keith

February 1, 2021

Corona Virus Thoughts #21

Almost 27 million cases. Almost 450k Americans dead. Oregon still pretty much on lockdown. It doesn’t feel that way to me because I don’t really go anywhere that requires being inside, except for grocery shopping.

I got my father on the virtual waiting list for a vaccine through Kaiser. As soon as I get the email, we head in for the first shot.

Governor Brown prioritized teachers over seniors. My dad is fine with that. He was a teacher for 40 years. Others are not.

It could very well be that Trump’s response to the virus is the worst failure of any American president in history. Just three days of Biden’s term revealed that.

They managed to get through the college football season with no player or coach deaths. I’m actually surprised.

Hey, did you know that Sam Houston State is traveling to play Gopher Snot University in a meaningless college basketball game during a pandemic?

Oregon still may try to play high school football this spring. Why?

The Republicans are balking to a raise in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour (like it is in Oregon). They don’t want the front like workers who fed them to earn less than a living wage even though they called them “heroes” from the floor of the House and Senate.

I wonder about the black market for the vaccine and all the rich people jumping in line. I am sure those stories will start leaking out soon.

The variants are now appearing all over the nation.

Death feels like it’s everywhere.

More stories coming out about people dying from Covid and still believing it was a hoax or a conspiracy unleashed by Bill Gates to inject us with tracking devices.

I’ve asked myself: what’s the major difference living in the city during the pandemic as opposed to living in the country? I find myself reading and writing less in the city.

One wonders when all this is concluded, if it ever is, if there will be a single American family not touched by death due to the virus.

Super Bowl in a week with fans.

If Keith Richards dies of the virus….(finish that sentence).

I’ll probably never travel outside of Oregon or Washington again.

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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.