But this is Chico, too

Here’s an impertinent question for you.

Did John and Annie Bidwell have sex?

Why would we assume they didn’t? Well, for one thing, they didn’t have chidren. And then there’s the fact that they were Victorians, who have a reputation for being uptight. Furthermore, Annie was very religious, and made sure John was as well. But does this mean they weren’t physically intimate?

This is one of the delicate topics the late Lois McDonald raised in her biography of Annie Bidwell. McDonald is convinced that John Bidwell fathered children with Indian women before he married Annie. And she doesn’t doubt for a minute that the Bidwells had sex after they were married. She even has a snippet of erotic writing to prove it.

We’ll get to that soon. But first let’s think about the Victorian era. People may have been prudish about sex, but that just means they didn’t talk about it. Back then, one of the main purposes for marriage was to have children. And in those days, you still had to have sex in order to procreate.

Britain’s Queen Victoria, for whom the era was named, had nine children in the first 18 years of marriage to Prince Albert. Then he died.

Although the Bidwells had no children, it wasn’t by choice. So you can be sure they tried.

McDonald speculates in her book that the reason Annie became violently ill early in their marriage was because she suffered a miscarriage. Then she spent a couple of weeks confined to her bed, presumably to recover.

Her bed, by the way, was their bed. Unlike a lot of wealthy Victorians, the Bidwells shared a bedroom — except whenever one of them was out of town, which happened a lot. Early in their marriage, Annie spent months at a time visiting her family in Washington, D.C. And John was often away on business trips.

Their letters — which they wrote to each other every day whenever they were parted — often express an intense longing.

In one exchange McDonald included in her book, John wrote, “While I was in Dr. Harkness’ waiting room, a man said that the juice of the pomegranate afforded great wonders in the night.”

Annie later replied, “Oh, how I long for some of your pomegranate juice — more than any other fruit.”

That’s pretty racy stuff for a couple of Victorians.

Posted by at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What a mess. Wouldn’t you know it that two days after sweeping my patio, the storm of the decade would come along, burying it and the rest of the back yard in two feet of twigs and branches.

A person visiting my back yard now wouldn't even know I have a patio.

But what can I do? Life is full of storms — meteorological and otherwise, predictably turning order into chaos and undoing progress on every front. We are doomed to go back and do the same things again.

Six months ago, I finally had a tooth that had lost a filling fixed. After congratulating myself for braving a visit to the dentist and getting the work done, the filling broke off again.

Two years ago, I had my gallbladder removed to try to put an end to bouts of wrenching pancreatitis attacks. The gallbladder was diseased, so I sighed in relief at having gotten rid of it. But a few months later the attacks returned with greater vehemence. So I had to go back and reluctantly resume my odyssey through the labyrinthine medical system.

About four years ago, I left my copy desk job at the Enterprise-Record and moved into the Style section to focus on my first love — writing. Three years later the job was eliminated and I had to go back to the desk and, except for my column “But this is Chico” and this blog, put my writing aside.

I’ve had longtime relationships fray. I try and try to mend them and think I've succeeded, only to have them unravel again.

There are things I do every day that hardly qualify as storms, yet contribute to my conviction that, as The Red Queen said to Alice in “Through the Looking Glass,” “Now, here, you see. It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. To get somewhere else you have to run twice as fast.”

Leave a garden untended for just a month and it will become a jungle, even without a storm to mess it up.

Then there are dirty dishes and clothes to wash, whiskers to shave, bills to pay, e-mails and phone messages to answer, children and pets to feed, broken stuff to fix — again and again and again.

Nowadays, you hear a lot of people assert “I’m a doer, I’m a problem-solver.” That’s good to hear because there are always things to do and there are so many problems that come to us unbidden.

I like to call myself a thinker and a dreamer, but I spend surprisingly little of my time in those hallowed states. When I’m not doing something that will keep me in the same place, I’m either planning for it or recovering from it.

Posted by at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In just a few hours, Mother Nature did more to thin Chico’s urban forest than years of ax-wielding humans could ever accomplish. We think we’re such big news when it comes to tampering with the environment, but our ferocious climate can sometimes make our efforts look puny.

The worst wind storm I’ve seen in my 10 years in Chico exposed the dangerous relationship that exists when you put lots of people, houses, cars and trees close together. Fortunately, most of the trees fell straight to the ground, missing structures and people.

The theme of this year’s Chico Icons show at Avenue 9 Gallery is trees. One of the points the exhibit makes is that, almost uniquely in the world of living things, trees have a mystique of durability and agelessness. Redwoods and bristlecone pines can live for thousands of years.

But trees are as much a symbol of fragility as they are of permanence. Just look at all the fallen giants from last week’s storm. They towered above Chico’s buildings and people. Suddenly, they’re on their way to becoming part of the soil. They’ll nurture tomorrow’s trees.

When the downed branches have been cut up and carted away, we’ll forget about the trees that stood on those spots. Instead, we’ll look upon trees that their now-toppled neighbors had been blocking from view. The sun will shine in spots that were shady, encouraging saplings to mature into strapping specimens. In time, they will age. Some of them will have to be cut down before they get very far into their dotage — generating heated protests. Chicoans sure do love trees — each and every one of them.

But to me, trees come and trees go. I don’t mind this as long as the basic fabric of Chico’s urban forest is preserved.

Posted by at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the things I like about this blog is that I can illustrate it. Most of the photos are my own, taken with disposable Safeway cameras.

This entry, much like the one I did a few months ago about palm trees, is photo-driven. It’s about signs.

First up is the new countdown pedestrian traffic signal at Normal Avenue and Second Street. It shows you how much time you have left to cross the street before the light changes. I first experienced and appreciated these kinds of signals in San Francisco, where you take your life in your hands every time you try to cross the street.

You're just going to have to take my word for it that the signal counts down numbers. This quality of this photo suggests that I might need to upgrade the type of camera I use.

This is also a talking signal. When you press the button it will tell you whether the light is red or green. I assume this is for people who can’t see the signal.

The next sign is a historical artifact. Fairview Center, near the intersection of East Avenue and Cohasset Road, is still around, but Nunzio’s Market is presumably long-gone. I found it interesting that the sign for it still stands. It shows how businesses — even those that merited tall signs — come and go. When we came to Chico about 10 years ago, the Bomber’s Baja burritos placed was in Fairview Center. We were faithful customers for about five years, but then we started going to other burrito places.

When I last looked, Bomber’s was gone and the building was vacant. We may be partly to blame for it going out of business.

And now for the mystery spot sign. Can you figure out where it is? The word “beautiful” has been carved into the back of this sign. The word “Bush” is a graffiti addition. It was hard to get a good photo of this sign because at this time of the year, the tall trees next to it shade it from the sun most of the day. You don’t have to walk by the sign to read the back of it. It’s visible from the road.

The last sign, like so many that clutter the landscape, is funny because it states the obvious. It says we shouldn’t dump stuff into the storm drain, but who would do such a thing? And if you are the sort of person who does this, no sign is going to stop you. I guess these signs are part of the movement to bolster Chico’s “green” credentials.

This entry is so photo-driven that the text isn't quite taking up enough room to wrap around the four photos. I'm writing this to help pad the text. I don't really need that much text because the signs speak for themselves, although it is clear to me that they would do a better job of speaking if my photos did a better job of showing details, such as the numbers on the countdown sign.

Posted by at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)