KIMBERLY BURNHAM, PHD, BRAIN HEALTH COACH, AUTHOR & POET - Peace Poetry & Brain Health Exercises Daily Words

Gift a Poetry Party to Your Family Today

5/21/2020

Gift an Online "Remembering the Future" Poetry Party with Kimberly Burnham

Each participant emails five things they want to do when the lockdown is done. Participants can also share other information about themselves and how they are coming through the lockdown. Kimberly Burnham, award winning poet will write poems as if the lock down is finished and you have done the five things and are now remembering from the future. Participants can share their own poem or Kimberly will read it. Each Poetry Party starts with participants sharing how they feel about this 2020 experience. Email Kimberly at NerveWhisperer@gmail.com

$5 per participant $25 minimum for a one hour Zoom Poetry Party. Buy it for your family today.

Poetry party for families, friends and neighbors online on Zoom, remembering the future during the Corona Virus lockdown of 2020Picture

Online Summer Writing Class for Children Age 10-15

5/18/2020

The Write a Book in a Year, a Publishing Class for Children Age 10-15 by Kimberly Burnham with Shaya Malino-Goldstein eBook will be Free on Amazon for two days (Tuesday and Wednesday), May 19-20, 2020

This class and then the book were born when my 10-year-old stepchildren, Shaya and Yair had early release from Montessori every Friday. Wilma, a friend joined them and every week we would talk about some aspect of how to publish a book and then they would write for 30 minutes. Fast forward into the Corona lockdown and more writing and Shaya is 70 pages into her story. Yair has finished several short stories and is writing a non-fiction book about the number ten with me. Shaya's book Cortellas, The Hidden Planet is being illustrated by her classmate Ava.

Among other things, Write a Book in a Year, a Publishing Class for Children Age 10-15, covers how to punctuate conversations, story arcs, 101 ways to say "said", fears, phobias and motivations, how to get a Word document ready for publication, and writing an author's bio.

Books by Kimberly Burnham

Online Summer Children’s Writing and Publishing Class

Each Zoom class will include 15-20 minutes on an aspect of writing, editing, or book publishing and 25-30 minutes of answering questions, individuals reading from their story and getting feedback, and brainstorming with storytelling.

The class requires a commitment to write for three hours a week in the Summer Program and one hour a week in the Fall and Winter Program (in addition to the class).

Writing activities includes: hand writing the story or book, typing into the computer directly or from handwritten notes, editing, creating illustrations, making character development notes, etc. )

Dates

Summer Writing Program on Zoom June 15 - August 28
Session 1) Meets Monday, Wednesday, Friday (9 am PST) for 45 minutes
Session 2) Meets Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday (10 am PST) for 45 minutes

Come to any or all of the classes ($21 per week or $180 for Summer session)

Fall and Winter Program on Zoom September 13-May 14

Session 3) Meets Tuesday 4 pm PST for 45 minutes
Session 4) Meets Thursday 4 pm PST for 45 minutes
Session 5) Meets Sunday 10 am PST for 45 minutes

Come to any or all of the classes ($7 per week or $180 for Fall and Winter session)

In person classes will start when class gatherings are possible in Spokane, Washington.

Children Achieve Handwriting Fluency by Age 10

5/15/2020

In an article on "How do children learn to write letters?" Researchers said, "during writing acquisition, some letters may be more difficult to produce than others because certain movement sequences require more precise motor control (e.g., the rotation that produces curved lines like in letter O or the pointing movement to trace the horizontal bar of a T). Children of ages 6-10 (N=108) wrote sequences of upper-case letters on a digitizer. They varied in the number of pointing and rotation movements. The data revealed that these movements required compensatory strategies in specific kinematic variables. For pointing movements there was a duration decrease that was compensated by an increase in in-air movement time. Rotation movements were produced with low maximal velocity but high minimal velocity. At all ages there was a global tendency to keep stability in the tempo of writing: pointing movements exhibited a duration trade-off whereas rotation movements required a trade-off on maximal and minimal velocity. The acquisition of letter writing took place between ages 6 and 7. At age 8 the children shifted focus to improving movement control. Writing automation was achieved around age 10 when the children controlled movement duration and fluency. This led to a significant increase in writing speed." - Seraphin Thibon, L., et al. (2019). "Investigating how children produce rotation and pointing movements when they learn to write letters." Hum Mov Sci 65. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731149

Children’s Writing and Publishing Class Workbook

5/12/2020

Write a Book in a Year, A Publishing Class for Children Age 10-15 is on Free Download on May 19-20 (Tuesday and Wednesday)

To join a kid's summer book writing class, please contact Kimberly Burnham at 860-221-8510 in Spokane, WA or NerveWhisperer@gmail.com

Here is the outline for Write a Book in a Year, a Publishing Class for Children Age 10-15:

The Writing Process
Story Notes, What To Write?
Picking a Title
Visualizing Success
Basic Story Arcs, Plots and Kinds of Stories
Punctuating Dialogue
Fears and Phobias in Characters
The Challenge or Quest
Feelings and Emotions
Describing Places and Sensory Words
Resolution and Happy Endings
Opening Line and Grabbing Attention
Action Words and the Brain
Ways to Say Walk
Unexpected Fortunes, Powers, and Storms
Emotion Words and Motivation
Drawing a Map for Your Story

Editing Your Manuscript
Modifying a Word Document, Margins, Spacing, etc
Hundreds of Ways to Say Said
Finding Synonyms
Formatting Dialogue and Paragraphs
Inserting Pictures and Shapes into the Document
Editing Each Other’s Work
Writing an Author’s Bio

Publishing Process
Title and ISBN Number
Cover Design
Look at Online Categories for Books
Setting Up Accounts and Publishing on Amazon
Setting Up An Author’s Page
Learning How to Set Up a Web Page
Book Launch
Five Questions and Blog Interviews
About the Author

The book can be used as a guide or workbook. In each 45 minute class we spend 15-20 minutes on that week’s topic plus time for questions, individual help and of course, time to write.

The program is designed for each student to finish a book 25 to 150 pages long. The books can be fictional stories, non-fiction experiences, a researched book, a series of short stories, or a graphic novel with cartoon-like graphics and words. Several students can also collaborate on an anthology of stories.

If you would like a downloadable copy, please email Kimberly Burnham at NerveWhisperer@gmail.com with Children’s Writing Class in the subject line.

Corona Virus ... Social Distancing Poetry Anthology

5/7/2020

Contributors: Inner Child Press, Poets for Humanity
hülya n. yılmaz editor,
William S. Peters, Sr. introduction,
Kimberly Burnham, PhD (Integrative Medicine) Foreword,
Padmaja Iyengar-Paddy, INDIA, Poet, Writer, Reviewer & Editor
Gail Weston Shazor,
Asoke Kumar Mitra 7
Kimberly Burnham 8
Anwer Ghani 10
Padmaja Iyengar-Paddy 11
Hussein Habasch 12
Menduh Leka 14
Irene Marks 15
Solomon C. Jatta 16
Clelia Volonteri 17
Muniam Alfaker 18
Shernaz Wadia 20
Rafael Jesús González 21
Francisco José Casado Pérez 22
Jeton Kelmendi 23
Kamani Jayasekera 25
Demetrios Trifiatis 26
Rita Stanzione 28
Welkin Siskin 29
Hema Ravi 30
Rohini Kumar Behera 31
Ernesto P. Santiago 32
Brenda C. Mohammed 33
Ameedah Mawalin 34
Khalid Imam 36
Pankajam Kottarath 37
Ranjana Sharan Sinha 38
Anord Sichinsambwe 40
Xavier J. Frazer 41
Luzviminda G. Rivera 42
Othmen Mahdi 44
Anna Nicole D. Velez 45
Ketaki Datta 47
De’Andre Hawthorne 49
Tianju 52
Noreen Ann Snyder 53
Vijaya Bhamidi 54
Alicja Maria Kuberska 55
Anthony Arnold 57
Olfa Philo Drid 58
Ashok Bhargava 65
Hayim Abramson 66
Geeta Varma 67
Jaydeep Sarangi 68
Gita Bharath 69
Brindha Vinodh 70
Zaldy Carreon De Leon, Jr. 71
Iwu Jeff 73
Venom M 74
Izza Fartmis 76
Santosh Magazine 77
H. W. Bryce 79
Ratan Ghosh 81
Chijioke Ogbuike 82

Omar Godling 84
Iram Fatima ‘Ashi’ 87
Paramananda Mahanta 88
Eden Soriano Trinidad 90
F. M. Ciocea 91
Joan McNerney 92
Otteri Selvakumar 93
Fahredin Shehu 94
Sayeed Abubakar 95
Pragya Suman 96
Sudarsan Sahu 97
John Eliot 99
Alan Summers 100
Tyran Prizren Spahiu 102
[ix]
Table of Contents . . . continued
Thryaksha Ashok Garla 103
Sangeeta Sharma 104
Antonia Valaire 105
Shareef Abdur-Rasheed 108
Aneek Chatterjee 109
Rahim Karim 111
Dragan Dragojlovic 112
Debbi Brody 113
Josep Juárez 114
Kairat Duissenov Parman 115
Ahila 117
Himasri Barman 118
Lilla Latus 119
Mandour Saleh Hikel 120
Manisha Joshi 122
Diego Bello 123
Eliza Segiet 124
Dilip Mohapatra 125
Pratishta Pandya 127
Willie Jones 129
Sahaj Sabharwal 131
Sridevi Selvaraj 132
Loretta Hawkins 133
Steve C. Sikora 134
Bob McNeil 137
[x]
Table of Contents . . . continued
Smruti Ranjan Mohanty 138
Louise Hudon 140
Kevin A. Boens 141
Ibrahim Honjo 143
Tom Higgins 144
Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo 145
Norbert Góra 146
Supratik Sen 147
JoAnn Smith 149
Sujata Dash 151
Chad Norman 152
Hong Ngoc Chau 153
Tali Cohen Shabtai 158
Elena S. Eyheremendy 159
S. Pathmanathan 160
Milagros Sefair 161
George Kurian 162
Saroj Mahobe 163
Varanasi Ramabrahmam 165
Adyasha Das 167
Stephanie Alaine Brown 168
Kamala Wijeratne 170
Aditi Roy 171
Zanka Zana Boskovic Coven 172
Anju Kishore 174
[xi]
Table of Contents . . . continued
Lizzy Anthony 175
Sumita Dutta Shoam 176
Sunil Sharma 177
Christopher Stewart 178
Mohammed Nurul Huda 179
Raja Rajeswari Seetha Raman 180
Valerie Ames Middlebrook 181
Vidya Shankar 184
Warda Zerguine 185
De Vincent Miles 186
Lakshani Willarachchi 187
Mohamed Bourhanem 190
Awatef El Idrissi Boukhris 191
Varsha Das 193
Antoinette Coleman 195
Keith Alan Hamilton 196
A. Annapurna Sharma 198
Suma K. Gopal 200
Siti Ruqaiyah Hashim 201
Kalyna Temertey-Canta 203
Dr. Sigma 204
Gino Leineweber 205
Safia Hayat 206
Jyoti Kanetkar 207
Monalisa Dash Dwibedy 208
[xii]
Table of Contents . . . continued
Jodel E. Agbayani 209
Mario C. Lucero 210
Md. Khalilur Rahman 211
Shruti Goswami 212
Monica Gray 213
Lana Joseph 214
Nataša Sarǳ̌oska 217
S. Sundar Rajan 219
Preety Sengupta 220
Gurdev Chauhan 221
JuNe BuGG 223
Orbindu Ganga 226
Christeen Saparamadu 228
Najma Mansoor 229
Sidra Sahar Imran 231
Vasuprada Kartic 232
K. V. Dominic 235
Aakash Sagar Chouhan 237
Anuradha Bhattacharyya 238
Piyankara Ganegoda & Lakshani Willarachchi 239
Teresa E. Gallion 240
Setaluri Padmavathi 241
Edna Garcia 242
Queen Sarkar 243
Mallika Chari 244
[xiii]
Table of Contents . . . continued
Tangirala Sree Latha 245
Caroline N. Gabis 247
Gopal Lahiri 248
Pushmaotee Subrun 249
Takatoshi Goto 251
Christine Von Lossberg 252
Avijit Roy 253
Akshaya Kumar Das 254
Shubha Khandekar 255
Nutan Sarawagi 256
Colombe Mimi Leland 257
Elizabeth Kurian Mona 258
Avril Meallem 260
Hiranya Aditi Godavarthy 262
Usha Sridhar 264
Marcelo Sanchez 266
Sylwia K. Malinowska 270
B. V. Siva Prasad 271
Sujatha Warrier 272
Ayo Ayoola-Amale 273
Maria do Sameiro Barroso 274
Rubab Abdullah 275
Muhammad Azram 276
hülya n. yılmaz 277
William S. Peters, Sr. 279

Writing Our Stories Helps Us, Write Your Memoir Today

5/5/2020

Expressive Writing:
How Writing About Bad Things Is Good

"Expressive writing about past negative events has been shown to lead to a slew of positive outcomes. However, little is known about why writing about something negative would have positive effects. While some have posited that telling a narrative of a past negative event or current anxiety "frees up" cognitive resources, allowing individuals to focus more on the task at hand, there is little neural evidence suggesting that expressive writing has an effect on cognitive load. Moreover, little is known about how individual differences in the content of expressive writing could affect neural processing and the cognitive benefits writing confers. In our experiment, we compared brain activity in a group that had engaged in expressive writing vs. a control group, during performance on a feedback-based paired-associate word-learning task. We found that across groups, differential activation in the dorsal striatum in response to positive vs. negative feedback significantly predicted better later memory. Moreover, writing about a past failure resulted in more activation relative to the control group during the learning task in the mid-cingulate cortex (MCC), an area of the brain crucial to processing negative emotion. While our results do not provide support for the assertion that expressive writing alters attentional processing, our findings suggest that choosing to write about particularly intense past negative experiences like a difficult past failure may have resulted in changes in neural activation during task processing." - DiMenichi, B. C., et al. (2019). "Effects of Expressive Writing on Neural Processing During Learning." Front Hum Neurosci 13: 389.

Write Your Story Today!

My Book: Self-Publishing, a Guided Journal Preview

5/4/2020

Please contact Kimberly Burnham at NerveWhisperer@gmail.com or 860-221-8510 in Spokane, Washington to self-publish your memoir today.

Here is some of what is covered in My Book: Self-Publishing, a Guided Journal, which is for adults, but is also applicable for writers of any age.

Important Numbers
Crafting the Manuscript
Think About the Reader
Book Size
Paperback, Hardcover, or Book Jacket
Cover Art
Black & White or Color Pictures
Setting the Book Price
Book Title
Imagine Your Printed Book
ISBN Numbers & Copyright
About the Table of Contents
Font Size
Index, Glossary, Table of Pictures, Charts, Maps
Author’s Bio
Online Author’s Page
Back Cover Copy
Acknowledgements
Foreword and Preface
Formatting
Royalties
Book Categories
Telling Friends About Your Book
eBooks, Paperback Books and Audio Books
Inside Paper Color
Shiny or Matt Finished Cover
Book Length
Proof Copies
Costs of Publishing
Publishing Packages
Marketing
Online Book Sales and Bookstores
List of Local Bookstores
Book Tours, Blog Tours and Interviews
Blog Tour Questions and Answers
My Favorite Blogs
Video Marketing
Quotes and Testimonials
Finding Yourself Online
Creating Calm Network Publishing Group
Setting Up Publishing Accounts and Author’s Pages

Strees, Writing and Memory

5/4/2020

Writing About Stressful Events Doesn't Impair Working Memory

"Acute stress impairs working memory (i.e., the ability to update and keep information in mind). Although that effect is well established, the boundaries around it are not. In particular, little is known about how recalling an unresolved stressor might influence working memory, or about how stress-or recalling a stressful event-influences the processes underlying working memory task performance (e.g., sustained/controlled attention vs. capacity). We addressed these issues in the present study (N = 171) by randomly assigning participants to write about an unresolved, extremely stressful experience (stressful writing condition; n = 85) or the events of the prior day (control condition; n = 86), and, subsequently, both measured change detection task performance and used computational cognitive modeling to estimate the processes underlying it-namely, attention, capacity, and bias. We found that, relative to the control task, writing about a stressful experience neither impaired performance on the change detection task nor altered any of the processes underlying performance on that task. These results show that the effects of writing about an unresolved, stressful episode do not parallel effects of acute stress on working memory, indicating that experiencing a stressor may have very different cognitive effects than recalling it at a later time." Shields, G. S., et al. (2020). "Feel free to write this down: Writing about a stressful experience does not impair change detection task performance." Emotion 20(2): 317-322.

Write Your Memoir Today

Achrei Mot - Kedoshim Journal Your Journey

4/30/2020

Free Download Kindle eBook [Click on the Amazon Link below] April 30-May 1, 2020 of Achrei Mot - Kedoshim (Leviticus 16-18): Journal Your Journey Through a Year of Torah in Honor of Pearl's Bat Mitvah on April 30, 2020. For a print copy of this book or the book focused on a different parshat contact the author, Kimberly Burnham at NerveWhisperer@gmail.com

Kindle eBook and Print Copy Available on Amazon

Achrei Mot

Life is messy chaotic
after the death
the death of two sons
too close to God
Aaron taught how to come close
safely
what to do to be safe
and close in the presence
for himself, his family, his people
we are called through ritual
to further the survival of our community
-Kimberly Burnham

What Can A Two Month Old See?

4/29/2020

Seeing and Thinking Half As Well As an Elderly Person

kids can at 2 months
eat, sleep, poop and be loved
expectations should be low
lift her head fixate on faces
follow people with her eyes
recognize them a short distance away
babies see light and shades of gray
can’t yet tell objects apart
field of vision is small
a foot from their faces
greater depth of vision comes with time
about 2 months
color vision comes later around 4 or 5 months
can’t test how well babies see color
developing about one million neural connections a second
grow dramatic about 1 percent every day
by 3 months baby’s brain is roughly half
the size of an elderly person’s

Kimberly Burnham
Color and Healing Poetry Challenge Day 29 April 29
a Found Poem from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/parenting/milestones/your-2-month-old.html

Arithmetic By Carl Sandburg

4/29/2020

Arithmetic By Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many
you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven--
or five six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice
and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky--
or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over and
try again and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply – and you carry
the multiplication table in your head and hope you won’t lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one
and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the other,
how many animal crackers will you have if somebody offers you
five six seven and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay
and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you
two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic,
you or your mother?

Plants Have Two Color Vision

4/26/2020

Plant Vision

Plants, fungi and bacteria
response to light
constantly adapt
to changes in light
phytochromes
light detection in all vegetation
allows organisms to distinguish between
two colors of light
a primitive two-color vision
light causes reorganization in protein
release of a water molecule
response to light highly collective
enabling phytochrome proteins to translate light
into structural signals
guiding growth and development of plants
fungi and bacteria on Earth

by Kimberly Burnham
Color and Healing Poetry Challenge Day 26
April 26, 2020

A Found Poem, Words from https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/04/plants-respond-to-light-within-a-fraction-of-a-second/127766

Visit Paris France Virtually

4/26/2020

Here are five video tours of Paris, France. No passport or language skills needed.

Paris Tour for 6th -9th Graders [Link].

Buildings and Art: Paris Catacombs Free Virtual Tour from Home [Link]

Buildings and Art: Eiffel Tour - Tour Eiffel

Buildings and Art: Paris' Sacre Coeur Church in Montmartre Neighborhood [Link]

Art - Petite Galerie [Link].

Palace of Versaille [Link]

Art: The Louvre [Link].

Places: Louvre's Metro Station

Places: Air France Museum [Link].

Yellow Written in Blue

4/23/2020

Color-Word Stroop Task

Do well on the Color-Word Stroop Task
indicates cognitive function
more importantly cognitive flexibility
brain health

You know the test
the one where the word "purple
is written in red
and "red" is written in blue ink

How fast are you?

by Kimberly Burnham
Color and Healing Poetry Challenge

Brown, the Color of a Singed Beaver

4/21/2020

See the Colors Around You

Look around in Eastern James Bay Cree
there are colors all around

ᐹᔅᒎᓵᐧᐋᓈᑯᓲ "Paaschuusaawaanaakusuu"
it is purple
the color of jam

ᐸᐦᑖᐅᓈᑯᓲ "Pahtaaunaakusuu"
it is brown
it looks like the color of a singed beaver

ᐅᔖᐅᔑᔔ "Ushaaushishuu"
it is yellow
it is a little bit yellow

ᐧᐄᓴᓱᒥᐦᑯᓲ "Wiisasumihkusuu"
it is a flashy,
bright red

ᒥᐦᐧᑳᐱᔅᑳᐤ "Mihkwaapiskaau"
it is stone or metal red

ᒥᐦᐧᑳᔅᑯᓐ "mihkwaaskun"
it is stick-like red

ᐹᔅᒎᓵᐧᐋᓈᑯᓐ "Paaschuusaawaanaakun"
it is purple
the colour of jam

ᐱᒋᔅᑲᓈᑯᓐ "Pichiskanaakun"
it is sky blue

ᒥᐦᑯᔔ "Mihkushuu"
it is pinky-red
it is a little red thing

ᔑᑯᑌᐅᓈᑯᓲ "Shikuteunaakusuu"
it looks orange
the colour of a bakeapple berry

ᐅᑑᒋᒥᐦᑰᓲ "Utuuchimihkuusuu"
it is burgundy-coloured purple
the colour of a bruise

ᐧᐋᐸᔅᒎᒋᓲ "Waapaschuuchisuu"
it is white mud

ᐧᐋᐱᑯᓀᐤ "Waapikuneu"
it has white feathers

ᐧᐋᐱᑌᐅᓲ "Waapiteusuu"
it is faded
it is greyish like a dog

ᐧᐋᓭᒋᓲ "Waasechisuu"
it is white and can be seen from afar
when the sun shines on it

ᐧᐋᓭᔅᑯᓈᑯᓲ "Waaseskunaakusuu"
it is turquoise
the colour of a clear blue sky

by Kimberly Burnham
Color and Healing Poetry Challenge Day 21
April 21, 2020
Words from http://dict.eastcree.org/Words

The Color of Bruises in Eastern James Bay Cree

4/20/2020

Jam and Bruises

"It is purple" in Chisasibi Cree
of the Eastern Shore of James Bay, Quebec
"Paaschuusaawaanaakusuu"
also means "the color of jam"
and "Paaschuusaawaanaakun" or "ᐹᔅᒎᓵᐧᐋᓈᑯᓐ"

"Utuuchimihkuusuu" or "ᐅᑑᒋᒥᐦᑰᓲ"
means "it is burgundy-coloured purple"
"the color of a bruise"
and ᐅᑑᒋᒥᐦᐧᑳᐤ or "utuuchimihkwaau"

by Kimberly Burnham
Color and Healing Poetry Challenge Day 20
April 20, 2020
Words from http://dict.eastcree.org/Words

Are Red and Pink More Different Than Light Green and Dark Green?

4/19/2020

Arbitrary Colors

English splits hues into distinct colors
according to lightness
red and pink
orange and brown
objectively no more different from one another
than light green and dark green
or light blue and dark blue

A Russian makes the same red and pink
and orange & brown distinctions
and a further distinction between blue
sinii (dark blue) and goluboi (light blue)

Color Naming More to Do With Thinking Than Seeing

4/18/2020

The Name of Shades of Green

Unnamable colors just beyond the consciousness
see anew relax the rigid perspective
color a visual perception of the observer
not a property of electromagnetic radiation
how we divide and name the colors
more to do with thinking than seeing

The Ova-Himba of Angola or Himba of Northern Namibia
use five color names

"serandu" reds, browns, oranges and some yellows

"dambu" or "ndumbu" a variety of greens, reds, beige, brown and yellows
the term used for a Caucasian person

"zuzu" or "zoozu" describes most dark shades
black, dark red, dark purple, dark blue, etc.
the colors of the falling dusk
or a dark green butterfly

"vapa" is white and some shades of yellow
the light colors of the sunrise
or a yellow cat

"buru" or "mburau" is vivid shades of green and blue
like a blue falcon

it is thought only naming a few colors
increases the time it takes
to distinguish between two similar colors
compared to people whose language separates the colors
like Western languages into eleven or twelve colour or color categories
black, white, red, blue (light blue, dark blue), green, yellow,
orange, brown, pink, gray, and purple

Language influences perception of color
imagine 12 tiles 11 the same color
and one is a different color
choose the one that looks different
11 one shade of green
one tile slightly lighter or darker
to the Western eye very similar
but easy for the Himba who have two completely different words
for different kinds of green

A second test is harder
eleven green tiles and one blue tile
all were "buru" shades of green and blue
not as easy to distinguish for the Himba eye

Other Ovaherero speaking people with more contact with the West
use other names of colors
"oserandu" (red)
"ongara" (yellow)
"ombambi" (brown)
"ondrondu" (black)
"ombapa" (white)
"otjihoni" (orange/brownish and maybe check-patterned or irregularly dotted)
"omblou" (blue) from the Afrikaans word “blou”
"ongrien" (green) from the English “green” for shades of color
the word ondumbe (meaning very or strong or dark)
or the word "ondjere" (meaning light, not so very)
is put behind the name of the color

by Kimberly Burnham Color and Healing Poetry Challenge Day 18
April 18, 2020

Words from https://www.gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-see-colour/
and refuted at https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18237
https://www.artsy.net/show/hakgojae-gallery-hakgojae-design-project-space-kang-han-byul-body-eats-colour
Color Myth https://prezi.com/p/je6_jzrblmqx/legend-of-the-colors/

Blue and Green in Asia

4/17/2020

Blue Asian Apples

In Chinese 青 pronounced qīng in Mandarin
and “ao” in Japanese means both blue and green
blue and green shades of 青
藍 “lán” is blue in Mandarin
綠 “lǜ” is green
both shades of “qīng”

In Japanese 緑 “midori”
green from the verb “midoru”
“to be in leaf, to flourish”
グリーン pronounced “guriin”
derived from the English word green

In Japan traffic lights the same as everywhere
the green light is described as “aoi” blue
because green is a shade of aoi
green apples are 青リンゴ [Ao ringo]
no different than what in English is a green apple

by Kimberly Burnham
Color and Healing Poetry Challenge Day 17
April 17, 2020

Russian Blue Dividing the Color Spectrum

4/16/2020

Blue, Light Blue, Dark Blue in English and Russian

English and Russian speakers divide
the color spectrum differently
light blue and dark blue are both blue
in English
in Russian
lighter blue is "goluboy” and darker blue is “siniy”
there is no "blue"

English speakers can distinguish between light and dark blues
Russian speakers cannot avoid distinguishing them
and must do so to speak Russian in a conventional manner

Russians are faster if one is "siniy"
and the other "goluboy"
and slower if both are "siniy" or "goluboy"
two words makes it easier to remember
and recognize the distinction
where a color boundary exists in Russian
but not in English.

Two types of memory are better than one
slightly better memory for colors
with readily available names in my own language
remembered color chips in two forms
non-verbal visual image and a verbal label
each memory fallible
two are better than one

by Kimberly Burnham
Color and Healing Poetry Challenge Day 16
April 16, 2020
Words from https://www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780