Rediscovering the Night Sky in Middle Age

Before moving to Arizona, I lived my entire adult life in the bright lights of urban big cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, D.C. For the past 20 years, a street light shined so brightly into my bedroom in midtown Atlanta that it necessitated wearing an eye mask and hanging up room darkening shades. I stopped going outside and looking up at the sky because there were no stars. In fact, it felt as if there were no night, just an eerie, hazy, pinkish glow after the sunset.