Anthology. Night is inspiring, healthy, and disappearing. Repeated theme. Last entry the best, sort of a IDS lecture that darker nights, even in cities, are very possible ( )

Anthology. Night is inspiring, healthy, and disappearing. Repeated theme. Last entry the best, sort of a IDS lecture that darker nights, even in cities, are very possible ( )

Overall, the essays collected here veer more toward the “how I feel about losing the night sky of my childhood” variety than suits me. That said, there are a number of well-written personal essays included that meld personal experience with “fact” in an interesting and thought-provoking way, and which I truly appreciate: Chet Raymo’s “Why the Night Sky is Dark,” Christopher Cokinos’s “ A Backyard History of Light,” Michael P. Branch’s “Ladder to the Pleiades,” Anne Matthews’s “The Sound of Falling Snow,” William L. Fox’s “Night in Mind,” Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Nightfall,” and Christina Robertson’s “Circadian Heart.” As a whole, the collection emphatically communicates how imperative it is that we ameliorate light pollution and reclaim the dark skies of nighttime, both to protect and preserve an important human cultural experience (stargazing), as well as to disrupt as little as possible migratory bird behavior, astronomical activities, etc. As Chet Raymo succinctly states: “All this light directed upward has no utility on the ground; it provides no security or convenience for our nighttime activities.” We don’t need it, so lets dim the lights. In doing so, we may be able to, for example, bring the Pleiades and the Milky Way back into view. As Michael P. Branch so aptly notes in reference to the Seven Sisters, “Insofar as our visceral experience of them is concerned, these stars are critically endangered.” ( )