What is the most common color for the $25 dollar chip in casinos the world over? If you said “green,” then you know your colors.
“A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged. It is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.”–Oliver Wendell Holmes, opinion, in Towne vs Eisner, January 7th, 1918.
“They were ravished with its loveliness, a warm, soft-voiced spring–green landscape dotted with sassafras and scarlet-colored snakewood, smelling of wild strawberries and hart’s tongue.”–Marshall Fishwick from Virginia: A New Look at The Old Dominion.
Did you know…”Pink flamingos get their coloring from their diet of shrimp and worms, denizens of salt ponds.” An excerpt from Salt: A World History by Mike Kurlansky. That was an excerpt featured in the September 2002 issue of the Quality Paperback Book Review.
I never would have known that. I see them on lawns of those celebrating birthdays and I’ve even seen them in the wild on trips to the deep south. I just assumed that was their color. I didn’t know there was a reason behind their shade of bright pink.
One of my very old editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica stated: “There are nearly 3,000 species of dragonflies. Most of them occur in Central and South America. They have a great variety of colors, ranging through blue, green, bronze, amber, steel, white and red-spotted.”
My wife has always had a deep abiding interest and affection for butterflies. Her books on the subject have always been a source of inspiration to me, especially the photographic plates of the many species that inhabit the world. The most colorful ones are those that come from teeming tropical jungles. Unless you were deep in those jungles, or seen the photographs taken by entomologists and National Geographic, you might never see these delicate, beautiful creatures. It reminds me of a quote from tonight’s radio program. It is from Livingstone’s African journal, written in the three years between 1853 and 1856. “The trees abound, and so does honey. This is evidence of a great number of flowers–though of few varieties. Some would deserve a place in our flower shows, but are born to blush unseen except by the angels.” Maybe that truly is the sole reason that they exist at all, to be cherished by the angels.
…And if you listen carefully to the program tonight, you’ll discover what my favorite color is. I’ll give you a clue.. It’s the color of the paper-clip that I use to hold the pages of my script together…
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Don Jackson
