Except for the administration of the City of Las Vegas, which farms out its advertisements to the Journal North, bypassing the Tri-Weekly Optic, lots of people feel good about shopping locally and keeping the money in circulation.

I’ve tried to abide by that policy. A couple of times last week I was favorably impressed with local service — and remember, this comes from a man who believes it’s courteous to say “please” and “thank you” and to go way beyond our job description.

Let me explain: Continue reading →

It’s time for another round of whimsical titles of movies, TV programs and books. The rules are simple: React to the clue and make a minor change in the title. Most of the works have only a single letter altered, but the correct answer may also depend on a rhyme.

For example: In this movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger works as a remorseless, opinionated and efficient hairdresser. Answer: The Permanator (The Terminator).

Ready? Continue reading →

“Hayseed” and other put-down terms generally get showered on rural folk by us urbanites. We’ve looked at people from neighboring towns as rustics, while we, in the big city of Las Vegas, are urban sophisticates.

Basketball teams arriving from any of the small schools that once dotted northern New Mexico in the ‘50s had funny ways of handling the ball, or cheering. Our teams, on the other hand, the epitome of sauvity, knew all the LeBron James moves, even before LeBron was conceived (of).

Listening to high school sports on radio makes me wonder how and why particular nomenclature evolved. Specifically, how and why do teams have their nicknames?

But let’s start on the farm in the mid-‘60s: Continue reading →

To what lengths will some people go to connect with their roots? And what means enable them to do so?

These questions arise in the case of Florence Bordj and her mother, Therese Bonnafous Bordj, from France but now living in Tahiti. They flew to the states to be close to the haunts of their great-grand-uncle and grand-uncle, respectively, Msgr. Adrien Rabeyrolle, the pastor of Immaculate Conception church.

But first, how they got the connection: Back in 2003, the first year of Work of Art, I wrote on how the word “challenge” appears to have changed complexion.

Let me explain:

Today, a challenge comes across more as a request, as in “I have been challenged to invite 20 or more people to my Amway party.” I said in that column that “challenge” used to be an urging to attempt something that has a foreseeable reward. My words were, “‘Challenge’ was the word Msgr. Adrien Rabeyrolle employed to announce to us Immaculate Conception School third-graders in Sister Mary Verfressen’s class that the fourth-graders had challenged us to sales of raffle tickets. We gladly took up the challenge. Besides, what business do those pseudo-sophisticated fourth-graders have trying to beat us?” Continue reading →

My dad, who lived to be 94, might have been called a dandy in his younger days. We don’t use the term much nowadays, and for those too young to have heard it, it describes someone overly concerned with appearance.

Today’s most proximate term might be “metrosexual,” although not all the connotations of the term apply to Dad. And in absolute fairness to him, I emphasize he worked hard to support his family of eight. But he still liked being dressed up.

My dad, J.D. Trujillo, is remembered in his neighborhood on Railroad Avenue as “the man who always wore a suit and tie.” He walked to work, to the Ford dealership three blocks south, on Grand Avenue, and sometimes caught up with a number of other Werley Auto employees, who also lived in this barrio. In those days, people bought homes close to where they worked and took jobs close to their homes. Few had cars. Continue reading →

It’s tough to realize that today marks the last Thursday publication of the Las Vegas (Daily) Optic.

The announcement that the (Daily) Optic is to become a tri-weekly the first week in March has generated more attention than the Optic’s decision, when Landmark became the parent company, to publish every weekday, even on holidays.

Remember, the penta-weekly Optic for years observed Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year’s Day and other national holidays, with the result that on certain weeks we had only four issues.

I’m not sure people ever got used to having a Christmas issue, for example, when that holiday fell on a weekday. And possibly on rare occasions, Optic carriers merely bundled the holiday issue along with the regular copy.

It’s the end of an era, involving rearrangement of Optic features and work schedules. Area subscribers will now be getting their Optic in the mail every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and that day’s edition will also be at single-sales locations around town in the morning. So you can enjoy the newspaper with your morning Ovaltine. Continue reading →

For many of my grandparents’ generation, the Biblical words, “Be fruitful and multiply,” were more of a command than a suggestion. Grandma and Grandpa Medina complied, delivering 16 children, of which my mother Marie was the oldest daughter. Six remain, most in their nineties, and most of the others lived into that decade as well. And a few of them procreated so efficiently that in the ‘50s it was fairly safe to tell people, “I’m related to half of Santa Fe. If it’s a Medina, there’s a good chance it’s a cousin.”

But that was back in the ‘50s, when Santa Fe’s population was around 25,000, a figure close to the number of exempt employees currently on Gov. Richardson’s staff, not counting his security force.

Like many of my generation, the last-surviving cadre of grandchildren, we self-regulated. Accordingly, none of my siblings even came close to the dozen children my Aunt Stella in Santa Fe delivered. Imagine how much more populated the world would be if every generation, on average, set out to have even more kids than they have siblings or aunts and uncles.

About 30 years ago, when the Zero Population Growth movement was much more militant, people were shamed if they had more than two children. The idea was simple: Every married couple had only two kids — to replace the parents, and so on. Continue reading →

A photo in last week’s Optic shows an old house on the Highlands campus dwarfed by a most imposing, new building, the new residence hall designed to accommodate 262 students, as part of the university’s burgeoning enrollment.

As I drove two friends — one a student I’m hoping to recruit — around campus, I led an impromptu tour, which included memories of the area.

An aerial photo in the registrar’s office shows the university circa 1950.

Things have changed: Wilson Complex, now a staple for almost anything athletic, isn’t in that photo. Nor is the paved running track or even Tyrone Music Building. Instead, the old women’s gym (the gym was old, not necessarily the women), which also contained the bookstore, appears on the spot of the Kennedy parking lot.

It was inevitable that the few blocks north of National, along Ninth, 10th and 11th streets, would lose their residential flavor as the campus grew north. I remember Agnes and Mary Lou, classmates from Immaculate Conception school, who lived in that area. Continue reading →

Compliments come in unexpected forms. I, for one, got one without expecting it. Apparently the compliment thrower didn’t intend to be so profuse in commenting on my strength.

Let me explain:

A while back we hired a local woman to do household chores which we hate, things like cleaning, straightening, washing and windows. She did a good job, and we hired her back several times. With the more frequent visits came familiarity.

Once, in a just-between-us-girls voice, she told my wife that “Art is always throwing the house.” What’s that? I can toss a football with the best of the 69-year-olds; my baseball-throwing acumen is pathetic, and, I throw a bowling ball, well, just like Obama.

These are objects designed to be thrown, but how does one throw a house? I thought about it and of course realized that Spanish is Julia’s first language, and there’s a slight bridge to cross from one language to another. I’ll get to the “thrown” house in a few graphs. Continue reading →

The headline for the sports pages of Feb. 2 has already been written: Cardinals Defeat Steelers; Arizona Breaks 61-Year Drought.

Well, the headline is written, at least for a slew of area folks who predict an Arizona victory. Why? The key reasons are “They deserve it” and “They’re closer.”

Super Bowl XLIII is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 1, in Tampa, Fla.

Of the dozen-plus people surveyed, mostly exercise buffs working out at the City Recreation Center, none is an original fan of either the Arizona Cardinals or the Pittsburgh Steelers. Several base their hopes and predictions on proximity, the fact that it would take just a day’s drive to get to Phoenix, whereas a trip to Pittsburgh …

The random sampling shows a mix of eight favorite teams, with three highly intelligent prognosticators being original Oakland Raider fans, whereas three dreamers root for a team called the Dallas Cowboys. And people also like the Washington Redskins, Green Bay Packers, San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings. Continue reading →