"Critical Thinking Enablers: The Skills Of Fact Finding And Taking Back Science"

Independent scholar Richard Burrill is perhaps best known for a series of anthropological forays, through big books and public presentations, into the life and times of Ishi (ishifacts.com), the last living member of the Yahi people (he died in 1916).

Burrill is now developing a new project which has a far larger aim, to prepare Americans for the 250th anniversary of the country's founding, in 2026 (journeyintoamerica2026.com). He is self-publishing a series of books designed to improve cultural literacy; as his website says, "Imagine a majority of Americans who are informed throughout the land with shared knowledge about America’s diverse peoples, its traditions, its stories, the metaphors we live by...."

The first is called "Critical Thinking Enablers: The Skills Of Fact Finding And Taking Back Science" ($20 in paperback from The Anthro Company Press, journeyintoamerica2026.com). Readers can call (530) 809-2451 for more information. The book, or "syllabus," "is designed to help the people value knowledge in order to think critically and be informed, as best we can to direct our government who serve us."

The two sections (on fact-finding and how science works) contain a total of sixteen chapters intended for individual learners or seminar groups. The "enablers" in each chapter, often with an anthropological focus, form an eclectic collection of historical investigations, puzzles, illustrated lectures, discussion starters, and a thirteen-page critical thinking glossary. 

Topics include distinguishing primary from secondary sources, recognizing propaganda, scientific thinking, and mastering numbers. They're not the last word, but rather fun and interesting jumping off points for further exploration.

The bottom line, Burrill says, is to develop in learners what Ernest Hemingway called (when asked what a great writer needed) "a built-in, shockproof crap detector."

Burrill, teaming with local computer literacy consultant and educator Lon Halley, is scheduled to present "Critical Thinking Enablers by Using the Best of Technology Today" during Chico State University's This Way To Sustainability conference. 

The session is scheduled for Thursday, March 28 from 2:15-3:00 p.m. on campus. For more information on the two-day conference, and to register, visit bit.ly/csucsustainability; one day admission is $35, a two-day pass is $50, with free admission for all students.

"Peter Lassen: The True Story Of A Danish Pioneer In California"

Retired librarian Nancy Leek of Chico continues her series of Golden State Biographies for children with the story of one of John Bidwell's compatriots. Illustrated by the inimitable Steve Ferchaud, the book is called "Peter Lassen: The True Story Of A Danish Pioneer In California" ($15.95 in paperback from Goldfields Books, goldfieldsbooks.com). 

It's available locally at Bidwell Mansion, ABC Books, Made in Chico, and at anchr.org, the site of the Association for Northern California Historical Research.

His influence? Think of "Lassen County, Lassen Peak, Lassen National Volcanic Park, Lassen National Forest, Lassen College," Lassen Trail, and more.

Leek evokes a man always on the move. "Born in Denmark in 1800," she writes, Lassen "was thirty years old when he decided to travel to America. ... He didn’t speak English. He didn’t know where he would go or what he would do. But an independent spirit and a love of adventure took him ... to a land of beauty and opportunity called California." 

He first landed in Boston, but the crowds were too much. He wouldn't settle in Missouri, either, because the frontier called out. Eventually, with Mexico's permission, he plied his blacksmith trade at Sutter's Fort, where he met Bidwell. But he wanted his own ranch, so he "chose a piece of land along Deer Creek."

"Many of the Indians living in northeastern California were Paiutes. Peter had usually gotten along well with Indians. Numaga (also known as Young Winnemucca) was the chief of a Paiute band. He and Peter became friends. They trusted each other. Peter was successful in settling disputes between the Indians and the settlers."

Wanting to invite others from Missouri to join him, he found a new route to California. In the meantime gold fever was in full swing and when he returned most of the workers had left. By 1850 he had left, too, wandering the mountains.

Lassen then set out for Nevada in 1859 with two other men in search of silver. Peter and one of his companions were shot and killed under still-mysterious circumstances. 

Stubborn but good-hearted "Old Pete" was gone. But, as Leek's book attests, his legacy remains.

"In The Shadow Of The Hanging Tree"

For Portola novelist Michael McLellan (michaelamclellan.com) it started in Chico. "In 2010," he emails, "I bought the house my grandparents had purchased new in 1962 (a stone's throw from lower Bidwell Park) from my grandmother's estate. I wrote a fair portion of my first novel on a picnic table" near the creek. 

McLellan has produced in his third novel a searing tale of the 1860s, intertwining Southern slavery with massacres of Native Americans as white settlers expanded Westward. It is not for the squeamish.

"In The Shadow Of The Hanging Tree" ($15 in paperback from Sweet Candy Press; also for Amazon Kindle) begins in 1861 in Missouri, charting the horrific life of twenty-year-old Henry, a newly freed slave, attempting to escape the roaming militias intent on killing runaways.

Caught by Emmet Dawson and his band, Henry and his companion Eliza face almost certain death. They are taken to a big tree by the road. "There were six people hanging from the tree limb. Even with the blood from his cut face blinding one of his eyes, Henry saw more than he could bear: five men and one small boy, all slaves."

There is a parallel story. In 1865 John Elliot is expelled from West Point at the behest of influential East Coast businessman Jonathon Hanfield. He is shipped off to Fort Laramie in the Dakota Territory to assist Colonel Frank Picton "with the Indian situation." John, in love with Hanfield's daughter Clara, is also the son of Hanfield's rival.

Henry survives, recuperates with the Cheyenne, and becomes a military guide at Fort Laramie. When it becomes clear that Picton has formed a militia intent on fomenting an all-out race war against the indigenous peoples, Henry and John (now reunited with Clara) face stark choices. There is graphic violence (with the N-word used fifty times) in this deeply affecting, gut-punch of a novel.

"The white man only knows desire," Standing Elk tells Henry. "He knows nothing of contentment. ... The white soldiers murder without regard, but themselves are spiritless and go screaming into their own deaths as they were born into life. ... There can be no peace with such men."

"All They Will Call You"

For writer and performer Tim Hernandez, Woody Guthrie's poem "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)," with music by Martin Hoffman, "was the beacon." Popularized in concerts by Pete Seeger, the song was a biting commentary on the crash of a Douglas DC-3 in Los Gatos Canyon on January 28, 1948. 

According to a news report back then, "broken and charred bodies and an indiscernible heap of debris were all that were left of a government chartered flight from Oakland, which would have taken 28 Mexican Nationals to their homeland...." 

The song puts it this way: "The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting/ The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps/ They're flying you back to the Mexico border/ To pay all your money to wade back again. ... You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane/ And all they will call you will be deportees."

Who died that day in Los Gatos Canyon? In a gripping retrieval of history, Hernandez has crafted a page-turning account of passengers and crew and their hopes for a better life. "All They Will Call You" ($16.95 in paperback from The University of Arizona Press; also for Amazon Kindle) by Tim Z. Hernandez (timzhernandez.com) is the 2018-2019 Book in Common for Chico State University, Butte College, and a host of area organizations.

Hernandez will speak at Chico State's Laxson Auditorium on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:30 p.m., part of the President's Distinguished Lecture Series. Tickets are $20 for adults, $18 for seniors, free for youth and Chico State students. Tickets for the performance are available at the University Box Office (csuchico.edu/boxoffice) or call (530) 898-6333. 

The book chronicles the grisly crash, the witnesses, and the lives of the crew and some of the passengers, including Luis Miranda Cuevas who heard, in 1946, "that even though the war was over, trains leaving Guadalajara for los Estados Unidos could still be found, and braceros were still needed." Once in the U.S., workers engaged in a strange dance with the needs of agriculture and the long reach of "la migra," the immigration authorities. 

It is a harrowing account, told with compassion, lyricism, and hope.

"From Profits ... To Prosperity"

Retired electrical engineer Darwen Cook of Chico wondered some years ago what would happen if economics was viewed from an engineering perspective. "Economics," he writes, "had no cohesive guiding principles like the other sciences that I studied and used for engineering." Worse, he says, economists focus on profits rather than prosperity. What would happen if all that changed?

His answer is detailed in a comprehensive set of recommendations that is at the same time a manifesto for an Economic Humanist Party movement. Cook calls his idea "economic engineering," an approach "based on axiomatic principles and human rights intended to achieve maximum economic prosperity for the vast majority of all humanity sustained indefinitely."

"From Profits ... To Prosperity: Blueprint For A Democratic Humanistic Economy" ($19.95 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is written in the form of proposed legislation Cook dubs the Humanist Economic Reform Act (HERA). 

It's informed by the Economic Bill of Rights, which Cook says is implied in the U.S. Constitution. Key rights include "the right to equal valued pay for equal valued work," "the freedom from the oppression of an economic privileged class," and "the right to a living wage sufficient to achieve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

"I have reformulated Capitalism," Cook writes, "as a democratic, axiomatic, mathematical system. I call this reformulation 'Humanism.'" The axioms act like a kind of Euclidean geometry for economics. They are not the product ofeconomics but rather introduced from the outside (by an engineer) to guideeconomics. 

The first, for example, maintains that "the fundamental reason our economy exists is to serve humanity in facilitating the worker/consumer duality by achieving maximum prosperity for the vast majority of mankind." It recognizes that humans shouldn't be treated as commodities "such as zinc or soybeans .... This axiom ends the possibility of economic slavery once and for all!"

His proposal involves expanding the Federal Reserve into a fourth branch of government, called the independent Economic Control Authority, and the replacement of Social Security with a "National Fund payroll deduction plan" to increase retirement benefits. 

What if the economy were engineered for human prosperity? Here, at least, is one man's answer.

"Spillway Emergency"

Oroville Dam, February 7, 2017. "As water releases from the flood control spillway ramped up to 54,500 CFS (cubic feet per second) in anticipation of inflows expected from rainfall, DWR (Department of Water Resources) employees noticed an unusual flow pattern; the bottom of the spillway appeared to have suffered partial collapse." 

As William Sager and Wayne Wilson note in a chilling, book-length account of what happened next, "the initial discovery of the problem was almost by accident." Two DWR electricians, making a routine check, saw concrete "flying through the air on the spillway," a piece described as "'about the size of a Volkswagen minibus.'"

Five days later, with the main spillway crumbling and water overtopping the dam's emergency spillway for the first time in its history, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea ordered the evacuation of 180,000 downstream residents. 

The hour-by-hour story, what journalists call a "tick-tock," is told in "Spillway Emergency: The Story Of The Failure Of The Oroville Dam Spillway And The Evacuation Of Oroville" ($20 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle). Sager and Wilson, both fire service retirees and Oroville residents, were among those evacuated. 

They conducted interviews and scoured documents and have produced a superb account, fair to all sides, covering "triumphs" as well as "missteps" (especially by DWR). 

The book doesn't assess causes of the main spillway failure; after a survey of flooding incidents in Oroville since 1849, it focuses on how CAL FIRE (which provided emergency response mentoring), DWR (led by Acting DWR Director Bill Croyle), and local law enforcement had to set egos aside and work as a unified team. It did not come easy, but it happened.

February 12. "At 2:00 p.m., the emergency spillway was already eroding at the rate of thirty feet per hour." Structured as a series of connected "monoliths," at 3:15 it appeared monolith 3 might collapse. "At 3:50 p.m., a DWR geologist briefed the unified incident commanders in the DWR boardroom. 'Imminent failure of weir due to head cutting, one hour to go before that happens.'"

One hour before the unthinkable.

In the forward, Honea says the book "chronicles one of the most tense, uncertain, and frightening experiences of my career." 

"Widow Creek"

"It's a work of historical fiction about Mariah Hardwick Penngrove, a young woman who travels from Missouri to Northern California via wagon train in 1849." That's the straightforward description provided by Westwood writer Sarah Margolis Pearce for her novel "Widow Creek" ($12.99 in paperback from Lucky Bat Books; also for Amazon Kindle). Yet that barely scratches the surface; there are wonders here that transcend the genre.

Mariah keeps a journal, inspired by the writings of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Their own journal entries appear throughout the book as they, like Mariah, explore what is "beyond." 

Bamboozled by one Earl Penngrove into an ill-advised marriage and a long trip to California to collect a non-existent inheritance, Mariah becomes a widow during the journey but she is determined to carry on.

"I wondered about those thousands of miles Lewis and Clark explored," she writes. "What was out there in The Beyond? I did not dwell on the enormous space, the lonely miles, and the empty stretches that made your eyes sore from looking. Not then, at any rate. It was the not knowing what was next around the bend that captured my imagination."

She arrives in Remington River (readers will be reminded of Chester) which is on the path to Red Bluff, overlooked by Hasten Peak. A stage stop called Widow Creek Station plays an outsize role in Mariah's adventures, most notably with the notorious Californio Pajaro Mendonca, a Mexican born in California. 

There's a mutual attraction, though it is not long before Mariah is embroiled in a land dispute with a San Francisco tong leader who is also a prominent madam. Po Fong will stop at nothing to get what she wants—and she wants what Pajaro has hidden.

Mariah's writings are framed by a present-day historical investigation involving, among others, a Chico State University history major in prison for bank robbery. Somehow there's a connection between Mariah and three mysterious rocks discovered near Hasten Peak. Writings on them refer to her and Pajaro.

Pearce captures the joy of historical investigation in determining what's true. Is Pajaro really a bad guy? The answer is complicated--and so is this satisfying, beautifully crafted, and provocative novel.

"Evolved"

Chicoan Jesse Lawson works in Information Systems at Butte College; a U.S. Marine, he's served as an intelligence analyst. He's a singer-songwriter; host of the "Coping with Creativity" podcast; and the author of "Evolved" (self-published for Amazon Kindle; visit lawsonry.com for details), a sci-fi thriller that begins quietly at Chico State University.

That's where Dr. Lexa Rogers, a lecturer in archaeology, is on the cusp of getting a full-time position when, out of the blue, government agents from the Department of Homeland Security whisk her away, supposedly for a weekend, on a super-secret mission.

At Chico Municipal Airport the agents drive right up into the belly of a cargo plane for the long flight to San Felice Circeo, home of one of the most important Neanderthal fossil finds. Lexa is a former Marine but the secrecy makes no sense. "The real question now," she tells the agents, "is why some hundred-thousand-year-old bones in Italy are a matter of national security."

It turns out that buried in one of the ancient skulls is a tooth; removed for study, the handlers had accidentally chipped it, as Lexa sees in a photograph. But there's a second picture of the tooth without a chip. Okay. Except that the second picture was taken afterthe first. The tooth has healed itself. The genetic value to humanity? Incalculable.

There's more. Lexa meets Donna Morrow, project director in the Carson Habitat, "three hundred feet below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea and fifteen miles south of the Italian coast," where the focus is on Olive, a giant octopus who has learned rudimentary sign language. 

More importantly, cephalopods like Olive can quickly adapt their skin color to their surroundings, rendering them almost invisible. If that ability could be duplicated in the laboratory, soldiers would hold tremendous advantage against enemy troops.

Who wouldn't want such a genetic technology? So there are plots and counterplots afoot--and a grisly attack by a mysterious creature that makes getting at the truth a matter of life or death, even as the horror mounts.

This is the first book in the Special Projects and Intelligence Division Emergency Response (SPIDER) series and readers will eagerly await Lexa's next page-turning adventure.

"Life And The Fields"

Chico poet George Keithley has released a marvelous volume entitled "Life And The Fields: New And Selected Poems" ($24 in paperback from Turning Point, turningpointbooks.com). Drawing on publications from "The Donner Party" (1972) down to the present day, with nine new poems, Keithley has created a paean to the natural world that also recognizes its fraught relationship with human purposes.

The book begins with "Voices, Stillness": "We listen to/ the rhythmic lapping// of the water. We/ hear its current,// almost the sound of voices singing// on the far shore/ until they drift off...." In the poem only the "skeletal pilings" remain of a pier washed away by a flood; now there is only "deepening stillness." But it is the stillness that draws the poet to a connection with the world that can hardly be articulated. 

In the last poem in the collection, "Enjoy the Land," the poet is alone by Deer Creek, "Water cascading/ over rocks, rushing beneath the aspen/ and oak that shelter the foothills...." And a question comes as the poet struggles with parental regret: "... why does a man seek the solitude/ that troubles him?" He adds, "Always/ we long for those we've loved in the silence/ of what was whispered, wept, or left unsaid."

There are poems here of human love but also folly and miscalculation. "There is a land logic which we lost..." says the tragic voice of George Donner. Later in the collection, at "The Red Bluff Rodeo," "The last man on a saddle bronc/ provokes a rough ride/ to impress the judges./ Jabbing flesh,/ his spurs urge/ the bronc to kick/ three ways at once--// He flies from his mount/ in mid-air, tossed/ free. Falls/ like a sack of meal in the dust./ The throng disapproves and boos./ On hands and knees he crawls away from the hooves."

The rider flies, and falls. Now consider "Geese Going North": "They fight to be free of our earth,/ legs dangling, drawn up in the driving air,/ wings stroking the wind, beating its current beneath the keel/ of the breastbone as they're borne/ toward that loud height/ where we find them this morning in full flight."

Keithley soars.

"Sequoia Chronicles"

You're an investigative reporter for a small, northern California radio station, but now, toward the end of December, 1978, you are hiding out at the Little Grass Valley Campground, and it's freezing. You're twenty-seven and your life isn't making sense.

You write in your journal: "If this were one of my newscasts, here's how I would report the events of the past year: ... 'I've watched two people die violently. I worked with an undercover detective investigating a grisly murder. I've made enemies of a motorcycle gang and some local land developers. I have been threatened a lot. Even shot at once. ... I lost several of my best friends this past year. Ed, Grandpa. And now Emma. Oh, and this is my last newscast, because I was fired last week.'"

So begins "Sequoia Chronicles" ($15.95 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle or visit sequoiachronicles.com) by Jim Moll. A former North State Voices columnist, Moll, nicknamed "The Voice of Oroville," draws on his own radio news experience to tell the story of Mark Keating, News Director at the fictional KBSC ("Broadcasting for Sequoia City") in a fictional Sequoia County, not all that far from Oroville.

Keating's mind has a soundtrack; his journal entries are replete with lyrics of the sixties and seventies, like "A Horse With No Name." "Sequoia Chronicles" consists of those entries along with the chapters of the suspense tale Keating is writing, about a (fictional) plot against President Carter fomented by a man in New Delhi named Zia, who wants to change history. Keating's working title is "Mark's Great American Novel."

Keating is at first a just-the-facts newsman, detailing in his journal the land fraud he discovers, the personal histories of his friends and those who may be after him (is he being paranoid?), as well as the details of President Carter's goodwill tour to India early in 1978. But when Emma comes into his life, emotions begin to surface that he has long suppressed. 

Local references abound and add to the verisimilitude of this tale of human extremes, a fascinating yarn about what it means to make a difference in the world--and whether the cost is just too high.

"Calypso"

Humorist David Sedaris is now in his sixties, and that is cause for taking stock. His new collection of personal essays, "Calypso" ($28 in hardcover from Little, Brown and Company; also for Amazon Kindle) does just that. He wonders if he will someday be like that old guy on the plane who pooped in his pants. He tries coming to terms with an alcoholic mother (gone for three decades), a father in his nineties (a man of few words and very conservative views) and the suicide of his sister Tiffany in 2013. 

When Sedaris remembers some of the things his mother said about him to others in the family, he writes that "it was hurtful the first few times her criticism got back to me. ... Then I realized that it didn't mean anything. Opinions constantly shifted and evolved, were fluid the same way thoughts were. ... It was all just storytelling." 

That's key to understanding the Sedaris clan, from his longtime boyfriend Hugh, to David's siblings, Gretchen, Lisa, Amy, and Paul. The essays evoke a quirky family constantly on the move (especially David in his Fitbit obsession), with opinions flying and bouncing into each other, morphing sometimes into silliness and sometimes into sentiment: storytelling binds them together. 

Wry, rude and gross (like when, after surgery to remove a non-cancerous fatty tumor, he feeds it to a turtle), Sedaris is also funny. He names the family beach house he buys on the coast of North Carolina the "Sea Section." 

He describes in detail doing public readings while suffering intense gastrointestinal distress. He inveighs against everything being "awesome" these days, and learns the giant snapping turtle with a growth on its head actually has a name. "I felt betrayed, the way you do when you discover that your cat has a secret secondary life and is being fed by neighbors who call him something stupid like Calypso."

Chico Performances is presenting an evening with David Sedaris on Monday, January 14 at 7:30 p.m. at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium. Tickets from the University Box Office (csuchico.edu/boxoffice or call 530-898-6333) are $60 Premium, $50 Adult, $48 Senior, $40 Youth and $15 Chico State Students.

Now isn't that awesome?

"What Some Would Call Lies"

Rob Davidson (robdavidsonauthor.net) teaches American literature and creative writing at Chico State University. His latest book comprises two novellas that brilliantly explore the tricks of memory in coming to terms with the past. 

"What Some Would Call Lies" ($16.99 in paperback from Five Oaks/Formal Feeling; also for Amazon Kindle) begins with the tale of one Monica Evans, entitled "Shoplifting, or How Dialectical Materialism Can Change Your Life."

Monica, 27, her husband Jeff, and their toddler son Jacob move to Chico, "a little hamlet of progressive thought surrounded by a wasteland of backwater conservatism," as she tells her mother, Claudia, her bête noir. Claudia encourages her to write, but not about Saundra, Monica's late sister. Yet Monica, who raises Jacob pretty much alone because of Jeff's long work hours, is obsessed with her.

Saundra died from a fatal combination of booze and sleeping pills. "That's what torments me," she tells her therapist. "Whatever was going on in my sister's head. Nobody really knows." Was it an accident? Suicide? Monica has to know, so she attempts to duplicate Saundra's feelings, like the time she was caught shoplifting (when Monica did the same, "it felt wrong andexciting, perverted andglorious"). She writes Saundra's autobiography, calling on memories that never existed, ghosts wearing Saundra's favorite yellow dress.

In the second novella, an older Jackie Rose looks back on his childhood in Duluth, Minnesota (Davidson's own birthplace). On the verge of becoming a teenager, he is naive about his world of 1980 until his substitute sixth grade teacher, Ms. Poindexter, introduces the class to the underbelly of American history, definitely not standard textbook issue. "There is always a history other than the history you receive," she says, "other ways of telling the story."

Jackie's parents fight more and more; his mom wants to go to college, his dad (who sells kitchenware) drinks too much and, as his son discovers, is stepping out and lying about it. Jackie meets an older girl whose affections stoke his nascent sexuality. And then she disappears, leaving only the wisps of memory. 

If these memories are lies, these stories poignantly suggest, perhaps they are some of the truest things about us.

"Slugger: A Legal Thriller"

"Simon Schuster walked out of his chambers like Zeus upon a cloud, white hair flowing and black robe swishing as he climbed the secular altar. ... His judicial bench was raised, like in every courtroom built for the American high priests of justice. The man was in his mid-sixties, Rod guessed, and as impressive in intellectual firepower as he was in girth."

Rod is Rod Cavanaugh, "for the defense." A young star in Oregon's legal firmament, Cavanaugh, in the midst of a painful divorce from Julianne, who has mostly succeeded in turning his two teenage daughters against him, is as skilled as they come in the courtroom. Exhibit A: He gets low bail for his client, Rudy Randal, charged with "setting a disabled man's car ablaze before beating him nearly to death."

Here, in the opening chapters of "Slugger: A Legal Thriller" ($18.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle), Chicoan T. B. O'Neill (tboneill.com) unfolds the intricate tale of a man whose legal and personal lives become hopelessly intertwined after a series of surprising revelations. Real justice, the story implies, is not only messy but challenges faith in the legal system itself.

"Slugger" refers to a book with the same title published on Amazon by his young assistant, Brooke McCarthy, based on Cavanaugh's confidential case notes. But Brooke too thinly disguises the characters and there is a threat of a libel suit against Rod in the portrayal of Ritchie Cinquini, the man allegedly beaten by Rudy Randal. Cinquini manages Spanky's, an Oregon strip club, which in turn is owned by a mysterious not-to-be-messed-with company called CIPMANCO (Chicago Investors Property Management Company). 

Along the way there are beatings, and murders, and a blow-your-socks-off ending.

O'Neill practiced law for three decades, his website says, and now he's turned to writing, populating his novels with composite types of those he has jousted with on the legal field of battle. The courtroom scenes have the ring of authenticity. The characters are fleshed out in all their human frailty. This is masterful writing (and plotting), a legal page turner that would not be out of place on an Amazon best seller list. "Slugger" bats a thousand.

"The First Testament"

Verses from Isaiah 11, often read during Advent and seen in the New Testament as fulfilled in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, are startlingly fresh in a new translation by scholar John Goldingay.

"But a shoot will go out from Yishay's [Jesse's] stump, a branch will fruit from his roots./ Yahweh's breath will alight on him, a breath with smartness and understanding,/ A breath with counsel and strength, a breath with acknowledgment and awe for Yahweh; his scent will be awe for Yahweh. ... He will exercise authority with faithfulness for the poor, and reprove with uprightness for the humble people in the country." (1-3a, 4)

Because the group of books later called the Old Testament is "hugely significant for Christian faith," as Goldingay writes, he has chosen to call his literal rendering "The First Testament: A New Translation" ($60 in hardcover from IVP Academic; also for Amazon Kindle).

Goldingay is emeritus professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. He and his wife Kathleen now reside in Oxford, UK, where he continues to write (see johnandkathleenshow.com). His revised translation of the Old Testament, which first appeared in his seventeen volume "Old Testament For Everyone" series, aims to supplement more familiar translations using common English words in an accessible format including maps, glossary, and introductions to each book. "It uses the name for God that God invited Israel to use, the name Yahweh."

Goldingay kindly responded to an email asking about his use of the word "smartness," in Isaiah and especially in Proverbs. He pointed to a definition that Google provides: "having or showing a quick-witted intelligence."

He says on his blog that "The depth and the wonder of the words I have been reading have come home to me more and more. I’ve sat there marveling that I’m privileged to let this sacred text soak into me. I’ve felt more and more that I have been on hallowed ground. Yes, they are holy scriptures. Of course it’s because they’re all about God. So simply reading them for hours every day has made me wonder at the God whose activity lies behind them and who is the most prominent character in them."

"Ten Miles Of Roadside Archaeology Along The Old Humboldt Wagon Road"

In late August 2016 a fire began off Highway 32 at Santos Ranch Road, south of Forest Ranch, which eventually burned 88 acres, including the south rim of Upper Bidwell Park. According to former Chico State University professor Gregory White, co-owner of Sub Terra Consulting: Archaeology and Paleontology, several public trails sustained damage.

White identifies four "cultural resources" that are "eligible for the California Register of Historical Resources," including portions of the Humboldt Wagon Road (built by John Bidwell). White's project report, aimed at the rehabilitation of the area, provides detailed documentation of artefacts, including wagon tire ruts and even "a distinctive Coors 7-ounce can with a double church key opening, one of the very first aluminum beer cans made, dating to 1958-1959."

As those affected by the Camp Fire wrestle with the enormity of the destruction, we must not forget the past. As a model of how it might be documented, White's project is given a lively and accessible historical context in "Ten Miles Of Roadside Archaeology Along The Old Humboldt Wagon Road" ($19.95 in paperback from the Association for Northern California Historical Research, anchr.org). 

The book, with hundreds of images, features contributions from ANCHR writers Nancy Leek (on Bidwell's vision for the Chico and Humboldt Wagon Road, "open for business in 1863" as a toll road), David M. Brown (on the lure of mines; and a stage ride to Quincy), Ron Womack (on the "Hooligans and Heroes" of Ten-Mile House; and Wakefield's Station, "a long day's horseback ride from Chico"). 

Josie Reifschneider-Smith, Publications Editor, writes on those who built the roadway and on Frank Bidwell Durkee, who, starting in 1919, pushed for improvements to the Humboldt Wagon Road.

Key to the book is public awareness of the destruction by inattention and vandalism of the rock fences, writes Reifschneider-Smith, "and the ruts carved into the tough volcanic bedrock by the iron-rimmed wheels of thousands of wagons and stagecoaches." A group called Respect The Walls (https://www.nvcf.org/fund/respect-the-walls/) is raising funds to preserve what has come before. 

When tears are dry, and Paradise rises, let us applaud local historians and archaeologists as they preserve our own collective memories.

Uncontrolling Love: Essays Exploring The Love Of God"

Immense tragedies, such as the Camp Fire, may for some call into question the traditional idea of God as both all good and all powerful. How is one to make sense of how a loving God acts in a world so full of suffering?

Recently, Thomas Jay Oord, who teaches theology and philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho, has proposed a reformulation of the attributes of God, suggesting that "love comes logically first in God's nature" and that this love "cannot override, withdraw, or fail to provide the power of freedom, agency, or existence to creation. Consequently," says Oord in the introduction to a collection of short essays on his ideas, "God cannot control creatures or creation."

For Oord, "the God who must love and cannot control others is not morally responsible for failing to prevent evil. ... God doesn't even 'allow' suffering, because God can't stop it acting alone. Therefore, God is not culpable for the genuine evil in our lives."

Implications of Oord's theological position are presented in "Uncontrolling Love: Essays Exploring The Love Of God" ($16.95 in paperback from SacraSage Press; also for Amazon Kindle), edited by Chris Baker and others.

The dozens of accessible essays consider "who God is," "how God acts," and "how creatures respond." One of the contributions is from Butte College and Chico State University philosophy instructor Olav Bryant Smith. In "Contributing To God's Growing Perfection," Smith writes that when we say that certain special events in our lives are "perfect" (like "a first kiss") we also recognize they are fleeting, our circumstances ever-changing.

Could it be the same for God? Rather than ascribe total power and knowledge to God, Smith writes, perhaps God grows in "perfection" "in response to the expressions of a universe of creatures striving to participate in establishing their own myriad beautiful creations.... Much of the Bible suggests a God waiting to see what we'll decide and then responding accordingly."

Readers will have to decide whether Oord and Smith resolve the problem of evil satisfactorily. In emphasizing human free will that can't be overridden by God the book offers a sometimes startling rethinking of traditional theology.

"The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism In An Age Of Crisis"

How do we rebuild a community after horrific devastation? How do we pursue the common good to mitigate future disasters? Do religious traditions have a part to play in teaching us how to bear our griefs and to express thanksgiving in the midst of suffering?

Such questions arise in a new book by Alan Jacobs. Jacobs is an academic (Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University) writing with clarity and verve for a wider audience. Former Paradise resident John Wilson, who edited the now-defunct Books and Culture literary journal, published numerous articles by his friend Jacobs.

In 1943 it was apparent that the Allies would triumph in World War II. A number of writers, working separately but united by a Christian worldview, agonized about rebuilding. What kind of education would be needed to avoid the temptation toward authoritarianism or, alternatively, acquiescence in the idea that all values are merely socially constructed with the highest good "getting along"?

Jacobs considers the responses of five important literary and philosophical figures in "The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism In An Age Of Crisis" ($29.95 in hardcover from Oxford University Press; also for Amazon Kindle). In weaving together the central themes of these Christian intellectuals--Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil--Jacobs raises questions for our own times, and our own rebuilding.

For him, these writers "share the conviction that this restoration will not be accomplished only, or even primarily, through theology as such, but also and more effectively through philosophy, literature, and the arts. It is through these practices,which I believe are best called 'humanistic,' that the renewal--or if necessary the revolutionary upheaval--of Western civilization will be achieved. That was the project that these figures, in the various ways and with their sometimes fierce disagreements, shared."

The final chapter is devoted to French Reformed writer Jacques Ellul, whose seminal studies on the rise of technology and propaganda show there are no simplistic answers on the road ahead to rebuilding an enduring community. But we didn't expect there to be.

"Reflections And Dark Truths"

"The rain falls silently in the middle of the night," writes Paradise resident J.R. Henson in his recently published book. "Old oak trees are like a canopy in my backyard. Some drops of rain read the wrinkles in the old oak trees as a blind person reads braille from a book. If the rain keeps up through the night and into the morning, it will mean a hearty breakfast for the trees." The piece is entitled "Paradise," and the rain takes the author back in memory to his days as a ten-year-old playing in the sprinklers on a hot summer's day.

Much has been lost in Paradise, and the book, featuring almost three dozen short essay-stories, explores personal loss in a way that resonates deeply just now.

The book is called "Reflections And Dark Truths" ($10 in paperback from Valley View Press, Paradise) and as the title suggests it's divided into two sections. The reflections hearken back to the narrator's childhood, his "emotional journey growing up." Then the "dark truths" consider aging grandparents, the "crumbling" of his own hopes and dreams, estrangement from loved ones, having to face the tremors of the real world, and almost yearning "to be cradled once again back in the mental hospital."

There is yearning, too, for redemption. In "Can You Hear What I Hear?", the narrator senses a connection with something joyful, something divine. "I pray for my brokenness. I pray for forgiveness. Moreover, I ask God to enter my heart." But that doesn't make the reality of loss go away. There are losses of the natural environment, losses of love.

The biggest loss is of Smokey. "The smooth curly dark-haired dog that slept in my arms and rested his head in my right hand just yesterday is now gone. Gone from this world, and my heart aches for his return."

Henson writes in an email that he and his family members escaped the Camp Fire just before a planned book release party that had been set for Paradise Library. Signings are still scheduled at the Chico Library for Sunday, November 18 from 4:30-5:30 p.m. and at the Oroville Library on Saturday, December 1 from 4:00-5:00 p.m.

"The Doolittle Raiders: What Heroes Do After The War"

"As a grammar school kid in Willows … in the late 1940s," George Nolta writes, he met a man named Jimmy who was on a hunting trip with a group that included Nolta's uncles Floyd and Dale. "Jimmy" turned out to be Jimmy Doolittle, the man who commanded "sixteen B-25s that took off from the deck of the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942. Each carried a crew of five: pilot, copilot, navigator, bombardier, and flight engineer/gunner."

The mission, America's response to Pearl Harbor, was "the first bombing raid on Japan during World War II." Ted Lawson, pilot of the seventh crew, told the story in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," written with newspaper columnist Robert "Bob" Considine. It was turned into a movie starring Spencer Tracy as Doolittle, Van Johnson as Lawson, and Phyllis Thaxter as Ellen, Ted's wife.

The Lawsons eventually settled in Chico. Ted died in 1992 "and is buried in the Chico Cemetery." After Nolta, who now lives in Citrus Heights, published a piece on Ellen for the Colusi County Historical Society, the two became friends. Ellen asked Nolta if he would use her research on the crewmembers to create a book documenting their lives, not only pre-raid but post-raid.

The book is called "The Doolittle Raiders: What Heroes Do After The War" ($16.99 in paperback from Schiffer Publishing); its vivid and clearly written narratives trace the accomplishments, and the heartbreak, of the eighty Raiders. Sixty-four survived; the remaining were lost in a crash landing, drowned, or tortured and executed by the Japanese.

In an email Nolta notes that "some of the Raiders flew up to the Willows Airport to do some last-minute short takeoff practice after their planes had been serviced at McClellan Field in Sacramento. …" 

Doolittle received the Medal of Honor and late in his life told a writer that "I believe every person has been put on this earth for just one purpose: to serve his fellow man. … If he does, his life will have been worthwhile." He was ninety-six when he died in 1993. Richard Cole, his copilot, the only surviving Raider, celebrated his 103rd birthday in September 2018.

"Murder At The Columbarium"

The novels of Chico writer Emily Gallo (emilygallo.com) trace the interconnected lives of some unlikely friends. Her new tale focuses on San Francisco's famous Columbarium, a real place on Lorraine Court "with the walls containing thousands of niches holding urns of every variety."

Jed Gibbons, "a tall, sinewy African-American in his early sixties," and a survivor of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana, has become the caretaker. His wife, Monica, is a social worker at Glide Church and HIV positive. One morning, as Jed opens the gate in front of the columbarium, he finds the body of a woman strangled to death with her own hijab. And more: A baby, alive, lying next to her.

"Murder At The Columbarium" ($13.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle) is by turns an engaging mystery (Jed plays detective and comes under suspicion himself) and a family drama (Jed wants to adopt the child but Monica is not so sure given their age and her condition). At least they can provide foster care for little Aja (the name they choose), but it's clear Jed is smitten, even as he tries to find the child's relatives and (perhaps) relinquish Aja.

San Francisco police and the FBI get involved, and some strange doings go down at the columbarium, from vandalism to a neo-Nazi, tattooed with "1488," who buys a niche and installs an urn in the shape of a KKK hood. A couple of mobster-types visit the columbarium as well, and other unsavory characters seem to come and go. The solution to the case has international implications.

Eventually Jed is led to Garberville and a pot farm run by an old musician named Dutch Bogart. Jed's friends help care for Aja, including Tony, who takes over as caretaker for a while, and Malcolm and Savali (a "third-gender" Samoan).

The novel's inclusivity is never preachy but rather a kind of gentle force against those who would take another's life.

Gallo will be signing copies of her books during "Mystery At Monca" (the Museum of Northern California Art at 900 Esplanade in Chico) on Thursday, November 8 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. There will be mystery games, refreshments, and admission is free.