When in the course of human events it becomes neccesary for a man to attend the wedding of his fiancee’s best friend, he must needs be don a tie. I did this today. On the ride home, I removed the tie and, siezed by some old highschool memory, peeled the back of it open to reveal the guts of it. Back in prep school we used to compare the color and number of stripes in the inner body( is there a word for that stuff?) for the purpose of gauging thier relative quality. I found four blue stripes on the burlapish inner-body. I recall gold and silver stripes but not blue (nor in the case of a tie I just grabbed from the closet, pink, and another has no stripes at all). What gives? Are the stripes a code to the over-all quality of the tie or (as I think I read somewhere) the quality of the backing/ stiffening material? What does the numer and color of the stripes tell an observer?
Wearing a necktie as a headband while jogging may say unintended things about your politics.
I knew the question sounded familiar when I posted, but I thought it was out of an article by Joel Achenbach which I could not find. I thank you who answered my querry. Sorry it’s been so long, but, as frequently happens to me, I broke my damn computer again (not physically, but I seem to have the ill-luck -or lack of clue- of deleting key files and/or programs which are essential for accessing and using the web. The good news is that with this fix I can finally send e-mails - every cloud has a silver lining 
Thanx again –
WASTE
I would imagine that if you spend enough time telling everybody at the wedding, very slowly and in great detail, about the knot that you are using and why you prefer it to the 84 other available knots, that you’ll be able to get out of this requirement before too long. Hence, this link.