After perusing the material, it made me reflect a bit on the unbelievable excellence of the education we got back then for our parents hard-earned $1/month payment to St. Ethelreda.

A couple years back I wrote a column about the Slumming Down of America (Can be read here) following the footsteps of the Dumbing Down of America. It was prompted by being appalled daily at the lack of education evident in the business world here in the Wild West. Don’t know if my classmates in Arizona have felt the same way, but Nevada is truly a barbaric redneck stronghold. (Marianne, where you are doesn’t count. You are surrounded by academia and where Jim Fee is in Portland I never noticed the same depth of ignorance when I lived there because Portland is too much a metropolis.)

I come close to strangling strangers in grocery stores and restaurants when I hear the common use of double negatives that bombards my ears from every quarter and have bitten my tongue bloody to keep from making some acerbic retort that the poor slobs wouldn’t understand anyway.

I think I miss the midwest.