Earth Hour Tomorrow March 28th

Tomorrow, March 28th, 2009, is Earth Hour, sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. Started in Sydney in 2007, last year's Earth Hour drew participation from 400 cities; this year there are seven times more municipalities signed on. Earth Hour begins at 8:30 pm, local time. The idea is to turn out all lights deemed non-essential...and to unplug the computer, too.

It's the night of the State High School Basketball Championship here in Indiana, with our own Bloomington High School South – so we won't be entirely in the dark: we'll turn out all the lights and sit in front of the tv basketball hearth. (And Jack and Sav will be there in person, at Conseco Fieldhouse: I wonder how much energy it takes to light that?)

It's the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. You can learn more about that, and its after effects, at the World Wildlife Fund website, a good place to look for environmental news and information.

Later: just home from a reception for Bill Brown, the new chief sustainability director at Indiana University. The party also honored student interns in sustainability projects, one of whom mentioned Earth Hour, with a large light switch poster publicizing it. But it's time now to power down...and to flip all switches off for a few delicious, dark, dream-filled night hours, like the ones alluded to in the cascading flowers above.