Purple is a color I am generally neutral about, but it has taken decades for me to elevate it from negative status. I’m guessing it barely made the grade for inclusion in those tiny boxes of crayons used down to the very last smidge by Early School first graders in 1944. Somebody claimed that it started out as “red,” but was left in the oven too long. That claim hasn’t been widely held, but it has set me to thinking. If “too much oven” is responsible for the color purple, the loosely referenced theory might explain a long-held, deep-seated suspicion. Why in ...