"The Victory Lap: Jack Yerman And His Incredible Journey To The Olympics And Beyond"

"Jack Yerman," the Paradise Post noted in 1984, "is only one of 155 living Americans who earned the Olympic gold medal. Yerman's great moment in sports came in the summer of 1960 in the Rome Olympics when he helped the U.S. mile relay team beat Germany for the gold....  For the record, Yerman ran the then-fastest first leg in Olympic history, 46.2...."

There was another big race, this time in 1970 at the Gold Nugget Days' Donkey Derby. He got a "49" to win with a donkey named "Little-Jack," but that was minutes, not seconds. The next year he won with "Silver," celebrating with sons Bruce and Bryce and his beloved wife Margo, who carried month-old Blake.

Bruce Yerman (who entered the world at "9 1/2 pounds, 2 1/2 pounds bigger than predicted") has now published a warm and well-researched biography of his dad, including key family photographs. "The Victory Lap: Jack Yerman And His Incredible Journey To The Olympics And Beyond" ($14.95 in paperback from BookBaby; also for Amazon Kindle) brings the story to 2021.

Before Margo died of cancer in 2014 she encouraged Jack to buy his dream car (a red Corvette Stingray) and "she suggested he marry again." In July 2018 "he married his new sweetheart, Carol Mattern of Paradise." In November that year, while the couple was in Puerto Rico, word came that Paradise was on fire. Their home was lost, but a friend rescued Carol's dog and Jack's gold medal. The couple rebuilt and returned to Paradise in 2021.

Bruce, Director of Operations, Camp Fire Collaborative, sensitively places family history into historical context as he tells of Jack's formative years (born in 1939) with an absent father and an emotionally distant mother and a "quiet, small, comforting voice" that said "Your time will come." 

Indeed so. He played for Cal in the Rose Bowl, excelled at running, and, later, raised his family in Paradise. Brutus Hamilton, Jack's coach at Cal, and a longtime friend, reminded Jack that even though only one name goes into the record books, "his achievement should be considered a team effort." 

Jack would never forget.

"Hope And Healing: A Dialogue On Ways To Recover From Trumpism And Covid-19"

Rob Burton, Chico State Emeritus Professor of English, is sending a valentine to those who seek common ground in a contentious era. 

In his new book Burton, a baby boomer, imagines a series of conversations with a fictional guide, a millennial named Sophia Morales, humanities professor at Northern California's "Euphoria University." 

Her father is Costa Rican, raised Catholic; her mother Pakistani, brought up "in an Islamic culture"; Morales grew up in the States "in a progressive, medium-sized college town situated just a short drive away from the headquarters of the John Birch Society, an ultra conservative group with leanings towards the Ku Klux Klan."

For Morales, this diversity is a "tapestry" to be celebrated, not a "melting pot" to be boiled down into a "stew." She channels some of Burton's utopian sensibilities but offers practical suggestions for navigating a raft of hot-button topics.

"Hope And Healing: A Dialogue On Ways To Recover From Trumpism And Covid-19" ($9.99 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) is a concerted effort to move the discussion away from a zero sum game (winners and losers) and into win-win territory. 

As the title indicates, the book is not politically neutral (for both Burton and Morales "good government" has an essential role to play) but insists on articulating a hopeful vision of the future, advocating a dynamic balance between group and individual identity.

Throughout the dialogues Burton raises objections and seeks clarifications. Though he's actually talking to himself, the model of civil discussion is refreshing. Issues include health care, gun control, and criminal justice; women's rights, inequality and poverty; climate change and technology; nationalism vs. globalism; religious tolerance; and immigration. 

"I believe that we can make immigration a win-win social and political issue," Morales says, "if all nations, particularly the United States, welcome immigrants that same way they welcome tourists or any other temporary visitors. They are welcomed with hospitality not treated suspiciously....; they still need their valid documentation."

For Morales, "the Coronavirus magnified and intensified the structural weakness and problems that were there to begin with." Can we make things better? Burton asks readers to dream a little about the possibilities.

"Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman"

Frank Wills is the only African American associated with Watergate, the political scandal that eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon and the jailing of those in his inner circle. Yet while Nixon and many of his henchmen found post-Watergate life financially and culturally rewarding, Wills fared far differently.

Adam Henig, who graduated from Chico State, tells Wills' story, from his life in the segregated South to his job as "the security guard who alerted police to a break-in at the Watergate Office Building," to his death from "an inoperable brain tumor" (and other complications) on September 27, 2000.

"Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman" ($29.95 in paperback from McFarland and Company; also for Amazon Kindle) is based on interviews with family and friends that "explore the fate of Frank Wills, a Black man in 1970s America caught up in a power struggle dominated solely by white men."

Henig's research shows "that Frank Wills' actions in the early morning of June 17, 1972, were not a source of heroic pride, but in the end caused him bitterness and disappointment." Wills was 24, a high-school dropout, and, as with others at the scene, hardly realized "that his phone call to the DC police had triggered what would become the first chapter in the uncovering of the biggest political scandal in American history."

In the Foreword by JaQwan J. Kelly, who portrayed Wills in the last scene of Steven Spielberg's 2017 film "The Post," the actor notes that "even heroes are not immune to racial injustice and exploitation."

Wills was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1948. That year, Henig writes, "when the traveling display of the original Constitution and Declaration of Independence came to town ... Blacks and whites had separate viewing lines." And "even the city phone directory was divided along racial lines. If you were a person of color, there was a 'C' next to your name, indicating you were 'colored.'"

Henig's fair-minded portrait notes Wills' own poor life choices along the way, but his sympathies lie with a young Black man who did the right thing at the right time--and in so doing changed the world.

"Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness And Civil War Soldiers"

An enduring mystery of the Civil War, and perhaps any armed conflict, is how two soldiers, faced with unspeakable battlefield trauma, can diverge so greatly in their ability to cope with life when hostilities end. Some do well; others descend into insanity.

Butte College history instructor Dillon Carroll probes what he calls this "hidden history": "Soldiers, doctors, and civilians all grappled with war trauma--the long collateral damage of combat--in ways previously unknown to historians." 

His newly-published book, an extraordinary scholarly study that reads like a novel, examines the coping mechanisms of soldiers (they were not merely victims), the responses of then-prevalent "insane asylums," and how families connected battlefield experience with the decaying minds of their loved ones more swiftly than the doctors.

"Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness And Civil War Soldiers" ($45 in hardcover from LSU Press; also for Amazon Kindle) draws on hundreds of sources, including letters, diaries, and medical records (especially from the Government Hospital for the Insane, known as "St. Elizabeth's"). 

What emerges is a nuanced and measured cultural history of what may well have been PTSD in an age before the advent of brain science and psychiatry (which replaced the work of "alienists" who tried to figure out the causes of a soldier's alienation from society).

Alienists explained madness, without obvious physical causes (like syphilis), as the result of immorality (including "intemperance, masturbation, overwork, domestic difficulties, excessive ambition, personal disappointment, excessive religious enthusiasm, and overweening jealousy or pride").

Not every combatant suffered ongoing mental debilitation. "Black soldiers ..., imbued with a sense of purpose and a desire to strike back at the trauma of slavery, were less susceptible to this than white soldiers."

Almost thirty years after Appomattox, Carroll writes, some "survivors of the war's battles and their aftermath were still suffering with nervousness, kept awake by insomnia, and, when they did sleep, awakened by terrifying nightmares. The boom of the cannon, the gurgle of the dying patient, and howl of the bloodhound haunted the repose of many Civil War veterans."

Carroll's analysis of first-person accounts helps readers understand "why"--and why coming to terms with the hidden wounds of war is so difficult.

"Earthly Delights: Poems"

Troy Jollimore teaches philosophy at Chico State and, in his new book of poems, celebrates a world that contains movies. And yet, even in the theatre, "in the very temple of Delight," as he quotes Keats saying, "Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine."

Listen: "A friend who left for the East Coast two years/ ago has flown back to Chico to take photos/ of Mount Lassen exactly one hundred years after/ its catastrophic eruption. For a while/ it feels as if everything is a reenactment of something that has already happened: even dumping/ a skitter of Raisin Bran into a bowl/ ... or trying on sneakers takes on/ the aura of a ritual." 

Well, "Are you trying/ to deny time and change, to say that death/ will have no authority here, or are you/ celebrating the fact that everything is/ in flux and ungraspable, or is the season/ doing one or the other of these things for you?"

In "Earthly Delights: Poems" ($17.95 in paperback from Princeton University Press; also for Amazon Kindle) melancholy seems ever present for something lost or just beyond the horizon.

So, in "Early Morning, Upper Bidwell Park," the poet writes, "When God made the world he did it like this/ world-making in the daytime/ world-undoing at night// And it has occurred to me that we might be living/ in one of the undoings...."

Elsewhere, "When the Senator Theatre closed in 1999 in Chico, California,/ the last film to be shown was 'American Beauty,' and so I went, for the last screening./ I went to take in the last images, to feel the last light, to be a part/ of the end of something, to be, I suppose, a kind of witness, and to be a part/ of that crowd of others...."

Then a postscript to a poem called "Fire": "The world will end in fire, not ice,/ William Tecumseh Sherman said,/ as we, horizons glowing red,/ inhaled the ash of Paradise."

Now the poet sings of the "melancholy night, sagging with the heaviness/ Of summer, and of silence, of things we cannot guess,/ Rocked gently on the azure by the wind's caress,/ The trembling tree, the nightingale's mournful address."

"Lily's Lament"

Chicoan Dick Cory, retired science and health teacher, continues his environmental activism in his thirteenth self-published book. This one is for kids, but also for adults, with a narrative by a long-tailed lemur.

"Lily's Lament" (approximately $20 at Made In Chico) features full-color illustrations by Steve Ferchaud which bring lemurs to life with a distinctive tail to tell. There's a bite to this tale as it's the story of what's happening to the lemurs' home in far-off Madagascar.

"What bothers me most," Lily notes, "is I'm getting old at 17, and as leader of my troop (alpha female), I may not be able to protect and care for my family much longer. Our living space has been squeezed down to the ... southwest corner of our country. Although we spend about one-third on the ground, we still need the forest for food."

Lily is eighteen inches tall; though she weighs but five pounds, "don't sell me short on brain power. I've been able to learn simple arithmetic, understand patterns, and pick the right tool to do a job (sequencing)." As Cory writes in the introduction, non-human animals have ways of communicating, even "the ability to select, create, and use tools."

For Cory, "watching long-tailed lemurs hop, skip, and jump across open ground in Madagascar is so much like children playing on a school playground during recess. There must be some common emotions, pleasures, and need of expression." Humans should not forget.

Lily's country is poor; the most important export is natural vanilla, but the consequences for Lily are stark: "I like awake at night in my cave bed wondering what value we have to our country. Is the wood and natural vanilla so valuable to drive us off the island? Our lives are at stake (endangered) not only by this lost ground ... but by hunters for food, and pet collectors. We live on the edge of 'no more' (extinction)."

Could tourism be an answer? Kids coming to Madagascar "could watch us jump from tree to tree, climb the rocky sides of steep mountains, and hop, skip, and jump" along the ground. It's an optimistic dream, and Cory leaves readers with much to think about.

"InSanity"

"Our connection evolved into a salacious summer fling," writes Chicoan Robyn Alana Engel in her new memoir. "Between romps, there were frequent 'I’m here for you' phone calls. We’d stroll along the creek at Bidwell Park hand-in-hand and laugh about absurdities like a chihuahua chasing its own tail." But "'Jeff' wouldn't commit to an exclusive partnership with anyone.... I slipped into a bout of depression. I didn't realize this then, but my brain was screaming for balance."

The screaming continues throughout "InSanity" ($11.99 in paperback, self-published, with more at rawknrobyn.blogspot.com; also for Amazon Kindle), a dark and mordant work of creative non-fiction which explores in gritty and fairly explicit detail the tension Engel feels between self-care as a single and an insatiable desire for sex.

"Am I oversexed," she wonders in print, "due to a lack of touch throughout my childhood? Or am I oversexed because I'm trying to make up for lost time--having been such a late bloomer?" Her introduction to "Justin," her prince charming, came only in her late thirties, but the marriage didn't last. Then, later, Engel receives news that her ex had died by suicide.

Memories of growing up in an outwardly successful but inwardly psychologically abusive family flood in (never hugged by mom, ignored by dad). And guilt about how poorly she treated her middle brother. Depressed, schizophrenic, Glenn died by suicide in 1988.

Engel's own will to live is fed by a need for constant emotional and sexual stimulation ("loneliness makes me feel crazy"). Her hookups over the years (with Jeff, Twig, George, Mr. Scorpio, Fred, Paul E., Troy, Eldee S., Paul Revere, JT) and run-ins with roommates, neighbors and bosses reveal a blushingly hilarious acid tongue, a person who can't stand boredom--but also someone deeply wounded.

A licensed therapist, Engel played Annie Bidwell, shook Bernie Sanders' hand when he came to Chico, helped Camp Fire victims. For Engel, "you have to choose life, in order to inspire others to do the same.... I choose life, and I intend to give my best to the whole of it. I arrive home, in sanity."

(Please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for 24/7 free and confidential support.)

"Sunroofs And Shoeboxes"

For Chico State journalism graduate Jaime Mathews, now living with her husband and kids in Danville, her life as a single person was, well, frustrating. "I was thirty-one years old," she writes, "and I always thought that by then, I would be married with children.... Instead, I was living with a roommate, my dog, and two cats, working at my dad's business while I was also growing the hair salon I had purchased (and already disliked)."

She felt stuck. So she started writing "on January 7 because beginning on January 1 seemed way to cliché for me" and "committed myself to writing every day for six months about the things I was grateful for. You see, I knew about the power of mindset. I had studied it constantly during my master's program in holistic health and nutrition."

Though the resulting "gratitude journey" opened many personal and professional doors, the point is to express gratitude for what you already have (and may not realize it). 

Those daily posts are contained in Mathews' upbeat "Sunroofs And Shoeboxes" ($12.99 in paperback from The Sweet Life Co., thesweetlife.co; also for Amazon Kindle). Subtitled "train yourself to find happiness in a coffee mug, joy in the laughter of a stranger, and fulfillment in the beauty of a sunset," it's like opening the sunroof on a car: "There is a distinct feeling of expansiveness."

Noticing a little extra around your mid-section? Well, your intuitive sense is called a gut feeling and "because of this, having a more visually present gut can actually be a very healthy reminder to pay attention." (Though a too-present gut can indeed pose a health risk.)

Need creative inspiration? Try Chico's Thursday night market "which showcased the uniqueness of this college town: kettle corn ... fresh herbs, and the most amazing breads."

Sad, scary, or dangerous situations can stimulate gratefulness for others: "We are not meant to live this life on our own." 

"So the next time you fail your New Year's resolutions, forget about them" and loosen up; set a goal whenever, and go for it, being kind to yourself and those around you. 

Readers will find Jaime Mathews a cheering companion along the way.

"Abandoned Chinatowns: Northern California"

With floods and civil war in China in the mid-nineteenth century, many Chinese men came to Northern California during the gold rush boom not so much to start over but to "earn enough money to provide for their families back home and to return to their homeland with financial security." 

As southern Oregon writer Margaret LaPlante points out, this led in the 1850s and beyond to the establishment of numerous Chinatowns and created tension not only among non-Chinese but also within their own communities. "Fires swept through Chinatowns continually," she writes, "but the Chinese showed their resiliency by rebuilding time and time again."

LaPlante captures some of these Chinatowns through hundreds of historical photographs in "Abandoned Chinatowns: Northern California" ($23.99 in paperback from America Through Time). San Francisco's original Chinatown was destroyed by earthquake and fire in 1906. Other Chinatowns throughout Northern California had their own challenges. 

One photograph shows the "third Joss House in Oroville's Chinatown; the first two burned." The Joss House, or Chinese temple, "was built in 1863 using bricks manufactured in nearby Palermo. In 1937, after a series of vandalism and thefts, the town decided to turn the Joss House into a museum," still also available for worship.

LaPlante writes that the "Chinese who lived in Red Bluff built elaborate tunnels underneath the downtown. Most of the tunnels stretched out to the Sacramento River. As in most Chinatowns, there was a great deal of opium, gambling, and prostitution."

In Truckee, many Chinese "worked on the railroad. The Truckee Chinatown burned in 1878 but was rebuilt on the outskirts of town. In 1886, during the anti-Chinese movement, Truckee's ... 'Caucasian League' ordered all Chinese residents to leave Truckee on their own or they would be shipped out in boxcars."

LaPlante devotes an entire chapter to detailing "anti-Chinese sentiment." The 1870 Naturalization Act forbade Chinese from becoming citizens and vestiges of discriminatory policies remained until at least 1965.

The Chinese "planted vineyards in the wine country; they cleared the delta...; they installed irrigation for orchards; and they worked in the fishing industries and in canneries.... They operated laundries, restaurants, markets....."  LaPlante's book is a timely reminder of what has come before.

"The Yahi Storyteller"

Lewis Foreman, a correspondent tells me, was part of the Chico High School graduating class of 1959. Now, in his eighth decade, he has written and illustrated a book of extraordinary tales that tell of ancient civilizations, galaxy traveling machines, and a perpetually sunlit garden world at earth's center.

And it begins with the story of a talented drummer whose stage name is Frosty. Years ago "he had left his home town of Chico, Ca., which had not satisfied his musical desires, and moved to the City." In San Francisco he finds "drugs and Rock and Roll" and later sets off to Reykjavik to explore his Viking heritage. What he finds is no less than the Reality behind all mythologies--and sword-and-sorcery adventures aplenty.

"The Yahi Storyteller" ($39.92 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) prefaces Frosty's own incredible journey with the long tale of Sky Hawk, part of the Acoma Anasazi, who "had wandered the southwest and had eventually entered California," coming to the land of the ancient Yana nation and the Yahi people.

Only a few Yahi survive the cattlemen's attacks (and Foreman's book does not look away from the grisly slaughters), but they do find hidden caves in which to live, and eventually Sky Hawk the storyteller is welcomed into the Yahi family.

"The Great Spirit is the manifested Father and Mother Creator," Sky Hawk tells the children, "and has been called by many names. The Navaho people call it the Holy Wind, the pale-skins call it the Holy Ghost."

Father and Mother Creator, neither male nor female, "are beyond creation." "They, together with the manifested Great Spirit, are the Creator. Three, yet all one. They are Power, Wisdom and Love." 

This back story sets the stage for Frosty's literal slide into the Viking era, where the drummer is renamed Sigmund Thorsson, summoned by the leader, Ice Wolf, to learn drums--and to explore a strange tunnel into the center of the earth wherein Centaurs, Sprites, Satyrs, Dragons and apes reside. 

The dark lords and their Fallen minions have arisen to enslave others, so the Viking exploration turns into a battle with cosmic consequences. 

Foreman's fertile imagination is wonderful to behold.

"Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught In America"

Spring 2019. "Sixth-grade science teacher Kristen Del Real had invited me to come by during her prep period, so for the first time since age thirteen," Katie Worth writes, "I found myself walking the halls of my alma mater, Chico Junior High School." She had returned to find out what kids were being taught about climate change.

Worth worked with FRONTLINE and The GroundTruth Project, part of a team that won an Emmy for the interactive documentary "The Last Generation" (bit.ly/3dMzMNL) about three young people living in the Marshall Islands. Rising sea levels threaten their very homeland.

One of them moved with his family to Oklahoma, and Worth wanted to know what his textbooks said about climate change. The answer fit into her larger investigative journalism project now published in book form: "Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught In America" ($16 in paperback from Columbia Global Reports; also for Amazon Kindle).

Worth "traveled to more than a dozen communities to talk to kids about what they have learned about the phenomenon that will shape their future. What I found were points of friction in abundance." 

Del Real explains that several years earlier, students started to lose interest in their climate change "solution projects" because a history teacher "was showing them YouTube videos alleging that global warming was a hoax...."

And yet, Worth writes, "the more that scientists have studied a link between human industry and global temperatures, the more unambiguous they have found it." 

Her report explains how "climate deniers" create "climate doubters" among the general public in a striking parallel with tobacco industry tactics. She is frank in her reporting that climate scientists don't know everything, and she interviews climate skeptics and fossil fuel advocates. 

But the bottom line is that climate change is falsely presented as a debate, as if coming from "legitimate scientific disagreement."

In 2019, Paradise Intermediate seventh-grader Nakowa Kelley said in Marc Kessler's science class: "This global warming stuff? My parents said it's not true." With care and attention, Kessler tells Worth he helps students search for the truth, but it is a challenge. 

The previous November Nakowa's house disappeared in the Camp Fire.

"Follow The Crypto"

Retired Chico State dean Stephen W. King (swkingbooks.com) has just published the second novel in the Lucas Bitterman series, and it takes up King's interest in the new world of cryptocurrency. 

Luke, a member of the Secret Service, finds that, after an earthquake in Bellingham, Washington, he must "Follow The Crypto" ($18.99 in paperback from FriesenPress; also for Amazon Kindle). As the story unfolds, readers will learn not only about how Bitcoin works but why it's the favored monetary system for various nefarious doings and for avoiding taxes. That's because it's untraceable. Sort of. 

The earthquake doesn't cause much damage, except, as a news alert says, to "one side of a three-story downtown building." It falls nine feet into one of the old mining tunnels under Bellingham; nobody hurt, but investigators find strange things in condo 2A, where someone named George Kennedy lives. We're talking "digital wallets," code numbers, and cash. About $30,000.

George has made it known to local bank tellers to expect big deposits because he's a professional gambler. In actuality, of course, George is not; he's not even "George." But before he flees the area he wants to visit the bank one last time to retrieve "almost five pounds of gold bullion coins--about $150,000 worth of American Eagles and Canadian Maple Leafs."

Luke, serving as one of the Secret Service representatives on the government's Joint Task Force on cryptocurrency crimes, is soon involved in what is becoming a bigger case than one about a local con artist's bad luck. Staying with an old friend and his wife near Lake Whatcom, Luke unravels a drug smuggling scheme that stretches from Bellingham down the I-5 corridor all the way to Mexico.

Along the way we meet not only the corrupt officials running the operation but a greedy wannabe. And, after a killing, the question becomes whether the good guys' plot to catch the murderer will work. 

But there is more. Once motives have been revealed things get increasingly complicated and Luke wrestles with the "inherent tension between law enforcement and criminal justice." King is at his best in asking where justice may be found and, fortunately for readers, his answer is not encrypted.

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes"

Paradise High's junior safety Dylan Blood said it this way: "After all we've been through, we have each other's back in everything; we play for each other. It's win or death. If it wasn't for Paradise, none of us would be who we are. Paradise is something within each of us, and we're fighting for it together." 

It's the spirit of "CMF"--"Crazy Mountain Folk." And it's captured in a heart-rending new book by LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke. Reporting on the Bobcats' first football season after the Camp Fire, Plaschke entered the life and thoughts of Coach Rick Prinz, the coaching staff, athletic director Anne Stearns, the players, and those who cheered them on. 

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes" ($28.99 in hardcover from William Morrow; also in audiobook and Amazon Kindle formats) reads like a cliff-hanging thriller--because it is.

Readers may know how the season ended, that cold (and rainy) dose of reality, but will not be prepared for the many stories of players and their coaches escaping the burning town and then living what came next: disruption, anger, questioning, and--commitment to football. It is enough to reduce a book columnist to a puddle of tears.

"'Football became the thing that bound the town together,' explained Jay Bell, athletic director at the high school from 1985 to 2004. 'Paradise is a different kind of town, and we had a different kind of football program.'"

On Thursday, November 8, 2018, coach Prinz texted team members at 8:10 a.m., confirming practice that afternoon at 3:00 p.m. unless the smoke got in their way. Little did he know.

Much later, after the season, at the banquet to honor the players, Prinz recalled that text. Then he said: "Eleven minutes later, we were running for our lives. These young men faced the reality of death. ... I could see the anguish and fear in my players' eyes. We didn't have a school, we didn't have a practice field, we didn't have cleats, we didn't even have a football!" But, of course, they had something else. 

You must read this book. Period.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. Send review requests to dbarnett99@me.com. Columns archived at https://dielbee.blogspot.com

"I Lift My Eyes To The Hills: God's Help In Times Of Trouble"

Back in 1983, when Stephen Payne was going to Chico State, he and a friend, he told me in an email, "decided on a lark to build a raft out of inner tubes and plywood and float down the Sacramento River for two days." Aside from almost capsizing in a patch of whitewater, they made it, a cause for thanksgiving. 

Now living with his wife, Laura, in Southern Oregon (with an uncle and aunt in Orland), Payne finds continuing reasons for thanksgiving, not least of which is Laura surviving stage-4 melanoma. Yet, as a Christian, he recognizes that "in the midst of the storm, when all had seemed bleak, it was not easy for me to remain grateful to God." 

He found comfort in the Psalms which provide assurance that "the Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore." Thus, "whether he answers as we hope or not, he is still faithful, and he is still good."

That conviction is expressed in his coffee-table book "I Lift My Eyes To The Hills: God's Help In Times Of Trouble" ($19.99 in hardcover, self-published, available at www.liftmyeyestothehills.com), featuring his stunning full-color photographs of the natural world (and its people), all set within the context of the Psalms of thanksgiving.

Ten chapters each focus on a verse, such as Psalm 96:12, "let all the trees of the forest sing for joy." Payne presents a brief exposition; a set of his glorious images taken in Oregon, California, and around the world; his own accounts of nearly capsizing as he faces metaphorical whitewater; and chapter discussion questions.

He and Laura spent a decade with Wycliffe Bible Translators translating the New Testament for the Kwatay people in Senegal; Steve now trains national translators. Through it all he continues his love of photography. 

Tourists snap the sunset's "burst of color" and then leave, but with patience the photographer begins to see "the high clouds overhead start to glow with the pastel shades of alpenglow." That, he writes, is like committed love, for God or one's spouse: "enduring, soft, tender, and patient," even in the midst of rapids.

"Rickety Stitch And The Gelatinous Goo: The Battle Of The Bards"

"Listen," the living skeleton says to encourage the lovely Canta in a new graphic novel, "You don't need a big audience to sing. You don't need adoring fans or chests of gold. And you don't need approval from anyone. You just need the music. ... We sing because we love to. The melodies, the stories ... they inspire us."

The skeleton, along with his sidekick, a talking hunk of gelatin, and a group of oddball friends, have journeyed far to the city of Harp's Edge, there to join in a great music competition that will, in an unexpected way, bring down the house. 

"Rickety Stitch And The Gelatinous Goo: The Battle Of The Bards" ($16.99 in paperback from Knopf Books for Young Readers; also for Amazon Kindle), illustrated by Ben Costa, and created and written by Costa and James Parks, is the third outing for Rickety and company.

Book 1 of "Rickety Stitch And The Gelatinous Goo" set our heroes on "The Road To Epoli"; Book 2 saw them on "The Middle-Route Run." For Costa and Parks, both from the Bay Area, Rickety's stories are part of a larger universe, the Land of Eem. Readers coming first to Book 3 will miss the backstory, but there's plenty of action--and poignant betrayal--to keep teens and adults mesmerized.

Rickety desperately wants to find out who he is, and his purpose. He comes from an earlier time, never co-opted by the again-resurgent Gloom King; as one character puts it, he's "the undying ember of a golden age that has been all but forgotten." 

Throughout the story, there are flashes of that reality, and oh, the song: "What Once Has Been, Again Shall Be," written by Costa and Parks, and sung by former Chicoan, and now Oaklander, Evin Wolverton, who co-wrote the lyrics (listen at RicketyStitch.com). Wolverton performed in several E-R Sessions, back before the Plague.

Outcasts and outsiders find courage together. As the song says, "For every sorry heart, we'll lift each other/ For every crashing wave, we'll brave the sea." Though a deep sorrow has come upon the world, Rickety's antics will keep readers in stitches.

"Letters From A Korean Foxhole: Remembered Words Of A Forgotten War"

Elizabeth Venturini writes that when her dad, Louis Joseph Venturini, "turned 20 years old in December 1950 ... it was his turn to go and serve his country." Six months earlier "75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th Parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north, and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south."

Louie was "honorably discharged from the Army in October 1952" after serving in Korea and being severely wounded by grenade shrapnel. His almost daily letters home revealed few details of his experiences in-country, and when he returned he had terrible nightmares for a time and "wanted to forget what had happened."

He married in 1954 and after a few years, as the family grew, they moved to Chico from Los Angeles. Here Louie farmed almonds and prunes and, as "a licensed building and plumbing contractor, he established ... the L-V Plumbing Company."

Later, as Elizabeth read the hundreds of letters her dad had sent home, "I realized they would tell the story of the Korean War as he experienced it in 1951, not as portrayed by the Hollywood genre of films." He was "uprooted from his civilian life and home like thousands of other young men, to serve in a country no one had heard of, for people no one knew, and for a war nobody understood."

Those letters, including family photographs and careful notes Elizabeth adds for context, have become "Letters From A Korean Foxhole: Remembered Words Of A Forgotten War" ($14.95 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle with more at lettersfromakoreanfoxhole.com).

Most begin with "Dear Folks, Just a couple of lines to let you know that I am okay and hope you are all the same." Louie seems much more concerned with the well-being of those at home, and acknowledging salami Elizabeth's grandmother would send, than with the military challenges he faced. 

Poignantly, Elizabeth adds comments made seventy years later when she interviewed her dad. 

"A lot of good men died over there," he told her. "A lot of my buddies. Not much to say about that."

"A Carnival Of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)"

The Chico Performances page (chicoperformances.com/artists/2021-2022/david-sedaris.php) calls David Sedaris "author and humorist savant." His recent appearance at Chico State's Laxson Auditorium comes in the wake of his second volume of diary entries.

"A Carnival Of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)" ($32 in hardcover from Little, Brown; also for Amazon Kindle) takes its main title from the menu offering of an Indian restaurant in London. It's fitting, of course, for the hundreds of entries that range from poignant (the death of a sister, the dementia of his long-time agent) to preposterous (the lengths some people go to avoid any plopping sound when they use public toilets).

Some of the entries are just jokes, since Sedaris spends multiple hours signing books and hearing the latest funnies--most often of a scatological nature. Not to be outdone, he and his partner, painter and set designer Hugh Hamrick, after noticing some fresh manure spread on a nearby mansion's lawn, decided to call it "The House at Poo Corner."

Sedaris is not a conservative Republican (though his dad, in his nineties, is). "Trump won, and I'm in shock. Here it is, not even eight, and already three American friends have written to ask if they can live in our backyard in Sussex." But mostly he steers away from politics, picking up on human foibles he encounters at his readings all over the world.

Speaking of picking up, he has a few foibles of his own. His obsession is garbage; he constantly picks up litter wherever he goes (and has a garbage truck named after him, as well as a beetle, named by "a Greek entomologist in Tennessee"; "the Darwinilus sedarisi is a predator that eats maggots").

"I met a guy last night who stays home all day while his wife works. 'I'm living off the sweat of my Frau,' he said." Sedaris suggests a boat be named "Row v. Wave." "A bear and a pony go to a karaoke bar. 'Why don't you sing?' asks the bear, and the pony explains he's a little horse."

Sedaris' non-sequitur life is filled with profanely hilarious observations, a needed seltzer when life seems a pile of poo.

"Exploring Intercultural Communication"

Butte College Communication Studies instructor Tom Grothe (pronounced "gro-tay") spent pandemic lockdown time writing a textbook about the pleasures and pitfalls of communicating across cultures. What's more, he's made it free to the public.

"Exploring Intercultural Communication" (published by LibreTexts, free at bit.ly/3mc3DnZ) is accessible as web pages or a PDF. In ten chapters Grothe moves from the "what is it" to the "how to do it," offering fascinating insights along the way.

For example, Grothe reminds us two words with same dictionary definition may be used differently in different cultures and even within a culture. "The word 'amigo' in Spanish is equivalent of the word 'friend' in English, but the relationships described by that word can be quite different. During my travels in Guatemala, I experienced 'hola amigo' as a common greeting, even among strangers. Just as in English, a Facebook 'friend' is quite different from a childhood 'friend.'"

Or take the offer of coffee. In some cultures, that means the host is suggesting guests stay a bit longer. In other cultures, "an offer of coffee after a meal is generally recognized as a polite way to indicate to the guests that they ought to leave soon." It's easy to think one's own cultural tradition is the way everyone does it. (Not true, of course, as the section on what counts as an obscene gesture demonstrates.)

Defining culture itself is notoriously difficult, in part because scholars no longer see it as something fixed. Culture "is influenced by historical, social, political, and economic conditions." Older books about the cultural norms of South Korea, for instance, are likely significantly out of date.

Grothe writes from an inclusive perspective, bringing non-Western and indigenous research to bear on examining the "power structures" inherent in cultural assumptions. From the experience of migration and identity to racism, privilege and stereotyping, the book does not shy away from considering, in a calm and reflective manner, some of the most divisive issues of our time.

Sections on intercultural conflict management, romantic relationships, communicating with people with disabilities and nonverbal communication all provide a comprehensive but friendly guide to the diversity--and ambiguity--of human interaction.

Tom, would you like some coffee?

"Where The Light Fell: A Memoir"

Ten years ago author Philip Yancey spoke at the El Rey in Chico, part of a series of talks sponsored by Bidwell Presbyterian Church. The best-selling author of  "What's So Amazing About Grace?", Yancey chronicles how "God chooses to make himself known primarily through ordinary people like us."

Now comes autobiography, a "prequel" to his other books. "Where The Light Fell: A Memoir" ($28 in hardcover from Convergent Books; also for Amazon Kindle) focuses on his early life through college days, a stunning tale of growing up in Georgia, of racism and white poverty, and of a mother visiting her own dashed dreams onto her two sons--with irreparable harm.

In 2007, in the aftermath of a life-threatening car accident, Yancey thinks that "in the face of death, old fears would come surging back. An upbringing under a wrathful God does not easily fade away. Instead," he says, "I experienced an unexpected serenity. I had an overwhelming sense of trust, for I now knew a God of compassion and mercy."

It wasn't always so. A year after his birth in 1949 his father, convinced God would heal him, succumbs to polio. Mother (that's what she wanted to be called) dedicates Philip and his older brother, Marshall, to become missionaries, a dream she and her late husband would never fulfill. "My brother and I are the atonement to compensate for a fatal error in belief."

Raised in fundamentalism, Philip and Marshall learn how to move audiences with tearful testimonies even as they imbibe racism. Over time Marshall is estranged from Mother, trying out new lifestyles every week, buying into hippie and drug culture, and Philip becomes the sneak and "trickster." 

"Like Marshall, I fully expected God to crush me someday--the threat Mother held over us. Yet from the Bible I am learning about a God who has a soft spot for rebels...."

Life is like a jigsaw puzzle, Yancey writes. "Only over time does a meaningful pattern emerge. ... In retrospect, it seems clear to me that my two life themes, which surface in all my books, are suffering and grace." Readers will find both in abundance in Yancey's unforgettable story.

"Tiger Mom Wisdom: U.S. College Admissions Success Through Creativity, Character, And Community"

With a business degree from Chico State, an MBA from Pepperdine, and her College Counseling Certificate from UCLA, Elizabeth Venturini advises Chinese and American parents on how to get their student into prestigious American universities. 

Her advice is distilled in a comprehensive new guide called "Tiger Mom Wisdom: U.S. College Admissions Success Through Creativity, Character, And Community" ($16.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). "Tiger Moms are the ones who run the household, take care of the kids, and supervise their children's education and extracurricular activities." They've been frustrated with China's "intensely competitive education system, where students can have their entire future determined by a single college admissions exam--the Gaokao."

And so Tiger Moms look to the U.S. American moms are more flexible regarding higher education and value creativity. By contrast, Tiger Moms believe in "academic discipline," that "the right degree from a prestigious school is ... one of the main factors determining a student's future economic and social standing." Venturini, in her book and website (collegecareerresults.com), blends the two perspectives. Prestige is important, but so is realism about the student's "inner spirit."

Her primary audience is Tiger Moms wanting to know what they can do to prepare their student for life in America. They should have encouraged their student early on to explore careers, think about their own talents, what they want to do with their degree, and "develop personal traits such as creativity, character, and community--all in anticipation of presenting them on their résumé for any future opportunity."

But if that hasn't already happened, Venturini has detailed guidance on what to do in this era of Covid, online learning, and in the wake of the Operation Varsity Blues admissions scandal. From boarding schools to how to write a good college essay (it's not enough to come across as smart; one must strive for "unique"), to community service, to what to do when the school says "yes" (or "no")--it's all there. She covers art, music, and film schools, athletics, paying for school, and college etiquette ("the art of charm").

In the end, she writes, "We are a Tiger Mom sisterhood!"