Mar 2024: Ar Hyd Y Nos

Host Bill McGeeney is joined by storyteller Mary Stewart Adams, author of the new book - All Along the Night, Dani Robertson, and dark sky consultant, John Barentine.

See Full Show Notes, Lighting Tips and more at LightPollutionNews.com. Like this episode, share it with a friend!

Please be sure to check out Dani Robertson's Book: All Through the Night.

Bill's Picks:

• Why flying insects gather at artificial light, Nature.
• Artificial light at night reduces earthworm activity but increases growth of invasive ragweed, BMC Ecology and Evolution.
• Artificial light at night affects the timing of roosting by Chimney Swifts, International Journal of Avian Science.
• David Duchovny tries to avoid 'electric light', BANG Showbiz.
• The majority of streets turned off at night in Bordeaux: what results after a year?, Jean Cittone, Le Figaro.
• Dark Skies: Watch as Powys lights go off for dark sky, BBC.
• Nocturnal Seafaring: the Reduction of Visibility at Night and its Impact on Ancient Mediterranean Seafaring. A Study Based on 8–4th Centuries BC Evidence, Journal of Maritime Archaeology.
• Orion and the Dark, Netflix.

Transcript

Bill McGeeney: 0:01

Light pollution news, March 2024. Archivee de Inus. We have a great show for you this month. Joining us all the way from jolly old whales. Author of the new book All Through the Night, Danny Robertson and if you live in Michigan you're probably familiar with her voice in interlock and public radio Mary Stuart Adams joins us and making a return appearance. One of the greatest minds in the Starry Sky Dark Sky movement, Mr John Barantine Plenty on the plate this afternoon. We learn new details on how nighttime flying insects use light at night. Colorado's wealthiest ski town decided to create new Dark Sky ordinance. But should 311 be the enforcement mechanism and a couple pays 100 pounds of legal fees after they fail to convince a judge of light trespass? Oh, and what to make of a new glow in a dark park in Dallas? All this way more. You all want to miss this one.

Bill McGeeney: 0:55

Light pollution news kicks off right now Talking about light pollution news, where we review everything that occurred in, out and related to light pollution this past month. I'm your host, Bill McGeaney, Excited as always that you can join me today. I'm thrilled to have three guests, all authors at some point in their lives. Before we begin, I want to remind you at home. You can learn about everything we talk about today and today's show by heading over to the website light pollution newscom, and included in there are all of the links, along with today's script. My guests today span a variety of backgrounds, and I think today's show is going to be one of you may want to share with your friends. So let's start it off, and from Ann Arbor, Michigan, I'm exceedingly lucky to have Mary Stuart Adams with us. Mary, are you an institution up in Michigan? I feel like you are.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:42

I feel like now, and I would never say that about myself.

Bill McGeeney: 1:45

Well, maybe you won't, but 12 years on the radio up there discussing the stars and, and you also helped create and lead development for the headlands international dark sky park, which runs for correct me where I'm wrong two miles along Lake Michigan.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:59

Correct yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill McGeeney: 2:00

In addition, you help protect 35,000 acres of public land up there. It's all amazing. And, mary, I got to know you mainly Well, first off because I would see your stuff come through my feeds for the storytellers night sky program. I started listening. I was like this is great. I got to get Mary on here and then I dug around like I didn't realize Mary was a superstar.

Mary Stewart Adams: 2:21

Neither did Mary realize she was. But I can tell you that in leading the initiative to establish the international dark sky park at the headlands that out of that came all of this other opportunity. So an invitation to do a weekly radio program and then also getting the state of Michigan to pay attention to what we had going on and then eventually passing legislation to protect that 35,000 acres of state land. So it kept building and it's still going. So it's exciting work.

Bill McGeeney: 2:49

We had. We had a really cool article on a few months back of a church somewhere in the western side of the, the Mitten, and it was a church that would actually had light controls and the pastor was a Greek Orthodox, and the pastor would turn off the lights so that they could watch the Aurora or just sit out there, like they have putting campfire benches out there, so they could hang out outside and just take in the night. So I don't know what the culture is going up there, but that's a great start. That's great. Then, next up, we have a man that really John, do you don't need any introduction? I don't really need to introduce you.

Bill McGeeney: 3:26

I feel like everyone knows the name John Barrett team and I'm very, very honored to have you back on the show. Your breath of knowledge on this topic is really second to none and I know there's a class of dark sky advocates and researchers that that you sit in and it's a and you guys just had released the world at night, which is a lengthy, 160 page but very detailed guide to understanding light pollution and how to preserve the night. Where did the impetus for this document come from? What was the need for this specific document?

John Barentine: 3:58

Well, Bill, we had. We've been building up this notion of best practice around my temp conservation for a long time, and everybody at all the dark side parks people like Mary and Danny were super useful in helping us develop that, and we came together almost seven years ago now to start writing this document and put that down into words so that people who are coming up at other places are not yet certified, for example, will have a reference. We're really proud of it. We hope it gets into the hands of a lot of people in parks that are out there making a difference and that this will make it easier for them to know what to do.

Bill McGeeney: 4:32

This was sponsored by National Park Service here in America.

John Barentine: 4:36

MPS was one of the partners in it. It was formally sponsored by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which has the Dark Sky's advisory group that I was on for a while, and it's a group of experts who are practitioners and also researchers, who come together to build this up over time so that we can put it into the hands of the people that really need it.

Bill McGeeney: 4:56

Now, is this something that, if a park wants to implement Dark Sky, they would go out and get? Or is this something that a national preserve or park system would put into their bucket of best practices? They should do across the board.

John Barentine: 5:13

I think it's both, really, and it's independent of whether a park is seeking Dark Sky certification. Even if they're not ready to go quite that far, it's still something that can inform their own local policies, and there's a lot of overlap with, as you mentioned, US National Park Service, with the practices that they developed independently over the last 25 years or so. So some of that's already built into their policies. But now we're increasingly dealing with national park systems in different countries and for them this is new. So for them they can look at it and say we feel pretty confident. Mps is one of the biggest such systems in the world. If this is the sort of thing that they follow, then we can feel confident about integrating this into our policies as well.

Bill McGeeney: 5:59

Well, congratulations. I paged to it. I think it's a little much a read in a few days, but it was very, very thorough, good work. Also with us today is Danny Robertson, and given the excitement stemming from your new book, danny, all through the night, maybe I should say the Danny Robertson, because your name is out there right now. Danny, I suspect you're probably wearing this, but in case you weren't, you hold a unique and maybe MBO position as a dark sky officer for Ruri. Am I saying that right?

Dani Robertson: 6:31

Very please, everry.

Bill McGeeney: 6:32

Everry. Okay, you know I actually went to co-pilot for that one, so it got me within the ballpark. That's pretty good. So ever reason national park and the areas of outstanding natural beauty, more commonly known on this side of Atlantic from his previous name, Snowdonia and I got to admit the Welsh, you guys have a great way for exacting terminology I did crack up when I saw the area of outstanding natural beauty. I can't get much more direct than that for a place that you want to go to, no mincing words. So, Danny, we'll talk about your book a little bit later on the show, but I'm curious about how's the reception been so far. I know when Karen Asferoglu was on first off, he was like you got to get Danny on. You got to get Danny on Second. I asked Karen whether he saw any urban areas kind of reach out to him to help facilitate better lighting in their plans, and he hadn't seen any movement from urban side on that. Have you seen anything from urban culture, urban people reacting to your book? Because your book is very relatable.

Dani Robertson: 7:34

Yeah, so thank you very much. This will have me on and with John and Mary, who are two absolute legends, so I feel a little bit starstruck, and also you as well, phil.

Bill McGeeney: 7:45

You don't have to include me in that. It's fine, it's all right.

Dani Robertson: 7:48

I do. I'm a big fan of the podcast, you know, but we in a way, like as the national park, we are a little bit different to how the US national parks work. So we've got the national parks and then we've got the areas of outstanding natural beauty, which, as you say, quite an extreme name, but they are absolutely beautiful places. We're a little bit different in terms that our national parks are really heavily populated and a lot of areas, and we do have urban areas well, urban areas in our national park and areas of outstanding natural beauty, which we should shorten to AUMB but now could, otherwise it will take up three hours of the podcast.

John Barentine: 8:24

I like it.

Dani Robertson: 8:25

I like it.

Bill McGeeney: 8:26

It's very direct. I know what I'm getting Right.

Dani Robertson: 8:29

I know what I'm getting when I say that from the book and also through my work, I have had a lot of people reaching out to say that they are really keen and they want to make a difference. Whenever I give a talk in my day or night job, the first thing people always tell me about they've all got this one particular streetlight that they all hate. And then we're like how do I get rid of this streetlight? Tell me how I get rid of this streetlight. But yeah, I've had some really interesting conversations, particularly with groups who are connected to sort of biodiversity or they're worried about climate change, coming from mid major cities and across the border from me, actually in England. So people from Manchester, birmingham, some people from Newcastle as well, which is another big town up in the north. I think, well, city here in the north. They're not gone. The Jordy's are going to come from here. I just call their city a town, but we do deal with cities.

Dani Robertson: 9:14

Already in Wales We've got Bangor. We've got Wrexham as well, which you may be familiar with In the US, as the two Hollywood stars have bought Wrexham football team, rob and Ryan. So we like to say that they've got two stars in their football team, but we've got thousands of stars above our area about standing Natural beauty that we need to protect. So people in Wrexham have really got on board with it as well. So they've adopted some dark sky policy in Wrexham. So things are happening. Urban people are starting to get to grip with it and that's really encouraging because, if we're talking about the health impacts of pollution, it's our urban areas and our urban societies that are most at risk. So it's really crucial that we get them on board and take them on this dark sky journey with us.

Bill McGeeney: 10:00

Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. I mean, urban places are where everything's going to turn.

Bill McGeeney: 10:05

So but yeah, I'm about a fourth of the way through the book and if I wasn't sick this week I probably would have brought a little more and I'm joining, I'm really enjoying the book. It really it's fun to to read your path to, I guess, your path to darkness. It's fun to, enjoyable because you know we've all, we've all had those experiences. The experience you had, like everyone can kind of relate to growing up and, you know, being afraid of dark and and having friends or siblings you know, like you can relate to, to many of the experiences. So I'm looking forward to getting through the last three fourths of it at some point in the near future.

Dani Robertson: 10:51

And hopefully it wasn't the book that made you sick. It was.

Bill McGeeney: 10:54

No, no, no, no. Well, since I am in the presence of dark sky, let's jump into these stories. And I don't need to tell you guys this, but you know, ecology has been lighting up over the past year plus. And yet another big story in ecology this month. In a study released this month from nature, researchers believe that to have confirmed that the reason that insects, such as nighttime pollinators, become trapped under artificial light at night derives from their needs orient and navigate by skylight. In the study, insects utilize a dorsal light response to point their backs towards light to orient them to safely fly at night. And this story picked up a lot of traction this month. Do you guys think it opened up anyone's eyes to the issues that insects actually are facing? Does anyone feel like it's actually moved their needle any?

Dani Robertson: 11:45

Yeah, and I think it's been really good to give people a reason, because we know the saying like a moth to a flame, but we've never been able to say exactly why that happens. So to actually have physical evidence is always really helpful, especially when you're on the policy and planning side, because we can say, oh yeah, insects are, I retract this life, but we can't tell them why, can't tell them the science behind it, we couldn't give them evidence of why it was happening. So having that evidence and that proof, this is what happens, this is what's happening, and absolutely helped from a planning side. And I think insects are a hard sell with the public because they're not cute, uncuddly. But yeah, I think people are starting to get it. And it was the visuals that came with that report were really interesting and it was really quite tragic to see, you know, the ball moths and things just flitting helplessly around the light bulbs. I think it will help and getting those strong visuals is what we really need in this campaign, I think.

Bill McGeeney: 12:39

Yeah, it's a good point. The visuals are definitely where it's needed.

Mary Stewart Adams: 12:42

It raises awareness of something that we really don't necessarily want to pay attention to. You and coming at it from the perspective where I stand like looking at the cultural arts and the humanities it's like how do you make a romantic representation of an insect? And yet there's something about the hum and the buzz of the night which may seem like an odd place to come in relationship to this, this kind of a topic, with insects being attracted to light at night and the consequences of that. But it begs the question of how we, as human beings, enter into this natural environment and bring chaos. We bring the chaos. It's not there of its own, it's the human imposition in an environment that is operating on a harmonious rhythm and we change it all the way down to the tiniest member of that system. And it's good to be aware of our, of our consequence.

Bill McGeeney: 13:37

That's a really, really good way to phrase it. We change it down to the tiniest member. Well, sticking with that. Since we're in the insect world, we have another article that identified the impact on the utility of soil and plant health. Apparently, artificial light at night can decrease the surface level activity of earthworms to the tune of 76%, and a study in BMC ecology and evolution found artificial light at night might force earthworms underground to forge on root structures of plants. In addition, the study identified that 86% of earthworms mating took place on the surface, thereby posing a potential reproductive risk for the animal in relationship with artificial light at night. Artificial light nights impact resulted in a 35% reduction in earthworms. Such activity appears to go hand in hand with a reduction in ragweed germination, the invasive plant that was used in the study. The study surmised that this may be due to earthworms staying underground to feed on the roots of the plant instead of coming up because there's light, and despite reduced propagation of ragweed, the plant itself did apparently gain biomass in the artificial light. However, the light's deterrence of the worms prevented the soil aeration and thus reduced seed propagation. Here's another policy based on, basically, plants and insects about how they interact with artificial light.

Bill McGeeney: 15:00

I have one on birds that I want to talk about, which is kind of odd because usually we come across multiple studies on birds, but here's a good one. The International Journal of Aviant Science confirmed that Alan was highly predictive of chimney swift roosting entry times. Chimney swifts typically use the angle of the sun, ie sunset, as one of the many cues to re-enter their nest. In this study, 21 sites sat in a highly light polluted areas of New Jersey and in New York metropolitan areas. And I'm going to need to phrase this carefully, because chimney swifts activities absent of light pollution are kind of contrary to what you might think, chimney swifts typically go to roost earlier in the summer than they do in the autumn, and this study found the presence of light pollution. Chimney swifts actually went to roost later in the summer. They went to bed later in the summer, in alignment with autumn Another sign of impact on avians with light pollution.

Bill McGeeney: 15:52

And then we can round out our ecology side here with an interesting piece from Vox. I really thought this was unique Because there's per Benji Jones, something weird is happening to alpine goats. Essentially, alpine goats are emblematic of the greater trend for mammals, and that is to increasingly operate at night opposed to daytime. The article cites global warming as a major driver. However, also cited in a piece included, greater human presence, not just development, but activities like hiking and, I presume, off-roading such as dirt biking, jeeping, atv all have similar effects here. The piece doesn't say anything about lights as a night assisting these daytime dwellers in their transitions, but I would be interested to see how much the bright nights actually play into this transition. That rounds out our ecology for the month. John, I see you just sitting there.

John Barentine: 16:44

So something that ties all this together. For me, bill, is pretty much every time we hear another study on ecology, there is an effect. It's so rare that you see anything in the literature where researchers go looking for an effect of artificial light at night on plants, animals, you know whatever it happens to be, and they don't find it. And what I got from those articles is number one this sense that the activity of certain animals is being driven into the night, whereas these are mostly daytime or diurnal creatures. So it's expanding the part of the day in which they can do what they do, which could be an advantage for some species and a disadvantage for others. And so you know the chimney swifts coming around at the wrong time of day. They think it's autumn and it's actually summer. They miss out on opportunities to find food and do the other things that they would do in summer With the insects.

John Barentine: 17:35

I was surprised at, for example, with the moths, how many people I knew who shared that story on social media. That wouldn't have given a second thought. But it's because it's such a familiar behavior among moths Everybody has seen that and so people who would not think about light pollution or the role of light in the lives of these insects were suddenly captivated by the story because it explains something that seemed to them to be otherwise a little mysterious. You know, why would the? Why does the moth go to the light at night? And now we have a clear answer to that.

John Barentine: 18:07

And all of these cases, the light is doing something to these creatures. Sometimes it's beneficial to them in the short run, but in many cases it's harmful to them in the long run. And that's where we're starting to interface with things like climate change and habitat loss and loss of biodiversity, and it feels like we're just forcing the natural world in a way that it's really unpredictable in terms of what we will see. On the other side of that, it's not yet really prompting people to take action, but they're aware of it and the more that they hear about it, eventually I think they are going to want to take action because they'll realize.

John Barentine: 18:46

You know, the pollinators are out there enabling us to have food crops and we can't replace that with technology. You know the birds are disappearing from our environment at an alarming rate. You know why is that? What's going on? What does that say about the health of our planet and about our prospects as a species in the future. So every time I hear one of these stories, it's just like another piece of the puzzle fits into place. We're seeing this bigger picture now, and for the natural world the picture is generally not good.

Mary Stewart Adams: 19:14

And with also the just the sense that what would life on Earth be if the sun altered its course for even just a split second? And the rhythm of engagement between Earth and Sun, like if it just altered for one moment? It would be devastating. And yet we, with entering the environment this way with artificial light, are doing that for all of these ecosystems. It's staggering when we start to wake up to an awareness that that's happening, and then it's also really strengthening to consider that we do have the knowledge and the technology to change it. But then again the struggle to make it more known. We can do something about this.

Dani Robertson: 19:57

It's funny, mary, because I start my book like that. I start my book by saying if we block out the sun, we would have an immediate outcry, but nobody has had that realization. Well, I'll say nobody. Generally, people haven't had that realization about the night.

Dani Robertson: 20:12

We do not look at the human experience as being part of an ecosystem. We do not look at ourselves as being part of biodiversity, but our, the way we live in our lives, has changed so much and that is driving change into the night and so many of the practices. When we look at colleges, we look at biodiversity, where biodiversity is failing, and they can't understand why. Because they're implementing all these measures by daylight, but no one's been there at night. Nobody's gone and thought how much light is there at night? No, what disturbances are there at night? And it's only just that. That starting to tip. I think into people thinking we've missing half of the data. Essentially, you know, because the darkness is so crucial. Once the system starts to collapse because of the pressures of light pollution and all the other things, it's, we're at the top of that chain, we're the driver and we're the ones who are going to suffer as well. So it's just important not to separate ourselves from the ecosystems, I think.

Dani Robertson: 21:05

But I'm glad that these studies are starting to come out. When I first started this work, the only thing you ever heard about was turtles, turtles laying their eggs and the turtles going towards the street lights, and that was all well and you know. All well and good for research. But when you're working in Wales, where we don't really have turtles, it's a hard sell to say that it's having impacts on biodiversity. So the fact that it is becoming a bit of a bit of a up and coming research topic, I'm finding a lot of universities are really interested in it. Now I've had a few emails from masters students who are saying that they're going to take this forward as a project which is really, really interesting, and so it's great to see that it is being taken on board at all different levels now.

Bill McGeeney: 21:46

Yeah, and Danny, to your point, there are national parks here in the US that have special events you have to get a permit, I believe and there are special events for fireflies. Awesome, that is astounding, right? So people actually. Now, who knows the trouble you might have trying to round up the people to actually do what they need to do on that, that's a different story in there, but the fact that people actually are curious enough and they don't see fireflies anymore and they actually go to a national park and the national park is going to give you, I think, a timed moment where you're allowed to go and look at these fireflies, which is pretty outstanding.

Mary Stewart Adams: 22:24

But also it really is devastating that we are in this situation where something that even in my own lifetime just being able to look out into the backyard and see that phenomenon and it's gone for so many people. And how do we encounter one another in that reality in a way that isn't just defeatist?

Dani Robertson: 22:47

It always falls back to that thing, doesn't it that? If you don't know what you're missing, yeah, oh, you don't know that it's gone because it's happened so rapidly. So we don't have fireflies in the UK. We do have glowworms, which are misleadingly named. They are actually beetles and they're quite similar to fireflies in terms of they glow. They create a luminescence to attract mates.

Dani Robertson: 23:08

My dad I won't reveal his age to the public, but he grew up in a city and he would see bushes and hedgerows filled with glowworms. I've never, ever seen one. Like I say, I've never, ever seen one. I saw my very first one last summer and it's taken me years of searching to just find one glowworm. And they are crashing in numbers in the UK.

Dani Robertson: 23:33

So I'm only aware of them because my dad had told me about them and they sounded amazing and nothing could prepare me for how, just how brilliantly that little creature glue in the hedge. I did his glue word glowed, glowed in the hedge. It was literally like a little fairy, like Tinkerbell. I instantly understood that where Tinkerbell comes from. I knew that that's where that character came from then. But up until that point I'd never seen one. I didn't know what to expect. So it was so special but it just happened so rapidly. So in the 30 years between my dad being able to see them in cities to me going out to try and find them in the countryside where it is relatively dark it just shows the losses have been so rapid and barely barely noticed because it's happened so quickly.

Bill McGeeney: 24:18

Danny, and I feel like for John and Mary you guys probably saw the Milky Way at probably an earlier age. But, Danny, when was the first time you saw a Milky Way? First time I saw a Milky Way was when I was 28. Yeah, I think it was I saw a thin trace of the Milky Way before them, but not actually like the Milky Way.

Dani Robertson: 24:38

Eight years old but I had just moved to rural Wales from the middle of Manchester so Manchester's a big city in the UK and there was no hubbusting anything. I think we could see the moon and I remember that there was a comet. It was the comet Halebop was going through in 96, I think it was. My dad was so excited he really wanted us to see it. He said Patrick Moore was on the TV night after night saying this comet is going to be visible. You can go out, you can see it. This is how you see it.

Dani Robertson: 25:08

I was on the TV in the middle of Manchester and I remember loads of people coming out on this obelisk week because they all wanted to see it. We were all wearing our pajamas looking up to the night sky and there was just no hubbusting anything. So everyone was very disappointed. But I didn't know about Lightbush. And then people didn't know it was Lightbush and that was stopping them from seeing it. They thought, well, the comet is rubbish. This comet isn't everything they said it was going to be because we can't see it. And that just wasn't knowledge.

Dani Robertson: 25:34

So I was eight years old before I saw the Milky Way, because we'd been moved to an amazing rural area and it was just the darkness is what hit me first. And I remember my dad dragging me out and I remember I must have been so petulant and so annoying, because I remember being miserable about it, because I was cold, my nose was cold, my eyes were streaming. I was like why are we going out? Why are we going out? It's so cold. But we sat on the beach and we looked up and I shut up. Then. I was happy then because I could see the Milky Way and it just blew me away. And it's the first time I remember being mind boggled to think that, oh my gosh, there is so much there. I am such a tiny part of the world and when I remember that, even at that young age, it did really have a profound impact on me. So it's really sad you didn't see it until you were 28. I feel like we need to start a support group.

Bill McGeeney: 26:30

I definitely agree. I asked some guests that because it's interesting to see when people actually saw the Milky Way. The real thing about me is I've always been in astronomy but I would do it in places that were like Portal 4 or 5, where you might get a trace Milky Way. But you still have a lot of difficulty trying to find things. It's not as vibrant as it is when here in Pennsylvania go up Cherry Springs. It's a totally different story. And then I remember getting lost for the first time in the sky because I was used to seeing constellations. You go to a dark sky spot. Everything is so rich you can't figure out the constellations.

Dani Robertson: 27:04

That happens to me. It's so weird, isn't it? And you just, like I, know my way around the night sky. And then I was sitting here like whoa, what's happened? Where has anything gone?

Mary Stewart Adams: 27:14

That's why I always liked to start programs at the headlands and when I'm doing night sky stuff at evening and that time between sunset and before the stars come out, to just really take advantage of that momentary experience that you have, seeing something that you know is there but it's not there yet. And I think this is kind of what we're talking about. You hear about the Milky Way whether you're eight or 28,. It's like this. Something is there and this moment of finally seeing it is so remarkable.

Mary Stewart Adams: 27:45

And I really wrestled over the years with thinking about how what I hear in a description of looking at the night sky and how majestic it is and how small and insignificant I am. And I always think no, the fact that I'm witnessing the majesty means that I too am majestic, might I act differently if I recognize that. So, danny, like you were saying, that we're not living outside of this environment, we are in it and we're consequent in it and just that, that in between that twilight space when the light is going down and the stars are coming, to think that we can experience that every single day, we need human beings walking around with that experience, that lived experience.

Bill McGeeney: 28:28

Well, you know, who doesn't have that experience is former ex-file star David DeCovney, as he actually tries to limit himself to what he terms electric light, and what he actually does is. I meant like I never have a good transition out of the ecology segment, but this one here is very good and, mary, you set me up for this really nicely. So, to quote DeCovney, because I get up so early, I go to bed early also. I feel like electric light has really messed up with our sense of mind and body and that we were made to hide in a cave at night from predators and wake up with the sun. So I tried to do that constitutionally. I feel like it works for me. I don't think he's seen a Milky Way, maybe not in quite a long time, but hey, you know, at least the circadian rhythm is really on point. I think he's good from a health standpoint.

Dani Robertson: 29:14

Yeah, it's funny because I was sent to bed early so my parents could watch him in ex-files. I remember hearing that too and maybe like it's pretty funny.

Bill McGeeney: 29:24

It's pretty good for a guy who would chase UFOs at night, right.

Mary Stewart Adams: 29:28

Yeah, loved reading that article because it made me think of when my children were small. I mean, this is how geeky I was. I would turn off the main circuit breaker in the house, not so there wouldn't be blinking lights anywhere, but so that there would be no electric current going around while they were sleeping. And so when I read that article in the cave, I'm not the only one and thinking about what is the last experience of light before you go to sleep at night, if you're going to sleep after the sun has set, is it electric light? And how do we transition when we're just flipping off a light and then closing our eye? What is that?

Dani Robertson: 30:06

Yeah, that's.

Mary Stewart Adams: 30:06

Like, how do we? Well, it's another way to transition. So for a while and I don't always do this, but I would light a candle so that, after turning off the electric light, the candle light would be the last light before trying to go to sleep, to really acknowledge the transition that is required nowadays to get to sleep.

Dani Robertson: 30:26

I'm a bit more high tech. I say high tech, it's not very high tech. I've got one of those sunset alarm books and at the time I was like am I really going to spend this much money on an alarm clock? And I was like really want to work because I've always struggled with insomnia. But my God, it works. I am not like a light, like literally pun intended. It goes, it works so well and it likes you up. It wakes you up with a sunrise as well and yeah, it is still artificial light, but it takes you through the temperature changes, I guess the color changes of the night and it does really work and it's the best thing. I wouldn't dress myself to blow out a candle and I'd probably burn my house down. I'd probably say bro.

Mary Stewart Adams: 31:09

But it's good to know my daughter swears by that kind of a light as well.

Dani Robertson: 31:13

They're good, they are good. I recommend not on commission, but if they are listening.

Bill McGeeney: 31:19

These are all great ideas. I could have been put my phone down and go to bed. There's no magic happening on my side. Well, talking about light and night and health right, since that's kind of what we're talking about here.

Bill McGeeney: 31:31

There's study of South Korea where outdoor artificial light at night raises your chance of contracting age related macular degeneration. A team of researchers studied 126,000 individuals with an average age of around 66 years old. The group measured the levels of light pollution by use of the United States Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program operational line scan system. Try saying that three times over, john. You probably could. All right, I'm not going to challenge it out, but for those of you who are not familiar with the US DMSP operational line scan system, it's essentially a series of weather satellites that utilize both visible and infrared sensors, and part of that package is a light radiance offering which you all through utilize to measure the brightness of locations. In the research, the study found a sizable uptake and the likelihood of urbanites to develop age related macular degeneration when exposed to what they term hazardous levels of artificial light at night. Such individuals were three times more likely to experience macular degeneration versus individuals who are considered to be in low risk rural groups.

Bill McGeeney: 32:32

This isn't the first major health study to link light at night with health related problems. Even tech companies obviously Apple, microsoft they reset everything in a light mode, to your point, danny, going through the whole temperature chain before bed, right, does this kind of health news dent to public? Does this make, does this get in there? We have a whole bunch of circadian studies that come through and like is it making sense to people? What's your read on that?

Dani Robertson: 32:59

If I talk to the public like pushing, you can't feel it hurting you, you can't smell a bad smell and the impact isn't instantaneous. So I think people struggle with something that isn't immediate and it's quite a abstract idea. However, it is one that I do feel really strongly about, because we have to work so much more screens at the moment. My dad has macular degeneration. I know that I carry the genes for macular degeneration and the fact that I have no option but to work on a screen and use screens every day when I know that it's going to it's going to be impacting my eye health.

Bill McGeeney: 33:36

You can't even escape screens when you go for entertainment, like when, if I want to go to a sporting event, I'm surrounded by not just major, like the screen in front of me, because there's always a screen in front of me, but then you have ribbons of screens and you have multiple screens coming out Almost everywhere. You can find a nook, apparently like walking down the street. If you go in a major city, buildings are screens.

Dani Robertson: 33:57

I hate them.

Mary Stewart Adams: 33:59

Well, it's so much so insured.

John Barentine: 34:02

Bill, I think there's. So anytime we talk about light and health, I have to speak up from the research community to remind people that this is an incredibly complex topic that doesn't reduce well. The study that you're talking about with the age related macular degeneration is emblematic of a lot of studies of its type, in which they looked at some epidemiological quantity in the human population and then they correlated it with light at night. That's measured from satellites, and the missing piece in the middle is we do not know how much light these individuals were actually exposed to. They're making a guess at their light exposure based on what we can see on the earth at night using satellites. It is rare to see a study where they actually measure the quantity of light that the individuals are getting, and that's the important piece here that's missing.

John Barentine: 35:00

If we do studies like this in a controlled environment, if I put you in a laboratory and I irradiate your eyeballs with a certain amount of light, we know very clearly there are strong health effects. And then we have these correlation studies where it says that people who live in these areas where there's more outdoor light at night, as seen by satellite, have these health effects. When we control for these other factors. Phil doesn't quite bridge the gap. So my point of bringing this up is to just exercise some caution and take these results with a little bit of skepticism.

John Barentine: 35:31

If we rush from this to the conclusion that outdoor lighting in particular is causing health problems for people, I think it's a very difficult case to make. They're probably getting more light exposure from screens and things in the indoor environment. Does this all add up? I think it probably does, because when we look at other kinds of health problems like metabolic disorders and cancers and that sorts of thing and we control for those other factors that influence that, there's still a residual signal with all of this outdoor light at night that we can see on satellites and I think it is affecting people in ways that we don't fully appreciate yet. So there's a lot that we still don't know. But every year it we keep heading in more or less only one direction and fighting out that all of this light seems to be problematic for people. So wherever we can take the opportunity to limit our light exposure, we should do that, because it very clearly promotes better health if we do.

Bill McGeeney: 36:31

And John, you make a really good point on the correlation. It's a correlation-on-causation. I've always wondered on some of these articles that they try and we're going to have two more I think the most impactful environmental factor for an individual, just given you're trying to say, hey, because the environment has X and it could also have about 30 more major variables playing into it. And I look at some of the studies on night shift workers and night shift workers probably do have a lot of issues, just being someone who's actually worked night shifts, so I understand what they might be going through.

Bill McGeeney: 37:11

At the same time, there's other factors that you don't consider and that part of that is that you turn around. Your day isn't completely flipped upside down, your day is mostly flipped upside down, but then you have to sacrifice part of your night, which is daytime, to people Because that's the only time that they're around, because you have to re-shape part of your natural sleep time to see those people and then you go back to it, so you may be getting less sleep on a regular basis just because you're working nights and you won't see any of your friends or family if you don't do that. So yeah, I've been curious about some of those externalities or the other variables that I've talked about. But to your point, I think it's interesting to see that we're starting to see a trend, a small murmur of a trend here.

Mary Stewart Adams: 37:58

Really appreciate you bringing that kind of specificity to making sure that it's not just jumping to a conclusion after seeing research like that.

Mary Stewart Adams: 38:06

When I was reading that article because of the background from which I come toward these kinds of things I kept hearing this line from an Emily Dickinson poem the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind. And there's so much in that around how not only to not jump to conclusion quickly, but also, when we're bombarded with light we also can't see. I mean it's just amazing contradiction and thinking how light allows us to see. And yet, coming from kind of a more nuanced or a more poetic approach, it also to me speaks to the necessity of trying to understand what is the nature of human relationship in environments where there's harsh artificial light, like we could never measure that. We might all feel it, but how do you quantify that and how do we celebrate that? But as Gertis says, beauty is everywhere a welcome guest. And so just to come from that place, is it beautiful? It's not a vain question, it really is about health and well-being. I just want to say thank you for bringing that articulation of specificity there.

Bill McGeeney: 39:19

In an article from the European Journal of Physiology it's found that artificial light at night in short duration can increase blood pressure and heart rates in diurnal animals like ourselves. However, over time the stress may induce greater changes, including the heart and blood vessels, and an inability for the body to handle anticipated stressors. And then a separate article from the Journal of Clinical Hypertension attempted to identify blood pressure variations driven by artificial light at night. While the study did not identify a higher propensity towards increased blood pressure and hypertension in environments with greater artificial light at night, it could not discern driving factors which may or may not be related to artificial light. So just rounding out the health stuff there, Do you guys have any thoughts on those last two?

Dani Robertson: 40:06

I just think it is interesting. It is hard because there are so many variables with light, but I think I could be a study about this already. I haven't found one yet, but it would be interesting to look at patients health in hospital settings, because if you're on a ward you are in artificial light all the time and I always worry about patients because they have to have those stripto-esplorescent lighting on throughout the night when they're having observations and things, so they're not getting any sicker humor than them, and how is that impacting their health? I think it would be really, really interesting and you know, mary bought us that really quick point in the bump being blinded by the lights and how darkness can reveal a certain beauty. And I'm gonna take a slightly less poetic approach. But when we talk about human and humans and how we've procreated throughout time, if it wasn't for nightclubs I'm very dark rooms people wouldn't have procreated if we were all in a half bright light all the time. We're not a good looking species.

Bill McGeeney: 41:06

Oh, great stuff. Well, you mentioned not having a study that actually had looked at patients, but there was a study a few months back talking about pre-term babies.

Dani Robertson: 41:15

Oh, scuba yes.

Bill McGeeney: 41:17

That that actually had been discharged earlier than ones under artificial light at night. Once I wonder light 24-7 light Surveillance? Essentially they actually turned the lights down for these babies and they were released early, so maybe that's a step in that direction to understand a study like that.

Dani Robertson: 41:33

Interesting I could.

John Barentine: 41:34

That could well be a study about it, that Keeping on top of research is hot and and and there are actually there are a few in the last decade, looking at people and intensive care units in hospitals and fighting out that in situations where the hospitals were more Mindful about the application of artificial light at night so you know, not coming in and turning on all the rim lights to take vitals in the middle of the night, for example, or the observation lighting so that they can be seen you know, through a window from a nurse's station, for example that those cases where they were more mindful about it, healing was improved, time spent in the hospital was reduced, and that becomes a dollars and cents issue for delivering health care and also in consideration of the dangers that people are Subjected to just by being in the hospital, the possibility of picking up secondary infections, for example.

John Barentine: 42:27

Doctors tend to want to move people out of hospitals as quickly as they can, right, so increasingly, what we're finding, at least here in the US, is that new hospital construction is being Taking a very different approach to how they do their interior lighting, and it started with the shift workers. It started with the, the known impacts to the nurses which we we have been aware of for about 35 years, but now it's being extended to the patients themselves. So it's better for everybody all around and they're finding that the better that they do with their lighting, the fewer problems they have with shift working employees. But also they get better health outcomes and quicker discharge times For patients and that's good for the bottom line.

Bill McGeeney: 43:06

Very, very good stuff. Thank you, john. That's good to know, like I didn't realize Exactly the Oracle. There we go. I love it.

Bill McGeeney: 43:16

Well, as you guys are probably aware, light pollution news is completely supported by listeners like you at home, and To help offset our recurring costs, what we handle is our audio web space or editing costs, etc. First I'd like to thank any of our supporters out there. If you listening our supporter, thank you so much. But there's no better way than to help to show out and become a supporter. Just for the price of a cup of coffee three dollars a month helps keep the show up and running and If you're unable to support, don't feel inclined to so. All I asked was that, you know, is the thank you. You shared the episode with anyone you may think may find interesting, or if you think the show does offer you value. Please share support in any way that you can do as a way of saying thank you. And again, if you are a supporter, thank you so much. We really can't do it without you. Mary. So you worked on a headlands dark sky, I guess. Is that reserve?

Mary Stewart Adams: 44:09

Dark sky park dark sky park.

Bill McGeeney: 44:11

Yeah, has that changed the shape of Michigan tourism?

Mary Stewart Adams: 44:14

Absolutely it did. I'll share with you that how. The idea of landed was that I was teaching about the night sky from the humanities Anywhere that I could get an audience at the library, at the community college, writing for the paper. This was early 2000s, and A friend of mine who started working for the county said you know, there's a park that the county owns and you could do programs there. And he introduced me to a woman who had started an organization called the outdoor lighting forum, which she started because her husband was an eye doctor and he had aging patients that were starting to experience difficulty with their vision at night, and so they started to pay attention to what was happening with artificial light in the environment. And then this outdoor lighting forum was kind of an ad hoc committee of the city zoning and planning. They would pay attention to any new building that was going to happen in a three county area. They would show up and when the plans were submitted for permissions, they would bring information about effective light at night. And so she was the person that told me about the what was then called international dark sky Association. And so this me teaching about the night sky, this piece of land that was available, and then this Connection to the international dark sky association, this idea was born hey, let's do this thing.

Mary Stewart Adams: 45:39

And once we got the designation in 2011, it just took off like wildfire and the very next year, the state of michigan protected this almost 25,000 acres of state land, which has continued to increase.

Mary Stewart Adams: 45:53

But at the time, michigan had a huge tourism budget millions of dollars that were spent on the pure michigan campaign. That budget has been dramatically reduced. However, tourism is one of the number one industries in michigan. Billions of dollars are spent every year on tourism in michigan. So to get dark skies into the tourism campaign and on the minds of People who not only live in the state but are coming to the state, what I experienced was a real kind of proud ownership of the fact that michigan was paying attention here. What's happening in southeast michigan now is that here at the University of michigan, there's an organization called michigan dark skies that is working to keep track of all of the lighting issues that are showing up the communities around michigan, and then also trying to get an urban night sky place at bel isle, which is an island that sits in the detroit river that connects, eventually, lake eerie and lake churon.

Bill McGeeney: 46:49

But and that's a park right.

Mary Stewart Adams: 46:51

It's a park, it's a natural park and it's in an urban environment, and so what's going to happen there? You're not going to get the Windsor canadas across one side of the river. You have to try it michigan. On the other side. They're not turning their lights off. However, you can raise awareness about the fact that this is a nighttime environment that's used by pollinators and birds and human beings that don't necessarily have easy access to things outside of the city because they can't necessarily get there. So it just keeps the conversation going, which I think can be really important because eventually, decisions have to be made and Keeping keeping the issue in front of everyone, whether it's through tourism or through, you know, talking up eclipses and meteor showers, or talking about light pollution, energy resources. You know there's so many ways to just keep the conversation alive, and that is happening here.

Bill McGeeney: 47:40

Yeah, I will say for the tourism side it's one of the driving factors I've. I've wanted to go up to, I guess, the minnesota area for a while, but going through michigan is now an appeal, right when you go you have to.

Mary Stewart Adams: 47:53

So there's this really interesting place in the northern michigan. It's called the straits of macana, like here on on the east side, like michigan on the west side, and it's about five miles north, south, about eight miles long, is it measured, and I used to think to myself All right, like this is just one body of water and we call them by different names based on the direction. But actually when you're in the straits of macana, you realize that you are dealing with the meeting place of two very different bodies of water. But this is one of those rare places where, if you're out on a boat, you can catch it in that really dynamic environment full moon rising in the east as sun is setting in the west, and you've got this kind of experience of, again, the majesty of the world and the earth. And this is Unique and you can't have that experience everywhere in the world, but you can have right here in michigan.

Bill McGeeney: 48:48

You're a michigan experience.

Mary Stewart Adams: 48:51

So if you're coming to michigan, you want to stop off there and have that experience excellent.

Bill McGeeney: 48:55

I'm looking forward to the check from the michigan tourism bureau on that one.

Dani Robertson: 48:59

That's really maybe, uh, the podcast can take place in michigan next time I can come back as a guest. Yeah, please hold out some michigan. Yeah, please calm.

Bill McGeeney: 49:09

Well, let's kick off for policy news this month and take a look at this one. Beginning in january of 2023, bordeaux turned off approximately 57 Of its street lights to save energy. The lights went out between 1 am the 5 am. The city projects that saved upwards of 1 million euros. Street lights remained on for the city center and major thoroughfares. So what was the result? The crime rise.

Bill McGeeney: 49:33

Despite aggressive criticism of the plan, it appears that, similar to some uk communities who have undertaken a similar set of actions To have resulted in no measurable increase in crime. Per deputy mayor who oversees public lighting policy, lauron gilliaman Black, can bring a feeling of insecurity, and that's understandable, but in terms of security, we have not known to any increase. Bordeaux had a bit of forethinking here and should emergency vehicles need to report a situation, the town can quickly light up that area for use by emergency forces. But Bordeaux also is implementing motion sensing street lights in areas with low pedestrian foot traffic. Bordeaux obviously is living in the current reality of high energy costs and is learning to be more tactical About their approach to lighting. How do you suppose the same thing can happen in environments that don't have such constraints? People need to see it.

John Barentine: 50:25

If you do kind of the blind test, as it were, they tend to prefer it you can really make a lot of changes to outdoor lighting in cities and the public doesn't even know that you've done it, if you do it very gradually. The Bordeaux study is uh, or the phenomenon is similar to public work that we've seen, as you mentioned, from the uk and some other places, where Solutions like turning off the lighting for part of the night, if not all of it, or simply dimming it down, like we do here in tucandre, the overnight hours, when few people are out to even notice that it's happening, there's no public outcry. They at first people see lights, lights being turned off, and they're skeptical of that. But when they actually experience it, oftentimes they don't necessarily feel more unsafe. It's the concept that bothers them, I think, more than the actual reality.

John Barentine: 51:17

And then the data bear this out. In most cases we don't see an increase in overnight crime. We don't see an increase in overnight traffic accidents because you keep the lights on In the so-called conflict zones where traffic is coming together. You know we're we're bicyclists and motorists are coming together on your major thoroughfares and the town squares, and that sort of thing we can achieve really drastic reductions in light consumption and by and large people accept it, but the messaging becomes very important, so they don't feel like they're being attacked. To be perfectly honest, we.

Bill McGeeney: 51:50

We have the opposite thing here, john, and obviously in in a major city it's not, you know, not not down in Tucson and different parts of southwest. Here we've switched over to 3000 kelvin lights for for many of the street lights, although that's questionable if you want to use that metric for us. But they are planning on bathing areas of what they consider high crime areas in light and I'm curious about that. Has there been research proving outside of the chicago crime labs site? Has there been research proving that if you Quote-unquote bathe, as one public official here said, areas of crime like temple university here bathes their whole campus and adjacent areas in high powered lighting? I mean it's daytime 24, seven there. Is that proven to be effective? Is that? Is that the solution? Is that because if you said, turn down the lights here, good luck.

John Barentine: 52:48

Yeah, we just do not have any clear scientific evidence that we can reproduce and control studies that suggests that light has any particular impact on crime, whether good or bad, and practically speaking, I think there are probably circumstances where both of those things are true, that adding light either Improves the situation or makes it worse.

John Barentine: 53:12

There is no single formula that works in every case. In parallel with that is a sense of um reassurance for people using outdoor spaces at night and how they are Lit, and researchers have said he's something that they call feelings of safety. Turns out that adding a little bit a little bit of light to a otherwise dark space really increases people's sense of personal security. But that starts to turn over at very high levels of light, because now they feel like they're in a spotlight and they're more likely to be the victim of crime because they're on display that they're, they can be very easily seen by others. So I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of all of this is that there's a certain amount of light that probably has a mild deterrent effect, but you can very definitely go overboard to the point where You're certainly no longer safe from a statistical standpoint, but also people don't feel safe at highlight levels.

Bill McGeeney: 54:08

Well, those lights are going to be coming in soon, so I'll be. I'll be letting you know how it all goes.

Dani Robertson: 54:14

They use the word bathe, where if you were to say it were going to blast the area with light, that would be a gentle, a gentle bath of light. See, but if you were to say we're going to blast this with high energy light, people would feel quite different. Probably, and I think it's a great point.

Dani Robertson: 54:31

Terminology is really important and I think the way these changes come in is really important, and I have small concerns. Whereas in the UK we have the energy crisis as well and you prices are going up, so a lot of councils and local authorities are changing or turning lights off completely Whilst. In one hand, you're like that's great for dark skies, but on the other hand, I don't want it to happen like that because it's being associated with a negative. So UK history we had the minor strikes in the 1970s and people had road in blackouts where they were forced into darkness, and for a lot of people of that age, this is bringing back memories of Recession, of the UK going backwards, things not being safe, instability.

Dani Robertson: 55:13

I would much rather we can do it in a controlled way where we can so show people this is why we're doing it. It's beneficial for x, y and z, rather than it being a cost-cutting exercise, because I think it can really really easily fall into One, a political weapon stick for people to say we're going to protect dark skies as a cover for costs when it's not really what they're aiming for, and then it just it does. It becomes a bit of a political football then and I just I think it's can very easily turn into a negative association, which I really don't want to happen, because there's so much more to it than just saving money yeah.

Mary Stewart Adams: 55:47

I really appreciate that, danny, and also drawing attention to the fact that the words that we're using to describe the situations can have such a fundamental effect on the behavior. To say, blast instead of bathe, rather than trying to move the mountain by digging at its base. I've come around this, you know. Try to come around from the side of looking at what are the phenomena that we're missing. And hey, wouldn't it be great if we could see that, having this direct encounter with the night sky and the night and darkness in a way that isn't riddled with a sense of fear, or that this idea of going dark we have negative connotations related to that, how can we create opportunities for ourselves and for one another to really have that experience consistently, in a way that allows us to find a different language for describing what it is?

Bill McGeeney: 56:35

Yeah, very good point, sarah. The linguistic part of it is so important, you know. It sets the framework for how you're going to define that narrative in every other aspect, so great points. We can talk about Aspen now, which is Colorado's wealthiest ski town, and it has taken it to the residents and businesses who carelessly aim lights at their neighbors.

Bill McGeeney: 56:57

In December Aspen put a new lighting ordinance into effect that requires any light trespass to be eliminated under the hours of 10pm to 7am when not within an hour of business operation. This includes everything from carelessly placed exterior lighting fixtures to closing the shade. So how does one enforce this rule? Oh, glad you asked. You can file a complaint via Aspen's 311, the standard line of community service request for many US communities. All lighting fixtures put into effect or replaced since December are now partied to this new arrangement. This month we had a couple of articles whereby residents appear kind of resentful of lighting ordinance, and Tara Roberts-Sabrisky had brought up the fact that when they were up in Maine they had to work with folks on an individual level because they're worried about government-led enforcement of what they would consider a neighborhood matter. I guess using 311 is not the right course to enforce a lighting ordinance.

John Barentine: 57:57

I'm very skeptical about that way of implementing it. To be honest, People don't like being they don't like their neighbors kind of tattling on them to the government. So that's one thing. A lot of the problems that we see in implementing outdoor lighting policies have to do with complaints and disagreements between neighbors, and I don't think that that furthers the cause very much. But we have enforcement problems in general with almost all lighting policies everywhere for a variety of reasons, one of which is that fundamentally, I think people don't like being told what to do.

John Barentine: 58:34

We've got to do more education. We've got to do more awareness raising in the hopes that people will see that there's a benefit to these rules, that they're not there for purely punitive reasons and they're not there because a small group of people in the community wants dark skies. But there's a real community benefit to everybody, no matter what their interest is, and being very pitting neighbors against each other, I think is the wrong way to go about that. That's not going to make anybody happy and it's probably not going to increase support for the lighting ordinance in Aspen or anywhere else that they try this.

Bill McGeeney: 59:11

Yeah, in my mind it feels like a disaster. You're undermining exactly what you're trying to achieve. But if we look at, I guess, the question, how do you sell the lighting ordinance in this case? How are you going to sell that to the neighbors who are more concerned about, or how do you enforce it to neighbors who are concerned about their personal freedoms? We have other forms of environmental protections that we may or may not enforce, and how is this any different? And I guess, what do you do? You're saying about we have to do a better job, kind of educating folks, but what are we educating them on?

John Barentine: 59:53

I think people generally want to do the right thing. I think they want to be perceived as good neighbors. We all want good neighbors. There's no matter where you live.

John Barentine: 1:00:03

And when I'm giving talks to people about this sort of thing, for example especially out here in the West, where property rights are really important and people get very defensive if you tell them what they're going to be able to do on the property I make the argument to them that this supports their property rights, because to the extent that they feel they have a right to control their property and to enjoy it, they should recognize that their neighbors have that right as well, and in the same sense that a community would have a noise ordinance, for example.

John Barentine: 1:00:32

And everybody understands why we have that and even people who are very pro-property rights are in favor of that sort of thing. It's because we all want to be able to enjoy our property and therefore we have obligations to our neighbors. And I think we can appeal to that sense in people without having to go really heavy-handed on the enforcement. Once, people again, if they can see this, if they have that experience of the neighbor's porch light blasting in their window at night, they start to get it. They understand, if I just keep my light on my property we solve half the problem right away. We don't have to get into the business of legal enforcement.

Bill McGeeney: 1:01:12

Here. We do not enforce noise ordinances, it's just not enforced. It's on the books, not enforced.

John Barentine: 1:01:18

And I. It's unfortunate.

Bill McGeeney: 1:01:19

Yeah, but I do wonder how much of that's because people don't want to tout on their neighbor.

Dani Robertson: 1:01:24

I think it's you Americans and your freedoms.

Bill McGeeney: 1:01:26

You're obsessed guys, we got, yeah, we drank the punch. We drank the punch.

Dani Robertson: 1:01:34

We got the things with. Yeah, tackling all neighbors isn't really cool. I've got the neighbors theme-sharing stuff in my head now as well. I don't know if you know, but it's an Australian soap opera. I think once you have a lot of people who are doing the right thing with lighting, communities do tend to start self-policing, where if you are the one neighbor with bad light, all the other neighbors are like can you not please? Self-policing and not wanting to be the one stuck out like a sore thumb in your community goes a really long way, and nobody likes to be told what to do. I guess to some extent. But I also think, like pollution, the word pollution hasn't got through to people. If you were throwing sewage out into the street, people would have an issue with that and they would want you to enforce it. Once people understand and respect light pollution as a pollutant, like throwing waste out into the street, that's when I think change will really start to happen in people's minds and in communities.

Bill McGeeney: 1:02:31

Yeah, and we had that great definition of light as a pollutant back in the philosophical transactions of the Royal Society. But yeah, that was a good way to frame it up. Well, aspen is far removed from this next story. From your land over there in the UK, Danny, and I'm sure you enjoyed seeing this story, I appeared that a neighbor who sued another neighbor will now have upwards of over 100,000 pounds to pay following an unsuccessful suit alleging that light trespass impeded on their sleep.

Bill McGeeney: 1:03:01

Francis and Graham Pollard, the defendants, moved an exterior sconce from the side to the back of their part-time residence in 2021. They had to fix their saw little use. Now the Pollards keep the light on nonstop overnight through the daybreak, reserving the right to do so in explicit conversation with the other party. The fixture itself appears to be close to a foot wide and has an omnidirectional spray of light. The light sits about 16 feet from the appellant's bedroom windows. The defendants, the Pollards, responded to the initial complaint by adhering first a small cover and then later a larger cover over the fixture. When, judging by the picture supplied in the article, it looked like fully half of the fixture was covered. Perhaps the offending half is mostly shielded.

Bill McGeeney: 1:03:48

The problem from the Hunts'. Point of view was that the light continued to emit upwards into their house, and the Hunts argued a case under the Environmental Protection Act of 1990, which, according to the guidance from 2015, must prove unreasonable or substantial interference with the enjoyment use of a home. The judges rejected the claim and subsequent appeals by the Hunts. The crux of the case came down to location of the light readings which the appellants the Hunts claimed that were incorrectly sourced. Per the Hunts, the measurements should have been taken from their property, which they apparently weren't. That's a pretty steep penalty on a light trespass case. Now, I'm not sure of a little legality of this.

Dani Robertson: 1:04:30

I'm not going to even attempt that I think it's been sensationalized by the press because I think what's happened is they've paid to take it to small claims courts, so that is their legal fees for taking it to court.

Bill McGeeney: 1:04:45

That's right.

Dani Robertson: 1:04:45

Because that would not.

Bill McGeeney: 1:04:46

Yeah.

Dani Robertson: 1:04:48

So it's not that they've been fined or anything, and I think this is just one of those scenarios which is really hard to entangle, because I think the light is being used, whereas there's probably a lot of other issues with that other neighborly relationship, but it's the light that is getting the blame, and it's always hard to entangle these things. But if you have neighbors who fall out and they're going to look for anything to take offense, it sounds like that's kind of what's happened, because it seems like the other party did try. They partitioned the light, they put a shield on it. What the whole situation was there is very hard to Daniel, like you said, it's very sensationalized story.

Bill McGeeney: 1:05:26

You kind of know it's sensationalized when you have three different sources to tell you different parts of a different story.

Bill McGeeney: 1:05:31

And it all kind of blends in and you kind of figure out what the real story is. But it is interesting. Like you said, the neighbor tried hey, okay, we'll put this here for you. I was not working. All right, we'll put another piece here for you. I was more impressed that the UK has a way for you to actually have recourse on light trespass. That was my main takeaway from that. I was like wow, there's an actual way that you can bring recourse here in the States. It's very state-specific and sometimes even community-specific.

Dani Robertson: 1:06:02

It's tricky one to prove and it's very rarely at the field. But you can go down that route and basically, if there is the light from someone else's property is touching your property, you do have the ability to take it forward with environmental health and then further if they don't take it on. But it is a tricky one because light is difficult to. There's never a standardized way to measure it. There's never a standardized way to report these things and the impacts that they have. So it is tricky. But it is good ideas there a little bit. So there is something. They have recognized it in some way as an impacter on people's lives.

Bill McGeeney: 1:06:38

And who would you even go to have it measured? Who would be the official that measures it?

Dani Robertson: 1:06:42

So they don't always ask the issue. Sometimes you get a really good council. So we have local authorities who are our council, so they look after everything, like they collect rubbish and do all the I don't know what the equivalent is called in America, but they would have people in their department in environmental health who deal with things like pollutants. They do with noise pollution and things like that. So it depends on the individual who is employed there whether they have that interest, whether they have that training and they would go down with a light reader and they would try and take measurements. So it completely depends. There's no, I don't think there's any sort of guidance there on where you should take the measurements from, where you should take the measurements from for how long. It's all very. It's just people trying their best. At the end of the day it doesn't always go the way people want it to.

Bill McGeeney: 1:07:34

John, I know you guys did the whole piece on instructing parks on how to actually go dark sky. Is there any similar legalese piece out there that instructs people on how to create uniform lighting measurements?

John Barentine: 1:07:49

Bill, there's really not. It's something that many of us have talked about for a while now, trying to come up with and define some metrics. There are bodies like the Illuminating Engineering Society, the International Commission on Elimination, that specify means of measuring, for more for designers, they don't really specify, for how do you establish a violation under one of these rules? For example, I remember dealing with some issues. Speaking of the UK, there's legislation. They're called the Clean Neighborhoods and Environmental Act of 2005. They were moving in the direction of it becoming increasingly specific, because it talks a little bit about lighting, but they didn't get to the point where they had something that was prescriptive. So, as Danny said, the councils have people who are out there trying to do the right thing, but they don't have a lot of guidance in the law or the rules follow from the law to tell them how to do it. So the law will make a vague statement about how you're supposed to be free from this form of nuisance that your neighbors are creating, but it doesn't say exactly what the threshold is.

John Barentine: 1:08:59

We do find over here in the US that more of the lighting codes are specifying numbers, so you can go out and take your light meter and, in principle, you can measure a number and that tells you whether or not a violation is taking place.

John Barentine: 1:09:14

But then we find that the people in the municipal governments that are assigned to enforce these things they don't know how to use the devices, they don't know what they measure, they receive no training in it, and all of this, I think, goes right back to this notion of whether the community supports us or not. If it does, they're going to bring the resources to enable disenforcement to proceed correctly. In my opinion, more often than not, it's something that's out of sight and out of mind for most people and cities are. You know, they're dealing with their own budget problems and they're saying that's just not something that we put a lot of priority on in terms of enforcement, and they just don't really do it. At the end of the day, how can we change the laws to make them more transparent? How can we train the people who need to go make the measurements and have people understand what the rights and responsibilities are under the law? To me, that's the big challenge.

Bill McGeeney: 1:10:07

Yeah, good points, john. I hope we can get persuasive people here. Continuing on to other news, the past guest, karim Ashveraglu, mentioned to be on the lookout for this great news and we have a really good video from BBC over in your neck of the woods, danny, for the lighting of a priestine in Norton, when they turn the lights down and switch some of them off, and I have the video in our show notes here and I'm sure you guys have already seen, danny, I know you've seen it. There's a point in the video where the BBC does a side by side of the before and after the changes is really jaw-dropping, and added to that, I love what the mayor said here. So the mayor of Pristine and I'm saying that Pristine right.

Dani Robertson: 1:10:52

Pristine, yeah, Pristine okay.

Bill McGeeney: 1:10:54

Pristine Norton, beverly Bottom, even boasted about the fact that the street lighting improvements, be that amber in color and reduced in brightness, and lower cost LEDs, the community is still able to fully utilize this roadside lighting while at the same time protecting night sky. And that's the mayor that said that about community. I thought that was pretty neat. That was a pretty neat little add-on to a great accomplishment, so congratulations to all who worked in that space. Here's what I want to get your guys' thoughts on. When I heard the title New Glow in the Dark Park now open I thought, oh wow, glow in the Dark Park, that sounds great. I know I put Glow in the Dark Tape on every single one of my Xiaomi pieces of equipment so that way I don't trip over them. It would be kind of neat to go to Glow in the Dark Park. But no, that's not what we're talking about here. It means colored LED strings.

Bill McGeeney: 1:11:43

The park recently opened in Dallas and it uses colorful LED strips to allow kids to play at night, which makes sense given the oppressive summertime temperatures in that area. One thing that can't be said about Joya Longgood Park is that it wasn't well thought out from a child's perspective. The strips adding a rotating color ambience. It's in line with an auto-changing LED control. If you're a kid, I think you'd find this to be pretty neat. What are your thoughts from a Star Sky, dark Sky perspective on this? What are your thoughts on this? I have no idea on this one. I looked at it and I'm just like it's interesting.

Dani Robertson: 1:12:18

I think it's quite sad that children have to have a place illuminated because of, essentially, climate change. The earth is becoming too hot for children to go outside, so we're going to burn more energy. It's going to make it possible for children to go outside and play in a park. They've done something similar in Dubai with their beaches. They now flood light beaches and the sea because it's become too hot for people to go out Once the beach in the daytime. It's going to have an impact on the biodiversity. It's going to have an impact on other things which all feed into the climate change cycle. It just makes the situation worse and it just gets perpetually worse.

Dani Robertson: 1:12:54

We're denying a child's right to play is something it's quite hard to take a stance against that If they can't physically play outside at night. Children need to play Intrinsically as part of them becoming adults or becoming people themselves. They need to have access to play. I don't really know where the middle ground is on that. Perhaps a real glow-in-the-dark park? You can get these glow-in-the-dark footpaths and things now I don't know. What do you think, joni? What do you think, joni? Are you much more wise on these matters than I am?

John Barentine: 1:13:27

For me, there is a middle ground here. It reminds me, too, about the use of what they call colorful and dynamic lighting. That's the label they're putting on it now. I also think that things like holiday lighting fall into this category as well. It's something that people like, and if we push too hard on this, there will be a negative public reaction. Nobody wants to be the ones that tell people that they can't have their lights around Christmas, for example.

John Barentine: 1:13:56

Your points are absolutely well taken. It's unfortunate that society won't deal with the bigger problem that's pushing the time that kids can play outside to the nighttime hours, because that's the only time that it's cool enough to do it. I think this is a teachable moment. On the one hand, we don't need any more light in the nighttime environment. On the other hand, I would rather have this sort of thing, probably, than a football stadium where they leave the lights on all night long because they're trying to grow the grass. I mean, there are extremes to this, but this would be a great opportunity to talk about what this light does.

John Barentine: 1:14:30

I think the parents are probably going to realize after a while that maybe that's a little too activating for kids after dark, but if they kept towards the warmer colors and the intensity of the light didn't look like it was really all that high. There's a moment here where we could have a conversation with the community about the relative value of this, while putting it into a bigger context and saying we have to be mindful that we don't go overboard, that we're looking at the color of light, etc. And that we can cater to something that people want and increasingly they need in order to extend the day, to do things during the evening that are now not possible during the day, but not going too far in the other direction. So they think that there's no consequence to using this resource. That's how I would approach it.

Bill McGeeney: 1:15:16

And I mean we're talking about kids here, so how late would they be playing? You're not going to be playing until like midnight, right? I mean, this is these. We're not talking about big hits, I'm just for you at home, we're talking about little kids. You know, elementary school level. It's a playground, really neat setup. They have a really well-fought out setup. But yeah, it does beg the question. All the questions and responses here today, I mean I think you guys have covered a good bunch of that field. I watched that video.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:15:46

I mean, thank you both, danny and John, for what you shared. It left me feeling I had a question about, you know, sensory stimulation and what's happening with a child at night and even in the morning if, like the first thing that's happening, the light's going on. I'm really sensitive to that and myself. Will it stay as a children's park? Will it morph into something else? Does it collect what, what? What collects around it? Because certainly the man who spearheaded it had wonderful intentions and is looking for a solution to something that he saw as a dire situation but maybe didn't have all of this. You know, information that we have access to, which is what artificial light at night can do and can harm.

Bill McGeeney: 1:16:34

Mary, what if they turned off the park at like 10 o'clock? Would that be a fair compromise in there?

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:16:40

And I think so. I think gosh, I don't want to admit, but yes, of course, we are, as a humanity, in this place where we have to make compromises in order to regain our health. I don't ever want to have the feeling that there isn't a way through a challenging situation, because I think the most important thing for me in my work has been to affirm the human being standing at the center of our thought about the environment in which we find ourselves. What would it be if, instead of placing emphasis on the insignificance of the human being, which I mentioned earlier, that instead we said you know, we are at the center of our understanding about our environment? It might we act differently if we could say all right, what's happening in our environment, we're not subject to it as victims. There's not randomness operating in such a way that we have to protect ourselves from some chaos, but that we ourselves are participating in creating it. It happens through us, not to us.

Bill McGeeney: 1:17:39

I think that goes back to John's earlier point that in order to really have perspective on community awareness on the issue, you have to kind of, you have to bring it back to being pollution, right, you have to really frame it and define it as what it is and that's actual environmental pollutant. Well, mary, you, you bring up a really good and I want to use this transition to the next one because you bring up a really good piece on us, right On on us and who we are and how we impact everything around us. A violinist named Ariana Kim performed at the Great Northern Festival, a wintertime series of events that promote fun and create creative ways to enjoy the cold days in St Paul, minnesota. What makes Kim's performs interesting is that Kim attempted to create a sensory experience. The 90 minute performance titled Light, sea, dark here premiered Steve Heitzig's composition that apparently was partially inspired by sounds made on a Minnesota winter night.

Bill McGeeney: 1:18:45

The performance involved two pieces. The first part guess where, given earplugs, from what I gather, no different from any of the phone ones you'll pick up at a CVS or Walgreens, and attendees then explore the gallery, in complete silence, of the legendary African American photographer and director, gordon Parks. American Gothic photographs. If you're not familiar with the name, gordon Park, the think of the movie shaft. Following this, attendees were ushered to a theater where they took in Kim's performance in perfect darkness, and the author of the event, david Tim, found that that the event did not focus an individual's attention solely on seeing in light and listening in dark. Instead, tim found himself honing in on the imperfections of silence and the imperfections of darkness. Specifically, Tim mentions his ears becoming obsessed with the home of the theater's heater while wearing earplugs, and he mentions that his eyes became fixated with the light trespass leaking from into the room from other areas during a performance. So this kind of sensory experience, mary, this is kind of what you're talking about, right?

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:19:54

Yeah, I mean yes. What it pointed out to me is something that I was musing about this morning is that, like, turning off the outer light is one step, but then and this pushes into kind of the metaphysical or spiritual turning on an inner light, which is a totally different experience, but to be distracted by the sound of the heater or the light streaming in it. To me it was that it's like there's a distraction operating there. That that reveals that maybe as an individual, this person wasn't necessarily able to center in the self, and I don't want to make an unfair judgment. So I mean, I've certainly been in that situation myself, but it made me ask the question what is the the power of an after image? So when I go through a light polluted environment or I'm in a cityscape that might be well lit, what is happening after that in terms of my sense of self and well being? And how could that be a part of this conversation?

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:21:02

I'm working with a group of folks that are art therapists, and what they call their art therapy is metal color light therapy, and it's glass that's made with metal oxides. You go through a process where the only light that you see coming through this glass is the light of the sun, not directly, but just you have a room and the light will pour in, and then you cover it and and immerse yourself in the dark, in what rises up in the after image, and so this is kind of a meditative practice, but it also stirs the question what? What is it that is living in me that responds to light and to dark? And if I'm never exposed to dark in a healthy way, am I otherwise finding opportunities for, to develop that which develops there? So for me I call that an active imagination, which is not just to make believe, but the kind of thinking that we engage in when we don't know what we're dealing with and if we never are exposed to environments where we can actually kind of try to develop a way to like literally see in the dark out of a sense of self.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:22:13

I think this is why we this is how we get to places where now we've got neighbors fighting with each other, right, like it's. Maybe that's a leap to take. But how can an inner practice and an inner sense of after image of light and dark inform me when I'm moving through my environment? And not only if we are affecting our physical environment, but if I were to step into looking from the perspective of ancient cultures that recognized a soul and spirit nature of being human and used their sense of the harmony of the celestial environment to inform all activity in the physical world, what might that look like if I brought that into consideration again?

Bill McGeeney: 1:22:56

Yeah, mary, do you have a spiritual school somewhere that that we can? I feel like I'm I need to take a good week and go in dark faith in your, your spirituality somewhere, so if you can set that up, that'll be great.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:23:13

It's the night sky, right Right, just going out under the night sky.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:23:18

I thought that was a really cool little exhibit she tried to try to make, though yeah, I agree and really to, to give someone an immersive experience and and I love that kind of that inter sensory play, like normally here you would be seeing, but you'll be listening instead and trying to switch it so that you can get that sense that what is engaged, like at night.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:23:42

I find myself in a situation right now where when I get up at night, there's no light around me and it's pitch black, and so I think about this kind of philosophically or, yeah, a little bit more into the kind of metaphysical again, but when my eyes are open and I'm awake but I cannot see, what becomes of the sense of sight that seems to be engaged but isn't landing on objects that are made perceptible by light outside of me, what's happening in me that I can still sense my environment?

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:24:13

I can't call it sight and it's not necessarily touch, but there's something operating that allows me to to that there isn't another word to describe it to see my way, and I think that when we, when I think about light pollution, it's that kind of a sense that's being inhibited in human beings and that is as consequent as what's happening to the moths, what's happening to the earthworms, what's happening in all of our ecosystems. What's happening in the health and well being of our communities Like that inner sense is being diminished and again, it's not necessarily easy to measure it.

Bill McGeeney: 1:24:53

Yeah, I would think it's like an intuition. Is that kind of a corollary there?

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:24:57

It could be, I mean, but I think that for me it's much more conscious than an intuition can be. But do intuitions and inspirations come if we aren't ever in that environment? Like, how might we be inhibiting the great inspirations that have motivated some of the highest achievements in human culture that have many, many ways manifested as a result of human being striving to understand what is our relationship to this glorious celestial environment around us? It is all informed by perceived harmony and trying to manifest that as human beings on the earth.

Bill McGeeney: 1:25:35

Now, now, mary, we saw a play back in November, and I'm trying to remember what the name of it was, but it was essentially a play that a New York screenwriter or playwriter wrote, and it was about the life of Henrietta Levitt, the astronomer, essentially the John. Would you call them calculators? I don't know.

John Barentine: 1:26:00

Yeah, yeah, I saw the play you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, and they did Harvard calculators. They were right, people were making measurements and yeah.

Bill McGeeney: 1:26:09

And and Henrietta Levitt for you at home who aren't as familiar figured out essentially the missing link to identify the distance of space, the difference of stars, and the piece probably wasn't as factual as it tried to be, but it put on a good show and the thing I loved about it was how it actually kind of glorified what you just said, mary, that inspiration and her inspiration, her guiding, her guiding frame was always to kind of look up at the stars and it romanticized that and it made kind of like the nostalgic theme of the whole play. And it was, it was a good play, it was very enjoyable. And, john, do you remember the name? Oh gosh, I'd have to look it up. Bill, it's all right, yeah, but I know I have it out on the Reddit page, so if anyone wants to scroll through Reddit, you can go and see it over there. But yeah, that it's exactly what you're saying, mary. You know, having that inspiration and having having that connection to who you are and being able to pull from it.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:27:10

Yeah, and when I was, you know you sent us some great information to get ready for having these conversations and I found myself I can't help it. It's just something that I do, but in everything that I was reading there was a poem popping up or a constellation story or something that's really trying to understand. The night sky is so engaging and so enlivening it. Just the stars are in everything and it's kind of a way of reading human life on the earth. You know, we think about the earth beneath our feet, but it is in a celestial environment, it is a celestial body in its environment. And what are we doing when we are not only affecting the habitat here on the earth and our own capacity to see the stars, but what about the earth's relationship to its own neighbors? I mean, this might seem like a really strange question to ask, and yet, what consequence might we be having in a much larger way around? What becomes? What becomes of earth?

Bill McGeeney: 1:28:08

I love it. Well, let's let's move on to, since we're talking about sensory experiences. I know Danny's over here trying to, trying to get ready for tonight, because previously you guys, in the past couple of weeks, you had three communities in Cumbria that did a big switch off, and were you part of that, danny?

Dani Robertson: 1:28:25

No, that's over in England.

Bill McGeeney: 1:28:27

Okay, okay, and so the big switch off for your home is an annual event? I think this just blows my mind. I mean, it doesn't matter the size of the community. This event is just mind boggling. The big switch off is an annual event coordinated by the friends of the Lake district, a large public land area in Cumbria, to raise awareness on energy savings and promote stepping outside to see the stars. The event tries to promote dark sky tourism by enticing businesses and homeowners to turn off their street lights for one night. This year, in addition to ambleside and grass mirror, keswick joined the fund. The event comes with free activities, which include photography, astronomy and simple constellation matching. Danny, I know this is your wheelhouse. I reached out to Jack LRB, who I'm sure you're familiar with Yep.

Bill McGeeney: 1:29:17

He provided me some great information on the actual activity. It looks like an interesting experiment and, honestly, in the age of experientialism, which is a term that I just created I think you can credit me and I'll copyright it later where everything is an experience, right Like we live in this day and age, just like this playground we're talking about is an experience. Now, kids get to have an experience in the playgrounds. We're very much about having Mary to what you've just been saying, having these moments where we kind of look at ourselves a bit. So I feel like this may be something that people experience for the first time and it's given people an opportunity. So you haven't partaken in a big switch off, but have you actually been to any of these events, danny?

Dani Robertson: 1:30:04

I haven't been to an event like this. But Lake District is they've got a lot bigger towns, it's a lot more light-poleted, so they jack-o-work really, really hard there to do what you can, and he does amazing stuff actually to make it part of people's festive celebrations. So I think it's really, really effective what he does there. It does get a lot of, I guess, picked up a lot and it gets a lot of attention, rightly so. I think it's a really good way of doing things.

Dani Robertson: 1:30:31

Whereas we have Welsh Dark Skies Week so the whole of Wales as a country we've just had our, I say, week. It kind of merged into three weeks so we've got events happening all the time all over Wales and it is it's about this experiences, it's about helping people experience darkness, and I try and get people to understand that it's about more than just the stars, so it's about darkness as the whole. So going out into the nighttime and experiencing natural night time, natural darkness, whether it is starry up there or cloudy, because we live in Wales and it's cloudy quite a lot. So it is about it's about having that completely, I guess, going back to what Mary was saying about enveloping yourself in darkness, because we don't experience that anymore. So 98% of people in the UK are living under heavily polluted skies, so they're always so excited and there is an element as well of people, especially women and children, of being out at night. It feels very like a risk taking. It feels like a bit of an adventure for them, so-.

Bill McGeeney: 1:31:36

Like a badass.

Dani Robertson: 1:31:38

Yeah, they love it. They love that experiences. And we have one tomorrow night where we're hiking out into the middle of the dark sky reserve in a ready and people are just. I can't. I cannot run enough events for people. They are so happy to be there. They're so excited to go out at night. I'm inundated with people wanting to join our events.

Bill McGeeney: 1:31:57

Wow, that's great, and-.

Dani Robertson: 1:31:59

It is amazing.

Bill McGeeney: 1:32:00

I always wonder, you know, when you do these events at night? Part of it is because simply the unknown, because they obviously you lose your sense of vision to a degree. You can still see pretty well once they adapt, but maybe not under cloudy skies or where you're at, danny, but you lose it to a point. But other senses pick up the paint. They pick it up Like when you're out, they just you know. Your audio senses go wild right. Your tactile senses go kind of crazy. Everything gets amped up to pick up where your visual sense and many people probably don't experience that anymore.

Dani Robertson: 1:32:38

No, they don't, and I've read John probably knows better than I do I think it was like a third of Americans don't even use their night vision anymore, or it's somewhere around that. But people are definitely very excited to be outside and we try to take people again. We meet them before sunset so they get to experience the sunset, they get to see the environment as it looks at daytime, so they can build up that confidence. And we basically encourage them or challenge them to not turn on their torches, their head torches, for as long as possible. And so many of them will then be walking through the night and they'll be like I haven't got my head torch on and I'm like, yeah, you don't need it, do you, Because your eyes are kicked in. And then I can't believe how much I can see, how much I can hear. They'll hear owls, We'll see things like badges you know, knocked it or well done.

Dani Robertson: 1:33:25

And they just love it. They're just mad for it, so it's really positive experience.

Bill McGeeney: 1:33:30

I always say that's what I love about being outside at night is you get to hear everything. We have a screech, ale not too far from here in a great horned ale that's not too far and you know just listening to the ecology Foxes. Foxes are fun.

Bill McGeeney: 1:33:43

They're a little terrifying to hear at first but they're kind of fun to hear, you know, it's just it's fun to hear it, it's fun to hear all the activities. It's like a party. I know Bonnie we had Bonnie hang on before and she mentioned as a party at night for the animal. So it's kind of interesting. So I want to take our last breather here this would be last one of the afternoon and I remind you at home to be sure to follow us on Instagram at lightpollutionnews, or over at LinkedIn at light pollution news. We have a Reddit page, r slash light pollution news, where you can find there's an awareness petition I put up to help a student from an Illinois college generate awareness on the issue of light pollution. There's another piece that Diane Ternscheck sent my way to, a helpful guide on how to broach conversation with your local officials. So there's a lot of good stuff over there and feel free to check in and subscribe to that page.

Bill McGeeney: 1:34:31

And if you are enjoying what we do here, I ask you to take a few seconds. Either give us a five star review or five star, give us a five star rating, or provide a review wherever. Whatever service you're using, shares and likes do help. So before we go any further, danny, and as I mentioned before. I'm reading your book only, sad to say it, fourth of the way through, which I would have been more all through the night. It's just, it's a really straightforward book and I like your quick wit. It's very, very, very noticeable and it comes through on, I think, even some of your, your pieces that are meant to just to be straight talk Now, granny, I'm moving to a snail space, but you mentioned your sister had a particular fear of the dark.

Dani Robertson: 1:35:12

Yeah, Is she still?

Bill McGeeney: 1:35:13

does she come visit you out in the room?

Dani Robertson: 1:35:17

So, yeah, growing up we shared a room, so it was emotional because she would insist on having the light on through the night, because she was absolutely terrified of the dark and I think it's quite a natural fear for a lot of people and she still has.

Dani Robertson: 1:35:31

She still sleeps, with a little night Like I should probably not say like in public without asking her, sorry. I have two sisters, you don't know which one it is, so but she does actually come out with me so she comes and helps me with my dark-skine monitoring and she's come out to events and things now, which is really good. And I think there is a difference in her mind now with natural nighttime being outside and the darkness you feel when you just it's that suddenness of flicking a switch in your home and suddenly it's plunged into darkness. I feel like that's the issue for her in her mind is that it doesn't go from nice sunset down into a nice light. It's just that it's a bam. Instantly it's gone, isn't it? So I think that's the scary thing for her. But no, she loves coming out with me. Now I drag her out all the time. She's a cures in that sense.

Bill McGeeney: 1:36:20

Well, that's great to hear. So how about this book? Why don't you tell me much more about the book? Where did the impetus to write it actually come from?

Dani Robertson: 1:36:30

I think, just because I want more people to know about light pollution, I want people to take it seriously, and I'm doing all this work across canary, across Wales, as much as I can, but you can only get yourself in front of so many people. So I had started writing and also my job is so cool, like I was, like I have the best job in the world.

Bill McGeeney: 1:36:50

I've got a lot of work to do. You honestly have probably one of the coolest jobs I've ever come across and I'm saying that, danny, there's, and I'm being honest here. I remember another cool job it came across is when I was I did a. I was biking the Columbia Park Icefields Parkway up in Alberta and I was doing a multi-day trip on that and it came across these road crew who would propel down drill holes, stick dynamite in a rock and then blow up the rocks and a rock wouldn't fall on the road. And you know I mean, right there, you're up at that category in my book.

Dani Robertson: 1:37:24

Yeah, I am. Just. I'm very aware that my job is really cool and I don't know how long this job will last. So I just wanted to make the most and write down the things that we're doing and just to share those experiences with people. But also I just thought that it's weird because people like me don't tend to work for national parks. I come from a poor background. I grew up in a council estate. Hugely likely I hadn't set foot in a national park until I was about 21. So you know, there's someone like me. To be now working for a national park is odd. There's not many people like me in the national parks in the UK, so it might be interesting to people to see that we do need these other perspectives.

Dani Robertson: 1:38:08

But yeah, the book is just there because I want people to fall in love with the night. I want them to fall in love with darkness, not just the stars, understand how much darkness means to all of us, and in Wales darkness is a part of us. We're very comfortable with darkness, I find in Wales, compared to even England, just over the border, because we have got quite a lot more of rural land. The book I wanted to call it Arhe de Norse, which means all through the night. So that's where the name comes from, because we've got a famous hymn called Arhe de Norse in Wales and it gets sung at our rugby matches. So if you've ever watched rugby which is like American football but more interesting because it doesn't stop every five seconds- yeah, you said, it's true, it's true.

Dani Robertson: 1:38:50

You will hear them singing Arhe de Norse, which means all through the night, and there's some lovely, amazing lines in that story about the Milky Way and how amazing the stars are and how darkness is part of us as a country. So that's where the title came from and I just feel like darkness has just been such a part of my life without me even realizing it. So I just wanted to share that story with people and I just got very, very lucky that a publisher came across me and thought that I was interesting in there to write a book which I hadn't done before. So that's how it came about and hope you people are enjoying it. And I just wanted it to be a book from a normal person's perspective. I am just your average person and in environmentalism, in climate change and things like that, it's normal people who are going to have to make changes and it's as you get impacted by the decisions of the people who are higher than us. So I think it's interesting not interesting, maybe interesting, but important to hear from normal people.

Bill McGeeney: 1:39:55

I have one last question on the book and then I want you to be able to plug it. Do you think because you do speak about that, you speak about directly on the women front? Do you think that society, and in messaging from society, disadvantages women when it comes to dark skies?

Dani Robertson: 1:40:13

Absolutely, I think it does. In the UK we are told as soon as you can walk, you don't go out at night, you don't go out alone. We're not expected to go out at all after dark. We feel very much restrained, we feel very much tied to having to stay inside. We get less access to leisure time because of that, Because in the UK, being so far north, we have really long winter nights, so for a long time in winter a lot of women can't access the outdoors because we're being told by society not to go out. If we do go out and we are murdered, it's our fault somehow. But that's the messaging that we get all the time and it shouldn't be that way. It shouldn't be that way at all. And I'm trying to show people that it's not darkness, it's not darkness, it's fault. Darkness isn't going to hurt me as a woman. It's the actions of people that will hurt me. But darkness is being given the blame, isn't it? Or all the horrible things that people do to each other.

Bill McGeeney: 1:41:11

All right. Well, Danny, where can a listener find your book? And yeah, why don't you tell us where they can actually find you?

Dani Robertson: 1:41:17

People can find my book at all good book shops. I believe that's the line. You can Google DannyDarkskys, because that's what I get called in my job, and it will come up with my Twitter and on my Instagram and I've also got a little link tree website things and you can find a link to the book on there If you would like to read it. I'm assuming you can find it in libraries as well. Go and support your local library because libraries are the best. I hope people read it and I hope people enjoy it. And I don't know, I'm not very good at self-promotion so I'm literally squirming.

Bill McGeeney: 1:41:58

Well, moving on, John. Hey, John, I know you're always cooking up something. Is there anything new coming down to Pipeline?

John Barentine: 1:42:05

Oh, there's always something going on, bill. I think the thing that's probably next is kind of a follow on to what we did for IUCN is I'm working with some folks in their Marine Turtles specialist group and we're going to later on this year publish a pretty major practitioners guide for sea turtle conservation and it has a big chapter we're writing on everything to do with artificial light, so it's been a real pleasure to work with those people and learn a lot more about how it affects marine turtles.

Bill McGeeney: 1:42:36

I'm sure Danny's going to be excited to read it.

Dani Robertson: 1:42:38

That's always the tale of this, isn't it?

John Barentine: 1:42:41

Yes, yes the famous Welsh sea turtles. I've got a lot of research going on, working with organizations like American Astronomical Society, international Astronomical Union, dercis International, and people know that I'm a freelance consultant as well. They can always find me dercskrackconsultingcom. I'm at John Berentine on X, which I will never call X. I will always call it Twitter, and that's probably the best way to find me.

Bill McGeeney: 1:43:07

OK and Mary, how can people learn more? How can people actually listen to your show over on interlock and radio?

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:43:13

Yeah, so I have a website, thestorytellersnightskycom, which is a long name for a website, but if you Google Mary Stuart Adams, you can find me and I every week have a one minute and 50 second radio program that I also post on podcasts that you can get wherever you listen to podcasts, and what I do in that is take the storyteller's perspective on the night sky and just access whatever I can from the cultural arts of humanity to say here's a story this week. So, like this week, it's leap year, right. So looking at what is this? It's not a quirk in our calendar, but this decision around calendar making that we insert this extra day every four years, and how does that lend itself to storytelling and what is it? What's changing in our relationship to our environment when we all of a sudden have an extra day? I mean, these are places where I like to spend my thought. So you can find me at storytellersnightsky, you can find me on interlock and public radio. You can find me on podcasts, wherever you listen.

Bill McGeeney: 1:44:16

Great, yeah, Mary, and I think the weather was able to figure out the calendar. Here in Philly we lost one month of winter about now four years ago. I'm your host, Bill McGeehaney, reminding you only to shine the light where is needed. Hope you and yours have a great month and it cuts off anymore Like it's a dead end and goes right to spring. And so spring will be here next week and we're recording for you at home. We're recording in the last week of February here, and so it's going to be here. It's going to be, like you know, 60s all the way through. So I think I've read the calendar, I think it knows what's going on. But anyway, I only have a couple more stories here and then we'll finish up and we'll get everyone home. And first I want to bring up this interesting piece here and it's kind of up your alley, Mary, and what you were just talking about with the calendar.

Bill McGeeney: 1:45:10

It's an interesting study on antiquity. It's something near and dear to my heart as a history nerd. I love history of all types.

Bill McGeeney: 1:45:16

A study looked at how visibility at night impacted ancient Mediterranean seafaring. Among some of the obvious things you would expect, namely that sizable number of small, medium-sized vessels pilotaged across ancient land or adjacent to ancient landmass, that is to say, the ships followed a path along the coast. Others ventured to cross at night, utilizing the moon for light when available. Typically, the sailors would attempt to fixate their path in relationship to Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, what astronomers recognize as the polar north. Then sailors proceeded to divide the sky into sexers to identify the changes in latitude.

Bill McGeeney: 1:45:57

The Greeks predominantly utilized Ursa Major, which is made up of partly imparted by the notable Big Dipper, asterism, While the Phoenicians the same people who gave us the word guerrilla, opted to utilize Ursa Minor, commonly seen today in what we say is the Little Dipper. In fact, the starry sky played such an important role that select bright stars were featured in pottery depictions of the time, in this case around the 8th century BCE. So our connection to night never ceases to amaze me, and this past heritage that we seem to just it doesn't seem to carry forward much. It just is kind of, I guess, as a charm, a historical charm, to see how people use night as a tool.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:46:44

I thought of the compass rose and how the compass rose and the names of the winds on the first historical records of a compass rose, at least in the Western hemisphere.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:46:55

There's a certain place on the Amalfi coast of Italy where all of the names of the winds make sense, you know the one that comes down from the mountain and the one that's coming up from the desert.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:47:04

So if you're in that place, but this seems to be appearing around the time of the Crusades, when you have Europeans going over toward the Middle East and even further East, where you have nomadic peoples that are moving around in the desert and at night marking the rising and setting the rising, particularly of a certain group of stars, and then they're setting and using this to navigate not by water but by land.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:47:34

And it's just this. To me, it's this fascinating kind of coincidence of cultures where using the stars, using something like the name of the winds using or the directions that the winds are coming from, as a way to define where am I on the earth and how does the North and its North star differ from what I find in the South? Until the age of discovery, and like the 15th or 16th century, there's this idea that there's nothing but monsters below the equator. And so you have all these monsters in the night sky, at least in Western astronomical lore. It's like all the monsters there below the equator, like all the heroes there up above, and this just is so telling about cultural belief and how we make our way around the globe. It's fascinating.

Bill McGeeney: 1:48:26

And we utilize it legitimately, like you said. Where you're using it as a tool, they're relying on it for life or death.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:48:32

Yeah, wayfinding, I mean it's yeah, here in the Great Lakes region. Most of the indigenous peoples here were coastal navigators. They're going along the shore so they're not reliant on the stars. Nonetheless, when it comes to doing ceremonial right, then it's waxing and waning of moon rising and setting of particular stars, that kind of more activity that goes into an expression of ritual belief about the divine that was informed by the stars, but then this navigation at night. They were just reliant on the land, at least in this environment where I am in Michigan.

Bill McGeeney: 1:49:07

Right, yeah, I know I had Travis Navisquiel and earlier talking about the Minnesota and Dakota regions and their native history around the storytelling with the Aurora Borealis and some of these other you know, nice sky phenomenons, so it's just always interesting stuff that we don't hear enough of, you know, and I think that to me those are always enjoyable books as well.

Bill McGeeney: 1:49:31

So, lastly, since we're on, don't mean to say fiction there, sorry, apologize since, but we are going to talk fiction now Since we are on lore. Orion in the Dark is coming to Netflix, and for those of you like myself, I wasn't really aware of Orion in the Dark. It's a new animated series based on children's book by Emma Yarlott, adapted to film by Charlie Kaufman. The overarching theme is to confront and conquer one's fears, in this case by literally meeting the character Dark. And then there are many themes within the story, but one that I did want to hit on is how Orion's fear extinguished Dark and left people only with light. Who exhausted himself? Working 24 seven, created a environment of sleepless, overheated people. This film, actually, I think, is out now, and I'm curious if any of you guys have Netflix, have you guys been able to watch it? Have you guys ever seen it? Or?

Dani Robertson: 1:50:23

I haven't seen it yet because it's not available in the UK yet, but I have seen the trader for it and it does look it's in it's picks. Is it picks up, is it?

Bill McGeeney: 1:50:34

I don't know, I'm not sure.

Dani Robertson: 1:50:35

All the time, isn't it? So it looks quite, it looks, it looks cool. I'm excited to see it.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:50:41

I didn't see it yet either, but I noted the date that it said it was released, which was February 2nd, which is the cross quarter day. It's the halfway point in the winter season, which is traditionally celebrated as a time of inner light.

Bill McGeeney: 1:50:55

I'm sure they planned that.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:50:56

I mean, is it coincidence? You know it's, it's really interesting like that day, hey, those are the kinds of things that I look for. Dates and numbers and distance dates. It's like, oh, that's a, that's a rhythm in the cycle of the year. There's something that that former cultures are reading at that time of year to determine, like when is the spring going to come? If you look at the phase of the moon at the halfway point in the winter, you can predict when the saps are going to rise. You know, it's like really reading the environment. And but now we have this, you know we have movie being released that day.

Bill McGeeney: 1:51:28

I mean, you know, mary, we're almost coming up on the eyes of March right, and the eyes of March historically, well, culturally, historically, you know, is something that if you lived about 500 years ago you would, you would know what eyes are, but you don't live like nowadays. We don't have an idea of what an eyes, it's just a saying to us.

Dani Robertson: 1:51:51

I think this is American. We don't have that.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:51:54

The eyes of March. Well, I think it comes to just probably most made most famous in Shakespeare. But it's because he has. He was a dewy. A Caesar is warned beware the eyes of March, which nowadays everybody thinks, oh, march 15th. But that's not correct. The eyes are actually the time of the full moon and so if the moon is not new at the beginning of March, then March 15th will not be.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:52:18

The eyes right. So we've, like, culturally, it's been lost. What is that definition? So it's coming from much earlier in time, when and I think if I alluded to before I was one of these people that was referred to as a calendar the callons Like you would go into the, into the town square, and you would announce the day, because we needed to know whether it was the day that you paid your taxes or you did your religious ceremony or you would. You know there were certain things that would happen and somebody would be keeping track based on the rhythm of the moon and its relationship with earth and sun. And it's fascinating, yeah, so the eyes comes out of the nones and the eyes and the yeah, how the system gets built.

Bill McGeeney: 1:52:59

But before we go tonight, just wanna congratulate the hard work that led to the following new designations the Pinch Tiger Reserve, which became India's first dark sky park and it has been a lot of pushing India. There were a lot of it seems to be a lot of energy down there to get some dark sky locations. Jonestown, a new dark sky community in Texas. Oxford Forest Conservation Area, new Zealand's second international dark sky park. And Castle Valley, utah, the state's fourth dark sky community. I wanna thank my guest, mary, john, danny, thank you for all showing up today, really appreciate it. You know this. You guys have been phenomenal, as always. John, it's always great to see you, danny, I'm loving the book, and Mary, it's my pleasure. This has been great. You pretty much put me through a clinic here on dark spirituality. This is great.

Mary Stewart Adams: 1:53:53

Well, thanks for the invitation, Thanks for all your research and preparation. It was a pleasure to be here.

Bill McGeeney: 1:53:57

I wanna thank you at home for taking the time to be with us. As a reminder, light pollution news is recorded on the last Sunday of every month and released on the first week of every month. You can find all the details from this show over at light pollution newscom, where the script will be posted along with all of our links from today's show. Thank you once more. I'm your host, bill McGeehany, and remember to only shine a light where it's needed.