Valentine's Day comes early as a city in California replaces its old sodium-vapor streetlights with LEDs, and Conway receives a sign from above. "My Prayer" originally composed by Georges Boulanger, Carlos Gomez Barrera, and Jimmy Kennedy, covered by the Platters, covered by me. (CWs: some strong language, brief phallic language, food/brief crunching, death) TRANSCRIPTS: CONWAY: This is Conway, receiving clerk for the Dead Letter Office of ***** Ohio, processing the national dead mail backlog. The following audio recording will serve as an internal memo strictly for archival purposes and should be considered confidential. Need I remind anyone: public release of this or any confidential material from the DLO is a felony. Some names and places have been censored for the protection of the public. This case begins with a letter, Dead Letter 135707, and a recorded radio broadcast of unknown origin. Our research indicates that after a series of complaints regarding faulty streetlights in July 2016, a city in California formed a commission to replace their aging sodium-vapor lamps. City council partnered with a local tech company to quickly remove the old lights and install bright new LEDs. They sent out a notice of the planned change to all residents within city limits. This prompted the aforementioned letter in response. The letter and the radio broadcast were sent on different days, the broadcast recorded before the plan was even public, but arrived at the commission at exactly the same time. It...spiraled out from there. A carrier noticed the mail buildup at the listed address of this supposed commission--a burned out church--and sent it our way to sort through. These are the collected letters, voicemails, emails, and other communications surrounding the days following in summer 2016. MARY: Dear City Council, I’m a zoologist with the University of ******. I just heard about your proposal for our streetlight issue, and I have a few concerns. First, it should be noted that the views presented here are strictly my own, and do not reflect the opinions of the university or its administration. From what I’ve read about the commission’s plans, it seems that the city will be removing the low-pressure sodium bulbs we use now and replacing them with high-efficiency LED lights, funded partially by Thanatech. While I do think it’s a good use of taxpayer dollars to upgrade our city’s infrastructure, and efficiency is definitely desirable, my concern lies in the LEDs themselves. Our old sodium-vapor lamps may not be the brightest or most aesthetically pleasing, but these supposed deficiencies may be important. Inside low-pressure sodium bulbs, metal is heated, causing it to emit a yellowish light. This warm, relatively dim light sits around or below about 2200 kelvin, significantly warmer than natural sunlight. The LEDs you’re planning to use sit somewhere between 4000 and 6000k, the approximate color temperature of actual daylight. So why does any of this matter, you may be thinking? Well, although these lamps aren’t great for helping us see at night, they may be better for our furry friends. It’s theorized that brighter, bluer light, like that provided by LEDs, can trick segments of the brain into thinking that it’s actually daytime. I worry that replacing our whole grid with these bulbs could have a negative effect on our local wildlife. If a bunch of birds, bats, raccoons, and skunks think it’s daytime when it’s really midnight, we could have more problems on our hands than flickering street lights. The wavelengths of light emitted by these LEDs could disrupt their behavior, and may throw off their circadian rhythms. Disrupted sleep can cause serious problems, from common irritability and sluggishness, which we often see in ourselves, to memory issues, paranoia, aggressive or impulsive behavior, lack of appetite, even hallucinations, and so on. While I think fixing our streets is a good idea, I don’t think it’s worth potentially upending our entire local ecosystems in the process. Surely we can come to some kind of middle-ground and just get new sodium lamps, right? That is, unless you’ve already paid for Thanatech’s LEDs with our tax dollars. Either way, thank you for taking the time to consider my concerns. Best wishes, Dr. Mary ****, class of 2005 CONWAY: Postmarked July 11th, 2016, arrived July 12th 2016. The following radio broadcast was sent July 5th, 2016 and arrived July 12th, 2016. CRACKLING VOICE ON THE RADIO: Good evening, ladies and gentleman. I'm here to tell you there’s electricity in the margins on the page, an atom bomb’s worth. In the space between the words, there’s energy. The things we can’t see are made of that energy. They travel through the wires and hide in stoplights. We can’t see them because we are not meant to see them. They come out at night and ride on the electrons in the air. Ladies and gentleman, we are made of electrons. When ...
