also consider the 5 Blue Zones of health and happiness
BLUE BOOK
USA
belloq's storyville 1898-1917
https://64parishes.org/entry/new-orleans-blue-books
blue book tests 1920's Indiana
A blue book is literally a book with about 20 lined pages that college, graduate, and sometimes high school students use to answer test questions. More specifically, a blue book refers to the type of exams that require students to use these books to complete the test.
Kelley's New and Used Car Blue Book
The Blue Book
- Debbie Strayer and Susan Simpson Common Sense Press
The Learning Language Arts Through Literature series begins with The Blue Book. This complete beginning phonics and language arts program artfully integrates phonics instruction with all of the other areas of language arts that need to be covered at first grade level: reading skills, spelling, handwriting, and grammar. The course also teaches more higher-order thinking skills than do many other first grade programs.
Based on Dr. Ruth Beechick's ideas about learning, the course does not assume that children learned to read in kindergarten. However, children should be able to identify letters, and it would be very helpful if they know some or most of the primary sounds of the letters. Early in the course, the first group of letters—a, n, r, and t—is introduced. In this same lesson, students learn about consonants and vowels as well as blending letters to form words. This progression will likely be too fast for children who do not already know letters and sounds.
INDIA
“Your face is blue, madam. Like that of Krishna,” the taxi driver said affably, as he took me back to my hotel.
In Hinduism there are three main deities: Brahma the creator, Shiva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver. Vishnu spends eternity sleeping, until when called upon in a crisis, he wakes and like the most powerful of superheroes saves the world.
Krishna is a manifestation of Vishnu. His name means “dark,” and like Vishnu he is portrayed with blue skin.
In addition to being associated with the gods, blue—through the indigo dye—is also historically linked with India. In the first century a. d. the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote about “indicum, a production of India,” which “yields a marvelous combination of purple and cerulean [sky blue].”
He suggested that the dye was a kind of slime sticking to the scum on river reeds. It actually comes from a bush with small green leaves that when dried and fermented in a dye vat look pretty scummy, which explains the misunderstanding.
In Pliny’s time, indigo would probably be shipped to the Roman port of Ostia in the form of hard cakes. It was valuable enough to fake: Pliny reports people selling “indigo cakes” made from dried pigeon dung, stained with just enough genuine dye to pass as real.
Indigo is intensive to process, and has historically been cultivated where labor is cheap. It had a brief heyday on slave plantations in the Caribbean and South Carolina in the 18th century, pricing the Indian plantations out of the market. But when slavery was abolished, the British planted indigo again in Bengal, where weather conditions are ideal.
Because laborers were subject to abuse, there were two “blue mutinies”—one in 1860 and another in 1917. The second was initiated by the 47-year-old Hindu lawyer Mohandas (later known as Mahatma) Gandhi, as one of his first acts of peaceful civil disobedience against British rule, which finally led to Indian independence in 1947.
AFRICA
“Indigo grows wild in almost every part of the African Coast … Besides the Indigo, there is another plant which the natives use as a blue dye, which appears to impart a more indelible color, and which, should it stand the test of experiment, might also be cultivated.”
–British Report of the Committee of the African Institution: West African Produce, 25 March 1808
Africans have used indigo for centuries as symbol of wealth and
fertility. Indigo-dyed cotton cloth excavated from caves in Mali date to
the 11th century and many of the designs are still used by modern West
Africans. The Tauregs, “blue men” of the Sahara, are famous for their
indigo robes, turbans, and veils that rub blue pigment into their skin.
Yoruba dyers of Nigeria produce indigo cloth called adire alesso using
both tie-and-dye and resist dye techniques, while honoring Iya Mapo, as
the patron god of their exacting craft. Dyers of the Kanuri (Cameroon
and Nigeria) and Fulani (modern Niger and Burkina-Faso) ethnic groups
popularized indigo near Lake Chad and through portions of West Africa.
Most African dyers are women including among the Yoruba, the Malike and Dogan of Mali, and the Soninke of Senegal. Dyeing is also performed by men among the Mossi (Burkina-Faso) and the Hausa, who have produced indigo-dyed textiles in the ancient city of Kano (Northern Nigeria) since the 15th century.
