snow

July 4, 2020

Fourth of July Corona Virus Thoughts

I rambled the beach at an extreme low tide on the morning of Fourth of July. I admired sea stars and mussels. I stopped in one of my forts and made a phone call to a dear friend. I visited another fort and read the strange nonsense someone had written on the wood.

On my way home I begin to think about my country and the spectacle the President staged at Mt. Rushmore last night. I didn’t watch a second of, nor will I ever. I never thought I would live to see the day when a tinpot dictator held the highest office in the land. It all seems to be collapsing around him in disorder and death.

I got into it with a neighbor the other day. He described the mask order as Nazi. He said it was all a hoax and the flu. I rebutted this and that and then walked away. If gravity aided the Democrats, he would say gravity was a hoax and believe it. Consider this: many French reactionaries welcomed the Nazis invasion of their country. The Vichy government and all that. This time feels like that to me, a Vichy sort of government in place that rallies the fanatics with fear and hate and debasement. The old fascist playbook. It’s never changed. It never will. Consider this: there were many Germans who still believed in Hitler after it all ended. We have those kind of Americans today.

Last night I watched a movie about football and one of the extras was someone named Jack Snow, which I think is about the best male name I have ever heard. It occurred to me that I once owned the football card of Jack Snow. He was on my All-Name team, a group of players with the best football names, such as Dick Butkus and Jack Ham and Sonny Sixkiller.

As I was walking back home from the beach, I came across a dilapidated red sedan parked in front of a grange hall. The sedan was covered in moss and duct tape. The tags were expired from years ago. A young man was sleeping in the driver’s seat because the back seat was filled with shit. The man wore a black hoodie and his mouth was wide open as he slept. He face was scarred and hollow.

This scene struck me as precisely the image of America’s body politic.

The swallows soared overhead as I passed the sedan. They didn’t care about anything but flying.

I hope I don’t hear a single firecracker tonight, but I will.

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.