dragons

July 7, 2025

Fourth of July in Empire

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The mayhem had commenced on my street and dusk had not yet settled over Empire.

Earlier in the day, President Trump had signed the Big Beautiful Bill into law.

I went to my front window to investigate the mayhem and observed two, obese, approximately 12-year-old white boys wearing tight shorts and tight t-shirts throwing snap dragons on the pavement.

One of the boys assumed a squatting position reminiscent of taking a dump in the woods. He raised his arms and clenched his fists in the manner of President Trump on stage at a rally. The friend tossed snap dragons his direction.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

I heard them laughing. Then I heard the squatter yell, “I’m going to fart!” I couldn’t see his face. Did I want to?

The boy’s body contorted as he ripped his fart. Then he abruptly stood up and shook his ass awkwardly.

“I shit my pants!” he yelled. “I shit my pants!”

I believed him. Boys do not lie about such things. Other things, yes.

His friend howled and tossed more dragon snaps at him.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The boy who shit his pants began to dance.

I was witnessing an American boy shit his pants on the Fourth of July accompanied by the cacophony of dragon snaps (and other fireworks) and dance in the aftermath.

He did not go inside to change. He kept dancing and his friend kept tossing snap dragons.

And thus I was gifted an indelible new metaphor for the current state of American life.

Gifted?

NEVER STOP PRE

The Enduring Inspiration of America's Greatest Sports Legend

Buy the Book: Print $21.99 + $5 shipping

"Never stop Pre. When he's no longer relevant in Oregon, Oregon is dead."

On May 31, 1975, Coos Bay, Oregon native Steve Prefontaine died in an automobile accident. At the time of his death, he held 14 American records in distance running.

Pre was 24 years old and already a legend in Oregon and the world of track of field.

Read More - Click here to buy the ePub or Kindle Editions

Read and subscribe to Matt Love's observations on the Substack platform on the crisis of homelessness.

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Nestucca Spit Press Presents A New E-book

Sonny and the Big Clean-up Day

(A Story for Kids and Adults)

By Matt Love

Sonny the husky discovers a homeless encampment destroying a creek in a Portland city park. She alerts her owner and a park ranger and inspires a community clean-up of the damaged riparian area. Neighborhood citizens and residents of the encampment join Sonny to restore a tiny part of a watershed and later celebrate their collaboration.

Buy Bundle Direct From Author (PDF & ePub Download)

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$15.99 + $4 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.