The Illinois prairie, low risings and wet swales, formed following the long gone glaciers. That swampy wonder is now mostly drained for industrial agriculture and commercial projects.  But when night comes (and when it goes) the descendants of a billion generations of bloodsuckers fly out to sip and sup, sucking undefended animal nourishment for their progeny, virulent microbes rendered as payment for the repast.

Insect bloodsuckers don’t like hunting in yellow light (or so it is said). And so moderns hang yellow bug lights to make it confusing for mosquitos and their insect friends. Somewhere apart are hung blue lights to attract them into some killing zone, chemical or electric zaps.

This is all common-sensical, generally doable, and mostly effective, to be finally solved by the first frost.

 

 

But hot-blooded and blathering exhalers, (artists, emotives, artistic types, and the like), are targeted by a different (exploitive)  bloodsucking variety, and are in need of just such a simple defense.

Some artists try to make the mellow light ( warm and wonderfully renaissance Italianate) hoping the bad guys might spend or go bumbling away – if only in gentle emotional confusion.  As to where they might go, it should be noted that dystopian movies are flush with blue light accented by a spray of arcing reds.

Perhaps those annoying “skeeters” might happily depart to some artless blue electrified swamp.  And stop freely sucking artists blood while paying with tiny platitudes.

And so we let our little lights shine.