A friend asked me to go with her to the Motor Vehicle Department in Las Vegas to get her squared away on the Real ID, which, among other things, entitles one to board a commercial airline.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the Real ID is a document with bells and whistles that gives the holder added privileges.<\/p>\n
It seemed simple enough until she informed me that the name that would appear on her renewed driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license does not agree with what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on her birth certificate. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a twice-widowed, once-divorced senior citizen whose current (about to expire) license contains much more than the given, Christian names on her birth certificate.<\/p>\n
Before we arrived at the MVD, I assured her securing a new license would be a piece of cake. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In fact, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll go with you get my own driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license, which is also about to expire,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I told her.
\nNot so fast. I believe that the MVD officials who listed all the new hoops we need to face didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realize how much things change over the decades. But before we go on, let me assured readers that what my friend and I experienced was unique; and trying to use this column as an instruction manual would be foolhardy.<\/p>\n
The steps one needs to take to secure a REAL ID can be found online; all I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m providing here is a recounting of my own (and my friend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experiences.)<\/p>\n
The name on my birth certificate shows up as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Arturo Benjamin Trujillo.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gone by Arturo in decades. All of my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153official\u00e2\u20ac\u009d names simply refer to me as Arthur. But worse, the original certificate \u00e2\u20ac\u201d much of which is hand-written \u00e2\u20ac\u201d faded over the years. Yes, around the time of my marriage, and in need of a legible copy of the certificate, I drove to Santa Fe and secured what was then called an official document, which was simply a photo copy of the one what wore out decades earlier.<\/p>\n
Online information describes a series of documents which may suffice for anyone who happens to have misplaced something important. My Social Security card \u00e2\u20ac\u201d an important and acceptable piece of documentation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d must have given up the ghost long ago. Before the card disappeared during the Punic Wars, its lettering became faded; the \u00e2\u20ac\u01535\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the \u00e2\u20ac\u01538\u00e2\u20ac\u009d became virtually indistinguishable, and I grumbled about why documents that need to last a lifetime don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the staying power of even a 10-year-old newspaper.<\/p>\n
Notice how many \u00e2\u20ac\u0153name change\u00e2\u20ac\u009d legal ads have been appearing the Optic each day? Are these legal notices a result of the recent directive that all residents must have official, and mainly legible paperwork?<\/p>\n
I have about three weeks before my license expires. The options are to try to provide paperwork that verifies my Social Security number, even though it appeared several places in the 1040 form my accountant filled out in April. As for my friend who has lost two husbands and has been subject to several name changes, I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t venture a guess as to her options. Meanwhile, irrespective of my friend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s need to get past many obstacles, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m concerned about my own situation.<\/p>\n
I believe the authorities who dreamed up the Real ID requirement failed to realize how easy it is<\/p>\n
to impose requirements and how difficult it is for so many people to comply.
\nDo I pay for a name change legal ad to appear in the newspaper I work for? Will I then need to go back to using \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Arturo\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Check my byline in the next Work of Art.<\/p>\n
That will tell you which route I needed to take.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
On several occasions, with Optic deadlines looming, our acting managing editor Dave Kavanaugh leaves headline writing to me. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll provide enough space above an article for me to fill in.<\/p>\n
One of the more difficult fits is with the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Do we use it in headlines, remembering that brevity is important? I try to avoid \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in references to police; part of me remembers my dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lectures about respect, and how \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is thought by some to be disrespectful. And \u00e2\u20ac\u0153copper\u00e2\u20ac\u009d even more so.<\/p>\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the alternative, inasmuch as some of the meanings of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153constable on patrol,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153custodian of the peace\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and even \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chief of police.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Patricia T. O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Conner, author of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Origins of the Specious,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nothing to do with metals, copper or otherwise, whether in buttons or badges.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She adds that more likely, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a verb, meaning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153seize\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nab.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comforting! The words refer more to what police do than what they are.
\nIn this space you may see repeated uses of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the future \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but that will depend on what our managing editor decides.<\/p>\n
Without even reading any of this column, my wife, Bonnie, announced that she planned to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop a few dollars\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from my unattended billfold at the house. Bonnie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s version of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d does not imply any plan to return anything she has seized.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pushing midnight, and I hope to cop a few hours of sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend asked me to go with her to the Motor Vehicle Department in Las Vegas to get her squared away on the Real ID, which, among other things, entitles one to board a commercial airline. Apparently, the Real ID is a document with bells and whistles that gives the holder added privileges. It seemed […]<\/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\/1627"}],"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=1627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1628,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627\/revisions\/1628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}