Secret Coast Radio 19

NSP Meditations, secret coast radio

Welcome to the Secret Coast Radio podcast broadcasting somewhere on the Secret Coast

Let us begin by saying:

We prefer the first person plural over the singular.

We prefer mystery over journalism, but journalism is pretty important right now.

We prefer rock hounds over hoarding gold.

We prefer the sound of birds over the sound of chainsaws.

We prefer the sound of the fracas between hummingbirds over the the sound of the fracas between politicians.

We prefer soup over sophistry, listeners over loudmouths.

We prefer reaching out to people over wondering who should reach out first in moments of crisis.

We prefer business types who raise wages when they recognize good work over business as usual indifference.

We prefer revival over recrimination, duty over dereliction of duty, joy over rage.

We prefer the story of the front-line grocery clerk keeping us alive over the story of the quarantined celebrity telling us to be safe.

What is this podcast about? Who are we?

Like we said, mystery over journalism.

Let show number 19 begin.

The link to the show is:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

Crab Louie!

NSP Meditations

I sat on a deck that overlooked a fine garden, field and trees. A vulture flew overhead. I sipped a barley wine and tasted delicious buttered toast made from my host’s homemade bread. It was a sunny Monday morning, an hour before noon. Earlier, I had planted 200 Sitka spruce trees in an attempt to heal a poisoned clearcut. I’ll long be dead before I’ll know if it did any good.

My host brought me a glass bowl of cooked crab with some cocktail sauce. Crab Louie! I’d never eaten Crab Louie before, but here I was eating it for brunch, along with the toast and barely wine. What a strange, incongruous, glorious combination! And who was Louie? And shouldn’t I be drinking a Cutty Sark on the rocks rather than a barely wine? Perhaps dragging on a Pall Mall, too? Doesn’t Crab Louie just scream 1952 and a table at a night club in Akron, waiting for Dean Martin to perform his 1:30 a.m. show, his third show of the night?

At that moment I was surely the only professional tree planter in the world feasting on Crab Louie after a job and I relished that distinction. More marvelous incongruity and cheers to the people who invite it into my life.

Fishermen

NSP Meditations

How about a real good yarn, a true one, about two younger men, one who wears pink tennis shoes and pink outer wear, the other who chews tobacco and walks around holding a beaverwood staff? Sure why not? As Isak Dinesen wrote, “The only imaginative writing that interests me is writing that illuminates the magic of life.” Or something to that effect.

These dudes exude some interesting magic of life. They live in a disheveled RV Park on the Secret Coast. They do not work. They do not own a vehicle. They often drink 32-ounce Dr. Peppers. They decorate rocks with wonderful illustrations of woodland creatures. How they ended up here is a total mystery, perhaps even to themselves. One receives disability, perhaps of the existential kind. He’s the breadwinner.

They like to fish. They didn’t know a lick about fishing until moving here. They bought some poles and rode the bus to the river or lake and fished for salmon or trout. They also walked to the beach and fished for surf perch. They learned through trial and error, observation, and asking questions. They improved and started catching fish, cleaning them at a station, bringing them back to the park on the bus or walking them home in a bucket. Then they fried the fish up for supper. Huck Finn couldn’t have done it any better.

The virus struck. The bus would only transport people for medical appointments, not fishing. The breadwinner somehow arranged for his caregiver to come over, pick up the two men, drive them to the fishing spots, and then pick them up in a couple of hours. If they caught fish, the caregiver gave the fish a ride home, too.

It was all perfectly legal, a unique form of care giving, quite possibly unique in the annals of care giving, and totally hard core Oregon.

One day, the chew man landed a monster trout from a lake while fishing from a steep bank. He went to reel the beast in and it damn near pulled him into the water. Then, the pole snapped!

He needed a new pole, so he asked a crank living in the park, the weird man who collected beaverwood, if he could pick out a choice cut for a new fishing pole. The crank was delighted to help. In short order, they found the perfect pole.

So in the coming days, two Oregon men will be chauffeured at taxpayer expense in some sort of therapeutic exercise for one of them, to the river and lake, quite possibly the ocean as well, and one man will fish for salmon, trout or perch using a fishing pole made from 100% certified, GRADE A, organic, Oregon beaverwood.

You see, it was a good story.

Corona Virus Thoughts #2

Corona Virus Thoughts, NSP Meditations

The world is sick, sicker than usual, and the headline read:

Khloé Kardashian Wears Trending Neon Yeezys for a Playdate With Daughter True in Teeny Combat Boots

What? What language is this? Some new form of banality? Can someone translate this? Can it be translated by anyone with a grain of intelligence?

What about the human being who wrote this headline and received a wage for doing so? Who is this person? Are they living the dream?

Inside a quarantine facility made by union men decades ago, a writer thinks:

I want a dog.

Why aren’t people writing letters?

I hope rain lets up so I can keep my play date with my friend the chipmunk and listen to some hummingbirds duke it out.

Where is FDR we we need him? Where is the America of the Marshal Plan, GI Bill, and Civil Rights Act? Forget the moon landings, however. They did nothing for us. They hit golf balls and planted a flag. Where is the America that busted the trusts?

My god, I just remembered a dream I had last night! I was Walt Whitman doing something. I’ve never had a dream where I became someone else. It’s quite strange.

I laugh at the notion that high tech will save us. It might if the country went back to a 90% tax bracket like we used to have and the policy was redistribution of wealth instead of grossly higher concentration as it is now.

The fall began with the election of Ronald Reagan and his campaign to ruin government and governance. I thought rock bottom of this effort came with the election of George Bush II, but I was wrong, very wrong. Look at us now.

Fortitude

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

Surfers surfed in the roiling river, between the north and south jetties. The incoming tide sent up perfect waves. It seemed insane to be out there, but probably was necessary to preserve a semblance of sanity.

The seals were right there with them. They were just having fun and munching fish at the same time.

Rain fell. The ocean was green and white, churning and churning. It would outlast us all. As the poet Richard Hugo wrote, “We are absurd.”

Never is that more obvious than now. What’s that saying about a trained seal…? Well, they could run the federal government better than it’s being run now, and they wouldn’t try to enrich themselves, either.

A man built a fort, a solid hangout fort. He decorated it with an empty can of Mickey’s found in the wood. Fort Mickey! Oh the goodness of the fortified green of Mickey’s malt liquor, but really, you need the short, squat, wide-mouth jar for the best effect. The tall can seems classless, more like a Miller Lite.

An old rock hound approached the fort building man. They met. The rock hound sported an orange mustache out of the Civil War. He gave an instant lesson in rock hounding, agates and jasper and such. He laughed at the can and wanted it for future cash. The fort man told him he needed it for art’s sake! They both laughed at that.

Rock hound left to go tumble and polish. Fort man kept on fortifying. The seals came in closer to watch.

Corona Virus Thoughts

Corona Virus Thoughts, NSP Meditations

A tattooed, bearded, shirtless man did push-ups in the parking lot of the grocery store while his dog curled up snoozing next to his backpack.

President Trump enlisted Creed in the fight against the virus. He requested they write and perform a Fight the Corona Virus RAWK Anthem. In an empty stadium, of course. Creed knows how that goes.

I’ve spent much of the last four weeks planting trees to restore a wrecked, poisoned watershed. It’s fine work and I am totally alone except for birds and plants and bees. I am lucky to have this.

My best friend of late has been a chipmunk.

I’ve read 17 books in three weeks. Four were Westerns. My favorite so far is a biography of the Danish writer Isak Dinesen by Judith Thurman. It might be the best literary biography I have ever read. It teaches you about her incredible life and how to write and how not to live as a writer.

I’ve built 14 snowdrift forts in three weeks.

I’ve written absolutely nothing.

I started my 150th or so journal last week.

I’m going to make a vegetarian meatloaf.

My peas are coming up.

Is there a market for environmentally-conscious erotica?

I have helped my elderly neighbors.

I have wondered what percentage of Americans have never planted a tree.

You can feel people slipping away.

I miss my great collaborator.

The virus presents an opportunity for many self-reflecting people to revolutionize their lives. I have feeling they don’t have the courage to do it once the dust settles. Back to business as miserable usual.

I watched another Fred Astaire movie. What is it about him and those ascots or scarves or whatever they are called around his neck? He looks the same age in every film and some of them are 30 to 40 years apart. The word that comes to mind when I watch him is: debonair.

Dog fever has struck.

I keep seeing empty cans of Viennese sausages along the road. Is that the food of the apocalypse?

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