School’s out and there’s evidence of kids enjoying the outdoors. I hope the trend lasts and youngsters continue to soak up some rays instead of overdosing on video games.

At the moment a dozen kids are enjoying a game of baseball in the field just north of our house. I don’t know all of them, only my three grandchildren and their neighbor Soley. It’s a loosely organized game of baseball in which every time the bat makes contact, it’s a homerun.

The most crucial part is deciding which team bats first. If your team does, you win, something like 25 to 0. Why? The other team would have won if its players had batted first.

These games are generally called in the first half of the first inning — because darkness arrives before the other team gets to bat. Maybe if they can remember tonight’s score and continue tomorrow, the other team will have a chance. But judging by the happy smile my grandson and namesake is wearing on his face, I suspect his team won. Continue reading →

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK – Two weeks in Scandinavia, for a vacation and the baptism of grand-daughter Ellen Vestergaard Trujillo, mark our third trip here. We just returned from a side trip to Stockholm, Sweden, the farthest east we’ve ever been, and though we have a better feel of the turf both in Stockholm and Copenhagen, we have much to learn.

Let me explain:

When our son Stan moved here three years ago and said he took the subway and train each day to work, we envied him: What a stress-free way to read the morning paper. The other option was by bike. He could join literally a million other bicyclists who pedal to work. Continue reading →

 

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK – What exactly is an expiration date? Much after the fact, I pondered that question following a hassling by a usually-friendly staff of customs-passport inspectors at the airport in Copenhagen, Denmark.

This is our third trip here. Our passports, acquired in June 1999, show proof of our visits to this area twice before, in 2006, 2008 and this year. The policy is for each visitor landing at Kastrup International to furnish proof of residency.

The economy has made some trans-oceanic travel skimpy, and after landing from a half-empty flight, we figured we’d breeze through the passport check. We were last in the line of about 100. My wife Bonnie stopped at a kiosk manned by a gentleman who welcomed her to the land of Hans Christian Andersen. He checked her photo ID and passport, stamped the booklet and sent her on her way. Continue reading →

In Edward Albee’s play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” George, the host at a late-night party, tells the guests about how faculty wives “gather at the downtown A&P like a bunch of geese.”

The guest “corrects” George by saying the proper term is “a gangle of geese, not a bunch.” Well, the host, played by Richard Burton, points out that if the guest is “going to be cute and ornithological about it,” the correct term is “gaggle, not gangle.”

Which makes us ask, what do geese do when they congregate to qualify as a gaggle? In flight, geese generally constitute a flock or a skein, but on the ground, they’re a gaggle.

Nouns of assemblage, usually descriptive of fowls, give virtually no clue as to why it’s all right to refer to a herd of cows but not of lions. Lions hang out in a pride, and fish are in schools.

There’s a suspense movie, “A Murder of Crows,” starring Cuba Gooding Jr., the title of which refers, of course, to crows but doesn’t explain what’s murderous about them. Could enough vultures, as opposed to crows, constitute a murder? Not likely, as vultures’ meals of choice have already been murdered and are now road kill.

Let’s examine some of the groups: Continue reading →

A few weeks ago, driving in Albuquerque, we noticed a couple — one steering, both pushing — who’d run out of gas close to a service station.

With my wife driving, I did the Good Samaritan regimen, hopped out of the passenger’s side to help them get their Chevette up the ramp to the gas pumps on Montgomery.

Now most people would be thankful for anyone, even a 69-year-old at the time, who agrees to add a few pounds to the pushing, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, I was treated to some choice language (redacted here, in this family newspaper) that only irate out-of-gas Chevette owners can express.

They didn’t direct the invective at me; rather, they hollered around me. “I told you to fill up the f—— car before we left the house. But no-oo, you had to be Mr. Tight A–.”

“Why don’t you shut your pie-hole, you f——- b—-?” Continue reading →

Sometimes even the experts simply have it wrong. I’m staring at a dozen grammar and style books trying to locate some of the most common errors people commit in writing and speech.

We concede that because people speak about 10 times faster than they write, the ear tunes out some — but not all — of the errors we hear. Because we have more time to read things, we can be more critical of errors in print.

Let me explain:

Now that I’ve turned 70, my short-term memory is not what it used to be. In fact, my short-term memory is not what it used to be. We often hear locutions like, “They gave the award to she and I.”

She and I? Hardly. They gave the award to her and me. Because such a sentence is fairly common, I checked some sources, trying to find an explanation. The first source, a yellowed, ‘60s-era newspaper stylebook, explained that people often use the wrong pronoun in feigning snobbishness. According to the editors of the stylebook, “she and I” sounds more high-falutin’ than “her and me,” and that’s why it’s used that way. Continue reading →

Perhaps no mark of punctuation — this one among the smallest in the English language — has caused more grief. It’s misuse appears to be what its best noted for.

Let me explain:

The apostrophe (‘), that little cosa that few people are able to master, more than anything else, has caused English teachers to turn in their chalk prematurely and declare, “never again.”

The last time I taught freshman composition at Luna Community College, I may have frightened a coed when I wrote “never again!” on her introductory essay. I’d meant that admonition to refer solely to her habit of writing “it’s” when she meant “its.”

Continue reading →

“You’re doing fine, Dad! You can make it.” With that, my youngest son Ben, less than half my age, entreated me as I climbed and descended a mountain — all part of his and his wife Heather’s gift on my birthday. I didn’t need a pep talk; I needed some horse liniment.

The invitation was for my wife Bonnie and me to join Ben and Heather for a weekend at Carlsbad Caverns. We were to explore the famous Big Room by going through the Natural Entrance. I’d visited the caverns before, when I was about Ben’s age and much more physically fit than I am today.

The first physics lesson a visitor learns is that even though going 75 stories downhill does not require all the heavy lifting of going up, the body nevertheless uses muscles — different muscles — to provide resistance against falling and tumbling down. With every step I took in the descent, I became aware of how I’d be sore — but differently sore — the next morning. At least the path was even. Continue reading →

Whenever there’s an error in the Optic, some readers likely think we messed up. And they holler, “Hire a proofreader!”

But isn’t it possible that we merely plant a typo here and there? Why? To give readers something to talk about and us something to write about. Like now.

Alex Montoya of Las Vegas, now living in Flint, Texas, caught one of the plants, this time in an advertisement for Mora County manager. Montoya, my former student, writes, “I thought of applying for the position. I don’t think I meet the computer qualifications. The ad calls for one who is ‘computer illiterate.’“

No, Alex, if you’re lacking the “illiteracy” qualifications, Mora County simply has no room for you. However, what if, just what if … the alleged error were deliberate? We at the Optic get tired of going days without anyone calling to say, “You know that article you wrote about city government? Well, I want you to know that almost every word was spelled right.” Continue reading →

Few things took precedence last week over the details of the visit by President Obama and the First Lady to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. The economy, bailouts, the war in Afghanistan, the G20 Summit: All of these paled as talk-show hosts and columnists spent days purely pondering protocol. 

For a few days, the big news was whether Obama had blown it by presenting Her Royal Highness with an iPod containing footage of her previous public appearances (she gave the Obamas a framed family portrait) and whether Michelle committed a breach by touching Queen Elizabeth other than during a handshake.

So, what constitutes protocol? What are the roots of this phenomenon that determine distance, occasions for touching, whether a curtsy or a bow takes precedence over a simple handshake?

To review: Both Obamas gave the queen a two-handed handshake, called a glove, apparently proper procedure. And while taking a group photo, neither Obama touched the queen. Notice, in scores of Optic photos, usually of cheerleaders, how many subjects put their arms around one another. Some day it may even be common to find U.S. presidents hugging the queen while holding two fingers behind her head in rabbit ear fashion. Continue reading →