What was intended as a joyous occasion — a sign of real progress, with cake as the main course and punch as the chaser — might have instead appeared as an annoyance, if you read newspaper headlines.
Let me explain:
A recent issue of the Optic included a front-page photo spread on a ribbon-cutting for a the city’s newest diversion dam. About 50 city officials and townspeople boarded vans to go high up Gallinas Canyon, “to places some of you have never been before,” as Mayor Alfonso Ortiz expressed it.
He was right. My wife, Bonnie, and I had never seen Bradner or Peterson reservoirs. True, we’ve been by there, but the roads taken by the four intrepid city drivers were scarcely navigable by man or beast. Once we reached the summit of what might be called the “San Miguel County Nosebleed Section,” we saw wonderful, pristine sights, placid ponds, albeit a bit too dry for our tastes.
So bucolic was the scene that any lover of nature ought to oppose any plan ever to open up the sites to the public. There are areas that ought to remain untouched, given some of humanity’s penchant for dumping beer cans, potato chip bags, fast-food wrappers and styrofoam cups.
But back to the Optic headline: We wrote “Dam ribbon cutting” above the photos, and that prompted a note from reader Jose Marquez, who said, in part, “Dam ribbon-cutting … sounds like it was annoying to someone.” He went on, “It reminds me of some signs I see around town that read, ‘Slow children playing.’ Either they are not very smart or don’t move very fast.”
Marquez mentioned another sign: “Cows and horses keep out.” Well good luck! Horse sense and even a degree in psycowlogy don’t turn our quadrupeds into readers, but the sign-painter’s efforts were noble.
I still tease a friend who owns property outside of town. He painted a sign: “Keep gate locked.” Is that a reminder to himself? To the livestock? To the public? One time, as I drove by, I saw the sign and the gate open, so I dutifully came home, fished out a padlock and placed it on my friend’s gate. Now that’s helping out a fellow man.
Around town, in restaurants and even government buildings, we see the following bit of information: “This door to remain unlocked during business hours.” Now what exactly does that mean? I took it literally as free information from the management to the general public. Why one would care that a particular door is open eludes me.
But what about the other interpretation? Could that unlocked-door message actually be from some higher-up officials who are telling the management they’d better leave the door unlocked?
A few doors around town, notably one at the City Recreation Center, bear the sign, “Keep door closed at all times.” Fair enough. We assume the order applies to workers there, but aren’t doors also for opening? “At all times” means that it must not be opened, even for storage, or for cleaning, even for a second. So why have the door in the first place?
They need a good plasterer to fulfill their wishes.
Though the spelling is a wee-bit different, “dam dedication” sounds like something we used as kids, a word guaranteed to entitle a parent to insert a bar of soap into our respective oral orifices. My first hearing of the d-word in public — no big surprise — came back in the ‘40s, when the entire audience at the Serf gasped upon hearing Clark Gable, qua Rhett Butler, use the term on Scarlett O’Hara.
And “dam” is what a fish says when it smacks into a concrete barrier at Storrie Lake.
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By definition, a standing head is something that appears daily — well, sometimes thrice a week. In the past, there could have been numerous standing heads, about history that repeats itself, like “Liz Taylor Remarries,” “Lindsey Lohan Arrested,” “LeBron Chokes,” and “Limbaugh Nauseates.”
There ought to be standing heads for all the state- and county-level employees placed on paid administrative leave. Imagine being on paid leave, sometimes for years, and not needing to show up for work.
And notice legions of others who get assigned “administrative” or “desk” duty. Imagine earning a living doing “desk” duty. Your job is to handle office matters, greet the public, answer the phone, and in short, see that things run smoothly.
But then comes someone newly taken off the streets, who now has a desk right next to yours. Nice prospect, huh? You’ve trained for your desk job, but suddenly you have a helper. What does that say about your own training, when your station becomes a repository for others who need to be assigned some kind of duties so taxpayers don’t complain.
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Tom Herrera, of Luna Community College, reacted to last week’s Work of Art column about hugs. He wrote, in part: “We mustn’t let that part of our culture ride into the sunset. … About six years ago, one of my entries to the ‘funnies’ was actually published in the Albuquerque Journal (and others). It was an entry to the comic strip ‘Baldo’ and ‘Pitos.’ …
“My entry to ‘Pitos’ was ‘Hugatona,’ a person such as your favorite Tia who hugs everybody and anybody. The authors apparently liked this entry, drew Baldo and his Tia engaged in a hug that nearly suffocates him. There are hugatonas and hugatones all around us.”
Herrera added that Lupita Gonzales, an Optic contributing writer and his former high school teacher, is one of his “favorite hugatonas as she always has a warm hug for me.”