The End of Moonlight

A few years ago the moonlight disappeared from my courtyard. Previously, on a clear night, the leafy grove outside my door had been awash in silver glow. But suddenly that space and all the other courtyards in my apartment complex had no moonshadows.

I could still see the moon if I looked up. But no longer did I see its ethereal white light on summer foliage. Nor did I see shadows of bare trees lying across sparkling snow. I did not see moonglow kissing pale magnolia blossoms in the spring. I especially missed it in the fall, when its mystic glow dances with the autumn wind.

It was fear that stole the moonlight. Fear that bad people lurked in shadows, fear of lawsuits brought on by missteps. New-fangled fears married old fears and gave birth to budding fears that would grow in time to something like terror. Until at last, the peaceful grounds that I knew got lit up like a Walmart parking lot.

I'm not against outdoor lighting. It is necessary. I'm against lights that glare like prison-break lights, lights that blind you on an evening stroll, lights that cancel moonlight. When I told my nextdoor neighbour, who was instumental in the installation of the new lighting, that I missed the moonlight, his response was: “The new LEDs are your new moonlight!”

I've had to learn and accept that there are people who don’t care about darkness, starlight, moonshadows. They’ve taken the night sky for granted. And they've let fear override any memory of what it can mean to have a bit of darkness in the garden, a place for reflection on a quiet evening, a calm place beneath a tree where one can unwind. They have forfeited a peaceful kind of magic for an imaginary sense of security.

My neighbour across the courtyard used to bring his telescope out regularly at night so that neighbours could see various stars and planets and other heavenly phenomena. Kids and adults alike loved this. But since the new lights went up, he doesn’t bring the telescope out: “Too much light pollution here to see anything now,” he said.

Also too much light pollution to see stars with the naked eye. Many children now grow up never seeing the miracle of the Milky Way. There's a sense of wonder to be found in star-gazing, and experiencing the night sky sans light pollution can foster humility and curiousity. Also community: the telescope evenings were an important connection for neighbours in a world where people are becoming increasingly disconnected from one another.

The bright light follows us indoors. This is known as light trespass and we have plenty of it here, flooding in through windows and doors. These are old apartments and air flow from unblocked portals is essential. In other words, black out curtains are not a solution.

One determined resident fashioned a lantern from a bit of red cloth and installed it over a naked floodlight. That particular corner of our complex also has two wall-mounted sconces, a streetlight and a few other light sources. So this ingenious little juryrigged shade brought some relief to a number of residents who had light shining through their windows. The lantern was charming and safe and it solved a problem.

So of course, management took it down.

Someone tried a bucket over a similar naked bulb - it didn't eliminate trespass but it reined in spill that was lighting up gardens.

Two fed-up residents phoned the City Inspector. One of them sent me pained emails about how solitary she felt in taking this action and how potentially ostracized. Because in our community, we like to solve things internally, before calling any authorities. To do the latter could be seen as sowing division within the community. But this woman was living in an apartment surrounded by offending lights and management had not listened to her.

So she made the call. The inspector came out and inspected and then ordered management to fix the problem or be fined. They did a half-assed job of cutting down on the lights that were invading her home, but at least it was something.

One day, while in our local pet store, I espied an Elizabethan dog collar. Its shape was exactly that of a livingroom lamp shade. It was durable and weatherproof. It cost $90 but I was tired of nothing being done about the glare and the trespass and the pollution, so I bought it.

I rigged to fit over a naked bulb outside of my place, and then, rather than go guerrilla as the red-lantern neighbour had, I became a squeaky wheel to get it officially put up. I’m not a born SW so this was challenging for me. But I felt mental health was at stake, if only because some folks were not getting a good night's sleep.

The worker who put it up snickered. "It's a dog collar!" he declared, as if it were front page news.

"Yeah," I said, "it is. I never said it wasn't." I didn't bother to explain that it was a prototype for the shades we could put on the many glaring lights that dot our grounds.

Woof woof.

Of course, it was important to me to bring immediate relief to sleepless parties, including myself, but beyond that I wanted this dog-collar-shade to serve as a model, something a committee or an individual could look at and say: “That works! It puts the light on the ground where it should be and not in windows where it shouldn’t be. We could do this.”

But they didn’t say that. Instead the same dude who told me the LEDs were my new moonlight, ignored my shade completely, and got on his metaphorical soapbox to declare, in a fit of what he mistook for compassion for all mankind: “I want the pathways to be lit even for the drunk guy who comes home at 4 a.m.”

So all the sober souls trying to sleep have to suffer light trespass and blinding glare so that the inebriated fellow staggering home by the new moonlight will be okay?

My city recommends 10 lux for sidewalks (but they light public walks to 3 lux). Beneath a single LED lampost in my complex, the lux reading is 42. These faux-Victorian football-field lights were not designed with people in mind. Nor was any thought given to wildlife: no one considered that it might look like the perfect place to build a home - if you're a bird. And that's exactly what happened.

"Birds depend on their internal clocks to tell them when to breed, lay eggs, forage for food and migrate. Light pollution can throw off that delicate system, which causes changes in their behaviour, bodily functions and growth." - Jane Kay for Environmental Health News.

One experiment showed that male blackbirds did not develop reproductive organs when they were exposed for two years to light at night. "If you see these deleterious effects in the birds, you're likely to see them in humans in short order."

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Thanks for reading!