{"id":4769,"date":"2025-10-16T22:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/4769\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T22:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:24:08","slug":"why-so-many-lights-hellertown-saucon-source","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/4769\/","title":{"rendered":"Why So Many Lights, Hellertown? \u2013 Saucon Source"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not sure when it started, but a few years ago, I noticed little tacky solar lights going up everywhere in Hellertown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t immune from the craze, and neither was the rest of small-town America. I bought a string set of solar paper lanterns from Ikea, a set of walkway lights from Home Depot or somewhere, and a more expensive and serious (and ultimately, less cheerful) set of string bulbs. I think they\u2019re all more or less broken or discarded now.<\/p>\n

My cheap lights phase is over.<\/p>\n

But then I noticed something new: Landscape lighting on tiny Hellertown breadbox houses. It began with glaring, harsh-white spotlights trained upon various yard things (statues, trees, the inscrutable sides of trees, etc.), then evolved into more serious \u201ctasteful\u201d landscape lighting.<\/p>\n

Then it hit me. People are trying to make their houses look like the houses of the rich. Drive past Saucon Valley Road\u2019s $6 million dollar mansions a night and you\u2019ll see lots and lots of landscape lighting.<\/p>\n

Wealthy or middle-class, homeowners seem to want to their houses to look like architectural showpieces or cultural landmarks. Never mind that everyone from dentist offices to Joe Sixpack has landscape lighting these days.<\/p>\n

It reminds me of a line from John Updike\u2019s Rabbit At Rest: \u201cThat\u2019s the genius of the capitalist system: either you\u2019re rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who am I to criticize all the lights? Well, I\u2019m me. And you\u2019re you. I happen to think landscape lighting\u2013unless you\u2019re dealing with Windsor Castle or the Lincoln Memorial\u2013is a bit, well, pretentious? Am I being mean? Or have I, so to speak, seen the light?<\/p>\n

If putting up a cheap string of solar fairy light brings you good cheer, I say have at it. The pleasures of economical and cheerful junk are not unknown to me. I would never suggest that a rope of $10 solar LEDs from Lowes is destroying the planet.<\/p>\n

A creeping, little-noticed side effect of all this never gets mentioned: We\u2019re losing dark night in Hellertown. It\u2019s very hard to go anywhere in town in 2025 and feel the luxuriant blackness of night, never mind see stars. Everywhere you turn, there\u2019s some blasted cheap glare in your face. It\u2019s weird.<\/p>\n

\"\"The website LightPollutionMap.info shows the degree of light pollution across parts of the Lehigh Valley, including the Hellertown area. (Credit: LightPollutionMap.info)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great little tool out there<\/a> where you can see estimates of light pollution across the world, and not surprisingly, our little corner of the planet is blinded by the light.<\/p>\n

Even the National Park Service has chronicled the growth of light pollution<\/a>: \u201c\u2026 [r]ecent citizen scientists\u2019 measurements indicate that the average night sky got brighter by 9.6 percent per year from 2011 to 2022, which is equivalent to doubling the sky brightness every 8 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know, I know. Some of you are saying, more guilt-tripping enviro-claptrap. But some of the most conservative folks I know like darkness, too. They appreciate nature, perhaps more than we often believe.<\/p>\n

The issue seems to connect with a general tendency towards cultural loudness, too. Maybe this very commentary is part of that. Everyone has something to say. We live in an era of flag language, bumper stickers, blaring decorations, 60-foot-tall skeletons. People\u2019s choices are in your face, constantly. Pick me, pick me, pick me, we all seem to be saying.<\/p>\n

But even I want to turn myself off sometimes. I took down my cheap lights. I didn\u2019t need them, ultimately. Night is pretty enough, all by itself, but it\u2019s getting harder to find.<\/p>\n

Bill\u00a0Broun is a writer who lives in Hellertown<\/a>.\u00a0Letters and op-eds about local topics are published at the discretion of the editor.\u00a0Opinions shared on our community platform are solely those of the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m not sure when it started, but a few years ago, I noticed little tacky solar lights going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,1131,204,4367,4368,4369,1405,1559,4370,28,4371,4372],"class_list":["post-4769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-environment","tag-hellertown","tag-light-pollution","tag-lighting","tag-lights","tag-night","tag-opinion","tag-outdoor","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pretentious","tag-solar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}