My family thinks I’m paranoid, but I’m thinking I’m Miss Pollyanna and too trusting.

I just put two and two together and got four, instead of five… I never realized that mankind/womankind has tipped the scales so that dark colors are associated with death and dying. And age.  The symbolic slur occurs even in gift giving of new clothes.  Somehow, folks seem to feel more comfortable easing oldsters out of tbe limelight by relegating them to the dark side.

The first time I realized this (okay, suspected this), was when one of my children warned me not to give my young nieces any jewelry with brown stones in it.  (I often gave fossilized jewelry of the darker kind),  “because they won’t wear it.”

Then I looked in my closet.  Am I molded (thanks, Darwin!) to dressing myself precipitously in the colors of the cold, cold ground?  Quoth the raven (and me) “Nevermore!”

(Image is of Granny D, who completed her 3,200 mile walk for campaign finance reform, from California to Washington D.C., arriving in 2000 at the age of ninety.  I’m pretty sure she selected her own color in which to march for campaign reform.)