Recent columns appear to have had sticking power, as I still get feedback about items on home remedies, columns about the pronunciation of some Spanish names and of the ways we play with words.

At an Associated Press awards banquet last week, I met Phaedra Haywood, a Santa Fe New Mexican staffer who’d just taken a first place in feature writing for a series of articles on volunteers for a fashion makeover. Part of her beat is the village of Pecos, and she mentioned that some of the remedios — Aceite Mexicano, volcanic oil and castor oil — I’d listed in a previous column were familiar to residents of that community.

And Geneva Benavidez of Las Vegas listed a familiar concoctiofn — a few drops of Aceite Mexicano, water and a bit of honey — as the cure for tummy troubles. She also mentioned a solution her grandmother administered in Geneva’s youth: “vinagre, salarata and a sweetener,” which she said tasted like soda pop, to treat upset stomachs.

And why not? The complement to the vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, would provide the fizz that livens up soft drinks. Grandmothers certainly knew how to improvise.

Bertha Jimenez showed me a large bottle of McLean’s volcanic oil, which she inherited from her mother. She too ingested many doses of the compound as a child with an aching tummy.

Never opened, the bottle nevertheless lacked the safety seal most products have today. And though the dust on the bottle and orange box indicates considerable age, the box contains a modern scanner code.

Regarding the column on the slaughter of Spanish names such as “True- jill-o,” “Mun-dragon” and “Pu-cheek-oh,” Dolores Gonzalez, Highlands University’s interim assistant to President James Fries, said she’d like to know how Show-Me-staters rendered the name of her former Highlands boss Manuel Pacheco. Pacheco recently served as interim president at Highlands.

Gonzalez wonders what Pacheco heard when he was president of the Missouri University System. Surely someone called him “Pa-cheek-oh” at least once.

As for her own last name, she said about the only liberty people have taken with it is turning it into two syllables, as in “Gone Zalez.”

Gonzalez said she’s been privy to a fair amount of teasing in that her grown son can’t roll his “r’s,” but her grown daughter can. Both children received Spanish-language instruction in parochial schools all the way from kindergarten. “Maybe it’s all physiological,” she said.

Editha Bartley, of “Palabras Pintorescas,” fame, reacted to last month’s “Work of Art,” which contained word trivia. Editha pointed out that there are many homonyms in English with three meanings, but can I identify any with four?

For example, “rain,” “reign” and “rein” as well as “cite,” “site” and “sight” are pronounced the same but have different meanings and spellings.

There are four sound-alike words, namely “right,” “rite,” “write” and “wright.” They mean, in order, “correct,” “ritual,” “the act of scribing,” and someone who constructs things like plays, as in playwright, or wheels, as in “wheelwright.” But does “wright” exist as a word in itself? The few uses of the term require that it be connected to another word.

One word I can think of with four different meanings and spellings is “peke,” as in a yapping mutt; “peak,” as in summit, “peek,” as in look in to, and “pique,” as in a fit of rage. Now I expect some mother-in-law to disqualify “peke,” in that it refers to “Peking” and “Pekingese” and should thus be capitalized.

Here’s another possibility: “medal,” as in award; “metal,” as in an element; meddle, as in interfere; and mettle, as in verve. Four different words, four different spellings, but the same sound. Some may argue that the “t’s” in “metal” and “mettle” give these words a different sound, but in speech, the sound is the same. There’s something about an intervocalic “t,” one that appears between vowels, that softens it and turns into a “d.”

Ronni Roberts, apparently convinced that columnists have nothing better to do than muse over language, e-mailed a fascinating piece along the lines of the Serf Theater marquee, in which someone rearranged the letters of “In Her Shoes” to read “Heros Shine,” and later, “Oh, He’s Risen.”

Roberts’ submission includes words like “dormitory,” which, if you rearrange the letters, yields “dirty room,” and “slot machines” turns into “cash lost in me.” “Presbyterian” can be rearranged to read “best in prayer,” and “George Bush” becomes “He bugs Gore.” And why is Gore inconveniently bugged? Because “Election returns” becomes “Lies — let’s recount.”

And finally, just in time for Mother’s Day, we take “Mother-in-law” and come up with “Woman Hitler.” Puh-leeze don’t take offense at this last one: I don’t create these rearrangements, I only report them.

But if it upsets anyone, I suggest trying Geneva Benavidez’s recipe listed above.

Works wonders, I hear.