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Porch ceilings in the American South are traditionally a pale blue green and they have been for centuries (which is amazing since our nation has barely even been around that long). The evocative name of this traditional color is “haint blue” and the roots stretch back to before the revolution when pigments choices were limited. In the Gullah culture of low country South Carolina (a culture created out of West African tradition, colonial greed, New World wetlands, tropical disease, and rice), blue was a special color which was anathema to spirits or “haints.” According to tradition, ghosts either thought it was the sky (problematic) or running water (impassable) and left it alone. There was plenty of indigo pigment to tint the whitewash, and so doors, casements, window frames, and ceilings all became haint blue. And even robust materialists inured by reason against the perils of the supernatural can still agree it is a lovely & calming hue.
But the use of haint blue didn’t stop along the Florida and South Carolina coast. The tradition was admired and emulated throughout the south, and it has even continued to spread beyond North of the Mason Dixon Line and west of the Mississippi in the modern era. I wish I had the time to select a whole “Southern Living” pictorial spread of exquisite southern porches (for, although we are better off without the ways of the old South, those porches are delightful and should be adopted everywhere), but I think these pictures convey the idea.
Sometimes if you aren’t watching the heavens (or the news) closely enough, you miss a major astronomical discovery. For example last summer, astronomers discovered a galaxy which formed only one or two billion years after the Big Bang (so I guess it is unclear whethter I missed this story by one year or by 12 billion). At any rate, the galaxy hunters used the Hubble space telescope to peer through a powerful gravitational lense far away in space. Gravitational lenses are areas where timespace is warped like a huge lense by high-gravity phenomena, and a viewer can use them like a huge lense to see far-away objects. By using the Hubble telescope together with the gravitational lense they were able to see back a dozen billion years in time to the edge of the universe…as it once was not long after creation. What they saw perplexed them.
There is a fundamental difference between galaxies. Galaxies where stars are being formed tend to be blue and spiral shaped (like our own beloved Milky Way!). Galaxies where stars have largely stopped forming are “red and dead” since the remaining stars tend to be long lived red dwarf stars and the bright young (short-lived) blue stars are mostly gone. These red galaxies are not shaped like spirals, but tend to be elliptical shaped (like an egg or a football, not like one of those evil gym machines).
The ancient galaxy at the edge of the universe was neither of those colors or shapes. It was a dense yellow disk. Stars formed in an (enormous) accretion disk but then, for some reason, new star formation stopped. The blue stars burned out (“the light that shines twice as bright etc, etc..”), but the yellow middle aged stars were still burning. The galaxy had three times the mass of the Milky Way but scrunched into a pancake of much smaller area.
So do galaxies always form as disks and then either become self-renewing blue spirals (maybe by colliding with other galaxies or clouds of dust)or dead red footballs? Or was this early yellow disk galaxy an abberation? Or is our own galaxy truly new (well…newish…being only a few billion years old)? I do not understand astrophysics well enough to answer these questions or even formulate them properly (although I get the sense some of these questions may not yet be answered by anyone in any comprehensive way), but I would love to hear what people can add to this rudimentary yet compelling story of shapes and colors.
Happy Fourth of July! The United States of America turns 242 years old this year (2018). People always talk about how new our nation is, but 242 is pretty venerable by any reasonable standard. When the founding fathers declared independence, France was under the Ancien Régime, China was ruled by the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and the Ottoman Sultanate was a great world power. Russia was expanding under the enlightened reign of…Catherine the Great! The nascent United States had the idealistic strength of purpose to break from the forms of monarchy and autocracy which held sway around the world and to revisit the ancient, dangerous ideal of democracy–rule by the people for the people (although, admittedly, it was a pretty limited and flawed democracy in those early days…and maybe in these days too). Democracies have always turned upon themselves and blown apart, so the founders were brave/brash to mint a new one in the era of absolutism, but it succeeded beyond their wildest dreams (except maybe for Alexander Hamilton…that guy was a maniac).
I love my country for its dangerous democracy and vibrant idealism, although weighing everyone’s opinions and forging them into a consensus can sometimes be a slow and painful process. I also love America’s enlightened rule of law, its technological savvy, and, above all, its diverse population of people from all sorts of different backgrounds united by shared ideals. Lately though, we have reached a sort of crossroads where the population is fundamentally at odds over two different divergent views of America’s strength, ideals, and purpose. For the present, we are the Divided States of America: a recherche red nation of obedience, hierarchy, bravery, loyalty, & honor; and a libertine blue nation of shifting identities and ideas, ceaseless change, and unnerving new possibilities. Until one nation gains political ascendancy so overwhelming that the other side acknowledges it, the whole nation stumbles along deadlocked, incapacitated, and unable to adapt to a world where our adversaries and competitors are refining seductive new forms of autocracy (and goodness knows what else).
After World War II, the world lay in shattered ruins. The United States was at an apogee of power, victory and success. Yet America rebuilt our adversaries in the belief that prosperous powerful, happy nations would be better allies and would become amazing friends. We chose to remake the world not only with our vast power (not that we have been altogether reticent about wielding that double-edged sword) but with concepts, contracts, commerce, and compassion. Germany, Japan, and Italy are our dearest friends—esteemed equals in the great work of civilization and progress. The Pax Americana has not been a perfect success, but it has been very good to the world and very good to us. Turning our back on the world we built (and all of the advantages we built into the system for ourselves and our point of view) is rank folly. When we had everything and were the only super power, we failed to reach out to the former Soviet Union with the same big-hearted elan…and look where that got us.
We have made terrible mistakes in the past and we are making a lot of new ones lately (and revisiting some of the golden oldies which have plagued us and destroyed other great nations). Everyone talks about the “shattering of norms” (which makes me think of the drunken everyman from “Cheers” falling from his barstool and exploding into shards like peanut brittle). Reforms are inevitable and necessary if a nation wishes to stay dynamic and powerful. Some norms will have to be shattered so that these much-needed reforms can take place. The dance of reaction versus progress is so much harder in the real world than it looks on the pages of the history books though, and for the first time since the Cold War ended, I am truly afraid for America’s future. If we cannot control ourselves, our bright dreams of space colonies, next generation biotech, super AIs, and enlightened ecological conservation will vanish… so will a lot of other things we esteem and so will some very fundamental things we have always taken for granted.
I live in bluest Brooklyn, and I don’t suppose it is a mystery where my political sympathies lie. But it wasn’t always so. I am a West Virginian too, with a red heart and a (perhaps overweening?) sense of our special place in the world. This is a holiday and it isn’t time for more rancor right now, but I am going to write more about politics as the elections come up. We need to look back 242 years and forwards 242 years too (like the founders did) if we hope to get out of this serious crisis of our democracy.
The greatest Chinese political epic begins with the lines “Nations long divided must unite; nations long united must divide.” We are being tested by that adage and so far, we are failing the test. Have a happy Fourth of July! But stay ever-mindful that we have serious painful work due on our representative government. This time the heavy lifting won’t be done by heroic half-imagined people of long ago with funny clothes, muskets, fifes, paddlewheels, and telegraphs. It is up to us…you and me and all the people we care about with all of our dumb phones, anxieties, loudmouth ideas, and hare-brained schemes. We need to respect one another and strike new compromises, or government by the people for the people will perish here and the world will have to look to South Korea, Switzerland, Belgium, and India to find its paragons of liberty.
What in the hell is this supposed to be?
Portrait of the Hon. Mrs Ernest Guinness (Frank Dicksee, 1912) oil on canvas
Of all the colors in my paintbox I am most dissatisfied with blue. There are a lot of strong greens and there are vivid cadmium yellows, oranges, and reds. There is ivory black which as dark as the depths of the void and dioxazine violet which is a great purple, but blue is a difficult color. The brightest blues of the sky are from sunlight which has been scattered by the atmosphere. The blues of bird feathers and butterfly wings are from careful refraction of light from reflective structures in the wings: if you ground peacock feathers fine enough there is no more blue….
The main blue pigments in the painter’s palette are cobalt blue (which is ancient and robust but a trifle subdued) ultramarine blue (a sulfur-containing sodium-silicate) which inclines toward purple, and cerulean blue a sky blue cobalt stannate which is painfully expensive. Oh! there is a manganese blue out there in the paint stores, but I never used it until I bought a little tube a month ago, so we’ll see how it turns out: it is sort of a tropical powder blue. They are each beautiful but they each have their problems and none is the pure royal blue in the center of the spectrum which is bright, non-toxic, and lightfast (although the poisonous cobalts and…ultramarine too… last through the long ages). This is why I was excited when my old painter friend Brendan (a raven painting specialist) sent me a link to an article about a new blue pigment.
YInMn blue
The new blue is called YInMn blue. Discovered a couple of years ago by Robin Young, the new blue is lightfast, stable, and seemingly nontoxic (although sometimes in the past problems have taken a while to become evident). The new blue is made of yttrium oxide, indium oxide, and manganese oxide. It seems to be extremely lasting, and best of all it is very very blue. Unfortunately, right now it is expensive (and the paint companies are still testing it out), but I have a feeling it might hit the market soon, and whatever its faults it can’t be worse for one’s health than carcinogenic cobalt.
Kudos to Robin Young for the new color. I can’t wait to get a tube and paint some truly blue flounders…speaking of which, i better head back to the easel.
Here is a little gallery of drawings and paintings of the Mauritius blue pigeon ((Alectroenas nitidissimus) a charming blue fructivore of the beautiful island of Mauritius (which is in the Indian Ocean, to the east of Madagascar). You may notice that there are only artworks of the blue pigeon with the yeti ruff and naked smiling vulture head. That is because the poor pigeon went extinct in the 1830s, a victim if drastic deforestation on the island. The pigeon went extinct when the fruit trees it relied on for food were cut down. It looks funny and personable and sad.
One of the defining characteristics of warriors in this age of the world is their camouflage garb. The brave men and women of the Army, Marines, and even the Air Force all have combat fatigues which make use of broken stippled patterns of drab colors meant to conceal them from the eyes of enemy combatants…but what about the Navy? Sailors tend to be mercilessly prone to being spotted—since they are generally located on huge floating metal arrays belching out smoke above the flat blue seas. Ferrebeekeeper has written about attempts to camouflage ships, but what about the men aboard these vessels?
Perhaps the absence of camouflage—as much a part of a soldier’s identity as a sword was in the past–is why the US Navy decided to try blue digital camouflage work clothes (aka aquaflage). However that experiment is now coming to an end. The navy is discontinuing the production of the chunky blue-black-gray suits as of October 1st (although the final phase-out of service will be three years from now).
There were a lot of problems with these suits. The tunics and trousers feature a pattern which resembled a ghastly mélange of bluefish chunks and hematite. And the purpose was unclear too. Was this for sailors who were trying to hide in the ocean itself…or in a bad nineties music video?
The outcry against the uniforms was not solely aesthetic. Apparently these awful things were hot and were prone to melting and catching on fire (although I guess those are aesthetic concerns too—who wants to be seen wearing melted sardines and asphalt or running around in a flaming sailor suit?)
The uniforms came into service in the not-very-great year of 2008. Maybe they were part of the same sort of wooly thinking which caused the great recession or, more-likely, the result of an unsavory deal between a vendor and a politician in charge of appropriations. The suits which are formally known as “Navy Working Uniform Type I” will be replaced by green camo known as “Navy Working Uniform Type III” (apparently Type II uniforms were a sort of invisible khaki color). This will solve the sailors’ fashion woes, but now everybody is going to think that they are army guys. Maybe the Navy needs to give up on camouflaged sailors and return to some stylish 18th century horizontal stripes!
If they want to be inconspicuous, they can just stop playing bagpipes….
A photo of my garden in Brooklyn (April 17th, 2016)
Until last week it was a slow cold spring in Brooklyn—but, then, suddenly, the season sprang into action in a flurry of beautiful colors. The tulips leaped up out of nowhere–although the accursed squirrels are beheading them as fast as they bloom–and the cherry tree blossoms are just beginning to open (more about that later). Here is a picture of my garden the other day: you can see some of the classic Dutch-style tulips and the bleeding hearts over in the left corner.
However I wanted to draw your attention downwards to a flower that barely makes it into the picture because of its delicate tininess: the muscari or grape hyacinth—a diminutive but exceedingly lovely plant. Muscari originated in Central Asia, Asia Minor, North Africa, and the Mediterranean Basin. The little flowers bloom in temperate woodlands of the region’s forests early in spring before the trees have a chance to set leaves. They propagate easily and can become beautiful purple, blue, and white carpets on the woodland floor. Muscari have escaped the garden and naturalized in parts of North America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
Grape hyacinths have that name for a reason: they are botryoidal and take the form of a pyramidal cluster of grapes (although each individual blossom is actually a tiny urn). The effect is enchanting up close. At a distance the little urns become indistinguishable. In fact the individual plants blend together into an amalgamated mass of color–and what a color. The finest feature of grape hyacinths are the exquisite hues. They come in pale blue, white, and (lately) steely pink, but the most characteristic color is also the finest—an incredible blue-violet with a glaucous shimmer.
I have always wanted a vast field of muscari, because they begin to take on the otherworldy haunting qualities of their relatives, the bluebells. From a distance, large numbers of muscari look like rivers or oceans or the surface of alien aquatic worlds. They are just beautiful! Hopefully mine will keep expanding so that future springs will be even more dramatic.
One of my favorite clothing colors is “French Blue” a brilliant bright ultramarine color which is best known for its use in men’s suits and shirts. French Blue is the same color as French ultramarine—the synthetic version of ultramarine (a princely and ancient pigment made of crushed lapis lazuli). It’s hard to tell if “French Blue” is really French or not—I couldn’t find the equivalent in this French dictionary of color, but it is certainly beautiful and fashionable.
Electric blue is one of my favorite blues. The hue is named for the color of an electrical discharge through the atmosphere (which is to say the fluorescent ion glow of nitrogen). The name is older than you might imagine: according to “A Dictionary of Color,” the first use of the name was in 1845. The blue note of electrical sparks is readily apparent in photos of sparks and discharges—but somewhat less so in the real world where electrical discharges are bright, swift, and unpredictable. A lot of Victorians must have stared at wacky apparatuses for this to become codified as a standard blue.
Nineteenth century scientists realized that there was some connection between electricity and the human nervous system, but they could not quite put it all together. Electric blue therefore became a favorite color for indicating supernatural phenomena. The color became immensely popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century and was used in all sorts of garments, sales brochures, and products. It was a fad color which lasted a long time (since fads spread more slowly in those days).
The color has faded from popularity somewhat, but in our era of glowing screens, glowing blue is never entirely irrelevant (plus, as noted, it has a basis in the physics of electricity and the composition of the atmosphere).
Quingbai Ewer (Song Dynasty, porcelain) Zetterquist Galleries
China has a long (and continuing) history of exquisite art, but many aesthetes and Sinophiles feel that the apogee of Chinese craft came during the Song Dynasty (960 AD – 1279 AD). Now I am not sure I agree with the Song purists to that degree, but the work of that era is indeed particularly lovely. Additionally, Song creative forms became the standard templates followed and improved upon in seceding dynasties. Here is a beautiful Song dynasty ewer with a pale blue glaze which illustrates the winsome delicacy of form characteristic of the time. Note how elegantly the slender handle and spout curve into the flower petal body. A little carnivore sits on the stopper: a dog or wolf or cat? This pale blue green color is known as quingbai (“blue-white”). It is a pale translucent blue green over white and it is one of the characteristic trademarks of the era. It is a wonderful little vessel!
