Wiki Friday: criminalized colour schemes, bonsai kittens, and more

Where to even begin. I guess with hello. It's nice to be back. Nice to be writing a Wiki Friday.

Today is the first day my daughter is in daycare. She's barely there for a few hours, but wow, the spaciousness I feel in this toddler-free home. Even with a head cold I can imagine, for the first time in a while, completing the writing process involved in a Wiki Friday. 

Composing Wiki Fridays is, believe it or not, one of my great joys. I haven't read Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, but I think I get the gist. Most day to day activities, these days anyway, ask us to think quickly, to give opinions quickly, to react quickly. Thinking slowly, deliberately, while living with a smart phone strapped to one's hand, seems nigh impossible. Pausing from reacting, to pursue my own line of inquiry, is a true refreshment to my mind and spirit. Let us begin.

Red, yellow, green – a criminalized colour scheme

The book Gardens of Water, by Alan Drew, had been sitting on my shelf for years. I knew the novel was set near Istanbul after the devastating 1999 earthquake, but I guess I hadn't read it through to the end. It's quite gripping, and really goes deep with the perspectives of different characters, from a Kurdish teenage girl to an American father who can't resist proselytization. In one plot point, a Kurdish boy in Eastern Turkey is shot by the Turkish military because he appears to be wearing red, yellow, and green, which make up the colours of the Kurdish flag, above. 

Folks on the internet debate whether this colour scheme, or the flag itself, is technically illegal or banned in Turkey, but suffice it to say, the colours have been dangerous for many. I am personally drawn toward red, yellow, and green, in art and nature, and as a result have been thinking about these colours together a lot. As we go into fall in the northern hemisphere, we will see them everywhere, in berries, leaves, dried grasses, and vegetation made lush by rain. Perhaps more on this another time.

Grapes

This search was generated by the fact that I couldn't picture grapes vines having flowers. But as with all fruits, they do flower. The flowers are just small.

While scanning the Wikipedia pages, I learned that Concord grapes are named so because they come from the city in Massachusetts. They were cultivated from wild grapes there by farmer Ephraim Wales Bull. I only tried Concord grapes as an adult, and my first response was, "Oh, this is 'grape flavour'". And indeed it is! Concord grapes spawned an entire industry of grape-flavoured products, from candy to soft drinks.

Bonsai kittens

I tentatively brought up 'kittens in jars' to David. Did he remember this urban legend that was floating around when we were kids? It was an urban legend, right? No one was actually growing kittens in jars to stunt their growth, surely. David looked at me with bemusement. He had never heard of such a thing.

Wikipedia confirms that this was a big hoax around the year 2000. An MIT student created a website that described the "lost art" of bonsai kittens, and the internet, particularly animal rights people on the internet, went nuts. Somehow the hoax even reached me.

Tolkien

Good old J.R.R.

We're watching the news Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power series, or, as I call it, 'Ring TV'.

Maya will be home soon, so I'm just going to share some quick little zingers:

Tolkien worked for the Oxford English Dictionary, on Germanic words starting with W.

We have his mother, Mabel, to thank somewhat, for she homeschooled him, including in botany and Latin.

He was bitten by a large baboon spider as a child.

He served in World War I and it is understood that Mordor is based on scenes from the trenches.

He was very into Beowulf.

In a letter, he said that the purpose of life is to know God and be moved to thanks.

He may have been the first to use the term 'phonoaesthetics', regarding the relative beauty and pleasantness of certain words or sounds within words.

Until next time.