anna_sonny32

January 21, 2020

Dogs Reigning in My Mind (Part 15)

In a short story titled “Dogs” Ring Lardner wrote, “A man can’t be all bad when he is so kind to dogs…well friends when you come right down to cases they’s (sic) about as much sence (sic) to this as a good many delusions we got here in this country…”

Meditate on Lardner’s statement. It’s true. A man can treat dogs with kindness and still be an angry, hate-filled asshole or a genocidal dictator. I do believe there is a sliver of hope to reconstitute angry or hateful human beings into decent human beings if they love their dogs. Something good lurks there. Imagine the angry man’s dog as an unwittingly disguised or camouflaged entrance to a deep, dark, limestone cave where his heart resides. A person can enter that dog cave as a spelunker, and explore for the presence of a heart. If the spelunker discovers the heart, no matter how hardened or sclerotic, perhaps the discovery begins medicine. Why not start the healing with the love of a dog? In recent years, I’ve spelunkered into many a person’s angry or indifferent heart via their dog. I’ve met with both success and failure in these attempts, but I never stop trying.

Time for a painful admission: I used Sonny the husky’s invalid condition as an excuse for not acting as a better human being or even a mediocre one. What that means is that I told people I had to care for her and could not get away from home. What that means is that I did not spare the time to care for friends suffering from cancer, divorce, dislocation addiction and mental illness. I am deeply ashamed of this. I often wrote about Sonny and held myself up as a pedestal of virtue in my steadfast caring for her. I did care for her with all my heart, but I shut my heart off to others who needed me. Please forgive me. I have asked.

I don’t want to become an anti-human dog person as I get older. I’ve seen evidence of that in many elderly people, particularly those volunteering at animal shelters. Humans have dealt these people truly terrible, brutal hands. They themselves might have dealt other humans equally terrible, brutal hands. Dogs are the only creature they can now care about. Don’t let a dog become that to you. You can care for both.

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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

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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.