An inveterate verbophile, I’ve always been interested in words, what they mean, why they mean, why they can hurt and heal. Remember that bit of doggerel about “sticks and stones” that may “break my bones”?

I like to think my vocabulary is on par with the next person’s, but even after seven decades of pondering, deciphering, memorizing and manipulating words, I often come across new ones. A friend and frequent contributor to this column, Bruce Wertz, hit his Facebook friends with a word that is new to many: “hyperpolysyllabicomania.” Thanks to some fairly predictable Greek and Latin roots, we can figure out that Bruce’s new entry has to do with “ultra,” ”many,” “syllables” and a passion, as in the ending, “mania.” So without even looking up the definition, we safely come up with Bruce’s passion for long words.

But beyond long words, what about those with prefixes that connote similar things? For example, think of the myriad words beginning with “sp” that suggest water: spill, spurt, splash, sputter. How many more can you add to the list without consulting a dictionary?

And just recently (“recently” for a person my age could span decades, eons), I became familiar with the “fl” prefix which suggests rapid movement. Try it: fling, flick, flay, flip. Now, provide some of your own. Continue reading →

As I look back, almost exactly 50 years, to the time when all Highlands students who hoped to graduate needed to pass the university-devised English Usage Exam, I realize it wasn’t so hard after all.

The anticipation of hurdles, in my experience, is far worse than the reality. “What if I don’t pass the exam? Will that mean I can’t graduate?” we’d ask ourselves. Indeed, failure to pass it meant taking it again until we passed, but I forget the requisite waiting period before re-taking. At the time, Highlands was under the quarter system, with each term lasting about 10 weeks. I suspect those who failed the exam needed to wait until the following quarter.

The word “English” in the title of the since-discontinued exam was a misnomer. That implied it was a specialized test for English majors that required learning and retaining hosts of terms like passive voice, run-on sentences, gerunds and fragments.

Not so. It was simply an examination that required clear, concise English. But unfortunately, in my years of teaching at Highlands, I became accustomed to hearing students posit that the test was something designed exclusively for English majors. Continue reading →

This being my first column of the year 2015, I wish to return to my main preoccupation. Actually, the preoccupation properly expressed would be Katherine Zeta Jones. But for now I’ll settle for a less exciting passion: words.

I was surprised to discover that “vape” has become a word to describe inhaling those electronic cigarettes — or e-cigs — that I’ve never even seen, except in magazine ads.

And there’s that duo, “actually” and “literally,” now sprinkled into much teen-speak, as in “Actually, I literally ripped his lungs out when he insulted me.

And we have “like,” my guess to be the most common filler word in the lexicon, despite its usually having no meaning, no function in language, like except in constructions like “I like those wheels, man,” or “You look like my sister.”

But for now, let’s like narrow down this grammar lesson to a word that rears its head every election cycle. I’ve alluded to this speech mannerism in the past, but I’m convinced its use has become much more common lately. I’m referring to the word “humbled.” Continue reading →

My family of five siblings, two parents and a bachelor uncle lived in a tiny house on Railroad Avenue: eight of us in a house with two bedrooms and one bathroom. Night-time required a degree in logistics, as the living room needed to remain pristine and was not for sleeping. Severino and I rolled out a foldaway bed at night and wheeled it into the kitchen-laundry room combo in which Tio Juan also slept.

The living room was the first room visitors saw as they knocked on the front door. Remember, in those days, few people had a phone; a text message was decades away, so people just showed up unannounced, sometimes expecting dinner. Mom, who passed away in 2002, used to laugh about the time my classmate at Immaculate Conception School, Johnny Lopez, who lived exactly a block away but across the tracks, used our hallway as a shortcut to school.

Tales like these, on retelling, have a way of being embellished, ballooned out of proportion. The truth is that Johnny absolutely would cut through our yard, but not always through our house. Once I happened to be in the back yard at the time and invited him to walk to school with me — “Let’s take a shortcut through the house,” I said. He agreed, “But may I use your bathroom first?” Continue reading →

When was the last time someone from another state failed to realize that we New Mexicans also live in a state? No doubt at least once you’ve been asked what the rate of exchange is for pesos and real dollars, or whether one needs a passport to enter the borders of this untamed land.

My family has traveled quite a bit, having visited all continuous states except North Dakota and Maine. If we stay anywhere long enough, we’re invariably asked, “How far is Las Vegas from Mexico City?” Once, when I lived in Illinois, I explained that the city we were in, Aurora, was CLOSER to the Mexican capital than was Las Vegas.

A few years later there had appeared a letter to the original Dear Abby. It was around this time of year that a mother wrote Dear Abby a letter explaining that upon her young daughter’s visit with a department-store Santa, the jolly old man asked her what city and town she came from. The girl told Santa she had been born in Virginia. Continue reading →

Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014

What were they thinking? They are young — probably pre-pubescent — boys who almost caused my workout partner to reduce Las Vegas’ population by three.

Let me explain:

Always one to believe the pedestrian has rights and drivers aren’t automatically conferred their own rights by virtue of having lots of horses under the hood, I try to be accommodating to pedestrians. Anyone on foot, crossing to Charlie’s Restaurant — and most of them jaywalk — gets the no-problem-go-ahead gesture from many motorists on that slow-moving street.

Wednesday was different. As we headed west on Mills, I noticed the three boys walking from a trailer park on the north side of Mills toward the lot across the street. The driver didn’t snap that there were three — suddenly appearing — potential fatalities waiting, as they sallied across the four lanes. We came perilously close to running over all of them. A shocking, heart-pounding part of the episode was the boys’ obvious lack of concern for their own safety.

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A number of years ago, when our oldest son, Stan Adam, moved from Seattle to Denmark to find his way with Microsoft, that created an opportunity for us to travel long distances to visit him.

We alternately flew and drove to Washington State when our son lived there. But soon, after relocating in Copenhagen, he met a woman who’s now the mother of his two daughters, ages 5 and 3. The Danes take baptisms seriously, and accordingly it was difficult for us to turn down an invitation to Ellen’s baptism. So we flew there — some time in the late fall — only three months from our earlier trip that year.

Our visits there amazed me at how well Danes speak English. Often, Bonnie and I stopped strangers on the street to get directions. Without hesitation, the people pulled out their best English and made it clear how we should proceed. But the rest of the time? They seem to speak Danish among themselves. Ask me how many Danish words I know. Danish originated from Old Norse and Icelandic, and that’s quite a distance from the Romance and Anglo-Saxon tongues I’m somewhat familiar with. Continue reading →

An item I read years ago in Readers Digest concerned the pin-dot community of Costilla, on the New Mexico-Colorado border. Apparently, in the olden days, maps weren’t as precise as they are today, as we lacked satellites. There was a perennial discussion as to which state Costilla belonged to: New Mexico or Colorado?

There were hearings, the resurrection of long-dormant deeds, testimonials and threats of lawsuits — until a court determined that Costilla did indeed belong to New Mexico. One long-time resident of the community was heard to exclaim, “Thank goodness! I couldn’t have spent another winter in Colorado.”

Whether fact or legend, the Digest item made an excellent point. And I hadn’t thought of that little town in years. If I had, I’d have thought of it merely as a place one drives through to get to Colorado from Taos. In Monday’s email was a note from a woman named Patricia Craineu, who was born in Costilla, moved to Barstow, Calif., and more recently relocated to Las Vegas. Continue reading →

“One dollar and 87 cents.” Those are the opening lines to O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” the Christmas classic about a couple struggling and each wanting to buy a gift for the other. That was in 1906, when a dollar bought something.

Most people know the story: Jim sells his watch to a jeweler so he can buy Della a set of beautiful brushes. Meanwhile, she’s undergoing the same struggle and agrees to sell her hair to buy Jim a gold watch fob. Christmas Day, they realize that neither can use the gift: His watch is gone, as is her hair, but they console one another with the assurance her hair will grow back.

One dollar and 87 cents. That must have been a lot in those days.

Each month as I examine our bank statement, I feel reassured that we will probably not end up in the poor house, as was the fear for Jim and Della. And of course, I realize that the money the couple had in the “Gift,” by today’s standards, would scarcely buy a cup of coffee.

Remember when it was common for a local street mendicant to stop you as you entered a restaurant, and ask, “Can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee”?

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“Please! Don’t recite any recipes. I beg of you.” And with that surprisingly authoritarian tone, I explained that all I had done was compliment the chef over the meal my wife and I had been invited to.

Any comment about the food during the meal often leads to a detailed recipetation of each step, as if we were taking notes.

But first, let me explain that a few readers of Work of Art have detected — and told me about — the cynical tone to a couple of recent columns. For example, I recently wrote about the mysterious fruitcake that fellow columnist Editha Bartley discussed in her weekly column. It’s my contention that no one has ever eaten that fruitcake; instead, each recipient of the fruit-nuts-and-whatever concoction thanks the giver, smiles, and immediately repackages it to send to someone else, chain-letter fashion.

The result is that the same fruitcake has circled the globe many times; it is not due at our house until my retirement or in 2034 — whichever comes first.

This column, which will be about Thanksgiving and Christmas food, will not be a recipe, at least not in the sense of “Stir vigorously for three hours, then fold in ground up walnuts sautéed in vinegar at 650 degrees.” Continue reading →