Humans Destroying the Night Sky

In the movie The City Dark, people that care about the earth are concerned and revealing to the world through this documentary that people are destroying nature by using night ligths. Humans are supposed to be the smartest creatures above the earth, but what they chose to do is destroy the earth.  In reality, humans are the ones responsible for the world that we live in.

Before seeing the film, I didn’t realize why the birds were dying every day. I thought they died because they were sick, but I never asked what kind of sickness they have. I was surprised when I saw in the film how every year they found thousands of dead birds that were crashing into buildings. It was fascinating to see the turtles hatch, but it was very sad that more than half of the turtles die because they didn’t make it to the ocean. They were disoriented, following the light of the city instead of the light of the moon in order to find the ocean.

 In the film The City Dark, Ian Cheney says “what do we lose when we lose the night?” I believe that humans need the night sky the same way animals do. While watching the turtles hatch in the film, the newborn turtles use the night light of the moon for guidance to go back to the ocean. The same way the turtles use the night sky is why thousands of animals were created to live at night. As a result, if small animals can follow the night sky when they are just born and humans can feel peace in their heart by watching the night sky it is because it is a connection that society doesn’t realize. I wonder how our ancestors could watch the night sky. They probably had the opportunity to see the sky with a better view and understanding the connection between the night sky and humanity.

The night sky hides a marvelous world, and by seeing the night sky we can remember that people are not the center of the earth, which is more than humanity. The world is full of thousands of different species and some of them are very small that we can hardly see them, like ants, spiders or garden worms. For example, a garden worm is necessary for good soil, the same way thousands of species are in the earth for some reason and we have to learn to share the world with them instead of trying to destroy them. In The City Dark film, Ian Cheney says he felt like he “was at the center of the world.” Humanity is forgetting about how big is the world and are focusing on the wrong things. The world is not composed with only humans. If humanity could just open their eyes and see how big the universe is then they will see how people are like the size of a worm and the earth is like the garden soil compared to the universe.

Overall, after watching the film, I realize that humans are the most danger species on the earth, not the snakes nor the scorpions. Humans are the ones that are working in order to destroy the earth by trying to find happiness in the wrong things. For example, humans are building the glamour of the city with night lights, while forgetting that other species use the light of the stars or the light of the moon for guidance. Also forgetting that behind us there is a generation that is going to need a place to live.

Stars in the Night Sky

 When I was a little girl I had many adventures and one of the adventures that I had was watching the stars at night. I remember laying down on the floor with my brother, Isidro. We watched the sky and tried to count the stars during night but it was an impossible mission. We could see thousands of stars or even millions filling the sky. I remember each night the stars were different. They had that brilliant white color and some of the stars were not that brilliant. I even watched something falling from the sky. My father told me that stars die and fall, and that was the light that we saw coming to the earth. He said every time we see a star fall down we can ask for one wish.

My brother and I enjoyed playing at night with the sky. We could see designs in the sky, like faces, and we believe that maybe angels were watching over the earth. Where I come from is a small town close to the mountains. I remember when my family would come over to visit; since we could not fit inside the house, we slept outside, sometimes on the front porch and sometimes on the top of the house. Since, in Mexico, the houses are different, the roof of the houses are straight like a sheet made out of concrete. I enjoyed the night back then because the world was not as dangerous as it is today. I remember sleeping outside under the sky without a worry in the world. I remember feeling that joy to be outside and close to the sky.

Now that I’m an adult and live in a different country, I wonder what the sky at night looks like, and since I have a little girl that is eleven years old, she is as adventurous as me. She likes to run and play outside and enjoy the nature. We decided to purchase a telescope to watch the moon. My daughter and my son were so excited to see the moon. I was surprised with the first impression of how the moon looks under the eye of the telescope. It was like a piece of rock but perfect with craters all over. I saw the starts and the moon when I was little but not that close. We tried to see the starts but we only could see a bright light.

Since this project is to watch the sky, I watched the sky during spring break almost every day and I noticed that there are not that many stars in the sky and I can even count them. My first day when I was at the park around 7:00 p. m., I saw the sky which was very light blue, almost white in color but with a blue tone. I saw white clouds around the sky. Then by 7:30 p.m. I only could see one tiny little star that wasn’t that brilliant, and then by 8:00 p.m. the sky was a beautiful shade of dark blue, like in the movies where they show the blue of the ocean. But still I only could see couple stars appear during the night. By 8:30 the color of the sky changed from that beautiful color to just a dark color, and the only light I saw was the light that the park uses for illumination. Then I kept looking at the sky for couple of days in the back yard of my house and I noticed the same stars appeared. I counted them, and there were seventeen stars. I kept watching them change positions but there were the same number of stars.

In the park I saw less stars than in my back yard. The last day I saw only a couple of stars from my back yard. I don’t know if it was because it looked like it was going to rain, but it was strange that they disappeared. I did not put that much emphasis into the sky when I was a child, but I noticed a big difference back then, the sky was full of stars, and I couldn't even count them. Now I can even tell  how many stars are in the sky, and I came up with questions that I could not answer. Is the sky different because when I was little I lived in a different country or because the stars are mysteriously disappearing from the sky?

Walking with Death in Life

“Highway 12, Just East of paradise, Idaho” by Robert Wrigley and “Reading the Obituary Page” by Linda Pastan are two poems that are similar to each other. Both poems narrate how death changes one’s life story in a minute of time. The poem “Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho” is a narration of how a doe dies and everything happens so quickly like a fast forward movie, reveling how, in a matter of minutes, life is very fragile. However, the narrator, who experiences this tragic accident, still has the vivid images in his mind of this tragic event where he takes the life of an indefensible doe. Similarly, in “Reading the Obituary Page,” this poem reveals that, in a matter of minutes, this music stops and the one who does not find a chair is hanging between life and death. These two poems suggest that death is part of everyone’s life, that each day that one lives is one day less, and that everyone’s future is unknown.

Both poems reveal that life can end in a matter of seconds.  In “Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho,” the narrator of this poem relates “the instant the truck hit her” (2). The word the narrator uses to capture the reader’s attention is “the instant” which reveals that life can change in a second. Also, suggest that life is uncertain and when death arrives, the ones who die are left in the past, but for the ones that are alive their life continues. For example, the life of the doe was left and the narrator continues on his way. Similarly, in “Reading the Obituary Page,” for the ones that were left without a chair the game ends, but for the ones that still have chairs the game continues. It is how life in reality is, and one personal example that I can share with the narrator of “Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho.” Is that I know the feeling of killing an innocent animal. One time, I was driving to college and I was passing under the freeway, when I meet an adorable white dove that crashed into my windshield. I continued my way and left her in the past, but I still remember, and keep thinking what the story would be if I was driving a minute earlier or a minute later before or after the crash. Certainly the story would be different.

I chose to write this blog about the poem of “Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho” because it reminds me of the tragic accident that I experienced with the dove. I chose to compare it with the poem of “Reading the Obituary Page” because I enjoyed playing the musical game when I was little, without knowing that musical chairs is a game that is training its players about life and death. As a result, each day people are playing these games without realizing that life is ending and that each minute that passes is a minute less in their lives.