February Musings Overlooking Youngs’ Bay

That’s no typo. It’s spelled Youngs’ Bay and I have never learned the reason for the strange possessive. It’s misspelled all the time, usually by a corporate business entity.

Two dogs snooze nearby. I am drinking a glass of single malt scotch to celebrate a very good week in my life. My friend Holt turned me on to good scotch. Bourbon is dead to me forever. Times change. I’ve changed.

Two 70-year old women died while clamming a few days ago. They were clamming at night and got swept away. Their bodies were recovered, unfortunately, I think. I can think of worse ways to die. They probably felt nothing. A wallop, unconscious, and that was it. They never felt the cold, I bet.

Saddle Mountain is calling me. I want to climb it with a new friend.

I just finished reading a manuscript of a novel about high school teaching written by a former high school English teacher. He died from cancer in 2011 and his brother has contracted with me to bring this book to the attention of the reading public, in some form or another. It’s easily the best book about teaching high school I’ve ever read and it’s set in Astoria in 1996. As I read this novel, it was as if this teacher was speaking directly to me from the grave in his attempt to resurrect me as an Oregon man of letters. I am listening Neil.

Walmart rises in Warrenton. It’s another nail in the coffin in Astoria’s future as a gritty place.

I read the NY Times today, oh boy. It was a disembodied reading.

It always intrigues me when the media finds a new old world and every writer starts using it. The latest example is “riven.”

Why do people line up to drink stout beer? Conversation about stout beer is the most boring thing I’ve ever overhead.

A recent obituary said that the man who died was finally released from the “surly bounds of earth.” The earth isn’t surly; the earth is the earth. The people on earth construct imaginary surly bounds and create their own destructive surliness. I’m glad I never met this man before he died. He was probably beyond surly, a real asshole.

I want to cook a vegetarian goulash in the crock pot. I have a recipe.

The Bonnie and Clyde book is about ready to launch. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever written, which is about right, because I am a new person.

I’m glad I didn’t live in the era when parents accompanied their offspring to every junior high sporting event and put their lives on hold watching the offspring perform. Kids typically never learn an interesting damn thing about life on overnight outings unless their parents aren’t around.

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