Friday, August 15, 2014

IT'S GETTING HARDER TO CALL THE STARS



THE NIGHT BLIGHT
In the city where I stay, on the street I have my house, I live in the night. I hated it when as a part of eradication of blight and for “safety’s sake” the city fixed all the street lights. Replacing all the old sodium arc with their dull yellow hue, which wasn’t overly bright. I was once able to turn my head to the dark clear coldness of the sky and as the city got more nebulous and shadowy I could see more stars than e’er before. Now with the new wide spread pole mounted LED’s shining so damn bright, half of the friendly stars are wiped out every night. I miss them I’d come to know; but now I wonder if those stars left brilliant enough to see are angry over the mockery of the new major bluish lights ever present held by them walking in the shadows of the street so easily seen glowing off ten dozen smart phone screens?

© M Durfee
8.15.2014

15 comments:

  1. Totally understand how you feel. You might be interested that there is a Dark Sky Association with recommendations and standards for lighting so as to reduce the impact on the night sky (http://darksky.org/)

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    1. Calvin here in Detroit people have been complaining about no streetlights for so long, they are putting up the brightest LED's they can find. It sucks.

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  2. I remember seeing the Northern Lights from Detroit -- to my amazement. I hate white noise and bright lights ~ even hiking deep in the woods, hard to get away from them.

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    1. It has been awhile since we've seen the lights Erik I remember last time, I poined them out to a couple of neighbors, they looked up and shrugged. didn't know what they were seeing and more importantly did nt care.

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  3. I am now living on an island that prides itself on darkness and low intensity lights--it is wonderfully dark and I can see the stars except for when there are clouds... The stars are so predictable and my old friends.

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    1. Jeff you are living in my dreams. Jealous? Me? hell yes!

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  4. Quite a good point from the stars' perspective :-)

    Love
    kj

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  5. The very same orange light now defaces our neighborhood and disturbs my peace of the night, steals my stars that I have to escape into the vision of a ps game to make the night bearable...

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    1. Maybe once a week all the electricity in the world should be shut off from midnight to 3 am, most people have never seen but a few stars and most will never get far enough away from the city to ever see them Shadow,

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  6. it is amazing when you can find that true darkness and see the lights in the heavens...that is one thing i would def miss if i moved to the city....in the shadow of my mountain, they are still pretty clear

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    1. One of the reasons I loved the Navy so much Brian was the horizon was only 15 miles away, beyond that there was no ambient light, and a navy ship is not a cruise ship, one red and one green running light.

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  7. I would settle for getting rid of the street light in my back yard.

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So Walking Man I was thinking...