blogshots

June 9, 2017

Lost and Found 12 / Lists

List of what needs to be lost:

Fear of possible confrontations

Doubts about my writing ability

Astoria. Astoria. Astoria

Insomnia

Windowless rooms where guidance is supposed to occur

Other people’s weird agendas for me

Being clever in moments that require dullness

The past, but not memory of it

List of what needs to be found:

Dog

Literary confidante

Creative collaborator

Job (47 applications and still trying)

Stamina (not the physical kind)

New writing styles for new problems

New Oregon beer to champion

New OTA joint

New publishing mediums to disseminate my writing

Tennis backboard

More coyote sightings

Macrame décor items

A gig

People who will give me a chance

The architecture of how to write the book I am living

The following books in old paperback editions: Moby Dick, Catch-22, The Scarlet Letter, Heart of Darkness, The Trial, Notes From the Underground, The Handmaid’s Tale

New retail outlets for corduroy pants

More friends who gift me Kenny Rogers’ brand corduroy jackets with suede patches

New reasons to wear corduroy jackets because teaching in them is over

People who follow through

Continued belief that I will experience surprise good fortune

New coastal locale to start over

Edible plants

Someone who can run a meeting

New beaches without memories of dearly departed dogs

30-40 year old RV in decent shape for sale

Literary agent

Obscure Bob Seger tracks

Reconnect to the first Pretenders album, which is gone

Another view from the top of Saddle Mountain

Partner/sidekick to investigate unsolved Columbia River Watershed murders and disappearances

Three-dimensional topographic map of the PNW

Total anonymity

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.