Local Opinion

“I hate inflation.”

I find myself teaching this simple lesson with more enthusiasm lately: elected positions in American government exist as opportunities to serve. “Yea, yea, old man, we know that” is often the expression I see on the faces of my students when I start. Occasionally, one of them might actually say it out loud.

I spent my whole life in cities and suburbs where there is so much light pollution that you’re lucky to see Orion’s Belt. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I thought I knew what the night sky looked like.

Sitting at the kitchen table this early morning, I see before me nature’s infinite variety in the form of a shallow blue-gray bowl filled with five small gourds.

The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed a bill to reform how Congress certifies electors after a presidential election. That bill (or a similar but slightly weaker Senate one) needs to pass the Senate now.

To the Editor:

Fort Wayne, my hometown, has a telephone service that residents can use to ask questions, request city services or report situations that require attention from city departments. I’ve never used this service but I have a friend who contacts the 311 folks daily.

Politicians used to “encourage” favorable votes from citizens by tapping kegs of whiskey at the polling sites. The stakes are higher these days as our representatives in Washington D.C. think much bigger both in dollars and constituents. The other difference is that those kegs of whiskey came out of the candidates’ pockets while their twenty-first successors have the federal treasury on call.

“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

Most of the public and parochial schools in my area started back up this week. So what, one might ask, until one looks at the calendar and realizes it is the second week of August. What happened to summer vacation?