Further adventures of Dick Cory, retired teacher

By DAN BARNETT

Dick Cory tries to offer solutions to the problems ailing modern society.

Take cell phone addiction.

"Constraint induced movement therapy shows promise," he writes. "Tie down the arm that holds the phone, take out the batteries, or duct tape over the receiver. & Producing phones that limit conversations to less than three minutes before going silent for 15 or that give electrical shocks would provide limits. & I can think of more, but you will have to excuse me, someone is calling on the other line."

Cory wrote about growing up in Nebraska in "Six Boys and a Bag of Dirt" and now he reflects on the adult world in "After the Dust Has Settled." Both books are self-published paperbacks and sell for $20 each. Copies can be obtained by writing the author at ubangarang @sbcglobal.net or at Cory's book signing from 1-3 p.m. Saturday at ABC Bookstore, 868 East Ave. in Chico.

In its 70 not-always-politically-correct chapters, "Dust" provides a rich mix of humorous recollections, social commentary and glimpses into the author's sometimes painful personal life. In 1980, his wife of nearly two decades asked for a divorce. "She had found another man," he writes, "and wanted a new life. & Today, I admire her courage to break the pattern. At the time, I felt abandoned, jealous of the intruder, angry, hurt and worried about my new responsibilities."

Time passed, and both Cory and his former wife "found others with whom to share our love. I now understand her frustrations. I'm very proud of our sons and their families. I am also proud of their mother & and the faith she kept for nine years in the battle with cancer, which she lost March 22, 2005."

Cory was single for some five years after his divorce. He writes that "at one time I was trying to 'play the field' with three women concurrently," which left him exhausted. "Good for the ego, but not the healthiest for someone in his mid-40s!" Something had to change. Celebrating after a city league baseball game (20 years ago now) he was pulled over by an officer for "reckless wet." "I survived the night in the tank, bruised pride and all, took the ribbing from my teammates, and the loss of our first game. Somehow everyone forgave me, and Jan and I are still together." Cory, a Democrat, and Jan, a Republican, have been married for 20 years.

Cory writes about politics, his "progressive puzzle" invention, skinning a skunk (on five beers), and kerf (the "lost measure of wood or other material due to the thickness of the cutting blade").

"Dust" begins in somber tones with reflections on 9/11. "Chaos seems to reign supreme in the universe, so maybe we should expect it to be common on Earth."

The last chapter is more personal, as Cory writes about meeting some of his former students (after 36 years of teaching science and math there are a lot). "I appreciate them recognizing me in retirement. It is a validation of life that each of us needs. In fact, I think it is the greatest perk of an educator."

In between, Jan contributes a short essay on winning the KGO Radio cookie contest one year. Thinking about her lucky day, she writes that she then bought a $5 lottery ticket and got back $53. In a world of chaos, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

The Navy's wooden boats - North state teacher on the history of minesweepers

By DAN BARNETT

Retired Navy commander David D. Bruhn now teaches at Las Plumas High School.

During his naval career he served aboard an ocean minesweeper (MSO) and later commanded mine countermeasures (MCM) ships. When he learned that the minesweeper Excel "had been decommissioned and relegated to the 'ghost fleet' at Suisun Bay, near San Francisco," he began to think of writing her story.

Eventually, his history expanded to include 65 MSOs and MCMs on which some 50,000 sailors served during the last half-century. The result is "Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The U.S. Navy's Ocean Minesweep-ers, 1953-1994" ($37.50 in paperback from www.davidbruhn.com), featuring a cover painting by Richard DeRosset of the USS Endurance (MSO 435) during the war in Vietnam. The book, encyclopedic in its coverage, contains numerous black and white photographs and maps and a comprehensive index.

Bruhn writes that "during the past 50 years, a total of 19 U.S. Navy ships were damaged or sunk by missiles, torpedoes, aerial attack, terrorist attack or mines. More startling than total numbers is that casualties to 15 of the ships, nearly 80 percent, were due to mines and not, as one might imagine, by & terrorist-employed explosives." The need for minesweepers seems obvious, though Bruhn notes in measured terms that "if the submarine force is the 'silent service,' mine warfare is the 'unknown service' within the Navy, receiving few resources and little publicity." He adds that "mine warfare has not traditionally been viewed by officers as particularly exciting or noble work, a perspective that is not unique to the U.S. Navy. A First Lord of the British Admiralty once characterized it as 'unpleasant work for a naval man, an occupation like that of rat-catching.'"

The turning point in the development of the MSOs was the Korean conflict in which "the ineffectiveness of older-type minesweepers with metal hulls was illustrated graphically in Wonsan Harbor, where such ships fell victim to magnetic mines. To combat a deadly menace it became necessary to construct a vessel displaying no magnetic characteristics, or 'signature.'" That led to a host of design problems since engines built of non-magnetic aluminum, bronze or brass didn't last very long. The boats leaked in storms.

The book goes into great detail about ship design, how minesweepers were used in salvage operations and the U.S.-manned space program and Atlantic and Pacific operations. (Whereas MSOs tried to locate mines and detonate them, MCMs used sonar to locate mines and steer around them.) Perhaps of most interest to the general reader are the last chapters, dealing with the U.S. involvement in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 (Operation Earnest Will) and in Desert Storm. Kuwaiti harbor areas had to be cleared of mines and the Persian Gulf kept open for shipping. Mine clearance is tedious and dangerous business and mines continue to be ideal "sea denial weapons" since they are cheap for the damage they can cause and they require a significant investment of "ships, helicopters and divers" to counteract them.

And that has Bruhn worried. What if an enemy were able to place mines near U.S. waters? The Navy, he says, is "woefully short of mine countermeasures ships." New technologies could produce safer and more versatile vessels; the author hopes that one day "sailors who go down to the sea in wooden ships will receive the same level of support and consideration for their service as those who sail in steel-hulls, upon or under the sea."

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com.

Sports journalist Frank Deford comes to Chico State University with novel view of baseball

By DAN BARNETT

Sports Illustrated senior writer Frank Deford is also known for his Wednesday commentary on the National Public Radio program "Morning Edition."

Publicity materials suggest Deford knows a thing or three about his subject: "The winner of an Emmy, a Peabody and a National Magazine Award, Deford has been elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters, and has been voted U.S. Sportswriter of the Year six times."

Deford will speak at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Sponsored by Chico Performances, Deford's presentation is titled "Sports: The Hype and the Hypocrisy." Tickets are $18 for adults, $16 for seniors and $14 for students and children at the University Box Office (898-6333).

Deford is also the author of "The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball" ($24.95 in hardcover from Sourcebooks, Inc.), which is set to be published in May. The quotations that follow, from my advance reading copy, give a flavor of the book but may be revised in the final publication version.

With that said, I can report that "The Entitled" kept me interested from first to last. Engrossed would be the better word, and I really don't know anything about baseball. Years ago, during my stint on the KPAY morning show, Sports Director Mike Baca explained to me the delight he took in watching a baseball game -- not only for the action on the field but especially for the intense strategizing that went on when nothing appeared to be happening. Deford's fictional novel makes that observation a compelling reality.

"You gotta always think ahead," Howie Traveler says to his girlfriend, Margo. Howie, at 57, is the manager of the Cleveland Indians. "You've got to consider the possibilities. Like tonight. Dinky Furlong is pitching for me, and he's getting them out, but Connie and me, we know he hasn't really got his best stuff. They're gonna get to him, for sure, but when do I start warming somebody up? Too early, maybe I altogether waste a guy I might need tomorrow. And Furlong is very insecure. He's like some pitchers: He sees a guy warming up, he takes it personally. But if I wait, maybe then it's too late, and the Yankees are into a big inning."

Baseball is about people, all right, and Howie is altogether (his favorite word) enmeshed in the life of his star player, maybe the best in the game: Jay Alcazar, who Howie calls a "five-tool player": "That means & he can hit, hit with power, run, field and throw." Alcazar also has a way with women, and his one-night stands are legion. But one night, as Howie walks down the hotel corridor to his room, he sees the door to Jay's room open. A woman is trying to get out, but she is pulled back inside and the door kicked shut. Soon afterward, the woman charges Alcazar with rape, and Howie is forced into an ethical dilemma. Should he tell the police what he saw, and maybe lose his star player and his job? Or should he keep quiet?

Deford illuminates the politically incorrect world of Major League Baseball even as he creates sympathetic characters that linger in the memory. An altogether captivating performance.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Chico peace activist spends Easter 2006 as a 'Prisoner of Conscience'

By DAN BARNETT

The letters and journal entries of self-described peace activist Dorothy J. Parker have been collected in "You Too Could Go To Federal Prison!" ($15 in paperback from the author's Web site, www.dojustpeace.com, or from Lyon Books in Chico). Parker was 76 when she was arrested at Ft. Benning, Ga., in 2005 when she "crossed the line" and purposely trespassed onto the base, sliding under a chain link fence. "Thirty-six of us knelt in prayer awaiting the arrival of the security guards who had spotted our unorthodox entrance into forbidden territory."

Parker and the others, under the auspices of a human rights group called "SOA Watch," were protesting the continuing presence at the army base of the "School of the Americas" (SOA Watch calls it the "School of Assassins"), recently renamed WHINSEC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, SOA "is a school chartered by Congress to provide 'professional education and training for civilian, military and law enforcement students from nations throughout the Western Hemisphere.' ... The school has been a target of protests since 1989, when some of its graduates were linked to the murder of six Jesuit priests and two women in El Salvador."

SOA Watch was founded by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, and (according to a Web site article from The Progressive) has in turn been subject to "counterterrorism monitoring" by the FBI.

Parker herself , active in the Chico Peace & Justice Center, worked for quarter century as a drug and alcohol recovery counselor with what was then called Butte County Mental Health, and since 1989 has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to build houses in Nicaragua's rural areas. She told a judge after her arrest at Ft. Benning that she was a "Prisoner of Conscience."

The author spent 57 days in the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Alameda County. Though it is called "minimum security," because of ongoing repairs to some of its facilities Parker found herself spending much of her sentence in the "Special Housing Unit" for women prisoners who had broken the often arbitrary house rules. There she was given no more than a hour a day to exercise outside and found herself frequently shackled and treated with disdain by prison officials.

A deeply spiritual person, Parker draws on the writings of Mary Baker Eddy (in the Christian Science Monitor), the Buddhists Tich Nhat Hahn and the Dalai Lama, and Meister Eckhart. The spiritual center of Parker's book is a meditation on Henri Nouwen's little book on the Stations of the Cross. He writes: "I may become an activist, even a defender of humanity, but not yet a follower of Jesus. Somehow my bond with those who suffer oppression is made real through my willingness to suffer my loneliness. ... We must each take up our own cross and follow Jesus, and so discover that we are truly brothers who learn from him who is humble and gentle of heart."

Parker took communion in "heavy chain shackles! Very moving symbolism for us (and the priest as well)." The feast of the Resurrection, Easter Sunday morning, turned out to be "cold cereal, a cold bagel with grape jam packet, milk and an orange."

I'm not sure I understand all that motivates Parker nor am I comfortable with her politicized brand of liberal Christianity. But if Jesus is risen indeed, maybe my comfort is decidedly not the point.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@ maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Chicoan muses on "old hurts, softened by the caring"

By DAN BARNETT

A friend of the author sent me a little book of poems by longtime Chico resident Archie Dan Murphy. "Poem Pudding" ($12.95 in paperback from PublishAmerica) distills a lifetime of experience into simple words, words that speak of mysteries that can never be put into words.

He writes in "Sundown Blues":

Ever hear the silence.
Roaring in your ears;
Bringing tumbledown
memories,
happiness, and tears?

"Born into poverty in California," a note about the author says, "Archie Dan Murphy, an Irish Cherokee, worked many jobs before finding his passion in surgery as an operating room aide. Many children, lovers, pets and friends and experiences have been his inspiration. He currently tends his garden and reflects on life's mysteries."

Murphy's poems have been printed exactly as he submitted them to the publisher, with his own spelling and syntax intact. Friends encouraged him to get them into print, especially after a house fire some years ago destroyed much of his work. On the page the simple, almost innocent words convey between the lines a life of tumult and desire.

Sometimes Murphy is philosophical, as in "Within Each of Us":

We have within us great joy,
and great sadness.
To reconcile the two is,
perhaps,
the spark of life itself.
...
To embrace life, and become a
part of the
greater whole, justifies our existence.
In doing this, we ease
the pain of old wounds,
and it gives us the means to salvation.

But the poet is not always meditative. The very next poem is called "Drinkin' Whiskey and Eatin' Licorice."

Murphy is making sense of life by means of his art. He recognizes there is something greater than his lone existence. In "Forgiveness" he writes:

Though our lives are not perfect, can we
not count our blessings?
Should
we not give the fates, what they have given us? Forgiveness.
One of the last
words from the cross."
Elsewhere, in "AKA Murphey," a kind of epitaph, the
poet says:
"We are gathered here,
to remember a man named
Murphey;
actually Murphey, Archie Dan,
born 2-17-36.
...
He had a
great need to do what the
Buddhists say, 'Right Work.'
...
Now it is
your destiny to be torch bearers. So
take heart, and persevere and
care;
for he will be there, somewhere.

In "The Dance," the poet admits:

Beer and roses don't go together
it's true, but Miss Bartender,
they do
seem right, when I look at you.
I don't want to go home,
I'd rather be
here.
I guess the lonely night,
is what I fear.

There were other loves, and deeper, and a simple reflection, in "Due To":

Lust, Greed and
long ago dreams, unrealized;
ponder, ponder, ponder.

It is the sole poem on the page.

But that's not the end. In "Yester-Dance" the poet says:

I put on my dancing shoes,
once each year.
I may not go dancing,
but I
put them on.

The poet has come to terms with solitude yet recognizes that through his words he is not alone. In "A Gentle Addiction" he writes:

So far, at this sundown age,
all these musings help me
fill a page. There
meaning is given life
by you, Dear Reader.
Easing pain, puzzlement and
rage.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Butte College administrator is a friend of hard-boiled novelist John Shannon

By DAN BARNETT

Ken Meier, on the job for less than a year as Butte College's vice president of learning, introduced this naive book review columnist to the gritty work of Los Angeles writer John Shannon.

In a series of nine novels featuring Jack Liffey (who recovers missing children), Shannon plumbs the cultural diversity of the south land. The fourth Jack Liffey novel, "The Orange Curtain," puts the detective in Little Saigon in Orange County, looking for the missing daughter of a Vietnamese bookseller. I haven't read this one, published in 2001, but I do know it's dedicated to Ken Meier.

Shannon's Web site explains the book's epigraph: Meier, he says, has been "my political mentor for almost 30 years, though he tried to abandon me almost as soon as we met by moving to rural Arizona to teach in a community college, a calling which he fiercely believes in. A working class lad himself, who could have become a first-rate professor of the history of ideas at any Ivy university, he has dedicated himself instead to making our community colleges fulfill their forgotten promise to the children of the working class." Now, of course, after serving a stint in Bakersfield, Meier finds himself at Butte College.

National book critics have found John Shannon. In late February, the New York Times Book Review published a note by Marilyn Stasio about the ninth (and newest) Jack Liffey novel: "Long a champion of teenagers in trouble, especially kids from L.A.'s culturally torn-up ethnic neighborhoods, this hard-boiled sleuth is on familiar turf in 'The Dark Streets' (Pegasus, $25), searching for a Korean film student named Soon-Lin Kim who went missing. But the landscape shifts when Liffey discovers that a paramilitary group of Asian-Americans has taken an interest in Soon-Lin Kim's student project. Although racial tensions always run high in Liffey's world, the violent turn they take here causes him to question his faith in 'the innate goodness of man.' And another old friend loses his way in the dark."

If he doesn't lose the way, perhaps the author might one day turn up in Chico for a reading and book signing.

"The Dark Streets" was my first foray into Jack Liffey's world. He is 60 now; his daughter, Maeve, who was shot in a previous installment, is now 17 and hot for the guy next door, a gang leader named Beto. Jack's girlfriend, Gloria, "a half-blood Paiute ... raised by Indian-hating fosters," is a cop and breast cancer survivor. Maeve's mother divorced Jack years before after he lost his aerospace job and turned to drugs and booze. His new job has not come cheap. Jack "had a metal plate in his head, titanium pins in his legs, a bullet scar on his shoulder and a weakened lung."

Kim's project is about the so-called "comfort women," Koreans forced into prostitution during World War II. Japan has not apologized, and an international hearing on the matter generated headlines in our own world just in the last few days. Liffey also gets caught (who knew?) on the wrong side of the Patriot Act.

The book is a verbal analogue to "24," keeping multiple storylines in the air at once, quick cutting from one to another. Yet "Streets" is not as dark as I expected and by the end it's clear there is at least some rough justice in the world. And Maeve, Jack realizes, pregnant Maeve, is still a sign of grace.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Discovering Our Importance TO Nature

By DAN BARNETT

As part of the "On the Creek Lecture Series," noted author Dan Dagget recently spoke at Chico State University.

Dagget's first book, "Beyond the Rangeland Conflict, Toward a West That Works," was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His latest work, "Gardeners of Eden: Rediscovering Our Importance To Nature" ($24.95 in large-size paperback from The Thatcher Charitable Trust and EcoResults!) expands on his alternative view to the "leave it alone" philosophy that has governed much thinking about the environment in the last few decades. According to a press release, EcoResults!, of which Dagget is CEO, is "a nonprofit foundation that finds funding for land managers seeking to turn their operations into a means to restore and sustain environmental values."

Just what that means is the subject of "Gardeners of Eden," a lively and personal exploration of how a new kind of environmentalism is being born among those who see themselves, and their skills, as part of the ecosystem, part of nature.

The huge mistake we modern humans have made, Dagget insists, is in thinking that "the only way we can really heal the land is to protect it from impacts created by humans: to 'leave it alone.' This widely held assumption is why, when we talk of healing the land, we invariably talk of protecting it, of preserving it. ... That's why articles that deal with land issues treat the word 'protecting' as having the same meaning as 'healing' or 'restoring.' It is why those articles never explain how protecting the land will heal it."

The assumption that healthy land is land humans leave alone is based, he writes, on another assumption: "that all environmental problems are caused by humans. ... We don't think of butterflies or deer or wolves as creating environmental problems."

But, says Dagget, there is a group of what he fondly calls "Lost Tribe gardeners" whose actions have benefited the land, have made it "outperform the Leave-It-Alone approach." To these people, such as Tony and Jerrie Tipton, who solved an "eco disaster" in the Nevada desert, the word "protection" is another name for "abandonment."

A Nevada mining operation had left a 300-foot pile of crushed rock "polluted with cyanide and covered with salt." The Tiptons "dragged a length of railroad rail over the part of the pile they intended to treat, breaking up the salt crust. ... Then they scattered the seed, spread the hay and straw, and released the cattle. The cows ate most of the hay and a little of the straw, and what they didn't eat, they trampled into the rocks along with the seeds and the microbe-rich organic fertilizer they provided from their guts." Years later native plants are still growing there, in an area with less an inch of rain.

Early in Dagget's career he demonstrated for Earth First! and in 1992 was named to a list of top grass-roots activists by the Sierra Club. But since then Dagget has come to realize that an environmentalism that insisted on defining healthy land as that least touched by human hands -- even if those land tracts were devoid of life -- simply made no sense. His book cites many examples of human intervention helping ecosystems thrive by their being used to grow food or raise cattle.

Careful management is needed, but that's the point of gardening.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Twenty Years of Learning

By DAN BARNETT

This column began March 4, 1987, and has continued as a weekly feature of this newspaper for some 20 years. I'm fairly astonished at that. When it started I was a spry young man in his mid-30s with boundless energy; now, about a thousand columns later, the energy is still there — but it takes twice as long to do anything. Make that three times as long.

Though much of my life is spent using computers these days, I remain a bookish short, enthralled and entranced at some of the things I've read, appalled at others. But I'm not going to name names.

The growth of desktop publishing has meant just about anyone could become a published author. It's easy to get a friend to write a review and post it on Amazon.com, but it remains difficult for local authors to achieve some of the recognition they deserve. Perhaps this column has helped in that regard. One of my great joys is learning that someone bought a book I've reviewed and enjoyed it. One of the great joys of authors is that someone bought the book.

Back in the summer of 1968 I decided to keep a list of every book I read. I was devouring a lot of science fiction in those days, so the first few handwritten pages are full of works such as "A Canticle For Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller Jr. As the years passed my interests broadened to include Saul Bellow, C.S. Lewis, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Dickens. By the end of 1986, when the list ended, I had reached book number 1,016. Some six months later a new kind of list began, this one called the "Biblio File."

I'm missing the first few columns, but the others I do have suggest that back then I was a chatty soul, devoting column inches to local folks who had had letters published in the Wall Street Journal or who had written magazine articles on overcoming addiction. Actual books by local authors were relatively rare, so I took to trying to make a local connection to books from the wider world. "With winds clocked unofficially at more than 100 mph a few weeks ago at the Chico airport — and with the word 'drought' increasingly on our lips — weather is once again in the forefront." That was in March 1988, and I reviewed a couple of weather-related works, including "Rhymes to Predict the Weather" by someone named Don Haggerty.

A year earlier, in a column called "To Squash a Conspiracy," I noted the appearance at Chico State University of an animal rights advocate. Apparently I wandered in on his lecture and asked about, well, vegetable rights. "His face grew pale. A carrot doesn't have a biography, at least that I know of, he said." But later I came across a book that claimed that vegetables feel things in ways we can't understand. I concluded that there is then nothing left for humans to eat and ended that April 1, 1987, column with: "Never again will I trust an artichoke. Never."

As more local books have been published I've put away sophomoric humor. Well, no I haven't, but my focus has been on the books themselves. I hope in most reviews I can convey the main point and give you a feel for the writing. I've learned a lot, and read a lot, and am ready for more. If that potato would just stop eyeing me.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Four months on the road, 10,000 miles, to find California's best

By DAN BARNETT

Thanks to the Internet, it's easy these days to compile and publish lists of things, such as bed and breakfast getaways or suspension bridges or pet friendly parks, but rarer for authors actually to visit the venues they write about. That's what impressed me about "Best of California's Missions, Mansions and Museums" ($21.95 in paperback from Wilderness Press) by Ken and Dahlynn McKowen out of Sacramento.

The couple, along with Dahlynn's two children, 9-year-old Shawn and his sister, 14 year-old-Lahre, hit the road for four months, visited some 200 sites and racked up 10,000 miles on the odometer. The result, after some editing, are chatty descriptions of 135 family-friendly California missions, mansions and museums. This is a good guide to consult if one is planning a summer vacation in the Golden State.

The listings, write the authors, "provide a broad geographic and subject-matter selection of California's missions, mansions and museums, primarily as they relate to California's history and culture." Picking the "best" was difficult, subjective of course, and a lot of places were not included (such as most science and technology museums) that didn't meet the criteria of illuminating state history.

In the area of missions, "our final choice came down to 13 missions that we felt included not only wonderful museums, but retained much of their original or at least their early 20th century restored historic fabric. ... We chose our favorite mansions in much the same way as the missions, but we added accessibility -- how frequently they are open to the public for tours."

For museums, the authors concentrated on smaller collections. "We didn't choose them because of their size or the value or rarity of their collections, although we certainly considered those things. ... We considered their uniqueness, not only in the types of collections and the variety of artifacts, but also in how they relate to California's overall history or to their local community's history."

The book is divided geographically, from the North Coast, through the Great Valley and on to the South Coast and desert. Each section has a numbered locator map, trivia questions and introduction. Each two- or three-page entry features a "what's here" list, a "don't miss this" note, a description of the venue, usually a small black and white photograph and a box providing operating hours, cost, location and the Web site. The book also features an index and a list destinations by category.

The chapter devoted to the Great Valley includes entries for the Turtle Bay Exploration Park (including the Sundial Bridge) in Redding, and Chico's own Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park.

The authors note that the second floor of the mansion "features several of the home's 12 bedrooms. That was not a good location for bedrooms in a town where summer temperatures reach 100 degrees, and upstairs rooms become even hotter. Possibly, the plantation windows served as summer escapes to cooler sleeping arrangements on the outside balcony. The indoor toilets that Bidwell included were thought strange by his neighbors and visitors. Many believed that having to perform such bodily tasks inside a house, rather than in an outhouse, was unsanitary."

And there is some Great Valley trivia. "Where can you find the very first Pony Car (Mustang) manufactured by Ford?" It's at the Towe Auto Museum in Sacramento. The car is a white convertible, the first to roll off the assembly line back on April 9, 1964.

See you on the road!

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Noted author Francis Moore-Lappé coming to Laxson Auditorium Tuesday

By DAN BARNETT

Chico State University's "On the Creek" lecture series will feature the author of "Diet for a Small Planet," Frances Moore-Lappé, at Laxson Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. The presentation is free but a ticket is required from the University Box Office, Second Street at Normal Avenue (898-6333).

Moore-Lappé will speak, courtesy of Chico Performances, on "Living Planet, Living Democracy: Lessons from the Citizens of the World," a subject she explores in one of her newest books, "Democracy's Edge: Choosing To Save Our Country By Bringing Democracy To Life" ($24.95 in hardcover from Jossey-Bass). This is the third book in a trilogy that includes "Hope's Edge," on which her daughter Anna collaborated, and "You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear," which was written with Jeffrey Perkins.

Though "Democracy's Edge" is a polemical work (there seem to be two kinds of Americans in the book: what Moore-Lappé calls the Far Right -- exemplified by the Bush Administration and its corporate cronies -- and everyone else), it is also intended to be a book of hope. There are stories of dozens if not hundreds of citizen groups that are making a real difference in politics, education, and workers' rights in accord with her definition of democracy.

"Living Democracy" involves "negotiating interests by relying on fair play, honest dialogue and mutual respect." It's "not just righting a particular injustice that limits people's freedom. It's changing how decisions are made." Humanity's task, says the author, "is to envision and create institutions, from our schools to our media to our businesses, that foster our democratic selves -- people able to feel and express empathy and to see through the walls of race, culture and religion that divide us, people who know how to exert power while maintaining relationship."

By contrast, what she calls "thin" democracy -- in which politicians proclaim "power to the people" but arrogate power to themselves instead -- perpetuates "four constricting measures" that limit the expansion of Living Democracy. These "misfits" include the assumption that two political parties are enough; that any real limits on campaign spending violate free speech; that "the free market brings us all prosperity"; and that "to keep generating wealth, corporations must consider only the financial bottom line." (While Moore-Lappé welcomes globalization "understood as ... communication and sharing across national borders," she rejects what she calls "global corporatism.")

"Democracy's Edge" is designed to counter each of those ingrained notions with success stories of people united by a common purpose changing how democracy is done. She spotlights the work of such organizations as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Industrial Areas Foundation (founded by "Saul Alinsky, the godfather of community organizing"). Hers is a leftist agenda, though she does not use that term, preferring instead to frame her proposals as "walking with bold humility" in reclaiming the kind of human relationships that Living Democracy ought to be about.

A chart at the end of the book invites readers to "consciously generate language that communicates what is emerging and what we want to bring into being." Her preferred term is "engaged citizen" rather than "activist." The seemingly neutral term "conventional farming" becomes "chemically dependent farming." "Liberal" becomes "progressive, democratic." She calls "pro-choice" the "pro-child movement including the right of every child to be wanted with opportunities for a full life." Finally, "taxes" are "membership dues for a strong, healthy society."

Moore-Lappé paints a provocative picture, worth the spirited public discussion it generates.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Poet, essayist Gary Snyder to appear at Laxson Auditorium March 2 for free lecture

By DAN BARNETT

As part of Chico State University's On the Creek Lecture Series, which is dedicated to exploring sustainability issues, noted poet and essayist Gary Snyder will appear at Laxson Auditorium on March 2 at 7:30 p.m. The presentation is free.

Snyder has lived in the Sierra Nevada foothills since 1970. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975 for "Turtle Island," he has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, in 1992 and 2005. He is a recipient of the Bollingen Poetry Prize, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2004 Japanese Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Grand Prize.

His latest book, "Back on the Fire" ($24 in hardcover from Shoemaker and Hoard), features recent essays, most previously published, that intermingle autobiography, reflections on the place of the writer in the modern world and a concern that those who have benefited from the natural world (all of us) become more thankful and "give something back."

Snyder sees the world through Daoist-Confucian-Mahayana Buddhist eyes and has little patience for those who romanticize nature with their "quasi-religious pantheistic landscape enthusiasms." In Snyder's "literature of the environment," "we will necessarily be exploring the dark side of nature -- nocturnal, parasitic energies of decomposition and their human parallels." He adds, in another essay: "Nature is not fuzzy and warm. Nature is vulnerable, but it is also tough, and it will inevitably be last up at bat."

Many of the essays deal with the forest, and fire, as a kind of symbol of changing public policy toward the wilderness. "Our wild forests have long had an elegant and self-sustaining nutrient and energy cycle, and staying within that should be a key measure of true sustainability." Periodic low-level fires are necessary for keeping the forest healthy; logging practices that remove the surviving trees after a major fire make it more difficult for the forest to sustain itself. Just as governments have to think in terms of thousands of years in dealing with nuclear waste, Snyder writes, we ought to be thinking of a "thousand year forest plan" as well. Ecology is about process, "a creation happening constantly in each moment. A close term in East Asian philosophy is the word Dao, the Way, dô in Japanese." As he writes in a poem, "--Nature not a book, but a performance, a / high old culture."

The art Snyder advocates "takes nothing from the world; it is a gift and an exchange. It leave the world nourished." "We study the great writings of the Asian past," he writes, "so that we might surpass them today. We hope to create a deeply grounded contemporary literature of nature that celebrates the wonder of our natural world, that draws on and makes beauty of the incredibly rich knowledge gained from science, and that confronts the terrible damage being done today in the name of progress and the world economy."

One November day, Snyder has cleared brush from around his house and sets fire to the pile. "Clouds darkening up from the West, a breeze, a Pacific storm headed this way. Let the flames finish their work -- a few more limb-ends and stubs around the edge to clean up, a few more dumb thoughts and failed ideas to discard -- I think -- this has gone on for many lives!

"How many times / have I thrown you / back on the fire."

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Retired Chico State professor explores the self's yearnings

By DAN BARNETT

Former Chico State University professor David Downes has achieved international renown as an expert on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Now, in his retirement years, Downes has taken to writing novels, drawing on stories from his boyhood growing up in the Cripple Creek gold district in Colorado ("The Belle of Cripple Creek Gold") and his exploration of how self, belief and love are interconnected ("The Angel in Wax").

In his new story, "Sailing: Inside Passages -- The Mysteries of the Inner Sea" ($10 in paperback from Xlibris), Downes, writing as "David Anton," puts his characters aboard the cruise ship Europa for a tour of the western Mediterranean -- which becomes a tour of their inner lives.

Merlin Morgan is 55, a retired literature professor. Marina, his Mother (the story always capitalizes the word), is very rich indeed; widowed for a decade, she had never remarried and always worried she had made her son's life too easy. Merlin, looking at himself in the mirror, "saw an older man, cynical about life, who had taken a hard look at the ways of the world and his role in it and concluded there was far more evil than good in life, and thus happiness in each individual life was a gamble involving the luck of the draw in a losing game."

On board the ship, Merlin, Marina and Milli (Marina's close friend), find themselves sharing a meal with four other passengers, including Nolan Merrill, "a retired banker in his early 80s. He was a bit fragile physically, spoke in a soft voice. His attractive daughter, Zelda, Merlin guessed, was unmarried, dedicated to making her Father's last years secure and happy. He liked hearing her speak; she possessed a rich, deep, toned voice that was very pleasant to hear. The flamboyant Masons were a true match. Victor was a retired car salesman, somewhere in his sixties, and his wife Alta, in her late fifties, an inveterate bridge player."

Most of the action in the story is inner. The tablemates find themselves disembarking at various ports of call, to shop or sightsee, and the cruise itself is uneventful. But Merlin is struggling with a growing sense of emptiness and lack of companionship. At one point he has a long talk with Nolan who asks Merlin point blank: "Do you have any religion?" All Merlin can do is mutter that he was baptized Catholic and then he adds: "Religion never took with me. And I think my education gave me reasons not to have any beliefs." But then, speaking more frankly, he tells Nolan that "I think I am, in some way now, more open to some sort of spiritual experience. Now that I am moving into middle life, I feel the need to allow myself to consider fresh possibilities."

"Sailing" is about some of those fresh possibilities. Merlin realizes that his exploration of the ruins of Carthage on one of the stops is merely superficial, passionless. Nolan, on the other hand, sees beneath the surface. As Merlin tells Zelda: "Your Father really saw them for what they were -- dusty covers for a civilization that lay under them that was rich and powerful, interesting and consequential in history. He made me realize this."

And so Merlin's story unfolds as real love, which had passed him by in earlier years, finds true anchor. Anton has written a thoughtful and engaging tale in which a cynic finds the magic of hope.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Chico writer explores national parks in books designed for pre-teens

By DAN BARNETT

Prolific children's book author Mike Graf, who teaches child development at Chico State University, is publishing a series of beautifully designed and illustrated stories about the national parks. The books are already winning awards.

The series is called "Adventures with the Parkers," and features the fictional family of Bob and Kristen Parker and their twins, fourth-grader Morgan and her brother James. The first is called "Bryce and Zion: Danger in the Narrows" and the second, "Grand Canyon: Tail of the Scorpion." Each is $9.95 in paperback from Fulcrum Publishing; forthcoming titles include "Yellowstone: Eye of the Grizzly" and "Yosemite: Harrowing Ascent of Half Dome," both scheduled for March release.

The first two "Adventures with the Parkers" books were recipients of the "Teachers' Choice Awards for the Family" for 2006; and "Scorpion" placed as a finalist in 2006 at USABookNEWS.com in the children's book category as one of the best books for children in 2006.

According to Graf's Web site, www.author-illustr-source.com/mikegraf.htm, the author "has backpacked the world's national parks, interviewed storm-chasers and special-effects wizards, met the last surviving Angel Island immigrant, rafted through spectacular caves, researched wolf restoration, rock-climbed in Yosemite, explored ghost towns" and has had a stint as a local TV weatherman.

"Scorpion" contains dozens of full-color and black and white photographs, along with sketches by Marjorie Leggitt, illustrating some of the most important and interesting features of the Grand Canyon. Set in the context of a family outing to a national park, the stories include diary entries from James (who wants to be a reporter) and Morgan, with sidebars throughout that amplify some of the aspects of the story.

On the way to the park, for instance, the family listens to the "Grand Canyon Suite" by Ferde Grofé, and an insert tells readers about the Painted Desert, which "stretches from southeast of the Grand Canyon to near the New Mexico border. Minerals in the soil make it rainbow colored." There's also a box about Grofé himself, noting that the most famous part of his most famous suite "is the 'On the Trail' section, which has the clip-clop sound of hooves."

The Parker family arrives at the Grand Canyon Lodge (first opened in 1928 and rebuilt after a fire in 1932) and, after an abundance of sightseeing, Dad, Morgan and James are ready for a hike down the Canyon, while Mom stays topside to do some long-anticipated painting.
The reader is told that "hikers should not attempt to hike down to the river and back in one day. While hiking down may seem easy, hiking up can be extremely difficult. It is 7.1 miles and 4,650 feet of climbing from Phantom Ranch to the top of the South Kaibab Trail, with no water available along the way."

During their hike the Parkers befriend an older couple who have run out of water; Morgan starts reading "Brighty of the Grand Canyon" by Marguerite Henry, about a very special burro; the hikers use an ultraviolet light to see innumerable little scorpions pretty much camouflaged in normal light; and James becomes ill for a time in the high heat.

Along the way the reader is treated to magnificent full-color images of the ages-old Canyon and some of its denizens (including condors). The book is impressive in its simple, interesting storyline and pacing, and its selection of facts. It's an ideal gift for a pre-teen; just be prepared to change your summer vacation plans!

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. 

School's in: A murder mystery that features Immanuel Kant, detective

By DAN BARNETT

"Inside the ample glass jar, the severed head lolled in a swirling sea of cloudy preserving alcohol. Tangled gray-red sinews, clots of blood and gore shifted gently in the straw-colored liquid like the trailing tendrils of a jellyfish."

Something fiendish had happened to the victim; his head preserved a secret only the finest mind might discern.

It is February, 1804. Hanno Stiffeniis, a magistrate in Lotingen, Prussia, is summoned by King Frederick Wilhelm III to Königsberg. "Our beloved Königsberg (is) in a grip of terror," the King writes. The summons takes Stiffeniis completely by surprise.

Stiffeniis sets up headquarters at the Fortress of Königsberg. The basement, where prisoners are herded to an uncertain fate, reminds Stiffeniis of Hades; "the upper floors were as confusing as the maze of Crete. Gloomy, ill-lit passages shot off left and right of the main corridor, no feature distinguishing one way from any of the others."

That seems to describe the investigation into the strange murders in Königsberg. Which way to turn? Some believed Napoleon was planning to invade Prussia and was leaving a calling card of terror. Others proposed not a political but a spiritual cause. All of the victims (just a handful, but unsettling in the extreme) were killed as they were kneeling; the cause of death was unknown but rumor was spreading that the Devil's Claw had done them in.

Stiffeniis tells the tale, and what a tale it is, involving not-soon-forgotten characters such as an albino prostitute; Dr. Vigilantius, a necromancer and follower of Emmanuel Swedenborg; and Immanuel Kant himself, now retired and sickly, who is collecting the heads of the victims.
Heady stuff, indeed, this "Critique of Criminal Reason" ($25.95 in hardcover from Thomas Dunne Books) by Michael Gregorio, a philosophy professor who lives in Italy. Gregorio draws on the new authoritative biography of Kant by Manfred Kuehn and interweaves invented characters and real personages into the lives of Kant and Stiffeniis.

Immanuel Kant is one of the giants of philosophy, an exponent of pure reason who famously wrote that all rational beings would wish to do away with emotion since it leads right thinking astray. According to the Kuehn biography, Kant wrote a little-known work, "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer," in which he seemed to mock Swedenborgian spirituality; in "Critique of Criminal Reason" Kant tells Stiffeniis that it's "the only book of mine for which I have ever apologized."

In the story, Kant himself has called Dr. Vigilantius to "listen" to the corpse of one of the victims and Kant who sets up a clandestine laboratory in which he collects the heads-in-jars. This is a side of Kant that seems very much out of character with the little man of Königsberg whose daily walks were so carefully timed residents could set their clocks. But Kuehn confirms that the elderly Kant was working on a manuscript at the time of his death that attempted to unite his metaphysics with physics, the natural world. Gregorio deftly uses this device to deepen the mystery surrounding the last days of Kant, who, in the story, becomes obsessed with the idea writing about "murder without motive," "cold-blooded murder."

The revelation of the murderer is satisfying but not surprising; in a way the story is more about the secret side of Kant and of Stiffeniis when faced with the mesmerizing aspect of Death, and the central importance of love. This "Critique" is engaging and thought-provoking. I'm assigning it as homework.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. 

Chico-based husband and wife team put whimsical words to outlandish animals

By DAN BARNETT

Michael Agliolo of Chico is a professional photographer, someone who creates images for ad agencies and stock photo companies and who teaches digital photography at Butte College. After years of picture taking, he discovered the computer and "what I was capable of creating within the unlimited resources of a keyboard and a mouse. So was born a long-lasting affair of the heart, inspired by my love of photography and a new found ability to manipulate the ten of thousands of images I'd collected over the years."

His wife, Nancy, began to look through the images, especially the ones of animals, and "started writing prose to some of the more amusing pictures." Well, more like poetry: What might a bear or cow or bird say given the oddball situations created by Michael? The answers started to appear on Christmas cards the couple sent to family and friends, and often they'd hear "you two should do a book." And so, Nancy writes, they have.

"Animals Thinking Out Loud," by Mike and Nancy Agliolo, is a full-color, shiny-page gift-paperback available in selected downtown Chico stores and also from the authors. Interested readers can write Mike Agliolo Productions, 2196 Oak Park Ave., Chico, CA 95928, magliolo@dcsi.net, or call 891-5100 for pricing information. (Ron Sanford, Kirk Yarnell and Marty Snyderman have also contributed images.)

The cow with binoculars on the cover is typical of the animal pictures inside. Each full-page image, beautifully rendered in sharp focus and colorful detail, is joined by some bouncy text by Nancy which begs to be read aloud (especially with kids). Take the piece called "COWard."

In a pasture not so far away,
Standing firmly in the mud,
I spy my fair Fernando
Chewing quietly on his cud.
I view him from afar because
I'm just a shy bovine.
I dream about that fateful day
I hope to make him mine.
I wish I were a braver cow
And looked more like my mother.
Then I'd go and talk to him ...
He moooves me like no udder!

Such "thoughts" accompany pictures of bears in a forest (one of them reading a newspaper on the loo), a hummingbird frustrated at a garden on a computer screen, and a turtle with a jet pack: "Some may say that it's absurd, / And some may wonder why. / But he knows that it's assured / Ol' pokey's gonna fly! // With this thing, he'll catch some air. / Two turbos are a must. / Now he can race that crazy hare / And leave him eating dust."

Computers play a role in four of the images (there are three ancient Macintoshes and one nondescript Windows laptop), a nod to how the composite pictures were produced in the first place. In one, a big old polar bear gazes lovingly into a monitor that shows a tropical sunset. "I see me walking on the beach, / A scene that's very pleasing. / But then I wake and realize, / My toes are next to freezing!"

Mike Agliolo has created a beautiful image of Pegasus, eagle wings flapping ("I live only in your dreams") and, on another page, a large cow with a rather peculiar birthmark (a bar code): "Never once did it occur to me, / That others were appalled. / They'd whisper to each other / That I'd be better off born bald!"

For Nancy and Mike, this project is more than just puppy love.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. 

Granddaughter remembers Red Bluff cattleman Charles F. Stover

By DAN BARNETT

Cheryl Conard Haase lives with her husband, Bill, on some 11 acres near Red Bluff. Though plagued by medical difficulties, and no longer able to ride, her love for the ranch life, and for her grandfather, "Charley" Stover, whom she called Papa, are unabated. For two years, Haase (pronounced "hoss") worked on compiling pictures, documents and memories surrounding Stover, who in 1944 was instrumental in organizing the now world-famous Red Bluff Bull Sale.
Stover was honored in 1960, when he was 81, as California Cattleman of the Year and honorary president of the Red Bluff Roundup Association. The Sacramento Bee reported Stover owned 35,000 acres of ranch land in Tehama County, raised "2,500 head of purebred Herefords" and held the yearly Chester Rodeo on his Big Meadows Ranch from 1920-1939.

Stover died in 1961 but left a rich family heritage beautifully captured in "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." (The book's cover pictures brands registered to family and friends.) The large, 300-page paperback is available for $34.98 at Shasta Western Shop in Cottonwood. You can also visit B & B Booksellers in Chester, Facts & Fictions in Red Bluff and The Bookworm in Oroville or write Canyon Vista Ranch, 12561 Wilder Road, Red Bluff, CA 96080.

In the introduction, Haase writes that she and her brother Dean "learned to ride before we could walk. ..." "It was Papa," she says, "who gave me the opportunity to live my life in a way that made me happy and feel worthy of the legacy that he left me." Dean, she continues, "was the apple of his eye, and the grandson he always wanted. We never knew our biological grandfather and did not realize Papa was our step-grandfather until we were teenagers. He was our Papa always."

Cheryl was not exactly an angel. She remembers taking her older sister's collection of Shirley Temple dolls for a bath in a house trough. And "during my first grade year at Lassen View School, in Dairyville, I was relegated to stay in the classroom every recess and lunch hour for cussing. My poor mother came to school chagrined and apologetic to my teacher ... explaining I'd been raised in a corral around the cowboys. As a rule the cowboys never swore in front of women, but hiding behind the corral, where they didn't think I could hear, I learned it all!"

Every page of the book is full of black and white family pictures, newspaper clippings, or large photocopies of various documents, from grocery lists to an invoice for Charley's 1917 Cadillac ($2,250 for the car plus $95 for "extras"). A page from his diary, dated Sept. 26, 1917, lists steers branded from eight owners; Haase notes that "when branding calves, each owner needed to bring at least two of his irons, so that there would always be a hot one when the time was right. When several owners were present, there were a lot of irons in the fire! The cowboys had to be wide awake, paying close attention to remember which one was 'ripe' and ready to grab, and which iron belonged to whom. ... In cowboy lingo, 'too many irons in the fire' means that a person has too many things going on at the same time."

It's a nostalgic read, and that's no bull.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. 

Schott in the dark - A high caliber almanac

By DAN BARNETT

Slide-rule companies pretty much went out of business with the advent of computer age. Though in the Internet age the printed page is far from endangered, traditional reference works are. All the words of the massive bound volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for which I paid $1,500 back in 1974, now come on DVDs thrown in for free with the purchase of some other computer program. The fabulously popular Wikipedia online is even beginning to rival Britannica in accuracy. And with data of every kind freely available on the Web, whither the yearly printed almanac? The "World Almanac and Book of Facts" or the "Information Please Almanac" now have a quaintness to them, almost as if someone published them year after year but had forgotten why.

So London-based Ben Schott decided to reinvent the yearly almanac. The result is "Schott's Almanac: 2007" ($25.95 in hardcover from Bloomsbury USA), designed especially for American readers (there are also British and German versions). In the brief introduction, the author writes, " 'Schott's Almanac' reflects the age in which it has been written: an age when information is plentiful, but selection and analysis are more elusive. ... 'Schott's Almanac' aspires to provide an informative, selective and entertaining analysis of the year. 'Schott's' is an almanac written to be read."

Superficially resembling the more traditional almanac, with familiar section titles like "books and arts" and "the States," "Schott's" is shorter (368 pages) and its content far quirkier. It's unlikely that years from now we will be driven to look up "street names, unusual" to find the "7 'wackiest' street names, according to a 2006 poll by Car Connection Web site." (A few of the selections, for the record: Psycho Path, in Traverse City, Mich.; Divorce Court, in Heather Highlands, Pa.; and, in Story, Alaska, Farfrompoopen Road, "the only road leading to Constipation Ridge.")

Oldsters beware, too. The print is minuscule and the overall tone decidedly hip. There are lots of fun lists (the "Hacker, Cracker, & Geek Speak" lexicon distinguishes among geeks, nerds, dweebs and dorks) but lots of serious talk as well, especially in the survey of the year that leads off the book. You'll find an official definition of genocide, a biography of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a short article on Holocaust denial. Some of the sections (sports, the nation) are more prosaic than others (such as media and celebrity, which leads off with a comparison of the cover stars pictured on issues of People and US Weekly) but all in all Schott's lives up to its claim to be readable.

Odd corners abound. Here's a poem from Thomas Hood (1799-1845): "Dirty days hath September, / April, June and November, / From January up to May / The rain it raineth every day. / February hath 28 alone, / And all the rest have 31. / If any of them had two and 30 / They'd be just as wet and dirty."

Then there are the Ig Nobel prizes, for real research that seems pointless, with the 2005 winners in chemistry: "Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger (University of Minnesota) for their tireless investigation into whether people swim faster in syrup or in water."
The "Oddest Book Title of the Year" award for 2005 goes to author Gary Leon Hill for "People Who Don't know They Are Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It."

Don't look for a review anytime soon.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. 

2006 - The year in local books

By DAN BARNETT

It was an eclectic year in local publishing. This column recognized some 40 books by local authors or those with local roots, and the subject matter ranged from nefarious doings at the zoo to computer animation. You'll find reviews of these books all archived here at Musable.

Poetry, novels and children's books

The Biblio File celebrated five volumes of poetry, including "Crossings" by Audrey Small; "Try to Write a Poem Without the Word Blood In It" by Sally Allen McNall; "Skyways," edited by Patricia Wellingham-Jones; "Tom Thomson In Purgatory" by Troy Jollimore; and "Poems From My Soul" by Alma Garrett.

I reviewed five novels, including two from Redding writer Steve Brewer, "Whipsaw" and "Monkey Man" (that's the one with the zoo doings). Charlie Price and "Dead Connection" were also from Redding. Then there were "Promised Land" by Helga Ruge and "Brother Eagle, Sister Moon" by Phil Dynan out of Corning.

Incidentally, I have some big novels on my shelf still unreviewed. I'm a slow reader and thus exceedingly selective about novels (which require lots of emotional investment and just plain time). But write the history of Chico radio stations and you're in!

The third five is children's books. I love their exuberant colors and creative expression. We had "Here Is the African Jungle" from Phyl Manning; "Perry the Pack Rat Finds a Friend" by Mardell E. Alberico; Debbie Cobb's "Gracie's Big Adventure With Augustine the Beaver"; and two from T. E. Watson: "The Man Who Spoke With Cats" and "Glen Robbie."

History/memoir

The largest category this year. Two about the military: "A Patch of Ground: Khe Sanh Remembered" by Michael Archer; and "Special Agent, Vietnam: A Naval Intelligence Memoir" by Douglass H. Hubbard Jr. Then there were three in Arcadia's "Images of America" series: "Chico" (Edward V. Booth, John Nopel, Keith Johnson, Darcy Davis); "Oroville" (James Lenhoff); and "Paradise" (Robert Colby). Colby also produced "Old Days in Butte" and Teresa Ward and the Richvale Writing Group checked in with "Richvale: A Legacy of Courage, Dedication, and Perseverance."

Olivia Claire High gave us "An Angel Among Us: A Mother's Heartfelt Story"; Lucia Barbini Falcone wrote "Over Bridges, Across Tables: Growing Up On the Island of Murano"; we had "Essays From the Ten" by Daniel Thomas; "Exploring Chico's Past, And Other Essays" by Michele Shover; "Six Boys and a Bag of Dirt" by Dick Cory; "Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temper-ance, and Cultural Revo-lution in Russia, 1895-1932" by Kate Transchel; and "Bicycling Beyond City Limits: A Journal of Endurance, Friendship and Discovery" by Michael F. Foley (Chico to South Carolina in 55 days).

Miscellaneous

We were also graced with "Storytelling Through Animation" by Mike Wellins; "Body Intelligence: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, and Feel Great About Your Body Without Dieting!" by Ed Abramson; "Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships" by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias; "Legacy By Design: Succession Planning for Agribusiness Owners" by Kevin Spafford; "Geology of the Sierra Nevada, Revised Edition" from Mary Hill; "The Chico User's Guide" by Eric Norlie; and "Who ARE You People? A Personal Journey Into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America" by Shari Caudron.

Photography/Art

Finally, two coffee-table delights: "Mobile Mansions: Taking 'Home Sweet Home' on the Road" by Doug Keister; and "The Murals of John Pugh: Beyond trompe l'oeil" by Kevin Bruce.

A tip of the hat to you all!

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. 

An area writer's Christmas grace

By DAN BARNETT

Her debut as a teenager was not auspicious. "I squandered every bit of my teen ... and early adult years. I was pregnant at 13. I had an abortion. At 14, I was with child again, and at 15 I gave birth to a baby girl in June of '72. Around this same time I started experimenting with different types of drugs and alcohol to find something to make me feel at ease with life, because I was pretty bound by feelings of inferiority, inadequacy and anxiety. Six months after the birth of my little girl, her father died of an overdose of alcohol and heroin (he was only 16)."

Though her life spirals yet further downward, local author Alma Garrett, who looks back on those years in "Poems From My Soul" ($12 in paperback from Red Lead Press, www.redleadbooks.com), finds another, infinitely greater nativity, and the power of God come to earth. "Wonder of All Wonders," reads the title of one poem: "Love pure and Holy, undefiled, / Wrapped in a manger / In the form of a child." "You rain down treasures / From heaven above;" she writes in "Reign, Rein, Rain," "Your grace, Your mercy / Your peace, Your love."

The book is a deeply personal testimony about that love. In the first part, searing narrative is interspersed with poetic commentary. In the latter part, as if a great song has broken forth, Garrett writes again and again of "The Call": "There's a call, can't you hear it? / To be one with the Father, son and Holy Spirit."

"Seventeen years ago," she says in one of the last narrative passages, "I surrendered the use of drugs, alcohol and my life to Jesus. ... It has been an uphill climb as well as a challenge, and I've got a long way to go. ... I don't mean to say that I am perfect. I haven't learned all I should even yet, but I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ saved me for and wants me to be."

Her earlier life featured a succession of boyfriends. They were pretty but deceptive packages, addicts of various kinds. One of her poems is entitled "Don't Be Taken In."

"In 1983," Garrett writes, "I moved out of the Bay Area to a small town in Northern California. I moved to get away from everything I knew and everything I became. I was getting tired of drugs and the mess they made of my life, I was tired of the people in my life, I was tired of men using me, and all I knew was that I needed a change. I didn't understand that if nothing changed on the inside (my heart), then no matter where I went my environment would be the same. ... I would take my jealousy, my fears, my anger, my memories, my pain. I would take everything."

As for drugs, she did take everything. The last piece in the book, "Tripping (Revised)" juxtaposes a kind of cool, swaggering rhythm with an abrupt warning of the spiritual dangers: "Shoot it, toot it, drink it, chew it, / Pop it, drop it ... YOU BETTER STOP IT."

But that's not the end of Garrett's story, a testimony of Christmas grace. "Work in me Thy Father's will," she writes in another poem, "To do of Thy good pleasure; / Birth in me the likeness / Of heaven's most precious treasure."

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. 

Ridge historian's story of Paradise is richly illustrated and a grand gift

By DAN BARNETT

Robert Colby, former editor of Tales of the Paradise Ridge, has just published "Paradise" ($19.99 in paperback from Arcadia Publishing), part of the publisher's "Images of America" series of pictorial treatments of towns and cities across the country.

"Paradise" is available at area bookstores or through Arcadia's Web site (www.arcadiapublishing.com). The book completes the story of Paradise and the upper ridge begun last year in "Magalia to Stirling City," also published by Arcadia, written by Colby and the late Lois McDonald, to whom "Paradise" is dedicated.

Colby's introduction recounts the origin of the town (for awhile it was called "Orloff"), the development of agriculture on the ridge and the formation of the Paradise Irrigation District (PID) in 1916. Then, in more than 200 beautifully reproduced black-and-white historical photographs, seven chapters take the reader from a consideration of the area's Maidu inhabitants on through the late-19th and early-20th centuries, to Paradise as it was in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

Each photograph carries a long explanatory caption. Several chapters focus on some of the important names associated with Paradise. In 1884, for example, Francis "Fannie" Breese, just 17, helped raise $21.50 toward the $41 needed to purchase three acres of land from her uncle for what was to become Paradise Cemetery.

More recently, Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote 82 Perry Mason novels, "bought 20 acres at the end of Crestview Drive" in the early 1950s to escape all the folderol his fame had brought him. Colby writes that Gardner "was no stranger to Butte County, having spent his teenage years in Oroville in the early 1900s, where he was suspended from Oroville Union High School for pulling pranks on the principal."

In "The Case of the Runaway Corpse," published in 1954, Gardner had one of his characters actually give the directions to the Paradise hideaway, in reality known to "only a few of his closest associates. ... Here he could relax, write, and ride his dirt bike. The term 'dirt bike' was years in the future, but J.W. Black, a longtime Paradise resident and master mechanic, constructed ones for Gardner and himself to ride in the surrounding mountains."

"Paradise" is full of such tidbits. There are also pictures of harvest fairs (the one on the cover shows the "Woodman's Dance Platform at Olive Street and College Avenue in 1912-13") and the famous pipes of PID. "From the beginning," Colby writes, "leaks in the PID water system were a problem. Because of steel shortages in World War I, pipes made of redwood staves bound with steel wire were used. ... Even today, much of PID's budget goes to replacing the inferior World War II steel pipe."

A train engineer and brakeman were killed on June 25, 1909, "when a 27-car lumber train left Stirling City for Chico. Leaving the Magalia Depot, the train 'ran away' on the down slope, passing the Paradise Depot at 70 miles per hour, and three quarters of a mile below the depot at Neal Road, it derailed." An extraordinary photograph of the wreck shows only a mass of twisted metal.

"Paradise" is a must-have for those interested in local history. Oh, and let Santa know, too, for old times' sake.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to dbarnett@maxinet.com. Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.