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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHORT NOTICES

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

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

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

Noted environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert coming to Chico State University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One woman's view of Chico and beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moon's own spark burns brightly.

Biblio File SHORT NOTICES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Local writers featured in "poetry of recovery" anthology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chico author presenting free workshop on teaching kids about money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The year in local books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read on!

Sacramento writer on building the Christmas community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New novel has a Chico connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

Former Chicoan on golf's personalities

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

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

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

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

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

Orland couple tells a Bigfoot tale for kids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darkroom magic: Turning good holiday pictures into excellent ones

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

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

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

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

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

Diplomat's wife remembers a European childhood

Chico resident Helga Ruge, born in Wiesbaden, Germany, is the author of the memoir "Flashbacks of a Diplomat's Wife" and a fictional story, "Wither the Promised Land." Now she turns to novelized autobiography in "More Truth Than Fiction: Growing Up in Europe Between the World Wars" ($11.95 in paperback from Clay & Marshall Publishing Company, available at local bookstores or by writing claymarshallbooks@sbcglobal.net). Her purpose, she says, is to "leave an account of my childhood for my family" but also "to share with readers everywhere what life was like in Europe during the early 1900s."

She notes that "the many events and experiences I write about are factual and, though their names are fictitious, the human beings in my story are very real. And because I find autobiography without dialogue dead and boring, I give voice to these people even though it's not possible to recall exact words spoken so many decades ago." The story chronicles the life of Peter Heimbach and his wife, Lisa, and their two daughters, Helen and Inga, from 1922 to 1938.

Living in Biebrich, a small town near the Rhine, the little family was not immune to the instability of post-war Germany. "Inflation was so rampant that every day brought new prices" and "many Germans were out of work and hungry." Peter spent "four years in an internment camp in Russia during the war" but returned, intact, and now had a job "selling pills for his company," a job which eventually would take him, and his family, to the Soviet Union, then Romania, and back to Germany.

Baby Helen (nicknamed "Helly"--for good reason, as it turns out!) is born in 1922 "just as the church bells rang in Christmas at six o'clock in the morning." Helen is forever wandering off, causing Lisa, especially, no end of grief. "Impulsiveness was the most natural thing in the world to Helly."

Ruge's apt descriptions of everyday life is intertwined with the growing threat of Communism (where Peter's co-worker in Russia is arrested for unfaithfulness to the revolution) and the unraveling of German democracy and the rise of the Nazis. The reader is drawn into the pulse of domestic life, squabbles and all, in a story that in the end is about love and grace.

Chico abortion doctor tells his story

Bruce Steir writes that "I attended medical school twenty-three years before Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land. The only position that I had about abortion back then was that my sister should have been allowed to have the choice to have a safe, legal abortion instead of having to go through the heartbreak of giving birth and then giving her baby up for adoption to another family." He adds that "abortion was thought of as a criminal act in 1957, during my senior year in medical school."

Steir was Medical Director for the Feminist Women's Health Centers in Chico, Redding, Santa Rosa and Sacramento for a dozen years in the 1980s and 1990s. In December 1996 he was performing abortions at a clinic in Riverside and he writes that "one of the women died that day. It was the only death I had ever been responsible for. Over the course of my career I performed somewhere around 40,000 legal abortions."

Sharon was 27 years old and in the second trimester of her pregnancy; apparently Steir had perforated her uterus. He writes that the County Medical Examiner "referred to the death as accidental," but that several weeks later he was charged with second-degree murder by Riverside County prosecutors.

Rather than pursue the matter through what Steir describes as a "lengthy and costly hearing with the Medical Board" he surrendered his medical license in 1997 at the age of 66. The criminal case drained his savings and, seeking to avoid incarceration, with the advice of friends and family he entered a plea bargain to involuntary manslaughter. But the judge sentenced him to Riverside County Jail for a year (6 months of which was to be suspended for 1000 hours of community service).

Steir tells his life story in "Jailhouse Journal of an OB/GYN" ($15 in paperback from AuthorHouse www.authorhouse.com). Though time "has a way of dimming the memory for some details," the book gives the reader a sense of a man with few regrets. "An existing pregnancy that is not wanted is an accident or a mistake," he writes. "It doesn't really matter which it is. People make mistakes and as long as they do there will be erasers on pencils and delete keys on keyboards."

New chapbook from Chico State University's philosopher-poet

Troy Jollimore, who teaches philosophy at Chico State University, won the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for "Tom Thomson in Purgatory." That book introduced a unique poetic persona, exuberant, unguarded, and bigger than life, and he returns in four of the fifteen poems in Jollimore's new chapbook, "The Solipsist" ($10 in paperback from Bear Star Press www.bearstarpress.com).

A solipsist is a skeptic about the existence of the outside world. In the title work, the poet seems to agree: "Don't be misled: / that sea-song you hear / when the shell's at your ear? / It's all in your head. // That primordial tide-- / the slurp and salt-slosh / of the brain's briny wash-- / is on the inside." At the end, though, a question is raised "that comes up again and again, / as to why / God would make ear and eye / to face outward, not in?"

These poems raise questions, contort the comfortable ways we (or some of us) think. "Tom Thomson Indoors" wants a doorbell installed. "The installation man didn't understand: / 'You want your doorbell on the inside, sir?' / Well, yes--didn't he grasp it? Only fair / that prior to intruding on't, he give / the world some sort of warning. (Not that world / had shown the converse courtesy to him . . . )"

The poet explores the inner life of "Regret." "I'd like to take back my not saying to you / those things that, out of politeness, or caution, / I kept to myself. . . . Yes, I'd like to take back / my not frightening the pigeons that day with my wild / protestations of uncontrolled love, my not scaring / them off into orbit, frantic and mad, / even as I now sit alone, frantic and mad, / racing to unread the book of our love / before you can finish unwriting it."

In "Penguins," the poet unwrites the poem: ". . . and all the penguins in Worcester Square / (for 'penguins' read 'pigeons') / have, like dodos, forgotten how to fly / (for 'fly' read 'do long division'). . . ." The same poem isn't the same.

Jollimore gets inside your head with some brilliant skullduggery.