“As never before it is the duty of parents to train their children to behold the creatures of nature, which can never lose their identities because they can only be what they already are: the flowers ‘fresh and laughing as on the days of great battles’, the beasts who ‘walk the earth, ignorant, while their splendor lasts, of any weakness’, and, most of all, perhaps, the stars of the night sky, in all their unchanging majesty and stateliness of movement.” - Lessons of Nature by W.H. Auden
Back at the early part of this new century, Italian and American researchers said that because of light pollution, two-thirds of the world’s population, including 99% of the people who live in the United States, never really see a dark, starry sky…
It was an incredible storm that we experienced over the weekend. I would imagine some are still trying to dig themselves out. My wife was in Montreal over the weekend and said they received even more than we did.
“There will be storms, child / There will be storms / And with each tempest / You will seem to stand alone / Against cruel winds
“But with time, the rage and fury / Shall subside / And when the sky clears / You will find yourself / Clinging to someone / You would have never known / But for storms.” - Storms by Margie DeMerell
Who could forget the blackout we had some years back. For a few nights, we were blessed with a sky that was truly dark enough to be able to see stars, satellites passing by overhead, and even the occasional meteorite. I remember being outside on the front lawn with a telescope as we tried to see things city lights normally prevented us from seeing.
One of the writings I featured in the radio show tonight is called Skylights by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
“There are one-storey intellects, two-storey intellects, and three-storey intellects with skylights.
All fact collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-storey men.
Two-storey men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact collectors as well as their own.
Three-storey men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight.”
- excerpt from The Treasure Chest, edited by Charles L. Wallis, and published in 1965 by Harper and Row, publishers
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Don Jackson
