Yosemite as you've never seen it, through the lens of Chico State University's Byron Wolfe

"Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers" ($29.95 in large-size paperback from Trinity University Press) is the just-released softcover version of a book first published in 2005. It's an extraordinary "rephotography" tour, courtesy of Byron Wolfe, Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Imaging at Chico State University, and Mark Klett, Regents Professor of Art at Arizona State University in Tempe.

What is rephotography? According to Rebecca Solnit, a San Francisco-based writer who contributes three major essays to the volume, "by standing in the same place at the same time of day and year (which is necessary to get the angle of the light right) you return to the site of the photographer's choices--how he went onto the very lip of a cliff, what he chose to crop out and what he chose to show of the landscape. . . ." The photographers in this instance are Carlton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge, who photographed Yosemite in the 1860's and '70's; Edward Weston (1973), and Ansel Adams (mid-twentieth century).

Klett and Wolfe have taken their own stunning panoramas from the present day and overlaid them with precisely aligned images from the earlier photographers. The "Four Views from Four Times and One Shoreline" shows Lake Tenaya in 2002 with black and white photographs from Muybridge, Adams and Weston. The hills and mountains have changed little; the shoreline itself, once studded with boulders and trees, is smooth. It's as if little holes in time have opened up, and the reader can gaze in awe at what once was.

Solnit, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, writes that "truth is like rock. But meaning is like the pines." In her essay on the "politics of the place," Solnit notes John Muir's vision of the Sierra Nevada as forever "virgin wilderness . . . a place apart . . . a place hitched to everything else in the universe except other people. . . . But a century later Muir's vision needs radical revision." The book explores just what that new vision might be. Truth endures; meanings change.

The writing is superb, the photographs high art with just a touch of whimsy: Yosemite in all its glory.

A politically-incorrect memoir of undergrad days at Chico State University

In 1978 Mitch Cox left Cal State Northridge and headed to Chico State University. Little did he realize some of the best days of his life were just ahead. He was a self-described goof and all-around "fathead," and yet maybe not so dumb after all. He eventually he returned to the university to become Assistant Director of Athletics.

His story is told in "Fathead Goes to Chico" ($14.95 in paperback from iUniverse), a rude and crude account of hijinks and heartthrobs told in frat-boy style without the frat. Cox the writer slightly alters the names of real people and pays more attention to the humor of the situation than to the exact historical details. The reader is given a series of comic vignettes as "Poo" (short for the hated nickname "Mitchiepoo") transmogrifies into "Mitchell Shawn Cox" at his graduation.

Cox will be discussing his book at the Chico Barnes and Noble store this Saturday afternoon from 1:00 - 3:00 PM.

The author proves himself a thoughtful sort. One November, outside the dorms, "it was still sunny and nice so there were people everywhere throwing the Fris or just catching rays. I was . . . facing Lassen Hall, when I saw her coming. She was riding this beat up old bike down the walkway and as she passed, our eyes met. . . . Her hair fell over her left eye in an incredibly sexy fashion, she smiled, and that was that. Like a ghost . . . she disappeared inside Shasta." No one knew her, so Mitch figures she's visiting a mystery boyfriend, and that leads to "Mitch's Mystery Boyfriend Theory":

"If there exists a female that you're interested in, and if that female is not interested in you, and if you ask said female out, and if she says, 'No, I have a boyfriend,' then that boyfriend's name will be Cliff, Bret, Chuck, Rick or Kyle and not Herman, Myron, Fred, Harold or Irving." You'll never see this boyfriend, the theory says, "but since you can't prove he doesn't exist, you're hosed."

There are tales of roomies having sex while Cox is trying to sleep a few feet away, and practical jokes, and women, and good friends, and women. "Fathead" rules!

Chico area poets create their own buzz

In honor of Chico's California Nut Festival, held in February, Lyon Books of Chico sponsored a poetry contest. Owner-manager Heather Lyon writes that "participants were asked to submit poems that 'relate to nuts, other local crops, or bees or other pollinators.' Adult and child poets submitted poems." Lyon tells me she was so pleased with the submissions she decided to publish them all in "Sustenance: Poems By Chico Poets In Celebration of the California Nut Festival" ($7 in paperback from www.lyonbooks.com).

It's a lot of fun. The 31 submissions are divided into "thoughtful poems" and "humorous poems," with three entries by young people (Jane Hogan, Robbie Barber, and Madeline Chinchay). Lyon notes that "Jeanne E. Clark, creative writing faculty at Chico State University has four poems included in the volume. Judge Beth Spencer of Bear Star Press chose Clark’s poem 'Almonds' as a notable work." Previously published poets are represented, including Audrey C. Small, Joy Harold Helsing and Patricia Wellingham-Jones, but many of the submissions are from newly-published writers.

The poems can only be sampled with a few short excerpts. Clark, in "Almonds," writes of "Flatbed trucks stacked five high with white wooden boxes. These hives. // Sleepy bees, suspended in smoke, careen in the orchard." Judith Ellen Anderson has "Bees Under the Kitchen Window": "Next I called the honey people, making a lovely offer. / Lively swarm of bees: Free for the taking. / But no one answered - and no one took the free bees. // So now we've made our peace. . . . "

Helsing notes that the "Bees Are Disappearing": "I think / some bees found their way / into a different dimension, / a parallel universe / they like better, / and the buzz is spreading."

Reed McGuffy, another of the prize winners, tells the tale of "The Tree & Bee & What It Means for You & Me." The tree invites the bee; and the bee buzzes in reply: "Yer zzent iz juzz delizzuzz / An' yer blozomzz zo divine / I thinz I like yer offer, / I thinz I like't fine! // And so the two had Congress, / The Tree and tiny Bee, / And from that merry union / Come Nuts for you and me."

Just for kids: Local writer brings trains to life

Chico's Bonnie Worthington dedicates her first children's book to her son, Cole, "my angel and my inspiration." A note about the author on her Web site says that "her son became enthralled with trains and remains a devoted enthusiast today. His first train ride was on the little steam engine number 12 of the Orland, Newville and Pacific Railway in Glenn County. By the time he was three, Bonnie was taking her son on trips to the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento and going on tourist train trips all over North America. One thing they noticed was that there was a shortage of train story books for children, so Bonnie created the Engine Ed series of books for all little train enthusiasts and the adults who get to read to them."

The first in the series is "Engine Ed's Colorful Train" ($16.95 in hardcover from Bear Hug Books, available at www.engineed.com) with full-color illustrations by Laurie Faust. It's bedtime, and a little boy named Cole asks his mom to read his favorite story, the one about "Engine Ed." Cole drifts, but "when he opened his eyes, Cole was standing at the edge of an old walnut orchard and saw a big black steam engine on the tracks in front of him! It looked like it was smiling. 'Ding, ding, ding, ding,' rang the engine's big brass bell. . . ."

Cole finds himself "dressed in blue striped overalls, an engineer's cap, and there was a big red bandana around his neck." Engine Ed invites him on board. "'Well, wouldn't you know,' the big engine laughed, 'I've got Cole here in front of me and coal in my tender too and I can't get started without either one of them. Hurry up and climb aboard. I can't be late and I can't get going without an engineer!' puffed Ed impatiently."

On the ride Cole is introduced to a tank car, a boxcar, a flatcar, and an old fashioned caboose, and surprises Engine Ed with his knowledge of FRED. That, Cole explains, "stands for 'Flashing Red End-Device.' That's what trains use now instead of a caboose."

Youngsters will appreciate learning about trains through the simple yet engaging story, the stuff that dreams are made of.

Writer of rollicking, hilarious, endearing Western novel to appear tonight in Chico

Start with the Nebraska plain in the year 1871. Add 17-year-old elite-born Edward Turrentine Bayard III, just off the train from Connecticut, sent by his doctor to a lung-clearing sanatorium that proves pretty much nonexistent. Season with a large dollop of Dickensian characters and Three Stooges spice, and one has the makings of a Western novel that more than just “hops along.” “Turpentine” ($14 in paperback from Black Cat) by Spring Warren is an imaginative delight from the Davis-based first-time novelist (there’s more at www.springwarren.com).

Spring Warren will be appearing at Lyon Books in Chico at 7:00 PM tonight for a public reading and book signing. Married to historian Louis Warren, the author spent her growing up days on a Wyoming Ranch, and writes in publicity material that “my great uncle, Roy Montgomery, ran a bar and bordello in Gillette, Wyoming, called the ‘Buffalo Hump.’ He was the Democratic favorite for the governorship of Wyoming when the Republican faction levied charges against him for violating the White Slave Traffic Act. He spent a year in Leavenworth and no time as Governor.”

Some of that sensibility finds its way into “Turpentine,” which is the moniker Edward (“Ned”) receives early on in Nebraska. Ned is naïve but thoughtful, and falls head over heels for Lill Martine, but a marriage is not to be. Later, on his way back to Connecticut to unravel family mysteries, he meets up with his old tutor, Brill, who asks Ned, “Forgive my lachrymose thoughts. . . . How are Avelina and Tilfert, the love of your life, Lill, and the scoundrel horse, Chin?” “Dead, drowned, lost, and abandoned. Lachrymose indeed.” And that’s not even the halfway point of the book.

Back East, Ned teams up with a teenage coal miner named Curley and a cigar roller named Phaegin, a woman who loves dancing and who eventually loves Ned. Their adventures are by turns laugh-out-loud funny and mordantly grim. Along the way there are more identity shifts than in a Shakespeare comedy. Much later there will be time for reflection on just who one is and recognition that “the end and the beginning are much the same. Eventually no one owns identity.”

“Turpentine” is a rambunctious debut, captivatingly written.

Looking toward Easter and the hope of the Resurrection

N. T. Wright is Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, but he’s also a prolific scholar and popular author of “Simply Christian.” His newest book is “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” ($24.95 in hardcover from HarperOne). It’s a bracing call for readers to understand how the early Christian hope, which was based on what Wright calls “the strange story of Easter,” gives guidance to the church today as it confronts a world of death, injustice, hopelessness.

Along the way Wright takes up two false hopes, the materialist “myth of progress” and a kind of modern Gnosticism that seeks to escape the material world into some ultimate disembodied existence. But the first cannot deal with real evil, and the second undermines human stewardship of God’s good creation.

By contrast, the Christian hope is far different. “The early Christian future hope centered firmly on resurrection. The first Christians did not simply believe in life after death; they virtually never spoke simply of going to heaven when they died. (As I have often said . . . heaven is important but it’s not the end of the world.) When they did speak of heaven as a postmortem destination, they seemed to regard this heavenly life as a temporary stage on the way to the eventual resurrection of the body.”

Easter is a “strange story,” Wright says, because the earliest Christian accounts of the bodily resurrection of Jesus conclude not with a hope of “going to heaven,” but rather with “a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun—and we, his followers, have a job to do!”

The resurrection is “life after life after death,” and so “the presently embodied life before death can at least be seen . . . not simply as a ‘vale of tears and soul-making’ through which we have to pass to a blessed and disembodied final state, but as the essential, vital time, place, and matter into which God’s future purposes have already broken in the resurrection of Jesus and in which those future purposes are now to be further anticipated through the mission of the church.”

Wright considers judgment, heaven and hell, the ascension of Jesus, and more. He offers corrective words for the church as he looks at implications of the resurrection for justice, beauty, evangelism, baptism, prayer, scripture reading holiness and love, and the promised future redemption of space, time, and matter. The hope that Easter offers may take the reader by surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A history of Orland told in vintage photographs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That, he says, is “America’s shame.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So who is “Ray Carver”?

Paradise poet on the hard realities of life—and death

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

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

Walk into the wind

Conquer fear

as it flees the storm’s mouth

drowns the deep ocean’s roar.

Watch light

drink its last breath

as the mind’s eye goes dark.

Heed the star

that illuminates wisdom

stirring the far reach of thought. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The year in local books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a good year.

Image by Bill Husa, Chico Enterprise-Record

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas. Here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why did I laugh out loud?