WAURIKA — Fourth of July is just around the corner, but blocking my way to being able to take time for the holiday is this wall of sticky notes that serve as my memory. So, to paraphrase a famous Ronnie: Let’s tear down this wall:

Mediaites and political and social pundits keep hammering at us about this being a nation divided, and some even suggest we’re currently more sharply divided than at any time in American history.

Oh, puh-leez! What hyperbolic hogwash. Enough already!

Did these Big ‘n’ Loud Voices of Distress and myopic pundits never hear of something called the Civil War, when a half-million Americans were slaughtered because of our political and cultural differences?

And beyond that great cataclysm, can someone please point out an extended period of U.S. history in which we are all on the same page politically and culturally? If there was such a halcyon, blissful age, we need to identify it and figure out how we can return to it.

The population was politically and culturally split before we became a nation, and little seems to have changed since 1776. Even during World War II, when political and cultural debate seemed to be put on the back burner, our differences continued to simmer. Heck, I had one grandfather who thought Franklin D. Roosevelt was a god, while the other thought FDR was a devil.

Here in the 21st century, we may be more “evenly” divided than at anytime before, but so what? Disagreement and diversity are the life blood of liberty and democracy.

• I lose little sleep trying to pick sides in the acrimonious argument between the two main political parties over which is the “meanest” or most vitriolic in slinging mud. It’s a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” debate that has no definitive answer. Kinda like squabbling over which smells worse, a garbage dump or a cesspool?

• Not only is she lovely, talented and my best friend, Karen Kaley is blessed with intelligence and foresight. It was her idea to get married the day after my birthday. Hence, I never forget June 8 is our anniversary.

A nice call, Darlin’. We’ve had 19..uh, 17...ummm, 18 years of bliss. (OK, maybe I have a little trouble with the year we got married, but I never forget the day!)

• State-wide chambers of commerce would prefer not to talk about it, but studies by entities like the Department of Health & Human Services indicate Oklahoma ranks among the top five states with the highest per capita percentage of adults with mental illness.

• A couple remakes for aging Baby Boomers: Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Walker by Herman’s Hermits, and The Beatles’ classic, With a Little Help From Depends.

• If you spend life swimming against the current, it strengthens your shoulders, but it eventually wears out your heart. Once in a while, you just have to float downstream.

• “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” Mark Twain said it.

• Many people spend time discussing what the Founding Fathers meant about church and state, gun control, etc. etc. But one thing that can’t be argued: they meant for us to think for ourselves. And that seems to be a diminishing quality in the 21st century.

People wait for someone to tell them what to think, then when confronted with fact that states otherwise, they ignore it.

• Didja know a group of larks is called an “exaltation?”

• “There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we’d all love one another.” Frank Zappa said it.

• When you’re at the airport and the flight attendant says it’s time to “pre-board,” you should tell them that’s a physically-impossible act. See, when you say “pre-board,” what you’re really saying is: get on the plane before you get on the plane.

• Here’s another entry for the Big Book of Bad Analogies that I’ll publish one day: “McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.”