Wind and rain flogged Elmer and me as we descended to the Coos Bay beach adjacent to the boat ramp. Waves broke black and white onto the shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was 7:30 in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We relished the punishment because nothing energizes my creative mind and spirit more than walking in hard rain down a beach with a dog. It’s also my secret weapon to transcend these times that try our souls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something to my left arrested my attention. A person or persons had erected two 6-8-foot driftwood crosses at the entrance to the homeless encampment. Sentinels or totems? Or merely the result of drug-induced chaos?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A grimy and shredded American flag\u2014displayed upside down\u2014whipped in the wind. The crosses didn’t budge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elmer sprinted over to the crosses and christened the one flying the flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There my husky was, taking a piss on a driftwood fort flying an American flag as a distress signal, at the entrance to a homeless encampment destroying a wetlands with a magnificent view of Coos Bay and the President would deliver the State Union speech later that evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The image cried out for a massive oil landscape painted in multiple shades of thick and crusty gray, even the stars and stripes rendered in gray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wind and rain flogged Elmer and me as we descended to the Coos Bay beach adjacent to the boat ramp. Waves broke black and white onto the shore. It was 7:30 in the morning. We relished the punishment because nothing energizes my creative mind and spirit more than walking in hard rain down a beach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9768,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1264,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coos-bay","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9767"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9770,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767\/revisions\/9770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}