Six Tuscan Poets, by Giorgio Vasari, 1544.

Six Tuscan Poets, by Giorgio Vasari, 1544. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota.

Communication

Volume V, Number 2 | spring 2012

Preamble

Word Order

By Lewis H. Lapham

The Internet is blessed with undoubtedly miraculous applications, but language is not yet one of them. Technology cannot displace the primacy of words.

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Miscellany

From 1929 to 1965, Sherman Billingsley ran the Stork Club, called by columnist Walter Winchell “New York’s New Yorkiest place.” Among its patrons were Orson Welles, Grace Kelly, Tallulah Bankhead, and Frank Sinatra. When photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life in 1944, Billingsley shared the hand signals he used to communicate with his waiters: hand on tie (no bill for the table); hand touching nose (unimportant people, do not cash their checks); hands interlocked, thumb raised (get them out and don’t let them back in); and pulling ear (summon me to a phone call).

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

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The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.
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DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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