Word: moths
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Silence Will Speak. Wescott describes the late Baroness Blixen-Finecke, better known as Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa, Seven Gothic Tales), as she seemed when she visited New York four years ago- already at death's door, already moth-frail like "a fever-wasted child; but her eyes as lively as the diamonds in her ears. She really did no more than haunt the dinner table." No writer could ask for a better epitaph than Wescott's use of a line from one of her own characters: "Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal...
...Hanoi's main streets. One morning, a Red reporter had visited all the state trade stores with out finding a single fountain pen. He then watched while Mrs. Toan and Mrs. Hoa sold dozens of fountain pens in less than an hour, in addition to razor blades, moth balls, nylon stockings, shoelaces, buttons and aspirin tablets-all in short supply at the state stores...
Guinness itself is a superlative, the world's greatest grab bag of mosts, leasts, longests, shortests, fattests, thinnests, highests, lowests, fastests and slowests-20,000 records in all. Its students can learn that the creature with the most sensitive sniffer is the male silkworm moth, which can detect a female two miles away; that the longest place name belongs to the New Zealand village of Taumatawhakatangihangakoauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu; and that Mrs. Beverly Nina Avery, a Los Angeles barmaid, holds the record for most spouses in a monogamous society, with 14 husbands, five of whom, she once alleged, broke her nose...
...Moth Bags for Mossbacks. To keep the press happy, Romagna has performed prodigies of rapid transcription. Romagna's wooden attache case, custom-built by the White House carpentry shop, is a portable desk, but in a pinch, Romagna has been known to recruit the nearest back for the same purpose. Recording presidential talks in the White House rose garden -a favorite informal speaking site-is Romagna's pet chore: "Provided the speech is not too long, I can take it down, run the 50 yards to my office and transcribe it. dash into the mimeo room and have...
...behind another door. In 1948, on tour with Harry Truman. Romagna transcribed more than 300 of Truman's 536 campaign speeches, missing only an occasional word: when Truman sneered at leaders of the Republican 80th Congress as "mossbacks," Romagna. who had never heard the expression, wrote it down "moth bags...