More Nail Shop Meditations

Dad is getting his bi-monthly pedicure and manicure from the nail shop.

Innocuous pop music plays.

I hear a fountain gurgling.

I just finished writing a piece about filberts.

A fire truck just drove by with all the lights flashing but with no sirens wailing. That about sums up the state of America.

It’s primary season in Oregon and I read the entire voter’s pamphlet. Thank god they still print and mail these relics. Someone should write a novel in the form of a voter’s pamphlet. Maybe someone has, somewhere. There are such weird personal nuggets and asides in some of the fringe candidates, and in the case of the Republicans running for Governor, the mainstream,. Their fringe is the mainstream and that is never going to reverse in my lifetime.

Soon, I’ll be launching the independent gubernatorial campaign of a true Oregonian. His name his Frank Beavers. He doesn’t take money from Big Timber or Phil Knight or crypto currency ciphers. You’ll learn more about Frank and his vision for Oregon soon.

I continue to discover literary treasures in the street libraries. One such book is called Subways are for Sleeping by a writer with the last name of Love, published in 1957. It’s a collection of profiles of homeless people in New York city from that era, and their ingenious and almost unbelievable ways of surviving under the radar.

Not so much of that under the radar going on these days with the homeless and that should tell us everything.

Here I am writing about the homeless over 60 years later and there this tiny paperback was. Why does that keep happening?

The stories in the book have some relevance to today’s homeless crisis, but they are also as far removed as the Ice Age is from 2022. What was once found in the big cities, now has found its way to places like Sweet Home and Gold Beach and the bums and drifters and hobos aren’t called that anymore because the descriptions are totally lacking.

The blog passed five years this month. Most last three months. Blogs are so old school now. They’re like writing on papyrus as far as the Internet goes. Still, I keep writing up my meditations and thank you readers, whoever you are, for reading them.