As a former student, and husband of a teacher, I know that the education process is fraught with a lot of bullshit, but at the end of the day, students in Washington have more opportunities for quality education than the majority of states. What I tend to see a lot of is students simply unwilling to do the work required to gain that education being offered to them.

Drug use, crime, and economic disparity are issues everywhere, and the former typically have a lot to do with the latter. These issues prevail all over the world, and while there are parts of Washington where shit is pretty bad, it's not even close to other parts of the country, let alone the world.

I grew up poor and hungry in Washington. As a young adult I spent years struggling to provide for a family, but it was better than my childhood. There were times when I did things I wasn't particularly proud of to keep the power turned on. But at the end of the day, coming up poor in Washington is a far, far cry from coming up poor in Louisiana.

There are no easy answers to your concerns. They're going to exist anywhere humans do. We could point to late stage capitalism as the issue, but we'd be complicitly ignoring what history has taught us about other options. Are there better ways? Most certainly. Will they happen? Probably not in America. In all likelihood, for Americans, this is as good as it gets.

I know you're young and probably get tired of hearing this, but time will provide you with experience that gives you a better perspective. Don't let bitterness and frustration ruin your youth. If you don't like it here, travel--you'll realize it's a lot of the same crap everywhere.

Current, crazy high waves, wind, and tidal influence fighting the outgoing current all make for a shit show. I grew up crossing that bar a lot with my grandfather, in a fiberglass boat he built himself. Eventually, while crossing it alone, he broke his hip and would never be able to make the trip again. I've got a lot of fond memories fishing out there, and most of them involve dodging incoming freighter ship traffic. Once he lost his rip-cord while trying to restart his main motor and we had to crawl back on his trolling motor. The Coast Guard stopped to see if we wanted a tow and he refused.

Now I'm all teary eyed. Granpda died about a decade ago from cancer. His boat was half buried on his lot in Winlock, rotting and being chewed on by horses.

There's no Uber in Kalama, but if you hop on the Kalama Facebook page there's an independent lady that will drive you places locally. She's not associated with any ride shares. You'll need to call her to arrange for it. For my money, I'd just get a rental.