Frank Beavers’ Campaign Ads Launched Against No Particular Candidate, Just All of Us

NSP Meditations

Many Oregonians need to change. They consume too much crap. They are too angry. They don’t know one another.

Clearcutting is immoral and should be illegal on all public and private land because in the end it doesn’t make a difference who owns it, just how it is used.

We need new units of currency and coin with some real art on them. Put more wildlife on them!

Grow a victory flower garden and help out the bees.

Let those without sin cast the first stone.

Support your local squirrel.

Walk more.

Do things without computers.

Vote.

Frank Beavers’ Personal and Political Statement

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History

I come from humble rural origins, a tiny tributary in the Neskowin Creek Watershed on the North Oregon Coast, I was raised in a lodge by a single mother (farther murdered by a dairy farmer). I was home schooled and grew up to become a home builder, architect, sculptor and sometimes poet.

I am independent, and unlike the other independent running for Governor, don’t advocate massive clearcutting as a means of making Oregon a better place. We already tried that and look where it got us.

I have a fine family and we live along Johnson Creek in SE Portland. We’ve got a nice home I built myself made from local lumber that I milled. Our carbon footprint is zero.

I realize the mention of Portland drives most rural Oregonians into a lather of hate and resentment, but we all live in one state and inhabit its watersheds and must find a way to heal these extreme divisions. They are killing our future.

If there is one issue closest to my heart, it’s the homeless crisis. Look at it this way: the homeless need homes. Let’s build them. Let’s acknowledge we need to act with urgency.

I might also add that I have never used a computer or phone. I prefer the tactile way of life and building real, lasting things with hard work. We can’t rely on high tech, the Internet and messiahs of gadgetry to solve our problems. They are part of the problem!

Let’s elect someone who believes in governing, which of course eliminates all Republicans. And let us elect someone who doesn’t accept almost a million dollars from Phil Knight, which leaves out one independent candidate. Let us elect a Governor who doesn’t traffic in conventional progressive wisdom, always challenges personal and political assumptions, and never uses jargon, which of course leaves out most Oregon Democrats in power.

It is time, my fellow Oregonians, to choose a new path for our state, a path that follows the way of the beaver and the clarity of the haiku. We shall look to this wondrous creature of nature for the realities and metaphors we need to get Oregon going in the right direction. We shall look to the haiku to cut the crap from the language and inspire immediate action.

Frank Beavers for Governor!

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History ,

(It’s about Dam time!)

The kind of hard working Oregonian our state demands today!

Industrious. Soft spoken. Family man. Builder. Sculptor. Vegetarian. Sober.

Hello, fellow Oregonians:

I am launching my independent write-in campaign for governor on this blog. I can no longer stand aside as ideological differences permanently tear our beloved state apart.

Vote me, Frank Beavers, for Oregon Governor. Over the course of the campaign, I will share my personal history and political positions to attract your vote.

Below is my platform to reform Oregon.

Frank Beavers’ Platform for a Better Oregon

  1. Stop killing beavers and wolves in the name of the common good.
  2. Make “Louie, Louie” the official state song.
  3. Create 25 new state parks funded by a tax on millionaires.
  4. Appoint a special statewide task force addressing the homeless issue that mandates the governor serve as chair.
  5. Designate 1970s’ Vortex I, the only state sponsored rock festival in American history, the official state story.
  6. Tear down the The Dalles Dam and resurrect Celilo Falls.
  7. Ban all single use plastic bags.
  8. Ban all clearcuts.
  9. Commandeer 10,000 used RV trailers and fifth wheel trailers to house homeless people as temporary emergency measure.
  10. Require public schools to teach Critical Beaver Theory, a curriculum that teaches beavers are the most important species in restoring Oregon’s degraded watersheds to full ecology.
  11. Create a socialist cooperative that purchases and manages the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers as a publicly-owned franchise.
  12. Plant a million trees a year on public and private land in Oregon.

Fishing Scenes

NSP Meditations

I don’t fish but I enjoy watching others fish. I think it’s because the act of fishing seems so still and quiet to me, even when fishermen are bobbing in boats in the Columbia River.

Here are some fishing scenes I’ve observed that have stuck in my mind like oil paintings:

A man fishes for salmon from a bank of the Willamette River. He catches one, but struggles to reel it in. He takes out his phone to take a photograph of the fish and then the fish escapes the hook.

A young Latino family fishes for surf perch on Nesika Beach.

A hornless man fishes for salmon from he bank of the Willamette River.

A young man fishes in the morning before work for salmon from a bank of the Clackamas River.

A disabled man fishes for trout in a pond near the Rogue River.

Rose smoking a cigarette and fishing for salmon from the rocks of Netarts Bay. It was the first and only time I went on a fishing date.

Drunk men in boats fishing for boats in Nehalem Bay.

Homeless men in Seaside fishing for crab off a bridge over the Neacanicum River.

Drunk Russians fishing for perch off the South Jetty of the Columbia River.

A man fishes for steelhead in Fish Creek in a watershed ravaged by wildfire.

I wish I had taken up surf perch fishing when I lived near the ocean. I was almost ready to a year or so ago, and then moved away from the ocean. It is unknown when I will return.

Perry Mason Book Idea

NSP Meditations

The notion of a book about Perry Mason struck me in a dive bar as I waited for someone to arrive. Sometimes I think I do my best creating while waiting for people.

There I was looking out to a lake and The Method of Perry Mason: How Watching Television’s Greatest Show Can Improve Your Life (working title) emerged. I have no idea why it occurred at this particular moment, but when such an idea for a book appears, I don’t ignore it. The same thing happened with the bridge and rain books.

The idea clearly originated with my viewing of the show with my father every weekday morning. It’s how we start our day and we always converse during the episodes about what we are watching and how Perry Mason the character as played by Raymond Burr embodied everything potentially wondrous in Americans: probity, hell-bent on justice, compassionate, non-judgmental, ethical, loyal, intelligent and so much more.

So for the book, Dad and I would watch all 271 episodes in order, I would take notes, record impressions (I’ve already written extensively about our Perry Mason moments for the blog) and then provide a commentary on certain episodes and suggest something that occurred on the show as a way to live better, to live like Perry.

Other book notes:

Mention how I came to watch Perry with dad every weekday morning. Mention the long Portland history with Perry Mason when it used to air at noon on an independent station for something like 40 years, apparently unique for a market.

Discuss the reboots, including the terrible HBO series.

Discuss Burr’s odd invented biography and incredible generosity to cast and crew members.

Delve into the original source materiel, the 82 Perry Mason novels written by Erle Stanley Gardner. (NO, I won’t read them all!)

Short digression into the character of hapless prosecutor Hamilton Burger. He always wanted the system to “serve the interests of justice,” unlike most current prosecutors who are totally unfamiliar with that idea.

Highlight the clothes, the dresses, the robes and ascots, the cars, the cigarettes, the decanters of brandy, the dames, the drinking, the pill popping, the furnishings, the drawing rooms, the telephones, the floor model TVs, all of it.

His desperate clients sometimes pick him out of phone book the size of a wedding cake!

Perry often says “We gotta move fast!” in the interest of justice. No one does that anymore. It took 18 months to hold a Congressional hearing on the attempted overthrow of the American government by a defeated President.

Remark upon the scenery of and around LA and how much of what we see in the rural scenes has been developed or burned.

Perry always implored his clients to just tell the truth. Clients often lied to him and he became exasperated but he never quit on them. What a quality! Not quitting on someone.

It’s never about the retainer, the money. It’s about justice, the search for truth.

Connect my experience in the legal system with a Perry Mason comparison.

Highlight the incredible vocabulary on the show. It teaches vocabulary! Bring back the words “louse” and “rake.”

Dad caught only two grammatical errors in the shows. And never from Perry! He loves the articulation by the actors and loathes the lack of articulation in current shows.

Comment on how the episodes we watch on free TV have had roughly 5-7 minutes cut from the show to broadcast more commercials, of course. It makes watching the show a bit discombobulating because key scenes are often left out. Insist that readers of the book watch the original uncut episodes.

The names are perfect: Lt Tragg, Hamilton Burger, Paul Drake, Della Street, Perry Mason.

Discuss how the black and white and grays of the broadcasts fit perfectly with the morality issues presented by the series.

Perry Mason is loyal. His loyalty can never be severed. We all need friends like this.

Perry never panics or rushes to judgment. He never judges. He is always patient and measured. We need more of that in America.

Point out my favorite episodes.

“Facts matter,” says Perry in multiple episodes. They don’t anymore in American political life.

Would Perry have defended Kyle Rittenhouse and Derek Chauvin? Yes. Everyone deserves a competent defense.

Highlight how in several episodes Perry uses dogs to win cases! Dogs! Make that connection to the real world. Dogs tell the truth.

Mention how a friend of mine was assisted in her recovery from a traumatic brain injury by watching episodes of Perry Mason in the hospital!

The show educated people to basic American legal principles and the Bill of Rights. This was before the Miranda decision.

Remark how defense attorneys are in critical, unconstitutional short supply and we need a new kind of Perry Mason show to inspire people to become criminal defense attorney and not more CSI geeks.

Connect to my life and discuss how if I had it do all over again I would have become a public defender and moved to a rural area on the Oregon Coast and given my all to my clients and set up shop in a small office with an ocean view.

Comment on the brisk pacing of the episodes as opposed to today’s bloated shows and what that suggests to modern storytelling and writing.

Possible opening to The Perry Mason Method:

This book originated because my beloved step mother Pauline died from cancer in 2020 and my then 89-year-old father, Karl, was shattered by the loss. He now lived alone in Portland and didn’t drive, had mobility issues, and didn’t know how to use the internet, something indispensable to live in modern American society.

At the time, I was living in a 42-year old Winnebago in a disheveled RV park on the Southern Oregon Coast. After consulting with my father and older sister, I decided to move in with my father and take care of him until…

We quickly established a routine of watching Perry Mason every weekday morning and the show put the hook in me in a way contemporary television and streaming show dramas do not.

Then one day almost 18 months later, the idea for this book hit me in a dive bar on the Oregon Coast and I still don’t know why it emerged the way it did. But Perry Mason had jolted and bolted into my creative mind and I dared not ignore its presence. Here is the result. (Cue the opening of the Perry Mason theme.)

Reading Studs Terkel for Answers

NSP Meditations

I woke up and looked at the clock: 1:47 in the morning.

Studs Terkel had awakened me. Not a dream about the legendary oral historian, rather, I was jolted awake by a big idea related to my writing about the New American Diaspora: read some of Terkel’s classics, including Hard Times, about the Great Depression. I’d read a lot of Terkel in college during my study of American history, but hardly remembered any of it.

Why Terkel now? Was his oral history format the best one to tell the story I was writing and wondering how to write? I didn’t really know. I did know that if you wake up with a writer on your mind you better read the writer. I also knew that this was the first time in my life I had ever woken up with a writer on my mind.

I bought and read three Studs Terkel books: Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970), Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974) and American Dreams: Lost and Found (1983).

Below are my notes, impressions, opinions and questions generated by the reading. They are subject to change, as is all my thinking on this issue.

It is far too early for an oral history of the current homeless crisis. The great strength of Terkel’s books is that many of his subjects had decades to reflect upon experiences and we learn how they struggled, survived, dug in, adapted, moved on, or if they lived in contrast or accordance to their experience. There are virtually no stories of quitting in these books, because if they had, they wouldn’t have been around to talk to Terkel. Quitting means something different today than in did in 1937. So does the American dream of 1983.

I have read many excellent feature stories about homeless people and the various causes that led them to the streets or willows and keeps them there. But a feature story is not the same as an oral history. The latter looks far and wide into the past in hope of establishing/resurrecting interest and/or unearthing/generating fresh perspective about a momentous historical event. A feature story is for the present and typically doesn’t have a large scope.

The contemporary notion of the American dream is contested, as it should be. As for what many workers told Terkel in 1974 about how they feel about their jobs—I hate my job—that’s largely unchanged. What has changed is that a terrible job back then at least earned them enough so they didn’t have to live out of tent, van or RV if they were working.

Interviewees in Hard Times recounted seeing people living in shacks made from orange crates, a piano box and rusted out car bodies. I have seen someone living in a shelter made from encyclopedias. An extraordinary number of people are living out of vehicles and they go almost totally uncounted when the experts estimate homeless populations in various locales and across the nation.

The current homeless crisis is rooted in much, much more than merely housing, mental health and addiction issues. That’s way too convenient an explanation, but a trio of favorites for many politicians. There is something insidious in contemporary American life that has shattered many people and we see the shards all around us. Can these people be put back together? Can they put themselves back together? I have seen successes. I have also seen people too far gone to even try.

A long time ago, men fought for jobs. They don’t now. Men often stole to eat during the Great Depression.

There were virtually no such entities as non profits as we understand those organizations today to assist struggling people in the Great Depression. There were churches to help.

Governments razed encampments during the Great Depression, even though those people were looking for work. There was no work. Today, there are people living in encampments who aren’t working or looking for work, there are all manner of jobs available, and governments are still razing encampments, but ostensibly for different reasons.

During the New Deal, the federal government tried everything to alleviate a crisis! They employed writers, photographers, playwrights, actors, circus performers and Vaudeville acts! They hired men to plant trees, build trails, lodges and dams! It almost feels were more creative in the crisis. In recent years, as the crisis worsened, I have seen zero creativity to solve the homeless issue in Oregon and I have been looking. Maybe it’s out there.

The federal government had to step in because the cities and states simply couldn’t address the catastrophe. It feels like we are there now. It feels like we now need a massive federal effort, and just more than spending billions of dollars, but that seems highly unlikely in today’s fractured political climate.

People enrolled in New Deal programs told Terkel that the programs generally worked or at least led to positive transitions. Today, I read mixed reports from the homeless about the success of programs, but is that because these struggling people are doing enough to help themselves like struggling people did during the Great Depression?

Many millions of Americans were bitterly opposed to the New Deal. They believed relief programs undermined the essential American character. No one destitute deserves a handout. Work! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Don’t be dependent on government!

If you ask homeless people what the American dream is (or was), what would they answer? Would they mock it? Or would some answer: “I am living the American dream. I am doing absolutely nothing.”

Almost every homeless person I have met once had a trade or jobs in the service economy. Some have talked proudly of former careers in construction, maritime-related industries or trucking. Then, somehow, the careers ended and they wound up homeless. Whether this occurred suddenly or gradually, I didn’t discover.

Did homeless people once invest in America and nothing came in return, or practically nothing? Good question. Maybe I should ask some of them.

There is not a generation gap in the current homeless crisis like there has been in many other American social/political problems.

Harsh economic conditions can cause personal trauma as deeply as physical and mental abuse. Living in homeless squalor obviously exacerbates personal trauma so why would anyone advocate that traumatized homeless people should live in prolonged (or permanent) squalor so they won’t be further traumatized? It makes no sense.

Many interviewees in Hard Times declared an embarrassment, humiliation and internal loathing because they could not find work and support their families. Is there anything similar to that with some of today’s homeless people? I’ve never heard any of the ones I’ve interact with ever express such a sentiment.

World War II ended the Great Depression and American went to work. There’s no war coming to save us this time. In fact, a war is going on within American society and the casualties and refugees are everywhere. I seem them every morning on my walks. One of them has now amassed seven dining room sets near his trailer.

The homeless crisis presents the greatest challenge to state and local governing in my lifetime and I live in a city and state that believes in the power of progressive governing, but so far has failed spectacularly on this issue and the result has been death and the buck never stopping.

Can Oregon’s various governments do it? Can we do it?

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