In praise of the color blue

By
Summer Cloud
Let's talk color. Specifically the color blue. Does this happen to be your favorite color? If so, you
share this affinity with about 29% of other people (including "yours truly") according to a 2012
poll (Click to read how blue ranks in popularity worldwide). But what does blue mean to you
anyway?
The mental linkage between the word "blue" and being down or depressed aside, blue is an
uplifting color in that it characterizes bodies of water (unless overrun with Styrofoam cups and
pollutants or algae or such) and the skies above on a sunny day.
Scientists, of course, have found many interesting properties about blue light. For example, blue
light at wavelengths of 670 and 830 nanometers ameliorates multiple sclerosis symptoms. And
there is this: recently Nasa's Curiosity rover on Mars captured images of a blue sunset on the
red planet! (Click to access a CNN story on this phenomenon)

With your indulgence, dear reader, I'd like to

trace much of this to a natural association of
born and grew up), especially during the
suspended those billowy wonders made of
name (Summer Cloud).

share a little about my own love affair with blue. I

blue with the skies over North Texas (where I was
summer months. It is the medium in which is
liquid droplets that inspired my American Indian

Photo taken in Plainview, TX during August 2011

It is also the color of one of my favorite gemstones, turquoise ("Sky stone" in American Indian
parlance) and is the color of the stone in my college ring (Blue spinel).
Like many American Indians I carry a medicine bag (which bears an artistic rendering of the
summer clouds I captured in a photo taken near my late maternal grandparents farm outside
Plainview, Texas). The contents of my bag? You guessed it, turquoise has a place of honor in it,
as does a reddish stone taken from what was once the gravel driveway of my grandparent's
country farmhouse. These items serve as a physical connection to my ancestry; one that
summons up all kinds of joyous memories and associations.
Here is a photo of my medicine bag and its lithic contents:

And finally, I would be remiss if I did not add two other blue favorites -There is Neptune, the gaseous giant rendered blue by the absorption of red light by atmospheric
methane.

Photo taken by Nasa's Voyager 2 spacecraft

And the Pleiades star cluster also known as the "Seven Sisters",..

Nasa/Palomar
...which is admittedly more blue-white than "true blue". This particular star cluster holds special
significance to we American Indians and many other cultures as well including the Japanese (In
Japanese this star formation is called the "Subaru"). I am cognizant of the fact some people
believe that advanced alien civilizations exist on planets in or near the Pleiades cluster and
have visited earth. I cherish the Pleiades for a different reason. Namely, yes, because it emits
blue light -- but also due to the fact that I associate it with seven (7) students of mine in Japan
who became "The 7 Princesses" (I selected these seven to serve as role models for specific
trait and virtues I felt the other young people in my orbit were neglecting or had let bad
economic times eclipse). One of the seven became both a princess and my Nihonjin musume
(daughter). Click to read more. [Note bene: I am 70 pages into a manuscript that lays out the
story of moi and my seven princesses]
Seven is the number of perfection in Hebrew numerology (Associated with the Almighty), and in
my mind with the color blue.
Do you sing the praises of blue? If not, why not?

Further Reading
Click to read "The Pleiades in Mythology"
.
2015 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved,