The Book Critics!

NSP Meditations

The weather turned warm and dry after a month of steady cold and rain. I was walking the neighborhood hoping I might run into Mark. I still hadn’t heard from him what he thought of The Old Crow Book Club book.

It always occurs to me that one day, I might never see Mark again because he got off the streets or passed away.

I rounded the corner and there was Mark and Donny taking up residence on their usual sidewalk. I called out and they called out to me like they always do, if I was Norm on Cheers.

Mark was sporting sunglasses and eating a chocolate concoction from Ben and Jerry’s. A slim book with a title I didn’t catch rested near him. Donny was smoking a Lucky Strike.

Mark was in jovial mood. Earlier that morning, he’d found a $20 bill on the street, thus the spendy ice cream treat. I bought a copy of the newspaper advocating for the homeless from him and tipped him a few bucks. We then discussed his current health status and next attempt at securing housing, or at least temporary shelter. He said he was feeling much better and would be trying again with the bureaucracy. I didn’t pin him down on the particulars but did insist he follow through: many people were concerned about him and expending a lot of effort. Mark acknowledged that and I hope that meant something to him.

Then I got to the point and asked Mark about the book. Before he could answer Donny interrupted and praised it near rhapsodic enthusiasm. He’d even sold a copy for $5 and wanted to give me the dough. I laughed and refused. He also said the local bookstore was selling it, which was news to me because I hadn’t approached them about carrying it. Donny had taken several copies from various street libraries and handed them over to the store! The dude was gigging my book! Without my permission!

I got back to Mark.

“I loved the book,” said Mark, “but there are few errors.”

“Yeah,” said Donny. “A couple of errors.”

The critics! Apparently Mark had four grandchildren, not two. I got something wrong about Donny’s past as well. I apologized and told them to mark up a copy for changes in case I decide to print a second edition.

We then dove into certain chapters of the book they particularly liked. We all agreed that the story about the crate of coconuts left behind/donated by the nearby Thai restaurant was a a top pick. That was such a ridiculous and hilarious encounter and also included a conversation about the Time Warp dance from the Rocky Horror Picture Show!

Donny interrupted the narrative again and exclaimed he wanted to write something. I said “WRITE IT UP!” and I’ll publish it somewhere.

An elderly man approached. Donny introduced him as a local from the neighborhood, Reid, I think his name was. Donny told Reid my name and Reid said he was reading the book. He stuck out his hand and I shook it.

“Thank you for writing it,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

It was the first time I had ever been thanked with a handshake for writing a book. I will never forget it.

It was time for me to go. Mark, Donny and Reid continued talking about the book. It was a de-facto meeting of The Old Crow Book Club talking about The Old Crow Book Club but there was no Old Crow and no crows around!

Anya

NSP Meditations

It was an overcast Saturday afternoon in the neighborhood and I spent it leisurely, bicycling around and stocking copies of The Old Crow Book Club in the street libraries.

Earlier that morning, 7 AM to be precise, I’d driven through inner SE Portland neighborhoods and stocked about two dozen libraries. Rain fell during my duties, and when back in the car, I listened to the jazz station’s two-hour Brazilian Beat bossa nova program. It was a specially-themed show featuring all bossa nova songs with rain in the title. So there I was distributing books in rain, a writer who wrote a weird book about rain, and listening to bossa nova rain songs and occasionally trying to remember the fluent Portuguese of my youth as a missionary’s kid in Brazil in the late 1960s. What a strange convergence of things going on, but I like to think that makes me an interesting person.

I approached one the better libraries in Sellwood. A woman with purple/blue hair and holding daffodils was examine the contents of the library. I bicycled past her and said hello and that I was going to check out the library after she finished. I parked 20 feet away and told her to take her time. I was in no hurry.

She had the semi ragged appearance of someone homeless and then it dawned on me that we’d met.

She closed the library’s door and walked toward me carrying assorted possessions, including a pack of cigarettes, a smart phone, and a Bret Easton Ellis novel. She saw me holding a copy of The Old Crow Book Club and flashed a super smile. I tell you, when a homeless personal smiles at you like that, you won’t forget it anytime soon.

“You wrote that, didn’t you?” she said.

“I did.”

“I’ve been hearing about it.”

I then recognized her as Anya and she had made a brief appearance in the book. I’d only met her that one time and that was well over a year ago. Her appearance had changed a lot since then.

“You’re in the book,” I said.

“I am?!”

“I don’t remember what chapter but you’re in there.”

I introduced myself as Matt and gave her a copy and then we talked for 20 minutes on all things books, homelessness and street libraries.

I learned: Anya was living on the streets around the neighborhood. Her boyfriend had recently committed suicide. Someone had gifted her with the daffodils. She knew Mark wasn’t doing well and wasn’t going to survive much longer. But, she said, sometimes when you’re in trouble on the streets and need to get out, you can’t see it. She knew that all too well.

Anya had an extreme passion for the neighborhood’s street libraries! She said she knew every one of them within a four-mile radius! We discussed our favorites in Sellwood! She said she sometimes took stock from full libraries to bolster the needy ones! What? I thought, in another life, we might have been perfect partners!

I then pitched the idea of hiring her to help distribute the new book all over SE Portland. $20 an hour. Use the Little Free Street Library app on her phone (I showed her how it worked on mine.)

Anya said she thought many of the libraries weren’t registered. I agreed and said I thought that when one neighbor saw a library go up on her block, others wanted to join in.

“Sort of like the Broken Windows Theory,” said Anya.

What?

“Yes,” I said. “I doubt James Wilson (the criminologist who propounded this controversial theory decades ago) meant it with street libraries though.”

Anya laughed.

“I doubt it,” she said.

I knew right there that she had obtained a higher education of some kind and here she was homeless and carrying daffodils, a Bret Easton Eliis novel, and my book. Of course, maybe she had no formal higher education whatsoever and was just one of those brilliant self-educated persons I run across every now and then who should be running the country.

Before departing, I set up a time with Anya to meet to facilitate book distribution. I also set her up with some fine pipe tobacco that I always stash in my bike bag for these occasions. I offered a $5 dollar bill for lunch but she refused. I told her to consider it an advance on her salary. No. I tried again and she was adamant.

I could tell she wanted to earn the dough. I knew I had just found the greatest hustler of The Old Crow Book Club.

(Please consider visiting nestuccaspitpress.com and purchasing the book or better yet, making a donation to support my efforts to pay homeless men and women to distribute the book.)

Mark’s Heart Attacks

NSP Meditations

Two weeks had passes since I handed Mark a copy of The Old Crow Book Club. I was worried. He was clearly in decline.

The sun finally came out for one day and I was driving past Mark’s sidewalk, and there he was! I pulled over to check on him and see what he thought of the book.

I called out, “Mark, where have you been?”

“Matt!” said Mark. He was smoking a Lucky Strike but not drinking. Near him, a young homeless man I didn’t recognize was sorting cans and bottles, talking to himself, and drinking a bottle of champagne. Yes, champagne.

“I had two heart attacks,” said Mark.

“What?”

In short order I learned: a week ago he ended up in Emmanuel Hospital and was treated for a heart attack and then another one. He had no idea how he got there the first time or who had called for help. He was hospitalized a total of eight days, given some medication, and a free cab ride right back to Sellwood! Not a single employee from any of Multnomah County’s legion of agencies and nonprofits dedicated to addressing the crisis of homelessness had visited him. Apparently there wasn’t a social worker on the hospital staff to do anything for him, either. Who knows? It’s the same old bureaucratic morass, only this one isn’t delaying your DMV tags, it’s killing people.

Mark had nothing but high praise for the medical team that cared for him. He somehow hadn’t lost his backpack and sleeping bag during the ordeal but his ID and food card were missing.

“You could be dead,” I said.

“I was six feet under but wasn’t ready yet, I guess,” said Mark. I’m like a bad penny that keeps showing up.”

I asked Mark if he’d read any of the book before the heart attacks.

He had not. He’d been reading another book but would get to mine next.

For some reason, I sort of liked that Mark hadn’t read it. He was in the middle of another book and wanted to finish that one first. That’s a hard core reader for you.

It occurred to me that Mark might never read the book. If you ever write a book, never expect the person you most want to read the book will ever read the book, even if that book is about that person. I know this from personal experience.

I slipped Mark a fiver and wished him well. I reminded him about the book launch pizza party that was scheduled for the park as soon as it warmed up.

Mark said he was looking forward to it. I told him I’d see him soon.

Would I?

A few days later…

I passed three homeless men on the half mile drive to the grocery store at seven in the morning. One, a regular in the neighborhood whom I’ve never met, must be at least 80 years old. He was pushing a grocery cart full of cans in 38-degree weather.

Upon arrival at the grocery store, I noticed a man slumped in a wheelchair outside the main entrance. He was barely holding up a sign. In the parking lot, I saw another homeless man near the back entrance to the store. He was holding a sign with words asking for help. I did not help.

I stepped inside the store. Heat blasted me. There was Mark! Shit! He was alive!

We said hello to one another. He looked much better than the last time we’d met. He told me that later today, he was heading downtown to the hellhole abyss of Old Town to try and get housing. He apparently was on their radar because of his recent heart attack and that friends and family had notified someone in authority. He had tried the previous day, taking the bus, but, according to Mark, he had arrived during the lunch hour and the office was closed and he didn’t want to wait around. If you’ve seen this place, as I have, you would understand.

Can you believe that at noon they close the office of the biggest homeless services provider in Oregon for lunch. Is this really true or was Mark just confused or outright lying? If it is true, it’s outrageous. I thought this was a crisis. The director of this non profit should get off his/her/them ass and cover the lunch shift. I’ll cover the lunch shift!

I said to Mark, “It’s time, you’ve got to do it. You’re going to die if you don’t.”

“I know,” he said.

I believed him. I believed Mark was going to try again.

“You know it’s going to be fucked up like last last summer,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“See it through.”

I said if it worked out, they might get him into housing right away. I asked how I could reach him if that happened. He gave me a name and description of a house in the neighborhood of someone who cared. I am beginning to learn there are a lot of people in my neighborhood who care about Mark and other homeless people. The city and county and nonprofits have utterly failed in marshaling this caring.

I did not offer to drive Mark downtown, although I had nothing to do all day. He didn’t ask. I didn’t offer because I made the choice right there that Mark had to do it on his own or it was never going to happen.

And yes, I felt terrible at not offering.

My old football coaching instincts kicked in. I pumped up Mark with some Vince Lombardi bromides. They occasionally worked in my youth; maybe they would work on a homeless man in his mid 50s who was going to die within months or weeks unless he got off the streets.

I gave Mark a $10 bill for bus fare and something to eat or drink. I did my shopping and as I checked out, I saw Mark drinking a coffee and kneeling on the floor. A clerk came up to him and asked if he was okay. He said he had shortness of breath but was okay.

I walked out of the store, got in my car, drove home. It’s an unnerving feeling driving home, feeling like a total piece of shit.

A day later, I heard that Mark had gone downtown again and all the shelter beds were full. It also hailed three times that afternoon and Mark was somewhere out in it, and I know this because I drove by the grocery store and he was out in front, sitting on the sidewalk, and reading The Old Crow Book Club.

Oregon Tavern Age: Poetry

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

I sat in a booth in faux OTA country, Clackamas County proper.

Outside rain fell what seemed like the 30th straight day.

I waited for a poet to meet me. Speaking of poetry, I’ve tried reading the poetry in three straight issues of The New Yorker and didn’t understand, or worse, feel a thing. Why write poetry like that? I’d rather read the poems written by homeless men and women that appear in the weekly newspaper advocating for the homeless. At least these poems have blood and try to move you.

It was unremarkable joint with unforgettable décor consisting of screens and advertisements for tasteless corporate lagers favored by men who hate transgender people.

I drank a creamy Oregon ale and took stock of the joint’s clientele—Trumpian to the core. How did I know? How could you not anymore in this sinking ship of a nation?

It had been a fairly nondescript day up to this point. The one exception was the hour I spent stocking street libraries with copies of The Old Crow Book Club. That almost daily routine pretty much sums up social life, but it does make me happy getting the book out there. It doesn’t go anywhere unless I hustle it and I have been hustling. I just need more readers to support that effort.

Some irrelevant NBA playoff game played silently on a screen. It’s always funny to think that some players make more in one quarter than I did my entire 25+ year teaching career. Like I said, a sinking ship of a nation.

The poet arrived. He would doubtless share one of his new poems with me. It would engage me and we would discuss it. But not talk of its craft or opacity.

As it turned out, we talked about the exquisite detail of Chevy Astro. A neighbor of the poet dropped dead while trying to repair this mini van. He was doing a favor for another neighbor, the last act of his 44-year-old life. A Chevy Astro!

The Old Crow Book Release

NSP Meditations , ,

(My new book about the Old Crow Book Club is available through nestuccaspitpress.com)

It was a Wednesday afternoon and I took a stroll through the neighborhood. The cherry blossoms craved to bloom, but the cold weather wouldn’t allow it.

My mind felt cluttered with thoughts of all I had to do once I got the print run of The Old Crow Book Club back from the printer in McMinnville. Which was the next morning.

There was Mark, co-founder of the Old Crow Book Club, sitting on his usual sidewalk. The last time I’d seen him, about a week ago, he looked near death, but denied my urgent request to call 9-1-1 and the Street Response Team. Later, I regretted my non-action, but Mark was adamant and lucid.

So, it was much to my surprise and relief that I saw Mark reading a book while also smoking a Swisher Sweet and drinking a can of malt liquor.

I asked him what he was reading. He told me, The Odyssey (for the fourth time!), a hundred-year old edition he had rescued from the bookstore’s recycling bin. It occurred to me that Mark was undoubtedly the only human being in world history who had read The Odyssey multiple times while smoking a Swisher Sweet and drinking malt liquor.

We briefly discussed the Greek classic. I then told Mark about picking up The Old Crow Book Club the next morning. He perked up. I told him I’d swing by and give him the first copy.

“It better be signed,” he said.

“I’ll sign it,” I said.

I briefly told Mark I didn’t know how he and other members of the book club might react to the contents of the book. I wasn’t nervous about a possible negative reaction, but his opinion mattered to me, so I wanted the straight shit once he read it.

“I’ve always loved everything you’ve written,” he said, “especially that zine about Joe.”

Over two years ago, we had met because I saw him reading a book just as he was now. Then, a few weeks later, I saw him reading one of my books in front of the can/bottle recycling machine. He’d discovered it in a street library. We’d gone on to establish the book club and become friends. My discussions with him about literature were the most interesting ones about literature in my entire life.

“Mark,” I said, “whatever happens, if your reading the book changes your mind about anything related to your homelessness, like wanting to get into housing, I’m ready to try again.”

We had tried last summer and totally failed, but it wasn’t Mark’s fault. He was ready then; after that debacle, he was not.

“I’ll let you know,” he said.

And with that I walked away. I’d see him tomorrow and the sequel to The Old Crow Book Club would begin to unfold on the very sidewalk where it had all started.

I knew something for certain about what happens when one of my books is released: the better stories related to the subject of the newly-released book, are always better—ALWAYS—than those that made it into the book. It is true as gravity and the heartlessness of the Republican Party.

The morning drive to McMinnville on Highway 99W was hellish. How people tolerated this every morning and evening for a commute or just getting around was beyond me.

I listened to an old mix tape from the Nineties. Nirvana still had some kick left. I wondered who Cobain would be if he were alive today.

Everywhere along 99W for 40 miles were homeless people pushing grocery carts full of possessions, straggling around, living in tents or derelict RVs along roadways, driving duct-taped cars that were clearly domiciles.

I arrived in McMinnville and saw elderly homeless men and women shuffling through neighborhoods and the downtown commercial district. I saw more zombie RVs. Here I was about ready to pick up my book about homelessness and its subject matter was all around me and moving in dirty mono.

The 2000-print run was ready for pickup. I have a 20-year relationship with this family-owned Oregon company and they have always provided incredible service. It’s always nice to spend my publishing money with an Oregon business and help employ Oregonians. I wish I could do it more.

I tore into one of the boxes and fished out a copy of The Old Crow Book Club. It looked fantastic! A couple of dudes helped me load 17 boxes of books into the Subaru. They barely fit. I thanked the crew and drove away.

Now the hard work really began. How do you get a book out to readers? There are dozens of ways, but with this particular book, I was distributing it almost exclusively through street libraries around Oregon. There is a phone app that shows you all the registered Little Free Libraries in the world and Oregon must boast more capita than any other state in the nation. There are almost 30 in my neighborhood alone!

I would do the bulk of this distribution, but I planned on hiring some members of the book club to distribute copies around the area on foot. I was also going to hire another homeless man with a vehicle to help me cover the tri-county area. (If anyone wants to support this unique distribution effort, please go to nestuccaspitpress and make a donation. It will pay to hire these homeless men to assist me.)

Mark was set to get the first copy, but now it would be the second one because a receptionist at the printer simply had to have it after she overheard me describing it.

So I gave it away right there. She wanted to pay, but I said read it, then stock it in your nearby street library.

I hit 99W and headed for home. I thought about consulting the library app for immediate distribution, but I wasn’t in the mood to look at a phone and ruin the moment of celebrating the release of a book.

Traffic slowed a bit in Lafayette and I spotted a street library near a park of this tiny agriculture and wine community. I pulled over and stocked it with the Old Crow book and some of my other titles. Five feet away on a bench of a bus shelter, a homeless person was asleep or passed out inside a sleeping bag. A couple backpacks rested under the bench.

So yes, Lafayette has at least one homeless person.

I considered leaving a book near the person, but didn’t want to spook whoever it was.

By the time I made it home, it was pushing noon and I was starving. I decided to treat myself at a pizza joint with a lunch special and pint of beer. As I ate, I wrote in my journal and outlined the distribution plan for the book. I also signed Mark’s copy of the book and thanked him. I called him a friend.

After lunch, I drove to Mark’s sidewalk. He was there, reading and smoking a Swisher Sweet. Sean, another member of the club was there, too, with a large bag of cans.

I walked up to Mark and presented the book.

“Oh wow!” exclaimed Mark. “The cover is great.”

“I really like the way it looks and feels in the hands,” I said.

I raced to the car and retrieved a copy for Sean. I handed it to him.

He held it like a spiritual text and immediately thumbing through it. He said nothing.

I took a photograph of Mark holding up the book, but not before he pulled back the cowl of his hoodie and spruced up his hair. A homeless man was primping for a picture! That should tell you right there that hope still exists.

It was almost two years to the day Mark and I had met exactly where we stood now. I remarked about that.

I briefed Mark and Sean about the upcoming plans to gather members of the book club for a pizza and (not malt liquor) beer launch party down by the creek. I also said in the coming weeks I would be paying them to distribute the book to all the street libraries within a two-mile radius.

Sean said, “Matt, I may just have to celebrate your book with some Old Crow.”

That made me laugh.

I looked at Mark perusing the book. What a funny feeling it must have been for a man to be handed a book about himself by the author who wrote it. I know it was pretty overwhelming for me—certainly a first in my writing life.

And as I stood there, it dawned on me that it’s never good for an author to have any expectations for a book upon its release. I’ve been burned and disappointed before and thus, learned my lesson.

But…I did want something from this book. It didn’t matter if Mark liked it or not. My wish: I wanted him to read it and decide to try and get off the streets. We both knew he wouldn’t last another year out there.

Henk Pander and Tom McCall (Part 2)

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History

I no longer have my notes and transcribed interviews related to the McCall portrait. I must go on my memory of talking with Henk, former Secretary of State Norma Paulus, a protege of McCall’s, and Thomas Vaughn, former long-time director of the Oregon Historical Society.

Tom McCall lived in Portland after his second term ended in 1975. Some time in the early 80s he developed cancer and eventually died in January of 1983 after a prolonged and painful fight. At some point during McCall’s chemotherapy, it was either Paulus or Vaughn who arranged for Henk to paint the Governor’s official portrait. Inexplicably, an artist hadn’t already been chosen and painted it. Now McCall was going to die before sitting for the portrait so time was of the essence.

I believe Paulus and Vaughn chose Henk because they were familiar and admired his work, he was in Portland, and his aesthetic was as unconventional as McCall’s visionary governing.

Henk told me McCall was chauffeured to his studio for several sittings where Henk made sketches. McCall was so sick by then that the sessions didn’t last long. McCall seemed a bit confused by Henk’s expressionistic and distinctly modern style. He did tell him, “To make it great!”

Henk told me he and McCall carried on lively conversations during the sittings but he couldn’t remember any of their substance. He also told me he read McCall’s 1977 Autobiography Maverick and he was drawn to the dramatic scene where McCall landed on Cannon Beach and called out the motel owner who had kicked picnickers off a beach in front of his building, claiming it was private property. His outrageous act had prompted the whole Beach Bill controversy of who owns Oregon’s ocean beaches in the dry sands areas. Luckily, the socialists won this battle and I am forever in debt to those who helped orchestrate the winning.

Henk decided he wanted to use that legendary visit to Cannon Beach in the midst of a legislative session when the Beach Bill was in dire jeopardy as the backdrop/landscape/theme/? of the portrait.

No artist does that painting official portraits of august politicians. Portraits almost always stick to formula. JFK’s was really the first to deviate but it didn’t start a trend.

Henk sketched McCall in 1982 and began working on the portrait. It was going to be of a massive scale as far as Oregon’s gubernatorial portraits went.

McCall died and the portrait was almost finished (so much so that it was signed in 1982) but Henk told me he couldn’t get the face right.

So as McCall laid in state in the Capitol and Oregonians lined up for a last look, Henk lined, up too, and stashed a camera inside his jacket

And when he came to stand over McCall, Henk Pander whipped out the camera and snapped a couple photographs of a dead Tom McCall! He then touched up McCall’s face using the snapshots as reference!

The portrait was unveiled in the Capitol sometime in 1983 and there, McCall’s widow, Audrey, saw it for the first time in front of the media.

Henk heard later she hated it because McCall looked sick. Paulus and Vaughn both liked the portrait.

I think it’s the greatest painting I have ever seen in my life and I’ve been to The Louvre, The Tate, MOMA and the Prado.

One final historical correction: McCall never landed on Cannon Beach by helicopter. It was one of the most enduring myths of modern Oregon history and finally exposed by my filmmaker friend Tom Olsen in his documentary about the Beach Bill, Politics of Sand.

But the myth is enshrined forever in the portrait of the greatest governor in Oregon history. As it should be.

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