To the Editor:
You’ve probably noticed the glare of the new LED headlights. These are now common on all buses, trucks and cars. I first really felt the effect of these lights on a cross-country trip. After driving late into the night, for a couple of nights I realized that my eyes just couldn’t take the intensity of the glare from oncoming headlights and I switched to only day driving.
While LEDs themselves are a good thing – they use less power and last longer than incandescent bulbs, thus saving electricity – their growing use has created many problems. Let me focus here on buildings and houses.
Night lighting of structures is a tricky thing. You can put any LED into a socket to light your home, but if you’re considering people who walk around at night, LEDs can be blinding. They should be faced down and not out. Walk in front of your house or business at night and look back at the lights – if you can’t look at the lighting for 10 seconds, then the light is too bright.
This is true for area businesses and schools as well. LED lights are being installed without much consideration as to where the light is shining. The school near my house (Richmond) installed LED lights that now shine into my second story window – three blocks away! So, this is an example where one person (or light) can do a lot of damage. The solution is for those installing LEDs to think carefully about where the light will shine and adjust accordingly. Thanks for considering this when you install LED lights (or any lights really).
Albert Kaufman
To the Editor:
I read with weary disdain the ad for the upcoming event, “The Granny Crawl comes to Portland!” From where, I wondered? Whose tired, unimaginative, cliched idea was it to have younger-aged individuals don their “best grandma attire…?” What exactly would that attire consist of? Shawls, for certain. Glasses, of course, frizzy grey wigs… I am busting a gut laughing at the mere thought. And there is a handy color photo, should those already lacking imagination wish for some inspiration.
I recently earned a degree in Gerontology and was inspired to pursue this subject as I have always been troubled by the manner in which our senior population in the US is treated – disrespected, dismissed, discarded. Ageism. The last bastion of discrimination. And it isn’t going anywhere, except onward and upward when people think a bar hopping brood of Golden Girls-lookalikes is a swell idea of a night out.
The people they mock are their mothers, their teachers, their sisters, themselves, if they are lucky enough to be around a few decades from now.
I am disappointed The SE Examiner would promote such an affronting event, thereby aligning itself with an indolent mindset–at once supporting disdain for our elders while fostering an unquestioning ignorance of the richness, depth and boundless discoveries they have to offer us. Easier to make fun of those whose life stories are countless, absorbing, complex, entertaining, moving… If only we bothered to listen.
Louanne Moldovan
Editor’s note: Letters to the Editor should be less than 300 words and The SE Examiner reserves the right to edit them for length or content.