Yester year

I like the following text which I found on http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/grace_notes/the_star.php.

That does not mean I like the contents of the site in general, quite the contrary ! But this is beautiful.

"Theirs was the Age of Myth; a world where night was not dimmed by the web of lights that now obscures the stars. Their nights were lit by flaring torches, dim oil lamps, guttering candles; by the phases of the moon and the broad shimmering river of the Milky Way. As the sun declined and night ascended, life withdrew into shuttered and barred homes. Only the very rich or the very poor were abroad in the dark.

The night sky, now so thin and distant, so seldom really seen, was to them as thick and close as a handful of coal studded with diamonds. They could turn it in their mind's eye even as it turned above them. They reclined on their hill sides, their roofs, or in rooms built for viewing and marking the moon and the stars. They watched it all revolve above them and sang the centuries down. They remembered. They kept records and told tales. They saw beings in the heavens -- gods and animals, giants and insects, all sparking the origins of myth -- and they knew that in some way all was connected to all; as above, so below, "on Earth as it is in Heaven".

I wish I could write like that !

As a child I have experienced the end of  this period. One could see the stars, and there were almost no streetlights. And even inside the house, the light bulbs were weak, because electricity was expensive ; often the light came from the burning stove. One had almost nothing, but life was simple (and hard).

Progress and growth have brought us many positive things, but, at this time, the negatives are taking over.