Nestucca Spit Press Meditations – A Blog by Matt Love

December 6, 2023

Overcast Meditations

shaft

December 4, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: Sunday Football

Bottle Coversmaller

December 1, 2023

A Man’s Need for Counseling

elk

November 29, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: Elk Spaghetti

annette

November 27, 2023

Annette

cutscover

November 26, 2023

Support Nestucca Spit Press This Holiday Season! Buy Some Books!

pistolfortsunday

November 22, 2023

Sunday Fort Building

November 20, 2023

Tribute to Bruce, Cindy, Ron and the Nesika Beach RV Park

corn

November 18, 2023

Candy Corn Homeless Man

kit

November 16, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: First Aid

james

November 14, 2023

Some Thoughts on Philosophy

scope

November 10, 2023

The Stethoscope Man

carrots

November 8, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: Carrot Curry Soup

November 6, 2023

Guinness Meditations

November 1, 2023

Jamie Needs a Flute!

October 30, 2023

Elizabeth

October 25, 2023

Rainy Day Ruminations

October 23, 2023

The Joy of Reedsport

October 18, 2023

Darrel

October 16, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: Jack Off

October 11, 2023

Dad Contracts Covid

October 9, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: The Great Escape

October 4, 2023

Prefontaine Memorial Run

October 2, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: The Narrows

September 27, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: Lorna

September 25, 2023

Oregon Tavern Age: FDR

September 20, 2023

Almost Gus

September 18, 2023

Poverty, By America

September 13, 2023

Perry

September 11, 2023

The Death of Little League

September 6, 2023

I Have a Story to Tell

September 4, 2023

Joy Writing Workshop in Astoria October 14

September 1, 2023

Oregon On My Mind (Part 7)

August 30, 2023

Oregon On My Mind (Part 6) Rest in Peace Walt Curtis

August 28, 2023

Oregon On My Mind (Part 5)

August 23, 2023

Oregon On My Mind (Part 4)

August 21, 2023

Oregon On My Mind (Part 3)

August 16, 2023

Oregon On My Mind (Part 2)

August 14, 2023

Oregon On My Mind (Part 1)

August 9, 2023

An Oregon City Legend

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.