Maybe it’s because these new hearing aids really do their job, but I’ve noticed how loud we’ve become as a country and a culture. I’m not just talking about used politicians. Rather, I am referring to all the gizmos and gadgets that are now part of our landscaping arsenals.
Take this fall season when the autumn leaves drift by our windows, those autumn leaves of red and gold forming some kind of unwanted nuisance on our yards and driveways. Such a season invites us to sit on our patios and porches to enjoy nature showing off her multi-colored tapestries. Suddenly, you realize that your conversations are helplessly drowned under a cacophonous calliope of roaring leaf blowers ricocheting off the pine trees or wafting across the lake.
Where in the world did these loud monsters designed to blow hot air and break wind come from? I’m sure that some great venture capitalist devised these things with a utilitarian purpose void of any consideration for the noise pollution they create. Every day, trailers drawn by loud pickups unload their mowers and blowers to do battle with such a formidable foe as nature itself, using a lot of sound and fury to signify silence overkill. The war zone is not confined to refined areas of nice houses. Go to shopping centers and parking lots where those trailers unload their mercenaries of leaf and litter removals. Their boots are on the ground from sunup to sundown.
Several years ago I enjoyed being in a group of folk touring China where something seemed strangely missing as we went about the villages and cities and countryside. After a while, it occurred to me that there were no blowers making their ungodly rackets in the streets or shops or open areas. Older women and men were utilizing homemade brooms without motors to keep the country as clean as a whistle while being as quiet as a mouse. I watched my good friend and retired peach grower, Watts Auman, quietly sweep the Great Wall of China.
Even though such tranquility was made in China, where else might one find some hint of noiselessness in this world? If you head into the big block stores for Black Friday wearing your Covid 19 masks, you might want to stuff some cotton in your ears to blunt the loudest version of Christmas music ever perpetuated on human eardrums. Jesus himself wouldn’t be caught dead in such a musical megalomania. The roar of the blowers in the parking lot seems more pleasing than the “Angels from the Realms of Glory” blaring at you in the checkout lines.
Meanwhile, we all wait for that eerie Eve when “…silently the wondrous gift is given” in order to tune our heart strings to the more delicate decibels of December. Who knows, instead of beating our swords into plowshares or spears into pruning hooks, we may have to abandon our leaf blowers to take up the soft whispering sounds of brooms to sweep away everything in order for us all to sleep in heavenly peace and quiet.
Have you noticed how much quieter a book is than a Netflix story?
How many miles of the Great Wall did Watts sweep? And if he is retired, are the peaches still growing?