It's the one building on campus best suited to be both a social and an academic space, but the nature of how students work has changed,” says Cox.Īcross Roy O.’s four floors are spaces to fit just about any way a student wants to learn on any particular day or night. It’s where they go to have a meeting, do their work or just hang out. “Every student has a reason to visit the library. Cox has worked at the university since 2001. Dean of Libraries Rick Provine led the charge until Brooke Cox (’00) succeeded him in January 2022. continued to be the intellectual center of DePauw. But for university leaders and the generous alumni who supported the project, the focus was more on making sure Roy O. After all, it was a mounting list of deferred maintenance items that launched planning back in 2015. Scientists argue that it should be treated as seriously as other forms of pollution.At a basic level, the library renovation was necessary. The night has a central role in the timing of the biological activity of wildlife pollution from artificial light is systemically disrupting animals’ hormone levels, their number of offspring, and navigation. Increasing amounts of evidence suggest artificial lighting is bad for our health, with links to disrupted sleep patterns, obesity, impaired memory and an increased risk of cancer. And what we’ve done as a culture is stick on bright lights, to continue to do the ‘to do’ list and keep ourselves busy, and generally distracted,” says Chris. “It’s asking something different of us – it’s reflective, it’s contemplative, meditative. Now that we can go about our business at any hour of the day, we miss the natural lull of the night. You have to go out of town to find that sanctuary,” Salisbury writes in his book. “There is no string to pull or switch to flick if you want a few hours off to bathe in the quiet enveloping dark. Research shows that more than 80% of people across the world live under light-polluted skies and no longer have access to true darkness. Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardianĭarkness has become something located away from where most of us live. The outdoor educator Chris Salisbury in woodland near the River Dart in Devon. “It’s a wonderful reign … a less human place.” “The quality of enchantment is around at night – starlight, moonrise, the mysterious, the unseen, the imagined,” says Salisbury, who encourages children to start a campfire, look at wildlife, and tell tales in Just William-style expeditions. Although the singing and poem caught me unaware, the instinct to share stories at night-time is as old as humanity. In a depopulated landscape devoid of distractions, the mind wanders and the imagination kicks in. From deer to otters to wild boar, research suggests more and more mammals are becoming active at night to avoid being around humans. Understanding the dark side of the landscape is not just about seeing interesting animals, but noticing how darkness feels and learning to be comfortable with it. The point of these night-time wildlife expeditions – which Salisbury runs as part of his WildWise events company – is not to terrify people but to reconnect them with darkness because we have become “exiles” of the night, he says. There is no string to pull or switch to flick if you want a few hours off to bathe in the quiet enveloping dark Chris Salisbury, ecologist Children find these body parts fascinating and it’s usually adults who grimace, says Salisbury, who insists on silence as we paddle home on the river. Halfway through the trip, he recites a poem, and I nearly choke on my hot chocolate when he reveals his “box of death” containing half a dozen dead bats, and an owl wing and claw from roadkill. In most ways it was a boon for humanity, Salisbury writes in his new book Wild Nights Out, but adds: “What is rarely considered, however, is the loss of something very precious.” The story of people’s mass disconnection from the dark started in 1880, when the inventor Joseph Swan lit up his home in north-east England with incandescent electric bulbs for the first time. The River Dart at night, as seen from the canoe.
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