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It is Thanksgiving week and Ferrebeekeeper has a couple of little appetizer articles planned to post here before the great feast, however, before we get to those, I would like to talk about something which I have only become truly thankful for of late in life. Devout readers know that I love colors and I sometimes rue America’s puritan distrust of brilliant scintillating colors (I was recently at an airport in Richmond and everyone there was wearing black, blue, white or oatmeal!). Wouldn’t life be better if it was like a tropical coral reef or a city in Tamil Nadu?
Except, for some reason this year the Thanksgiving color palette is calling to me with a greater allure than it has ever possessed. Among the holiday color palettes Thanksgiving is the odd one out. New Years is gold, silver, and jewel-tones. Valentine’s day is bright red and hot pink. Saint Patrick’s Day is Kelly green and gold. Easter is a rainbow of cheerful pastels. Summer colors are superhero colors of red, blue, white, yellow, and green. Halloween is orange, black, purple and green. Christmas is red, green, and gold. However, Thanksgiving is russet, burgundy, harvest gold, and drab. It’s like a sheet set from 1975! Except now I see that within that rainbow of brown is the stubble in the autumn fields, and the feathers of buff turkeys, and the g;owing leaves of the bald cypress before they fall away.
Throughout my life I have chafed at the earth toned hues of autumn, but suddenly they seem more beautiful than I can ever remember. It is like they are not trying to sell some god-forsaken novelty or social pretense but are are simply the colors of Mother Earth herself.
Anyway, I don’t have a bigger point–although my other posts this week are related to this and come to think of it, lately my artwork has changed to reflect the somber beauty of the autumn woodlands too. Maybe I am finally coming to except that I will never be a triggerfish or a macaw and must be content to be an olive flounder or a tawny owl…or maybe the next season will reveal a new set of colors which delight me and my tastes will keep changing like the seasons and the years.
I just downloaded this from the net, since I didn’t want to take photos of people’s kids (and also since the painting is better than what I did)
So, I worked a five year old’s birthday party this past Saturday as a face painter. As I speculated beforehand, my young patrons asked for rainbows and unicorns (and one flower), which is good because the face paint was not the world’s most versatile medium! I don’t know if I could have painted a truly intricate subject with that goop…and it was more intimidating than you might expect to paint on the beautifully coiffed and perfectly attired little princesses of Park Slope (though in truth I think it would be intimidating to paint any person’s face for the same reason—you have to look directly at them and touch their face). I felt like one of the supporting characters in a Disney movie “’Here now, your highness…Don’t squirm so or it won’t look right!” Thank goodness I didn’t paint any mutant ponies, monster fairies, or melted peonies!
Anyway I really love painting & children & parties (and I needed the money) so the afternoon was delightful. Despite my time in the toy industry, I haven’t been to a five year old’s party since I was five. The guests seemed to enjoy the beauty and thrill of life and the event with rare zest! It reminded me of something else too. The children’s party outfits were the most beautiful possible colors—brilliant aqua, radiant pink, magenta, crimson, and glowing lavender. Then I looked at the parents sipping their cocktails and talking about jobs and international trade and real estate. All the adults were wearing sad dull colors like we had been impressed into some glum army of despair. What happened? Why do we shy away from color as we grow older? Color is one of life’s greatest delights. Are we afraid that we’ll rob it of its power if we overuse it (the children had no such qualms)? Or do we think the scintillant beauty of colorful garb will highlight the weaknesses of our own appearances and draw unwanted attention and unflattering comments?
Baby Corn Snake
I was forcefully reminded of the pretty corn snakes which lived in the fields and forests of the hill farm when I grew up. When they are newly hatched they glisten with bands of scarlet, orange, and luxurious cream, but when they grow into adult snakes their colors become muted and they blend in with the clay and the fallen leaves (the better to evade the attention of predators and to seize on unwary mice, I guess). Is it that way for adults? Unless we are pop stars on stage or master gunnery sergeants on parade, it is better not to draw too much attention or risk looking foolish with a garish combination. That strikes me as a sad way to live (although I guess it has a certain Puritan modesty and no small measure of self-interested cunning).
Adult Corn Snake
Of course a children’s birthday party is not the right place for grown-ups to get gussied up anyway (unless they are the clown, which I might have been). However as I transition back into office life, I notice everyone wears a lot of gray, taupe, khaki, and navy. I am sure that some of that is protective camouflage—it really is best to blend into the walls on Wall Street. But still, there is something unsatisfactory about our culture that it encourages drabness.
All drab and sad…
Sigh, maybe I need to move to India or Thailand. They are certainly calling me louder than my new life in title insurance!
This is more like it!
Olive trees (Olea europaea) in the Garden of Gethsemene, Jerusalem.
A couple of years ago I was in a sumptuous private garden outside of San Francisco. The Mediterranean style garden was filled with gorgeous silvery trees bearing strange deep purple fruit. When I earnestly praised the trees to the garden’s owner, he looked surprised and informed me that they were olive trees. I was raised thinking olives were disgusting squishy things that came in jars. Only after moving to New York did I realize how varied and delicious they can be. I ran to the nearest tree and pulled off a ripe black olive and popped it into my mouth…and promptly involuntarily spat it out. The fruit was indescribably bitter and vile. “Oh there’s a process to preparing them for eating,” said the owner nonchalantly.
That was my first experience with a living olive tree (Olea europaea), one of the plants which appears most frequently in Western literature and art. In Greek, Roman, and Biblical writings, the olive has easy primacy over all of the other plants, fruits, trees and flowers (other than the life-giving grains). It is a defining symbol of Mediterranean culture and civilization.
Dispute de Minerve et de Neptune (Noël Hallé, 1748, oil on canvas)
There is a classical Greek myth about the creation of the olive tree. Poseidon and Athena both wished to be the patron deity of Athens. The dispute was becoming heated, but before it came to outright war, Athena proposed a contest: whichever deity could provide the most useful gift (as judged by Cecrops, the snake-bodied founder-king of Athens) would be the city’s special god. Poseidon presented his gift first. He raised his trident and brought it crashing down on the acropolis and a spring of water gushed into the air on the spot where the Erechtheion was later raised. The citizens were delighted—until they tasted the water and found it to be as salty as the ocean. Then Athena struck a great boulder with her lance. The rock split open and a beautiful tree with silver leaves grew in the spot—the first olive. Not only were the olives delicious, the oil was good for illumination, perfume, and cooking. The wood was made into votive statues and other useful things. The tree was drought resistant and tolerated brackish water. As always, Athena was victorious and the city was named in her honor.
Wild olives (oleasters) were used for oil, fuel, and wood for at least 19,000 years. It is unclear when they were first domesticated, but domestication happened in many different times and places (possibly from different wild antecedents). Domesticated olives are propagated through grafting and cloning—since seeds can yield undesirable strains. As I discovered in San Francisco, ripe raw olives are so bitter as to be inedible—they must be treated with salt or lye (!) in order to become acceptable to the human palate (although goats and cattle do not object to untreated olives). The oil obtained from crushed olives was far more important than the fruit itself. Olive oil is almost pure fat and is resistant to spoilage for longer than a year. Not only was it the great preservative of classical society, it was the basis of cuisine, medicine, personal grooming, perfume, and sacred ritual.
Detail of a seated statue of Augustus wearing an olive wreath (from the Augusteum at Herculaneum)
The oldest and most revered cult objects of ancient Greece, the mysterious xoana, were constructed of olive wood (although these strange sculptures were known to ancient authors, none have survived into modern times except as stone copies of the originals). In ancient Greece and Rome, victory—in games and in actual war–was denoted by a crown of wild olive leaves (also known as kotinos). Olive oil was equally sacred in the Levant where it played a part in Jewish sacrificial offering and priestly anointment. In the Bible, the olive is the first plant which the dove brings back to Noah as the flood resides—imagery which has become synonymous with peace. Ironically olive is also a dark yellow color (or a drab green) in universal usage by the militaries of the world thanks to the fact that it is not a color readily distinguished by human eyes and thus blends in with many sorts of terrain.
Olive Drab Merkava Mk.4 Main Battle Tank camouflaged in a scrubland (the tank is in the middle of the composition)
In the modern world olives have spread from the Mediterranean and now live on all continents except for Antarctica. Huge orchards of commercial olives can be found not only in Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece and Israel, but also in South America, Africa, Australia and Asia (and the West coast of North America, obviously). In their new homes olives can be a nuisance. They are a serious invasive hazard in Australia and certain Pacific Islands. Because of their resistance to drought, they out-compete native plants and create a weedy monoculture. Their high oil content makes them susceptible to fires which burn incredibly hot. Of course not all olive trees are commercial plants, or dangerous weeds. Olive trees can live to immense old age and some revered specimens are at least 2000 years old. Such ancient trees are remarkable for their fabulous gnarled trunks and branches which take on an otherworldly appearance appropriate to their age. Additionally it seems somehow appropriate that the olive tree—which has a reasonable claim to being humankind’s favorite tree–is capable of living through the millennia.
Ancient olive tree near Kavousi, Crete–reputed to be 3,500 years old
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