Trinidad Martinez, mentioned in this space a while back, took on ethnographic research for a linguistics class he took a few years ago when Prof. Carol Scates chaired the Highlands University English Department.

A native of nearby Peñasco, Martinez came up with an impressive list of words which we Spanish speakers in northern New Mexico have adopted. Surely, anyone familiar with the Spanish language has come across any number of words that we’ve somehow made fit.

For the most part, Martinez, a retired elementary school teacher, chose verbs; accordingly, for many it became a simple matter to add an -r-type ending to English verbs and thus adopt. Spanish verbs are easy to identify: the telltale “ar,” “er” or “ir” at the end helps, as in words like “pagar” (to pay), “comer” (to eat) “vivir” (to live). Is there anything in the English language that comes even close to providing the identities of verbs? “Eat,” “live” and “pay,” except for being short, common verbs, provide no clue that they’re even verbs. Continue reading →

It would have been great if people who predict the end of the world had been a wee bit more accurate. Even though the prediction of the coming rapture was a few ticks off, it certainly drew a lot of attention.

Presbyterian Pastor Randy Campbell, for one, opened his Sunday sermon by announcing, “I’m here!” Doubtless many others said the same thing.

The gentleman who predicted that on May 21, a fifth of a billion Christians would be taken to heaven, California preacher Harold Camping, also said that those of us left behind, would suffer a living hell on earth.

Camping, whose independent ministry runs Family Radio International, admits he felt terrible that the prophecy didn’t come true. It was an expensive — well into the millions — venture, mainly through 5,000 billboards around the country.

The prognosticating man of the cloth ought to do his homework better. This isn’t his first such miscalculation. Remember back in 1994 when what Camping called a “mathematical error” prevented the Apocalypse? Isn’t there an expression, about “once burnt, twice wary”? Continue reading →

“Please leave the humor to me.” I’ve used that line many times, especially toward my brother-in-law, Jeff Romero, a lawyer who used to be the district attorney in Albuquerque.

He’d start in with lawyer jokes (yes, lawyers know them all; they hear them, spread them, laugh at them and feel unloved if someone fails to tell a lawyer joke in their presence).

One thing about Jeff, a man who has made quite a good living, was his reluctance to buy new stuff.

What particularly puzzled me was his insistence on keeping a pre-historic TV set, possibly the same one used by the Flintstones.

You know the kind I’m describing, always emitting a greenish tint, having knobs and rabbit ears, and a rounded screen that you might expect to find goldfish swimming in. That kind of TV set. Jeff is like my in-laws, Max and Bertha Jimenez, about whose set I said must have run on kerosene.

When I made the same statement to Señor Counselor, Jeff corrected me and said it in fact “runs on whale oil.” Now I’m not necessarily Señor Everything New. No sir. I like to allow things to perform their services before replacing them. But that’s iffy in itself. How many times have you bought something electronic and when it broke, tried to have it repaired, only to discover that “you have last month’s model. Those aren’t made anymore”? Continue reading →

Video games have spoiled it for many of us. We have grown so inured to realistic things coming toward us that I fear too often we don’t know how to react when danger is imminent.

Let me explain: Many years ago, we brought some friends home from a dance at Immaculate Conception School. Because my dad was the first one on his block to own a genuine adjustable camera (an Argus C-3), he wanted to take a group photo of us.

In those days, the M-25 flashbulb was about the size and shape of the balloons we see at the Albuquerque Festival, and the heat they’d generate was comparable to the kettle that fires up those hot-air balloons.

Well, Lydia, my sort-of date, apparently had never been photographed at night, and when the bulb fired, she shrieked and must’ve imagined there had been an explosion. Those noisy, bulbs, which cost about a quarter apiece, in the days when 25 cents was close to one’s hourly wage, eventually went out of style and gave way to things like flash cubes and later, strobes.

But this isn’t to be a treatise on early photography Continue reading →

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Birther. It must be awful to be identified by only one term: birther.

By definition, a birther ought to be 1) someone who creates birth, 2) someone who bears a child, 3) someone like a midwife who catches babies, 4) a bad speller who offers choice sleeping accommodations to another on a Pullman train, or 5) the male child of another bad-spelling mom who expected a girl, whom she would have named Bertha.

But this one-issue group calls itself birther solely because its members fail to believe that President Obama really was born in the U.S. Now, with Hawaii and Alaska as the newest kids on the U.S. state block, having been admitted in 1959, Obama’s legitimacy as president might have justifiably been brought into question. Especially for birthers who failed Basic Math, U.S. History or got only as far as 48 states. Continue reading →

“I have a bone to pick with you.” Really? Does anyone fail to understand the expression, meaning having a score to settle or an argument to advance?

Methinks many of us — including and especially myself — must have come across this and other expressions and never really bothered to verify them, to discover what they really mean. Sometimes we use incorrect expressions without knowing so; other times we use them correctly but don’t know why.

Here are some common terms, which, invariably get used wrong:

At the top of the list has to be “I could care less.” People use it more often than the original term, “I couldn’t care less.” Note that the first instance demonstrates that the speaker is capable of caring a great deal and is therefore far from indifferent.

Another is “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” For many years I would argue, “Yes you can!” But really, you can’t. Imagine a cake so carefully crafted that it’s a thing of beauty, a joy forever. Until it gets eaten. Continue reading →

One of the best photo-ops in recent times came Monday morning when I got a call from Optic managing editor, Martin Salazar, asking me to hustle over to the north exit on I-25 to get some pictures.

Taking Exit 347, I discovered that a sea of orange cones, closing the right southbound lane, stretched for about a mile. There, a number of city vehicles were towing away dozens of wrecked trucks, buses, trailer houses and other equipment that had greeted locals and tourists alike. This eyesore has been an in-your-face assault on our aesthetic sensibilities for years.

Patiently, city crews hooked on vehicle after vehicle, dragging them to the shoulder and towing them away. With each tow-away, there seemed to be sighs of relief from the workers. One of them even slapped his hands together in a gesture that says, “Well, that’s one down; only 100 more to go.” Continue reading →

Growing up on Railroad Avenue, the place we called “Tough Street,” presented manifold problems. Having left that barrio about 50 years ago, I still retain many quite lucid memories of that place.

Mom and Dad, like so many other parents raising families in the ‘40s and ‘50s, probably believed children needed to acquire English as their primary language, and if we were to pick up a bit of Spanish along the way, well, that’s even better. But to be fair, this behavior was a regular feature of our parents’ generation, and it has faded somewhat during ours.

Regardless of their intentions, I for one struggled, especially among kids I played with in the neighborhood and those I went to school with, at Immaculate Conception, for 12 years. Continue reading →

Imagine receiving a letter so eye-catching that it makes you want to send a copy to 100 friends. But wait! With postage costing $44, not to mention the price of paper, envelopes and ink, well that starts to run into money.

The only time I succumbed to such expenditures was in 1972, when an acquaintance whom I met at a workshop in Charlottesville, Va., sent me a letter with the notation “This one really works!” with the urging that I send copies of the letter to 25 friends.

Postage was about 18 cents at the time, but my teaching pittance was also less, so I felt it more. The 10 dollars it cost to forward the letters didn’t yield me that $10,000 this “really works!” scheme virtually promised. It did, however, force me to consider a third mortgage.

What if technology hadn’t made it so easy today to send off a zillion copies? On the one hand, the ease in e-mailing things tends to cheapen the product: it’s like receiving a photo-copied thank-you note, or, as we recently experienced, attending a wedding reception and finding the words of gracias already on the tables, wrapped in a plastic ribbon. Continue reading →

It’s happened twice in less than a week: This old man has found himself getting choked up. The older I get, the easier it is to become dewy-eyed.

Let me explain:

I delivered a brief eulogy for my father-in-law, Stanley Coppock, in Springer last Thursday. Why me? Why not one of Stanley’s four daughters? Well, to a (wo)man, they emphasized they’d be unable to carry it out — too emotional.

Since I’m not blood, but a son-in-law, and since the daughters had prepared the words I delivered, I was sure I could get through it without shedding a tear. All went fine (and here, I realize, it might even appear that I’m describing a performance instead of paying homage to a man I’ve known for almost 50 years) until I got to the list (neighbor, friend, father, husband, brother, grandfather, etc.). Something about identifying all the things Stanley was, and stood for, made me interrupt my presentation, pause a second, compose myself, think about it, and conclude it.

The same thing happened to my son, who was in fact merely reading a note from his Denmark-residing older brother. But that’s another story. Continue reading →