A simple question from my daughter-in-law Heather caused a bit of confusion, and when I’m confused, I dream up ideas for a column.

Here’s what happened: Heather, my son Benji and I went to the Las Vegas Recreation Center for a workout. I pulled out three water bottles from the trunk, one for each. After our workout, Heather asked, as I stood perspiring on the scale, “How many ounces did you lose?� It occurred to me the question was perfectly ambiguous, even triguous. Did she mean how many ounces of water did I sweat, or how many ounces of weight did I shed, or even how many ounces of bottled water did I spill? In my case, finding those ounces occurs easier than losing them.

Continue reading →

Why are siblings so mean? Why such perfectionists? Why can’t my slightly older sister allow me to wallow in variations of my own distortions?

Let me explain:

Last week my column covered the pluralizing of surnames, pointing out that many people believe all they need to do is insert an apostrophe before an “s” and the job is done. Accordingly, it’s proper to report that the Trujillos (no apostrophe) took a day trip last week to Mountainair and Gran Quivira Monument.
Continue reading →

    Remember the Serf Theater sign, the one abandoned several years ago, with “In Her Shoes” left there, giving the impression it was one of history’s longest-running movies?
    It’s gone through several transformations, some rather clever, such as “Heros Shine” and “Oh He’s Risen.” Remember the rules: Thou who rearrangeth the sign shalt use all of the letters. Only recently, somebody took the trouble to anagrammize the west side of the sign.�
The change now reads, “3 Roses for Her. Fini.” Apparently the sign also contained the date, “31 Fri.,” which accounts for the extra letters.
Continue reading →

A one-line item in last week’s Work of Art mentioned my plan to return to teaching in the fall. If students sign up in sufficient numbers, if we have clement weather and a stiff tail wind, I’ll be co- teaching a journalism course at Highlands to help revive the moribund college newspaper, La Mecha.

Tom McDonald, Optic publisher, will be the co-teacher and doesn’t yet know that he’ll have almost the “lion’s share” of the duties. (Remember, lions don’t share, so technically McDonald would be doing all of the work. So that’s why he’ll have almost the lion’s share.)

Rachael Ball, virtually a one-person newspaper crew, did an admirable job of putting out La Mecha this school year, under some taxing conditions. As editor, she worked hard but often lacked reliable help. McDonald and I hope to restore La Mecha, which hit the skids around the year 2000, when the journalism program got deep-sixed after my retirement.
Continue reading →

Winner of the 2008 Associated Press Managing Editors competition

Never never never did I have the parent of a student hassle me about a grade. That was when I taught at the college level.

Always always always was I confronted by parents who thought I’d been unfair to their child. That was at the high school level.

My sister-in-law, Donna, an elementary school teacher, envied my autonomy and my ability to do my job at Highlands without needing permission slips from parents, without notifying parents that their child had missed class, or spending half my teaching day on playground or cafeteria duty.

But what Donna warned me about, more than 20 years ago, ruined my day. “One of my former students is at Highlands now and signed up for your class,” Donna said. “And you can expect for her mom to be dropping by your office regularly.”

Continue reading →

Recent columns appear to have had sticking power, as I still get feedback about items on home remedies, columns about the pronunciation of some Spanish names and of the ways we play with words.

At an Associated Press awards banquet last week, I met Phaedra Haywood, a Santa Fe New Mexican staffer who’d just taken a first place in feature writing for a series of articles on volunteers for a fashion makeover. Part of her beat is the village of Pecos, and she mentioned that some of the remedios — Aceite Mexicano, volcanic oil and castor oil — I’d listed in a previous column were familiar to residents of that community.

Continue reading →

An aphorism that for me rings truest is “The shortest line is the slowest.” I can’t think of many things in life more profound.

As one who hates keeping people waiting in line, whether in a bank, supermarket, big box or anywhere else, I sympathized with a gentleman in front of me at Wal-Mart last week who used the wrong card to charge his goods.

As soon as he realized his mistake, I sensed we were going to be there for extra innings. Whether the customer was close to being over the limit on the card, or he simply preferred to use another, we never found out. By that time, a couple of customers behind me started getting impatient. The checker, not knowing how to cancel the transaction, needed assistance from customer service and went into rush mode, which means about one step every 12 seconds.

Continue reading →

    “You can’t change the rules after you play the game.” There’s no other way of saying that.
    I’d be redundant to simply rephrase it, play verbal checkers and substitute a few words, like this: You can’t change the rules after you’ve already agreed on them, even if you’re unhappy with the outcome of the process.
    There, that’s not really better, just different.
    Until last night, I was involved in a process with others in which every participant has gotten many chances to voice his or her opinion. My concern, for several months has been that mere whim trumps agreed-upon rules, and when the outcome displeases one, there’s the desire to re-create the past.
Continue reading →

   In an almost-forgotten class on American history, we covered inflation, the illustration being that after the Civil War, the currency ballooned so much that people practically needed a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.
   Doubtless, the buyer would still be wondering, “Will this be enough money?”
   Several years later, I got a practical application of the principle when I took my youngest son, Benji, to the new McDonald’s in town.
   Twenty-five years ago, in the nascent days of direct deposit, we’d walk to a bank, deposit most of the check and draw out a bit of spending money, this era antedating debit cards as well.
Continue reading →

    It’s not as if I can scale walls, leap tall buildings at a single bound or perform acrobatics on a trampoline.
    The implication that I could came from Karen Rieniets and Barbara Dorris, both of whom just assumed I had something to do with the rearrangement of letters on the marquee at the long-closed Serf Theater downtown.
    To review: Last week I took a photo of some changes on both sides of the marquee. For years the sign had advertised “In Her Shoes.”�
    Someone got to the sign and changed the words to “Heros Shine.” The photo cutline commended the alterers for having used all 10 letters to come up with a different, original, movie.
    But our features editor, Lee Einer, said the plural of “hero” takes two “e’s.”
Continue reading →