Vakkotaur

[Poll #1536458]

I bought a couple incandescent light bulbs. One of the small bulbs in the fridge went out and since it was a physically smaller bulb, there wasn't a ready replacement in the big box o' bulbs in the basement from when we converted to CFL. Given the size requirement and environment, a switch to CFL wasn't an option. So a direct replacement was bought and made. I think it's also been over a year since I changed any bulb.

When I was a kid the Christmas tree at home had a couple strings of large lights. Not huge, but certainly not the little mini or submini lights became common. I think these were the C7 size. As that's what I grew up with, that's what I tend to think of as the default "right" size for Christmas lights. The minis aren't bad, just not what I think of first.

I also recall seeing some rather large bulbs that my grandparents had. These were likely for outdoor display given the size. They also were fancy looking, with a neat twist or swirl to the glass. I don't recall ever seeing these lights used. I think I asked about them once and was told that the string was too old (and worn) to be trusted.

The city of Fairmont is also the electric utility provider and this year had (or has, for a few more days) a rebate program for Compact Fluorescent Lights. This was a really good deal and jmaynard and I took advantage of it to change almost every bulb in the house. When I last visited the City offices to pay the utility bill I saw they had another, more seasonal, rebate program. It would mean a few dollars off of the purchase of a new LED string of Christmas lights. We don't put up any lights for Christmas (we're always somewhere else anyway) so we didn't take advantage of this program.

I saw some of these LED Christmas lights and was a bit amused at a solution to an obvious LED problem. LEDs are very directional. That's great for things like flashlights, but lousy for things like decorative lights. The solution is to have the LED illuminate a plastic envelope (not solid plastic when only the shell is really needed) to disperse the light. Further, the envelope is faceted to further disperse the light. The result is a large (about C7 sized) fancy looking envelope.

Most LED lights that are meant to replace incandescent lights are too dim, and are generally too directional. So far the biggest change has just been flashlights. But the LED light strings make a lot of sense. LEDs are now bright enough to work in that application if not for general illumination. They run cool, so lighting based fire hazard is reduced, and of course they also use less energy than incandescent lights. And they are truly solid state, so they are going to last long time. That to make them workable means a fancy-looking plastic envelope of about C7 size certainly doesn't hurt, at least in my opinion.

Streetlight.

What did you just picture? A bright somewhat orange light? A bright pure yellow light? A stark blue light that seems to be at once too bright and too dim?

The first thing I picture is generally that last choice, the bluish mercury vapor light that was the only streetlight I saw around when I was quite young. They cast light, and could seem bright, yet somehow also seemed dim. It's probably that the light was mostly blue. One result was that holiday decorations that were put up on the light poles really stood out. They were bright and brightened up the pole they were on.

I remember, somewhat, the old decorations, curved somewhat spiral wreath-like things with lights inside colored plastic globes. These were the most common decorations in Merrill. At one entrance into town there was another item, it was made to look like a candle in a holder, and also a sign that vertically spelled out NOEL. Downtown, there was one corner where a string of lights was strung overhead, diagonally across the intersection. All that looked impressive at the time, the streetlights still gave the light, but the decorations stood out.

Then came the sodium vapor lamps. These have some advantages. They're cheaper. They give more light. They don't use mercury. The low pressure type are a pure yellow, the high pressure type are more broad-spectrum (whiter) but have a bit of orange to them. Merrill, like many other places, switched to the sodium vapor lamps. Merrill also got different holiday decorations.

It was rather disappointing to look at. Part of that is the change of decorations are a change away from my childhood memories. The old decorations likely were in bad need of replacement, but they're what I remember. The other part is that all decorations seem washed out when bathed in the bright sodium vapor light. In that downtown area, not only were the mercury vapor lamps replaced with sodium vapor lamps, but there were now two lamps per pole, making things brighter still. With my interest in astronomy and a dark sky, I found such excess offensive and wasteful.

Moving to Fairmont, I still notice the decorations which are, of course, different. Pretty much all street lighting is now sodium vapor. I prefer the yellow low pressure sodium vapor rather than the high pressure. Some say it's unnatural. Well, it's bright light at night, of course it's unnatural. But low pressure is cheaper to run and maintain - and easier to filter out, something I consider important. The decorations hung from light poles are, like the ones in Merrill, washed out by the bright streetlights even though the decorations use exposed bulbs now.

Fairmont seems to do more with street-level decorations, having illuminated wire sculptures in parks. These stand out better than the pole-mounted things. Fairmont also feels more commercial, mainly from timing. Merrill would put up the decorations sometime in November, but would leave them unlit until the night of Thanksgiving. It made for more of a contrast in the season. Stores might do Christmas stuff early, but the decorations weren't lit until Thanksgiving.

Fairmont has a parade in November to start off its Christmas shopping season. This is done the weekend before Thanksgiving. The lights go on for or during the parade. The first Friday in December is another shopping event. While I like these for my chance to meet Gerry and the team of belgian horses again, if it weren't for that I'd likely not care. I was a bit surprised the first Winter here, when a parade blocked off the way I'd intended to get home from someplace (with my rapidly cooling supper) and also when the decorative lights were lit, to me, early.

When was the last time you experienced true darkness? Not evil, not bewilderment, but the utter absence of light. Chances are it wasn't recently, if at all.

During the day, well, there is daylight. And at night there is the moon or stars if the sky is clear. Also there are all the lights. Porch lights. Security lights. Advertising lights. Mercury vapor and sodium vapor lights. Automobile lights. Red lights on towers, or worse, strobe lights. That's outside. Some of those are necessary, but many are not.

Inside there can be darkness. The lights of night can be shut out with shades, or blinds. And the lamps can be switched off. At least the main ones can be. But chances are there is an electric clock which emits light, even if dimly. If there is a stereo system of some kind or a VCR, there is another light. Some phones will even blink. But these can be masked or covered. And then there is, finally, darkness.

I found, or perhaps I should say made, darkness last night. And I watched it. It wasn't dark in the dark. That is, it was not just an inky blackness to my eyes. This wasn't a matter of healthy eyes and vitamins from carrots giving me good dark-adaption. I was seeing something that wasn't quite really there.

If I close my eyes in light I can see, for a bit, the afterimage of the things of the last scene I viewed before closing my eyes. What I saw last night wasn't an identifiable afterimage. It was sort of the ghost of afterimages, slowly fading and growing less discernable. As time went on what had been a jumble of faint lines became more nebulous. There was a patchiness to the bits. What I saw had the eerie almost-there look of a faint nebula just on the edge of visibility. I wonder how much was afterimage and the slow chemical restoration at the ends of optic nerves and such and how much was processing noise of the eye-brain combination trying to get something as input.

There were other images or 'lights' as well. If I strained to aim my eyeballs far in one direction or another I could see flashes at the periphery of vision - something like can be seen from a powerful cough or sneeze, but not as pronounced.

The curious thing was that while I had complete absence of light, I didn't see the darkness. I saw my eyes trying to see. It was lighter than other less dark darknesses. That seems odd, but what I saw last night was a dim grayishness with lighter bits in it rather than blackness. Far away from artificial lights (a harder and harder place to find now, alas) I have seen a 'dark' sky punctuated with stars. Between the stars there was a blackness blacker than what I saw last night. But there was also starlight. I had stars to look at and to provide contrast with the places where they weren't. Perhaps light can be defined by dark, but dark is more defined by light, it seems.