A recent guest on Michael Feldman's public radio radio show "Whad'Ya Know" was asked why he chose to live in Door County, Wis., after growing up in New York City and spending his college years in Berkeley, Calif.

"You can see the stars at night," he said.

"Ah, yes," Feldman re-sponded in a matter-of-fact voice with just a hint of Midwestern self-satisfaction, "the stars are brighter here."

Yes, the stars are brighter here.

And, though many prefer the big city's bright lights, those of us in Iowa who actually can see the night sky know we've got something that those bathed in the neon glow are missing. We realize that without the stars, we lose a little of our humanity.

• • •

While chaperoning a group of bored teenagers some time ago, I posed the question "What if you grew up on a world with no stars? How would your life be different?"

That got their brains going. "No stars?" they said. The notion seemed inconceivable.

Finally, one spoke up. There would have been very little, if any, travel to far-flung lands, he said. Sailors required stars to guide them as they navigated vast seas and oceans. Perhaps we'd possess a greater wariness and distrust of others; the great democracies of history where diverse views were tolerated - Athens, England, the Netherlands - always were seafaring peoples that traveled to strange, new lands.

There also would be virtually no astronomy, another said. That in turn would mean no calendar beyond the simplicity of day and night or the waning of the moon.

We probably wouldn't have developed agriculture, a third added. The rotation of constellations and rising of certain stars, such as Sirius, marked the seasons and warned of annual floods for many ancient cultures. A fuzzy sense of when to plant and harvest only could mean crop failure.

"No constellations?" one of the quieter teens suddenly said. "Why, we'd have almost no mythology." Indeed, how many of the great stories from ancient Greece and Rome, with their morals and lessons, would never have been imagined without gazing at points in the sky and arranging them into shapes to bring Orion, the hunter, and Ursa Major, the big bear, to life?

Perhaps religion would at best be some sort of primitive animism, the first teen added. Our stories would deal only with rocks and ground animals but never with the heavens.

In fact, there might be very little sense that there is "something else" beyond one's hill or valley, the second teen said, whether it be heaven, gods or a distant light upon the horizon to strive for. People would have an extremely egocentric view of the world.

• • •

As I listened to their answers, I thought about a convention I'd attended in downtown Chicago. While walking to a coffee shop at night, I was struck by the distrustful look upon peoples' faces, of how they avoided eye contact with one another. Then, as I enjoyed a cup of coffee at the cafe, I overheard a young couple boast to one another about how Chicago had everything they ever needed, of how unnecessary ever leaving that great city was. A few minutes later, the man glanced at his watch, quickly rose and half-heartedly apologized that he had to go for he was late.

The woman sighed. They were prisoners of time - an artificial time set by the mechanical cogs and wheels of a wristwatch.

A few minutes later outside, I glanced at the sky. It glowed a dull orange, as if the last light the evening sun casts across the heavens before receding below the horizon.

But in that diffuse light, there were no stars.

(originally published Aug. 3, 2003)