All the Whites You Cannot Name

January 10, 2018 7:51 AM

Not people.
posted by MovableBookLady (10 comments total)

My inner five year old thanks you for this:

"Snowdrifts look white because they are made of millions of tiny translucent ice crystals. As ThoughtCo. explains, 'Light does not pass through ice easily. Instead, it bounces around back and forth within the ice crystals. As the light inside an ice crystal bounces around off the interior surfaces, some light is reflected and other light is absorbed. With the millions of ice crystals in a layer of snow, all this bouncing, reflecting, and absorbing leads to a neutral ground. That means there is no preference to one side of the visible spectrum (red) or the other side (violet) to be absorbed or reflected. The sum total of all that bouncing leads to white'."
posted by storybored at 8:25 AM on January 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

A great example of how good writing can elevate even the most mundane of topics to the level of spellbinding reading.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 8:28 AM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

Kelleher's written a number of other color meditations for the Awl. (The Awl's gotten really, really good again this past year. Silvia Killingsworth is editing the hell out of it.)
posted by Iridic at 8:38 AM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

This is a wonderful article, and worth it if not just for the Monet. I like the Bruegel too! But the Monet, ah! Wondering off to look at things, without the interference that others bring, is not loneliness, it is one of the richest of life's experiences! If you find just the right companion for that sort of sharing, then it can be even better, that is relatively rare, but lucky!
posted by Oyéah at 9:40 AM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

That was lovely.

FYI: Benjamin Moore semigloss linen white for the walls, china white for the ceilings and trim and you can't go wrong. Just sayin'.
posted by Mchelly at 10:14 AM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

UNexpectedly fascinating. Thanks. Love this excerpt, which so accurately describes what strikes your eyes when standing in a snowy landscape:

...Instead, I just saw snow. Over 300 miles of snow, reached through hours and hours of driving through all-white, treeless landscapes, punctuated by the occasional house, the rare petrol station. I learned that colorless landscapes often are richer in tone than you might expect; that pink and blue and yellow shine so strangely from colorless crystals. Refracted and reflected, light bends and changes in the icy north. Color is gone, but color is everywhere.

posted by Miko at 10:58 AM on January 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Funny to read this and look up at my corkboard, which has a postcard reproduction of the Caillebotte stuck to it. It really caught my eye on my last visit to the Musee d'Orsay, even though I'd never heard of the painter.
posted by praemunire at 12:46 PM on January 10, 2018

How marvelous. Thank you for posting this!
posted by Annabelle74 at 2:11 PM on January 10, 2018

Lovely writing!
And I am very happy to have learnt about Navajo White, which explained to me the beigeness of America, which came as a huge surprise to me when I first arrived.
posted by mumimor at 3:14 PM on January 10, 2018

Cosmic latte reminds me so much of having LiteStep as my XP GUI shell and all the drab background colors I attempted to find in order to have that perfect minimalist computer style.
posted by gucci mane at 9:53 PM on January 10, 2018