Port: Your civic duty is to vote, and then accept the results

MINOT — The kindergarten I attended in Wasilla, Alaska, was attached to city hall. There were big double-doors separating the school from the city offices. We kids were forbidden from going near them, except I had a special dispensation. At the end of the school day, I was allowed to go through and up the stairs to my mother's office, just down the hall from the mayor's office. My mother was a city clerk. I'd bide my time in the break room until it was time to go home. Or maybe in Mayor Dorothy Page's office. She was the first woman elected to lead my hometown and would let me play on the floor in her office. Once, having overheard her discussing the city's deposits, I asked if the bank was dinosaur proof. In Wasilla's archives, there may be the letter she sent the local bank president asking if their vault could survive a Jurassic-era threat. Somewhere I have a copy of the letter he sent back, assuring her that it was. These are the roots of my lifelong love of gov