Rainbows and Earth Day

Around sunset on Sunday, I had my curtains closed for the night and a thunder storm was winding down. I could still hear the thunder in the distance and the rain was still falling. I walked into my kitchen and the curtains had a bright gold glow showing through from outside. It was very eerie. I was afraid that the lightening had hit a tree and started a fire. It was that bright.I cautiously open the curtains and couldn't believe it when I saw the rainbow and the golden glow outside. I had to take the photographs from my kitchen doorway because it was still raining and there was too much risk to my camera if I went outside. It was so wild. Almost like the pot of gold from the end of the rainbow had been tossed to the sky and colored the world.
Today is Earth Day and I was pleased to notice in my local paper that the art museum as well as other community sites and organization had learning programs this weekend for children, related to the environment. The Nature Conservancy has some good programs and suggestions related to Earth Day which I liked. So do a lot of other organizations but I liked some of those in particular.
As it turns out there is more than one Earth Day. One Earth Day is celebrated each year on the March equinox. That Earth Day was introduced in 1969 by John McConnel at an UNESCO conference on the environment. Starting in 1972 the UN Earth Day celebration started on the March Equinox and has continued each year. The other Global Earth Day was started on April 22, 1970 by Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach in and has been celebrated each year on that date since then as Earth Day. I didn't realize until I started researching this that there were two different dates called Earth Day.
In a way the more observances for the earth the better. I heard something on a radio program about Earth Hour at the end of March that made sense to me. They were talking about how in order for big changes to be made, politicians will need to see that people are concerned about the environment and will consider the environment when voting. The point was that the more people who become involved in these events, the more political leaders will realize that the voting public does factor in the environmental record of politicians when they vote. I am not expressing this well but it made sense.Earthday Network had an interesting suggestion on their site. According to their site they were founded by the organizers of the First Earth Day. They suggest calling your political leaders to let them know you want climate change legislation. They have a number to call in the U.S. for your Representatives and Senators and they also have a numbers for people in other parts of the world to call the leaders from their country. I can't vouch for the numbers or the organization except to say that the number they give for the U.S. is for the U.S. Capitol Switchboard and hopefully that line will be buzzing with calls for climate change legislation.