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CD Catfish (Tim Vogelaar and Joel Smythe for “Nashville Catfish out of Water”)
I suspect that ever since the color of the year was announced to be radiant orchid, my readers have only been asking themselves one question: “Are there any purple catfish?” There are many imaginary purple catfish in the arts and in fantasy (and in a world of fluorescent lights, all sorts of things can take on a lavender hint), but there is also a real purple catfish! Native to the clear flowing streams of Guyana, here is Centromochlus reticulatus, also known as the purple oil catfish or the driftwood cat.
Centromochlus reticulatus (image from msjinkzd)
Centromochlus reticulatus is a shy and retiring catfish which likes to hide by day in driftwood and come out at night to feed on whatever tiny invertebrates or other foodstuffs they can find. The adult fish are extremely tiny and measure only 1 inch (2.7 cm) in length. Like many little catfish, the fish may be shy and nocturnal but they are also social and friendly with each other. Indeed aquarists report that they can sometimes be seen coming out to feed in little pseudo-schools where they frisk and dance in happiness at being together. Their most distinctive traits are the handsome honeycomb spots on their backs, their long whiskers, and cute all-black eyes (which are covered in adipose tissue and “lack orbital rims”). Because they are so furtive, their wild range is somewhat unclear: although they are most common in Guyana’s Rupunun River, they reputedly also live in various nearby South American waterways (including the northeastern tributaries of the mighty Amazon).
Young Centromochlus reticulatus
The little fish are not exactly a Pantone dream color: younger fish are a demure purple/pink (although in older specimens the purple may fade somewhat). And yet I find the tiny lavender catfish to be very endearing.
A Satellite Photo of Modern Gotland (reference needed)
Tonight we travel once again to the ancient and mysterious island of Gotland, the largest island in the Baltic Sea. Ferrebeekeeper has already visited Gotland as the (possible) land of origin of the enigmatic Goths and as a place which is absolutely covered in beautiful medieval churches, but in this post we push further back in Gotland’s mysterious past to contemplate an ancient sculpture. The Smiss stone (Smisstenen) also known as the Ormhäxan (which means snake-witch stone) is a carved picture stone shaped like a huge piece of toast which shows three zoomorphic serpent creatures entwined in a sort of triskelion pattern. Beneath the creatures, an apparently female human figure with legs spread holds aloft two writing serpents.
The Snake Witch Stone (unknown sculptor, ca. 400-600 AD)
As you can see, the actual stone is even more amazing than the already astonishing description (I get the sense that the red paint was added by a later hand, but, alas, I am unable to find an explanation for the brightness of the color). The stone was discovered in an ancient cemetery in Smiss in the När parish. Scholars and archaeologists have dated the stone’s construction back to 400–600 AD, the late Vendel era when great migrations changed the Germanic world–but all of the experts disagree concerning the stone’s meaning and purpose.
The “Hall of Picture Stones” at the Gotland Museum in Visby
Some historians (the reputable ones) believe the stone shows a pagan goddess or sorceress…perhaps Hyrrokkin (a snake wielding giantess) or maybe some unknown deity left out of the Eddas. Other thinkers have speculated that the stone depicts a Minoan snake goddess (although who knows how she got to Gotland from Crete), Odin making love (?), or Daniel in the lion’s den (???). I am usually good at determining how people perceive visual art, but I confess to being perplexed by these latter interpretations. The lovely knots and sinuous serpentine animals look very much like Celtic, Pictish, and Mercian designs to me–which would comfortably place the stone’s figures within the cryptic North Sea pantheon of late antiquity. Unfortunately, there is little and less which is certain about the faith and folktales of that time. We are left with a haunting beautiful sacred stone, but like so many of the most compelling statues from humanity’s history, the real meaning slips from our grasp and we are left with haunting conjecture.
The Snake-Witch Stone surrounded by other ancient picture stones from Gotland
The Crown of Flowers (Louis Jean Lagrenee, ca 18th century, oil on canvas)
After weeks and weeks of ice, gloom, rain, and wind, I am already yearning for spring (although there is certainly plenty more winter left!). To keep everyone’s spirits up, here are various paintings and photos of people wearing crowns woven out of flowers. Such a headdress is the symbol of youth, vitality, happiness, growth, and warmth—the very opposite of winter’s barrenness. Gaze upon the lovely wreathes and floral garlands and think of the coming flowers and the green shoots of spring. Someday the gray rain, the dark rain, and the white ice will pass and the balmy weather and bright colors of spring will reemerge. Until then here are some allegorical pictures to remind you of the next season!
Flora (Gustave Jacquet)
“Puppet” editorial in January Numero Korea
Image from “Oh Joy”
Flora ( Marie Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Le Brun,1799, Oil on Canvas)
Allegory of Spring (Carlo Cignani, 1628–1719, oil on canvas)
Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser (Frida Kahlo,1940)
flower headdress (from angelictoo)
Primavera: Allegory of Spring (Ann Marie Campbell)
The Boat of Charon (Jose Benlliure y Gil, 1919, oil on canvas)
Here is a painting of a lesser underworld deity by a lesser Spanish master. In the Greek pantheon, Charon was the ferryman of the dead– he carried departed spirits across the river Styx a haunted waterway which reputedly separated the world of the living and the world of the dead. Charon was a self-interested deity who acted only for money (which, in retrospect, makes him one of the more comprehensible Greek deities from a contemporary American perspective). If a dead Greek person was properly buried/burned, he/she had a small coin for Charon to pole him/her across the dark river to the grim underworld. If, however, souls died alone or nameless and were not given a funeral, they then had no way to pay the ferryman and were forced to wander for centuries o millennia at the border of death’s realm. There is no mention of what Charon did with all of his spirit wealth: he certainly seems unhappy, unkempt, and ill-groomed in this painting. Maybe he hoarded it all or invested it in unwise joint-stock schemes (or had some other perverse vice which we never heard about). José Benlliure y Gil has certainly done a splendid job at portraying the greedy gaunt boatman and his deceased charges. Perhaps the painting has a particular strength because the First World War and the Spanish flu were such recent memories when the work was finished. I especially like the dark owl perched on the despairing spirit in the little boat’s stern and the phantasmagoric figures swirling within the stygian haze.
UC San Diego Triton
This week Ferrebeekeeper has been all about Tritons: we published posts on 1) The retrograde ice moon of Neptune; 2) the giant starfish-eating gastropod; and 3) the Greek merman god. The only major definition of triton left is the nucleus of a tritium atom which has one proton and two neutrons (as opposed to a normal hydrogen atom which has one proton and NO neutrons). Tritium is very important in nuclear engineering and could be critical to the development of nuclear fusion reactors—an effort which I regard as being of paramount importance to getting humankind moving forward. Unfortunately, I am no nuclear engineer, so you will have to research tritium elsewhere.
Although the concept of deuterium-tritium fusion is succinctly explained by this necktie…
What I did discover is that, for some reason, Triton is incredibly popular as a mascot. Numerous semi-professional and school teams have a triton (a merman) as a mascot. Is it because the figure is solemn and powerful? Is this a last breath of Greek polytheism blowing through America’s high schools and colleges? Do people simply love mermen? I have no idea, but for a lighthearted Friday post, here is a gallery of Triton mascots.
Edmond Community College Tritons
A homemade Triton outfit
The Triton College Seal
“Tryton the Laker King” (it beats me)
The University of Guam Triton
The University of Missouri–Saint Louis (their “tritons” are devilish red water monsters)
Eckerd College (St. Petersburg, Florida) weird anonymous triton mascot
San Clemente High School (San Clemente, California) Tritons
And, once again, the UCSD King Triton mascot…
Enjoy the mermen, stay warm, and I’ll see you next week!
Fontana del Tritone
(Gian Lorenzo Bernini ca.1624-1643, Piazza Barberini, Rome)
Triton (the moon) and tritons (the gastropods) are named after…Triton, a Greek sea god who was the son of Poseidon (king of the sea) and his wife Amphitrite (herself a daughter of the ocean titans Nereus and Doris). Triton was portrayed as a mighty merman who carries a musical conch with which he calms the seas…or whips them into a frenzy.
Triton lived with his parents in a golden palace beneath the waves (according to Hesiod). He has a few cameo appearances in classical mythology (most notably in the story of Jason and the Argonauts) but he is generally overshadowed by his mighty father. In late antiquity and the Renaissance, Triton came to be a sort of progenitor of mermaids and mermen (a role which he occupies in Disney’s “animated film The Little Mermaid”).
Triton and Ariel (from “The Little Mermaid”)
Geologists know that oceans and seas are indeed ever-changing and protean. Whenever I think of Triton, I imagine how the oceans of the world will be entirely different in a few hundred million years (just as today’s oceans are no longer the Tethys or the Panthalassic Ocean). Neptune’s reign will end and the oceans and seas will change–and yet they will really be the same great world-sea as they have been since the beginning.
A Giant Triton (Charonia tritonis) on an Indonesian Reef
Yesterday this blog took us to the depths of space to explore the frozen ice-moon of Triton. Today we atone for that cold voyage with a trip to the inviting tropical seas of the Indo-Pacific. In these vibrant waters can be found one of the greatest living gastropods, a prince among predatory sea snails, the mighty Charonia tritonis, (commonly known as the giant triton or Triton’s trumpet).
A Giant Triton climbs over a pillow coral in Hawaii
Charonia tritonis grows to over half a meter (20 inches) in length: it is one of the largest living snails in the world (and it is not much smaller than the biggest extant snails). Equipped with a powerful muscular foot, acute senses (particularly smell), and an agile tentacle-like proboscis, the snails are formidable hunters. Additionally they are protected from predators—even big fierce ones–by their beautiful spiral shells which are vibrantly colored orange, brown, yellow, and cream. Of course such a shell would become a liability for the snail if an animal ever evolved which killed the snails in order to harvest the magnificent shells solely for their beauty (but what are the chances of that?).
A man sounds a blast on a triton shell–which has spiritual significance in Hawaii
Giant tritons hunt at night. Their main prey are echinoderms—starfish, which can be large powerful and armored. Fortunately the snails are not just equipped with powerful muscles and superior brains. They also have salivary glands that produce sulfuric acid AND a chemical which paralyzes starfish. The tritons find starfish—even big spiny poisonous starfish like the invasive and all-consuming crown-of-thorns which bedevils the reefs of the Indo-Pacific—then hold them down and inject saliva into them. As the starfish dissolves from within, the snails rip them apart and feast!
A triton kills a crown of thorns
Tritons have a specific gender—they are male or female. They seek each other out for courtship and the female then lays a large clutch of eggs. When the eggs hatch, the young snails become part of the oceanic plankton for a (poorly understood) time before developing into adults. Triton shells are esteemed by many cultures as sacred musical instruments. The shells themselves are collector’s items and are arguably better known then the formidable long-lived predators which make them. Although the snails are not threatened with extinction as such, there are fewer and fewer really big adult ones (or even small ones) on today’s reefs. This is a real shame, since those same reefs are being devoured by the horrible crown-of-thorns. Hopefully a new generation of divers and wildlife enthusiasts will appreciate the triton on the reef and leave them to their invaluable hunting. Resist the urge to buy the beautiful shells and help save the reefs of the Indo Pacific!
Neptune’s Moon Triton photographed by Voyager 2 (NASA)
It is absolutely freezing here in Brooklyn—a great vortex of bitter Arctic air has swirled south across huge swathes of the nation. The temperature here is 9° Fahrenheit (or -13° Celsius). Imagine how much worse things are in Minnesota, where it is -14° Fahrenheit (or -25° Celsius). Brrr! It hurts my fingers to write about it–even in my overheated study (well—bedroom, really). Now truly stretch your mind from the frozen heartland of America to the edge of the planetary solar system. The largest moon of the ice giant Neptune is the moon Triton, discovered in 1846 by English astronomer/brewer William Lassell, and named for the son of Poseidon. On the surface of Triton temperatures plunge to 36…which is to say 36 K (Kelvin). To translate that is -237° Celsius or a bone chilling -395° Fahrenheit.
Artist’s rendering of an ice volcano on Triton with Neptune in the background (NASA)
Triton is a strange moon. It is the seventh largest moon in the solar system and it is the only large moon to orbit its planet in a direction opposite from the planet’s rotation (which is called a retrograde orbit). Since there is no model for retrograde moons forming from accretion disks, Triton must be a captured object from the Oort cloud—and, indeed, the moon is extremely similar in composition to Pluto and other dwarf planets of the Solar system’s distant periphery. Despite the extreme cold of Triton’s surface, the moon is geologically active. Like Earth, the moon is probably differentiated into layers: a core, a mantle, and a crust. The crust is formed of ice: frozen water, methane, and nitrogen. A large polar cap covers the southern pole, but much of the rest of the moon is a“cantaloupe” surface of melted and refrozen ice. The surface is (geologically) young. Cryovolcanic activity and tidal forces have kept the ice active. Cryovolcanoes were first spotted on Triton during the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989 (the first time such phenomenon were ever observed). Because of tidal warming (caused by gravitational interaction with Neptune), Triton may have once had a liquid ocean beneath the crust, but this has likely solidified assuming that there is no radioactive decay from the rocky core.
A size comparison of Earth, Earth’s moon, and Triton
Triton is closer to Neptune than the Earth’s moon is to Earth…and Neptune is seventeen times more massive than Earth. This doesn’t bode well for the long term future of Triton. Within the next three and a half billion years, the moon will either be pulled into Neptune’s surface and swallowed or it will be ripped to pieces and form a spectacular ring structure like Saturn’s.
Guangzhou China
I love China. During five millennia of continuous civilization, the Chinese people discovered many of the most fundamental breakthroughs which have propelled humankind forward: today the Chinese government is rapidly pumping money into research (even as our own leaders decide to turn their backs on science and discovery). Chinese literature and art are hauntingly ineffable—the saddest and most beautiful in the world. China is huge and gorgeous and bewildering. It is its own world of peoples, sweeping vistas, and wonders! Today China is rapidly becoming a paramount global superpower—as befits a nation which contains a fifth of humankind.
A scroll painting of an elephant and scholar from the 1920s
Yet modern China has been a poor neighbor (!) and an absolutely terrible steward of nature and the environment. I will leave out details about local wars, nightmarish buffer states, and wholesale toxic pollution of entire regions to instead concentrate on markets for traditional medicine, cuisine, and craft—where so many of the world’s endangered animals vanish for no good reason. Chinese leaders are quick to point out the high environmental costs of rapid modernization and point fingers at the western world’s excesses during the industrial revolution and the gilded age (and today). But what do foolish superstitions and flagrantly useless status symbols have to do with these arguments? If contemporary China wishes to be taken seriously as a conscientious nation, it needs to at least take steps to reduce the endangered animal trade which is needlessly driving so many wonderful creatures extinct.
They are so beautiful–and they are going extinct.
That actually happened today (also known as yesterday on the Chinese side of the globe)! China is the world’s largest consumer of ivory. As tens of millions of consumers become middle class (or affluent…or rich) the demand for intricately carved elephant tusks has risen meteorically. Africa of course has its own troubles and a small amount of money can seem like a great deal there. In practice this means that the last great herds of elephants are swiftly being poisoned or shot so that their tusks can fetch a premium in the rising cities of China. It is a heartbreaking tragedy that an animal which lives as long as a person (and seems to feel emotions just as deeply) should be killed for two of its teeth. How absolutely horrifying it is to imagine the extinction of all elephants for petty vanity. What would be the purpose of a world with no elephants?
Yao Ming–hero to elephant lovers (even though he is very small compared to the great animals)
The Chinese are not monolithic and educational quirks (excesses?) of the Cultural Revolution generation have meant that many people are ignorant of elephants’ magnificent nature (and slow reproduction).Yao Ming who played basketball or something in America has unexpectedly become one of my greatest heroes by spearheading a public awareness campaign to teach people about elephants and to prevent their extinction. Other pachyderm crusaders have also taken up the cause (along with international NGOs) and the central government has finally taken notice. Authorities crushed six tons of confiscated ivory into powder in Dongguan, China, on January 6, 2014.
Authorities in Guangzhou with the captured ivory (which equals one fifth of the illegal ivory taken last year)
Of course it is a bit of an easy question: should the world’s other great order of immensely intelligent social land mammal be killed for stupid ornamental knickknacks? But China has answered it properly (finally) and I offer them my unreserved respect and admiration. With their growing space program, their rapidly improving universities, and their new environmental awareness, China truly is improving and growing very quickly. Hopefully it isn’t too late for the poor elephants which are still left alive.
No doubt you have noticed how different clothing stores have the same color palette for their wares. If you walk from Banana Republic to Uniqlo to Armani Exchange, you will see remarkably different garments at wildly different prices…and yet the colors are all the same (and the opposing colors suit each other beautifully). The effect even stretches to kitchen and home goods stores: so if you are particularly obsessed you can probably match your underwear, your blender, and your divan—as long as you buy them in the same year (and also assuming you buy divans). The reason for this phenomenon is that every year the mughals of fashion, trendiness, and color itself get together and proclaim a color palette for the year.
In practice, international corporations tend to defer to Pantone, a company based in New Jersey for this palette. Every year Pantone (allegedly) convenes a secret quorum of fashionistas, artists, Illuminati, scientists, sorcerers, and what not in an unknown European capital to choose the color which most accurately expresses the zeitgeist of all human endeavor for a year. [When I was imprisoned in the legal industry, a strange coworker who was really “in the scene” during the eighties confided that what all this really means is that a gay man with a sharp eye chooses the palette, Pantone reviews it, and everyone else gets told what colors to use. This sounds quite plausible, but I have no way of verifying the truth of the allegation. Pantone has grown much savvier at marketing nonsense since the eighties…as indeed has everyone except for me, alas].
Anyway, the official color of the year of 2014 is [insert royal fanfare with horns] “Radiant Orchid” an extremely pretty mid-tone purple/lavender. To celebrate, I have illustrated this article with radiant orchid pictures (at least to such an extent my computer’s ever changing screen and my own eyes can replicate the hue). Undoubtedly the other colors you see at shops this year will all perfectly match radiant orchid. Pantone announces the color of the year for free, but if you would like to see the associated palette you will have to order the proprietary information from Pantone View.
As you can probably tell from the tone of this post, I feel that “the color of the year” is a bit silly (not radiant orchid, which I find very fetching, but the concept itself), yet I do like the idea of a unified palette and I like the fact that favorite colors change with the era in accordance to a larger consensus of human taste. Perhaps someday we will all smile with bittersweet nostalgia as we think back on 2014 with its mild lavender in the same way that my parents talk about mustard and avocado or my grandparents talk about baby blue. In the meantime, if purple is your thing you should feel happy, and if not you should start pulling strings right now to influence the mystery color of 2015.
