Biblio File SHORT NOTICES

"One Hell of a Ride: The Life and Times of Lou Federico" ($24.95 in paperback from Adventure Publishing) is replete with black and white photographs. In a letter he writes that "I lived in the Chico area for many years during the waterfowl seasons, starting in 1967. . . . I am an outdoorsman and entrepreneur who pioneered Baja, California, in the 1960s and 70s in order to build resort hotels." He became friends with John Wayne in the last days of his life and remembers that in 1961 his Club Aero Mulege fly-in hotel was popular with influential Chicoans.

Marysville-Yuba City resident David Hobbs became a Christian in 1974 after quite an extraordinary pilgrimage, told in "Out of the Fire" ($15 in paperback from 4L Press). According to a news release, Hobbs worked for the U.S. Forest Service fighting fires starting in his college years. He "spent four years on helicopter crews, two years on tanker crews, and two years on the elite Rogue River Hotshots. He was also in the first group of college students busted for drugs at Humboldt State University . . . and spent the 'Summer of Love' (1967) in the drug scene in Berkeley."

UC Berkeley anthropologist Kent Lightfoot, and Otis Parrish, a member of the Kashaya Pomo Tribe, have just published "California Indians and Their Environment: An Introduction" ($19.95 in paperback from University of California Press). New research suggests "California Indians lived in vibrant polities" practicing prescribed burning. Not all was paradise. The authors note that "we have good evidence that in some times and places Native peoples experienced poor health and hardships brought about by periodic food shortages, parasites, endemic diseases, violence, warfare, and political manipulations." Lavishly illustrated with detailed accounts of how the Konkow, Maidu and others used plants and animals.

Former Yuba City resident finds freedom in Zen surfing

As a high schooler, Jaimal Yogis traded suburban Sacramento life for the call of surfing. He upped and ran away to Hawaii. Here today, gone to Maui.

Perhaps his "New Age-y" parents understood Jaimal's intense boredom and his growing spiritual need. His Air Force dad had been a gourmet chef, a "hippie trapped in a colonel's body," and "he and my mom lived in an ashram in the '70s." Jaimal and his sister Ciel practiced meditation and "I was even named after an Indian saint: Baba Jaimal Singh. And it couldn't have been just coincidence (I thought) that my Lithuanian grandparents' name was shortened to Yogis. I figured I was destined, like Siddhartha, for spiritual greatness." Prince Siddhartha became the Buddha. Jaimal became a writer for San Francisco Magazine. From a Zen perspective, pretty much the same thing.

Yogis' lighthearted yet serious-minded memoir is called "Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest To Find Zen On the Sea" ($15.95 in paperback from Wisdom Publications). In self-deprecating fashion the author (who lived for a time in Yuba City with his father and his stepmom) comes to understand that the quest for the perfect, blissful surfing experience serves only to stoke the illusion of an independent self. "Just as a wave cannot exist apart from water, what we mistake as 'our' minds are dependent on the one true mind, the Buddha mind."

Yogis quotes surfing hero Barton Lynch observing that surfers are "more cocky and judgmental than any group of people in the world." The Santa Cruz surf Nazis are maybe the worst, yet Yogis comes to realize that even surf Nazis "have Buddha-nature." Himself included.

Life is like catching a breaker. "The take-off is arguably the most scary and difficult part of riding a wave. Too far forward or back can be the difference between a smooth glide down the face or being pitched--what surfers call 'going over the falls.' . . . the surfer, like the Zen student, must constantly find the middle way."

Yogis' water color portrait of a young man who accepts "who I am," that he is not "the things I do" (though they, too, are), uses language that is by turns funny, reflective and salty. That was Zen. This is now.

Local writer delivers fast-paced Western novel

The American Civil War is over. In Texas, changes are coming even to the communities spared the smell of battle. Strangers are passing through: "Poor folks fleeing the destruction, avaricious Northerners and men with criminal intent, adventurers, and returnees hoping to find something of the homes they'd left." The little town of Three Corners, near the Big Thicket area in the southeast, is one such place. Elias Trace has come to settle here. He is "in his early twenties, of average height and somewhat lean" and, as Crabby Janes, his friend and unofficial town mayor, says, Trace is formerly "of Mosby's Raiders, late of the Confederate States of America."

Not far from Three Corners a group of emigrants has been massacred by a "gang of deserters, Mexicans, and renegade Indians" led by Gilbert Clayton. Farm wagons were burnt, bodies scattered. "Men's trouser pockets had been pulled out; women's fingers bent awkwardly or were cut off for the rings." Some of the bodies were desecrated; some of the women were missing. A burial detail from town finds devastation, and they return with guns ready. "All who lived on the frontier were familiar with death as a part of life, but the details of what lay buried behind them would have unnerved even the most hardened of men."

That's the setup of "From Hell to Breakfast" ($12.95 in paperback from iUniverse.com) by Chico area writer John Henry Lyons.

Lyons introduces quite a cast of characters, including a love interest in the young widow Emma Mann. The story is one of courage, but also of leadership. Trace's plan to surprise Clayton's gang draws on skills honed with Mosby, and though Trace had wanted to put battle aside it had come to him. Trace wavers, but Crabby puts it bluntly: "It's leadership here that makes for victory, that and some luck and dirty tricks."

Trace remembers what a compatriot had told him: "Men that believed in a leader . . . would follow such a man if only to reach down inside their souls and see if they really had the courage to match what they had come to expect of themselves."

It's a crackling good yarn, a page-turner leading inexorably to the final confrontation in scenes of intense, cinematic violence.

Take a whiff of Chico author's new children's book

"'Billy, you pig!' Mama Bear slammed her hand on the table. Flippy the Fly jumped up from behind Billy's ear mumbling '¿Que pasa?' Larry the Lamb barely stirred on his blanket by the fire. They all lived together in a cave on the banks of the Wannarana Creek." Billy is making a racket with the silverware. He's drooling. And he stinks. Says Mama Bear: "If that pig doesn't take a bath soon, someone's going to pass out from the smell."

Therein lies a tale and it's told in "Billy the Pig: The Stinkiest Cowboy in Town" ($14.95 in hardcover from Stinky Press Publishing, www.stinkypress.com) by Chicoan Natividad (Naty) Osa. The delightfully whimsical full-page color illustrations are provided by Osa's son, Javier Durá. Copies are available through the Web site or locally from Lyon Books and Avenue 9 Gallery in Chico; Back at the Ranch in Paradise; and Discover Earth in Red Bluff.

The story passes this reviewer's smell test for witty wording and nonsensical fun. One day in Happy Holler Billy buys a Durian, the stinkiest fruit there is, from his friend Monk the Monkey at Monk's Fruits and Veggies. The rodeo is coming up and Billy has a hankering to do some bee roping. Monk is in a quandary. He "knows people don't want Billy participating in the rodeo unless he takes a bath. He had heard that Mrs. Robinson fainted dead away from the smell when she was standing in line behind Billy at the Pony Espresso Cafe. He wanted to talk to him about it, but how do you tell your friend people think he stinks?"

Quickly, though, Billy, Larry, and Flippy are soon off to Warthog Harry's Saloon and Malt Shop for a little lunch when they are confronted by Fleevil, "the notorious gunslinger and all-around bad apple" who challenges Billy to a duel outside. "Billy was out in the street before you could say in a pig's eye." The swine flew into action. "Billy's right hand flew to his side and fired off the first banana. It stuck to Fleevil's forehead like a horn." Turns out this pig's got talent. Will he be able to rope bees? Will he take a bath?

"Billy the Pig" brings home the bacon.

Interrupted by tragedy: A Chicoan's history

Tony Nicosia is a familiar presence in Chico. He describes himself as a "community activist." "I still give good massages," he says, "and get rid of headaches and sore hands, feet, and backs. I have also worked for the American Red Cross at the Neighborhood Church, and I helped the people who evacuated from the Paradise and Concow fires. I gave them food and water and helped out feeding and watering their animals. This year I helped again with Bidwell Park cleanup and I worked on the projects around Horseshoe Lake and Chico Creek." He is also involved with various environmental groups as well as the Chico Peace and Justice Center, which helped him get his life story into print.

"Dreaming of Wolves" ($15 in paperback from Tony Wolf Productions) by Anthony David Nicosia is available at Lyon Books in Chico as well as the Chico Peace and Justice Center, where newsletter editor Steve Tchudi helped shape the manuscript. The short chapters are reminiscences of a life studded by misfortune. "I was married two times," Nicosia says, "and both turned out tragically. The first was my wife, Cathy, and my two children" who were all killed in an automobile accident. "Then there was Christy, who died of cancer. I was a good husband and a loving dad, and I think of those two women a lot."

Nicosia himself "had two motor vehicle accidents in the past ten years, and I still have memory problems. There are many wonderful men and women who are my friends. I appreciate all the people who knew of my head injury and memory loss and were very understanding as to why I have had a hard time remembering them." He faced a difficult childhood in Pennsylvania. His parents divorced and he came down with rheumatic fever. In the hospital he developed an interest in wildlife, especially wolves. "They really take care of family--if a mother wolf dies, other members of the pack will take over the cubs."

He served in Vietnam, returning home to hostility and discrimination. In the mid-1970s he wound up at Chico State University. He faced cancer, brought on, he says, by exposure to Agent Orange.

Yet Nicosia survives--and guess what? "I am still dreaming of wolves."

SHORT NOTICES

Roseville writer W. Bruce Pruitt is convinced that criticisms of Freemasonry are demonstrably false. In "The Truth About Anti-Masonry: Straightforward Answers to the Critics of Freemasonry" ($9 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing) Pruitt defends Masonry against charges that it causes family conflicts, that Masons in business show favoritism to other Masons, that it's secret, cultic, a religion, and that its punishments are severe. He concludes that Freemasonry is "religious" but not a religion, and that it is perfectly compatible with the author's own Christian faith. Its symbols of a square and a compass are reminders of a solid moral foundation.

Former California State Park Ranger David Carle provides a valuable "Introduction to Water in California" ($18.95 in paperback from University of California Press), one of a series of "California Natural History Guides." Published in 2009, the second edition takes note of California's drought and claims that "the greatest opportunities for expanding water supply in the coming years will be through conservation, recycling, and groundwater management, rather than the old 'concrete path' of the past, when dams and aqueduct construction were the first choices." Carle also reminds readers that "water flows uphill toward money." A colorful overview of nature and politics.

When Mount Shasta begins to smoke, folks take notice. Also taking notice are three space aliens, Stanley Cooper, Mickey Circle and Cynthia Clark, sent to earth to scare and astound the populace in order to jazz up sagging ratings for a reality show back home. The smoke turns out to be a hologram, but the shenanigans don't stop there. Drifter Sam Burton finds himself in the thick of things, all chronicled by Red Bluff novelist John T. Allen in "Real Planets: Sam Burton & the Alien Reality TV Show" ($24.95 in paperback from PublishAmerica). It's a salty tale for "adults."

Captivating "Black Bart" novel humanizes northstate stagecoach robber

Paradise author Lou Legerton, retired from Wells Fargo, is fascinated with the mysterious figure dubbed "Black Bart" by the press. He spent a dozen years researching the stagecoach bandit, the bane of Wells, Fargo & Company in the 1870s and 1880s, collecting documents and letters, visiting Civil War battlefields where he fought, even visiting his family's hometown of Plessis, New York.

But why did Charles E. Boles (a.k.a. Bowles or Bolton), a married man with three daughters, forsake his family and take to robbing stages in Northern California? He eluded capture for years, leaving doggerel as his calling card, served four-and-a-half years in San Quentin, was paroled in 1888, and then disappeared.

Legerton, together with award-winning writer Gail Jenner, a Chico State University graduate now living in Etna, California, have transformed the historical record into a novel, suitable for young adult readers, that attempts to take the "full measure" of the man. "Black Bart: The Poet Bandit" ($14.95 in paperback from Infinity Publishing), by Gail L. Jenner and Lou Legerton, is illustrated with line drawings by Glen "Lawrence" Harrington, and it's compulsively readable.

In the epilogue the authors quote from "the last known letter" to his wife, Mary Elizabeth, who had not heard from him in 15 years. "My Dear Family," Charles wrote, "how little you know of the terrible ordeal I have passed through, and how few of what the World calls good men are worth the Giant Powder it would take to blow them into eternity. . . ."

Boles is a man stung by financial hardship, a jobless veteran lured by the false promise of California riches, a rascal with good intentions. He relishes his dual existence as "gentleman" and "robber." "On July 25, 1878, he robbed the Quincy to Oroville stage, and unloaded more than $600 worth of valuables. He'd liked to have made more on the deal." And he left some verse, admired in the novel by Mary Vollmer, his mistress (though the record is unclear): "Here I lay me down to sleep, to wait the coming morrow. Perhaps success, perhaps defeat, and everlasting sorrow. Let come what will, I'll try it on, my condition can't be worse, but if there's money in the box, it's munny in my purse."

Russ Woody invents a world

Not satisfied with putting words into the mouths of Murphy Brown and Jeff Foxworthy, Hollywood writer/producer Russ Woody has birthed a world and populated it with a slew of two-foot-tall grumps.

Woody, a recent guest at Chico State University, his alma mater, envisions a world at the center of our own that is in some way responsible for keeping earth rotating. The upside-down tale--complete with exploding heads, quivering mucus and other gross-out elements designed to appeal especially to pre-teens--has a logic all its own. Call it "circular logic."

The story is told in "The Wheel of Nuldoid" ($15.95 in paperback from Pointless Ink) which includes marvelously quirky drawings and maps by Norman Felchle. Readers can taste the book ahead of time at www.nuldoid.com and if they start to get cramps the story is having its intended effect.

It begins in the 2060s. Old Grampa Worst tells his grandchildren the bizarre story of his son, Warren, back in the late 1980s, after the earth's rotation had begun to slow. People became more sluggish as gravity pressed in, so, writes Woody, ratings for such shows as "Murphy Brown" shot through the roof. And a couple of sinister beer-loving Nuldoids, Kyle and Morton, who never ceased to argue and swear ("murk fuddle!" "Ya stinkin' drobbs horkels!"), journey to the surface in search of the Crystal somehow connected to the fate of Hoidenall (earth).

Mind-blowing adventures soon begin for Warren and Leo, "a student in Warren's social studies class, a scruffy-looking kid of eleven," and Warren's friend Lily. The humans, "Crustoids" or just "Toids," must travel to Nuldoid via the region of the Oidenoids, the "wandering conformists" who think their interpretation of the sacred "Book of Lloyd" is the only correct one.

Nuldoid is a place "where north was south and great was mediocre, where conflict and dissent and bickering were good and welcome things and where spit was greasy." It's "Hib nobb del noid" (literally 'Within dat circular circle, circles all dat is to be moved in dat circle"), referring to the "belief that everything exists in a circle. Therefore happiness is next to unhappiness, evil is next to good, fat to thin." Argument produces essential movement.

In Woody's fast-paced upside down story there are, indeed, wheels within wheels.

Award-winning Oregon novelist to make Chico appearance

"In those days," writes Portland-based novelist Molly Gloss, "plenty of men thought nothing of being rough with horses. A horse had to have a his spirit entirely broken was what a lot of men thought, had to be beaten into abject submission." This was the "winter of 1917 and 1918" when 19-year-old Martha Lessen, horse whisperer and broncobuster, rides into rural Elwha County in eastern Oregon looking for work.

So begins a quiet tale of Martha's "gentling" horses ("I can gentle most anything that has four feet and a tail," she says) and in turn being "gentled" into community life, especially by George and Louise Bliss, with whom she signs on. This is the time when young men are going off to war and ranchers are short of help.

"The Hearts of Horses" ($13.95 in paperback from Mariner Books) is an engrossing story, full of poignant reminders of our contemporary world (in those days, sauerkraut was called "freedom cabbage") and expressing a feminist sensibility in the strength and dignity of its female characters, even as women's suffrage would become a reality not many years hence.

Gloss will be signing copies Wednesday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books in Chico. Her work has won the James Tiptree Award, appeared in the New York Times' "Notable Book" list, and was chosen a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Martha is a loner, dressed as if ready for a rodeo (one observer thinks she looks like Calamity Jane), tall, "big boned," with a wide smile and air of innocence. Her childhood dream is of freedom, galloping "bareback across fenceless prairies through grass as high as the horse's belly," a life of independence, "intimate with animals, intimate with the earth."

As winter surrenders to spring, the reader is drawn slowly, slowly into what happens to the dream, into the sometimes tragic lives of Martha's far-flung neighbors, into the human and animal cost of war, the scourges of cancer, ptomaine poisoning and influenza, and "the hard truth that loving someone meant living every moment with the knowledge he might die--die in a horrible way--and leave you alone."

Yet in the midst of pain this is a story of hope, one of "taming" the heart--but not domesticating it.

"Funny signs" travel author coming to Chico State University

Doug Lansky has backpacked in more than a hundred countries, and besides collecting travel smarts he's also collected photographs of funny signs, often in fractured English, presented in a series of full-color books. The latest is "Signspotting 2: More Absurd & Amusing Signs From Around the World" ($9.99 in paperback from Lonely Planet).

Lansky and freelance contributors to www.signspotting.com have found hilarious examples (some of them unintentionally naughty) and the author adds an explanatory caption for those who may not get the joke. Some of the signs are not exactly helpful. In Monroeville, Pennsylvania, there's a sign that says "Entrance Only - Do Not Enter." In Boulders Beach, South Africa, a prominent sign says: "Table Mountain National Park - Warning - Please look under your vehicles for penguins." In Darwin, Australia, there's an official sign pointing to "Lost City." ("Pssst," Lansky adds, "don't tell anyone.")

Lansky is scheduled to appear at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium this coming Tuesday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. His "Get Lost" presentation, billed as stand up comedy, only about travel, is free to the public as part of the "On the Creek Lecture Series." Though the presentation is free, a ticket is required from Chico Performances (www.chicoperformances.com) by calling (530) 898-6333.

The author uses humor to get at something deeper, an appreciation of travel that doesn't depend on seeing all the tourist attractions and taking pictures of friends standing in front of them. One can tread lightly on the earth and make travel a very personal project. Collecting funny signs is not about laughing at those whose English is poor (Lansky points out that English speakers would also be prone to gaffes putting their words into different languages). It is about connecting with a memory and enjoying the silliness.

In Bangkok, Thailand, the sign says "Milk Chocolate Covered Crocodile" ("Hold the whipped cream," says Lansky); in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the club sign says "Members and Non Members Only" and in New Brunswick, Canada you'll find the "Ha Ha Cemetery." In Kenya don't forget the "Joyride Driving School." And when you visit Colton, California, be sure to see the sign on the side of the building that says "Colton High School - Commited To High Standards."

Sign me up!

Sacramento poet celebrates his newborn daughter

Brad Buchanan's new collection of poems, "Swimming the Mirror" ($12 in paperback from Roan Press, roanpress@gmail.com) is a small jewel of a book that illuminates the dad perspective. He teaches English at California State University, Sacramento, and these accessible poems, almost sixty of them, are by turns poignant, funny, and thoughtful.

Inside the womb, with "the white noise of corpuscles seething," "the kidneys' minuet," and the "bladder's pulse," "The unborn child conducts her own / orchestral suite, until she is born / and the roar of the universe withdraws. / The silence hurts so much she cries // for the whispers of the breast, the lost / percussion of love, The Planets by Holst, / and the tiny chorus of kicks from within / that strikes the triumphal march up once again." Such is "The Music of the Spheres."

Now she is here. There is "Quiet Alert": "Not sad, but crying, / the baby is signaling / her newfound needs-- / the world's in a holding / pattern, and knows it. / We work the angles / of blankets and breastfeeding, / tilt at the windmills / of burping, navigate / the pink circumference / under a diaper, / discover the truth behind / rumors of new uprisings / from the south, / decode the morsels / that drop from her mouth, / and then relax all the way / back to delight / seeing her eyes open, / quiet, alert."

A newborn, though, can take its toll on parents. Sometimes tempers become short, accusations fly, there's "Spilled Milk." ". . . An unfair response / becomes a negotiating position-- / and then, at last, as talks break down / and we are reminded of why we were lovers / before we were mother and father to one / helpless human being, now sleeping again, / we find spilled milk well worth crying over, / since nothing else matters at 2 A.M."

Later, "Her Fall": "She tumbled, / but the tears didn't come / until we found her / lying on her belly, / and picked her up to see / what happened, / why she couldn't fly."

In "Activity Report," "Somebody found an open box of cookies and was very happy." The reader will be, too.

SHORT NOTICES

The "Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions" ($18.95 in paperback from University of California Press) identifies 130 species. Arthur Shapiro, Professor of Evolution and Ecology at UC Davis, covers the lives of butterflies and which garden plants attract them. The bulk of the guide is devoted to detailed species descriptions with full-color illustrations by Timothy Manolis. Tidbits abound: "The Anise Swallowtail is one of the very rare cases where a single species will feed both on herbs (carrot family) and trees (cultivated citrus in southern California and in Butte County). . . ."

Sacramento native Albert Hurtado, an historian at the University of Oklahoma, has produced a definitive scholarly biography of a California pioneer (who attended John Bidwell's wedding in 1868). "John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier" ($24.95 in paperback from University of Oklahoma Press) is a detailed warts-and-all account. "Sutter's financial management was not helped by his well-known addiction to drink. His friend Bidwell, a lifelong temperance man, worried about him and arranged for . . . a celebrated temperance lecturer" to visit Sutter. "It did no good. 'I told her, that she could not convert me,' Sutter explained."

In "The Purple and the Orange: A Tale of Defoliation" ($23 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing), Fair Oaks author Denis De Luchi has written a massive novel (569 pages) about an Air Force pilot named Tony Gyro (pronounced "hero") who volunteers to spray Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Though married, Major Hero has a number of sexual liaisons, and throughout the sardonic story searches for the war's meaning. He concludes: "We have it all wrong." An author's note says that De Luchi "is a retired Air Force pilot and college physics professor. For Lent, 1952, he gave up church."

Premiere book on slide presentations has Chico connection

The speaker looks out at the assembled audience and, like magic, the first PowerPoint slide appears on the nearby screen. Seemingly enamored of each slide, the speaker turns and reads it to the audience. One slide features six main bullet points, each with three sub-points and, in the smallest of type, a scattering of sub-sub-points. Another slide features a detailed spreadsheet and the final slide simply says "Questions?" As if to underscore the point, the question-mark is pictured by the cheesiest of clip art mined from the bowels of Microsoft's PowerPoint library. The first question one thinks of is, "Why are you inflicting this on us?" The second question is: "What time is lunch?"

The problem, writes Nancy Duarte, is not that slide presentations are evil, but that they "all too often reflect the agenda of the presenter rather than build a connection with the audience." Rather than simply reading their slides, presenters need to put in "the effort necessary to transform them into visual stories that support their message." Duarte shows how. She calls for a new "slide ideology," "a meaningful relationship between you, your slides, and your audience." It's all expressed clearly and beautifully in "slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations" ($34.99 in paperback from O'Reilly).

According to a note about the author, Duarte is "president and CEO of Duarte Design, one of the few agencies in the world that focuses solely on presentations, and in 2006 was responsible for the slides used in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film, 'An Inconvenient Truth.' Though it’s based in Mountain View, Duarte Design (http://www.duartedesign.com) has an office in Chico."

The book is superb and immediately useful. It's not another how-to on PowerPoint, but rather a guide to "best practices" in the use of any presentation medium--even if it's just paper flip charts used by John Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. A slide that "contains more than 75 words is a document. . . . True presentations . . . reinforce the content visually rather than create distraction, allowing the audience to comfortably focus on both." For Duarte the process starts with creating "ideas, not slides," using the visual medium to "tell the truth" and "get to the point."

So does the book.

Noted author to speak at Jesus Center benefit dinner March 26

Mark Scandrette, the co-founder of ReIMAGINE ministry in San Francisco, brings readers into a gritty, street-level Christianity with "Soul Graffiti: Making a Life In The Way of Jesus" ($14.95 in paperback from Jossey-Bass). "No matter our aesthetics," he writes, "there is something in the motivation of the graffiti artist that we can identify with, a guttural yelp to be heard and understood, to talk back to the universe or to God when we feel helpless, abandoned, or overwhelmed." Being an apprentice to Jesus Christ means becoming, in one's very life, an authentic embodiment of the "good news" Jesus brought.

Scandrette, along with his wife and three children, live in the Mission District, and the stories he tells of street people, down-on-their-luck neighbors, and "respectable folk" are sometimes shocking, sometimes heart-breaking, always unsettling. For the author, the "emerging vision" of the church is more than just correct belief. "Our culture allows us to claim belief without validating faith by actions. Our use of the phrase 'I believe' could more accurately be substituted with 'I agree' or 'That makes sense to me' rather than 'I act on this information with fidelity and trust.'"

Scandrette will be speaking during the Jesus Center benefit dinner Thursday, March 26 from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. at Chico State University's Bell Memorial Union. Tickets are $40 with tables for eight $300; they're available by calling (530) 345-2640.

"Soul Graffiti" looks at the "school of conversion" in terms of Jesus as companion, artist, healer, and mystic (that is, one who is "conscious of the transcendent reality of God, accessing power to love through contemplative prayer, mindful surrender, and the practices of silence and solitude"). He adds that "in the experience of the early disciples, the power of Jesus' resurrection brought the spiritual metamorphosis required to inhabit the kingdom of love."

Finally, "entering the kingdom of God is a lot like learning to dance again. Somewhere in the deepest part of ourselves we have heard the music of our Maker and long to get our groove on. . . . We repent and reimagine how we live in our bodies, knowing that revolutionary force, the Spirit of God, is at work in us, wooing us toward health, wholeness, love, and peace."

Tales of "Yana City" from Chico's Clark Brown

"Down in the Valley" ($11.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) is billed as "a collection of four stories and a novella set in a small college town." For retired Chico State University English professor Clark Brown, the fictional "Yana City" "exists somewhere in the imagination, though the stories themselves take place loosely from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s.

"Here now in Yana City," Brown writes in "Wilderness," about an English department fight at Yana State College, "you were aware of your surroundings all right--mountains and valley floor and the great slow river--and the sky, always, the sky--but the town seemed lost in space and time, as though it had drifted from its moorings or fled from its orbit. Really, it was like a secret village you stumbled upon in a fairytale, as astonishing little world going busily about its affairs, undiscovered and uncaring. Oh, but the heat!"

Brown will be braving the elements, signing books and reading from his collection tonight at Lyon Books in Chico at 7:00 p.m.

In "Cézanne's Fingers," the shortest of the pieces, Philip Moore has been deputized by his college department to ask American Studies prof Charlie Harris to leave the school after being caught passing off a student paper as his own. Charlie intertwines his hands. "'The painter Paul Cézanne,' he intoned, shucking off his gloves, 'used to link his fingers like this, to show how everything is locked together. You know?'"

"When Evildoers Come At Me" tells the tale of young Alan Maeghers, full time student at Yana State, who finds himself at the center of several affairs and a Religious Studies major to boot. "The advantage," he says, "of majoring in Religious Studies--'Rel Studs,' as the schedule has it--is that you can appear extremely sensitive without actually having to believe anything."

"A Thing Decided," the novella, is the gripping diary of one Harlan Fort, who discovers the previous tenant, Stephen Bard, had died under mysterious circumstances "the summer of '78." For Fort, "I meddle, therefore I am." The truth uncovered is unsettling, shocking even, though, Harlan muses, "isn't that what this whole adventure has been about--the unsuspected people within us?"

Brown evokes those "unsuspected people" within the reader as well. Meddler!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHORT NOTICES

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

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

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

Noted environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert coming to Chico State University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One woman's view of Chico and beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moon's own spark burns brightly.