Election Polling Place Work Again

California has another primary coming up June 3 -- a small, boring one, with a couple of right-wing initiatives about eminent domain all alone on the statewide ballot, accompanied by a few local races. Turnout should be really low.
   All in all, it sounds like an easy, if long, 14-hour day in store for me at an evangelical church in Playa del Rey, Calif. I'm signed up as a volunteer precinct clerk for pay of a munificent $105. On Feb. 5 Super Tuesday I was the boss, the precinct inspector, for $175. That worked out OK, thanks to the help of my wife, Irma, who worked as one of 7 clerks. But this time I wanted to take it easier. Clerks -- the ones who sign voters in, hand them their ballots, accept the completed ballots -- work much less hard and have far less responsibility than the inspector.
  Again, I recommend this volunteer work for anybody. It's a real civics lesson in the grassroots workings of democracy.
  On other fronts in my retirement, I gotta tell you, life sometimes gets boring. I'm still searching daily for long-term volunteer work -- the animal shelter? The ACLU? The local courthouse? -- or for a part-time job.
  "Retire and die," an old lawyer friend of my lawyer brother once said, recommending against ever retiring. The guy had a point.