Word: yardarms
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...Ernest Hemingway also managed a certain amphibianism. He drank prodigiously at night, then had the discipline to rise in the morning and write for several hours before the sun crept toward the yardarm and it was time to drink again. The Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, a talented fanatic, would attend dinner parties until midnight, then go home and write until dawn. He died by ritual suicide in the midst of leading his private militia in a notably screwball coup attempt at a Japanese army headquarters...
They stand outside in the haze, on the balding knoll where their house rests. The trees list permanently to the north, made arthritic by the wind. Figures in a Wyeth landscape -- except for the yardarm, with flourishing skull and crossbones, that towers wickedly behind the house. In a moment the artist is off on another ramble, toward a new attic or field or relationship or controversy. More than likely, he will wander back to Betsy. She calls Wyeth "you old pirate"; he must know she is the anchor...
Admiral of the Fleet, Earl Mountbatten of Burma was born at Frogmore House, Windsor, in 1900, just as the sun was passing over the yardarm of Empire. His father was Prince Louis of Battenberg, a German kinsman of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and later Britain's First Sea Lord. Queen Victoria held him in her arms as he was christened Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas. The Battenbergs called their baby son Nickie, but its Russian connotation at that time prompted them to change the nickname to Dickie, much as the family name was later anglicized to Mountbatten...
Salted Wounds. Seamen's complaints about this hard life were redressed at the yardarm or, if the captain felt merciful, by the cat. One apparently incorrigible tar was flogged eight times in ten months. Sentences of 1,000 lashes were common. The man who survived his flogging got salt-the Royal Navy's antiseptic-to rub on his ribboned back...
...hurry to salvage every instant of scarce daylight, determined to get as much as they can out of the short day, the long drive and the considerable expense. But spring geländesprungers tend to take it easy, swinging onto the tows as the sun crosses the yardarm, basking in the long sun after lunch. Their siestas are prolonged because the midday snow is apt to be mushy, because spring snow is harder to ski, and because fewer skiers and longer hours mean more skiing and more fatigue. At Mammoth Mountain, this may lead to an added pleasure. Skiers tuck...