Today is the last day of August and I can feel the summer starting to wind down. As much as I’m hesitant to let go of the long days and the warm nights of summer, I am excited for the brisk, bright days of fall that I associate with baking, hot, delicious beverages, and crisp, new [...]

    A cyanometer is an instrument for measuring the blueness of the sky. It was first used by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (Swiss aristocrat, physicist and Alpine traveller) in 1789. His cyanometer was shaped as a circle with 53 hand-dyed sections, ranging from the lightest shade of blue to nearly black (example).  He used the device to [...]

I recently finished reading Maggie Nelson’s Bluets — a love letter of sorts to the color blue in all its shades – which I recommend to those interested in writing situated at the cross-section of love, loss, obsession and desire. At one point, Nelson introduces the satin bowerbird, a bird that solely uses blue objects to lure [...]