“Whispers Of The Wild: A Collection Of Poems”

Chico author and artist Meghan Irene Turner finds “nature is not a backdrop, but a living presence, a spiritual companion, a mirror reflecting our own journey.” 

In “Whispers Of The Wild: A Collection Of Poems” ($3.83 in paperback, independently published) she adds in the Introduction that “There is a voice that speaks beneath the hum of our daily lives. It rises from the hush of forests, the ripple of rivers, the soft tread of deer through morning…. May these words … remind you that life, in all its forms, is sacred. And that when we slow down and listen, the world speaks in poetry.”

Human folly is revealed when the poet says “Good Morning, World” “even though I am scared./ even though bombs fell over Ukraine,/ and over the Palestinians last night./ even though the dollar,/ isn’t enough anymore…./ even though the day that chases/ the light is uncertain,/ I say,// ‘good morning, world.’”

In “Revisiting A Vision,” the whole earth reels from human depredation. “Cook your favored meal./ Labor over every grain, dice, and stir./ Then, toss it on the dirt./ Watch the dust play in the flavor you cannot taste.// … This,/ is what climate change feels like/ when the matrix burns away.”

And yet there is “Each Day. A Celebration”: “Each and every cell of you,/ and of me,/ is life./ We will celebrate this.// … Learning to love,/ exposed and bare,/ choice given to surrender./ We will celebrate this.// Time given in breath,/ measured by memory,/ and this moment, right now./ We will celebrate this.”

Winter brings “Entanglement”: “Winter sky,/ I am in love with you./ As if,/ you are my lover.// Because,/ my lover is you,// The big chill of night air,/ I love./ Because, it reminds my skin to be alive// … Your washed skies,/ those are my lover’s eyes/ gazing at my day.”

Love requires “Optimism”: “Don’t tell me that the butterflies are dying,/ or that the sky rains weapons.// … Don’t tell me any of this./ Because I already know.// Now tell me,/ all of the ways you love the world,/ and all of the things you do to show it.”

“Dream Sweet: A Lyrical Bedtime Story”

Natalie Borer grew up in Grass Valley, attended Chico State, then became a high school English teacher and a “Substacker, Swiftie, wife, and mother of three” and now an author of a lullaby book. 

She and her family live in Corning; she writes me she was inspired by “my love of storytelling ever since I was little. I have memories of elementary school projects where, as a class, we would write a book and each have a page to illustrate. I had always wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, and only one day did I waver from this when I said out loud, ‘Maybe I'll be an author instead of a teacher,’ and my teacher responded with, ‘Why not be both?’”

“Dream Sweet: A Lyrical Bedtime Story” ($11.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), for babies and young children, celebrates seasons and special occasions with charming full-page illustrations from QBN Studios. She “decided that for my debut I'd go with a bedtime lullaby poem that I wrote, which stems from my experiences in early parenthood that I've gotten to relive and reinvent from my childhood. This lullaby commemorates these early years from my childhood combined with my children's.”

The book of dreams is about to open: “It’s time for bed now, little one. Settle in close, cozy, and snug./ As the sky turns from day to night, let the moon shine and the stars burn bright./ Now rest your head and your tired, little feet, wishing your dreams are nothing but sweet.”

How sweet? For the three children in the book, “Sweet as hot cocoa and Christmas tree hunting, Santa Claus, cookies, and present wrapping./ Sweet as fireworks and ‘Happy New Year!’ Banging pots and pans, loudly we cheer./ … Sweet as the kiss of a cute butterfly, and the sight of the first star in the sky./ … Sweet like the glow of your golden night light, your feathery pillow feeling just right.”

“I am so fulfilled by this stage of early parenthood,” she notes in the book, “seeing their faces bewildered and their starry eyes full of wonder over the simplest of things.”

G’night!

“Create More: Lessons Learned From A Life At The edge Of Entrepreneurship, In Five Acts”

Len Jessup thought of returning to Chico State as a professor. After all, he had received an MBA and bachelor’s degree in information and communication studies from Chico State, so it seemed logical. Though that didn’t happen, he did become a business professor, served two stints as a university president (most recently of Claremont Graduate University in Southern California), and two as a business school dean.

He realized his great joy was fostering innovation, leading change-oriented teams, and encouraging business startups. As managing partner of Desert Forge Ventures, which uses venture capital for just those purposes in the Las Vegas area, Jessup could write a book about the qualities needed for someone leading innovation. 

He did write it; it’s called “Create More: Lessons Learned From A Life At The edge Of Entrepreneurship, In Five Acts” ($19.99 in paperback from Entrepreneur Books; also for Amazon Kindle). He draws on his own experiences and those from leaders like Steve Jobs in each of the five chapters.

“Child’s Play” encourages childhood creativity; “Innovating at Work” introduces the idea of the “intrapreneuer,” one who innovates from inside an existing company; then there are the qualities of “The Transformational Leader”; “The Leader as A Creative Visionary”; and “The Leader We Need” (“We’ve got to continue to support and incentivize our young entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.”)

Jessup notes developing five characteristics of an entrepreneurial leader (creativity, vision, charisma, drive, and resilience) “won’t amount to much if you lack one essential personality trait: your tolerance for risk…. Successful entrepreneurs must become comfortable taking risks, and nearly anyone can learn to do this.”

Risk taking is not a random dice throw but flows out of the leader’s “core competencies,” creativity, adaptability, discernment, foresight, and “pattern recognition” (seeing common factors in organizational problems). Throw the dice, but with educated intuition.

Jessup lays out practical strategies to help the budding leader “see around corners.” “A leader with a strong ethos doesn’t just tell people what to do—they inspire trust because of who they are and how they lead.” Readers will find inspiration to “create more” by helping others achieve their own dreams.

"Free Bird"

It’s just after midnight, January 1st, 1990. Molly Kristen Sparrow, 33, is about to leave San Diego, and her husband, forever. Isaac is not home; clueless and unfaithful, he’s the scion of a wealthy family and Molly will be giving up much—including her son Grant, not yet 18, because the family will pay for his education. She hopes Grant will understand—someday. Six months later she will find herself in Mendocino, a medical assistant to Dr. Potter at a small clinic.

There’s a bar in Mendocino called The Floppy Fish; every summer owner Lyle takes off while his friend Tom, fresh from teaching archeology and grant writing at a prestige university in Connecticut, takes over as barkeep and fixit guy. Tom is Thomas James Hemingway (“no relation”), 38, and one day his woodworking skills fail him at the bar and a huge splinter impales itself in his rear end. So off to Dr. Potter.

As Molly helps Tom get undressed—Tom is in a very vulnerable position—he is stunned by Molly’s beauty, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. In his life. Molly thinks he’s cute, but soon, when they begin seeing each other, her stomach does flip flops in his presence.

Readers know this because Molly and Tom alternate chapters in “Free Bird” ($14.99 in paperback from Boyer Publishing; also available for Amazon Kindle) by Chicoan Pamela Dean. It turns out to be a spicy romance, tastefully explicit, from phone sex to passionate love play (but is it … love?). Even the kisses summon eros. “When Tom kissed me,” Molly writes, “the earth seemed to move under my feet. The way his big hands cradled my face so gently, reverently almost, was more sensual than anything I have ever experienced.”

There’s a special charm to this novel because Chico State, Madison Bear Garden and even the Oy Vey Bagel Company (remember, it’s the 90s, folks) play key roles. 

But is all of this just a summer fling? Will Molly become her own person after being in thrall to Isaac’s family? If she falls for Tom, is love a trap as well? Lovers of spice will find the meal cooked to perfection.

“Outer Space Is Closer Than Antarctica: And Other Things I Learned While Falling In Love At The Bottom Of The World”

In four work trips to Antarctica’s McMurdo Station from 1999 through 2007, Chicoan Michelle Ott’s life changed dramatically. In Antarctica, she writes, “I have experienced the sadness of a long-distance breakup. I have scrubbed dirty pots and pans for ten hours a day, and I have witnessed the bright-green aurora australis at -30 degrees Fahrenheit; it was so beautiful I cried, and my tears froze my eyes shut. I have had my breath knocked out of me by a gust of Antarctic wind.”

A metaphorical wind knocked her breathless when in 2004 she met Sean, also bound for Antarctica via Christchurch, New Zealand. Sadly saying goodbye to her New York boyfriend, Ott found love at McMurdo, and the story is told in her unconventional memoir, “Outer Space Is Closer Than Antarctica: And Other Things I Learned While Falling In Love At The Bottom Of The World” ($19.95 in hardcover from Chronicle Books; also for Amazon Kindle).

It’s unconventional because it blends the author’s inner exploration with the science she learned (and experienced) at McMurdo. In her time there she worked as a dining attendant and baker (included is the round cookie recipe for 1000 people; think 10 pounds of butter and 40 eggs), later as a janitor, and still later as Administrative Coordinator in the galley.

Antarctica—coldest place, windiest, driest. And then there’s “the Kármán line,” the place “where outer space begins, 62 miles above sea level; it is the border between earth’s atmosphere and outer space. When we cross this threshold, we leave the conditions of aeronautics and enter the conditions of astronautics. We can no longer fly airplanes; we need spaceships.” Ott notes the distance from Chico to McMurdo Station “is 8,496 miles. This means that outer space is closer than Antarctica!”

Ott’s whimsical drawings make the science accessible as she describes katabatic winds, the polar vortex, an ice cube neutrino detector, and the thirteen pieces of clothing needed for extreme cold.

Her 47-year-old self looks back two decades, “yearning for a different feeling…. That which I thought was far away has arrived.”

“Why Am I Still A Christian?”

The Advent season, with its glitter and good tidings, has a dark side. The promised one who will loosen the stranglehold of death has not yet come. “In 2025,” writes Ricky Hayes in his spiritual autobiography, “the headlines have been littered with assassinations and murders. I didn’t know the victims, but I know they didn’t deserve it. That’s the sickening part about Death: it doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t ask, it doesn’t care. All it does is take.”

Hayes, born and raised in Chico, found Death “would pop up again and again—sometimes as a shadow in the corner of my room, sometimes in hospital corridors, sometimes in the faces of people I loved.” So, he asks, why did God “let me carry this fear like an uninvited passenger for my entire life?”

Hayes explores that question (and many more) in “Why Am I Still A Christian?” ($13.99 in paperback from Publishers Brew, publishersbrew.com; also for Amazon Kindle). The story is “messy, it’s raw, it’s sometimes irreverent, but it’s real.”

The first half of the book is Hayes’ spiritual odyssey, and it’s messy indeed. “It’s about how grief, doubt, porn, legalism, cult-like religion, and plain old despair nearly convinced me to leave Christianity behind. But it’s also about how, through all that chaos, Jesus kept showing up. Not the Jesus of fire insurance, shame, and performance, but the Jesus who refuses to let go, even when you’re screaming at Him.”

The second half focuses on specific theological issues, with a biting critique of the modern American church which all too often, Hayes writes, suggests “salvation depends on our performance instead of Christ’s finished work.” In fact, “what I have learned most of my life from Christians, both Fundamentalist and Charismatic, is how not be be a Christian…. We’re supposed to influence people to be reconciled to God by loving one another, not by fighting a cultural war.”

The promise has been fulfilled: “The cross is about God revealing the greatest love one can give through the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Whatever blackness hinders our souls from seeing his beauty, God will shine through if we desire him to do so.”

“Core Samples: Poems”

“On the New Year,” writes Chico poet (and retired Butte College instructor) Phillip Hemenway, “the day/ standing sharp and clear/ in invitation to a California/ walk despite the glassy wind/ nipping hard from the north,/ we succumbed, the dog and I,/ to a basal need for motion,/ and from the road’s edge I saw,/ back among bare walnut trees,/ the swoop and slash of blue toes,/ a girl in her rope swing, flying/ barefoot in wide flashing arcs/ as she broke winter’s first law,/ her radiant joy the purest/ of all potions against the cold.”

But before the new year, the poet takes stock, looking decades back, here in “Core Samples: Poems” ($15 in hardcover, self-published, available at The Bookstore in downtown Chico and MONCA, the Museum of Northern California Art).

A trip to San Diego Zoo (seeing “the muscles flow like liquids through/ those tiger-black stripes”), a train ride across the country (“There is no snow/ this year there is/ no snow in Colorado”), a trip to Viet Nam (in Hanoi, a Brit “tells us over/ beer in the Metropole bar/ ‘Figure anyone here who ain’t/ working is watching’”). And there’s a gallimaufry of miscellaneous poems.

Death haunts many of the poems, such as in the sonnet sequence about the stuff left behind after the death of the poet’s grandfather Merle in 1985. And the Vietnam Memorial: “I must claim my war the one/ I did not choose to fight in….// I sing of Disobedience/ of Mom and Pop’s shame/ of all the dead ones you know/ that bullets gave a name// Where agent Orange and FBI/ stand cheek by jowl with CREEP/ A big black wall in Washington/ where the living go to weep.”

“All of us are fatally human,” the poet says elsewhere. “We must never rush out to prove it.” 

Does the poet’s walk foreshadow the future?

“And so at some distant New Year,/ I will walk all the dogs I’ve ever known,/ I will step out of my ancient shoes,/ I will find a rope swing and work myself/ into a spectacular blue-toed arc,/ and on the apogee of a January One,/ I will howl once and expand forever.”

“Father And Son: The Hitler Loyalist And The US Airman”

Mary Jensen, a “recovering grants writer” and Chico State Professor Emerita, told the story of her marriage in “Rudy’s Rules For Travel: Life Lessons From Around The Globe.” Her late husband had flown US Air Force bombing missions over his homeland in Germany.

In 1999, faced with difficult medical news, they became caregivers for each other, Rudy writing his long-delayed memoir and Mary acting as editor. “Rudy wrote quite unceasingly,” Mary recalls, “easily capturing the perspectives and voices of himself as toddler, adolescent, and young man, as each took his turn living with Papa.” 

The beautifully crafted story is told in “Father And Son: The Hitler Loyalist And The US Airman” ($16.95 in paperback from Astoria Books; also for Amazon Kindle) by Rudy Jensen with Mary K. Jensen. 

“Papa was 100 percent Danish but a German loyalist,” Rudy writes, “who had moved heaven and earth (and a pregnant wife) to have his son born a German citizen.” Born May 17, 1921 in Hamburg to Papa’s wife, Francisca, Rudy lost his birth mother to gallbladder disease just after turning two.

Papa (a seafarer) and Rudy settled in Washington, DC; eventually there was a new “Mutti” (“‘Mutti’ is a German endearment, much as ‘Mommy’ is in English”), Anna Weber, “a southern German whose family had been deeply scarred by World War I.” Papa became a waiter at the fancy Willard Hotel restaurant, which catered to official Washington, and there he met J. Edgar Hoover and the two became friends.

Rudy wanted to become an American citizen and Papa was adamant that the German occupation of France was “positive progress” (it took a long time for Papa to accept the truth). With American’s entry into the war in 1941, “overnight the entire Jensen family became designated ‘Enemy Aliens.’”

“War does strange things,” Rudy writes; in 1943 he began “a 27-month journey … being drafted into the American Army Air Force, not only as a German citizen, but also as an Enemy Alien.” (He soon became an American citizen.) The bombing missions he describes are deeply poignant. 

And yet Rudy survived. His subsequent decades with Mary testify to an extraordinary life.

“Rancho del Llano Seco: Northern California’s Last Rancho, Butte County, California”

“Rancho Llano Seco … is a historical 17,767-acre multi-purpose family ranch located in southwestern Butte County … ten miles southwest of Chico. The property is bounded by Ord Ferry Road to the north, 7 Mile Lane to the east, the Butte/Glenn County line to the south, and the Sacramento River to the west.”

While the physical location of the Rancho is clear, the location of documents regarding its history was not; material in “local museums and archives” proved elusive. Then the manager of the Rancho, which is private property, pointed researchers to Rancho Headquarters on Hugh Baber Drive. 

Here there were “tons of documents stored in archive boxes, in original magazine files, on wood shelves and in steel bins, along with photographs, aerial photos, communications and maps covering” (from 1874 to modern times) the almost 3000-acre “riparian and flood plain restoration project” within the Rancho started in 2019 by The Nature Conservancy.

The archeological and historical report produced for the project, now beautifully edited with dozens of digitized historical images and maps, is available through ANCHR, the Association for Northern California Historical Research (anchr.org) located in Chico. “Rancho del Llano Seco: Northern California’s Last Rancho, Butte County, California” ($19.95 in paperback) is from Gregory White (Archeology and Paleontology, Sub Terra Consulting) along with B. Arlene Ward (Mechoopda Tribe of Chico Rancheria) and Adrian Frediani (The Nature Conservancy).

Sections cover the natural environment, Native American cultures, and the history and ownership of Rancho del Llano Seco. In 1870 John Parrott completed ownership of the ranch, and his descendants “still own and continue to steward the land to this day.” 

One of the previous owners, Sebastian Keyser, who claimed the ranch in 1843, is of special interest as his path crossed the history of John Sutter and John Bidwell.

Keyser “apparently took part in the Bear Flag revolt of 1846, where he lost part of his left hand in a munitions accident.” He lost his wife in divorce and in 1847 notified newspaper readers that “he will not be accountable for any debts of her contracting….”

Readers today are in debt for this careful illumination of local history.

“Designer Science: A History Of Intelligent Design In America”

When UC Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson converted to evangelical Christianity, he “decided to devote his life to refuting Darwinism.” His book, “Darwin On Trial,” (1981), challenged Darwinian evolution not on Biblical grounds, as creationism had done, but philosophically. I talked with Johnson when he came to Chico many years ago, and he pressed the point that evolutionary science assumes “methodological naturalism”—the contention “that nothing but nature exists.”

Such a stance rejects a rival theory called “intelligent design” (ID), which Johnson’s book helped publicize. “Design,” C.W. Howell writes in a magisterial study of the ID movement, “was not permitted in science because, as Johnson saw it, the establishment watchdogs of scientific practice would never allow it a seat at the table.” Properly done, science would recognize “that complexity found in nature implies a designing intelligence.”

Chris Howell’s doctorate in religion from Duke University has produced a compelling story of “Designer Science: A History Of Intelligent Design In America” ($35 in hardcover from NYU Press; also for Amazon Kindle). Howell (cwhowell.com), based in Durham, North Carolina, is Director of Academic Programs for the C.S. Lewis Foundation. Recently he was a Zoom guest at the Chico Triad on Philosophy, Science and Theology. 

Howell is in the “theistic evolution” camp and is “currently a practicing Eastern Orthodox Christian; but I wear my dogmas as lightly as a hat, and I have no interest in promoting a particular viewpoint on creation, design, or theism.”

“At its heart,” Howell writes, “ID was based on a radical idea … that one’s religious or nonreligious presuppositions and assumptions—about whether God exists, for example—had an inordinate and maybe even determinative effect on one’s scientific ideas.” 

In 2005, in the Dover, Pennsylvania trial to determine if ID could be taught as an “alternative theory,” it “suffered a total defeat.” In subsequent years ID morphed into a political movement. “Intelligent design both planted the seeds and nurtured the growth of extreme skepticism in the world of US conservatism, a trend that has continued to grow ever since, sprouting in contemporary antivaccine movements and climate change denialism, among other things.”

It's a balanced yet sobering account.

“The Picasso Job: A Phoenix Thriller”

It’s the present day, ten days before Yom Kippur, and in Folsom State Prison an Iranian inmate named Bijan “Renoir” Reza—known for his artful theft of valuable art—is being called into service via a coded message.

It seems a painting by a famous artist has been stolen from a Paris museum and now Reza’s work is to steal the painting from the thief and collect the $5 million reward to fund—well, therein lies the tale, called “The Picasso Job: A Phoenix Thriller” ($17.99 in paperback from Thunder Creek Press, with ebook and audiobook versions also available) by Grass Valley area novelist Avanti Centrae.

First he needs a couple of lackeys. One is his cellmate, Dakota Black. “Even after a few years inside, Black still looked like the boy next door rather than a hardened criminal. Of course, all the men in prison claimed they were innocent, but Reza was inclined to believe his cellmate’s assertion.”

The other is Cody Winters, who blames Dakota for killing his brother Austin, whose “blood-red Thunderbird” had earlier forced Black’s Ram pickup off the country road, killing his passenger, his beloved girlfriend Jenny, their marriage never to happen.

The two are kept from killing each other with promises of part of the reward money and a fresh start, though Reza knows both will be “fish food” once the heist of the heist is completed. When a mysterious plan disables the guards and releases dozens of prisoners in the midst of smoke from a wildfire, the trio escape through the pipes of an unused sewer system, landing right into the American River.

Hard on their tails is Elizabeth Everett of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. “Although her mother was Iranian, Everett felt only minor kinship with her compatriots and had zero tolerance for that government’s terrorist leanings.” She had put Reza in prison the first time, and now, with word that he is part of a grand scheme involving nuclear material and Yom Kippur, time is running out.

Told from alternating points of view, each suspenseful chapter offers surprises all the way from Sacramento to Niagara Falls. 

Readers will have a barrel of fun.

“Queenstown Bound: U.S. Navy Destroyers Combating German U-Boats In European Waters In World War I”

In World War I, writes Chicoan and naval historian David Bruhn, “German U-boats sank over 5,200 vessels and came dangerously close to choking off Britain’s critical supply of food in the spring of 1917, which could have led to the collapse of the British war effort but for the entrance of the United States into the conflict.”

Once that happened, writes Bruhn, “it quickly became apparent that destroyers and other anti-submarine vessels were the key to defeating the U-boats.” The destroyers “were the most significant U.S. Navy contribution to the war effort. … Initially, American destroyers were all based at Queenstown (since 1920, Cobh, pronounced Cove), Ireland.”

Bruhn tells their story in exacting detail in “Queenstown Bound: U.S. Navy Destroyers Combating German U-Boats In European Waters In World War I” ($35 in paperback from Heritage Books, Inc.). Encyclopedic in scope, there are 177 photographs, diagrams and maps.

“Up to March,1918, only a relatively small part of the formidable American armies that were forming had reached Europe. The Germans had mistakenly believed  that its submarines could prevent the movement of large numbers of troops across the seemingly impassible 3,000-mile watery gulf separating them from the field of battle.” They were wrong. “The U.S. Navy’s ability to get two million U.S. soldiers safely to France changed the course of the war, and of world history.”

At first the destroyers only had the “hand-thrown Mark I depth charge. There being no launchers for the 100-lb weapon, the strongest man in a ship’s crew heaved the ordnance over the vessel’s stern when attacking a suspected periscope, or oil slick.” Germany fought back. In 1918 dozens of American vessels were sunk or damaged.

“Fighting continued with prolonged great loss of life in trenches on land; in the air; and on the sea until the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Great War ended.” Germany signed for peace; “an announcement of an armistice commencing at 1100 hours followed the signing.” It called for Germany to “turn over her submarines to the Allies.”

Peace had come, but at an unimaginable price.

“Happy-Go-Lucky”

David Sedaris (Amy’s brother) brings his mordant wit to life’s upheavals, both large and small, in “Happy-Go-Lucky” ($19.99 in paperback from Little, Brown; also in ebook and audiobook, read by the author), a collection of essays taking readers through the Covid era and beyond.

Inspiration often comes from quirky conversations at his book signings. Lockdowns shut that door, and took away the audiences. “Without a live audience—that unwitting congregation of fail-safe editors—I’m lost,” he writes.

“It’s not just their laughter I pay attention to but also the quality of their silence. As for noises, a groan is always good in my opinion. A cough means that if they were reading this passage on the page, they’d be skimming now, while a snore is your brother-in-law putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.” His partner, Hugh, is no help. “Hugh and I have vastly different senses of humor—this is to say that I have one and he doesn’t.”

Yet he considers himself “Lucky-Go-Happy,” the title of the final essay; lucky not to get Covid, and lucky audiences returned. Though one essay is full of jokes he hears at book events (most of which would not garner prudish Hugh’s approval), Sedaris is also lucky to have family cohesion in the wake of the suicide of one of his sisters and the death of his father, who had ceaselessly ridiculed his son almost until the end. 

“By the second half of his ninety-seventh year, the man was a pussycat, a delight. Unfortunately there were all those years that preceded it. … As long as my father had power, he used it to hurt me.”

Sedaris marches for Black Lives Matter, then skewers the excesses of wokeism—and social distancing. “‘Back off!’ a certain type of person would snarl if you stood only five feet and eleven inches away from them.” 

There’s a kind of wistfulness here, a yearning in his seventh decade for a time (now lost?) when we can laugh at our foibles without sending one another into exile.

Chico Performances presents “An Evening With David Sedaris,” Thursday, November 6, 7:30 p.m. at Chico State’s Laxson Auditorium. For ticket information visit tinyurl.com/bdfryuz5.

“Pumpkin Patch Surprise!”

Longtime Chicoan Lori Chergosky taught for the Chico Unified School District for thirty-four years. She writes me that in years past her teaching schedule allowed her to spend Octobers as “a farm guide for school field trips” at the Book Family Farm (facebook.com/BookFamilyFarm) in Durham or to take her classes there. She’s continues the practice in retirement and, at the request of Keith and Joy Book, created a souvenir storybook.

“Pumpkin Patch Surprise!” (independently published, with full color illustrations by Cheyenne Warthen) is available through Amazon as well as at the farm. It’s an homage to pumpkin patches everywhere.

“‘Surprise!’ says Dad. ‘Brenden, we’re going to the pumpkin patch!’ ‘Do we have to go today?’ I ask. ‘It’s our new tradition!’ says Dad. ‘But I just met Trevor, the boy next door. He’s coming over today to kick the soccer ball around. Can’t we just buy a pumpkin at the grocery store like we did when we lived in the city?’ I ask.”

But Brenden’s parents don’t want their son to miss out on “good old-fashioned farm fun.” “I whisper back, ‘What’s so fun about a stinky old farm?’ Dad says, ‘I can’t explain it. You’ll have to experience it!.’”

They see an amazing maze when they arrive, and then it’s time to feed the animals. “It tickles when baby goats eat from my hand. Watching pigs eat their favorite treat makes me laugh! They squeal and slurp as they pig out!” Behind the barn is a playground, including a hay pyramid. Is that a smile on Brenden’s face?

But now a big moment. A farmer asks Brenden if he’d like to collect an egg. Just reach under the chicken--What? “She says, ‘You’ll be surprised, it’s an amazing experience!’ I hesitate…and tell myself, don’t be a chicken!” He tries. And then, there’s the egg. “Talk about a fantastic surprise! It’s the most UNFORGETTABLE feeling ever!”

There’s another surprise when a certain visitor shows up. In the end, guess what?—it’s Brenden who wants to make it a tradition.

Chergosky reads her story at the farm this week through Friday for field trips at 9:15, 10:00 and 10:45 am. Call (530) 342-4375 for details.

“Magical Realism: Essays On Music, Memory, Fantasy, And Borders”

LA-based author Vanessa Angélica Villarreal joined a group of students at Butte College last week to present “Speculative Writing as Time-Travel to Heal the Present.” Sponsored by the Puente Project, helping “educationally under-served students enroll in four-year colleges and universities,” Villarreal used “Back to the Future” as a creative way to change the past to right the future despite the bullying Biffs of the world.

Villarreal expands on this in her “Magical Realism: Essays On Music, Memory, Fantasy, And Borders” ($29 in hardcover from Tiny Reparations Books; also in ebook and audiobook versions), longlisted for the National Book Award. 

She was born in the Rio Grande Valley to Mexican immigrants. The essays in the book trace her journey through challenging family dynamics, taking a job cleaning houses, marrying an unfaithful man, birthing a son, enduring a messy divorce, and eventually earning a doctorate at USC. 

Fantasy (which often in its world-building looks back at some golden age sullied by evil) and science fiction (which is forward-looking but tends to focus on apocalypse) helped her make sense of the abuses she endured. 

“Fantasy is a space safer than memory to process trauma and escape abuse into a world where the helpless are empowered by magic, friends are found among outcasts and survivors, and a hero will defend you with his sword until you find the hero was you all along.”

In nuanced analyses, Villarreal pulls back the curtain on the racialized and colonial stereotypes in much popular fantasy and science fiction, especially video games. And yet:

“Perhaps I am so drawn to fantasy because it is also the space of immigrant dreaming, the projection of the self into an impossible imaginary to bear the reality of the present one. Its central question: Forces larger than myself have estranged me from my home; what can displacement into new lands make capable in me?”

Readers will see the answer in this powerful memoir.

News: Brenda M. Lane, Napa author and contributor to “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hope, Faith & Miracles,” will be signing her books at Barnes & Noble in Chico on Friday, October 24, from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm. 

“50 Ways To Enjoy Life More”

Barbara Stamps Kimball “contracted polio as an adult, which led her to a spiritual quest and personal growth.” So writes her daughter, Chico State Sociology professor emerita Gayle Kimball. In 2025 Gayle found the manuscript for a book Barbara wrote in the 1980s. “50 Ways To Enjoy Life More” ($14.99 in paperback from Chico’s Equality Press; also for Amazon Kindle) is a “memorial to her grace and inspiration.”

Each short chapter features encouraging stories, some from Barbara’s own life, that highlight aspects of a more positive view on life. In “The Magic of Praise” she writes: “Close your eyes and think of five things you can praise about your partner, your child, or your friend. Now write them down. When the time is apropos, pass on your honest positives to these individuals. Remember, ‘Now’s the time to slip it to him for he cannot read his tombstone when he’s dead.’”

The author draws on names readers of a certain age might especially be familiar with, including the “hugging professor” Leo Buscaglia; psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky; writer Napoleon Hill (“Think and Grow Rich); est founder Werner Erhard; and Buddhism exponent Alan Watts.

Influenced by the writing of Ernest Holmes (“Science of Mind”) and Helen Schucman’s “channeled” book “A Course In Miracles,” Barbara’s source of encouragement flows from a religious/metaphysical view different than my own. 

She writes that “All the great sages, teachers, and wise ones down through the ages have told us of the importance of faith … in ourselves as part of God. … What you give out, positively or negatively, returns to you in kind, but it may not come from the same source. The law of karma (cause and effect) is as precise in its operations as the rotation of the planets….”

Yet many of her observations have a universal ring. “Each of us,” she writes, “has the choice to harbor old hates and grievances, like the famed Hatfields and McCoys, and carry them on our backs for years or we can choose to unload them and travel with a light and joyous step. The secret: love and forgiveness. Forgiveness brings new wings of freedom,” the freedom of a child.

“HIDEAWAYS: Within And Outside My Polygamist Family”

A Chico resident for almost half a century, Jerry Allred retired from a long career in education. His childhood, it turns out, was also an education—in hiding.

That’s because his father (born in 1906, murdered in 1977), was part of a fundamentalist Mormon group. “The year I was three, Daddy violated parole by moving our families to Colonia LeBaron, a ranch set in northern Mexico’s Chihuahua desert, to start a colony for Saints who were violating the laws of the land by living God’s holiest law of Celestial Plural Marriage.”

“HIDEAWAYS: Within And Outside My Polygamist Family” ($20 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) contains nineteen “creative nonfiction” stories imagined from family recollections, journals, and research. So while individual characters are not strictly historical, the fact remains: 

“Being the family’s eighth son and fourteenth child, I am one of forty-eight children born to Dr. Rulon Clark Allred and his seven wives. My mother, Mabel Finlayson Allred, was his fourth plural wife, and her identical twin, Melba, was also her sister-wife.”

Since the LDS Church had outlawed plural marriage in 1890 (and reinterpreted the 132nd Section of the Doctrine and Covenants), family members frequently hid, devised cover stories, and moved to places where they hoped to establish sanctuaries for persecuted Saints (Mexico; Elko, Nevada; Colorado), all to escape Church officials and the FBI vice squad.

Jerry’s coming into the world was a difficult birth indeed but Rulon’s ministrations (he delivered thousands of babies in his lifetime) saved both mother and child. Allred writes with great sympathy toward his father. “Daddy was convinced that his faith should be, and eventually would be, true for every person who ever lived, or else.”

Yet in his teen years Jerry departed from his father’s convictions. He was learning about evolution and could no longer believe as his father did that God had created everything “all at once” a few thousand years ago. With compassion and deeply felt emotion, Allred takes the reader into daily life and painful separations, an inseparable part of his own journey.

An interview with Allred, conducted by Nancy Wiegman for Nancy’s Bookshelf on mynspr.org, is available at tinyurl.com/2rnd4d79.

“Too BUSY For Bed!”

The author’s dedication is “To children everywhere: We say that when you are grown, you can be anything you want. / But with every song and rhyme and game to play, you already do it, every day!”

These days, author Lester Wong, a Chico pathologist and the father of three grown children, navigates the world of an empty nester alongside the children’s mom. But he remembers an earlier time when getting the little ones ready for bed filled the transition time with joyful songs and silly rhymes. That, he writes, “morphed into a bedtime book, and as every parent knows, a good bedtime book is worth its weight in gold.”

“Too BUSY For Bed!” (independently published, $27.99 in hardcover, $16.99 in softcover from Made in Chico or from store.bookbaby.com/book/too-busy-for-bed1), by L.K. Wong, features full-color, beautifully exuberant illustrations by Taiwanese-Australian artist (and medical doctor) Amy Lee (kookychooky.com).

“Did you say ‘Bed’?” the child says. “That clock is wrong! It should say, Time for FUN!” Why? “I’m not done; I need more time! Because Sometimes I am … Just … Too … Busy…. My evening’s just begun!”

Oh, the energy. “Sometimes, I am a Teapot, / I’m dancing all about, / This arm a waving handle, / That hand, a whistling spout!” Then it rains (or is the bath water running?). “Sometimes, I’m Itsy-Bitsy / and I’m climbing / up a spout, / It rains, it pours, / an old man snores, / I’m wet! / I whoosh right out!”

Jammies on, it’s time to jump on the bed and do a little exploring. “Away I run, you can’t catch me! / My little legs are quick! / But grown-up legs are faster still, / And long arms do the trick!”

Then, “my wiggle slows…. I’m safe and snug, / A Bug inside a rug.” And now a parent’s gentle rocking: “We’re all back home, down by the bay, / No jumping anymore, / While Mama keeps her quiet watch, / Some watermelons snore!” Of course they do. Dreams come, each “will be like new,” with a parental send off of “I Love You!”

A dreamily wonderful little book that will delight the little ones.

“Letters From The Shire: On Tolkien, His World, And A Better Understanding Of Ours”

“September 22 has, for years, held a special place in my heart,” writes Chicoan Matthew Distefano. “Not only is it the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins—two of the most famous Hobbits in the history of Middle-earth—but it marks the beginning of one of the greatest adventures ever told. Fittingly, then, I chose to complete this collection of letters around that date. But rather than releasing it on the 22nd itself, I’ve opted for September 23—the day Frodo leaves the Shire.”

The collection is “Letters From The Shire: On Tolkien, His World, And A Better Understanding Of Ours” (in Amazon Kindle format, published by Quoir in Chico, quoir.com). In pastoral language Distefano responds to 22 questions sent to him in response to two previous books, “The Wisdom of Hobbits” and “Mimetic Theory & Middle-earth.” 

Included are letters from his mom and his best friend, Michael Machuga; he and Matthew and their wives have created Happy Woods Farm on property next to Michael’s house in Paradise. Flowers and fruit abound. Hobbits would be pleased. 

As Distefano notes in one of the letters, “I take in many moments throughout the week, soaking in the naked now as often as I’m able. It’s always after smoking from my pipe, which is why I continually assert that I am a Hobbit in all but size.”

Some of the letters Distefano writes are theological. “Tolkien’s world is a monotheistic one,” he writes, but his mythology is not a Christian allegory (as are C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tales). The Hobbits are secular and yet what transpires in Middle-earth is guided by something beyond the halflings, and even the elves. Everyone has a different perspective on what that something is, Distefano says. 

For him, “When we turn inward, however, to our own communal and interdividualistic selves, we start to realize that God is everything and everything is God. That includes you. That includes me.” There are endless debates, but Hobbits get it right; for them, “Life is all about getting their hands dirty and cultivating crops and community.”

This cultivation, he writes, is nothing less than “slow magic.”

“The Goolwind Tales: Book One”

“Avaleigh, a young girl of twelve, could not keep her tears from shedding. Her younger brother, Hayden, a boy no more than nine, followed her lead in sensing the fear that now overwhelmed them.” The Head Caster (a “master of sacred magical arts” and the siblings’ uncle) had just informed the two that their father, who had embarked on a secret mission a year before, was “lost.” 

No one had heard from him for nine months. Their mother had vanished four years ago, likely on the same mission—the retrieval of an ancient book of extraordinary spells.

Readers 9-18 are invited to join Avaleigh and Hayden in an enchanting sword and sorcery quest to find their parents that unfolds in “The Goolwind Tales: Book One” ($13.99 in paperback from Publisher’s Brew, publishersbrew.com; also for Amazon Kindle). 

Written by Ricky Hayes, born and raised in Chico and a consummate world-builder, the story takes place in a world called Goolwind, with “four major islands, each one divided by the treacherous tides of the seas.” Avaleigh and Hayden, descended from a bloodline that makes them no ordinary casters, must journey far from the caster monastery in the kingdom of Essend.

Along the way they are befriended by a group of Goblins as they encounter a series of monsters (pictured in the glossary). The Behemoth Toads, for example, are immense amphibians that devour Goblins; Ash Hounds are fire-breathing beasts; the Gnolls are “a war-minded race of vicious but simple-minded hyena-like humanoids.”

Battles abound (though very little blood is shown) as Avaleigh and Hayden grow in their caster abilities, controlling water and wind with Thunder Strikes and Sinister Cyclones, to fight ever-present enemies. But Hayden is a little too sure of himself, and faces his own demise, saved by a Bonecrackle Caster called Jasper, a specter “improperly laid to rest … who either died violently, foolishly by their own hand, or a curse of some kind.”

Each time Hayden overextends his powers, using up his life energy, Jasper pumps his heart back to life. But Hayden needs the curse lifted, so the journey continues with new urgency, paving the way for the next book in the series.