About once a month, I drive over the river to the other part of town where I lived for thirty years. It’s really the same town, but it seems like another one to me. And like a different life.  I lived in the same house there for 26 years which is the congest I ever lived in a house.

When I was little, we moved all over southern Oklahoma every few years as Daddy”s work moved.  He worked for a petroleum company that was laying pipelines all across there.  The longest I ever lived anyplace then was in a little town called Ringling.  It had about 1200 people in it. Fourth grade through ninth.

I was pretty much an only child, so I planned to raise a large family in one house forever.  Funny how things work out.

Anyway, across the bridge where I used to live, I still know where to find everything.  I know where to buy an expensive loaf of white bread once a year to eat tomato sandwiches for a week.  I know where to go to a softball field behind Trader Joe’s once a year to pick up sweet Italian plus off the ground.  I did those two things today.  And I know every tree I planted at 1880 and drive through the alley there and talk to them,  Those redwoods remember me and they will be there long after I have stopped driving by.

Quote from Ted Lasso (Season 2, Episode 2): “Old people are so wise. They’re like tall Yodas.”   We old folks have  lived a long time.  We’ve made a lot of mistakes and learned from them.  Sadly, most younger people have to make the same mistakes themselves and learn the hard way.

On a much greater scale, those who do not know history are damned to repeat it.  I wish presidential candidates had to stand an oral exam on the Constitution.  The current POTUS is in my age group.  He exhibits no wisdom and little knowledge of history and no understanding of the Constitution. His language reminds me of that of a junior high school bully whose mother should have washed his mouth out with soap. This old school teacher would surely like to give him a good talking-to.

I have lived in and voted in numerous states. I thought it was very odd when big electric voting machines were set up in my neighbor’s garage for elections in one state. When their electricity went off briefly, it was chaos. I have lived in Oregon for 30 years. For 20 years, we have voted by mail. Couldn’t be more efficient! When someone complained that he had to buy a stamp, pre-paid return envelopes were introduced. “Oregon’s election system is secure and impressive,” according to the League of Women Voters. Non-citizens are already restricted from voting. Strict penalties are issued for any non-citizen or citizen, attempting to cast a prohibited ballot or tampering with the process. Luckily, this is not a significant problem. According to the Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office report of the vote-by-mail system across 20 years of voting, and with approximately 61 million ballots cast, the voter fraud rate in Oregon was 0.00006%. I believe this is a ratio equivalent to one drop to more than 22 gallons of water. Rigged. Naw. Vote-by-mail does not favor one party over another or one candidate over another. What’s more: the Oregon vote counting system is impervious to potential hackers by the simple measure that they are not connected to the internet at all!

I always advised students to choose a simple word rather than an impressive one they found in a thesaurus. (This was before Googling.) Nevertheless, I laughed at this one in the NY Times this morning: “the defenestrated secretary of homeland security.” I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school and I remembered that fenestra means window. So, she got thrown out the window. Perfect.