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The author began using the professional name Héctor de la O in the entertainment community in 1980, working as an engineer for a local radio station in Woodburn, Oregon - It is a surname of his maternal great-grandmother. Beginning around that time, Hector became a member of two well-known Latin American folklore bands in the Northwest, (first Antara, and then Grupo Kultura) playing the Seattle Folk Life Festival for several years as well as many local venues and events, from the Portland area, to all points around Oregon and Washington.Hector was born in a Mexican-American family in Los Angeles, California, where he was raised - graduated from Wilson High School of El Sereno, California in 1966, when he joined the Marines - After a three-year stint which included duty in Viet Nam, he went to several colleges, including East L.A., Cal State L.A., Sweetwater and Western Oregon University, majoring in Language arts, receiving two degrees.I already knew Hector as a linguist and creative spirit who spent his down-time at his sinecure in the courthouse attached to the Men's Central Jail on Bauchet Street, drawing, writing and adding to the Aztlán Chicano art altar on his desk, a collage of symbols, pictures and objects (an eternal work-in-progress that expressed the subtleties of his soul).He also spoke poetry, a language above the laws of grammar and syntax and the every-day manner we are accustomed to, of making connection with, and expressing what we see and feel. His "verses", as he calls them, remind me of a braid of dreams, a flow of thought that exist beyond the linear logic. These writings, like some stylized chronicle, entwine his boyhood in Northeast Los Angeles with his experience as a warrior in Viet Nam, and then again with his love of the beaty of the barrio world - all evident in a wisdom that is hard-won by holding fast to hope and love and all that is tender, in spite of the knowledge of violence and decay and inevitable loss - aware that this game is rigged.As I read these poems on late afternoons, on my balcony overlooking the palm trees and apartment building rooftops, realizing the horizon moves toward the sunsets of an ocean I can't see from here, I wondered if there was some hidden meaning in all I was reading - I did ask the author, who answered cryptically, "Could be." This is a compilation of an observer's experience with the spectacle of life, joy and suffering, offered to us in a multi-colored spiritual kaleidoscope.Hector lives in the Northwest to this date, and is semi-retired as a Court-certified interpreter for several states and the U.S. Federal Court. Since only his associates in the entertainment realm know him by his nom de plume, good luck finding him. Hector does welcome your communication, and sends his greetings to anyone who might read his thoughts (or whose thoughts he may have read). I invite you all to experience what I did in these astonishing pieces.Robert Rammelkamp [O.H.P.]
