The second-silliest traffic arrangement in the Meadow City — second only to the welcome-but-stay-off-this-street messages on Seventh Street — is around the Old Town Plaza.

Let me explain:

There are five ways to enter the Plaza: from Bridge Street, North Gonzales, Hot Springs, West National and South Pacific. But in some cases, once you’re in that magic circle, you still need to yield to traffic coming from Hot Springs and from South Pacific.

The configuration — called a “circus” in other countries — is bad for traffic rounding the park and heading east, toward Bridge Street, or back around the park.

Most cumbersome is having to yield to traffic coming from South Pacific, in the area of Art and Stones. Why? Because the stretch is w-a-y too long, and by the time motorists yield for one car, there are more coming down the pike. Continue reading →

We were pulling out of the Lowe’s parking lot Wednesday, with two grandchildren, Arthur and Carly, in the back seat, when my wife reminded me to wait until they’d shut their doors before I drove off.

Point well taken. I’ve always been impatient once I get behind the wheel and people are still loading. Once, my wife says, when our own kids were the age our grandkids are today, I reacted to a slammed door and drove about a mile from where Bonnie had been loading watermelons and cantaloupes. I didn’t snap until Adam, our elder child, asked why I’d left Mom behind.

Over the years that story has been retold, with many details adjusted for inflation. So instead of having traveled a mile from the fruit stand without her, I supposedly forced her to walk five. Instead of a 14-pound watermelon, it grew to 328 pounds; instead of a comfortable 72 degrees outside, it became Phoenix-like; instead of a 10-minute delay, it grew to 40 days and 40 nights; and instead of comfortable walking shoes, Bonnie was wearing stilettos.

Except for the poetic license and the slight embellishment of the details, I plead guilty. I’m trying to learn that if a door closes in a car and I’m behind the wheel, the sound doesn’t necessarily mean all the passengers have entered and we’re ready to roll. Continue reading →

Lately, we’ve seen photos of gleeful students being awarded personal laptop computers: the reward for completing a course, program or workshop.

The prize, to be sure, is not really a freebie; students need to complete some course of study; nor is the windfall restricted to this area, as schools have for years lured students by offering them free computers.

Changes have taken place regarding the ages of the users. Remember when only Dad and Mom could use the behemoth Radio Shack TRS-80 computers of the past, and allowed Junior to touch it only under supervision? The mantra used to be, “Don’t touch it — you’ll break it!”

Our granddaughters come over often — surely it’s to visit their favorite paternal grandparents — but sometimes with the request to use a laptop to play games. Permission (usually) granted, much to their delectation.

Yes, things have changed. Continue reading →

There shall be no further debate: The word is “adviser” and not “advisor.” Period.

Of all the questions that get asked of a teacher, the perennial one is whether the noun that identifies someone who advises ends in “er” or “or.”

Strange that not enough people have caught on.

The Associate Press Stylebook doesn’t even try to explain the rationale for why it’s “adviser” rather than “advisor.” It simply declares that the first spelling is correct.

So I did some research on why there’s a discrepancy with these and other words. The discrepancy, by the way, is huge, in that we find the misspelled word, i.e, the one that ends in -or, in newspaper ads, in most job descriptions and in the cranial storage facilities of every English teacher on the planet. We journalists, though correct, remain outnumbered.

As one who taught mostly journalism at Highlands but English in high school and at Luna Community College, I find it necessary to acquiesce and spell it incorrectly, with “-or” when at Luna. The rest of the time it’s -er.

But that’s not convincing enough. One wants to know why some words contain the “e” and others the “o.” Continue reading →

If you want to drive to Camp Luna to visit, we live on the northwest corner (almost). But if you’re a dog-dropper-off-er, we’ve moved to Honolulu.

Let’s vary the statement somewhat: If you need us, we’ll be at home. It follows, then, that if you don’t need us, we’re elsewhere.

We covered this iffy kind of conditional mood a couple of columns back, implying that people’s intentions determine the physical location or even the name of the other person.

Let me explain:

Three times in the past couple of months we’ve been recipients of the that-looks-like-a-friendly-home syndrome, which means that those dog-gone folks who don’t want to take responsibility for recently hatched animals simply drop them off early in the morning — usually in the Camp Luna area.

That serves a dual purpose: the dog-dropper-off-ers don’t need to worry about spaying, feeding and otherwise caring for the animals, and second, making these matutinal deliveries a distance away virtually guarantees the Fidos won’t find their way back home. Continue reading →

The waiter at a Santa Fe restaurant greeted us with the usual spiel: “My name is Brian, and I’ll be your waiter for the evening.”

There are only two ways to respond to this kind of greeting: “That’s nice!” and “My name is Art, and I’ll be your customer for the evening.” But rather than poke fun at a formality which at least shows, well, formality, I was struck with the non-sequitur that followed.

He reminded us, “If you need anything at all, my name is Brian.” Well, now, that means if we don’t need anything, his name is Isaiah or Joshua.

It’s a question of a conditional expression in which the implication — to language nit-pickers like me — implies the server has more than one name, depending on the needs of the customer.

The conditional non-sequitur already got covered in a column last year. Yet, being in the newspaper trade exposes me to more unusual uses of the language than the average person. It’s my passion. Continue reading →

Phillip Uzduwinis, the former director of the Highlands University Foundation, gave me quite a scare without meaning to.

A few years ago when my office was near his, by Kennedy Hall, I’d wave as I zipped by on my bicycle, on the sidewalk, heading west where the one-way sign points east. I’d take this route as a shortcut to the Wilson Complex, four or five blocks away.

After not having seen me riding by for several months, Uzduwinis asked if I still rode the bike, and if so, why hadn’t he seen me lately? I explained I’d moved to a new office on a different part of campus. He said he’d thought I’d stopped riding altogether.

And why? “Well, because the last time I saw you crossing on National and 11th, you almost got clobbered.”

Who, me? If I had been about to meet my Maker, I certainly hadn’t realized it. Uzduwinis explained that as I crossed National, some driver, who obviously hadn’t seen me, came within inches of making me sorry. Continue reading →

One of the pleasures of producing Work of Art comes from the amount of help I receive from readers who submit bits and pieces they think might be of interest to the newspaper audience.

In fact, my friend John Shuster, a transplant from Minnesota, recently asked me why a piece is smaller than the pie, but the word “piece” is bigger than the word “pie.”

It’s precisely that kind of thinking that has inspired a number of columns.

I’ve been asked how a person can write an entire column — as I have — on the reflexive word “self”? Or devote many inches of space to the way people use the word “so,” or “up”?

Continue reading →

Eric Berne caught people’s attention in 1964 with the publication of Games People Play, a manual on transactional analysis which codified, well, the games people play.

And people play them with intensity. It seems as if lately, one of the games, “If it weren’t for you,” gets played and replayed. My take on that game is people’s refusal to accept the blame for their actions.

Bad things happen; ergo, blame others, a rotten childhood, a domineering mother, an absentee dad, a boring teacher or mean boss.

But let’s not drift too far from a game I wish Berne had included, which I’m christening, “You Insult Me, You Insult Everybody Else.”

The game’s being played in light of a debate about what to name the new Santa Fe edifice on the site of the Old Sweeney Center, close to downtown.

If we could go back several decades, I’d try to locate the city councilman who steadfastly refused to endorse any plan to include “vista” in it. He identified a host of Santa Fe “vista” streets, buildings, schools, organizations and businesses and concluded that surely “vista” shouldn’t be the extent of our namabilities.

In Las Vegas, we have at least three vistas: Sierra, Monte and Alta — which mean about the same thing. Continue reading →

When you read something, do you like it when writers resort to “tropes,” i.e. twists or turns of language,” or do you prefer that they “tell it like it is”?

For as long as I’ve been able to read, I’ve disliked the use of “cry” or “cried” when the writer means simply that someone shouted, or even cried out.”

Why do I dislike such usage? I suspect too many writers try to be over-dramatic, as if the act of crying creates more animation than merely saying something.

Look at the volumes of children’s literature and count the number of times children (especially) cry for something quite pedestrian, like this:

“Throw me the ball!” he cried. Assuredly, the writer means that the crier merely “cried out,” spoke in a loud voice, rather than actually turning on the waterworks. Continue reading →