Living with a language purist can’t be all fun and games.
    Although I intended the purist reference to be about my father, the late J.D. Trujillo, it could also refer to me, at least as far as my wife Bonnie is concerned.
    During 28 years of teaching higher education, I took countless opportunities to correct an impression that apparently resides in every student in or contemplating college.
    One is simply that “In college, the professors don’t care whether you attend class.” The other is “You don’t have to attend class if you don’t want.” There is some truth to both notions. True, the typical college professor isn’t about to phone the parents of a truant student. However, professors do care how many people do the work and survive the class; they simply assume that the student must have reasons for missing class or failing to turn in the assignments.
    Few things dominate local news pages more than the politics, impolitic wardrobe malfunctions, and politics mixing with education. Therefore, here are some thumbs-up, thumbs-down observations.
    An over-flow crowd at Two-Dees listening to a presidential candidate on the stump brought back memories–not of elections past, but of places and things. It’s fitting that the rally for Gen. Wes Clark was at Two-Dees, which used to be Siders, which used to be Floyd’s, which used to be the Vegas Bowl.
   Sen. John Kerry, eat your heart out! This week, I’ve felt like a politician, rubbing elbows with dozens of locals in my quest to reach a consensus on Sunday’s Super Bowl.
    Armed with cell phone and reporter’s notepad, I stopped strangers on the street and invaded the working areas of Luna Community College, Highlands University and Carnegie Library.
    I expected a number of partisan fans, each one pulling for either the New England Patriots or the Carolina Panthers. Instead, the most common response to my question, “Whom do you predict will win the Super Bowl?” was “Who’s playing?”
I’ll be cheating you, in all the tests that I’ll be taking,
I’ve become adept at making crib notes too.
In my small watch case some verbs in French I’ll place,
the Gettysburg Address, a Shakespeare play and more I guess.
I’ll hire planes to skywrite notes outside my window too . . .
I’ll be looking at the sky and I’ll be cheating you.
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    Carly, on her way to age 3, caused some consternation and alarm at a recent family reunion in announcing that she “throwed the ball.”
    Her extended family, with more than its share of English majors, let out a gasp. “Did you hear her say ‘throwed’”? one of them asked.
Whereas recessions tend to wreak havoc on other communities, we, it has been written, don’t notice it very much because, well, we’ve become accustomed. Mom used to tell of the time one of her sisters, in a family of 16 siblings, left the family comb at school overnight. The brouhaha quickly followed, as brothers and sisters needed to comb their hair with their hands, or perhaps with a fork or a whisk broom.
During a pre-Christmas party, a neighbor challenged me to a game of Casino.
    Casino is an innocuous game in which, by pairing and adding cards, we acquire more than our opponent. It’s fairly simple; it has nothing to do with Casino (as in Las Vegas) except for the fact that it uses cards. This isn’t a lesson on card strategy (by the way, I beat the sap out of my challenger), but a discussion of the very word “challenge.”
Las Vegas has close to a dozen mini-marts, places where motorists can make a pit stop, get some gas, a soft drink and a burrito.
    Working at a convenience store involves much more than simply tallying the purchases. A key part of any employee’s job is giving information.
    So we set out to interview clerks and cashiers at convenience stores in the area, and posed the following question: “What do customers ask you about the most?”