With a “sense of stabbing pain” (as Winston Churchill intoned at the onset of WWII war clouds), I can scan and sense a remarkable change in north central Aroostook County, not just impacting our legendary dark skies, but also infecting the very rhythm of our daily lives. The most telling trend within our local life sees the rapid and popular proliferation of the new LED headlight and related illuminated grill decorations upon the front and rear ends in essentially a near majority of the cars, vans, trucks, industrial snow blowers, and related service vehicles now darting about the winter wonderland of The County.
Let me point out the trend and raise my voice, humbly. Light enthusiasts exult over the new LED look, offering unparalleled commuter clarity of roadway, driveway, parking lot and landscape. The New Illuminators point out that lighting and affrighting County critters signals clearer, safer travel. LED arrays, furthermore, offer efficiency, bold, slick, colorfully cosmetic, even sexy displays. LEDers seem intoxicated with the power of more light wherewith technological pride replaces human humility before a natural Universe. To borrow from Descartes, “I illuminate, therefore I am.” Mind you, I’m not speaking to the obvious modern necessities of appropriate lighting, but rather advocating the appropriate applications mentally, physically, and environmentally. Our new technology must serve people, not seduce us toward an addictive, commercially driven need for more light “status.”
Excessive artificial light now invades all aspects of modern American life, from the bedroom to the bathroom, from the highways to our ways. Whether by SmartPhone or headlight, our violated eye gates were never made for such chronic glow, and we will pay, I fear, a serious price for such commitments, including an unhealthy fear of the night. (nocturnophobia?) All this illuminated digital business becomes a law unto itself as the lack of proper turn signal usage shines as an example. To paraphrase Pete Seeger, “where has all the darkness gone, long time passing……..gone to LED everyone. When will we ever learn…….when will we ever learn?”
As our dearly departed United States President George H.W. Bush once confrontationally quipped: “Read my lips!”
Mine say: “Turn off the light!”
Lawrence Berz, Planetarium Director of Easton’s Francis Malcolm Science Center since 1988 encourages happy holidays as you slow down and look up.
