After lead scientist Horatio Glen Knightsen and his accomplice are apprehended, but later apparently disappear, senior engineer “Big Joe” Carson suspects something more is afoot, which is revealed in the third book of the Big Joe Carson series, “The Dutch Master” ($10.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).

The first two books, “Particle Beam (For Such A Time),” written with Dennis E. Jones, and “Red Skies (Aftermath),” introduce a fellowship of close friends, including David Janzen, a key engineer on a new super-secret device, the Laser Optic Diamond Turning Machine (LODTM) for the Laser Defense Weapon program approved by Congress.

Since the LODTM is not available at Costco, the lab has to build its own, at great cost. And now the Indiana lab is experiencing odd delays and Janzen and Carson wonder if Mildred Cornwall, administrative lead for the new program, and one among others of Dutch ancestry at the lab, might be involved with a rumored “Dutch master” of espionage.

There’s big trouble for Big Joe when Knightsen vanishes. “The FBI announced they were adding the charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder to the … charges against Big Joe Carson, and Sunny and Bunny Valencia, the two Latino twin daughters of the infamous but dead cartel lord, Agusto Guitterez Valencia, and defrocked U.S. Marshals. All three were already locked up on multiple serious charges, any one of which could land them behind bars for life….”

That’s on page 1 of the novel; later, an attorney, known for defending cartel members, springs the twins. His name is, ahem, Daniel Barnett, of the firm of Barnett, Bennett and Barns. I’m honored. I think.

It’s a great romp and a satisfying conclusion and, if it please the Court, you should read it.

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

A theologian and author of dozens of books, Hauerwas’ vision of the Christian life is perhaps most accessible in “Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony,” co-authored with Will Willimon, a retired United Methodist bishop who, Feiler writes me, “told me recently that I reminded him of a ‘young Hauerwas’” in his constant awareness of human sinfulness and possession of a rather wicked sense of humor.

The abiding question for Hauerwas is the place of the Christian church in light of Easter’s resurrection reality, when the temptation is to succumb to narcissistic impulses or to take over the reins of secular power.

Now, in a series of lectures and occasional pieces entitled “Fully Alive: The Apocalyptic Humanism Of Karl Barth” ($29.50 in paperback from University of Virginia Press), Hauerwas reflects on key themes from a controversial career, influenced by many, but especially Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). For Barth, as for Hauerwas, the “humanism” of liberal theology, which focuses on the human response to God, must be rejected.

In its place is the humanism revealed in Jesus Christ who in taking on our humanity revealed what it means to be fully alive, fully human. It is “apocalyptic” since Barth lived  “through an apocalyptic time but also because he saw the world as forever changed by a Galilean peasant.”

Though the book isn’t the place to start with Hauerwas, it is full of trenchant observations: The capitalist system “destroys human attachment to, and affections for, relationships and institutions by embedding them in impersonal exchanges.” More sarcastically, he writes that the American story is one called “freedom”: “That story produces people who think they have been wounded by being born.”

Hauerwas considers how the Kingdom of God made manifest in Jesus Christ ought to display a new kind of politics, showing an alternative to narcissism and power that can befriend “the least of these.” His is a provocative view, but, as he observes, “Few sins are more deadly than making God boring.”

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

And so it has been throughout history, people desiring what other people have; often it’s not so much the object itself (like money or political position) that evokes desire as the power the object delivers. Distefano draws on French theorist René Girard to look behind the scenes at human motivation and though for the most part the picture is not pretty, it’s, well, human.

And mostly unconscious. Girard deals with our propensity to scapegoat—create a “fall guy,” Distefano writes, whom we brand as evil and who takes “the blame for something they aren’t responsible for.” We learn in “The Lord of the Rings” the Hobbit Sméagol (Gollum) kills his friend to take the ring; later, his tricks rile folks and he’s made the scapegoat for all the community’s woes and banished to lonely wandering.

Yet Distefano finds in Tolkien not just negative examples of desire but a different kind of mimesis. It is friendship (think of the Hobbits Frodo and Sam) “discovered, not through unconscious mimesis of a model, but rather through conscious imitation of the love and affection each have for the other.”

This vision of a better community is lovingly unwrapped in “Mimetic Theory and Middle-Earth: Untangling Desire In Tolkien’s Legendarium” ($19.99 in paperback from Chico-based Quoir, quoir.com; also for Amazon Kindle), crafted for a general audience. “It is no surprise,” Distefano writes, “I am enamored with the Shire.” It’s not perfect, but a model of friendship.

Toward the end, the author writes of his friendship with Michael Machuga in Paradise, where Hobbit-like they tend a garden at Machuga’s house and afterward “put our (not so) furry feet up while pairing our pipe-weed with a glass of some of the ‘harder stuff.’”

Friendship, it turns out, is Hobbit forming.

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

The poet is Chicoan Paul Belz. Remembering 2020-2021, his poems acknowledge pandemic and political chaos but also the importance of simple pleasures and especially connection with the natural world.

“Sometimes The Soul Needs Chocolate: Pandemic Odes” ($7.99 in paperback from Vanguard Press; also for Amazon Kindle and available locally at Made In Chico) presents two dozen free verse poems beginning with “Ode To A Pencil”:

“Do you tremble when these sparks/ gather at your paper-scratching tip,/ tingle as we fill notebooks with song,/ wear yourself out with this frenzied work,/ then shout through my arm to my heart and skull,/ beg for more images, off-rhymes, beats/ you can place in a new-born poem?”

Belz is the author of “Bidwell Park,” also available locally, and it’s clear the author-poet is transfixed by nature’s expansiveness. In “Ode To Big Chico Creek” the poet imagines where the water rushing past has been:

“Other molecules streamed skyward through oaks’ roots,/ then waited for the sun to yank them up/ to chilled air, where they gathered as clouds./ They tumbled onto roses, mallards, pines./ Rain landed on people. Did some drench Darwin,/ who strolled on the Beagle’s deck and watched spiders/ cling to bits of webs and ride the wind/ over the sea, onto his nose?”

At the poem’s end, almost as an implied rebuke to the enclosed isolation wrought by Covid, the poet exclaims: “I watch you slide by,/ while heat takes water from my skin./ I’m parched. If I drink from you,/ I’ll take in multitudes.”

While “Hospitals turn the dying away,” the poet finds some measure of relief in camping. As so many suffer, there comes an almost guilty question: “Can I briefly claim the right to be sane?”

In that regard, the “Election 2020 Ode” expresses a wish perhaps even more relevant today: “Maybe we’ll learn to think again,/ wrangle and argue without curses,/ semi-automatics or flames….”

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

Later, in 1988, she found herself on staff at Wilbur Hot Springs in Williams where she discovered a love of writing. What happened in between is told in a quirky and mostly upbeat memoir, “Love Bath” ($27 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), which also features photographs and Adams’ artwork.

In her teenage years she had turned to drugs and booze, was sent to a boarding school at 13 after her mother remarried, and realized her dad, abused by his father, had taken up gambling “and the ‘easy’ life” to make up for a harsh upbringing.

Things began to change in 1987 when Adams and her mom attended a new age conference at Asilomar called “The Emerging Goddess.” “I loved being in silence and in communion with one particular tree. In taking time to ‘be’ with the tree, to touch it, and to give part of myself to it, I felt rooted in deep connection with the Earth.” Adams searches for more of this rootedness in creative expression that didn’t require a man to guide her.

But more lessons first. When her new boyfriend, “Albert,” came into her life, the math professor shared the drug Ecstasy with her. “I loved feeling the essence of God in any way, shape or form. Psychedelic drugs helped me see the true Oneness of all things: how we are all One with God.”

Things didn’t turn out as expected; during a healing stay in Bali, she learned Al had fallen for another. “I was beginning to grasp … that I could move more slowly and freely, at my own pace — and that I did not need this man, or any man, to feel safe and complete.” In a therapy session at Wilbur, she finds her “heart is broken open and there is more love than ever, rivers flowing out into the sands of time.”

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

Book overview

The subhead of the book details the content: “Personal Reflections and Casual Conversations About Chico’s Crown Jewel.”

The book delves into the origins of the park, the politics surrounding it, flora and fauna, little known facts and challenges facing the park.

Belz said, “Everybody in town and city officials,” should read his book.

“A lot of people who’ve lived here for ages have told me there’s a lot of information in there (the book) they didn’t dream of,” Belz said.

Education, awareness

A large part of Belz’s purpose in writing this book is to increase education and awareness about the park.

Though there are some education programs for children to learn about the park, “when it comes to community education, there’s practically nothing,” Belz said.

Belz also said the park used to get regular news coverage from various local outlets, including the Chico Enterprise-Record, but no longer does.

“A lot of us really feel like people need to be very aware of this place, because it is very special,” Belz said.

To Belz, what makes the park so special is its complicated ecology, the semi-wild parts of the park and its sheer size.

“Not a lot of towns have 3,600 plus acres of open space,” Belz said.

Why care?

People should care about the park because spending time in nature is extremely beneficial for health and wellness, Belz said.

During the pandemic, more people began to use the park. Belz said the park was a respite during this time.

“This is not hippie-dippie stuff,” Belz said. “This is stuff that’s really backed up with scientific studies.”

The National Library of Medicine conducted a review of 952 studies that focused on health and the interaction with nature. In 92% of the studies reviewed, all health outcomes were improved when individuals engaged with the outside world.

According to Belz, and multiple people he interviewed for the book, funding is one of the park’s biggest issues.

Commercial entities don’t have to pay to film in the park, said Belz. He said lots of people think they should have to pay.

The park is also free to use and has free parking. There is discussion of making it so people have to pay for parking in Upper Bidwell to bring in funds.

Other issues include dogs off leashes, litter, people going off of trails causing erosion and people cutting plants in the park.

Who is Paul Belz?

Belz is originally from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

He was always into hiking as a kid, and his dad “was a huge nature enthusiast.” He said he earned his masters degree in environmental science from Antioch New England University.

What brought him to California is “another long story.”

“A lot of my people in my little gang and I were big supporters of United Farmworkers, Cesar Chavez,” Belz said. “And some of us came out and were actually staff for a while.”

Chico State students get Cesar Chavez day off of school, and often spend the holiday partying and drinking.

“I think a lot of people find that depressing,” said Belz about how students celebrate. “Yeah. What more do we need to say?”

Belz moved to Chico from Oakland seven years ago with his partner Kate Roark. Bidwell park was a large part of what made them want to move to the area.

Roark and Belz both said Upper Park is their favorite part of Bidwell Park.

About the book, Roark said she, “was happy to have the project, but didn’t think it would take so long.”

In the end, she said she was proud of Belz and enjoyed the “fun outings,” they had, often in the park, while Belz worked on the book.

Where to find the book

“Bidwell Park,” published by ANCHR, the Association for Northern California Historical Research, is available at the following locations: The Bookstore, Made in Chico and the Chico History Museum.

The book is also available through The Bookstore’s website, chicobooks.com.

Made in Chico also carries Belz’s recent poetry book, “Sometimes the Soul Needs Chocolate: Pandemic Odes.” Belz said some of the poems in the book were nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Belz will be on KZFR on Wednesday at 7 p.m. to talk about the book and the importance of education on Bidwell Park.

Edited by Alicia Haupt, Brittany Massare, Jennifer Nizer, Manjula Paul, and Louis Valenti, the key first chapter, “Health and Safety for Children and Early Childhood Educators,” is co-written by Shaun-Adrián Choflá, Butte College Child Development instructor.

Choflá, with expertise in empathy therapy, and co-author Julia Luckenbill, Adult Educator/Director of the Parent Nursery School in Davis, flesh out key safety standards for early learning programs.

These standards, write Choflá and Luckenbill, are more than just physical safety practices but also embody emotional safety. For instance, how should educators choose books and other items for their classrooms? “First, partner with families. Engage in relationship planning by asking about the families’ needs, values, and wishes for their children. … Ask also for a list of key words and phrases in the families’ home languages. Setting up the classroom so that the walls and shelving reflect the people walking in for the first time is a wonderful way to support feelings of belonging … ”

In addition, educators should remember that “not all families have traditional structures, so your handouts should avoid assuming that families are headed by a mother and a father.”

The authors also discuss the disruption caused by COVID-19. “As early learning programs closed,” they write, “educators lost their jobs and children were left without the in-person support that early learning settings provided, creating trauma and impacting young children’s mental health.”

The chapter is concerned not only with trauma-informed care of children, but also the well-being of educators themselves and what early learning programs can do to foster the health of their employees (such providing substitutes and regular breaks).

Real-word vignettes throughout the chapter illustrate ways trained professionals can interact with children, like washing their hands with Dee, who is two; or how to bring children out of danger without alarming them.

This is a good guide to the good work done by educators who care for some of the most vulnerable among us.

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

Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Jackie Huett, Bill Sterling and Gary Mathias were all friends and lived in Yuba County. They attended a basketball game at Chico State to see their favorite team, the UC Davis Aggies, play in a championship game against Chico State. They left the game around 10 p.m. and never came home. What happened to them has been a mystery for 46 years. Madruga’s Mercury Montego was found abandoned on a snowy road.

Author and archivist Tony Wright wrote a book published early in 2024 called “Things Aren’t Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five.” He became interested in the case after watching a YouTube show about it and began a quest to tell the real story about who the men were.

The case has garnered national and international interest and podcasts and shows have been created. Law enforcement has been baffled about it for years. Wright talked to some of the men’s family members and conducted lots of research.

Wright said the men were friends and had taken trips such as this before without any incident.

Mathias’ body was never found and the case was never solved. No one knew why the men, who knew the area well, had ended up in the forest miles away from home in the middle of winter wearing light clothing. About four months after they vanished, four of the five men’s remains were found about 12 miles from the car and one was discovered in a United States Forest Service trailer with enough food and fuel to keep the men alive for months, according to the book.

Mathias was a patient in psychiatric hospitals during the early 1970s and Sterling was institutionalized at times during the 1960s, said Wright.

Wright is the author of four comic books and a graphic novel. This book is his first true crime book.

“The story was incredibly heartbreaking but eerie. It was a mystery that caught my attention and I wanted to know more about the five and why they vanished. The videos I watched and podcasts I listen to from 2018 until 2019 told a story but not a complete story. I knew there was more to them as people and the case,” Wright wrote in an email.

Wright reached out to a bunch of mental health professionals to get their thoughts, but no one returned his calls or emails.

“I decided to read medical journals, reports, and articles from the 1960s/1970s to the present about disabilities and mental illness, especially schizophrenia. They were excellent resources for understanding treatments at the time and how people perceived mental illness and disabilities,” Wright said.

He researched the case in many different ways.

“I also watched numerous YouTube videos created by people living on the autism spectrum and those living with schizophrenia. It was beyond helpful and gave me a glimpse into their everyday lives. I also tried reaching out to the YouTube creators, but they too did not respond to my messages,” Wright said.

His goal was to tell the story about the men and who they really were.

“I wanted people to know who the five were as individuals and as a group of friends. I wanted people to know more about them and what happened. It is important to examine the lives of the five, their disappearance, and the investigation,” Wright said in an email.

Mental illness and intellectual disabilities were not as understood and discussed in the 1970s, according to Wright’s book.

Wright wrote that Mathias had been taking medicine for the schizophrenia and “was doing a good job taking care of himself.” He said the other four men had part-time jobs and were “productive in the community.”

Wright said he thinks someone took advantage of the men because of their disabilities.

“They were sociable men who were easily manipulated,” Wright said. “People with disabilities and mental illness have a higher risk of being victims of a crime.”

Wright said Mathias had gotten into a fight with another man at a party in 1978 and there could have been some bad blood and perhaps someone had a dislike for one of the men. He said there was no solid evidence about this theory though.

Wright said mental illness and disabilities are more commonly talked about and understood today.

“I do believe we have a better understanding of mental illness and disabilities in this day and age,” he said.

Dallas Weiher Jr. was 11 years old in February 1978 when his uncle Ted Weiher and the other men disappeared. He is grateful to Wright for writing the book.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Weiher said. “Everything covered up will get uncovered. My belief is when the perpetrator comes out and tells the story, that’s how we will finally know.”

He remembers his uncle fondly.

“My uncle Ted was a teddy bear,” he said. “I think the boys were running out of fear. They may have been threatened and told their families would be hurt if they didn’t do what they were told. They were simple minded in a lot of ways.”

Weiher said his uncle was very innocent.

“He wanted to have a good time and enjoy himself. He was a man with a boy’s mind somewhat,” Weiher said. “He didn’t have logical skills. But he could function.”

Weiher has read Wright’s book and listened to some of the podcasts. He experienced “waves of emotion” and wept several times recalling what happened.

“He died in the trailer alone by himself. Someone lured them there and has not been punished yet,” Weiher said.

Weiher said he also cried when he heard his grandmother’s voice on the podcast pleading for the men’s safe return and had to pull his car over.

He hopes the book does well and he forgives whoever did this, but he said that person needs to receive punishment for their wrong doings.

Claudia Huett, who is married to Jackie Huett’s brother Tom Huett, has supported Wright from the beginning regarding the book. Wright interviewed her and her husband.

Tom Huett said people who reported the case before didn’t look at who they were and Wright did that.

“We wanted to tell the truth about who they were,” Claudia Huett said. “I’ve been an advocate for all of them. Each man was so much more than what was stated at the beginning of the book. People used the word ‘retard’ to describe them which I hate.”

Claudia Huett believes if the men were referred to as “five athletes it would have changed everything.”

Tom Huett also trusted Wright.

“People said five retards got lost in the mountains, whoop de do,” Tom Huett said. “It was discrimination. They worked their asses off. Each one had a job. People who didn’t have disabilities were jealous of them. They had communities and neighbors who supported them.”

If law enforcement had visited the trailers, he said, his “brother would be alive.”

Some people believe someone in the Yuba County area may have been responsible for the men’s disappearance.

Wright’s book is available on Amazon or can be purchased at  https://geniusbookpublishing.com/products/things-arent-right.

“I never understood, nor enjoyed most poetry,” he writes. “So I never considered myself a poet … even while writing poems. However, I have always enjoyed words. I’m fascinated by how they can carry innumerable shades of meaning. … Each word is a seed containing a tree of human thought.”

Those seeds blossom in “Shadows Of Light & Shards Of Dark: Poems ReCollected 1978-2023” ($15 in paperback, independently published). Over 45 years, beginning after high school, Jackson penned words that capture a moment but open up into larger vistas, illuminating “who we all are, where we have been, and where we may go.”

Loosely organized into four “seasons,” Spring considers words, love and lust, Summer is for shadows of light and dark, Fall contains “Treasured Ash” in poems for Paradise, and Winter heralds a journey toward “good grief.” “Grief,” the poet claims, “is not a rest along the way./ You’re not meant to live in despair./ Grief’s never meant to be a place to stay./ Grief is about continuing to care.”

The appendix is a children’s story, with Jackson’s own sketches, called “Mark & Cathy” and the “Meaning of Life,” a tale about misfits who fit.

The poet knows something fitting: “Darkness falls./ Yet, the sun miraculously rises bright./ Heaviness calls./ Yet, one is not so easily made light./ A secret:/ Gratitude defies gravity.” The poet is grateful for “Table Mountain Wildflowers” which “Tuck themselves in to the tune/ Of songbirds in the evening hours/ Serenading a stoic moon.”

Some poems here evoke smiles, others reflect deep theology. “Fear is/ A certain kind of faith/ In dark uncertainty./ Love is/ The certain kind of faith/ In light risen from adversity.” And: “No matter how logical or critical/ Love is personal, not political.”

“Only an unchanging God can truly say ‘I AM,’” Jackson writes me. We, on the other hand, continue to change: “I’m a question waiting to form./ I’m an aging man unborn./ I’m becoming but never will be./ It’s only a stepping stone/ In what you call me.”

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

Brown, drawn by the abolitionist movement, was increasingly absent from their North Elba home near Lake Placid. His “attempted seizure of the United States Armory at Harper’s Ferry failed.” Found guilty of “treason, murder, and conspiracy” he was hanged Dec. 2, 1859.

The family’s story is told in a 1969 Chico State master’s thesis by Wilbert L. Phay, who passed away in 2020, but not before giving permission to Chico-based Association for Northern California Historical Research to republish his work and include historical photographs and additional essays from ANCHR members.

“John Brown’s Family In Red Bluff, California 1864-1870” ($19.95 in paperback from anchr.org and local book outlets) includes contributions from Josie Reifschneider-Smith, Ron Womack and Nancy Leek.

In late 1864 Mary Brown “and her four surviving children arrived in Red Bluff” after an earlier encounter with a “rebel” wagon train on the Oregon Trail. But why Red Bluff, with its “Copperheads,” “its nucleus of pro-Southern sympathizers, the most ardent haters of her dead husband,” Phay writes, “and by association, herself, and her family”?

The book answers that question, and more. Others in Red Bluff built a small house for the family in 1865, so family life was complicated, made more so by the attacks of the Red Bluff Sentinel and defense by the Red Bluff Independent. Phay and the contributors create a compulsively readable narrative that makes the past live again. It’s essential reading.

The story continues to unfold. Reifschneider-Smith, ANCHR Publications Manager, has unearthed details about why the “rebel” wagon train was so hateful of Brown and his kin, some of whom are buried in the Paradise Cemetery; she will present her findings to the Paradise Genealogical Society, 1499 Wagstaff Road (530-762-7105) on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 3 p.m.; the presentation is open to the public.

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