My apologies for the cryptic subject line of yesterday’s edition. Unfortunately it was an as-yet-undiagnosed technical problem, not a secret code. The investigation continues (it’s all geek CSI up in here).

WORK

“Vienna”

Silence is to be used for fretting.
My idol the composer knows this.

Like music, we come and go from it.
As a boy, I mistook a lack

of people for silence. Then I closed
the door behind and heard the wind in the vestibule,

which meant I was in want of,
which meant I was in want.

—Richie Hofmann
—from How (#10, Fall/Winter 2014)

WORD(S)

whiffler. noun. A chain-mail wearing attendant who clears the way for a procession, often using a javelin, battle-axe, sword or staff. A swaggerer; a braggart.

“Behold, the English beach
Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys,
Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep mouth’d sea,
Which like a mighty whiffler ’fore the king
Seems to prepare his way…” (Shakespeare)

“But Goodryke is a fierce fellow, he’s got the bit between his teeth. He has been a whiffler for many years.” (C. J. Sansom)

The Dorset rustic has devised many names for the dullard: ”billy-buttons,“ ”billy-whiffler,“ ”lablolly,“ ”ninnyhammer,“ and ”bluffle-head“ are some of them. (Robert Hopkins)

“A little-known bard of 1630—Barten Holiday—wrote a poem of eight stanzas with chorus to each in praise of tobacco, in which he showed with a touch of burlesque that the herb was a musician, a lawyer, a physician, a traveller, a critic, an ignis fatuus, and a whiffler.” (G. L. Apperson)

WEB

1. Add the first line of one novel or story to the last line of another and you have: #firstlinelastline. (on Twitter) (on Tumblr).

2. Serial is a new podcast from the creators of This American Life that will follow one story each season season. This year: the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, her ex-boyfriend who continues to proclaim his innocence and a mysterious witness that might exonerate him. It’s gripping stuff.

3. Grammar Revolution. I haven’t watched it yet, but for only $8 and featuring Bryan Garner, Noam Chomsky, Grammar Girl, Steven Pinker, Richard Lederer, Geoffrey Nunberg and John McWhorter—quite a diverse group when it comes to opinions about language—I will be doing so soon.

4. Pieter Ten Hoopen’s photography is stunning. Good starting points: his work in the Congo, Afghanistan and Japan’s “suicide forest”.

5. Today in 1883, the inaugural run of the famed “Orient Express” began it’s journey from Paris, Gare de l’Est, to Giurgiu in Romania via Munich and Vienna. The train ran until 2009, peaking in the 1930s. The mystique and glamour of the operation was such that the Orient Express found itself in many entertainments as various as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the film From Russia with Love to Doctor Who, Star Trek: TNG and a Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Not to mention Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. In 1931, mass murderer Szilveszter Matuska blew up a bridge in front of the train, derailing it and killing 23. Arrested and confined, Matuska disappeared during WWII and his fate remains unknown.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. asks: “You shared the Thug Kitchen web site. It turns out the creators are whiter than white. Is this modern day blackface?” — Well, I guess there’s always the Iggy Azalea defense…

• Reader T. responds to my not-as-pathetic-as-it-sounded “sad face” comment: I’m still loving this weird little newsletter, and I particularly enjoyed the Manischewitz piece, partly because I previously had no idea how to spell it, let alone regarding the details of its history.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

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