The Gentle Snorts of Our Readers Nodding Off. . .
In Installment No. 947 of the ongoing "It's Summer, and We're Officially Out of Ideas" series, editors of the WaPo Style section at least stop flogging the old heat-and-shade warhorses. Today, instead, they turn the redoubtable Linton Weeks loose on "the sounds of summer." Get out your onomonopoeia headphones, nimble readers:
As the season fades into fall, these are some sounds we have savored: The scruuussshh of a full-grown man sliding through the dust into third base. The dinka-plinka of the ice cream van skulking about the neighborhood. The rumble of coming thunder and the white-noise pleasantness of an afternoon rain. Wasps whispering, bullfrogs bellowing, the crisp flapping of the flag on the 17th green, the metronomic numbness of ocean waves and the ker-swooch ignition of charcoal on the grill.
Yes, the fulsome dinka-plinka , the lovely scruussshh ; as one fond editor acquaintance once remarked: "That's not writing; that's writin'!" Still, amid all the bellowing froggies and whispering wasps--who we are almost certain are Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, by the way--this stray quote caught our, uhm, ear:
"I think I hear humidity," says Andy Rosenberg, a broadcast engineer who has worked at National Public Radio for more than 30 years. "I think it has to do with the density of the air. Things sound kind of deadened."
Dude, that's not humidity: That's Susan Stamberg.-- HOLLY MARTINS
The Sounds of Summer [WaPo]