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Shining a light on history

Roger Goun

• 1 min read
Shining a light on history
A statue in honor of the late teacher and astronaut Christa McAuliffe on the grounds of the New Hampshire State House. Terrible cell phone photo by me.

We were in Concord with friends last night for dinner and a concert. Since we were early, we stopped to pay our respects to the Christa McAuliffe statue on the grounds of the New Hampshire State House.

It gets dark early in New England after Daylight Saving Time ends[1], so the first thing we noticed was that the statues were shrouded in darkness. Someone asked, "Why don't they light these?"

"Because the Legislature is super cheap and wouldn't want to pay for lighting," was the obvious rejoinder.

New Hampshire is facing a revenue shortfall and shouldn't spend money unecessarily. Further, light pollution is bad and we shouldn't add to it.

But don't New Hampshire's notable citizens, including Daniel Webster, General John Stark, and Christa McAuliffe, deserve to have some light shown on them?

  1. Which is why moving New England to year-round Atlantic Standard Time makes so much sense. But I digress. ↩︎