The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume LIV

I love the night sky.

July 08, 2022

I love the night sky.

The endless horizon of the universe, a blanket of stars across the void, twinkling comfortably overhead. The night sky is one of my favorite things. It is free to look at, and weather permitting, you can see it every night.

Unless there are lights.

So many wonder what lurks in the dark, they are compelled to illuminate it. They shine a light. Sometimes a flashlight in the woods, or a lantern, or light a bulb on the porch. Just to see what may be there.

My neighborhood has been inundated with artificial light. The stars in our night sky compete not only with blinding streetlights placed by the city, but also with lights installed by neighbors to brighten their yards.

This does not just obscure viewing of the night sky. It also hinders our nocturnal wildlife, like opossums, raccoons, and flying squirrels.

Artificial lights alter plant growth and the insects that rely on them. Depending on the type of light, plants may not flower, as they need the dark, and pollinating insects rely on them to flower so that they can eat and pollinate more plants so that fruits and vegetables grow, in turn feeding wildlife.

In short, bright lights at night are a bummer.

One day at the lunch table upstairs, a fellow we worked with asked me and Gene if we had ever seen the night sky. He was about 20 years younger than us, and we thought it an odd question, like he was trying to be funny, but not hitting the comedy mark. We both said "Of course."

Then he told us that he had never seen the night sky and wondered if the photos he had seen were real or artists renditions, citing how in movies it is all special effects. But he was not joking. He grew up in cities and had never been to a really dark place. He could see some stars in the sky, major ones that we can all see, like The Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. So, he thought that maybe it was not a hoax, but an embellishment. We were relieved that he trusted science and did not submit to Flat Earth Theory, a preposterous idea devoid of science, so stupid, that I will not even grant a link to the subject. Google if you must.

We assured him that we had been to dark places and seen the Milky Way, and that those photos he has seen taken by astrophotographers were indeed real. I have met people who have never seen an ocean, never seen a desert, or an iceberg, or a volcano, or a freeway, but this was the first person who ever said they had not seen a dark night sky. I was truly sad for him. I think Gene was, too. We encouraged him to get out there away from the city and stay out all night, looking up.

I would love to go to a world class super dark place again, like River Murray in Australia. When I say super dark, I mean near the top of scale, and yes, there is a darkness scale!

I have been to Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada, the Gobi Desert, the Amazon basin, and lots of other dark spots. I am certain that some of these ranked up there as Class 1 sites. What our lunch companion described to us were inner city lights, all the way down in Class 9, like where we live now.

Even a Class 1 site on the Bortle scale is no match for a cave, though. Sometimes, on cave tours, the guide shuts off all the lights and you get a few moments of total darkness. It doesn't get darker than that. A cave is even darker than the darkest spots on Earth where all you can see are stars.

Some people claim to be able to read by starlight. I can't. I can barely see the stars to begin with due to the light pollution and my own poor eyesight. So, I miss the night sky, because I live in a city and don't get out of town much at night.

The dark does not frighten me. Being totally alone in the wilderness in the dark is a wonderful feeling. Far from city lights you also lose the sounds of the city. Whatever hum or ring you think you hear out there is in your own head. It can be extremely quiet in the dark.

I entered an abandoned mine shaft on the side of the road in the Utah desert once. I don't know what the mine was dug for. Went in about a hundred feet, I guess, to where I could barely see the floor anymore, and the opening in the distance was the only light. I wasn't going further without a flashlight. It was dead quiet. I called out and my voice was absorbed by the walls, no echo. It remined me of being in the cave in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, The Terror of Blue John Gap. I always remember that story when I find myself spelunking.

Outside though, no monsters could scare me. Or so I thought until one night in Libby, Montana. We lived at the end of a dead-end road that backed up to forest land and had minimal lights from the neighbors a half mile in two different directions. The rural night sky was spectacular, and I spent plenty of nights out there. Bears would routinely visit the property, and I was walking around the side of the house without a flashlight.

Why don't you ever carry a flashlight in the dark, Mike?

I just don't. It's not my thing. I'm looking at stars. I like the dark.

So, this one night, I was done staring at the sky, about to go back in, and when I was making my way alongside the house, I thought I heard something. It was right in front of me, between me and my path to the front door of the house. I couldn't see it, because it was pitch black, Class 1 dark with a hint of cave. I got a little scared.

Did I hear something right in front of me? OR - did I just think I heard something right in front of me? Either way, I shouted into the dark "You get out of here!" and I went the other way around the house. Hackles raised, and still unsure if I was imagining things or not, I could not decide if I heard anything lumber away, or if I just imagined that I heard it.

I definitely never saw anything. No footprints in the morning. It was probably a squirrel. I will never know. That is about the worst I have ever been scared in the dark. Camping out in Yellowstone, the only time I ever heard much of anything, I know it was moose, and they did not frighten me.

If something that wanted to do me harm was there, it would have.

What if it was a person with a gun? If it was, what did they want? Why not say anything? That is even creepier. Could they see me even though I could not see them, peering at me through night-vision goggles? I remain unscathed, still willing to visit the dark and stare up at the sky to take in the galaxies, but the thought lingers.

Would I be safer with lights? My personal opinion is no, I would not. I would enjoy my time outside less, is all. I would rather be confronted by my own instinctive fear of the dark and something that might be there, especially when it probably is not. Admission to some level of fear or wariness will keep you alive, as it helps you to stay alert, ready to accept unknown surprises.

Depending on who you ask, lights either don't do anything to deter crime, or they make everything much safer. It depends on who you want to believe to live your own truth. Most of the opinions of those who say outdoor lighting is a good thing are people who sell lights.

Lights make it easier to see, that's it. I know that is the point, but they really ruin the night sky. The dark is safe. The only things treading into the dark are able to see in it. They have nocturnal vision or flashlights, and if they have flashlights, they are human. Humans are more dangerous than anything else in the world. But they are not entering your dark havens without being able to see. Lights aid and abet. Criminals need to be able to see to do anything, so keep it dark.

The most dangerous of all hide in plain sight and attack in the light. They may scurry back to the safety of the dark the same way a cockroach will, but they go there to hide, not do harm.

Seminole Heights serial killer Trai Donaldson attacked people at night, but not in total darkness. It was light enough for him to see what he was doing, but he stayed close to the dark, like so many other killers do, to slip back and disappear into the safety of shadows. By all accounts, he was a decent, upstanding young man. He lived in the light. He had friends, family, some sports success, and a bright future. Nobody suspected that he would kill four people before he did.

Before anyone had been killed, if he had been stopped by police for any reason, they may have found him with a loaded weapon. They may have shot him, or he may have shot them. But that did not happen. After investigative work led him to be arrested, he was quietly taken into custody at his job.

What might have happened if he was confronted in the night? Say, wearing a ski mask while driving through Akron, Ohio? If he was detained for a minor infraction and remained calm, spoke with the officers, and gave them no reason to suspect him of anything, he would probably be free to go. But if he ran, what then?

Jayland Walker died last week when he ran from police. He was a fine young man, living in the light. Some equipment and traffic violation caused police to request him to stop. He did not. He hit the gas. He had a weapon and fired at police. When he finally slowed down, he crawled over to the passenger side of his car and jumped out while it was still moving. He searched for the dark, that safety net where he could not be seen, where he could hide. But he never got out of the light. He was shot 60 times.

That is 19 times more than Amadou Diallo., who was also a fine young man, standing on his porch having a smoke. He did not run from police. He never even knew they were there. Four plainclothes officers opened fire and killed him. It happened really fast. To understand how fast these snap decisions are made, read Blink by Malcom Gladwell. He examines the Amadou Diallo case in fine detail, breaking the event down to microseconds.

Both of these incidents happened extremely fast. The shots that killed Jayland Walker only took 8 seconds. I watched all the videos of police body camera footage. Even though the brain may slow everything down to microseconds, the flurry of information came too quick for everyone to process, so they just kept firing.

But what was Jayland Walker doing exactly, before police attempted to stop him? He was driving at night wearing a ski mask.

Why a ski mask? Where was he going? Where had he been? What did he do before he was ordered to stop? What was going through his mind?

I hope an investigation reveals where he was that evening. This is the most intriguing part of the story. Was he a bad guy? Not according to friends and family. Wearing a ski mask in the middle of the night in Ohio in July is suspicious, but like a lawyer representing the family stated, that while it may be odd behavior, it is by no means a crime.

Speculation can lay out a construct that he had committed a crime unbeknownst to the police. Maybe he did something and got away with it. Maybe he only contemplated a crime. Maybe he was thinking about suicide. Maybe he had a fetish that was satisfied by driving around with a loaded gun while wearing a ski mask.

But running from police and shooting at them is what got him killed.

Whatever it was that Jayland Walker did not want them to know, he took that secret to the grave. His decisions came down to microseconds as well. He was trapped. Surrounded by lights everywhere. He did not want to answer any questions about why he was driving where he was, what he was doing, why he had a gun, or why he wore a ski mask. Running and shooting somehow became instinct for him. Poor decisions, but ones he could see no way to recover from in the seconds that followed. It all happened so fast. So fast that he jumped from a moving vehicle. All he could do was run away so that he would not have to explain. He ran for the safety of the dark.

Allow me to steal a phrase from Donald Trump (from his comments after the deadly Charlottesville incident). They "were very fine people, on both sides." To sum up his thoughts, and you can see how it applies here, Trump went on to say something quite profound that day, "There are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country -- a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country."

People will pick sides. Jayland Walkers' friends and family will support him forever. Police will have their champions. And there will be marches, protests, and consequences that some will support, while others will not.

We may not all agree on how to light our neighborhoods. Some love the light while others curse it. It is a personal choice to be illuminated or stand in the dark, and what you see from the position you take is dependent on that viewpoint.

The truth is that we may never find out what the truth actually is. The stars always shine above us whether we can see them or not.

We may never know what lurks in the dark.