Why Even New Streetlights Make Me Happy?

Because we might be living in the End Times, even if I don’t get a spot on the ark with John Cusack.

I can see!

Recently I came home and noticed something was different. The streetlight just opposite my bedroom window had changed color. I actually don’t mind having a light shining there…it’s my night light in the sky. It illuminates the guest parking and allows me to admire the front garden when I come home at 2 AM. It also had that unpleasant orange tinge which turns the world gray and really brings out my green porchlight. Growing up in the Valley, it’s a color as familiar as the dark blue of the zenith over LA, and I feel I’m getting some of my money’s worth from the G when it snaps on like clockwork at sundown.

Now my streetlight is brilliant white, but not intensely painful to stare into, an integrated circuit torn from the surface of the Moon. The new light casts a perfect circle onto my street and just edges the front of the house. Best of all, you can hardly notice it from the sides, and from the back it’s almost impossible to see. Astronomers love these lights for eliminating the light pollution that interferes with their telescopes; as a benefit we get more stars to steer by in the flatlands, something we only notice in California when the desert winds blow, or earthquakes kill the power.

It’s an LED light; the City of Los Angeles, like many, finds an efficient and easy way to save money by replacing all the old mercury and sodium lights with these. They have no reflectors, sending their light directly at the ground, and color has returned under them. If you live in the service area of the DWP, look forward to yours…and get used to it. They use half the power and last three times as long. You can even give President Clinton a little credit for it. We shall see if you can blow one out with your mind. We shall see.

Here’s how they do it somewhere else:  LED Lighting in Barcelona