Prime ministers in bathing suits

Not available online, but I share this comical tidbit from Alexander Stille's New Yorker piece about the Italian prime ministerial sex troubles:

It's difficult not to be charmed by Deputy Umberto Scapagnini, Berlusconi's personal physician, whose theories of longevity drew him into Berlusconi's circle. He keeps the Prime Minister on a special regimen of diet, exercise, amino acids, vitamins, and antioxidants. "Berlusconi is the most extraordinary psychophysical subject I have ever examined," Scapagnini told me. "And I am not saying this because I'm a brownnoser. I am an internationally respect scientist - I don't need to curry favor." Scapagnini, who has travelled the Silk Road and studied the dietary habits of the residents of Okinawa looking for the secrets of long life, has helped develop a method for measuring what he calls a person's true biological age (the measurement of certain hormones and an examination of fifty strands of DNA as well as the person's immune system), which can vary considerably from one's actual age. "Berlusconi is fifteen years younger than his chronological age," Scapagnini continued. "He has an amazing immune system and powers of resistance. He has a magnetic personality and an exceptional capacity to communicate. He is perhaps the patient I've examined who has the capacity to live the longest. If you see him in a bathing suit, he has the musculature and tone of a much, much younger man." Scapagnini hopes to keep the P.M. alive until the age of a hundred and twenty, which he considers within the natural life span of a human being.

As for women, Scapagnini said, "Certainly, he has a strong sexual personality, and they are highly attracted to him, Naturally, for his part, as with any of us, this is not unpleasant."

Serendipity

I cannot remember where I first heard about Splash: Great Writing About Swimming (edited by Laurel Blossom), but as soon as I did, I had to go and request it from my beloved BorrowDirect. And since I was looking at an electronic catalog, I could not then resist requesting the appealingly adjacent Splash! A History of Swimwear. (More properly it is a history of 20th-century fashion photography with a swimwear focus, but an interesting book nonetheless.)

Forthwith, Maxine Kumin's "400-Meter Freestyle" and a bit of the illustrated chronology at the back of the swimwear volume:

A nursery of snails

At the New York Sun, Caleb Crain has a truly delightful piece about Henry Hitchings' Secret Life of Words.