I feel better now. The city council in Portland, Ore., has voted not to bomb Iran.

This makes Portland the second city to pass such a resolution. Berkeley, Calif., was the first. (I don’t believe any cities have decided we should bomb Iran.)

Berkeley went one better than Portland. Its council also encouraged Germany to indict former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes.

This all seems odd to me. These towns have rotting sewers, gangs shooting each other and people living under bridges – but the council is debating about whether to bomb Iran.

In recent years, the Portland city council has voted to call for an end to the war in Iraq, to condemn abuse of the Patriot Act and to deplore the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward homosexuality. And the sewers are still leaking.

Why don’t these folks tend to what they were elected for? Maybe they should have a training meeting or something.

I’m reminded of a psychologist who spoke at a county agents meeting back in the 1970s. This man believed a major factor in a person’s personality was the time period in which they grew up.

He said folks who grew up in the 1920s and ‘30s liked to do things in groups: company picnics, church socials, square dancing. (My parents, for example, took most of their vacations with other couples.)

The psychologist said people who grew up during the Depression were hard-working and careful with money, as one might expect. They were very reluctant to quit a job, because it might be hard to find another one.

This fellow said folks who grew up in the 1960s were into causes. Everybody had a cause in the Sixties: save the whales, ban the fur trade, save the forest.

Sometimes the 1960s people get so caught up in their causes they forget where their responsibilities begin and end. The psychologist said everyone would be better off if these folks went home and cleaned up their rooms.

About the time I heard the psychologist speak, some folks decided they needed to reform our local schools. They were mostly concerned about the curriculum, I think.

Sports were getting too much attention. The arts were underappreciated, and the kids needed more foreign languages. These people conducted surveys, met with administrators and pestered the school board. It was a small group, but they created quite a fuss.

A couple of years after this little crusade, one of the women involved told my wife she probably wouldn’t have gotten so caught up in all of that school stuff if she hadn’t had so much free time on her hands.

She should have been home cleaning up her room.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.