January 23, 2018

January Meditations Overlooking Youngs’ Bay

“The rivers are our brothers,” said Chief Seattle. “You must give the rivers the kindness you would give your brothers.”

There has been very little kindness offered to the Columbia River.

I am making new friends. I am trying to reconnect with old ones. I am going to take a special new friend to the rivers of my current life and share what they are about to me. I am thinking of teaching a river-themed writing workshop. Would that attract any writers? Do writers prefer writing topics to topics like Kindness, Faces, Rivers?

Rain is forecast all week.

I am putting my house up for sale.

I am approaching 90 failed job applications.

The broken record simile is dead.

The elk are on the move.

I haven’t built a driftwood fort in a month.

I’m reading a book about a talking and singing book who wishes he had hands.

I recently reread some Edward Abbey. He’s not holding up as well as expected.

I met an exciting new poet. Our meeting has re-energized my passion for poetry. I am seeing more poetry around me.

I met a new author and literary entrepreneur who has good ideas for the Oregon Coast.

The beard has gone where no beard of mine has gone before.

I am thinking about my friend Glen and his kelp soup. Yes, I know someone who harvest kelp on the beach and makes a soup from it.

The crabbers broke ranks and some took a lower price from the processors. Marx always said: “Own the means of production.” The crab price dilemma on the Oregon Coast is a delicious story of would-be socialism and worker collectives and capitalism and strike-breaking and all of that. It’s still the frontier in that industry.

Charles Bukowski wrote: “What interests me is non-dullness.”

Rum and rain go well together.

Where is that writer on rain who sent me the cryptic note on graph paper?

I am putting together a writers’ collective. We won’t break ranks.

My great collaborator and I might collaborate again.

A friend from the past contacted me in a supreme act of rapprochement.

I made the most wonderful black eyed pea soup. I am sharing it with friends. I didn’t use to do that.

My dad goes in for major surgery on Monday. It occupies my mind.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

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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.