Ties

 Clive James wrote that

Auden lived long enough for me to see his tie. I thought it had been presented to him by Jackson Pollock until I realized that it was a plain tie plus food.

("Sergei Diaghilev", collected in  Cultural Amnesia.)

In his memoir What I Think I Did, the late Larry Woiwode reported that

A sad-eyed grad who attended the Iowa Workshop and is back for his Ph.D. says Illinois lost its real writer, Bill Gass, when somebody in the administration complained about the food on his ties.

Well, since the beginning of the pandemic I have stained no ties, for I have rarely worn one.