I was riding my bike around the neighborhood stocking the street libraries with books and pamphlets. Nothing like working as an unofficial librarian at nine in the morning.

A high school baseball game was underway in a park stadium. The stadium was a stone’s throw away from a homeless encampment dotted with some of the most dilapidated RVs I’ve ever seen. They were never moving again. They looked like they’d gone through the Battle of Stalingrad.

I stopped riding and took in a few pitches.

I noticed a few fans sat in the stands behind home plate. A few cheers sounded in the distance.

Some other fans caught my eye. Some of the residents of the homeless encampment had set up lawn chairs just outside the home run fence, center field to be exact.

I knew they were residents of the homeless encampment because I recognized them. They were some of the same people who occasionally play pickup basketball. I also knew because, well, there is now a familiarity with their appearance and demeanor. That’s not a judgment or slander. It has come from observation and interaction.

Not much really happened on the diamond as I watched. That’s why I never got into the game as a kid, although I played it for years. I do recall it being the best sport to participate in and daydream at the same time. Can’t do that in tennis or football or basketball. Okay, maybe long distance running allows for daydreaming.

I mounted my bicycle and rode away. A drizzle began to fall.

Baseball on a Saturday morning during a Pandemic. I dug that. Homeless people in lawn chairs watching the action. I really dug that. Maybe hot dogs and beer were showing up later. There was something uniquely American about this, but I was somewhat at a lost to define it.

As always happens when I publish a book, better stories about the subject of the newly released book emerge and it truly amuses and vexes me at the same time.

This happened with the Vortex I, rain, Blazers, Yaquina Bay Bridge and Astoria books. Now it’s happened with my latest book, Of Dogs and Meaning. (which you can purchase here and I hope you will to support and independent writer at work)

I was sorting through some of my Dad’s old books and came across The Devil’s Racetrack: Mark Twain’s Great Dark Writings. I opened it up and saw my inscription to Dad. It was birthday gift from me in 1982. I’d never read it.

I was feeling in the mood for some dark writing and took the book outside on the deck and began reading the introduction, It referenced a tragic sea tale about an abandoned St. Bernard.

What? Mark Twain wrote about dogs! And I didn’t have it in my dog book!

According to the introduction, in 1896 Mark Twain wrote a fragment of a tale called The Enchanted Sea Wilderness. It wasn’t published for nearly a half century after his death.

I read the fragment and it truly is dark, Twain at his very darkest.

So the fragment goes….a St. Bernard bounded aboard a docked American ship and quickly became a crew favorite and shipmate once the ship launched carrying a load of munitions. After two months at sea, the dog had had learned how to stand a watch. One night, with the captain and crew asleep, a fire broke out and the dog woke up everyone in time for them to escape to a lifeboat. Everyone, that is, except the dog, who the captain chained to the helm over the heated objections of the crew. He claimed the St. Bernard would eat too many of the provisions and thus had to be left behind.

It is easily one of the most harrowing dog deaths in all of American literature, (there are many of those), and the result of human evil and selfishness.

But, Mark Twain has his wonderful dark redemptive way at the end. The captain and his entire crew later perish at sea in a hellish vortex. They all die knowing they had died because they wronged the dog.

Oh joy!

Yes, I really needed this story for the dog book.

It was a bright weekday morning, just past 7. I was strolling through a park before a volunteer session at a food pantry. My route would take me past a creek, athletic fields, ducks, geese, trees, squirrels and a homeless encampment with several piles of garbage that boggled the mind with its weird variety.

Something caught my eye as I walked along the former wading pool now turned duck pond posted with signs telling people not to feed the birds.

To my left, I espied an older woman wearing pajama bottoms and a hoodie tossing bread to ducks in the pond and the grass. There must have been 15 or so ducks following her as she walked in circles.

Even from a distance, I could see her smiling and talking to the ducks.

It was obvious to me that she was living in the homeless encampment I would be traversing in a matter of seconds. Regular morning walkers in my upscale neighborhood don’t dress like this and they certainly follow the rules when it comes to feeding the birds.

My heart stirred at the woman’s defiance of the rules. She was out of her tent or RV or pallet shanty in the early morning on a fine day and communing with birds.

Tiny moments like this keep me buoyed, and inspire hope. I report them to you and others via conversation in the belief that such moments are worth sharing, and can serve as a foundation for contemplation and yes, even concerted action.