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Strange Night lights over Manhattan

by Judi McLeod

June 30, 2004

Wishing on the first evening star has taken on new meaning in the skies over downtown Manhattan. The birth of a new city star in the heavens over the World Trade Centre has nothing to do with the celestial universe, and Jimminy Cricket isn’t singing over it.

Popular Science’s description of the manmade Urban Lodestar would be more at home in a science fiction paperback.

according to the Popular Science web page, "urban night blindness" and the "blankness of city skies" is a problem in neon New York.

So creators Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda created a "magnificent memorial for the World Trade Centre" with Urban Lodestar.

"Urban Lodestar is a light-emitting, five-pointed star, designed to float serenely above a city centre and pulse gently at the same rate as a resting heart to calm the city folk below," says Popular Science, a Time 4 Media Company.

There are no statistics to prove that the calm hearts of New Yorkers have led to a decrease in crime since Lodestar has been floating over the Big apple.

"Lodestar hovers with the aid of helium-filled polymer balloons; propellant tanks and directional boosters attached to a GPS-equipped positioning system keep it from going aWOL.

"During the day, photovoltaic film panels harness energy from the Sun and store it in batteries; at night electroluminiscent strips in the shape of a star glow with that stored energy. Graphite composite struts provide stability, and a battery-powered xenon strobe creates the pulsing effect.

Has your wife’s auntie Gert been calling you to complain about strange night-lights over the skies of Manhattan?

Urban Lodestar’s "intermittent green flashes differentiate it from natural celestial bodies."

This new star was born, courtesy of the 2004 Popular Science invitational design. "We chose the theme of "technological CaRE packages for the 21st century," explain magazine editors.

CaRE is touted as "an international humanitarian organization fighting global poverty."

How star gazing feeds the world’s hungry is not explained.

But respondents convinced invitational Pooh-Bahs that "cities need to gaze at newborn stars."

as far as is known, Lodestar is the first pentagram in the sky. Pentagrams are more usually to be found encased in a circle on the ground.

according to SkepDic.com, "a pentagram is a five-pointed figure used as a magical or occult symbol by the Pythagoreans, Masons, Gnostics, Cabalists, magicians, Wiccans and Satanists."

Today it is a ubiquitous symbol of Neo Pagans, and the fast-growing religion of Gaia advocated by al Gore and the Old Boys Network running the United Nations.

The pentagram comes with much depth in magical and symbolic meaning.

as old as time immemorial, it’s a symbol right up there with mockeries, such as inverting the cross or saying the Catholic Mass backwards.

The inverted pentagram is said to accidentally invoke the forces of evil.

Christian watchdogs think the pentagram is the devil’s hoof.

and as far as astrology is concerned, no star in the sky looks even remotely like the pentagram.

So how did a pentagram known as Urban Lodestar get up in the sky over the World Trade Centre?

The world of art.

artists Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda are both former residents of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s World Views artist residency program, which was housed on the 91st floor of the World Trade Centre Tower One.

Urban Lodestar is not the first attempt of art in the sky by Laverdiere and Myoda, who seem to get around.

Responding to an invitation from the New York Times Magazine, the artists proposed an image of two beacons of light called Phantom Towers.

The artists used light as a way of "sculpting the plumes of dust" hanging over Ground Zero the nights just after the attacks.

Or as the artists explain it, "It is an emotional response more than anything…the towers are like ghost limbs, we can feel them even though they’re not there anymore."

Meanwhile, as far as lights over Manhattan are concerned, aren’t you glad you didn’t follow up on your threats to have your wife’s auntie Gert committed to that nice asylum in Brooklyn?

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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