A photo in last week’s Optic shows an old house on the Highlands campus dwarfed by a most imposing, new building, the new residence hall designed to accommodate 262 students, as part of the university’s burgeoning enrollment.

As I drove two friends — one a student I’m hoping to recruit — around campus, I led an impromptu tour, which included memories of the area.

An aerial photo in the registrar’s office shows the university circa 1950.

Things have changed: Wilson Complex, now a staple for almost anything athletic, isn’t in that photo. Nor is the paved running track or even Tyrone Music Building. Instead, the old women’s gym (the gym was old, not necessarily the women), which also contained the bookstore, appears on the spot of the Kennedy parking lot.

It was inevitable that the few blocks north of National, along Ninth, 10th and 11th streets, would lose their residential flavor as the campus grew north. I remember Agnes and Mary Lou, classmates from Immaculate Conception school, who lived in that area. Continue reading →

Compliments come in unexpected forms. I, for one, got one without expecting it. Apparently the compliment thrower didn’t intend to be so profuse in commenting on my strength.

Let me explain:

A while back we hired a local woman to do household chores which we hate, things like cleaning, straightening, washing and windows. She did a good job, and we hired her back several times. With the more frequent visits came familiarity.

Once, in a just-between-us-girls voice, she told my wife that “Art is always throwing the house.” What’s that? I can toss a football with the best of the 69-year-olds; my baseball-throwing acumen is pathetic, and, I throw a bowling ball, well, just like Obama.

These are objects designed to be thrown, but how does one throw a house? I thought about it and of course realized that Spanish is Julia’s first language, and there’s a slight bridge to cross from one language to another. I’ll get to the “thrown” house in a few graphs. Continue reading →

The headline for the sports pages of Feb. 2 has already been written: Cardinals Defeat Steelers; Arizona Breaks 61-Year Drought.

Well, the headline is written, at least for a slew of area folks who predict an Arizona victory. Why? The key reasons are “They deserve it” and “They’re closer.”

Super Bowl XLIII is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 1, in Tampa, Fla.

Of the dozen-plus people surveyed, mostly exercise buffs working out at the City Recreation Center, none is an original fan of either the Arizona Cardinals or the Pittsburgh Steelers. Several base their hopes and predictions on proximity, the fact that it would take just a day’s drive to get to Phoenix, whereas a trip to Pittsburgh …

The random sampling shows a mix of eight favorite teams, with three highly intelligent prognosticators being original Oakland Raider fans, whereas three dreamers root for a team called the Dallas Cowboys. And people also like the Washington Redskins, Green Bay Packers, San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings. Continue reading →

This morning, just five days before the inauguration of a new president, I had a detailed conversation with my grandson and namesake.

I mentioned, in all sincerity, that Bush had ended the year on a positive note. “He demonstrated remarkable leadership, was strong, was quick to make the right decisions, acted courageously and, in the final distillation, made a lot of people happy.”

Arthur, who’s grown accustomed to hearing more vitriol than panegyrics at the name Bush, seemed a wee bit incredulous. “Well, Pompah, do you mean you’re now praising Bush? I’ve heard you being very critical of him,” he said.

My response: “When it comes to leadership and getting the job done, it’s really a ‘mission accomplished.’ It gives me hope for a brighter 2009.” Continue reading →

Is there any cure for language purists of my ilk? Will I/we ever be able to relax, irrespective of the knowledge that somewhere in the world public signs with misspellings abound?

Being a newly dubbed strait-laced language cop, I get it back twice as hard. I parade around commenting on other people’s typos, but when something I write, and by extension, something that appears in the Optic, has a glaring error, we catch it (not the error, the scorn).

How does it feel, Art?

A couple of examples: Continue reading →

A few hours ago, hundreds of millions watched the ball drop on Times Square, signaling the start of a new year, one of hope and promise, if not of prosperity.

As they sang an ancient lay — something about an elderly man named Lang who owns an old sign — many people celebrated by uncorking bottles of champagne and later waking up to a man-sized headache today.

As for me, the real ache is a couple of feet lower.

Let me explain: Continue reading →

“Are you the nice guy or the mean guy?” What? I hadn’t been asked that question in years. Hearing it, I harked w-a-y back, to 1966, when I still lived at my birthplace, at 906 Railroad, in a barrio we called “Tuff Street.”

Every house got a little tuffer, and I lived in the last house. The person who inquired about my naughty- and nice-ness used to live in the second-to-the-last house.

When I moved back to Las Vegas, I lived next door to three little boys, sons of Mel and Bella Martinez. I may have snubbed one or all of them the first time; the next time I saw them, I have been told, I was friendly. That prompted the oldest boy, Ralph, to ask why I was sometimes mean, sometimes nice.

But instead of conjuring up an answer, I came up with a clone. “I’m the nice guy. The mean guy is someone else, but he looks just like me, so be careful,” I explained.

Continue reading →

It’s astounding how we use expressions without realizing where they come from. At parties, it’s easy to impress others by attributing whatever quotation we use to either of two sources. It’s likely you’ll be right much of the time if you invoke 1) the Bible, or 2) Shakespeare.

You’ve heard people insist “Well, it’s sure to be in the Bible; the Bible’s such a big book, after all.” But nothing or nobody is cited more often than Shakespeare.

Let me explain: Continue reading →

How would you like to receive 364 gifts, during a span of less than two weeks?

If we believe the popular, tuneful Christmas carol, “The 12 Days of Christmas,” we ought to be gifted many times over.

Let me explain:

“My true love” doesn’t simply send a single partridge in a pear tree, but 12 of them. Remember, on the second day of Christmas, the true love sends two turtle doves plus a partridge in a pear tree, to keep company with the partridge the Postal Service dropped off the day before.

The bird is the last thing on the list each day, and each refrain ends with another partridge. The penultimate items, two turtle doves, get shipped by FedEx on the second through the 12th days; the five gold rings arrive eight times, on the fifth day through the 12th, for a total of 40. Continue reading →

For experimental purposes only, I wanted to test the frequency of capital letters adorning products. Accordingly, I’ve arrayed a dozen items in front of me to test the theory.

My belief is that most people overuse capital letters, LIKE THIS. And they like to play with exclamations marks as well!!!!!

But it’s hard to hear anything or anybody when everyone’s shouting.

Let me explain:

I chose 12 items: a can of Cheetos, a bottle of V-8, a book, a DVD cover, my laptop computer, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Danish,” the Dex phone book, a crossword puzzle magazine, a globe, a jar of kosher dills, a box of kitchen matches and a political ad that arrived weeks late. Continue reading →