But this is Chico, too

Tomorrow, I start a two-week vacation from work. I’m also going to take a break from blogging.

In the last nine months, portions of my cerebral cortex have been taken over and turned into blog-brainstorming central. No thought enters my mind without insisting I evaluate it for its potential bloggability. It’s driving me a little buggy.

Restricting myself to Chico as a topic hasn’t helped filter the flow of ideas. I’ve discovered that Chico contains the universe. It contains multitudes, not unlike the self Walt Whitman celebrates in his poem “Song of Myself.” The Song of Chico never stops playing in my head. It has become longer than the most plaintive English folk ballad.

It’s no comfort to know that few of my thoughts are blog-worthy. Every last one of them wants an audition. I do everything in my power to discourage this. I’m as cruel to my thoughts as Simon Cowell is to “American Idol” wannabees. I’m always on the offensive. I have no qualms about saying “That’s quite possibly the stupidest thought I’ve ever heard.” Not one in a hundred thoughts makes it into print, but they’ve all taken to parading themselves in front of me.

During my vacation, I’m going to see if it’s possible to make my mind a perfect blog blank. Hard physical labor, travel outside of Chico and reading works of science fiction may help distract me. Maybe I could use this time to develop a form of meditation that would teach me how to control the Chico-ish brainwaves. I’d like to be able to turn them on and off like a water spigot. Or maybe in the next two weeks I could experiment with self-medication, achieving the same effect as meditation, but with less effort.

As a writer, I’m aware that things could be worse. I could be out of ideas or have writer’s block. Most of the time, it’s not so bad to be pursued by thoughts. My ability to live in my head means I’ll never have to say “What am I going to blog about next?”

Curiosity is motivating this break from blogging as much as a desire to avoid burnout. I want to test the conventional wisdom that if you don’t constantly “update,” you’ll lose your audience. I’m about to temporarily abandon my readers at precisely the moment the number of page views this site gets is on the rise. (Thank you for checking me out. And please tell your friends — and your enemies — about “But this is Chico, too.”)

Will readers accept my need to temporarily retreat into silence or will they see it as a betrayal? Does the blogosphere forgive such lapses? Nobody seems to mind that my E-R column “But this is Chico” comes out only once a week. Is it really so different in the online world?

Am I naive to assume that readers will patiently await my return, using the time I’m away to browse through my archives and catch up on the 109 entries I’ve posted so far that they might have missed?

The answer, my friends, is blowing in the winds of cyberspace.

I’ll see you in two weeks.

Posted by at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christine Jorgensen’s story has always fascinated me. As far as I know, she was the first person to publicly proclaim she felt like a woman trapped inside a man’s body.

In the early 1950s, she attracted worldwide attention after she went to Denmark to have a sex change operation.

Every time I read or hear about a transgendered person, I think about Jorgensen. Their stories are almost identical to her’s. Each of them, male or female, feels completely out of sync with the gender they were born with.

Tedra Thomsen’s request to play on a Chico Area Recreation and Park District coed softball team as a woman reminded me of the importance transgendered people attach to an identity that exists independently of their anatomy.

Thomsen, who is 6-foot, 4-inches tall and a male by birth, regards sex change surgery as drastic and expensive, but she isn’t content to play on the team as a man dressed in women’s clothes. Something about her need to be regarded as a woman runs bone-deep.

What makes this even issue even more complex is that a person’s sense of gender exists independently of their sexual orientation. In a story written by Tom Gascoyne that appeared in The Chico Beat, Thomsen said she’s attracted to women. Travel writer Jan Morris, who started his life as James Morris, stayed with his wife after having a sex change operation about 35 years ago. They’ve been together for almost 50 years. But there are also plenty of transgendered people who are attracted to people of the same birth sex.

Whenever I discuss my feelings about transgender issues, I start by saying that the essential Steve Brown is a person and that my gender doesn’t particularly matter. But the response I always get is that I feel that way because I’m comfortable with being male.

But that’s not true. My outlook and interests are completely at odds with what is called maleness. I’m not interested in sports, I couldn’t care less about how my car looks and I’m not “good with my hands.” For the most part, male conversation, with its focus on things, bores me. My favorite movies are so-called “chick flicks.” Watching movies that have a lot of shooting and chase scenes literally puts me to sleep.

When my son was a little boy, I spent a lot of time with him, but we never did “guy stuff” together. Both of us would have felt ridiculous going into the back yard and enacting the male ritual of tossing a football back and forth.

I could go on and on about why I feel at odds with maleness, but you get the idea. I believe our gender roles are largely imposed on us by a culture that places a strong emphasis on oversimplification and superficiality. I have a feeling that if we could accept the fact that the sexes are far more alike than they are different, people wouldn’t be so concerned about the validity of their birth gender.

I sense that if I were to have a sex change operation, I wouldn’t feel much different than I do now. On a “soul” level, who I am has as little to do with my gender as it does with my health, ethnicity, physical appearance and age. The essential Steve Brown transcends such categories. I believe this is true of all human beings.

I also have a suspicion that if I were to have an operation that changed me into a female, I would feel just as constrained by our culture as I do as a male. I can’t imagine having to worry about wearing makeup and showing up to work each day in a different outfit. I would hate the idea of feeling I have to justify to people why I choose to be a “working mother.” In the 21 years since my son was born, I’ve never been asked — not once — to defend my decision to be a “working father” or to explain how I’ve managed to “juggle” two careers.

Gender roles have relaxed a lot since I was growing up in the 1950s, but those of us who are unable or unwilling to get with the program are still exasperated by the rigid cultural expectations.

Posted by at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“When crisis or collapse is happening, it’s almost impossible to recognize the unravelling, much less to honor it,” Chico author Susan Wooldridge writes in “poemcrazy,” a book about writing. “It can feel like being bumped backwards out of control and downhill into chaos.”

Her book is more than 10 years old, but I discovered it just a few weeks ago. Writing instructor Theresa Marcis read from it at a workshop Enloe Medical Center offers once a month to help cancer patients and their families find solace in writing.

I covered last month’s workshop and wrote it up for the E-R’s Health section.

Wooldridge believes there’s value in unravelling. In her book, she uses both science and religion to bolster her claim. “Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine won a Nobel Prize in 1977 for his theory of dissipative structures, a kind of chaos theory. He showed that a period of dissolution is necessary before any system — a cell, society, solar system or person — can jump to a higher level or organization. Seen this way, unravelling or disintegrating is a vital, creative event making room for the new.

“The Hebrew Kaballists wrote about this idea centuries earlier. They believed that to change from one reality to another a thing first must turn into nothing, where it reaches ‘the ring of nothingness,’ the state before creation when the egg has disappeared but the chick hasn’t formed. Chaos.”

This sense of unravelling, of coming undone, of descending into darkness is undoubtedly what takes hold of people who are thinking about killing themselves. They feel hopeless. They feel they have failed at something — or at everything. They are like the person the Canadian pop group The Guess Who sang about in the 1960s: “It’s too late. She’s gone too far. She’s lost the sun. She’s come undone.”

If, as Wooldrige suggests, these feelings are not only inevitable but a prerequisite for change, they offer a constructive way of looking at a process we are more likely to think of as a breakdown, bummer or bad trip.

Wooldridge writes: “Whenever I see what seems like disaster coming on, it helps to say ‘apokatastasis,’ from the Greek, meaning to set up again, to restore. It’s an invocation, referring to good fortune hiding in apparent tragedy. The word asks: out of apparent catastrophe bring blessing. As soon as I can remember to say ‘apokatastasis,’ I realize I’ll live through whatever bumping backwards I’m going through and come out in a better place.
”
She suggests that we each make up our own name for this phenomenon. “Naming it may help make this undoing less frightening.”

“Apokatastasis” doesn’t cut it for me. After repeated efforts to try to pronounce it, I’ve given up. I’ve been looking for a word or a phrase that will roll off my tongue more smoothly, but still sound like an invocation. My top choice so far is “Doo Wa Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Doo,” no doubt influenced by a PBS TV show I watched recently about 1960s British pop music. Just saying the phrase will allow a little lightness to pierce my darkest mood.

This is a better approach to unravelling than looking at it as an unmitigated tragedy. Why not take Wooldridge’s advice and see it as a chance to find a better way. So what if you come undone? It doesn’t mean it’s too late, you’ve gone too far or that you’ve lost the sun.

Posted by at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For six years, I was a volunteer at the Bidwell Mansion. I was a tour guide for a while and later I served on the Bidwell Mansion Association Board.

My instant affinity for Chico motivated me to learn about its history. Before moving to Chico, I had little interest in the history of the cities I lived in. I thought of myself as just passing through. In time, I may leave Chico, but I will always view it as my adopted hometown. I will never regard it as a way station.

As a volunteer at the mansion, the most important thing I learned about John Bidwell was that he was a key figure in 19th century California. His influence extended far beyond Chico. In the 60 years he lived in the state, he managed to go everywhere and meet everyone. He was both an observer and a player in the Americanization of this part of the country.

He’s perhaps Chico’s only true celebrity. Other Chicoans became famous after they moved somewhere else. Bidwell’s fame spread far and wide, but once he created the American version of this community from scratch he never left it.

I’m reading American history professor and author Al Hurtado's biography of John Sutter, mainly to read the parts about Bidwell, who worked for Sutter in the 1840s. I especially enjoyed a chapter on the Californio revolt against Mexican rule.

Hurtado writes that in the course of a journey to Sutter’s Fort, Bidwell first ran into Manuel Micheltorena, the governor of California, then met up with Juan Alvarado and Jose Castro, the leaders of the revolt against Micheltorena. Hurtado writes: “According to Bidwell, the governor halted and talked with him for about half an hour. ‘He desired me to beg the Americans to be loyal to Mexico,’ Bidwell recalled, ‘and in due time would give them all the lands to which they were entitled. He sent particularly friendly word to Sutter.’”

Hurtado writes that when Bidwell later chanced to meet Alvarado and Castro, “they treated him ‘like a prince.’ They too ‘protested their friendship for Americans,’ said Bidwell, ‘and sent a request to Sutter to support them.’ Now Sutter had choices to make.”

This is a perfect example of how Bidwell somehow managed to be Johnny-on-the-spot each time a chapter of California’s history was unfolding. He was a real-life Forrest Gump.

The Bidwell Mansion seems to be a fitting symbol of Bidwell’s influence. Its grandiosity doesn’t strike me as overblown. Bidwell’s eminence was based on solid achievement, not empty posturing. He never let his words exceed his deeds. As a frontiersman, farmer, community builder, politician and husband, he was always toiling in the trenches. Even on the day he died, when he was 80 years old, he was out on his ranch, doing hard physical labor.

Posted by at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is to Jesse Allread, Greg Tropea, Val Montague, Meagan Dixon, Greg Fischer, Jeff Culbreath, DNA and several anonymous people who have tried to respond to my blogs in the last several weeks.

I have finally located and posted your comments.

My initial assumption, which lasted a long time, was that nobody was responding. But after one of you e-mailed me and told me your comments hadn’t made it to my site, I looked into it. It turns out I wasn’t looking in the right place. I still haven’t learned all the ins and outs of navigating my way around the business end of this blog.

With the help of E-R Web content editor Ryan Olson I discovered the comments are stored in a folder called — what a surprise — “comments.”

They’ve always been there, but for the first seven months of my life as a blogger, they were also showing up in my e-mail. I didn’t have to look for them on my blog site. Ryan isn’t sure why they’re no longer making their way to my e-mail , but at least I know there's a place to go and fetch them.

So please keep reading this blog and keep making comments. I’m not ignoring you.

Posted by at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This walk around the block continues in front of Starbucks, on the northwest corner of Broadway and W. Third Street. Head west on Third until you reach the building just next to the International Order of Oddfellow’s Building.

Appropriately enough, it’s called the International Order of Oddfellow’s Annex. It’s a chip off the old corner-of-the-block building. It was built by the organization in about 1910. The bottom level houses Fleet Feet, a longtime occupant. A metal boxed cornice runs along the entire length of the front of the building. It’s supported by a large bracket at either end. Above that is a crenelated parapet.

The building next door, which also has a cornice and brackets, is home to good eating. Spice Creek and Cafe Malvina are ground floor next-door neighbors.

When you turn right and head up Salem Street, you will be confronted by a visually blank block on this side of the street. But that is more than made up for by the 1905 gothic revival-style St. Augustine of Canterbury Anglican Church, which takes up most of the block on the other side of the street. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The church has turned the northern end of the building into Augie’s Fine Coffee & Tea. Beyond the church lies the parking lot that was once the site of the Hotel Oaks, which stood on the southwest corner of Second and Salem streets for almost 60 years.

It looks bad for a city when a historic building is torn down only to be replaced by a parking lot. But Hotel Oaks came to an end because business was down, not because the site was needed for a parking lot.

Would a 21st century version of Hotel Oaks do well on the site today? My guess that it wouldn’t stand a chance unless parking for guests could be guaranteed.

Posted by at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After spending some time in the South Campus neighborhood, we’re back in the middle of town for this walk around the block.

Start at the southeast corner of Salem and W. Second streets. The unassuming white building with the blue awnings you see in front of you is one of downtown’s early preservation success stories. Etta Chiapella, its one-time owner, refused to see it torn down and replaced with a parking lot. She sold it to downtown buisnessmen Joseph Kaveney and Mike Webster on their promise to renovate it.

They completed the project in 1974 and named it Etta Chiapella Square. Today the building, which dates from about 1888, is the home of the Black Crow Grill and Taproom, Peeking Chinese Restaurant, Bidwell Cigar and Golden One Credit Union.

A parking lot that wraps around the building has an intriguing mural depicting trees that mimic the look of the real trees next to it.

Washington Mutual Bank, on the southwest corner of Broadway and W. Second, is one of downtown’s visual blank spaces. It went up at a time when people weren’t that interested in how buildings look. But I like the two display cases the bank has on Broadway that showcase Chico events and organizations. The last time I looked, they featured the Chico Women’s Club’s Celebration of Women and the Pioneer Days Parade.

All of the stores on this side of Broadway between Washington Mutual and Starbucks have been there less than two or three years. Brambley Cottage, which was once in the Garden Walk, is the only one of these stores I frequent. I like to go there to buy gifts for my wife.

Starbucks has been on the northwest corner of Broadway and W. Third St. for as long as I can remember. But that’s because I’ve been in Chico only nine years. Its tenure has nothing on Lee Pharmacy, which occupied this spot, on the ground floor of the International Order of Oddfellow’s building, from 1884 to 1994. Wesley Lee is believed to have started the pharmacy in 1857.

Join me next time and we’ll complete this walk around the block.

Posted by at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Mendocino, Mendocino,
Where life’s such a groove,
You’ll blow your mind in the morning.”

Back in 1969, Mendocino was worthy of this tribute by the Sir Douglas Quintet. Those were good times for the Northern California coastal town, which looks like a quaint New England fishing village — if you can pretend that the big body of water next to it is the Atlantic Ocean.

In the 1960s, Mendocino was saved from becoming a ghost town by a group of artists who came up from the Bay Area and started the Mendocino Arts Center. It was known as “the next Carmel,” which at that time was taken to mean a replacement for Carmel, a one-time arts colony that had turned into a tourist town.

Forty years later, the “next Carmel” has become just like Carmel. It’s full of bed and breakfast establishments, restaurants, gift stores and real estate offices. On a recent visit to the coast, I took a stroll through Mendocino and found some real bargains listed in the windows of the offices. Million dollar properties had been slashed to $900,000 — the perfect incentive for encouraging struggling artists to come to this community of 1,000.

There are many sad tales of cities that struggle and fail to survive economically. Mendocino is in a different category. It’s a victim of its own immense success. A story in BusinessWeek.com confirms that if you want to find a good place to invest in real estate five to 10 years from now, you should look at where artists are living now. “Sociologists and policymakers have long been touting art and culture as the cure-all to economically depressed neighborhoods, cities, and regions,” the article states.

Mendocino has become economically secure by exploiting its artsy ambiance and reinventing itself as a tourist town. At one time, some of the tourists may have been interested in the work of the artists who lived in Mendocino, but nowadays the main draw seems to be to experience a weekend in an uncommonly pretty place and spend a lot of money on food, lodging and gifts.

But little towns aren’t so pretty when they’re crowded. I visited Mendocino on a Thursday in early April and had a hard time finding a parking place. It must be a nightmare to try to go there on a Saturday in July. The main appeal of a place like this is its sense of solitude.

Mendocino and Carmel can serve as cautionary tales for communities, such as Chico, that are attempting to capitalize on their artsy ambiance. Promoting cultural tourism should not distract us from creating and bringing in good-paying jobs. If we do that, we won’t have to rely on visitors to keep the economy afloat.

Posted by at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continue this walk from the southwest corner of W. Third and Hazel streets. Head west along Third until you get to Ivy Street.

This is another intersection that is three parts good and one part bad.

The house in front of you, on the southeast corner, dates from about 1871, making it one of the oldest in Chico. It has been remodeled several times. Its most famous owner was George Crosette, the Chico Record’s first editor. He and John Bidwell were often at odds politically.

At the curb in front of the house is a carriage mounting stone with “Crosette” carved into it, a fantastic remnant of the 19th century.

Directly across the street is a Dutch colonial house, another post-Victorian style. Dutch in this case actually means “Deutch” or German. It was built in 1902. The main feature that defines its architectural style is a gambrel roof. One of its owners was Richard White, who was Chico’s city attorney, city clerk and city recorder.

Kitty-corner across the street is the Walker house, one Chico’s few brick residences. It was built in 1881 by Jefferson Walker, who owned a brick yard. Bricks for this house were also used in what is now known as the Phoenix building, in downtown Chico.

On the fourth corner is a mid-20th century apartment building, although this one isn’t as big and ugly as other apartment buildings in the South Campus neighborhood.

Turn left and head south on Ivy. The building at the northeast corner of W. Fourth and Ivy is an Italianate-style Victorian built in about 1873. It’s a more grand version of the three Italianate cottages on the west side of Ivy Street.

It amazes me how many architectural gems there are in this neighborhood, especially when you consider that many of the properties haven’t been well-treated either by their owners or the tenants.

There’s no particular reason to finish this walk around the block. The E. Fourth and Hazel street legs of the block don’t have any noteworthy buildings.

Join me soon for another square-shaped walk.

Posted by at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The South Campus neighborhood exerts a strong pull as a prime location for meaningful walks around the block. It and downtown are the oldest parts of Chico and a few of the buildings are almost 150 years old.

Start this walk at the southwest corner of W. Third and Hazel streets. You are standing in front of a stick-style Victorian house (top photo) built in about 1900, but which looks about 20 years older than that. The Fourth Street entrance has a gabled hood. The gables over this entrance and the Hazel Street entrance are shingled and have decorative bargeboards. The house has several decorative brackets.

Directly across Fourth Street is the Earll house, another stick-style structure. It was built in 1883 and is an example of a grand corner house. William Earll was a partner in a Chico hardware business. The house cost $5,500 to build. The house has a gable brace on its third level, a stick feature that is rare in Chico.

On the northeast corner, kitty-corner to where you’re standing, is the most westerly of the six so-called “Language Houses” on that block (bottom photo), most of which were built in the first two decades of the 20th century. The houses were once owned by Chico State University and were occupied by students who wanted to immerse themselves in a foreign language. The houses are now owned by Wayne Cook, who rents them to students. The corner house, built in 1914, once known as “French House,” is built in the colonial revival style. The porch, brackets and exposed rafter ends show craftsman touches.

This would be one of the most attractive intersections in Chico were it not for the AT&T building on the southeast corner. This building takes up an entire block, detracting enormously from what would otherwise be a fairly well-preserved section of the neighborhood. In my estimation, this building comes in at Number 1 among the South Campus eyesores.

Join me again next time to continue exploring this block, bounded by W. Third, Ivy , W. Fourth and Hazel streets.

Posted by at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of my jobs at the Enterprise-Record is to write feature stories for the Health section. Many of them are about Enloe Medical Center.

By and large, my stories are upbeat. Even when I write about serious illnesses and disabilities, the thrust of my stories is about how doctors, nurses and other staff members are trying to save lives and help patients get well.

Larry Mitchell also writes about Enloe for the E-R. His stories often focus on staff cuts, labor disputes, quality of care issues and the hospital’s expansion and its effects on the surrounding neighborhood.

Greg Welter is another E-R reporter who writes about Enloe. His stories sometimes focus on people who die at Enloe as a result of accidents and criminal assaults.

Compared to what I write about, these stories are downers.

Yet that’s what life is — a mixture of good and bad news. And that’s certainly what life in a hospital is all about.

A newspaper is obligated to tell it all.

In my dealings with Enloe, I am aware of its desire to put the best spin on things. More than once, in response to my stories, people who work there have told me, “It’s nice to see something positive come out for a change.”

But even though the kind of writing I do makes me seem like the Enloe “good news” guy, I believe in the necessity of The E-R doing stories that may put it in a less flattering light.

I know where Enloe is coming from. Like most hospitals, it’s caught in a squeeze. Hospitals bear the brunt of meeting a growing demand for care while scrambling to generate the revenue to pay for it. By and large, nonprofit hospitals such as Enloe aren’t the main beneficiaries of all the money that seems to be pouring into the health care system.

But an institution as big and complex as Enloe isn’t going to escape criticism. When you’re always in the limelight, you aren’t going to be granted too many moments when all you have to do is step forward, accept the bouquet and take a bow amid cheers and applause.

Posted by at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At the end of the last blog entry, I left you at the northeast corner of W. Sixth Street and Normal Avenue. The building on this corner, which dates from 1929, is one of Chico’s few Monterey revival-style buildings. It serves as office space for Legal Services of Northern California.

Head north along Normal until you get to W. Fifth Street.

I wish I could have walked along Fifth back in the 19th century when it was one of Chico’s finest residential streets, connecting downtown with the train station and lined with the houses of the well-to-do. The South Campus neighborhood is so full of Chico State University students now that it’s hard to imagine a time when doctors, lawyers and business owners and their families lived here.

I regard Fifth as a precursor to The Esplanade, which had its own heyday as a showy residential street. John Bidwell laid out The Esplanade, with its two side streets, in 1869, but it didn’t have many houses on it until the early 1900s. Before that time, it was a country road that cut through his ranch.

The brick building on the southeast corner of Fifth and Normal isn’t as old as it looks. Several years ago, I went on a walking tour led by John Gallardo from the Chico Heritage Association, who said it started out as a grocery store in the 1930s. Looking through the Polk’s city directories that are stored in the reference section of Chico library, I found out there was a Safeway Piggly Wiggly store at this site in 1931.

The corner is listed as “vacant” in the 1929-30 edition. This could mean there was no building at the corner, the brick building had no occupants or a structure pre-dating the brick building was vacant. Chicoans who lived here 77 years ago and whose memories are sharp as tacks would know for sure.

The next building on your right has housed the Grace Jr. gift store since 1974. Its owner, Grace Allread, died last year. This isn’t a vintage structure, but it’s among the one-of-a-kind businesses that give Chico its charm.

Finish the walk back at the Stansbury House. When Oscar Stansbury had the house built for his family, he was apparently worried that it was too far out of town. But I’m sure his daughter Angeline, in the last years she lived there, must have felt that the city was closing in on her.

Posted by at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Start this walk around the block in front of the Stansbury House, at the southwest corner of Salem and W. Fifth streets. Over the years the house has gotten a lot of press, most recently a story last month by E-R Style Editor Laurie Kavenaugh about work that is being done to reinforce its brick foundation.

The house is usually open for tours on the weekends, but it’s closed to the public right now while the repairs are being made.

Oscar Stansbury, a physician, had the house built for himself and his family in 1883. One of his daughters, Angeline, lived there her entire life. After she died, at age 94, the city took it over and turned it into a museum.

Head south on Salem to get a better idea of how downtown Chico has surrounded the Stansbury House. At the end of the block is the STAR Community Credit Union, an attractive newer building (top photo). Turn right on W. Sixth Street.

The Italianate-style house just west of the credit union building has stood on this lot since 1915, although it started out its life at The Junction, where Broadway and Main Street and Park Avenue meet. The house was built in about 1880.

Across the street, on the southeast corner of W. Sixth and Normal streets, is a house that has undergone a facelift that respects its original architectural “footprint.” I’ve included a “before” and “after” photo of it.

This is another project by Wayne Cook, who owns the Gage house on Normal between W. Fourth and W. Fifth streets and the so-called Language Houses on W. Third Street between Chestnut and Hazel streets. Cook, who is best known for his Hotel Diamond reconstruction on W. Fourth Street, has been a major force behind the preservation of the South Campus neighborhood.

Join me next time and we’ll complete this walk around the block.

Posted by at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The empress tree across the street from my house is blooming. For me, it’s the highlight of the spring flower show. I’ve written about the tree in my column, “But this is Chico,” but in my blog I can show you what it looks like.

Its blossoms are purple, my favorite color. In the photo, they look pink. That’s because they’re purple on the outside and white on the inside. I’m glad the process of natural selection didn’t lead to the weeding out of purple as a flower color. Looking at it from a theistic point of view, I’m glad God likes purple flowers. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have minded it if He’d eliminated orange or had not created it in the first place. It could have been worse. God could have made the sky orange instead of blue.

Empress trees are scattered throughout Chico. Without even going out and looking for them, I’ve spotted five others. Does Chico have more of them than other cities or did I fail to notice them until I became aware of the one across the street from my house? They’re so tall, you’d think I would have easily spotted them if they had been a common sight in other cities. I wonder if Sacramento, another shady valley city, has a lot of them.

Chico has so many iconic symbols that it’s drowning in them. But I have a feeling that when I’m old and looking back on the time I lived in Chico, I will be left with just a few indelible memories. The empress trees will be among them.

Trees tremendously affect our sense of what it means to be Chicoans. In the last two weeks the trees have undergone their annual leafing out, which is a major event in the city. The city looks so much better when the leaves are on the trees. They help hide the many deficiencies of Chico’s built environment.

Posted by at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)