I figured we’d celebrate the wave of relief felt by more than half of this country with a color that stands for enthusiasm, positivity and enlightenment. Or so the color gurus tell me…. conveniently ignoring that yellow has often had different connotations.

Just think of its association with sickness – yellow-fever, hepatitis, yellow-jack (a flag on a ship that is under quarantine) – or associations with excess – yellow journalism. Then there are yellow-dog contracts which deny workers the right to join unions. And my own yellow-bellied (cowardly) manner towards a personal nemesis: yellow jackets.

Oops, I announced a celebration, so let’s look at the positive side: yellow daffodils are one of the few bulbs that are absolutely resistant to being devoured by critters, and who bring brightness to spring. And yellow is certainly the color in late fall, early winter, that captures, mirrors and reflects the last of the light, reminding us of escape from the darkness.

Yellow mums bring cheer, modeling patience for long winter days given the eternity they last even in a vase or through first frost. The vivid contrast between yellow and the dark surroundings in the fall woods feels energizing, no hiding here, no shyness, a sturdy presence, at least when it comes to mushrooms.

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Yellow was van Gogh’s favorite color. Speculations abounded what could account for his “yellow vision.”

It was his abuse of absinthe, the alcoholic drink he favored! No, he suffered from xanthopsia, a state where everything in your sight looks yellowish, the result from exposure to toxins, including poisonous foxglove tinctures prescribed by his doctor in the asylum at St. Remis! It was subacute angle closure glaucoma that accounted for the yellow ‘halos’  in his paintings!

Basically all of these arguments are put to rest here. The use of digitalis from the foxglove plant was well understood in the 19th century, and by the time van Gogh would have reached sufficiently toxic levels (from absinthe as well) to exhibit xanthopsia he would have been unable to paint. Furthermore, he did not display any of the other symptoms associated with the kind of assumed glaucoma (brow ache, blurred vision,) never once mentioned in his otherwise detailed thousands of letters home.

His vision was also tested by his Doctor in 1889, using the kinds of color vision tests available for railroad personnel in safety tests, and found to be normal, as was his short- and long-distance vision. The guy was in his early 30s at the time, remember?

In contrast, we have his own thoughts in letters about his use of color, of his experimentation with color (yellows were almost always off-set with blue and white, a white he could not have distinguished from yellow with xanthopsia) and the fact that the use of yellow was already dominant in his very young years in Holland, before any of the potentially poisonous agents appeared on the scene. (Here is an invaluable source for his letters, searchable by key concepts.)

Last but not least we also have the assessment of his colleague Paul Gaugain:

‘Oh yes, he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland — those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.’

Now why do I bring up so much of this debate, in my view solved by looking at scientific facts with an eye on the whole package of historical data?

I have been thinking of how arguments are flying around in the Democratic party post-mortem of the election, claiming this or that or those being at fault for losses, for gains, on all sides. Often the loudest arguments win, or the ones that jive most with our own closely held beliefs (confirmation bias,) or the ones that are repeated most often. Now more than ever it seems paramount to wade through them all and really test the veracity of claims, not just their plausibility.

This is important because we will not prevail if we do not learn from mistakes. I am all in favor of celebrating today – but the work of tomorrow has to begin with honest assessments of future moves. And a good start is to look at the differing voices. We can contemplate what AOC had to say in an interview with the NYT yesterday, pointing to the fact that we urgently need and utilize the help of marginalized communities, but then tend to drop them and their demands once we’ve won, giving plum political jobs to anyone but progressives. Or we can turn to a thoughtful, intelligent essay in the Atlantic about what it would mean for democracy to simply go back to the status quo ante 2016. (Highly recommended reading.)

We can look at the argument of many that a centrist Biden, or down-stream candidates like him, overall outperformed the more progressives, even if those won in their own districts. We need to ask, if those claimed differences (we don’t even have yet all the numbers!) are based on message content differences (Medicare for All/Defund the Police) or were inherently driven by misogyny or racism (the more progressive candidates also tended to be POC, many of them women.)

There has to be an assessment of the way messages were conveyed – did we match the skillful bite-size narratives of the republicans with our more complicated stories, did we match their community engagement (democrats did not do door to door canvassing because of Covid)? Did top-down regulations and media approaches hamper individual democratic candidates because they were not appropriate for their communities?

Was there a failure to nationalize attacks on Trump for fear of scaring potential republican voters ready to jump ship – a population that did NOT materialize? After all, campaigns that accepted top-down funding were obliged to run under basic strategic maps brought to them by the DCCC/DSCCC/DLCC and this was their strategy.

Was lack of skill or funding or awareness for the need for social media dispersion a factor? There are so many variable to be taken into account beyond the core issues of progressive demands versus centrist calls for reconciliation and moderateness, that it will take time to isolate them and analyze them all. Most of all it will take the will to do that, otherwise we will not stand in 2022.

Reward yourself for due diligence in exploring these issues with a walk in the woods showering you with exuberant yellow. It will lift your soul.

Music today is by Michael Torke who has composed a lot around colors, including bright blue and its opposing color on the wheel: YELLOW. (Yellow Pages are not the only industry to flag that color. Think Nikon, National Geographic, McDonalds, and CAT and Caterpillar…..) Someone knows what they are doing.