High pressure sodium lights… not many of us are familiar with what that is, but if you lived in Chicagoland from the 1970’s into the 2010’s you are familiar with what they did.
Those were the lights that gave Chicago it’s famous orange hue. Inexpensive street lights that were cost effective for the city budget, but expensive when it came to light pollution.
Now that we are in the LED era the old sodium lights have been slowly phased out. The orange clouds are all but gone from the city sky scape.
Until this week…..
The orange hazy skies have returned to the shores of Lake Michigan. The smoke from Canada is a big deal and has made the sky filtered with unwanted color once again.
We had a second floor sun room on the back of our house in Oak Park. It faced the East and downtown Chicago. I loved sitting up there during summer thunderstorms and look at the orange lights and the lightning.
The low storm clouds would reflect the glow of the city and that famous orange color would brighten the stormy skies.
You’d never think street lights would have such an effect on the city sky. You’d never think Canadian forest fires would do the same.
We all remember what we were doing when Mayor Daley died or during the Tylenol deaths. The day Mayor Washington died and the Great Chicago flood are other events that will always stick out in memory.
I’m not sure if the Great Canadian forest fires and the smoky skies of June of 2023 will be as historic, but for the time being they have bogged us down.
I don’t know why I woke up this morning and gave such great importance to this subject.
Maybe the smoke has diverted my attention from other things.
At least I didn’t mention all the new taxes that Chicago, Cook County and Illinois put in the books. You’ll see those after July 1st.
Keep good care of yourself and finish June strong…. End of the month, end of the quarter and the halfway mark on a lackluster year.
Though I can hear Bryan Adams singing, “those were the best days of my life, back in the summer of ‘23… yah yah!”
