Dear Tweeters,

I'm an Oregonian but feel connected with Northwest issues beyond state
borders, even to such matters as Seattle's Millenium plans. So please
tolerate a one-time distant view of the debate.

Mayor Schell has written:

One suggested vision for a recognition of the Millennium is
to celebrate examples of Seattle's lasting
natural beauty: our light, our water, and our woods.

My reaction to this is: Halleluia! Celebrating a city's natural beauty is
a far better vision than any other I can think of. (Some right thinkers
must be squelching the horrid alternatives such as, "Celebrate the City of
Wheels," "A Millenium of Commercial Domination," "Cloning Seattle at Ten
New Sites," etc.) So we can thank our lucky stars (oops!-- can't see 'em)
for a super concept to start with.

Next step is to read it over again and realize that the phrase "our light"
surely means *natural* light if it's part of Seattle's lasting natural
beauty. So the direction we should be going is toward celebrating long
sunsets, moonlit nights, a sky full of stars, light and shadow in the city,
photography, painting and sculpture, setting measurable goals for increasing
the ordinary person's experience of natural light in the city environment,
marveling at natural light's effect on bird migration, etc.

Let's endorse the vision forcefully before we lose it; then let's come up
with a flood of ideas for the "our light" portion of the vision. In this
context, the increased artificial lighting of bridges and buildings will, I
suspect, seem antithetical and unproductive at best.

Darrel Whipple
Rainier, Oregon
dwhipple at columbia-center.org