Moon Band (bigmoblues.com). After he and his wife Robin moved to California in 1989 he began telling their son Miles a bedtime story featuring a ten-year-old orphan named Jake Foster and a talking mouse named Milton.

"Jake And The Hot-Air Balloon" ($11.95 in paperback from Page Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is the first in a planned series featuring the intrepid adventurers.

Jake's parents had drowned in a Caribbean storm. His only relative, aunt Hilde, died when he was five, and Jake wound up in a Colorado orphanage.

He "was a tough boy and knew that this was what life had dealt him, but even the toughest boy can face moments that are too hard and where he needs somebody. Jake was alone though, left with his dream of being high up in a hot-air balloon."

Word comes of a nearby hot-air balloon race, and Jake desperately wants to go, but an older bully and his minion at the orphanage get Jake into trouble. He's forced to make the biggest decision of his young life, disobeying those in charge and sneaking off to the races and right into the area where the balloons are set to lift off.

You just know something will happen and, sure enough, Jake finds himself aloft in one of the balloons where he meets Milton the talking mouse, a resident of the balloon basket. It's Milton's job to keep Jake safe, and, it turns out, that's a tall order.

Along the way, sailing over the world, the balloon is shot down by a group of very odd and friendly people on a floating mountain whose job it is to shoot holes in Swiss cheese but who aren't very accurate. Their balloon eventually repaired, Jake and Milton travel to the Caribbean, rescue a girl named Lilly, search for her scientist parents, and fight off a some bad guys.

The action-packed story ends with a few threads hanging, a big yellow bird, and a hint of the adventures to come.