icesmash

September 9, 2020

Corona Virus Thoughts #14

More unraveling in America, almost 190k deaths, but at least the NFL starts next week so everyone can forget about the ongoing catastrophe.

I just read the news that some kind of firecracker device at a gender reveal party ignited a California wild fire. I just wrote that sentence and I can’t believe I did.

School,or what used to be known as school, starts in Oregon soon. I am glad I am not a classroom teacher anymore. I wouldn’t have been able to hack it with Zoom and all that.

I need an adventure to snap me out of my fixation to find another writing project. I think I will take a long drive up a remote river canyon and seek out a story. Surely there is one lurking there.

I’ve been writing letters to my cousin in rehab for alcohol abuse. I wonder if they are helping in any way or is that just my conceit that a receiving a handwritten letter might make a difference to someone’s mental health. I know it would mine if I ever received one.

This morning, I built the 11^th fort in a complex of forts. I’m almost out of wood in this area. I found an empty can of Smirnoff Ice Smash in one of my forts. I wonder what that concoction tastes like.

The election is two months away. A lot could happen between now and then, like more people dying, more fires, more shootings, more conspiracy theories, more dumb and dumber all around.

Can we become more dumb and dumber in America? Oh sure. Just listen to another press conference from a Pac 12 or Big Ten football coach about the virus and necessity of playing football during a pandemic and we’ll hit a new low of stupidity every time.

My new best friend in nature is a crow with a broken wing that hangs out in the parking lot of my grocery store. He knows my car and always trots up looking for some snacks. I always have some ready.

Another young man violated the mask mandate in the grocery story not too long ago. He wore the attire of tree faller or construction worker. I walked by him and looked at his face. Pure smugness. Grade A American dumbshit. You just want this type to contract corona, maybe die, or kill some family members (poor, unnecessary grandma) and then have him say it never happened. It was all a hoax.

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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.