a beam of purest white

When a ray of light passes through a well-cut diamond it is refracted through a large angle and consequently the colors of the spectrum becoming widely separated strike a spectatorss eye separately so that at one moment he sees a ray of vivid blue, at another, one of flaming scarlet or one of shining green while perhaps at the next instant a beam of purest white may be reflected in his direction.

—Marcel Tolkowsky, quoted in The Book of Diamonds by Joan Dickinson, 1965.

the crystalline revelator

The diamond is the crystalline Revelator of the achromatic white light of Heaven.

—Thomas H. Chivers, (18071858).

untamable

Diamond in the English, and Diamant in the French, are both synonymous with Adamant, which comes directly from the Greek . . . meaning literally the untamable, the unconquerable.

—Edwin Streeter, from The Great Diamonds of the World, 1882.

fair as the star

“Fair as the star that ushers in the morn,”

—origin unknown, found in reference to diamonds in The Great Diamonds of the World by Edwin Streeter, 1882. Anyone ever heard this line before

peter pan in scarlet

The title of the sequel to Peter PanJ.M. Barrie’s children’s literary classichas been revealed. The new book, called Peter Pan in Scarlet, will reveal what happened to the boy who never grew up. . . . It will be published on 5 October this year.

London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, which owns the copyright to the story, commissioned author Geraldine McCaughrean to write the sequel. . . .

The trustees stipulated the book must feature the original charactersPeter, Wendy, Tinkerbell, the rest of the Darling family and the fearsome Captain Hook. They have read and approved McCaughrean’s recently-finished manuscript.

McCaughrean said: “Neverland was such a marvellous place to spend my year.”

—BBC News, Friday, 20 January 2006.

nancys new white dress

Richard Dyer, in his study of whiteness in visual texts [The Color of Virtue: Lillian Gish, Whiteness, and Femininity, 1993], delineates the role of light in producing the glow of white women, a class- and race-specific image of femininity that manifests when idealized white women are bathed in and permeated by light.. . . He establishes the historical connections between light, blondness, and spirituality, noting how the properties of light (and fair coloring) have meshed, in traditional Western iconography, with the enlightenment privileged in Christian discourse. Religious art thus portays sanctified white people enlightened by the glow of haloes . . . and the figure of the woman as angel, enlightened and enlightening. . . . These descriptions apply to Nancy Drew. . . . Not only does her blue-eyed, blonde-haired prettiness make her appear angelic, her behavior epitomizes the traditional functions of angels: protecting, avenging, and ministering. . . .

When Nancy attends a college ball with her boyfriend [in Quest of the Missing Map by Carolyn Keene, 1942] we see . . . Nancys wardrobe: Nancys new white dress made on simple lines accentuated her attractiveness. Eschewing frippery and bright colors, Nancy Drew exemplifies the properly conservative white woman.

—Ilana Nash, from American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture, 2006.

xerographic

October 22 [1938]
In Astoria, NYC the first xerographic image was created
(derived from the Greek “dry” & “writing”)
—Edward Sanders, from America: A History in Verse, Volume 1, 19001939, 2000.

rainbows and meteors

“Some of the very earliest myths, probably dating back to the Paleolithic period, were associated with the sky, which seems to have given people their first notion of the divine. When they gazed at the skyinfinite, remote and existing quite apart from their puny livespeople had a religious experience. The sky towered above them, inconceivably immense, inaccessible and eternal. It was the very essence of transcendence and otheresss. Human beings could do nothing to affect it. The endless drama of its thunderbolts, eclipses, storms, sunsets, rainbows and meteors spoke of another endlessly active dimension, which had a dynamic life of its own. Contemplating the sky filled people with dread and delight, with awe and fear. The sky attracted them and repelled them. It was by its very nature numinous. . . .

At some pointwe do not know exactly when this happenedpeople in various far-flung parts of the world began to personify the sky. They started to tell stories about a Sky God or High God, who had single-handedly created heaven and earth out of nothing. This primitive monotheism almost certainly dates back to the Paleolithic period. Before they began to worship a number of deities, people in many parts of the world acknowledged only one Supreme God, who had created the world and governed human affairs from afar.”

—Karen Armstrong, from A Short History of Myth, 2005.

black cadillac

Whooah, baby,
Please come on back,
For youve got something of mine.
Im sure I like this black Cadillac in the morning,
My black Cadillac in the morning,
Yeah, my black Cadillac.
Lightning Hopkins, Black Cadillac, from the album How Many More Years I Got, 1962.

sunrise gold

Down the long road into Statesville, he walked toward a realm of gold, sunset had turned all the world to gold.
And next morning, he was on the great road again, walking into sunrise gold. The sun came up behind him like a big red full moon, a red that was full of yellow, a red orange warm gold that absorbed all the pinks and pale reds of the morning.
Julian Lee Rayford, from Cottonmouth, 1941.