"Prison Vocational Education And Policy In The United States"

"It's a custody world." Spoken by an administrator of a prison vocational education program, it sums up the challenges faced by three Chico State University researchers contracted to help the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) determine whether new basic and vocational education programs instituted in 2007 were reducing recidivism. Back then, some 66% of those released were re-arrested within three years.

The idea was to assess the situation, modify behavior, prepare prisoners for re-entry into society, and follow up. All very logical, all very numbers-based. And, it turns out, all very misguided.

The story of the final report, and the behind-the-scenes reality, is told with wry wit by the three professors, a curriculum consultant and two sociologists: William Rich, Tony Waters, and Andrew J. Dick (who died in 2012). "Prison Vocational Education And Policy In The United States: A Critical Perspective On Evidence-Based Reform" ($100 in hardcover from Palgrave Macmillan; also for Amazon Kindle) sounds dry. Far from it.

The book presents the report in the context of prison bureaucracy and the inherent limitations of gathering data. (In the prison system, the researchers are warned, everyone lies.) Eight vignettes provide personal reflections from the white professors ushered into a world of mostly black and brown faces.

In the end, the report went nowhere as the Great Recession hit hard and vocational programs were abandoned. Yet lessons abound. "A class may be well conducted, teachers well trained, and a curriculum well chosen, but the fact that the students may have to submit to anal cavity searches before and after class has consequences for how much learning occurs and the quality of that learning."

The authors "still think that vocational education in prison is a good idea," especially for those with limited sentences, "but this is no longer all we think. We know that prison populations are far more difficult than spreadsheets at the main office may indicate…."

Prison is about punishment and restriction of freedom. "Classes will always be disrupted" for "lockdowns, sudden transfers, gang segregation, safety training, tool checks, and many other routines that trump the educational goals specified by the Legislature."

It's a custody world.

"Joy: 100 Poems"

Christian Wiman is Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. A few years ago he was diagnosed with an incurable blood disease, underwent a bone marrow transplant, and through days of treatment and a measure of recovery wrestled with a fundamental question, expressed in a 2012 interview: "What might it mean for your life--and for your death--to acknowledge the insistent, persistent call of God? … My work--prose and poetry--is still full of anguish and even unbelief, but I hope it's also much more open to simple joy."

It is the season of joy, but "what might that one word, in these wild times, mean?" That question appears in an extraordinary introduction to a poetry anthology, edited by Wiman, that attempts not to define but to inhabit its subject.

"Joy: 100 Poems" ($25 in hardcover from Yale University Press) "is aimed against whatever glitch in us or whim of God has made our most transcendent moment resistant to description. … The great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai once wondered why it is that we have such various and discriminating language for our pains but become such hapless generalizers for our joys."

Wiman's essay drives the reader beyond the safe bounds of mere happiness. Joy "is a homesickness for a home you were not aware of having." Richard Wilbur knows: "Joy's trick is to supply/ Dry lips with what can cool and slake,/ Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache/ Nothing can satisfy."

"But," Wiman writes, "there's no forcing it. Clamoring after joy leads only to fevered simulacra, … the collective swells of manipulative religion, the manufactured euphoria of drugs. … So what does one do with this moment of timelessness when one is back in time?"

The answer comes from experiencing the poems, mostly from our own time, whose diverse voices are sometimes hard, profane (there's an ode to urination), but also comprehending something about our lives that can't be said flat out.

It's like, writes Lisel Mueller, the sadness that comes when we are transported by music. "Joy, joy, the sopranos sing,/ reaching for the shimmering notes/ while our eyes fill with tears."

"How To Think: A Survival Guide For A World At Odds"

Former Paradise resident John Wilson (@jwilson1812) was for twenty-one years the editor of the now-defunct literary journal "Books and Culture." He published many pieces by his friend Alan Jacobs (@ayjay), Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University in Texas.

Jacobs  makes significant use of social media and that got him thinking about thinking, especially in a connected world where we can craft our own ideological cocoon. While some writers seem pessimistic about our ability to overcome biases, Jacobs is more hopeful.

The problem is not so much about biases but about "an orientation of the will: we suffer from a settled determination to avoid thinking. Thinking troubles us; thinking tires us. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits. … Who needs thinking?"

Well, we all do. In "How To Think: A Survival Guide For A World At Odds" ($25 in hardcover from Currency; also for Amazon Kindle), Jacobs focuses not on the fallacies of argumentation but instead attempts to reach the reader at an emotional, self-reflective level.

We do not actually think for ourselves. "We think in active feeling response to the world, and in constant relation to others. Or we should." And we need to recognize how important those relationships are in our thinking and at times push ourselves to connect with the "other." ("People who like accusing others of Puritanism," he writes, "have a fairly serious investment … in knowing as little as possible about actual Puritans. They are invested, for the moment anyway, in not thinking.")

Some groups stifle thinking by insisting we conform. Instead, we should strive for "true membership in .. a fellowship of people who are not so much like-minded as like-hearted. … Learning how to feel as we should is enormously helpful for learning how to think as we should. … You have to be a certain kind of person to make this book work for you: the kind of person who, at least some of the time, cares more about working toward the truth than about one's current social position."

As we approach a new year, there is perhaps no better resolution.

"Conversations With The Past"

Ruby English was Annie Bidwell's maid, and later also secretary, from 1914 until Bidwell's death in 1918. In an interview recorded in 1964 English remembers: "I was beside her when she died. I was right at the side of her bed when she breathed her last breath. She didn't say anything except, 'My head feels like it's full of piles of grass.' She would say that over and over. What kind of pain that was, I don't know."

English added: "Of course, before Mrs. Bidwell was cold, people were trying to get me to work for them. I never had to have a reference. Everybody said, 'If Ruby could please Mrs. Bidwell, she could please anybody.'"

Oral history from English and sixteen other interviewees is captured in "Conversations With The Past" ($16.95 in paperback from the Association For Northern California Historical Research, anchr.org), superbly edited by David Brown, Nancy Leek, Josie Reifschneider-Smith, and Ron Womack. Past president Dorothy Hill, now deceased, began the interview project in the mid-1970s.

Subtitled "Vibrant Voices From Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta And Tehama Counties," the book is available at The Bookstore and Bidwell Mansion in Chico; Discount Books and the Butte County Historical Society in Oroville; My Girlfriend's Closet in Paradise; and Gridley Museum. Footnotes and historical photographs provide helpful context, and there's a list of a dozen contributing local museums at the end, all to spark a reader's further exploration.

The voices include Adolph "Ad" Kessler with a firsthand account of his discovery of Ishi. Llewellyn Gay remembers pioneer life in Orland and Newville, in Glenn County, and a letter to President McKinley that was answered by the bunkhouse muleskinners instead.

The book ends with retired Lassen Volcanic National Park Chief Ranger Lester Bodine, interviewed by Ruby Swartzlow in 1979. He talks about all the preparations necessary for the visit of President John F. Kennedy, who stayed the night at the park and then dedicated Whiskeytown Dam and lake. (Kennedy is shown on the cover feeding a deer.)

It was September 1963, and a chilling editor's comment concludes the book, noting that this "was Kennedy's last official act before heading to Dallas two months later."

"Nancy Kelsey Comes Over The Mountain: The True Story Of The First American Woman In California"

The new children's picture book from retired librarian Nancy Leek of Chico is called "Nancy Kelsey Comes Over The Mountain: The True Story Of The First American Woman In California" ($15.95 in paperback from Goldfields Books; goldfieldsbooks.com). It's available on Amazon and locally at Bidwell Mansion, Made In Chico, and ABC Books. Each page features a full-color drawing from Paradise's own Steve Ferchaud.

In a postscript Leek tells the story in greater detail, noting that Kelsey "thought that she was the first American woman in California. In fact, when she got to Sutter's Fort, Mary Walker, the wife of explorer Joel Walker, had already arrived from Oregon. But Nancy was the first woman to come to California by the perilous route over the Sierra Nevada."

Kelsey and her ever restless husband Ben "joined the Bidwell-Bartleson Party for California" in 1841. "It was a hazardous trek," Leek writes in the postscript. "Nancy was pregnant during this six-month-long journey, and gave birth to a boy at Sutter's Fort after arriving there in December 1841. The baby did not survive." She eventually had eleven children (two died in infancy). Kelsey herself died in 1896.

The children's story starts with Kelsey left alone in the mountains while the men of the party scouted ahead. She "sat on her horse, holding her little girl, Martha Ann, on her lap. She was afraid to dismount her horse. Who knew what stranger, what bear or mountain lion, might come on her suddenly?" The story quotes Kelsey's own account: "I was left with my babe alone, and as I sat there on my horse and listened to the sighing and moaning of the winds through the pines, it seemed the loneliest spot in the world."

The story then picks up the start of the journey, the arrival in California, and in 1846 Kelsey's part as the "California Battalion" helped "take California away from the Mexican government." Perhaps she helped sew the original Bear Flag.

It's been almost two centuries since Nancy Kelsey was born. This captivating book keeps alive for a new generation the life of an extraordinary woman.

"Roads Not Taken"

Chicoan Emily Gallo is exploring the lives of a group of unlikely friends who frequent the famous Venice Beach boardwalk in Southern California.

Her first novel, "Venice Beach," introduces writer Finn McGee who comes to stay with his daughter, Kate, and who befriends the mysterious Jedidiah Gibbons, an escapee from the Jonestown massacre; in San Francisco Jed becomes caretaker of the Columbarium (the title of the second book).

"Kate And Ruby" takes up the story of McGee's daughter whose marriage to Martin breaks up when he comes out to her. Ruby, Martin's mother, resents the interracial couple and then "practically disowned Martin for being gay." Unexpectedly, Kate becomes Ruby's caregiver, and life's dailyness changes them both.

The theme of sexual identity is foregrounded in Gallo's newest story, "Roads Not Taken" ($12.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle; an Audible.com audio version is narrated by the author).

Kate had taught a young man named Malcolm Washington in high school. Malcolm now waits tables at Café Gratitude in Venice but everything changes when he applies for a second job at Marie Moss Senior Housing.

Savali, a Samoan, is on staff, and Malcolm is smitten. Though the novel intertwines the stories of the residents, the focus is on Malcolm's coming to terms with Savali's "non-binary" gender identification. Savali is Fa'afafine, a third gender in Samoan society.

Malcolm is straight and prefers to call Savali "she." Savali was born male, telling him that "I realized that I was, in fact, comfortable in my body and my mind in both genders. I also realized that I could wake up on any given day and prefer to dress or behave in one or the other. In other words, I identify as both and I identify as neither."

What does it mean for Malcolm to love Savali, and how does one navigate the "gender spectrum" and the desires that may be incompatible with being a couple? Though not explicit, the story delves deeply and respectfully into what is for Malcolm a new world of sexuality.

Gallo (emilygallo.blogspot.com) is scheduled to be interviewed by Nancy Wiegman on Nancy's Bookshelf, Friday, December 1 on mynspr.org (KCHO 91.7 FM) at 10:00 a.m.

"California Standoff: Miners, Indians And Farmers At War 1850-1865

"Incomplete accounts," writes historian and retired Political Science professor Michele Shover,  "are a common problem in local history. For example, Butte County's violent clashes between settlers and Indians were treated as random 'one-off' events--intermittent atrocities sprinkled among accounts of Victorian-era 'happy talk.'" John Bidwell himself "suggested the effects of such events were peripheral distractions, not core experiences."

Over the last two decades Shover has worked with original sources in an attempt to tell a more nuanced story, analyzing "underlying causes, political issues, conflicts of interest, cultural assumptions. …" The result is a magisterial work of scholarship that is also immensely readable. "California Standoff: Miners, Indians And Farmers At War 1850-1865" ($24.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) challenges assumptions and develops new historical understanding.

Meticulously detailed, with fifty pages of endnotes, the book's dozen chapters provide a riveting picture of the competing interests swirling around the community Bidwell founded. As Shover notes, "Politics was personal in nineteenth-century Chico, influencing social life and where residents spent their money." There are contemporary resonances everywhere.

Shover disputes what she calls Theodora Kroeber's "misanalysis of Maidu culture" and historical "distortions" all of which have implications for Kroeber's "Ishi In Two Worlds."

Shover also concludes that the Mountain Maidu raided the Mechoopdas working on Bidwell's ranch in the mid-1850s because they likely considered this "collusion."

Shover's research shows that many more Indians than the standard account of 32 died as they were resettled to Round Valley in 1863. "Primary documents disclose that close to 200 … died on the climb up the Coastal range mountain to the reservation." The record, she says, was "manipulated to shield the Army from its failure to deliver the Indians."

For the first time, Shover explains that these Indian deaths were not caused by the Army, but by "the most mortally dangerous type of malaria" that infected the group "while camped near Big Chico Creek in the summer of 1863."

The story Shover tells is one of violence since there were "no effective institutions in place that protected … against abuses." Her study, giving all sides their due, breaks new ground. It is indispensable.

"Shane The Shamrock Tries To Find Luck"

Retired teacher Cynthia Hutchinson lives with her husband in Bieber, about fifty-five miles north-northwest of Susanville. She has begun writing a series of children's books, filled with colorful sketches, aimed at the younger set.

The first is "Shane The Shamrock Tries To Find Luck" ($16 in paperback from Dorrance Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). The sixteen-page tale is followed by fourteen questions about events in the story ("What was the first thing he tried to do that the ladybug suggested?"; "What did Shane hope to try someday?").

It all begins "with this little shamrock named Shane who only had three leaves. And he thought to bring luck to anybody that he must be a four leaf clover. He decided to set out on a journey to see if anybody could help him find luck."

The plants and animals in the forest try to help, and near as they can figure Shane had to become more like them in order to find luck. That ladybug? Well, she said, "You don't need four leaves to bring luck to anyone. You just need to be able to fly like me to have luck. Why don't you climb up on that tree branch and try to fly?"

That doesn't quite work, and Shane hits the ground, only to hear laughter from a nearby rose bush. The rose advises Shane he doesn't have to fly to be lucky; he just has to look beautiful. But decorating himself with fallen rose petals doesn't make much difference. He's still Shane, the three-leaved shamrock, only now covered with rose petals.

A butterfly explains that Shane can grow another leaf if we wraps himself up in a leaf cocoon, but that doesn't work, and a daisy has him stand near her by a stream in a windstorm.

Nothing changes until he meets his four-leaf-clover friend Sissy, and though Shane doesn't grow another leaf he gains something more valuable: an understanding that even a four-leaf-clover can't actually bring luck to anyone. Instead, he learns, what counts is standing by one's friends, especially when they are in need.

As luck would have it, the next story may give Shane that opportunity.

"Jake And The Hot-Air Balloon"

Paradise resident Maurice "Big Mo" Huffman is known in the music scene for his melding of blues, Southern rock and funk with his award-winning Big Mo And The Full Moon Band (bigmoblues.com). After he and his wife Robin moved to California in 1989 he began telling their son Miles a bedtime story featuring a ten-year-old orphan named Jake Foster and a talking mouse named Milton.

"Jake And The Hot-Air Balloon" ($11.95 in paperback from Page Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is the first in a planned series featuring the intrepid adventurers.

Jake's parents had drowned in a Caribbean storm. His only relative, aunt Hilde, died when he was five, and Jake wound up in a Colorado orphanage.

He "was a tough boy and knew that this was what life had dealt him, but even the toughest boy can face moments that are too hard and where he needs somebody. Jake was alone though, left with his dream of being high up in a hot-air balloon."

Word comes of a nearby hot-air balloon race, and Jake desperately wants to go, but an older bully and his minion at the orphanage get Jake into trouble. He's forced to make the biggest decision of his young life, disobeying those in charge and sneaking off to the races and right into the area where the balloons are set to lift off.

You just know something will happen and, sure enough, Jake finds himself aloft in one of the balloons where he meets Milton the talking mouse, a resident of the balloon basket. It's Milton's job to keep Jake safe, and, it turns out, that's a tall order.

Along the way, sailing over the world, the balloon is shot down by a group of very odd and friendly people on a floating mountain whose job it is to shoot holes in Swiss cheese but who aren't very accurate. Their balloon eventually repaired, Jake and Milton travel to the Caribbean, rescue a girl named Lilly, search for her scientist parents, and fight off a some bad guys.

The action-packed story ends with a few threads hanging, a big yellow bird, and a hint of the adventures to come.

"Origin: A Novel"

According to the Bidwell Mansion Association's website, "In 1841 at the age of 22, John Bidwell became one of the first pioneers to cross the Sierra Nevada to California." Bidwell knew the range because in 1776, the Franciscan missionary Pedro Font named it on a map. Font was born in Spain which has its own Sierra Nevada.

That is where "the former spiritual leader of the Palmarian Catholic Church" lives, according to El País. This "dubious offshoot" of the Roman Catholic Church venerates Francisco Franco and considers Adolph Hitler something of a saint. Wouldn't it be only natural for this ultra-conservative group to try to stop any science that questions faith?

My lame attempt at creepy connections is overshadowed by the master connectionist, Dan Brown. In "Origin" ($29.95 in hardcover from Doubleday; also for Amazon Kindle), Brown notes that all the facts are real. (After the depiction of the Palmarian Church, one of the characters says "you could look it up.") Finding stuff hidden in plain sight is a hallmark of Brown's work.

The thriller once again stars symbologist Robert Langdon and takes place mostly in Barcelona. I chose to listen to the seven-hour audio abridgement narrated by Paul Michael (who also reads the full novel, over eighteen hours' worth), a man of many voices.

Langdon is in Spain attending a mysterious presentation by the atheist billionaire and futurist Edmond Kirsch, his former student, at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Kirsch believes his work in computer modeling and Artificial Intelligence has finally answered the two most important questions: Where did we come from? Where are we going?

Before the big reveal Kirsch is assassinated by a Palmarian, and Langdon and the beautiful museum director, Ambra Vidal, fiancé of the soon-to-be King of Spain, flee for their lives. The entire book is a setup for the eventual revelation of Kirsch's recorded message, and the question is whether what he says puts a scientific arrow through the heart of religion. Spoiler alert: It doesn't; in fact, it's something like a TED Talk, though philosophically incoherent (as Brown seems to realize).

In the end, an interesting casing but not much meat. As for scariness, it's a hollow weenie.

"The Wealth Of A Nation"

Who is Nathan Englander?

He's an attorney in the California city of Bakerton three quarters of a century in our future. He "was a first rate Rush running guard at UCLA," referring to a game that replaced football, basketball, and most other sports, which required genetic advantages in the players.

Ordinary folks, though, with appropriate golf-like handicaps, could play the highly regulated Rush. As Nathan tells Emerson McKernan, Bakerton's acting Art Museum Director, "the game, like those that it replaced, is a thinly veiled substitute for the battlefield, and the more physical the game, the more obvious it is. That is what fans pay to see."

Chico writer T.B. O'Neill (tboneill.com) creates a chilling dystopian society uncomfortably similar to our own world in "The Wealth Of A Nation" ($15.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle).

Rush events are provided by the state for the entertainment of the Citizens, who not only don't work but are forbidden to work. The Workers (and the smaller group called Entrepreneurs) "produce what the nation needs." To keep Workers going, the state pushes the addictive drug Reassert ("the dopamine and serotonin inducer that keeps you level and ready for the day" as the ad says).

As Nathan was taught, "it had taken five generations … to build the wealth of the nation to such abundance, such surplus, that only a minority of the brightest and most capable were asked to work and care for the others. And as a result, there was no more incessant, unrelenting, demeaning competition that kept everyone striving for unaccomplished prosperity."

Nathan's "mother and father were Workers, but his grandparents Citizens." To protect each group from the other, Bakerton sports a giant Wall separating Workers from Citizens. Englander finds himself defending Ari Howard, a Citizen who "defaces" the Wall with his extraordinary graffiti art (his talent is vouched for by Emerson, herself a work of art, who becomes Nathan's love interest).

But there are violent economic and political forces that cannot abide the status quo, and not for noble reasons. The complex and immersive thriller showcases O'Neill's world-building talents and provides an unsettling answer to the question: "What is freedom worth?"

"The Mindful Vegan"

Butte College kinesiology instructor Lani Muelrath (lanimuelrath.com) has been a vegetarian/vegan for more than four decades. The last twenty-five years she has also been a practitioner of mindfulness meditation and now, in her new book, she brings both together with "The Mindful Vegan" ($17.95 in hardcover from BenBella Books; also for Amazon Kindle).

The heart of the book is as its subtitle indicates: "A 30-Day Plan For Finding Health, Balance, Peace, And Happiness." This is very different, Muelrath writes, than serial dieting. "Micromanaging and analyzing every bite and obsessing over body weight and size mask underlying stress, anxiety, and not-good-enough syndrome."

Those who endeavor to practice vegan living face their own ingrained habits (such as compulsive snacking) as well as pressures from family and the wider culture. These stressors often provoke unhealthy defensive reactions. Enter mindfulness, which "gets to the roots of your challenges around food--whether it's refurbishing old habits, employing self-regulation of emotions, or becoming more at ease and grounded in vegan living."

The key is that mindfulness "expands that moment between stimulus and reactivity. You gain new access to the choice of where to place your attention, rather than having your attention taken hostage by reactive thoughts and emotions. Once you open the door to the possibilities of choice, you can more freely choose your responses."

Muelrath notes that mindfulness (with roots in Vipassana or Insight Meditation) is non-sectarian. In the 30-day plan she introduces the awareness techniques gently (a one-minute meditation on the first day, two minutes on the second, and so on, with free audio versions on the book's website). The author also provides a dozen recipes (including "Berry Good Ice Cream") and additional resources.

Once a practice of meditation is established, Muelrath brings in the vegan perspective (emphasizing personal health and environmental care) and, in honest yet encouraging discussions, takes up "wandering minds," "moods and foods," "cravings," "addictions," and more.

With these new practices, one just might forget, as Muelrath did, about that chocolate stash in the cupboard. That, she says, is real freedom.

Lani Muelrath is scheduled to be interviewed by Nancy Wiegman on Nancy's Bookshelf, Friday, November 3 on mynspr.org (KCHO 91.7 FM) at 10:00 a.m.

"London Spirits: Short Stories"

Rob Burton, Professor of English at Chico State University, was born near London and grew up in England. In his latest book he revisits familiar haunts by means of unconventional narrators, women and men from the afterlife who played a part in London's history.

"London Spirits: Short Stories" ($10.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is a series of fourteen enchanting tales (grouped into "Now," "Then," and "Now And Then") wherein sung and unsung voices are heard again.

In "Die Into Life," there is Fran in the present day who receives a call asking her to meet an old friend from her wild University of London days. "She put the phone down and looked around the kitchen at the symbols of a twenty-year marriage: pots hanging obediently on their hooks, cheery family snapshots on the refrigerator door, …." If she goes, will she return?

Yet even in the "now" there are words from the past that strike Fran deeply, and Burton's craft suggests that rather than history being a settled affair, it still has the power to surprise us, like art. "That's how art happens sometimes," a burping man named Puggy tells Mark in "The Knowledge. "You don't intend it to be a certain way but it assumes its own identity and takes its own course. It's quite magical, eh?"

In "The Purest Ecstasy," Virginia Woolf recalls "the daily practice of writing. Mysterious voices, bidden and unbidden, called to me." Sherlock Holmes solves "The Curious Case of Miss Irene Adler," and plumbers Phillip Clark and Tom Crapper, flushed with success, explain the "Westminster shudder" of the seventeenth-century.

The Celtic warrior-queen Boadicea speaks in the final story which gives its name to the book. She led a revolt against the Roman invaders in AD 60 or so for love of Londinium, and now her spirit says: "O fog-shrouded city, drizzle-dazzled town, metropolis of mud and thick materialism, what can I, your guiding spirit, say that has not already been said about these two thousand years of history? … What is the shape of your historical narrative?"

The funny-piercing answer throws a little shade on those who would forget what came before.

"A Deadly Wandering"

A terrifying highway accident in Utah in September eleven years ago left two rocket scientists dead. It was caused by nineteen-year-old Reggie Shaw veering into the wrong lane; Shaw survived, physically unscathed, but the answer to the central question--was he texting at the time?--would not come easily.

Matt Richtel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, based in San Francisco, traces the ripple effects of the accident in a deeply reported, and deeply affecting, book, "A Deadly Wandering" ($15.99 in paperback from William Morrow; also for Amazon Kindle). It's subtitled "A Mystery, A Landmark Investigation, And The Astonishing Science Of Attention In The Digital Age." The reader comes to know family members, those in the judicial system, lawmakers, and attention researchers in a story so emotionally compelling one cannot look away.

"A Deadly Wandering" is the Book In Common for Chico State University (csuchico.edu/bic) and Butte College (butte.edu/bic), and the larger community. Author Matt Richtel will be speaking at Chico State's Laxson Auditorium Tuesday, October 24 at 7:30 p.m. Adults $20, Seniors $18, youth and students are free. Tickets can be obtained through Chico Performances (chicoperformances.com).

There is much for the heart in this story, but also for the mind. "There is a tension going on inside the brain," Richtel writes. "It is a tug-of-war between two different aspects of the attention system. … Top-down attention is what we use to direct our focus, say, on a work project … or when driving on the road. … Bottom-up attention is … what allows our attention to be captured instantly, without our control, say, by the sound of our name … or the ring of the phone. Bottom-up attention operates unconsciously, automatically, driven by sensory stimulus and contextual cues."

You can have your hands on the wheel and be looking straight ahead at the road, but your mind may be focused on texting. Research indicates it may take ten or fifteen seconds for your mind to regain focus on the road--far longer than anyone had thought previously.

It's not easy to keep the right focus. As Richtel suggests, our cell phones have become akin to slot machines and users to compulsive gamblers.

"Theologians And Philosophers Using Social Media: Advice, Tips, And Testimonials"

Thomas Jay Oord (thomasjayoord.com) teaches at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho, and is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene. He's also a prolific user of social media and notes that, referencing Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the message": as we use Facebook, Facebook (in ways we perhaps don't fully understand) uses us. As McLuhan also noted, "the medium is the massage."

In an effort to understand how his scholar and ministerial friends get a grip on social media, he asked 91of them to write about their social media practices. The result is a breezy compendium of good advice focusing on the how.

"Theologians And Philosophers Using Social Media: Advice, Tips, And Testimonials" ($29.95 in paperback from SacraSage Press; also for Amazon Kindle) includes a chapter by Chico theologian and writer Greg Cootsona (gregcootsona.com).

Cootsona teaches religious studies at Chico State University, served as associate pastor for adult discipleship in New York and Chico, and is directing a multi-year grant project through Fuller Seminary called "Science For Students And Emerging Young Adults." His book, "Mere Science And Christian Faith: Bridging The Divide With Emerging Adults," is scheduled to be published soon by InterVarsity Press.

"Social media," he writes, "also brings with it several surprises. The first is a shocking level of incivility. … The second is how much I have to learn about how it is truly the way we communicate today, and yet, how much I have to learn in effectively employing social media." The keys, he says, are not to use polarizing language, recognize that there are many more readers than trolls, "create a strategy and goals with your social media use," and "post in the service of what you are convinced the listening public needs to hear."

Public theologian Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) warns against feeding the trolls; Professor of Science and Religion Karl Giberson (karlgiberson.com) notes that "a public intellectual needs to have a thick skin"; and Helen De Cruz (helendecruz.net), a philosopher of religion and philosopher of cognitive science, reminds social media users to "try to have fun and don't overthink it."

It's all great fun and a real tweet.

"First Blush: North State Writers 2017 Anthology"