Light Pollution Reflection / Refraction Number 19

Posted July 31, 2008

WARNING:

I guarantee my reflections and refractions will create controversy and confrontation; and quite likely I'll step on many toes, but it's time to be brutally honest.

Looking Back Whilst Pressing Forward With All Possible Dispatch!

We just completed a very long "round" trip journey this morning, about 600 million miles. Didn't cost a penny. Never left home. Didn't use a drop of oil or gas. You accompanied me on this trek, and it took only one year.

Together we raced around the Sun, covering 1.6 million miles every day. None of us "felt" it happening, no wind in our faces, no sensation of motion; but the Sun and the night sky (what little of it we can still see) certainly said we were on a journey of cosmic proportion.

One full trip around the Sun, one year, the length of time my Dark Sky Initiative (DSI) website has been online R and R number 1.

To some people (astronomers and nonastronomers alike) my DSI website is just the jawing and jowling of a grumpy old man, something to be quickly dismissed and left behind, offering nothing of value, nothing useful.

To others it's become a rally point, a nexus, linking dark sky education, motivation and activation. And when I launched this website a year ago I didn't think I'd still be here messing about with the issue a whole year later.

Despite what must appear to some readers as the ravings of a cranky old man, and despite some setbacks, I've never lost my sense of humor about the issues: dark skies and light pollution, but...

I'm more completely committed to the dark sky cause then last year, and I'm much more pragmatic-- hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-wired, hard-balled, hard-bitten, hard-boiled, hard-cased, hard-cored, hard-assed, hard-edged, hard-fisted, hard-hitting, hard-lined, hard-mouthed!

So much light pollution shining in my eyes over the years has made me a hardrocked activist! Having been trained in geology, I've become hardrocked-- igneous and metamorphic (or as one of my former students once wrote many years ago...ingenious and metaphoric.

How does my dark sky philosophy align with the mainstream, hierarchical dark sky orgs today? Well, let's just say I'm FAR from the ecliptic of dark sky deliberation and deed!

If you think of my dark sky philosophy as Earth's position in the Milky Way galaxy, I've gone from being where Earth is now--neither near the center, nor out on the edge--to being farther away from the center, nearer the edge, the fringe, the periphery, the margin of the galaxy.

Does this mean me and my message have become marginalized? Not at all! Alas, I prefer to refer to my new dark sky (galactic) position as being at the FRONTIER of the dark sky realm, where massive change is about to take place.

My thinking has evolved from being in the main stream current to out on the fringes of the stream, out where I can actually cause some serious erosion to light pollution!

In short the only way we'll ever darken the night sky is to turn off lights, not just "dim" them with expensive fixtures, high technology LED lights, laws, ordinances, etc.

The only way we'll ever see stars and dark skies again is to turn off the lights, not just a few, MANY! Maybe most!

I'm sure many readers will just laugh upon reading such heresy and say something like, "Oh, yeah, right, ya old coot! Like, that's going to happen anytime soon!"

I gotta admit, I do sound rather cootlike and cootish, don't I! Have I become a gray-haired old coot? A crotchety, vinegary, sour, dour, ornery old codger? Have I become a geezerly Muppet puppet--Waldorf and Statler-- sitting in the box above the stage, berating and scolding poor ol' Fozzie Bear with disrespectful comments and critiques? Have I become a hopeless, hapless, crusty, irascible, cantankerous sourpuss, a crosspatch, a crab, a crank, curmudgeon, heckler, a geezer-gooed, gray-haired old has-been?

Yes, I do think of such possibilities! Yes, I do think...wonder...worry... "What's happened to me? What's happening to me? What's brought me to this juncture, junction, confluence, conjunction, this nexus of nastiness?"

Answer: LIGHT POLLUTION--devastating, demoralizing, out-of-control light pollution... and my absolute, uncompromised, unqualified passion for dark skies and the night sky!!

TURN OFF THE LIGHTS? What madness! What refractory foolishness! What an aberration! What lunacy! And yet, if one wants darkness (and I do, almost at any cost), one does not do anything less than turn off the lights, right? One does nothing less than call for "LIGHTS OUT!"

So, why aren't the clonelike dark sky organizations advocating for nothing less than turning off the lights? We didn't become extinct as a species when there were no nighttime outdoor lights to "protect" us from the things that DID go bump in the night!

There were no lights to keep us safe when we lived outside with few walls and fewer roofs; living, for the most part, under the vast canopy of dark night skies!

Have you ever spent an entire night from dusk to dawn, outside? The sky your only lid or limit? NO artificial lights? Just starlight and moonlight? Lying directly on the warm Earth with little (nothing?) between you and the living land beneath?

The future? I read all 18 of the Rs and Rs I wrote this last year and the links on the left side of my website. Looking back I see some of my mistakes. Yes, the spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, etc., errors. But far more importantly, I see the "Big Picture" mistakes I made, at least some of them. I know there are others I don't see, but...

I am totally convinced now that the only real solution to light pollution is to TURN OFF THE LIGHTS! Do you agree or disagree? Please e-mail me with your answers

How we make this solution real will be my future focus.

1001 ways to kill a light!

Sunny Days and Milky Way Nights.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION with your own reflections and refractions. Just click on my e-mail address below and have at it! I will not sell or give your e-mail address to anyone. Your reflections and refractions will be placed under the link to the left labeled "Fan Mail - Hate Mail." I may edit comments I place there, but I will be careful to retain your words wherever possible.

NO EXCUSES! NO COMPROMISES! NO EXCEPTIONS!