May 12, 2018

A Writer in Peril

A good friend gave me a brownie for breakfast so I brought it to the driftwood fort, along with cheese, peanuts and coffee.

She had baked an excellent brownie with flourishes of coconut and yogurt.

I sat on a driftlog near the entrance to the fort, the one I’ve been building for six months. The sun was shining and no one was around for as far as I could see. I ate the brownie while reading some of the messages left behind in the latest installment of driftwood fort writing project.

The topics included:

Complaints of wind and stinging sand.

A haiku.

A desire for beer.

Praise for being alive.

A YouTube address for a video of the fort.

Questions of the fort builder. (Why did you make this?)

And…a note that read: “I wish life was easier. I miss so many people. I don’t want to live anymore.”

A person in obvious peril wrote the note. Perhaps the writing helped. It was unsigned. It was written at the beach and the writer was on the beach in crisis and had to climb inside the fort and investigate the box stashed in there. There was curiosity still within the writer, a good sign I think.

I’ll never know where any of these projects lead. That’s their very nature. I do it because it is novel way to engage people with writing and thinking (in nature) and certainly not a novelty. Indeed, I’ve read messages that indicate the writers were clamoring for such an opportunity, a real tactile one on paper with Keno pencils (thank you Oregon Lottery!). People often leave gifts behind that go well beyond word: pot, liquor, pennies, agates, shells, feathers, condoms. There are frequent comments of appreciation for the projects and the groovy containers that facilitate them. (Axiom: the groovier the container the more participation in the project.)

The projects continue. I keep learning more. I keep providing fort-inspired possibilities for human media. Interestingly enough, I have never seen anyone actually writing a note.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

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The Old Crow

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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

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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.

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The Savage

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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.

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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.