The number is 732 and counting. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how many installments of Work of Art have appeared in the Optic since 2003. I plan to make it to 1,000. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never missed a week, even when traveling with family to far-off places like Denmark, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Tecolote.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you ever run out of ideas?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d some people ask. Well, yes, and many a Monday night and early Tuesday morning I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve paced the floor, trying to conjure up a topic. It usually works.<\/p>\n
In the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc70s, I was doing work on a master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s degree in journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia. My thesis adviser told about how that central-Missouri city just had to have been the most covered small town in America. A writer for a non-university publication once wrote a brilliant extended piece on the Missourian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s motto that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it moves, interview it; and even if it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t move, interview it anyway.<\/p>\n
The opening illustration of the magazine article shows a battery of college reporters, camerapersons and news photographers crowded around a boy sitting under a tree, seated at a table that contained a pitcher of lemonade and paper cups. The kid had decided to raise the price of a glass of lemonade from 10 cents to 15, and student journalists were ready to engage in fisticuffs to get the big scoop.<\/p>\n
UM-C certainly deserves its reputation. It is the oldest school of journalism and one of the largest. And it had a false pride of never accepting credit for classes taken anywhere else, whether it be Northwestern or Columbia University.<\/p>\n
Another Missouri professor once advised me to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153write more and more about less and less.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Did he mean that soon I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be writing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everything about nothing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? As a result, some of my columns have been about a single word, like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ya know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Doing the periodic count of the number of consecutive columns inspired me to cover some of the highlights of the 13-plus years of writing Work of Art. The highlights have been getting feedback from many faithful readers. That includes people like my sister Dorothy Maestas, who never lets a comma splice go unnoticed or unpunished. I love receiving emails from people like Sara Harris, quite a help in my quest for the correct use of certain Spanish words.<\/p>\n
And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received comments from the late Dick Wootton, the late Mel Root, Jeanette Yara, Lorenzo Marquez, Cecilia Gallegos, Pat Amai, Bruce Wertz, Lucas Lujan, Alice Chambers, Manny Martinez, Bob Johnston, Richard Lindeborg, Martha Johnsen, Chad Boliek, Mack Crow, Liz Conescu and others who are as addicted to the nuances of the English language as I am. Erstwhile \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dulce Amargo\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Senior Profile\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writer, Lupita Gonzales, stayed up late many nights transforming my column into something legible, and managing to email them back to me before deadline.<\/p>\n
Despite contrary views on the part of my siblings, I have a good memory. Although I forgot what I had for breakfast today, I can remember, in amazing detail and living color things that we Trujillo siblings went through in our youth.<\/p>\n
My oldest sister, Dolores (Doey), still denies that she rented but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lend her girls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bicycle to the rest of us. And Dorothy asks me, at least once a month, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you sure you and I grew up in the same household?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
My late brother, Severino often denied engaging in real fisticuffs with me (unless he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d given me a real whipping that made him proud), and Bingy, closest to me in age, denies ever having bossed me around.<\/p>\n
A family this size, including Mom, Dad and Tio Juan, outgrew the four-room house we lived in on Railroad Avenue, aka Tough Street, where there was the biggest concentration of bullies in the entire town. As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mentioned in previous columns, it was a creative exercise figuring out a way to get to Immaculate Conception School and avoiding \u00e2\u20ac\u0153los peleoneros,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the guys who liked rearranging smaller guys\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 noses and teeth.<\/p>\n
There are several east-west streets on the way to school that one could take to avoid the bully population: Douglas, University, National, Columbia and Washington. Columbia and National were the fastest routes but also those populated with the meanest, toughest guys. Going as far south as Douglas? Forget it! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d arrive at school late and need to explain to our homeroom teacher, Sister Mary Yono Te Creo, why I was late. She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe me.<\/p>\n
One time, I waited for an across-the-tracks classmate, Johnny, to join me on my walk to school. But true to his habit, he always needed to make a restroom stop in our house, with our plumbing. Well one day, Johnny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bathroom visit went into extra innings, making me fear we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be late for school. Dad, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d borrowed a car, offered us a ride to school. And somehow, being behind a locked car door, windows rolled up, gave me such a feeling of security: If Gibbo, Sopandas, Carlos or Huesos came after us, Dad would have protected us.<\/p>\n
Well, Johnny and I learned, the very next day, that our brief moment of protection and superiority, in a used \u00e2\u20ac\u212248 Plymouth, lasted only while we were in the car. Johnny and I paid for our arrogance the next day.<\/p>\n
Once, deciding I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t about to let any bully intimidate me, I walked directly to I.C. School, not taking even one detour. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strange how that day nobody came after me. One of the more frequent pursuers even sent me a friendly wave.<\/p>\n
By coincidence, that Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sermon at Mass was about how some people who expect to run into trouble often bring it on themselves. Was the wave from one of the Railroad toughs some kind of omen?<\/p>\n
An omen can be a portent of someone good or bad. In a future column, I intend to explain what that omen meant to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The number is 732 and counting. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how many installments of Work of Art have appeared in the Optic since 2003. I plan to make it to 1,000. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never missed a week, even when traveling with family to far-off places like Denmark, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Tecolote. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1472,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions\/1472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}