It was the first synthetic dye, discovered by accident by a scientist who had dabbled in painting and who, "being a creative sort, ... followed his failure to see where it would lead."

The whole story of discovery, and of the mauve mania that followed, is the subject of this week's Science Frictions column on The American Scholar. The column, by Seattle-based Priscilla Long, appears every Wednesday. Long is a longtime editor and writer at my favorite Northwest archive, HistoryLink (full disclosure: I write for HistoryLink and have been edited by Long, and further full disclosure: it is my impression that she is a relatively unknown gem in this literary community). She also wrote "Genome Tome: Twenty-Three Ways of Looking at Our Ancestors," which in 2006 won the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, as well as the 2010 book The Writer's Portable Mentor.

Read the short column "How Mauve Was Her Garment," then, if you like it, move on to "Genome Tome." The piece was partly inspired by the awesomely ambitious art exhibition Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics at the Henry Art Gallery (curated by Robin Held).

A segment from Long's essay, which reminds me of something Rebecca Brown might write:

3. Alba
Take the gene that produces florescence in the Northwest jellyfish. Inject the green gene into the fertilized egg of an albino rabbit. Get Alba. Alba, the green-glowing bunny. Alba, designed by an artist in Chicago, created by a lab in France. Alba, a work of art, a work of science. Alba, the white bunny with one strange gene. Alba’s jellyfish gene makes Alba glow green. Oh Alba. Oh funny bunny. Oh unique creature, foundling, sentient being without fellow being. Oh freak without circus, star without sky, noise without sound. Alba the ur-orphan among the creatures of the earth, for what mother rabbit would accept into her litter a newborn that glowed like a green light bulb?

4. Recombinant Recipe: Milk-Silk
The spider web is the strongest natural fiber in existence. But for centuries attempts to raise spiders in the manner of raising silkworms have failed, due to the spiderly taste for other spiders. Spiders eat spiders eating spiders.