Columns

Edward Albee got it absolutely right in his play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” When one of George and Martha’s guests asked if she could use the restroom, George said to Martha, “Will you show our little guest to the — uh — euphemism?”
Euphemism? That’s the perfect word. It means “a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.”

The longest single ownership of the Optic began in 1967, when brothers Robert and Stuart Beck purchased the newspaper. The Beck family published the Optic for the next 35 years, and while old newspaper articles indicate it was the two brothers who owned the Optic, Stuart Beck’s wife Lois was also an owner, and managing editor for more than 20 years.

On the occasion of a birthday for one of us, my wife and I joined my sister Dorothy and her husband Joe Maestas for dinner at El Rialto. The rule in the Trujillo household is that the inviter pays for the invitee. And maybe that’s why we don’t invite others all that often.
But if we can inveigle one another to make the suggestion and turn it into an invitation, we’re willing. We’d almost finished our meal when the waitperson came by with the bill and took brother-in-law Joe’s credit card for processing.

In its 134-year history, the Optic has changed ownership 10 times, though three of those owners held the newspaper for less than two years. After Hub Kane died of a sudden heart attack in 1947, the Optic was run by a board of trustees headed by attorney Louis C. Ilfeld (Charles Ilfeld’s son), and included Kane’s widow, Helen Kelly Kane. The trustees and Mrs. Kane ran the paper for a brief period, but less than a year after Hub Kane’s death, the Optic was sold to Orville E. Priestly.