This season we attended three holiday programs featuring youngsters.
     Given the amount of time teachers have to slap their programs into place, it’s amazing how well everyone seems to perform.
     We could, of course, wonder why every child sings the same thing for every song. Variation would be nice, soloists, for example, and perhaps a few different carols.
     By necessity the selections were secular: no more “Away in a Manger,” or “Silent Night.” Instead, we got “Jingle Bells,” mega-doses of “Rudolph,” and “Frosty the Snowman.” This certainly is a secular season.

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    Walking has always been an important part of fitness. Years ago my three-and-a-half-mile walk to church was highlighted by being able to wave to people I knew.
     That was before every windshield got tinted. Strange, but caring friends and neighbors invariably slowed down to offer me a ride, when I didn’t need one. But the times when I was stranded, due to a flat tire or mechanical breakdown, people would just whiz by.
     Because of the chubbifying of America, doctors and other health care experts tout the benefits of activity, walking being one of them.

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    What can a person in my situation want for Christmas? Would you believe my letter to Santa will be a request for less mail?
     Let me explain:
     Nobody in the private sector could possibly receive more mail than my family. There was a time when we’d rush to the mailbox and sometimes receive a letter, an actual hand-written (or even typed or computer-generated) letter bearing a real signature.

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    Less than a year ago, at halftime of the Super Bowl, a “wardrobe malfunction” involving performers Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson exposed one of her breasts, throwing millions into high dudgeon.
     So skittish is the regulatory agency, the FCC, over the fallout of the breast that launched a million ships, lips and heart-skips, that it’s warning the networks of what “family hour” used to mean.

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    Does everyone dream of fame, or at least notoriety?
    One way to get my name in flashing lights all over big cities would be to change my name to “Don’t Walk.” When acknowledged by someone whose name I know, I usually get greeted with “Hi, there.”
     That’s when I tell the other person I’m planning to change my name to “There,” in order to get acknowledged more often. So the greeting will be “Hi, There (with a capital T.)”

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    Grammar question No. 1: Is the following sentence correct? “Everybody does their own thing.”
     Wrroonnng. As my English teacher would say, “You mustn’t mix singulars with plurals.”

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    The English poet William Wordsworth may have been the first to come up with the puzzling proposition: “The child is father to the man.”
     My take on it is that the child grows older, and in becoming a man, has spawned his own maturity.
     In my family, three children have become father to the man. No one really remembers exactly when the role reversal took place. It’s true that a part of family evolution requires the offspring to take care of their on-spring. I’m not ready for a nursing home, but that’s not really the concern here. The reversal deals more with the subject of hand-me-downs. Normally, one would expect Dad to say, “Son, this tie I got last Christmas is YOURS.” or “Son, you’d look GREAT in my polyester suit.”

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    The English poet William Wordsworth may have been the first to come up with the puzzling proposition: “The child is father to the man.”
     My take on it is that the child grows older, and in becoming a man, has spawned his own maturity.

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After an exhausting day of removing paneling in the new room to our house, in order to install bats and bats of insulation, we called the Public Service Company of New Mexico for an energy audit.
Back around 1980, PNM reps were happy to visit your home and advise you on whether the energy savings wrought by the new insulation would offset the costs of the materials.
But that’s as far as we got. The PNM representative, I think, felt intimidated by us. Here’s why:

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    In 1957, some 70 of us National Guardsmen with what used to be called the 515th anti-aircraft artillery unit in Las Vegas, filed into the orderly room, having been issued an M-1 rifle which for its time was high-tech. One of the soldiers, who should have known better, cocked his weapon and placed the muzzle against the head of another soldier, who appeared to be napping, and hissed out the words, “I’m gonna kill you, Commie.”

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