Final Meditations on Dad’s Death

NSP Meditations

Almost six months have passed since Dad died in Portland at the age of 93.

The probate period ended and I completed all the duties managing his estate as required by my appointment by the court as his personal representative. Only one task remains—settling his tax liabilities at the end of the year.

It was hard work and some thorny family issues the result of colossal entitlement emerged but I took the high road. It’s the only road in life to take. And it never gets any recognition. So be it. I know.

Some final thoughts on Dad:

I think of him often when I am performing physical labor or playing golf—two of our pastimes in my youth—if you can call physical labor a pastime.

He taught me how to do hard physical labor.

I came away with enough money from his estate to alleviate financial anxiety for the foreseeable future, although one never knows under the chaos of the Trump Dictatorship. I feel extremely fortunate have this security when so many Americans do not and their situation further erodes.

I plan on publishing a collection of Dad’s writing in 2026. I wish I had some of the letters he wrote home while serving as a combat Marine during the Korean War. I have no idea what happened to them.

Toward the very end of his life before the the last fall, hospice and drugs, we often discussed the current dismal state of American political life. I wanted Trump to go farther and farther and destroy every part of government and decency so we’ll be forced to start over and ditch archaic undemocratic institutions such as the Electoral College, Senate and Supreme Court.

Dad disagreed with me. He wanted Americans to rally and fight the greed, corruption and immorality and throw the bums out. He had faith. I waver.

I miss our talks.

I feel so lucky that I had a great relationship with him the last 40 years of his life. In my young adulthood, not so much, but that is not a story I will ever write about.

As of now, I don’t plan on writing anything about my experiences with him in assisted living although it is rich story of the type mostly absent in books, articles, posts, podcasts, TV shows and movies.

It occurs to me me that everything I do now, milestones and celebrations, I no longer have Dad in my life to share them.

And finally, a story about something that happened at his service at the veteran’s cemetery in Portland.

After the very emotional flag folding ceremony and playing of “Taps,” a Marine in full dress uniform handed me the folded flag and a leather-bound book.

I opened it and beheld a certificate of appreciation for Dad’s military service.

It was signed by the Commander and Chief of the US Armed Forces, the President of the United States of America, a draft dodging, veteran hating, piece of shit. His “signature” on such a document was so utterly profane and farcical that I started laughing through the tears.

Later, I considered sending it back to the Pentagon and giving them a piece of my mind. Then I thought about crossing out Trump’s vile name and substituting “Abraham Lincoln.” Dad would surely have approved of any decision I made.

For now, I haven’t done anything with it, or the flag. One day, I’ll know what to do.

Full Charleston Moon

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

Fog enveloped Elmer and me at dawn on a tiny stretch of Coos Bay beach. We were adventuring in Charleston, a fishing village that takes gritty to a new high (low?). Noir lurks there like Double Indemnity, especially when light shines outside and wind shears siding off half-century-old derelict trailers that have seen more than their fair share of occupants dying alone because of lard, booze, pills, handgun, or worse, loneliness, or even far worse, bitterness.

Low tide approached. Visibility: one hundred yards. A flashing yellow sign erected in the dunes read: ROUGH BAR. A fading half moon hung low and crooked in the sky. It looked almost drunk up there.

To our left, two dozen brown pelicans dive bombed shallow waters, splashing down between rotten pilings. They disappeared, then reappeared, then perched themselves on the pilings and squawked away, sounding almost diabolical.

To our right, I saw the faint outline of a row of huge commercial fishing boats with a few deck lights throwing dull beams into the gray. I heard voices on the boats but couldn’t make anything out. Maybe old salts were plotting a murder against a stoner fisherman. Hey, just throw that lazy hippie kid overboard in the Sea of Alaska. He fell. Drunk. An accident.

In front of us, a dredger anchored in the narrow channel. It was dark and silent.

I heard the putter of a small boat heading our direction. Seconds later, two men wearing hoodies appeared and motored slowly toward the bar. I heard the men talking but couldn’t make anything out. Maybe buddies were plotting a murder against a cheating girlfriend. Hey, let’s play William Tell in the clearcut. Bad aim. Drunk. An accident.

Behind us, a massive marine dock and ship repair building stood listing and peeling on pilings.

More light was rising. Moments like these make me wish I could paint dark oils on big canvases because this early morning on the Oregon Coast demanded such a rich seascape. No poem or or film or photograph could capture its breathing, heavy beauty and jagged juxtapositions. Forget a watercolor or pod caster describing it on a phone recorder. Only an oil painting could and most of would be left up to the soul and imagination.

Elmer was racing around the sand and then disappeared over a bank. I followed at a jog.

More light. Fog began its coiling retreat. Gray was fizzling out. I didn’t want it to go. Gray is a lot more interesting than brightness. Same goes for people.

I stood atop the bank and looked down toward Elmer, He was prowling the bay’s edge, sniffing out what the high tide had delivered. Something to my right caught my eye. I turned. It was a corpulent homeless woman bent over, digging for something in the mud. Her pants were almost to her knees. No trace of underwear. She mooned me with a full ass snow white moon!

I had to have that moon shining in this seascape! I demand it!

And yes, I wanted Elmer in the painting, too. howling at the moon. You know the one.

Oregon Tavern Age: Roseburg Camping Bitches

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

I stepped inside my local OTA joint and a large, tattooed woman with enormous breasts barely contained in a halter and wearing a camo trucker hat that read “Camp Bitch” jiggled toward me on a collision course.

Sweet country Jesus!

At the last minute she swerved around the pool table and I was safe.

Bad dance music played and two other women danced along. The Camp Bitch joined them and there was plenty of profane hootin’ and hollerin.’

Obviously tourists, but all the great coastal OTA joints are great because of the occasional mixing of local and tourist and the stories that result.

The women were hitting the sauce hard and appeared in what I would describe as camping or rafting attire. They were all in their 30s.

I sat a high table across the room and the OTA bartender brought my usual ale. I asked about the ruckus and she informed me that the women were the self-described Roseburg Camping Bitches and were camping at the county beach park about ten miles away, which of course meant they were drinking in nearby bar.

Time to eavesdrop because it was impossible to write with all the hell raising going on.

“No kids, no dogs!” one of them yelled.

There also wasn’t any men with them. Maybe they were past men. Can you blame them considering the state of the American male in his 30s?

They carried on for 15 minutes, slammed some shots, and then I overheard them say they were going to hit the Coos Bay thrift stores. For sure treasures abounded that the thrift hounds hadn’t discovered.

It had been a long time since I’d seen tourists fired up like this and I relished the sight. And not once did I observe any one of them doing anything of their phones for social media purposes.

A Creative Crisis and Thoughts on Hope

NSP Meditations, Writing

After reading a book discovered in a Coos Bay street library, I immediately began questioning my writing about the homeless, my writing in general, American writing by liberals in general, and the role of the liberal American writer in the authoritarian age of Trump and MAGA disease and dominance.

I would describe it as a creative crisis.

Disturbing the Peace, by Vaclav Havel, prompted the investigation. Published by Alfred Knopf in 1990, the book consists of Havel’s lengthy answers to a long-ranging interview conducted by a Czech journalist named Karel Hvizdala in 1986. The interview covered all of Havel’s extraordinary literary and political achievements that many readers here may recall: his national and international renown as a playwright of the absurd under Communist rule; his role during the Prague Spring in 1968 when the Soviet Union invaded and crushed rebellion; his courageous dissidence, his leadership role in the writing and dissemination of Charter 77; his nearly five years in a Czech prison for protesting human rights abuses; his books and plays censored for decades; and so forth and so on.

In late 1989, Havel would become President of Czech Republic after leading the Velvet Revolution and Frank Zappa would play at his inauguration. But that remarkable event was still three years away when the interview took place.

I read some of Havel’s writing in the early 90s and remember absolutely nothing about it.

Disturbing the Peace describes Havel’s life as a dissident and writer under an authoritarian regime during the Cold War and how Eastern European writers and artists played such a major role in toppling the Soviet Union and their client states. Indeed, artists wrought the most power to foment the eventual revolution! It was educational and inspiring and also utterly disillusioning at times because as I mentioned above, it made me call into serious question what the hell I am doing with my writing about the homeless or any writing for that matter. It made me feel depressed how impotent, outdated and utterly useless so much writing by liberals (if not all of it) in the mainstream liberal press (print and online) is today in the face of Trump’s cruel madness and evil and illegal execution of power.

Yes, all of that editorial upheaval and waves of refection from reading an obscure book last checked out from the Coos Bay Public Library on December 29, 1990, (I have the card) which is presumably why it found its way into a Coos Bay street library. I used to disapprove of public libraries discarding books that hadn’t been checked out for decades but since finding so many of these gems for free in street libraries across Oregon or costing quarters in library book sales, I now applaud the distribution. Give those dead books molding on the stacks new life! Their random discovery can change a person’s life and I would know from personal experience.

What follows will be observations, meditations, imaginations and questions about my writing and publishing generated by reading Disturbing the Peace. I would characterize what you are about to read as my way of working through the aforementioned creative crisis. This process will be my way of trying to concoct some advice, perhaps even a solution/remedy, or a fresh path, as I move forward into a new phase in my writing and publishing life, assuming there is to be one.

Is my writing about the homeless people I encounter in Coos Bay useless or impotent? In Portland, my writing about the homeless was coupled with an attempt, ultimately successful, to get my friend Mark (and other members of the Old Crow Book Club) into housing. I’m not helping anyone into housing or access any services in Coos Bay.

What does my writing about the homeless in Coos Bay offer readers?

Maybe I should end my Substack newsletter, The New American Diaspora. Maybe there is nothing left for me to say as the project begins its fifth year in September.

Has any of my recent writing about the homeless spurred any positive action on behalf of the homeless?

Perhaps I need an entirely new editorial direction for my writing, all of it, inspired by Havel. His writing mattered. It led to overthrowing a totalitarian regime and without violence.

I have a collection of my Christmas tales about homelessness in Oregon coming out this holiday season. Should I even bring it out? Is it pointless? I like these tales a lot and they brought me immense joy to write. So what? Perhaps I really need to dive into journalism and eschew fiction and poetry altogether when it comes to homelessness. Journalism takes so much time and energy; it is the hardest and most thankless type of writing. I wish someone would cut me a check for $10k and say: “Hey, here’s a grant to go out and do some reporting in Oregon that might make a real difference. So go out and make a damn difference!” Do things like that happen anymore. They once did for me.

Do I have such a journalism project in mind? Perhaps.

I am toying with starting a print publication, a quarterly or perhaps bi-monthly newspaper where I cover only my neighborhood of Empire, perhaps try to enlist some contributors.

Sure, that’s a a great idea in an era when newspapers are almost dead and never coming back.

But, still, I’ve always had a dream of starting my own newspaper. I know exactly how to produce one and distribute it in Empire. As Henry Miller wrote, “The most important thing (for a writer)—how to reach the public, or better, how to create your own public—still remains to be faced. Without a public it’s a suicide. No matter how small, there has to be an audience. I mean, an appreciative, enthusiastic audience, a selective audience.”

That could be a newspaper in Empire. Analog. No digital presence. Take it to the streets, I mean paperboy old school! And as Havel suggested, advocate for one concrete action and then hit it with everything you have.

Toward the end of Disturbing the Peace, Havel says, “…each of us must find real, fundamental hope within himself. You can’t delegate that to anyone else.”

It occurs to me that when I write and share my observations and interactions with the homeless in Coos Bay (and previously from Portland and elsewhere around Oregon), I am doing it primarily because I am trying to find hope, a sliver, a glimpse, a vapor of hope in that particular grim or ghastly moment—hope for that person, myself, or American humanity, or even a dog that is helping a homeless person survive. I often see hope in the dogs of the homeless. I often see hope when they tell me a funny story. I often see hope when they decorate their bikes and weird trailers for Christmas.

I have no idea where I am going with this piece, but I feel a lot better after writing it. I also hold out hope that I can materially help one homeless person in Coos Bay find a new, better path. There’s always that chance every time Elmer and I walk out the door and head to the beach.

Building my Fence

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations

After moving into my new home in the Empire District of Coos Bay, I needed to address a home improvement issue with alacrity: the rotting and ivy-chocked backyard cedar fencing that verged on collapse because no one had performed any maintenance on it since 1959, the year the house was built.

For now, the fence could contain Elmer, that is after I patched it here and there. It all looked unsightly and half ass.

Within days I’d arranged for bids to replace the entire 200 feet. Bid one: $15k. Bid two: $$9.5k. Bid three: dude never showed up. Trump’s tariffs on Canadian lumber were about to kick in so the price was going up for sure—maybe 20%.

The estimates shocked me. I could afford them, but sensed the fencing pros had landed themselves a city slicker sucker and were out to gouge me. After the bids, I surveyed the decaying fence and thought: do it yourself! You have some fencing experience obtained from stints as a caretaker of a national wildlife refuge and a Port Orford construction job. You have most of the tools and could borrow the rest from your former Port Orford construction boss. In fact, why not have him walk you though how to repair here and rebuild there. But do you have the carpentry talent to complete the project? And what about the physical stamina at 61 years of age? Sure you walk and run the husky seven miles a day but that’s not the same as hauling lumber, wielding a post hole digger, poring concrete, sawing (by hand) and hammering nails.

Fuck it! I would do it myself. If Thoreau could build a tiny cabin (from a kit, a fact not widely known) then I could repair and rebuild 200 feet of cedar fencing.

And thus the project began.

It took a month, a dozen trips to the lumber yard, digging post holes, pouring the concrete. Measuring, tearing down two sections and starting over, exhaustion, muscle spasms, splinters, and once working at eight in the morning while drinking red wine because that’s what fucking fence contractors can do! Drink on the fucking job!

During the building, I thought a lot about my dad and all our endless hours of manual labor together. He taught me how to work, work hard, with purpose and alacrity. This knowledge has served me well in life, and in fact helped save my life a decade ago.

When I pounded the last board into place, I stepped back, then stepped farther away to admire my handiwork: it was 75% of professional grade. Good enough for sure.

I kept telling Elmer: look at my master carpentry!

The best outcome: my carpentry improved every day, then regressed, then improved again. I reacquainted myself with the metaphor of carpentry as it pertains to writing: be willing to tear down something rickety; think about a tricky story before your write it up and consider different ways of doing it; take your time and don’t rush the job; walk away when frustration hits and examine the problem the next morning. Be willing to tear something down.

Carpentry is also a great metaphor for hos to conduct personal relationships.

Given time, would I have become a truly master carpenter? No. It’s like my guitar playing. Serviceable, a means to an end.

But I love knowing that I learned so much and strictly from trial and error.

Inaction

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations

My friend and her dog and Elmer and I cruised a Coos Bay beach on a breezy afternoon as high tide approached. We had the dogs leased and headed toward the Empire Boat parking lot and a return to home.

As we passed a huge driftlog, a bearded young man riding a bicycle through dune grass appeared, going in the opposite direction. Toward where?

It was an extremely dubious place to ride a bicycle. In fact, absurd.

I saw the man’s face briefly—hard, a bit shifty in my mind, but we made eye contact and nodded.

It was then I noticed a white tent tucked back in the willows. It must have been the man’s. The tent was not pitched there the previous morning.

We hurried on our way because the rising tide threatened to block our path around some slick and sharp rocks.

Elmer and I waited for the right moment, then maneuvered over the rocks. Standing some 30 yards behind me was my friend and her dog, waiting to follow us.

We made it halfway over the rocks when I turned around and beheld 15 yards away, not my friend, but a homeless woman in her 20s wearing a grimy sun dress, over-sized men’s work boots (no socks), and a blanket draped over shoulders like a shawl. She was taking the same path over the rocks as Elmer and I had just traversed.

Elmer and I stopped on a flat rock. The woman came closer, right at us. I saw her face: utterly vacant and pulverized by bruises, dead eyes. She had short curly hair. She took no notice us. I nudged Elmer aside to give her a wide berth. I said hello and tried to make contact but there was nothing to make contact with.

She stepped up to a serrated rock roughly four feet high. There was no way she could make it. A wave rolled in. She’s going to fall and split her head wide open on this rock. I ran through several first-aid procedures should the fall happen. The first order of activity would be to release Elmer off the leash so I could render assistance. I wasn’t worried about him bolting. He’d stick around.

The woman stepped down from the serrated rock and somehow managed to find footing on another jagged rock.

She now stood five feet away from me. I thought about offering my hand, but I didn’t.

The woman abruptly turned landward and walked into a small dune that led to a tunnel through a thicket of blackberries. She disappeared from sight. It felt like a magic trick, but not at all magical.

Elmer and I found firm footing on the the sand. My friend and her dog traversed the rocks. I told her about the woman. She had seen it unfold, but hadn’t seen the woman’s face.

We got the dogs into my car and began driving out of the parking lot. Within seconds we were discussing the woman, wondering if we should call 9-1-1, although neither one of us had our phones on us, and then the woman appeared, walking in the middle of the uphill road leading out of the parking lot. How she got there from the blackberry thicket was impossible to imagine.

I slowed my car until she veered off the road and onto a sidewalk. It was then we saw the young bearded man paralleling her course a block away on his bicycle, watching her the whole way. It all smacked of pimp and prostitute.

In the short drive home my friend and I discussed the woman with urgency, pitched different scenarios, possible courses of action or inaction, and possible consequences of those actions or inactions.

Had this occurred in Portland I could have called a Street Response Team and it might have responded, conducted an immediate assessment, and provided a specialized treatment, including calling the police.

There is no such triage service in Coos Bay and most likely never will be, although it would seem to be a great idea. I see the need for it every morning on my walk to the bay with Elmer.

My friend made bloody marys and we drank them on the patio as we continued to discuss the woman.

In the end, we did nothing. I told my friend if I saw the woman the next day in a similar state of extreme distress I would call the police using a non-emergency number (even though such a sighting would have constituted an obvious emergency) and make a report.

The next morning, my friend left for Portland early and a few hours later I was driving to the beach and saw the woman, wearing different clothes (no blanket), walking down the sidewalk. Her face registered an expression slightly above vacant, so there was something good in that, I think.

I didn’t call anyone on her behalf.

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