Word: pith
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Variations: Red Sox hats are a Boston favorite. Straw pith helmets, boaters or cowboy hats are cool, as are hats with solar-powered fans built in. Terry-cloth hats can be soaked in cold water, then placed for an evaporative cooling effect...
Once upon a time, actors like Spencer Tracy (in Stanley and Livingstone) strode off to explore Africa with their pith helmets set squarely on their brows, their bush jackets neatly pressed and a chorus bawling Onward, Christian Soldiers on the sound track...
...shopping mall on Santa Monica Boulevard that evening scarcely noticed the newcomer in a tuxedo who had joined them in line at the flower stalls. Neither the young lady in the decal-covered bomber jacket nor the young gentleman with the sheepskin vest over his T shirt and the pith helmet saw any reason to fuss over someone evidently doin' his thing in a tuxedo costume. No, what turned their heads was the new arrival's inquiry...
...earliest visitors, the ancient Greeks and Romans, tried just about any concoction to have their way with her. A scholarly study on the subject by Alan Hull Walton tells us that the pith from the branch of the pomegranate tree and the testes of animals were considered hot stuff. So were certain foods. "If envious age relax the nuptial knot," advised the poet Martial, "thy food be scallions, and thy feast shallot." Onions were a favorite, as were garlic, pepper, savory, cabbage, asparagus, eggs, pineapples, snails ("but without sauce," cautioned the fastidious Petronius) and just about any creature dredged from...
Americans are not comfortable lurking in drugstores, waiting for a chance to ask sotto voce for a pack of pomegranate pith, so we disguise our pursuit of Aphrodite in more acceptable forms: the pulse-racing perfume, the sexy dress, the dirty dancing, even the lofty status. No less a personage than Henry Kissinger asserted that view in the '70s. "Power," he said, perhaps with sparrow's tongue in cheek, "is the great aphrodisiac...