Dashed Outside

Well, you know, I am still thinking about that 1972 ghost article from the New York Times. Here is the part I am thinking about today: the paragraph ending, "a woman who died there in bed is said to occasionally return, floating in through the window to frighten occupants, including two young women who once dashed outside 'in a state of relative undress,' Colonel Dionne said." I am thinking of Colonel Dionne's exquisite formality, and whether it represses or perhaps expresses an unseemly lasciviousness - secret, perhaps, only to Colonel Dionne himself! In the version of the article that appeared in the Palm Beach Post, the editors removed the Colonel's title in that quotation, so that it just ends, "Dionne said," not "Colonel Dionne said," robbing it of some color and interest, I think - a tone-deaf choice on the part of the editors of the Palm Beach Post in 1972. Okay now I am done thinking about everything. (See also.)