A Brief Look at Rainbows, Arcs and Snowflakes

Long Beach could be called the Rainbow City, I used to tell people, because the city has so many of them. At least that was the way it used to seem to me. The local paper, The Press Telegram, would print staff and reader's photos. I clipped those brightly colored pictures out of the paper to save to a scrapbook. My favorite was one taken facing north showing the city's tall downtown buildings with the snow topped mountain range in the background. Due to smog, those mountains are not seen during the summer months, only on clear, cooler winter days. Can not recall the last time I saw a rainbow in Long Beach. Maybe it is due to all those smokers being forced outdoors to indulge their habit polluting the outside air.

As is my wont I have a more simplistic approach to life. "Sun shines were love grows" is my belief. It started during a torrential downpour the day a sister's divorce became final. Wrote a poem, "Another marriage bites the dust and god does not like to see the fuss, rains his tears on all of us". Coming upon the Pollyannaish ditty about sunshine, I started comparing people's moods~or my mood~to the moods of the weather. It is not the smoker's smoke but the culture of hate that has sprung up in the United States following the NYC World Trade Center tragedy, that has created this sudden lack of those beautiful rainbows.

Driving to my daughter's one Christmas morning, I spotted a small rainbow hovering just above the area of sky near her apartment. It appeared in a cloudless, typical sunny Long Beach sky, just as Stevie Wonder's Christmas Song started playing on the radio. "Maybe not in time for you and me, but someday at Christmas time", he sang. Rainbows need both the sunshine and rain to appear, so I took it as a sign from God. Tears welled in my eyes as Stevie sang on, "no hungry children, no empty hands". Hope you know the song, because this is a brief look at rainbows, arcs and snowflakes, not Christmas songs.

Speaking of wonder, I have a personal story about Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World". Will spare you the details. Suffice it to say: think Robin Williams face as the song plays in "Good Morning, Viet Nam". For purposes of this article consider this lyric from Satchmo's tune:

"...the colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of the people going by..."

What does that have to do with snowflakes? Peace Walker is one of many people that literally walks the walk, not just talks the talk. He walks around the world preaching and teaching peace. On his website he tells a story called "The Weight of the Snowflake". The moral of the fable written by Kurt Kauter is that a single snowflake does not have much power. But enough snowflakes joined together, can snap and break a tree branch. It is important, then that people snowflakes join together, so that "...someday at Christmas there'll be no wars, men playing with bombs like they were toys". Rainbows are bow or arc shaped. Here is a quote to consider:

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice; it bends towards justice; but here's the thing, young people, it doesn't bend on it's own. It bends because you put your hand on that arc and you bend it in the direction of justice. It bends because you decide..."

That might be as simplistic an approach to life as my weather as expression of moods philosophy and yet it also a rather common sense approach to solving problems or creating them. Takes a whole bunch of snowflakes to make a snowball and start it rolling down a hill, gathering more snow as it rolls. Another fav song, "It's Growing" comes to mind. It was written by Smokey Robinson, who Bob Dylan once called "the greatest living American poet". Any movement for positive change needs human snowflakes to grow into an unbeatable force. In a You Tube video, "Students for Barack Obama", from which the arc quote by Senator Barack Obama comes, students are being inspired to "...bend that arc in the direction of justice". Which way will you bend that arc of justice?

The end of my brief look at rainbows, arcs and snowflakes.

Author's Note: If you think nooses hanging from a "Whties Only" tree on school property as a warning to black students not to sit in the shade on a hot Louisiana day, August 31, 2006, bye. If you would like to help bend the curve towards justice, please consider taking action in the case known as "The Jena 6". Thank you.