2/6/17 RMB Clearer Skies

2/6/17 RMB Clearer Skies

Dear Rita Mae Brown,

It is February already! The clouds are back even though January brought us enough rain to get our Southern California Lands out of years of drought.

Our rain isn’t like your rain though. If it pours for more than a few moments, we step outside to gaze at the rare sight. I remember rains in Alabama, that went non-stop day and night, pouring down in sheets, filling the ditches along the roadway, made for just that purpose. Large pipes rested under every driveway, to allow the small river to run through town.

I’m glad to have seen the rain of the south. It makes our southern California rain seem so gentle, even at its most vicious. My heart goes out to those who were flooded or sustained damage. Our streets have gutters that barely dip below street level, not three-foot-deep by three-foot-wide trenches to catch the overflow. Streets and homes flood quickly.

Interesting how our perspectives change with everything we experience. What is gentle to one is ferocious to another. What is acceptable to some is repulsive to many. Our country is showing such a divide. Ignorance and bias is being revealed. We spent decades spreading acceptance and now the evil of prejudice has reared its ugly head to fight back.

It is in each of us to some extent. We know what we know. If you’ve never befriended a person of another color or race or who is different in any major way, even handicapped or gay, you will shy from them and gravitate to what you know. And if you become entrenched enough in only your own kind, all others become less human, of less value, unimportant, even wrong, for being who they are, for being different from you.

I hope we get to know each other, so that we might all live as neighbors and friends, so that we remember the value of life is equal among humankind.

To clearer skies,

Loraine