Everything Is Deluminated

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 20, 2009 | Eric Felten

[reaganaut1]

Wednesday night, scores of people turned up at a town hall meeting in the Village of Barrington Hills, Ill., 40 miles outside of Chicago. Residents are resisting a new lighting ordinance being entertained by the village government. In a bid to win plaudits from the International Dark-Sky Association—which fights outdoor lighting as a blight that blots out the starry splendor of the natural night—local officials want radically to restrict how residents use light on their properties. In response, some 200 people, out of a village of 4,000, have formed a group they call Homeowners Against Lighting Ordinances, or HALO.

Barrington Hills is an odd place for this battle. It's not as if the village has a problem with "light trespass." Most houses in the community are on lots five acres or larger—enough space that, even if there were residents whose mansions were blazing away like casinos, not much light would be bleeding over into neighbors' yards. Nor is the area, near the metropolitan glare of Chicago, a vital center of astronomical research.

But there are kudos to be had for embracing what is a fashionable cause. Dimming the lights appeals to environmentalists eager to save juice as well as to the trendy types touting natural lifestyles. Astronomers may have been the first to sound the alarm about light pollution, but now the idea has been embraced by activists urging us to seize the night. In the past few years, books such as A. Roger Ekirch's "At Day's Close" and Christopher Dewdney's "Acquainted With the Night" have rhapsodized the exotic delights of darkness. Thus builds a cause. And, for municipal busybodies, no cause is complete until it has been imposed on all one's neighbors.

[reaganaut1]

Government is getting pretty creative in trying to micromanage people's lives.

[AU72]

Drip drip drip go property rights.

[hoosierham]

Keep your lights shining on your property.

I see no good reason for lights pointing up into the sky ,lights surrounding and illuminating a flag where 99% of the light just pollutes the view.

Don't put a huge light in your backyard that forces me to use blackout curtains to sleep at night.

[bt_dooftlook]

Sorry, I see every reason to illuminate the US flag if you choose to fly it at night. When that light goes out, it goes out for generations...at least until some future generation figures why it glowed so brightly, yet so briefly, in the history of man.

[bog trotter]

I, for one, could go for this!
Contrary to what is said about most having 5-acre lawns w/little chance of “light pollution”, I say baloney!
We live on 20 acres and I like the night. However, city-type folks move out to the country and put up big ol’ city type lighting and I can read large newspaper print from one of them that’s a quarter mile away. The closest one belongs to some once-in-a-while folks who only come out 2 or three times a year but their property is lit up like a carnival all the year round.
I don’t consider myself a tree-hugger by any stretch (we burn wood) but all-night lights keep some kinds of night life (like whipporwills) away and also many of the larger moths which wrap their cocoons in leaves on the ground are attracted and then their larvae are raked up and burned or otherwise disposed of.
I don’t care how much light you have as long as you keep it on your premises. I don’t care to share.

[Tainan]

Going for that “North Korean” effect.

[hoosierham]

Original flag etiquette called for respectful lowering of the flag at night.

If you want an illuminated flag then arrange the light to come from above,in a way that doesn't interfere with your neighbors right to enjoy their property.

You can't(or shouldn't) expect to arrange your lawn sprinkler so the neighbors get soaked with over spray when they are in their yard.You can't(or shouldn't) expect your neighbors to put up with your love of loud stereos,power tools,or target practice with the .45 at 2 a.m.,well unless it is a burglar taking the stereo!

False patriotism that insists on annoying people with ostentatious displays doesn't impress me.The Nazis and Communists insist on in-your-face flags and symbolism everywhere.

Neither do I like seeing American flag napkins,and not really sure American flag t-shirts show respect.Sure don't want to see American flag underwear like the Union Jack shorts pictured on the British Marine in the Falklands;it just sends an odd message.

[hoosierham]

Agreed.