a purple castle

“His heart was a purple castle.”

—Patrick S’skind, from Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, 1986.

Golden Silence

“Slam your Doors in Golden Silence”

—product slogan at a design exhibition in Jacque Tati’s greatest film, Playtime, 1967. If you have not seen it, I can only highly recommend this rare and brilliant gem!

candy by the pound

“At about age ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound. This was revolutionary. Here were entire stalls of candy, naked as the day they were born, piled up two feet high and God knows how deep, glittering behind glass windows. . . .

What it was—beauty. The sheer, entropic plenitude of gumdrops, jelly beans, orange slices. I might buy any of these, merely for the joy of watching the clerk dig her shiny little silver scoop into the bin, pouring out my portion first in a great plinking rush, then one by one (plunk, plunk) as the green numbers on the electronic scale blinked up.”

—Steve Almond, from Candyfreak, 2004.

ORANGE BUBBLE YUM BUBBLE GUM

“HELP ME, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I NEED TO FIND ORANGE BUBBLE YUM BUBBLE GUM. NOT SHERBERT. ORANGE. I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR 2 YEARS. THIS IS MY BOYFRIENDS FAVORITE. IF I FIND IT HE MAY ASK ME TO MARRY HIM. IF YOU HAVE ANY INFO, PLEASE PLEASE CONTACT ME!!!!!”

—posted on the CandyDirect.com message board, cited in Candyfreak by Steve Almond, 2004.

the Bolshevists or “Reds”. . . and the counterrevolutionaries or “Whites”

“There were the Bolshevists or “Reds,” rulers of Russia and fully on the defensive, and the counterrevolutionaries or “Whites,” divided into many incoherent groups of former officials, nobles, military men, Westernized liberals, and moderate socialists. . . .

The Boshevist government managed to survive only because of the lack of co-ordination of its enemies—the natural consequence of their utterly divergent aims. On the side of the Soviets were patriotism, enthusiasm, and fear—patriotism to defend the country against foreign invaders, enthusiasm to promote a “classless society,” fear (on the part of the masses, and particularly the peasants) of losing the economic advantages gained throug the Revolution. On the side of the Whites were expert military men, zeal for constitutional freedom, and the vast resources of the foreign interventionists. But the Whites lacked a common objective.”

—Walther Kirchner, on the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920. From A History of Russia, 1948.

Zu’i, New Mexico. Pueblo Group.

“Notwithstanding the oppression of the Spaniards in early times, the culture and esthetic ability of the Zu’is flourished unabated, and they are still producing excellent examples of their craft.

The colors of the Zu’is have a distinct significance. North is designated as yellow, because the light of morning and evening in winter is yellow; West is blue, for westward is the Pacific Ocean; South is red, it being the region of summer, and the East is designated as white, to signify dawn. The upper region is multicolored, as the light of the sun on clouds; the nether region, black, as deep caverns and springs.”

—Dorothy Smith Sides, from Decorative Art of the Southwestern Indians, 1936.

Mohave, Arizona—California.

“The Mohave, who gave name to that vast arid waste, the Mohave Desert, are of Yuman stock. . . . In early times the Mohave were a powerful tribe, but owing to outside influences they have become greatly reduced in number. . . .

The Indian artists picture in their work the common objects of everyday life; the great powers of nature, the sun, moon, stars, wind, trees, animals, birds, or whatever might suit their fancy. . . . Many of the designs are worked on a white background representing the snow-time, or winter, which was the season when the men went on the war trail to achieve honors and glory. Other colors symbolic of military achievement were red, indicating wounds inflicted or received; yellow, the sun-colored war horses, and green, representing the grass or summer. In religious or ceremonial designs, red represents the sunset or thunder; blue, the sky, water or day; yellow, the dawn or sunlight; and black, the night.”

—Dorothy Smith Sides, from Decorative Art of the Southwestern Indians, 1936.

Navaho, Arizona—New Mexico. Nomadic Group.

“Sand to the depth of two inches is spread on the floor, then smoothed and evened with a curved stick; on this sand the artist works from the center outward with colors made by a man sitting at the east. Yellow, red, and white are made by grinding native rocks; black is made from charcoal. Black and white are mixed to produce a gray-blue.

The four sacred colors of the cardinal points are, white for the East, blue for the West, yellow for the South, and black for the North.

The artist then takes a pinch of the desired color between his thumb and forefinger and lets it trickle in the line of his proposed design, when the pattern is finished, with its exquisite color and detail, a rare work of art is produced.”

—Dorothy Smith Sides, from Decorative Art of the Southwestern Indians, first published in 1936.

My Blue Heaven

Just Mollie and me, and baby makes three,
We’re happy in my blue heaven.

—from My Blue Heaven, words and music by George Whiting
and Walter Donaldson, 1927.

Big Blue

“By 1960 the nascent computer industry had delivered about 5000 computers in the United States and over a thousand to the rest of the world. Across the industrialised regions of the world computers were seldom seen devices. They hid, shrouded in mystery, like tall wardrobes, in large rooms where the air temperature had to be regulated so as to absorb the heat from the electronics that filled the block-like covers. The IBM 1620 was no exception. The company had earned the nickname “Big Blue” due to the pale blue covers that enveloped its machines. Located in the new Physics building on the west side of the campus, tended by a small group of academics and technicians, the UWA 1620 sat inert yet alive, a mystery waiting to be unfurled.”

—Alex Reid, from his internet-posted essay History of Me and Computers, chapter 4, Early Computing at The University of Western Australia. Alex is the only person on the internet who could explain to me why IBM’s nickname is Big Blue.