Talking Poetry With Dad

NSP Meditations, Poetry

Dad and I were discussing the state of America, what was sickness at the core of our popular and political culture, when I asked him if he knew a poem that might distill it all down for a simple, yet also metaphorical understanding, if such a thing were possible or even desirable.

It took him all of a few seconds to ponder his answer, and then from his recliner, he recited a classic from Emily Dickinson, his favorite poet. He must know at least two dozen of her poems by heart.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Emily got it right all right. The big lead frog croaking to the admiring (deluded) bog. Dive into those American metaphors.

After the recital, somehow the topic of iambic pentameter came up. Perhaps I made a crack that Shakespeare probably farted in iambic pentameter it was so natural to his verse. Dad then launched into a few stanzas of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” as an example of iambic pentameter:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

It truly astonishes me that I cannot recite a single poem and my dad can recite close to a hundred. Now I can recite most of the lyrics from the Stones’ Exile on Main Street and a fair share of Prince and Bruce Springsteen songs, but that’s it. Not even a full Dylan song. I think something is truly lost in my not being able to recite a single poem.

Idea for a New Story: Beaver Town (part 4)

Fiction, NSP Meditations

Neil says “Hell Yes!” and rounds up Crazy Horse for a special gig. A month later they rock out at the Acropolis Club on a special stage decorated with beaverwood. The strippers hump beaverwood poles during the show and throw Neil Young-autographed choice cuts of beaverwood to the audience. After the third encore that closes with “Keep on Rocking (Beaverin’) in the Free World” with new lyrics written for occasion, Neil chucks his guitar into Johnson Creek where a crafty beaver chomps it by the neck an hauls it downstream to become part of his lodge! Don’t get no more beaver rock and roll than that!

The show, merchandise, photo booth shots with Bushy, and private dances with the strippers raises $250k and the watershed restoration project begins right away. Hank scores with all the strippers and as previously mentioned, that leads to a brawl between them (season two). Season two will also feature an evil, Evangelical city road planner who wants to condemn the land around the club for a highway bypass. This proposal would destroy the joint and all the restoration efforts. The strippers go to war with the planner (as only they know how to) and who says you can’t fight city hall with beaver to save beavers!!!!!

Idea for a New Story: Beaver Town (part 3)

Fiction, NSP Meditations

Hank, the super hot beaver biologist, tells the strippers that a mile-long restoration of Johnson Creek near the club would cost over $100,000 and would include non-native plant removal, planting of trees and shrubs, culvert replacements, some easements on private property, and the placement of large woody debris. He also says that it would take several years to see any improvement in habitat.

Sage, Sinaman and Rayvnn eat steaks at the rack while a colleague prances above them and they confer with Hank about the restoration plan. They also discuss how they can raise the dough in a short amount of time. A couple extra shifts and bigger tips aren’t going to cut it! Sinaman pitches an idea for a line of naughty beaver-themed t-shirts and panties and doodles a logo up on a cocktail napkin. They’ll dance in the apparel, sell the line on Etsy, and start a Gofund project, too. Hank suggests they sell choice cuts of beaverwood as well, and brings out a few samples for the strippers inspection. Sage handles one, massages it a bit, and jokes they could market certain cuts as dildos! Everyone yucks it up after hearing that. Saving beavers is fun!

As time goes by, Bushy the Beaver regains his strength at a wildlife rehabilitation facility in rural Clackamas County. The strippers arrange for a Beaver Cam at the facility to broadcast Bushy’s antics and they play it nonstop at the club as the strippers perform. Bushy becomes a kind of folk hero to the club’s regulars and they contribute money to pay for his care. Bushy’s YouTube station begins to accumulate hits and then goes viral when the scantily clad strippers start singing 80s and 90s pop hits to him live at the facility. “Like a Virgin” by Ravynn is especially popular. Some advertising revenue trickles in but the strippers need something big, really big, to get the cash really flowing. Then one afternoon, one of the old timer regulars, Elmer, a retired hippie archaeologist, says he just finished a biography of Neil Young and says Neil loves beavers and has completed all kinds of watershed restoration projects on his farm in Northern California. It’s practically a beaver paradise! That’s it! Neil Young! Get him to play a show in the club’s parking lot and charge $500, no $1000 a ticket! The strippers would dress up as sexy beavers right down to fake goofy buckteeth and faux tails and writhe around beaverwood poles onstage as Neil rocks the living hell out of the place. They’d live stream the gig, too, and the donations would pour in!

Ice Out Day 1 Observations and Activities

NSP Meditations

We lost power in the evening and the the next day:

I saw a man in skinny jeans trying to chip ice with a garden hoe. It didn’t go well.

I finished reading The Red Badge of Courage for the first time in 40 years and started reading a novel about US Grant. I was shocked how good the latter is. Crane was 24 years old when it came out and had never seen combat. He interviewed lots of Civil War veterans and helped bring their story of fear, courage and delusion to light.

My father and I wagered all day on things like whether the power would come on by this or that time or when this icicle would fall at this or that time. I made $15. (I lost it all and 20 more bucks the next day.)

I rigged up a radio with batteries and searched in vain for an AM or FM station broadcasting detailed news (not updates) about the ice storm and power outages. There wasn’t a single radio station in Portland with a single reporter doing any news reporting. There were, however, stations on the air with local announcers (not syndicated shows) who were discussing Jesus, the Blazers bench strength and how the Black Lives Matter movement no longer believes in the American Dream as enunciated by Martin Luther King in his 1963 speech. This last assertion was by the same (white) announcer who claimed Martin Luther King as a conservative (!) hero for his embrace of non violent protests to effect social change. I am not making this up. The fact is: the radio was utterly useless in the time of a public emergency and various stations would have seemed to have violated FCC regulations regarding their licensees and requirements to serve the public. I am no expert in this but it should be looked into by someone who is and write a story.

I fed squirrels.

I suffered through a morning without Perry Mason.

I shoveled ice and snow.

I drank a wee dram of scotch.

I made grilled cheese sandwiches.

Snow Day Talk With My Dad

NSP Meditations

As snow fell Dad and I sat down together with coffee in the living room and killed some time before Perry Mason aired. We start every morning with Perry and I must say that watching that show does tend to get one’s day off to a fine start because the prosecutors always lose, and in doing so, justice prevails.

During our conversation, I learned:

That in the early 1960s when my dad was a minster in Parkdale, Oregon he used a WW II surplus flamethrower in a Hood River apple orchard to suppress weeds. What? He said the orchard’s owner knew he was an ex combat Marine in Korea and doubtless had experience with a flamethrower, and Dad was looking for a little extra income, so why not? He told me one time the flamethrower threw up a nasty backflash that singed his eyebrows and could have easily killed him.

He once walked to grade school when it was 32 degrees below zero.

When he was 47 years old, Dad joined the Oregon National Guard. He was a teacher at Ogden Junior High in Oregon City at the time and then had the distinction of being the oldest man ever to join the Guard (maybe he still holds the title!). Dad told me he did it as a lark, for the extra dough, and of course, he had his summers off to fulfill his required weeks of service. He even got to travel to Hawaii and practice amphibious landings! I was examining his discharge papers from the Guard and it said he was rated as an expert marksman with the M-16 in his early 50s!

Also in his military papers was his original $5000 GI insurance policy he signed up for in 1953 right before his discharge from the Marine Corps. He’s been paying the premiums for almost 70 years! He told me he was finally ready to cash out the policy. I asked him why and he said he didn’t want the family to have to hassle with it after his death. So I got the VA on the phone and we started that process.

Idea for a New Story: Beaver Town (part 2)

Fiction, NSP Meditations

Here’s the idea for the story: one day, three strippers, Sage, Sinaman and Rayvnn, are on break in the afternoon out in the parking lot of the Acropolis, vaping some dank weed called Beaver Cherry Delight, when they see a confused-looking beaver emerge from the creek and collapse on the concrete. They are horrified and cradle the lovable bucktoothed creature known as castor canadensis and bring him into the strip joint to help him. Their goon of a manager orders them to get rid of the beaver and get back on stage, but they refuse and begin furiously Google searching how to care for him. In short order, they cut some willow branches from the creek with some steak knives from the kitchen, strip off the bark, and have the cook boil the wood up in his stew pot to form a kind of broth that they feed the beaver through a baby bottle that Sage uses to nurse her triplets on the job. All the customers come over to watch the feeding and are so moved they tip the strippers extra big to raise funds to have a beaver biologist make a house call. They find one online, call him, and he rushes over to assist. His name is Hank and he is a super hot horny hunk that the three strippers will fight over, really duke it out, in the second season.

Hank enters the joint and examines the beaver, now named Bushy. He says Bushy is malnourished because the stream’s riparian are around the club is dominated by invasive blackberry plants and there isn’t enough alders and willows to feed him and make a dam and lodge for him to take a mate and reproduce. When the strippers hear this, they start crying. They don’t want to let their little cute beaver die! Hank adds to their horror by declaring that if something isn’t done soon to rehabilitate this stretch of Johnson Creek to better ecology, beavers will vanish from the area and salmon won’t be able to spawn either.

Sage, Sinaman and Rayvnn aren’t going to let that happen! They are about to go full tilt Bushy the Beaver to save beavers!

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