I noticed the city glow was a little less last night. I appreciate anything that lessens the ugly cast of city lights blocking out the night. Sometimes the light pollution is eerie. I never felt safe because of the lights. I imagine if a mugger can’t see you and you walk quietly and thoughtfully, so that you aren’t detected, you would be safer than some people who walk down the brightest lit street, making loud noises with their shoes or boots, so that muggers can hear them coming from blocks away and lay in wait for them coming down the brightly lit street.

Stupid waste of energy, which doesn’t serve us hardly at all. But I am sure the energy companies love it, the constant hum of energy being consumed and the dollars they can depend upon.

During the blackout, I realized, when I flicked a lightswitch on as i entered a room, how thoughtlessly we use most of our energy. I didn’t feel less safe on the streets, and there was a kind of peace that settled over my friends and I as we blew out the candles in the yard and just drank in the dark. It was pure sweet nectar!

i am all for limiting the use of streetlights in the downtown areas. Businesses light up the place enough and late in the night, there aren’t any people around to really benefit from the lighting up of all the streets.

Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that’s been our unifying cry, “More light.” Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier’s Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we’re supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light. ~Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider