09/03/2026
Message from the founder of this page.
In the pandemic year of 2020, I started my efforts to educate people in the Door county (and visitors) about the destruction of the night sky due to poorly aimed lighting, brightness, and color. I was inspired to do this when a billboard suddenly appeared down the street from our house at the time. The light pretty much washed out nearly a quarter of the sky with a bright beam. To make a long story short, I was able to convince Link Outdoor Media to shut down those lights. It took emails and an article in The Pulse which shamed them into doing the right thing.
I continued on with my efforts and convinced a few other businesses in that area to improve their lighting - which they did - and made noticeable improvements. I later started this "Keeping the Door Dark" page to help spread the message and educate others about the issues. Later, I became an official delegate for Wisconsin with Dark Sky International and continued my efforts to educate. I did get a lot of positive compliments from people online as well as in person at different events with the local astronomy club.
I was on the board of the local astronomy club and did a lot of work to help acquire the research grade telescope as well as configure it to be fully computer controlled for tracking and flawless imaging. I also made frequent science and astronomy posts on the club page (as well as this one) to keep a good flow of content and educational astronomy info whenever I came across something relevant in my web travels.
Later some of my postings on this page were not taken nicely due to terminology such as "winning" and a "victory" for dark skies when a business did the right thing. Also, I was also called out for comments about Elon Musk's ongoing destruction of the sky with his Starlink mess. I learned that there are many people that are big fans of his, and comments against Musk are nearly always countered negatively.
The outcome of early November 2024 shocked, disappointed and scared many people. I didn't allow political comments on this or the club page, and was careful to keep it completely free of politics. My personal comments unrelated to astronomy on other pages about the situation were not taken well and I was basically told that my 1st amendment rights don't apply from someone simply associated with the group. A board member did a deep search of the internet of all my comments (in addition to LinkedIn profile since I was proud of my work and had it on my resume) to enforce their case against me. I was asked to step down from the board and that was the end of my efforts and sharing my passion for the hobby in Door County, as well as my dark sky efforts also ended.
Fast forward to Spring 2026. We relocated back to our home state of Washington after 8 years in Wisconsin and have settled into our new home in Western Washington. Skies over my house are about a Bortle 5 sky, pretty similar to skies over downtown Sturgeon Bay. It's a fairly reasonable trip East toward the mountains, or to the West toward the ocean to find some good skies. I have joined a local group here of dark sky advocates and astronomers who I'll be working with as a group. I know it will be an uphill effort in a city of 55,000 but I'm glad to be working with others than trying to make changes in a small city of about 9,000 totally by myself.
With that, I figure it's time for me to step down from this page and pass full admin rights to Andrea who is already a co-admin. I'll still stop in now and then, but for the most part Door County is just a completed chapter of my life and I move on to the next. I do miss the dark skies there, full Milky Way overhead and certainly the work I did with the observatory to make it probably the most advanced amateur facility in Wisconsin. It has so much potential for citizen science which I hope can progress more than it seems to have in the last years since my departure.
Ad Astra,
T.
