Lunarly speaking: Snow 09

by Mike Koppa — last modified 2009-03-17 22:31

Every once in while, relatively, I have an idea. For 2009, I will commit to sharing one of them on or around every single full moon. No kidding.

Snow Moon
Let's kill two birds with one stone.

Back in my 30s (I turned 40 under the waning Cold Moon, for those of you who forgot to send me greetings), I used to enjoy going outside at night and smoking a cigarette with a beer or whiskey. I have since replaced the tobacco with a dog and now walk instead of stand and drink and smoke. I think it's better for me. At any rate, one time when I was standing out there drinking and smoking, I was looking at the streetlight hanging over the intersection two doors down, and I thought to myself, "Why is that on?"

And then the noodle gets to turning and I start really convincing myself that there is abosultely no good reason to have that thing on. I live in a city in rural Wisconsin with a population of 4,350 (according to the sign), and let me tell you...there is nobody outside and there aren't even very many cars driving around. And I live two blocks from Main Street, which happens to be the convergence of four state highways. Five minutes from Main Street is the country, and the dark sky is beautiful. There is no reason for that intersection to be illuminated. Crime? Get serious. And if there was a risk of crime...with nobody outside, it wouldn't matter how many lights were on.

So today I did a little research and I found out that there are plenty of other people hip to the wastefulness of streetlighting. It makes me a little bit less of a cutting edge bright idea guy, but I'm okay with that, honestly. For example, they're already shutting off streetlights in England between midnight and 5 a.m.

No kidding here. Just imagine it. How many cities like mine are strewn across this great land of ours? How much energy would we save if we would simply stop doing something as stupid as illuminating the darkness when it doesn't need to be illuminated? ALL NIGHT LONG. This is a lot of energy being wasted, folks. A lot of energy. Turn out the lights.

Speaking of...not to be preachy but just to point out the obvious one more time...you don't need to have any lights on in any room of your home if nobody's in there. You really don't. Cottage Living isn't coming over for a photo shoot, and the animals can see just fine in the dark. And let's not even talk about your tv(s). You can forget I said that. If you're reading this you probably aren't one them....those people are freaky, 'eh? Just kidding, if you're one of them, I mean...well...forget it.

Okay, that's one bird dead. The other one?

But it's hard for me to consider my illuminated courthouse polution.

And now a brief update on studio-related activity

These crazy Macs just make it so easy to be creative it's amazing. I edited/produced my first-ever video for the masses on the web last weekend. It's posted on organicrising.com and you can see it (and man, you oughta see it) by simply clicking on either these two words or by clicking the image below.