I am sitting at picnic table outside a dive bar in my neighborhood. I am writing this in real time as I sip a local IPA.

It’s Sunday, noon, and 75 degrees.

Across the street a young shirtless homeless man with a leashed black dog pulls a grocery cart laden with bags of cans and possessions. He stops to check out the menu of a popular breakfast joint that is packed inside and out. A waitress gives him the evil eye. Homeless people don’t order to go…

…until they do. I see it all the time.

The man peruses the menu and then sets it on a table. No order. He pulls his cart through an intersection. The dog helps him pull.

Farther down the street, on a slice of concrete abutting the wall of a convenience store, an elderly homeless Hispanic man is asleep or passed out, He has been that way since 6:30 in the morning when Elmer and I passed him on the way to the dog park. He’s been this way for a week.

Next to the Hispanic man, another elderly homeless man is slumped over in his motorized scooter, apparently passed out.

Here comes a homeless Black man in his 20s carrying a bag of cans and smoking a cigarette. He is clad on all denim, including a cap. He’s not really walking, he’s strutting.

A block away, I see a Black homeless man approach a car stopped at red light. I see him talking to the driver. I see the driver’s hand extend sunglasses out the passenger-side window to the homeless man. He tries them on, nods, shouts, does a little James Brown shuffle, and skips away. I think it might be the most beautiful, subtle gesture of humanity I’ve ever witnessed in connection to the homeless.

I often get down writing about this subject. But when I see sunglasses as an improvised gift like that, well. I am not giving up hope. There was reciprocation in that exchange. That’s the key. That’s the only way we’re getting out of this. They both held out hands.

Term limits (15 years) for Supreme Court Justices. Mandatory retirement at 65. No outside income or gifts allowed while a Justice. All oral arguments televised.

Congress strips Supreme Court of cases involving personal privacy and creates a new federal court to hear these cases. Congress has the power to create courts and what cases they can hear (e.g. bankruptcy courts)

Abolish the electoral college. This should have happened 125 years ago. Voters in North Dakota shouldn’t have six times the electoral power of voters in California. The electoral college is the root of everything wrong in national politics today, everything.

Puerto Rico and DC should become states. These millions of US citizens (almost all of color) are almost totally disenfranchised.

End the President’s power to pardon and commute sentences.

Increase the number of elected US representatives by at least 50 members.

All candidates for federal office must release their tax returns.

One six-year term for President.

Add a Constitutional amendment that gives Congress to regulate absolutely all donations for campaigns for federal office.

Add a Constitutional that a President can have no other sources of income while in office, only his salary.

Add a Constitutional amendment banning the filibuster in the Senate and House (if they ever choose to enact it) and every other rule where a majority of votes doesn’t pass legislation, excluding specially-designated votes like expelling a member of Congress (takes two thirds).

Add a Constitutional Amendment that Congress meets five days a week, a minimum of eight hours a day, excluding a two-week summer, two-week holiday recesses.

Add a Constitutional amendment that prevents either chamber of Congress from shutting down government over budgetary spending/or raising the debt ceiling if agreement cannot be reached. If Congress cannot pass budget then it automatically reverts to the previous passed budget with a 5% spending increase. Likewise, if agreement isn’t reached to raise debt ceiling, then it automatically rises to previous year’s amount.

Robert Frost wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.

He was right in perhaps the truest line of American poetry ever written.

I visited Gold Beach not to long ago and camped in a tent with Elmer the husky in the same RV park where I lived for three years, a special disheveled place populated with interesting (mostly Trumpian characters) and dilapidated RVs, including one of them mine, a 1978 Minnie Winnie.

I became somewhat of an expert on RV living in disheveled RV parks and often surprised myself by how much my experience drifted into my writing. I loved the minimalist life in my RV and residing a block from the ocean didn’t hurt either.

But that time is over. I live in the big city now and help care for my dad. Also over is the wonderfully sublime scene of the RV park. The owner and manager died a year ago, and well, the new manager isn’t as vigilant keeping out the meth miscreants. In fact, I camped not too far away from several in much the same way Marlon Perkins camped not far away from wild game on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. There was no story in it, just irritation.

I’ve often wondered if I’ll return to the RV life after my Portland days have concluded. I am beginning to think not. I did it and did it with unique improvisational style when my very existence seemed very much in doubt. There is no going back to that time. Those circumstances are long gone.

Other Gold Beach gold that didn’t stay:

My good Gold Beach friend Earl, a wonderful and original poet is also gone. He died a few weeks ago.

Turkey’s, the tavern up the Rogue River, is also gone, although it’s still there. I stopped by for a beer in a tiny joint that I have described in print as the greatest tavern in Oregon and probably the last one that serves only beer and wine, and not even beer on tap anymore. All the great storytellers I met there are dead or gone. There is nothing but NASCAR, a building on the verge of collapse, and mental decrepitude in the form of support for Donald Trump. The man really has killed off so many great attributes of American life in rural areas. They are never coming back. Gold turned to lead.

The Free Pool Sunday event at the Sea Star lounge in Gold Beach, one the great storytelling venues I’ve ever come across is also gone. No, the event still goes on, I attended, but the heyday as I knew it vanished a few years ago. Now it’s just gambling and Trump bullshit. I must have written a half million words at the corner table, the one near the library and boasting a sliver of an ocean view. When I sat there recently, nothing. No inspiration. No crazy locals or weird tourists or addled homeless people.

The point is: these glory days came and went. I have let them all go. There’s no need to ever to return to the RV park to camp or to drink a beer in the Sea Star or hope someone tells an osprey story in Turkey’s.

What remains golden about this area is the remote beaches and how I have new memories of them with Elmer. We are creating new gold. Such as:

Nesika Beach at 4:50 a.m. and discovered one of the greatest driftwood forts of all time.

Pistol River Beach at 7 and beheld the most mysterious and interchanging mouth of river in Oregon, or the whole country for that matter.

The beach at the South Jetty of the Rogue River at 10:30 and saw strange young men vaping dank weed as ospreys dived into the river a few feet away.

Bailey Beach at dawn and saw shades of purple, red, and blue reflected on the sand.

Oh, and I almost forgot, nine holes of golf in the early morning on a socialist golf course in the middle of beautiful Southern Oregon Coast nowhere. I played damn well! A damn fine new golden memory.

Nothing gold can stay, but you can make new gold.