There is a debate in this town, as there is every autumn, about porch lights. The electric bill faction has its spreadsheets. The dark-sky faction has its star charts. Both make fair points, and this board has weighed them carefully against a third consideration: somebody out there is walking home in the dark, and your porch light is how they know where they are.

A porch light is not really for the porch. It is a signal sent outward, at a cost of pennies, that says: this house is awake to the possibility of you. Ask anyone who has walked the long way back from the bus stop in November. They can name every lit porch on their route. They could not tell you a single dark one.

We are not asking for floodlights. This is not an airport. One warm bulb, forty watts, amber if you have it — enough to pour a little gold on the sidewalk and let the moths hold their parliament.

The stars, we are assured by the astronomy club, will survive. They are quite far away and have seen worse.

Leave the light on. Someone is out there being brought home by it, and they will never knock to say thank you, and that is exactly how it should work.