Darkroom magic: Turning good holiday pictures into excellent ones

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

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

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

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

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

Diplomat's wife remembers a European childhood

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

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

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

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

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

Chico abortion doctor tells his story

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

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

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

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

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

New chapbook from Chico State University's philosopher-poet

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

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

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

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

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

Jollimore gets inside your head with some brilliant skullduggery.

Local metaphysical author on the "sacred wisdom" of animals

According to an author's note, Victoria Hunt "has studied metaphysics and earth spirituality for over twelve years. A third-level Reiki master and member of the British Druid Order, she teaches Celtic-based earth-centered spirituality. . . ." Her new book, "Animal Omens" ($15.95 in paperback from Llewellyn Publications) describes almost thirty "animal encounters" (nine from friends) which, she writes, may help people "reconnect with the world of nature" and through nature to the Spirit world.

Hunt will sign copies of her book in conjunction with the Chico Art Studios Tour this Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Felver’s Corner Art Gallery & Antiques, 196 East 15th Street in Chico.

Each "encounter," such as seeing a crow in an oak tree or a toy snake in the park, is followed by an "Omen" section about the characteristics of the animal (Crow has an "ability to move undetected between the dimensions of time and space"; Snake symbolizes "death and rebirth") with guidance for what such an encounter might mean. Crow, she writes, points to change, and brings "a message from the Otherworld"; Snake says "you will soon shed some aspect of yourself that no longer serves you."

Hunt reveals something about her own journey, describing a "shift in consciousness" in the mid-1990s "as a member of a family of hereditary 'ultra-sensitives,' people whose senses are heightened beyond the normal" which may even include "the gift of levitation" in her bloodline. She talks about her spirit guide, Balthazar, and her experience with past-life regression, garnets and auras, the Fair Folk of the woods, and her service to "My Lady," the Goddess, who tells her of metaphysical "philosophies held for only the most enlightened seekers."

In her comments on the white tailed kite, symbolizing "powers of the mind," the author writes that "our inner being, in its truth and purity, is held back by layer upon layer of mind and body and subconscious chatter. We lie naked and vulnerable in the mud of fear, longing to be released, to fly above what we are in physical form, past what holds us back and keeps us chained."

Though Hunt's gnostic worldview is inimical to my own, we do share a common interest in learning aright from the animals.

Sweeps month for Dick Cory

Dick Cory is a Nebraskan through-and-through, even after calling Chico home for four decades. He begins his third volume of memoirs, "Sweepings From Under the Rug" (paperback; for ordering details contact the author at ubangarang@sbcglobal.net), by describing his dad's office. "In the center of Cory's Store in Alexandria, Nebraska was a roll top desk elevated by a one step high platform. My dad . . . would sit at this throne doing ledgers and ordering, when he wasn't waiting on customers, stocking shelves, or sweeping the front step. . . . As a youth, I loved that desk with its mysterious creaks, pigeonholes, and tiny drawers."

And now Cory has metaphorically cleaned out all the little drawers of his own and has gone through all the sweepings, and the result is an eclectic collection of reminiscences, political commentary, letters to the editor, short stories, poems, songs, and self-reflection.

He'll be signing copies "Sweepings" at ABC Books on East Avenue in Chico this Saturday from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Never one to pass up a practical joke or harebrained scheme, in 1956, during the formal "Military Ball" on the University of Nebraska campus, he and some buddies (lacking dates) replaced all the bulbs on the sorority porches with red ones. "You get the connotation to those fraternity boys returning their dates to a red light district?"

In 1975 he and a friend tried to obtain a donkey for the annual Paradise Gold Nugget Days' Donkey Derby, but Betsy had other ideas.

These days he and his cronies meet every week at a restaurant as part of club "R.O.D.E.O." ("Retired Old Duffers Eating Out"). "We most all have wives to share trivial pursuits (that one will get me in trouble!), but not the camaraderie offered by the lunch bunch."

Cory writes that "I'm emotional. I get fired-up about causes such as winning Nebraska football games, environmental issues, injustices of humankind, nostalgic memories, and sad movies. . . . I can tolerate chaos and self-inflicted delays. These characteristics drive my wife, Jan, insane. . . . Old rusty vehicles, farm implements, windmills, and weathered paint on barns and farmhouses hold special fascination for me."

Cory, too, has weathered much, but he's not about to rust away. He's writing a murder mystery.

Local author, two-time breast cancer survivor, to speak tonight in Chico

As a patent attorney for a biotechnology company in the Bay Area, Jan Hasak's life was never to be the same when she and her husband Jim "found a painless tiny lump in my breast in mid-December, 1995. I had turned 43 just two months earlier." She tells her story in "Mourning Has Broken: Reflections on Surviving Cancer" ($17.99 in paperback from Xulon Press).

A Christian since 1989, and mom of three sons, she writes that "I had never experienced any significant personal suffering up to that point." That was about to change.

Hasak will be signing copies of her book tonight from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. at the American Cancer Society's "The Shop" on Mangrove Avenue in Chico. The event is called “Life By Chocolate” with chocolates prepared by Upper Crust Bakery and sponsored by Butte Community Bank. Admission is a $10.00 donation to The American Cancer Society’s fund raiser called “Making Strides Against Breast Cancer."

"My initial journey into the world of cancer was shrouded in mourning," Hasak writes, "the feeling of loss and grief over what could have been. But later I encountered a springtime of refreshing and blessing. This book is an account of that crossing through life-threatening challenges. . . ."

Hasak blends a deeply personal account of her experience of God's sustenance with details of her research. She provides the reader with invaluable reflections on treatment options, the value of vitamins and herbal supplements, support groups, and what not to say to those who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. With the removal of lymph nodes she faced lymphedema, a debilitating swelling of the arm as fluid accumulates. The author's book and Web site (www.janhasak.com) provide key online resources.

When a routine checkup in 2003 finds "another lump in the same breast in which the first tumor was discovered," she writes that "I felt that my body had betrayed me in a big way." Instead of a lumpectomy with the first diagnosis, she faced a bilateral mastectomy. And another round of grieving. "God does not condemn such feelings. But in contrast to the secular world, Christians are not to grieve as if they have no hope."

"Mourning Has Broken" is a compassionate and spiritually encouraging companion.

"Finding Beauty" author to appear Wednesday at Chico State University

Terry Tempest Williams is Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. A poet and naturalist, she lives in both Castle Valley, Utah, and Wilson, Wyoming.

Now, with the just-published "Finding Beauty In a Broken World" ($26 in hardcover from Pantheon), Williams offers an extended meditation on the endangered Utah Prairie Dog, threatened by developers, and on the genocide in Rwanda, taking pieces of shattered natural and human worlds and constructing a mosaic. "There is a way of being in the world that calls us beyond hope," she writes. "Mosaic is not simply an art form but a form of integration, a way of not only seeing the world but responding to it."

She will be appearing at Laxson Auditorium at Chico State University this coming Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Sponsored by Chico Performances (www.chicoperformances.com), her presentation is part of the On the Creek Lecture Series. Tickets are $22 Premium, $17 Adult, $15 Senior, $13 Student/Child; for more information call the box office at (530) 898-6333.

"Finding Beauty" begins in Ravenna, Italy, where Williams learns the ancient art of mosaic, the controlling metaphor of the book. She writes that "I believe in the beauty of all things broken," and mosaics exemplify for the author an attempt to come to terms with the brokenness of the contemporary world. Her style is also a mosaic: thousands of short prose paragraphs, letters, poems, quotations, field notes (from several weeks spent in a 10-foot tower observing Prairie Dogs).

She writes in the New York Times in 2003: "As we find ourselves on the eve of war with Iraq, why should we care about the fate of a rodent, an animal many simply see as a 'varmint'? . . . Quite simply, because the story of the Utah prairie dog is the story of the range of our compassion. If we can extend our idea of community to include the lowliest of creatures, call them 'the untouchables,' then we will indeed be closer to a path of peace and tolerance."

"One million Tutsis were murdered in one hundred days. Their killers were neighbors with farm tools, machetes, and hoes." Today there exists a genocide memorial, housing bones. Tiles spell out "Let Us Remember." It is a mosaic.

Chico author Lin Jensen on the imagery of words

Lin Jensen is the founding teacher of the Chico Zen Sangha and an accomplished author.

Saturday at 6:30 p.m., as part of the Artoberfest celebration, he will present a talk entitled "Words Into Images: The Art of Painting Pictures with Language" and will read from his newest book, "Together Under One Roof: Making A Home of the Buddha's Household" ($16.95 in paperback from Wisdom Publications). The talk and book signing will take place at Avenue 9 Gallery, 180 E. 9th Ave., Ste 3, in Chico.

For Jensen, the "Buddha's household" encompasses everything. "Every object you and I touch is Buddha," he writes, "and every house--including a homeless shelter or a prison complex or the downtown mall with its sprawling parking lot--is the exact place where the Buddha takes up residence." This realization, he says, is not something reserved for Buddhist greats, but for "ordinary minds," which "Zen insists . . . is as holy as it gets."

Jensen's collection of short essays celebrates not only life's ordinary experiences but the human power of naming those ordinary things. "We fleshly, earth-bound creatures are writing a language of creation, word by word. . . . Putting names to things, rather than taming the world by substituting language for living fact, infuses the world with a wild wonderment known only to creatures who trade in words."

While we must not confuse words with the things they name, Jensen writes, nevertheless the naming suggests close attention to the world. Naming something "bestows upon the things of this world a quality of intimate observation that I personally equate with love."

Jensen uses his words to characterize Buddhism as "kindness" borne of the "knowing that nowhere does there exist a single separate self. The perception of no self is one of compassion, since compassion is not so much a matter of feeling as one of identification." This identification extends beyond the Buddhist community (the "sangha") to one that is "inclusive of all beings." All this is not easy, since "human lives are 'ten thousand beautiful mistakes' as the old masters liked to point out." Jensen's is Zen with scraped knees, zazen (meditation) with an itch. Still, "we find our voice each day in the words the universe utters."

M*A*S*H star and activist Mike Farrell slated for Chico visit Saturday

From a bit part in The Graduate, to eight years on M*A*S*H as B.J. Hunnicutt, five seasons of Providence, and a part in Desperate Housewives, shy Mike Farrell has realized a childhood dream of becoming an actor. As a kid growing in West Hollywood he delivered groceries to the likes of Groucho Marx, Jimmy Stewart, and Lucille Ball, but these days "the beef" is in his outspoken activism.

It's all detailed in the new paperback edition of "Just Call Me Mike: A Journey To Actor and Activist" ($16.95 from Akashic Books).

Farrell will be appearing in Chico for a book signing and free-wheeling question session this Saturday at 7:00 p.m. at the Trinity United Methodist Church, 285 East 5th St. Tickets for the free event are available from the co-sponsors, Chico Peace and Justice Center and Lyon Books.

Both George McGovern and Bill O'Reilly have praised Farrell for his honesty, and the book highlights Farrell's decades-long involvement with what he calls "people issues" ( including "equal rights for women and minorities, . . . the right of the disadvantaged to a social safety net, . . . and an end to the death penalty").

But Farrell writes that he is not a pacifist: "I believe in the right of self-defense, be it personal or national, but I also believe in finding peaceful resolutions to disputes and oppose war except in the face of the most dire national threat." One time, introduced to Nicaraguan Sandinista officials extolling the virtue of the socialist revolution, Farrell was sickened by the "triumphalism" and evasion when he ventured questions about how "people's lives were being improved." In effect he asked "where's the beef?" and found only the stuff one finds in a barnyard.

Married since 1984 to actress Shelly Fabares, Farrell believes 9/11 should have been treated as "a grotesque and inexcusable crime" rather than an act of war; "America's emotional tension found an outlet in the war in Afghanistan. And it played into the hands of media manipulators who transformed George W. Bush from an inept bungler to a war president."

Farrell's Hollywood stories are frequently funny, but the author never loses sight of his bottom line: "Everyone deserves what everyone wants--love, attention, and respect."

Chico novelist writes of the power of love

It begins with a softball game in Madison, Iowa in 1950; before the story ends a young man faces almost certain death far away in the Korean War. The story is a tribute to a young woman's love--as well as the survival teachings of one George Grey Eagle on the Blackhawk Indian Reservation. It's a romance built on the theme of acceptance of those who are culturally and religiously different than ourselves; after all, one character says, "If God can accept people in heaven from all faiths, then who are we to question whom God accepts?"

"Love's Journey" ($19.95 in paperback from Books by Mode, www.booksbymode.com) is by Chico CPA James (Jim) Rozendaal. Rozendaal will be signing copies at Lyon Books in Chico on Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 7:00 p.m.

The first-time novelist was raised on an Iowa farm and knows the importance of religious tradition in small-town life. And therein lies the rub. Tommy Van Haaften, just out of high school and working in construction, falls in love with Allison Jorgenson, a tall blond Swede completing nursing school at the University Hospital in Des Moines. But the Dutch ought not mix with the Swedes, at least according to family tradition. The two fathers are adamant that their children not marry "outside their faith."

The story is straightforward and the language (and the lovers) chaste and even polite. This is in part a tale of military heroism, but it's also the story of almost mystical intuition. Grey Eagle talks to Tommy about Allison: "Love is the driving force in the universe. Your connection to her will be your ticket back. So the stronger the connection, the more certain your ticket." To Allison, grieving over Tommy's distance, he says: "You need to find your own sense of knowing. And when you do, it will sustain you no matter what the external circumstances."

When Tommy is wounded, captured and beaten on the battle front, his mother feels similar pains. She remains confident of his return.

Along the way Allison is befriended by a newspaper publisher who takes an interest in Tommy's ability to withstand torture. Eventually his story is published and becomes a book entitled "Love's Journey." Those looking for a happy ending will find it.

Chico poet rests a spell, and remembers

An author's note says Chico poet Tom Fuszard is also "a corporate communications consultant, speechwriter, lecturer and speakers' coach," and his background shows in the clarity and directness of his work.

"Places To Sit and Other Poems" ($9.95 in paperback from Felicidad Press out of Chico) is a collection of remembrances. In "Regrets" the poet writes: "Not wise to dwell on the past, / they tell me, / but now I have the time." The time is spent thinking about "What I Learned When I Started to Listen": "That wars are fought / mostly by people / who had nothing to do / with starting them // That a lot of people / are afraid all the time // That much of the world / is in a mess / and a lot of it is because / nobody listens."

These simple words give the reader pause, especially on a day of national remembrance.

Many of the poems are personal, recalling boyhood memories. In "Bird," the poet writes: "I have no idea why / I took your life. // One thinks little / about things like that / as a boy of nine. // You were there / on your little branch / and I with my / puny air rifle / just shot and you fell / and bled in the leaves / and died. // It was not to test my aim, / of that I am sure. / I had killed hundreds / of bottlecaps, / executed dozens / of glass jars. // . . . I did not think about / eggs in a nest / waiting to be warmed / or fledglings waiting / to be fed / or another waiting / for your return / and never knowing / why you did not."

The opening poem, "Places To Sit," has something to say about a park bench, a barstool, a witness chair, and more. Including deep grass: "For people in love, mostly. / People who want to be / away from the crowd. / See, he's brought a little book of poems. / He will read some, and they will see / the depths of each other's eyes / for the first time."

This little book of poems remembers love.

Advocate of Hindu Vedanta to sign books in Chico

Anna Hourihan, publisher of Redding-based Vedantic Shores Press (www.VedanticShoresPress.com), has edited a series of lectures on the Hindu philosophical school of Vedanta which serve as a good introduction to the teachings of Hindu mysticism. Delivered by her late husband at the University of Guelph, School of Continuing Studies, in Ontario, Canada, the lectures are presented in "Children of Immortal Bliss: A New Perspective on Our True Identity Based on the Ancient Vedanta Philosophy of India" ($16.50 in paperback), by Paul Hourihan.

Anna Hourihan will be speaking and signing copies at Lyon Books in Chico, Wednesday, September 10 at 7:00 p.m.

The book begins with the claims of Vedanta, that "nothing exists except the Divine Being, or Brahman. . . . Truth is One; sages call it by different names. . . . The very nature of the Soul is divine: the Cosmic Self manifests as the individual Self or Atman. . . . The primary goal in life is to realize, through direct personal experience, the divine nature within our own self."

For the author, the ancient Hindu teachings of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita are "the most sophisticated of all religious writings" and "represent the seedbed of everything that is deep, universal and mystical in the world." Thus the mystical traditions of Islam (the Sufis), Christianity (especially Meister Eckhart), Buddhism (Zen), and Taoism are all "confirmations" of Vedanta teachings.

Though Vedanta accepts "all religions as valid," what Hourihan means is "not the truth in them but the truth in us"; that is, a religion is inspired to the extent that it helps convince the person that his or her Self is identical to Brahman. The path to such realization, the author says, is through meditation, the experience through which even ordinary persons gain "the awakening of our true self."

The ego-power of individuality, including a fascination with "occult techniques," must be eliminated; "we are not sinners seeking somehow to be saved but rather we are an unknown purity seeking to merge with the Unknown Purity."

Buddhists, Christians and Muslims may well be uneasy at Hourihan's reinterpretation of their doctrines, but read with discernment the book is a clear exposition of the claim that "The Self is all, and you are the Self."

Greg Mortenson climbs the "inner mountain"

The Karakoram Highway (KKH) in Northern Pakistan "is one of the most daunting engineering projects humans have ever attempted. Hewing principally to the rugged Indus River Gorge, the KKH has cost the life of one road worker for each if its four hundred kilometers."

Named after the nearby Karakoram Range (giving the letter designation to one of its mountains, K2, the second highest peak in the world), the highway project forms a starting contrast to a very small, very quiet, but in some ways equally daunting project undertaken by mountaineer Greg Mortenson: The construction of a school, for boys and especially for girls, in a little village in the Baltistan area of Northern Pakistan.

The true story is told in "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School At a Time" ($15 in paperback from Penguin) by Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Mortenson's co-author spent two years interviewing many who touched his life; he found a life that touched many others in its single-minded determination to make a quality education (and actual school rooms) available to village children living at the edge of existence.

In advance of Mortenson's April appearance in Chico, Chico State University (www.csuchico.edu/bic) and Butte College (www.butte.edu/bic) have designated "Three Cups of Tea" as the "Book in Common"; other community organizations are also starting discussion groups and the E-R will be archiving stories dedicated to Mortenson's work.

Tragedy and failure have haunted Mortenson's life. After his sister Christa died of a seizure on her twenty-third birthday Mortenson in 1993 wanted to place her necklace at the summit of K2, but he failed to reach the top. He got turned around in his descent and entered an unfamiliar village, Korphe, where he met Haji Ali, the village chief, who told him sharing the third cup of tea means "you join our family."

Mortenson promised to return and build a school, and the story (told in the third person) traces the circuitous route he took to keep that promise. Hounded by failure, then by success, Mortenson is complex: An infidel in a Muslim land who gained respect and love from religious authorities, whose vision of building schools continues today, and whose inner climb is the most inspiring of all.

Roger Aylworth on the wonderful world of widgets

"When we were first married," longtime E-R columnist Roger Aylworth writes, "Susan and I agreed on a division of labor. Susan hates to iron men's shirts, and I am no great fan of dishwashing, so I agreed to take care of my shirts, and my bride took over the sink duties. In the long run this has meant that the dishes almost always sparkle, and I wear a lot of wrinkled shirts."

Such is life at "Casa Aylworth," and now fans of Aylworth's family humor column can revisit the bouncing brood of seven kids and two parents, and new readers can become fans. "A Place in the Shower Schedule: 101 Favorite Columns" ($16.95 in paperback from Delphi Books, www.DelphiBooks.com) chronicles the sometimes goofy events surrounding a man still smitten with "the saintly Susan" (whom he married in 1970) and the veritable plethora of "widgets" and "grand-widgets" who have made their entrance along the way.

The author writes about his column that "what I wanted to do is produce 'feel good' humor, situations where people would laugh with and not at other people. . . . With six sons and a daughter I realized I had an enormous reservoir of material."

The columns are loosely arranged by category, such as "On Being Roger" (in which the author finds that wearing a tuxedo to work can add "woo-whoo to the world"--even at his advanced age); widget wars (including the never-enacted "bottom-otomies" of recalcitrant widgets); and "Getting Fit" (wherein Aylworth realizes that his "body warranty" has expired).

There are also tales of animals (what happens when Flashy the hamster gnaws through a water line feeding the dishwasher, for instance) and encomiums to "the coolest truck in the whole, entire world!"--a vehicle the author christens "MAH TRUCK!"

Parenting never really ends, Aylworth observes, but it's "the capacity to enforce parental edicts that fades. I discovered a long time back that true parental power begins to disappear very early in the kid-dad relationship: Real control peaks the day before the little guy grabs the spoon in his own tiny fist and begins to shovel the mashed peas into his own mouth without help."

Readers will want to shovel in the columns in this warm, wise and wascally book.

Teardrops on parade from local photographer/writer

Chico's Doug Keister has a thing for "classic recreational vehicles"; his previous books include "Ready to Roll," "Silver Palaces," and "Mobile Mansions," all dealing with one form or another of vacation trailer. Now, with "Teardrops and Tiny Trailers" ($19.99 in hardcover from Gibbs Smith), Keister surveys "compact motorhomes and trailers."

The result is a book chock full of colorful interior and exteriors of teardrops, "canned hams" ("so called because their ovoid shape resembles a can of ham"), and glittery Airstreams. The cover shows a teardrop trailer built by the Gypsy Caravan Company of Bell, California, in 1937. The author notes that "fastidious care by a mere three owners during its lifetime has left this trailer in unrestored mint condition."

Teardrops became popular in the 1930s as do-it-yourself projects. Some teardrops were built from kits and conveniently had room for two--if you happened to be raccoons. But what the trailers lacked in space they made up in style. Keister shows dozens of restored trailers hitched to vintage cars. "Tiny trailers," he writes, "are a decorator's dream: a tidy well-defined space that seems to accept just about any stylistic ethos." There are blue ones and shiny ones, trailers that recall the Sixties, aircraft design, or an Arts and Crafts touch.

Canned hams reflected the teardrop style (though later the little teardrop came into its own with its aft kitchen) and became immensely popular in the 1950s, with their external styles "heavily influenced by the era's flamboyant automotive designs." Remember two-tone paint jobs and wraparound windshields, anyone? The makers of canned hams tried to make them cool, too.

The boler trailer (small "b") was created by a Canadian fiberglass septic tank developer. You can see where this is going. In the Sixties the compact fiberglass trailers, which looked sort of like bowler hats, hit the market. Though never wildly popular they were durable; some are still on the road.

The Airstream aluminum trailers got their start in the 1930s but are still popular; smaller Airstreams these days are marketed under the Bambi name. Keister also adds a chapter on the European love affair with tiny trailers, and there are two pages of online resources.

It's a fun book, and clear that tiny trailers are nothing less than portable personalities.

The origin of Orland's "Farm Sanctuary"

In 1985 Gene Baur worked at Greenpeace in Chicago, became a vegetarian, and (with his then-wife Lorri) founded Farm Sanctuary.

The story is told in "Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food" ($25 in hardcover from Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster). The organization focused on "downers," animals "down on the ground, unable to move on their own because they were sick, injured, or dying." Rather than tend to such animals or humanely euthanize them, which would be expensive, factory farms and stockyards routinely put them in the "dead pile"; sometimes such animals wound up in the food chain.

Farm Sanctuary volunteers photographed the abuses and in some cases removed ailing animals and restored them to health.

Eventually Farm Sanctuary relocated to a farm in Watkins Glen, in upstate New York, where victims of the factory farm system were named and nursed. Later, "one of our supporters, a professor at California State University, found available land suitable for a sanctuary near Orland . . . and donated about a hundred acres to us." Baur writes that the "Orland shelter has a visitors' center with an outdoor pavilion. . . . We've built barns and shelters where the animals can come and go as they please."

Actress Kim Basinger filmed a public service announcement on behalf of Farm Sanctuary featuring Henry the Holstein, "a frail baby calf" Baur rescued from "a crate at a calf ranch." Henry is now "a happy resident of the Orland shelter" and "weighs in at over two thousand pounds. He gets plenty of fresh air and grass to graze on."

Ultimately, Baur writes, "the best way to promote health, compassion, and sustainability is to adopt a vegan lifestyle. . . . Animal foods, including meat, milk, and eggs, waste vast resources and are inherently violent." But, he says, "if you continue eating meat and dairy products and you are concerned about animal welfare, then I hope you'll avoid factory-farmed meat, milk, and eggs."

The book is written in a quiet, reasonable tone (underplaying the controversy that has attended the work of Farm Sanctuary over the years), inviting the reader to consider that each farm animal "has a distinct personality as well as his or her own needs, fears, and desire to live."

Grass Valley author remembers his days as an L.A. motorcycle officer

William W. "Bill" Wilhelm spent 20 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, 18 of them as a "motor officer." When he retired in 1973 he had logged more than a million miles "without a preventable accident." That's not to say he had an "easy street" job, though. He saw his share of bodies, criminal shenanigans, official bureaucracy , and bad cops; and he worked the Watts riot in the summer of 1965 and the Sylmar quake in the San Fernando Valley in 1971.

Wilhelm has collected his reminiscences in dozens of vignettes. Though there are no accompanying photographs (a personal camera was forbidden on the job), his sprightly prose and dry wit paint a vivid picture of life from the officer's perspective in "Code Two 'N' a Half" ($12.95 in paperback from Oak Tress Press, www.oaktreebooks.com).

"Many see the motorcycle officer only as the dreaded image in the rear view mirror. Surely this guy has no sense of humor. His talent must be limited to eating doughnuts, hiding behind billboards and looking as if he doesn't understand the problem." Wilhelm is out to dispel the stereotype.

One time, after stopping a speeding motorist, he recognized a man he had served with in the Marine Corps during World War II. But he didn't recognize Wilhelm. Just before writing a citation, the officer "tilted my head back and told him I was getting a message. Then I told him, 'You were a Marine in the war. . . . You had a friend named Bill. I can see you and him in a foxhole.' He looked at me as if I were a complete nut case. 'I'm not getting Bill's last name.'" "Wilhelm," said the driver, and then the officer removed his helmet and sunglasses; "I told him he'd better keep his speed down, because the police department was short on Marines who were with him in the war."

The LAPD uses Code 2 for "get there legally, but without delay," and Code 3 for "emergency." When another unit had Code 3, Wilhelm notes that sometimes, when backup units "were riding fast to get there, the inside joke was that were were rolling 'Code Two 'n' a Half.'" Readers will enjoy the trip.

Fire in California: What we need to know

David Carle was a California State Park ranger for almost three decades. He brings his experience to a timely book: "Introduction to Fire in California" ($18.95 in paper from University of California Press), scheduled for August publication, is one in a series of "California Natural History Guides."

The book contains 15 maps and some 90 photographs (including one of "Richard Nixon on his roof during the Bel Air fire of 1961" spraying water with a garden hose while smoke billows in the background); in five chapters it covers the nature of fire, vegetation types and fire across California, file policy, how to prepare for a wildfire, and a history of major fires in the state. That includes the Fountain fire in central Shasta County in 1992 which consumed 300 homes; and the Southern California fires in 2007, some set by arsonists and spurred on by the Santa Ana winds, that burned half a million acres and 2000 homes and killed seven.

Carle details how CAL FIRE responds to wildfires throughout the state. "Estimated flame lengths are one way to consider firefighting options. . . . So long as flame lengths stay below four feet, hand crews using shovels and axes can construct fire lines near the front of the fire.

"The heat and danger from rapidly spreading fire after flames are between four and eight feet high mean that fire lines must move back a considerably greater distance; only bulldozers or other heavy equipment can clear fire lines along the fire front. . . . A fire with flames between eight and 11 feet requires air tankers or helicopters to drop fire retardant. . . . Beyond 11-foot flames, direct fire suppression is simply no longer effective. No amount of water or retardant can make an effective dent in the energy being released."

The chapter on "Getting Ready: Life on the Edge" is worth the price admission. It diagrams creating a defensible space around your home and what to do during a fire evacuation ("bring combustible patio furniture indoors" and leave some lights on so firefighters can find your "house at night or in heavy smoke").

One way to thank the firefighters and volunteers is to become more informed about fire. This book will help.

Not fire, but ice: Paradise native's Donner poems

Perhaps it's ironic that I read Shana Youngdahl's chapbook, "Donner: A Passing" ($12 in paper from Finishing Line Press, www.finishinglinepress.com) on the third day of my evacuation from the area threatened by the Camp Fire. Though we were well cared for by friends, there was no mistaking the sense of displacement that must have gripped the group of nearly 90 people. My battle was with fire, theirs with ice, and the outcome was far different. The fire danger lessened, and we returned home. For the 81 trapped in the Sierra snows in the winter of 1846, one accounting says 36 died.

Youngdahl, a Paradise native who now teaches at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa, has written 25 short poems that retell the story of the Donner Party, from packing day in Springfield, Illinois, in April 1846, to the survival a year later of a man named Keseberg, one of the party. "It is rumored, he bragged: he ate their children, / even called them by name, claimed Tamsen / died of grief upon George's death. . . ."

The reader is advised first to read one of the narratives of the Donner Party which exist online, and then to take up quietly, carefully, Youngdahl's terse, searing words. Lansford Hastings had promised a shortcut to California, but what little guidance he offered proved fatal. First came the desert trek: "To moisten children's mouths, Tamsen gives each / a lump of sugar wet with mint. / Later: a bullet to chew."

Later comes the fateful climb into the mountains, the snowfall which stops the party dead in its tracks, and the unspeakable events that to this day are not perfectly understood. The cabins are inundated in snow. "Little movement, this, the felling / of trees. The dead / frozen-eyed storms. // The bible murmured aloud, a forsaken / mountain where few breathe. // Each day the same bones / boiled and chewed. // The known world: thinning."

"It had been Tamsen's plan," the poet writes, "to feed her children flesh / from frozen bodies. Perhaps / they did not know what the meat / was, and could only stare / at the fire. . . ."

Ice is like fire. It burns a hole in the heart.