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November 16, 2020

Corona Virus Thoughts #19

Closing in on almost a quarter million dead in America. The President says and does nothing about it. No words at all. I bet some of the dead even voted for him. Wouldn’t that be fascinating to determine?

You can feel another big lockdown coming as record number of cases and hospitalizations occur.

Still, we continue to play football with hundreds of men interacting and in some places, with thousands of fans. It’s utter madness.

But…authorities in some places allowed football with or without fans but not church services of over 50 or so. I guess they got their priorities right in those states.

Governor Brown announced a two-week shutdown of non essential businesses starting Wednesday, yet UO and OSU will still play football. Total insanity.

Speaking of Governor Brown, an elderly man driving a battered pickup truck pulling a fifth wheel trailer has marooned himself near the beach on a dead end road. He has covered his truck with graffiti calling Governor Brown all sorts of terrible things. I don’t what he’s doing there. He probably doesn’t.

A storm walloped the Oregon Coast the other night. All I wanted to do was make pea soup and read a Maigret mystery by George Simenon.

It is clear many Americans are giving up on combating the virus. You can see it in their faces, either anger or indifference or total surrender.

Oregon’s cases spiked after Halloween and have been traced to five or so more parties in the Portland area. Trick or treat.

I do wish I could do more to help, but what is there for me to do?

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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.