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Well, I'm glad that the control of pseudoephedrine has cut down on meth production but I'm ticked off that I can't purchase it to control my rhinitis.  It's the best drug to manage my sinus and lungs response to central Oregon.  I'd love it if we could be like Washington state and have to sign for it.

posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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My memories:  5-10 grade 1960s

I was bullied probably because I was a boyish girl, fat and "teacher's pet.".  All my girlfriends abandoned me at the end of 4th grade.  After that girls were mean to me.  I wasn't hit but I was verbally assaulted.  Childhood was hellish and the only time I felt safe was when I was talking with my teachers.  I learned to survive by avoiding others and hitting people with my purse when necessary.  I don't remember telling any adults about these issues.  Adults were always too busy and being a scaredy cat is not admirable.  I was afraid until my junior year in high school when I finally gained some power as writer on my school newspaper.

What I learned was:  Children have no positive morality. Childhood is something to survive.  Children take pleasure where they can find it and it's pleasurable being cruel to others.  Girls are as mean as boys but their cruelty is less visible.

One of the reasons I chose not to have children was because I found my own childhood almost unsurvivable (if it hadn't been for my childhood religious faith, I would have committed suicide when I first started thinking about it in 5th grade.)

Happy ending:  what didn't kill me made me stronger and I am now a very happy and content middle aged professional.

I feel very sorry for all those kids being bullied but I don't see how one can change the "natural" cruelty of children.  It seems hopeless to me.   

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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I admire these young writers and encourage them to keep working.

I've given up my writing life many times since one of my first sonnets won a local prize when I was in high school.  Love, work, and the sheer inability to sit my tookus down in front of a blank sheet of paper (or blank screen) for extended periods of time have all contributed to my lack of production. 

Of course, the constant stream of rejections that most poets face is also rather daunting.  At some periods of my life I've been able to face rejection and have succeeded and getting a few things published. (My work appears in the recent anthology Beyond Forgetting).  At other periods I've allowed my ongoing failures to drive me away from sharing my work.  (I'm in one of those periods now, having spent hundreds of dollars entering a book in contests and losing every one.)

Poets should remember that there are probably more people writing poetry than reading it and this alone makes "success" in any material way improbable. One should write because one can't not write.

Kake Huck

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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Does opera have silly stories -- hmmm -- betrayed love, political oppression, class struggle? Not completely silly. How can opera get a new audience? Audiences buy what they desire. Desire is a result of lack. Marketing can create a sense of lack. What is it that opera provides that people lack? Especially young people?
Yes, I've been to the MET and occasionally regional opera (last year's Portland Cinderella was fun). I like the beauty, passion and spectacle that are great opera. But I've also slept through Wagner. So opera, like any other art, has good examples and bad examples and one's pleasure in it is a matter of taste. Stories, tunes, movement, excitement, violence, and a potent message all make opera tasty to me. I think that having really beautiful or handsome singers (oh, Anna N.!) and using new technologies will make opera more and more interesting to a wider audience.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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