its too rouge
“I cant be dying,its too rouge,
The dead shall go in white.
So sunset shuts my question down
With clasps of chrysolite.”
—Emily Dickinson, It cant be summer,that got through.
a color called Frolic green
“Freddy Wallaces boat, the Queen Conch, 34 feet long, with a V number out of Tampa, was painted white; the forward deck was painted a color called Frolic green and the inside of the cockpit was painted Frolic green. The top of the house was painted the same color.”
—Ernest Hemingway, To Have And Have Not, 1937.
the green visored-man
“Oh, nerts to you, she was saying to the third tourist, who had a rather swollen reddish face, a rusty-colored mustache, a white cloth hat with a green celluloid visor. . . .
How charming, said the green visored-man. Id never hear the expression actually used in converstaion. I thought it was an obsolete phrase, soemthing one saw in print inerthe funny papers but never heard.”
—Ernest Hemingway, To Have And Have Not, 1937.
New Orleans Street Signs, part 2
Photos by Kari Cesta. For similarly shocking pictures and more information, scroll down to part 1 of this continuing series.
a tincture
“. . . a tincture
Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed
Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change
to opal shafts!”
—Robert Browning, Paracelsus, 1835.
jellyfish of every size
“There were jellyfish of every size: white, gently pulsing discs as delicate as spun glass; small pink barrage balloons decked with beating cilia . . . ; an occasional orange monster with tentacles that promised evil stings for fish or mammal.”
—Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, 1998.
the appearance of blue-green bacteria
“Imagine that the history of the world is represented by a clockface, say, then the the appearance of blue-green bacteria in the record happened at about two oclock, while invertebrates appeared at about ten oclock, and mankind, like Cinderella suddenly recalling the end of the ball, at about one minute to midnight. I do not know whether such images are useful other than as encyclopaedia illustrations.”
—Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, 1998.
A love of green
“There cannot be a more important event than the greening of the world, for it prepared the way for everything that happened on land thereafter in the evolutionary theatre. A love of green is not just a sentimental attachment to rural holidays remembered from youthful days, green days. It runs deeper than that. In desert countries the rich sheikh celebrates his fortune with a garden sequestered away from the sun. We admire grandeur in wild scenery, mountains, canyons, deserts and glaciers. In such territory eventually this majesty begins to pall; a vague sense of dissatisfaction creeps in. Something is missing. But in greenness there is repose. It has been proved that the green wavelengths are least irritating to the retina. Red is angry, blue is cold, but green is restful.”
—Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, 1998.
the sun stood still
“Joshua said, O sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and O moon in the valley of Aijalon. So the sun stood still and the moon stopped.”
—The Bible, Joshua 10:12-13.
Blue and green suns
“The extremely violent nature of the eruption of Krakatoa on August 26th to the 27th, 1883, was known in England very shortly after it occurred, but it was not until a month later that the exceptional character of some of the attendant phenomena was reported. Blue and green suns were stated to have been seen in various tropical countries: Then came records of a peculiar haze; in November the extraordinary twilight glows in the British Isles commanded general attention; and their probable connection with Krakatoa was pointed out by various writers.”
—The eruption of Krakatoa and subsequent phenomena, a report by the Royal Society of London, edited by G.J. Symons, 1888.