Free The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time by William Safire

tragedy.” And in The Great Gatsby, his unforgettable “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

    You mention Clinton’s “unique juxtaposition” of is with is. This brought to my mind my favorite juxtaposition of a form of being: “Let be be the finale of seem,” from Wallace Stevens’s “The Emperor of Ice Cream.” I just wanted to return the favor.
    Dennis Lawson
    Seymour, Connecticut

    Codgertation. Thirteen out of 100 Americans are over 65; only 4 of those 100 are “wired seniors,” keyed into the Internet. But good news for older readers of words in all forms comes in a new book from a couple of heavy hitters in brain science. No age group is coming online faster than the Social Security set, and a recent survey shows that especially goes for women.
    When information in spoken form is presented rapidly, older people don’t understand it as easily as their children do. A fast-talking newscaster is not comprehended well by most older listeners and viewers (to whom advertisers’ messages are directed). But Guy McKhann, MD, of Johns Hopkins and Marilyn Albert, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, authors of Keep Your Brain Young: The Complete Guide to Physical and Emotional Health and Longevity, write, “Since you read at your own speed and can go back over what you read, speed has less influence on your understanding of written material.”
    That explains an eye-opening development in the world of the Netties. “One advantage of the computer is that it depends on the written word,” write Albert and McKhann, who are happily married and read to each other every night. “Given the fact that vocabulary and reading ability do not decline and may even improve with age, it’s not surprising that the fastest-growing group of new computer users in the United States is over the age of 65.”
    We’re allowed to read that again. Let it sink in. For information comprehension, the written word beats the rat-a-tat-tat of cable cubs and cuties any day. That’s why you see those letters crawling along the bottom of your screen.

    Cold Case Squad. What has become of Chandra Levy? The question about this missing person is triggered by the FBI’s grim refusal to accept the phrase Cold Case squad .
    Last summer, before the nation’s attention turned away from the vanished congressional aide, Jim Stewart, a CBS reporter, said that “the FBI officially transferred the Chandra Levy investigation to its Cold Case unit, which has historically handled only the toughest of cases that have few clues…. Cold case means cold leads, few tips and little to go on.”
    The FBI responded with an angry news release referring proudly to its Major Case squad and coldly noting, “It is not correct to call this squad the ‘Cold Case’ squad.”
    Following this up, I was informed by an FBI spokesman, “It has always been the Major Case squad. Cold Case squad is used by the media, not by us. The squad that we have in our office is called the Major Case Homicide squad . We do not call it a Cold Case squad .”
    And as for you journalists who don’t accept our official law enforcement terminology—freeze!

    Come Heavy. What’s a goomah, and how does it differ from a goombah ? Is the adjective skeevy somehow related to the slang noun for underwear, skivvies ? Does the come-heavy Mafia talk on television give you agita ?
    These are words from the HBO television series The Sopranos, which I first turned to hoping to hear a rendition of the mad scene in Lucia di Lammermoor . The show is centered on a relentlessly foulmouthed fictional Mafia family with the surname of Soprano. My interest is in the writers’ adoption of a lexicon that is loosely based on Italian words, a little real Mafia slang and a smattering of lingo remembered or made up for the show by former residents of a blue-collar neighborhood in East Boston.
    “ Goombah is derived from compare, ‘godfather’ or ‘dear male friend,’”