thousand

November 11, 2020

A Thousand Posts

I just passed a thousand individual posts on this blog and I want to thank all of the readers who have spent time here. I stopped tracking the numbers on readership a long time ago and really have no idea who is reading the blog anymore.

When I launched the blog in April 2017, it was a very dark and dangerous time in my life and having this platform as a way of organizing and conveying my thoughts was crucial to my survival, both creatively and financially. The subscriptions/donations to the blog in that first year saved my house and allowed me to navigate an unknown path to where I am now, not exactly prospering, but moving forward to something better.

Over the years, posts here helped produce the Bonnie and Clyde Files, Oregon Tavern Age publication, Pioneer Pride memoir and Oregon Coast Christmas Tales. I never thought I’d keep the blog going this long, with hundreds of thousands of words on a variety of subjects. Hell, I didn’t know what was going to happen with this project when I started. Most blogs die after a month. This one didn’t.

In the course of these thousand posts, I have reconnected with old friends and readers and met some fantastic new readers, including one who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help get me some grant writing work. The blog also helped me recruit participants for my writing workshops, find new author coaching clients and turn people on to great Oregon stories like Vortex I and David Shetzline.

I estimate about 95 percent of the material has been original, but it was good to republish some old pieces that had disappeared online.

Every once and a while, I receive a contribution for my writing here, and I truly appreciate that gesture. It means the reader values the effort of a professional writer.

At times I thought I would take a break from the blog, and had run out of ideas to write about, but something new always emerged, and often from the most unlikeliest of places, such as an old book about Jello as you will see soon.

So the blog will continue, until it doesn’t. A thousand more posts? Who knows? Keep reading and thank you for your time and attention.

Support Meditations Blog

The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.