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An Open Letter to Mayor Richard M. Daley
The Honorable Richard M. Daley
Chicago City Hall
121 North LaSalle Street, 5th floor
Chicago, IL 60602
Dear Mayor Daley:
As a longtime Chicago resident, I applauded the follow-through on your father's dream of lighting up Chicago streets to keep them safer from crime. At the same time, I was struck by a distinct minus factor, even beyond the changes in plant and animal life that came about.
That minus factor was that owing to the lights' pink-orange glare, the stars virtually disappeared from the night sky.
When I was a little girl I was allowed to go to sleep outside on summer nights, bedded down in the garden swing in our Edgewater backyard. Lying there in the dark, looking up at the sky with its layers upon layers of twinkling stars was a bliss as close to Heaven as I could ever imagine.
My Chicago born and bred children and grandchildren have never had that opportunity of looking up in wonder at our midnight sky ... because as far as they're concerned, the moon, bright planets and widely spaced stars are just about it. It's a big deal when they can point out a dozen stars. What a loss to their lives.
I read recently that the Chicago Latin School Astronomy Club is doing its best to counter the ecological and esthetic dangers of light pollution by advocating placing a shade on every mercury-vapor streetlamp in Chicago.
You've done an extraordinary job of beautifying the city with plants and trees. Now that's a hard act to follow! But if you would stand behind city dollars to divert ambient light from casting its glow into the sky--and instead only onto the streets and alleys (like the model shaded streetlights in the vicinity of the Latin School), then for sure you'd go down in my book as a visionary who sees beyond pink nighttime skies into an incredible city whose residents can look up and feel like they are also residents of the Universe.
Thank you for considering this meaningful issue.
Your constituent,
Editor, The Monthly Aspectarian
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If this subject strikes a chord with you, add your voice to ours by writing a short letter to Mayor Daley.
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