Long-time Highlands University secretary and neighbor Jane Quintana told me Tuesday that after reading Work of Art, she has to watch how she speaks, to mind her p’s and q’s. Her husband Nappy agreed.
    Anyone who believes “there’s no teeth to the law” might have emerged with a different perspective had they witnessed a confrontation Saturday at Camp Luna.
    One day this week we went to Santa Fe — twice. Well, it was actually more like two and a half times. Here’s what happened: We traveled to Albuquerque in the morning for an appointment. We returned mid-afternoon and got a call about picking up our two small grand-daughters. That accomplished, we recorded close to 400 miles, and neither we nor the car breathed hard.
    When the landscape takes on the appearance of a scene from “Dr. Zhivago,” that’s proof there’s been a heavy snowfall.
    Mother’s Nature’s early spring attack on northern New Mexico two weeks ago, justifiably has been called the “storm of the century.” No fewer than three national television networks identified Las Vegas by name, telling the country we were under two feet of snow.
    On a wall of our house hangs an old telephone, a reminder of rural life around the middle of last century.
    Unlike today’s slim, two-ounce Nokia version of instant wireless communication, this big, bulky machine has a crank, a generator that sends out real shocks, two bells, an oak case, plastic mouth and ear pieces and cord as thick as a python.
    It was enjoyable writing recently about dialects that people employ, depending on the situation.
    More than a year ago, I wrote about mall-dwelling, braces-wearing teenie-boppers named Jennifer whose every third word is “like,” as in, “And I’m like duh,” or “Like let’s go eat like a hamburger.” or “Like what do you want to do today?” The most recent exposition on language featured my take on how most people talk. People do not speak the way they read. On a good day, with a stiff tail wind, a writer can plunk down about 14 words per minute. That same person will speak 140 words a minute.
    A few days ago, a co-worker, Miranda Cisneros, and I had a discussion while lunching at the Spic and Span. Amazingly, we got three topics to coalesce: the death penalty, the Bank of Las Vegas time and temperature sign and President Bush’s overseas policies.
    For today, at least, I have an opinion, which changed only recently and which is subject to change without notice.
    Many creative pieces, known as master’s theses, often are doomed to remain forever in the stretch-wrap that entombed them when first placed on the library shelf.
    Some are esoteric (just like the word “esoteric”), in a language and on a subject so narrow that only devout followers in that field would conceivably enjoy reading it.
    A dozen years ago, my colleague at Highlands University, Dick Panofsky, observed that two identical VW Bugs in the parking lot of Mortimer Hall appeared to be of different heights. One seemed five inches shorter than its twin.
    One thing that made Saturdays complete when I was a child living on Railroad Avenue was the procession of itinerant comic book exchange boys and girls.
    Two or three kids from the Pecos and Commerce street area, delegates of the 1940s version of the Bookmobile, sans books or wheels, came by regularly, their arms full of comic books for exchange. Because my siblings and I were extremely literate (okay, well, where comic books are concerned), we customarily had a pile of crime, detective, humor, war, adventure and romance comic books.
    A couple of weeks ago, one of us at the Optic wrote an editorial applauding efforts to make more and more public places smoke free. As an ex-smoker, I am among the worst critics of the habit, but it’s not a fit of hauteur that motivates me; frankly, I hate the smell of the noxious weed that I used to inflict on others, without even asking, “Mind if I smoke?” The editorial mentioned the reality that entire families on their way to dinner at a restaurant may never even step into the restaurant because of one person near the door who’s lit up.