Flowers the Color Purple

Throughout the world the color purple tends to have many positive meanings--both now and in history.  The Bible sees purple as signifying wealth and beauty.  In many cultures purple represents nobility and ceremony.

For whatever reason the color purple is lavishly displayed among the flowers of spring.  

 
 

One of the most recognizable
is the iris--or "flag lily" as my 
Mother used to call them.

This specimen shows the glory and power of a very dark shade of purple.

The vinca displays a lighter shade, lavender, which is related to youth and beauty.

The hyacinth (above)
and the grape hyacinth (right)
each has its own tint of beauty.

   The crocus

            
      and the freesia



      can emphasize the
      reddish tint of purple.


Whatever the shade of purple, these flowers are a lovely
and welcome sign of the beauty springing up as the earth opens its arms to a new cycle of life.
 

3-Dimensional Printing

I've been hearing and reading about a topic that brings me smack-dab into the reason I started this blog.  I love to learn about new things, to mull over ideas, new and old.  Anything that stretches and challenges the mind.

We are by now accustomed to seeing 3D images, even though they really aren't 3D.  They may look as though they have depth, but that's just an illusion.  No matter how real they look, they are still just 3-dimensional representations on a 2-dimensional medium.

Here is a 3D picture of the St. Louis Arch.  It's really two slightly offset 2-dimensional images.  The picture looks pretty weird unless you put on the special pair of glasses to merge the images so that your brain interprets it as one image with the illusion of depth.









Photographs, no matter how well they capture a beautiful nature scene, are always flat on the page.  And a printer--at least the ones most of us have ever encountered--can only put ink down on a flat piece of paper.

That, however, is no longer true.  We now have 3-D printers.  Maybe you already knew that, but it seems that I am just waking up to that fact, even though my research tells me that they have been around for a couple of decades.  At first, of course, they were very expensive and limited in their use--mostly for prototype models in manufacturing applications.  Now, however, we probably have many products in our daily lives that are made directly from printers.  These are only a couple of the thousands of such items.

Cell phone case

Toy car

A computerized model with all dimensions (length, width, depth) is sent to the printer, which deposits ultra-thin layers of powder onto a surface, one on top of another, until the final product is made.  The powder is held together using a binding liquid that's deposited during printing.

And such items as these are only the tip of the iceberg.  What is really mind-boggling is the way 3D printing is becoming indispensable in the medical field. 

Applications in dentistry are becoming more widespread.  Crowns, bridges, and implants can now be made from a 3D printer right in the dentist's office.  No more living with a temporary crown--it can be scanned, manufactured, and put in your mouth all in the same visit!

The most amazing related medical story I have come across was done in June, 2011, in the Netherlands.
An 83-year-old woman had such a terrible infection in her lower jaw (mandible) that it had to be surgically removed.  Her age precluded the trauma of complex reconstructive surgery that would give her a new mandible, so the doctors decided to try something new: a 3D printed implant.

The project required a team of researchers and designers, as well as a company to handle the production.  But the actual printing took only a few hours.  A laser beam melted thin layers of titanium powder, one on top of the other.  Thousands of layers were necessary to build the jawbone (33 layers = l mm of height).  The printed jaw then got a bioceramic coating and was attached to the woman in about four hours.  She was talking and swallowing within a day.

This all sounds pretty amazing to me!

Next Post to Come:  FOOD PRINTING

It's All In How You Look At It

Nothing says Spring better than the fresh, vibrant color of tiny new leaves.  The ivy plant hanging in our atrium is proudly giving birth to new growth in response to longer days and more sunshine.

 

Looking for a few pertinent words about spring, I turned to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and was surprised to find how many expressed a view different from the expected.  To be sure, I found a few of the usual "tiptoeing through the tulips" sentiments:

      In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. 

                                                                      Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 and

      Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air

      Which dwells with all things fair.              Henry Timrod

First let me send condolences to those of you who live in a galaxy far, far away from California and its spring, a season which begins here as early as February and is galloping merrily along by now.  Of course, spring is, by its nature, quite fickle--no matter where you are.  In fact, though the past month was so warm and sunny that most green growing things got all revved up, we just had a week of sorely-needed cold rain here in the Sacramento Valley and lots of snow in the Sierras.  "Spring" seems to be an apt terms--lots of ups and downs! 

First leaf buds on a Black Oak

Henry Van Dyke took note of this fact in his book, Fisherman's Luck: 

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.

 

Stephen Vincent Benet must have been having a bad day in the big city when he wrote:

     Now grimy April comes again, .....

And Samuel Butler likewise:

     To me it seems that youth is like spring, an over-praised season .....

 

Leaflets on a willow

But I like spring, and so I resonate more with John Milton: 

In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.

                                                                              

Leaflets and blossoms on a Japanese maple

And, if we really want to get into the "springy" spirit, why not let it all hang out, romping and bouncing along as John Logan sings "To the Cuckoo" :

     Oh could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
     We'd make with joyful wing
     Our annual visit o'er the globe,
     Companions of the spring.

                  
                      
                   After all, in the words of humorist Donald R.P. Marquis:
                                     Oh, what the hell, it's Spring!

    

                                                                        

Mary Oliver - A Question

Just a short post today -- something I came across while researching poet Mary Oliver.
Her book of essays, Long Life, was published in 2005.  In the Foreword she wrote:

"...the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning.  'Here you are, alive.  Would you like to make a
 comment?' " 

Cat Lovers Know the Answer

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on. 

Most of us have read and enjoyed the imagery of this little poem, written by Carl Sandburg and first published in 1913.

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But I just came across some lines by another Midwesterner, contemporary poet Judith Minty.

All winter, those cats of mine

doze like old women in front of the fire,

curl their fur around saucers of sunlight

they have trapped on my rug.  Sometimes

they bury themselves in the wool of blankets
to sniff dreams I left there.

 (I just love that last line!)

Awake, their eyes reflect deeper sleeps.
Delicate tongues yawn, hide needles of teeth.
I listen for their soft paws,
for their purrs to rattle in slow circles
near my bed.  They want to capture
warmth from my body.  "Why do you
keep those cats?" my neighbors ask....


(This is only part of the poem.  The original appeared in her book Lake Songs and Other Fears, 1974).

"Why keep us?  Who needs to ask?"