NSP Correspondents

I Want Kitty Back

NSP Correspondents, Poetry

At Mall 101 in Depoe Bay,

an American flag flies between two signs:

Red-lettered “Art.”

Blue-lettered “Liquor.”

Guess which store remains open when leisure haunts the Oregon Coast?

Super Bowl Sunday tomorrow.

Bruce Springsteen plays live.

“Born to Run” or “Born in the USA?”

Or both?

I wish he’d play “Kitty’s Back,”

stop American time

like a shotgun spread to the face,

send the market crashing

on Super Hangover Monday

when mediocre high school history teachers

come down with the flu

and roll video of when America

kept on rockin’ in the free world,

and later end the academic year

without teaching about the Freedom Rides

or the massacre at My Lai.

Don’t give them “Glory Days” Bruce!

Give them “Jungleland,” one song, that’s it.

Oregon Tavern Age: Captain’s Cabin

Coos Bay, NSP Correspondents

It was my first day as a resident of Coos Bay and I utterly salivated at the prospect of discovering new OTA country, if there was any OTA country left on the Oregon Coast after Donald Trump had annihilated it forever by murdering storytelling by the regulars. Now all they did was parrot Fox News lies and wear their cheap MAGA gear imported from China.

On the drive from Portland I listened to Bob Seger—yeah, Turn the Page.

I’d driven by the Captain’s Cabin in the Empire district where I had purchased a home many times over the years, but never stopped in. Now was the time—2 in the afternoon on a weekday.

The parking lot was half full. No MAGA bumper stickers on $75,000 trucks.

One step inside and I knew the name was all wrong. It should be called the Captain’s Longhouse because it is one of the biggest OTA joints I’ve ever visited.

A shuffle board table, pool tables, high ceilings with rafters, a spacious outdoor area, a far corner where a live band could play complete with a dance floor.

A female OTA bartender stood behind the bar. An OTA man sat on a stool. A Christian home improvement show played on television.

I ordered a local ale and noticed signage for Dori’s homemade fruitcake–$2.50. Homemade fruitcake in OTA country? That was a first. I considered ordering it but didn’t want to suffer a possible bout of constipation or diarrhea so I demurred. But then again, Dori might bake the best fruitcake in Oregon. Next time, for sure.

I noticed the lineup of the Cabin’s evening entertainment. DJ, blues jam, karaoke, trivia and The Eddy Ross Band headlining on Saturday night.

Eddy Ross! A great rock bank name. Think Duane Eddy, Eddie and the Cruisers, Eddie Money, Eddie fucking Van Halen!

I asked the bartender about Eddy Ross. She’d didn’t know a damn thing because he’d never gigged the cabin. The OTA man said I should google him.

Fuck that! I’d walk in during the first set and find out for myself like the good ol’ days.

I was about to find a table when the bartender said she’d googled Eddy and his social media described his sound and “modern country and rock.”

Eddy Ross had gigged Winston and Roseburg, VFW halls, dive bars and such and now he was going to make his Coos Bay debut.

I watched a short soundless clip of the band—a four piece with a gargantuan physical presence on stage. I mean heavy and not heavy metal.

Would I attend the show? Probably not. Modern country is crap uneducated white man nostalgia and rock is dead.

I retired to my table and whipped out my journal. I noticed an old black and white photo of the New Deal boys building the McCullough Bridge over Coos Bay during the Depression.

I once lived in Newport where one of Conde McCullough’s art deco masterpieces, the Yaquina Bay Bridge, the greatest piece of architecture in Oregon, graced the landscape. I was so captivated by the Green Lady that I wrote a book about it.

Now I was back under Conde’s spell again.

I began to write. A young man (soon to be OTA) entered the joint and sat down at the bar. I read the back of his t-shirt: Stay the Fuck Out of My Face!

We’ve certainly devolved as a nation since “Don’t Tread on Me.”

I listened for Trump bullshit. Nothing. The men were talking about the Christian home improvement show and the building of a huge log cabin church in some desert wilderness where Jesus would presumably return one day and commence the rapture.

A Friend’s Meditations on Dementia

NSP Correspondents, NSP Meditations

A good friend of mine has started a unique program where she reads her meditations about her experience working with dementia patients. It’s an astonishing program that taught me a lot.

More information on the show and the link below. Please check it out and share with friends and family suffering in one form or another from the effects of dementia.

Kelly Callahan shares lessons from her work at “the center,” an adult day program for families affected by dementia. The link between dementia and meditation? Life in the present moment! Connection and awareness! Absolute acceptance! Spontaneous poetry! She holds a Master of Arts degree in Linguistics and a Master of Science degree in Clinical Linguistics. Kelly was certified as a Brain Longevity Specialist by the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation in October 2019.

https://insighttimer.com/kacallahan

A Vortex I Story

NSP Correspondents, NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History

(I received the following email from a reader not too long and thought it might interest those who know the incredible story of Vortex I.)

I just found your book, The Far Out Story of Vortex I, and bought it. I wish I had known about the first book,I would love to see the pictures. I was at Vortex and stayed for 5 days. If this is no believable so be it. I was on a Honda CL350, which was the last motorcycle allowed onto the main grounds, not the parking lot, and I had to agree to take people to and from the medical area in exchange for getting in. My memories are no longer as sharp as they used to be, I am now 77 years old, but I have often spoke about my first impression.

I was a graduate student at Purdue in Industrial Psychology, and had become a tourist hippie (grubby clothes, long hair, some pot, but with a job and every intent to have a career). I had been riding a bike for about a year, saw Easy Rider, and said to myself, “I can do that.”

I heard about Vortex while traveling north on the California coast. I had never before (or since) been to a music festival. When Woodstock happened the year before, I had just returned from Europe, and was too tired to go.

I was told the requirement to get the bike in (ride medical people around), and so I first went in and pitched my small tent. Then I returned to the entry area, and said to the young lady that let me in that I was ready to ferry anyone to the medical area. She said something like (I cannot remember anything exactly enough to quote it) ‘Oh, here comes ………. now!’ I looked up and saw a lovely young lady wearing a colorful print skirt and a hair garland; that’s it. I thought to myself, ‘Well, this is going to be a fun adventure. She climbed on the back of the bike and I took her over there.

We went straight to the LSD bad trip tent, and I found out that most of the problems were traceable to the fact that much of the LSD was laced with strychnine. This meant that many first LSD trips were accompanied by terrible stomach pains.

During Vortex I took part in the “wet sauna” and watched the Army Reserve helicopters overhead, with soldiers hanging out yelling to the naked hippie girls in the lake, who yelled back (we jumped in the lake after the sauna and the chanting of OM. The soldiers were basically hippie guys who dodged the draft by joining the reserves.

If you are interested in whatever else I can remember, prompt me, otherwise, thank you for this book.

Jan Ditzian

Panning During the Pandemic

Corona Virus Thoughts, NSP Correspondents, Poetry

An old timer pans for gold during the pandemic.

He pans a coastal stream that carries flakes

down the watershed to gleam at the ocean’s edge.

A gold miner at dawn on the beach!

He’s got the gold bug!

Wishing for a strike!

Hope of hope to get into the money

and start singing:

We’re in the money/ we’re in the money

The classic show tune from The Gold Diggers,

sung by Ginger Rodgers with her golden smirk,

in the Depression, 1933, FDR Year 1,

a sunrise of a year in America.

Freedom from fear FDR promised.

He delivered.

Look what our President today promises

while he rakes in the gold

to decorate his boudoir.

He delivered as well.

1 2 3 4