When you
live in the city you have to put up with some noise. Like the ambulance racing
down East Johnson Street at 2 a.m. or the bus that stops and takes off on
Baldwin Street at 5:30 every morning.
But there
are other noises sources that we have decided, as a community, are unnecessary
and intolerable. Like boom boxes on buses. And wind chimes.
“Wait. Did he just say ‘wind chimes’? Lumped together with boom boxes on buses? That cute little tinkling sounds in the spring breeze?”
That
clanging and clinking. Incessant clanking. So loud that your neighbors can hear
it in their bedrooms with the windows closed. Clang! Clang! Clink, clang! Day
and night. When you’re sitting in your back yard on a summer evening.
Clink-clang-clang! Or in your dining room, over a quiet dinner. Clink-clink!
Clang! Clink, clang, clink, clang!
We here in
the ’03 Zip Code like to think of ourselves as a sensitive lot. A
community of good neighbors. Some of us don’t use gas lawnmowers and we
scrupulously pick up our dog doo. We wouldn’t think of throwing a loud
party. Sometimes we even shovel the neighbor’s walk. But some of us seem
to think nothing of getting in our neighbor’s face with the
chink-clang-clang, clang-clang of our wind chimes.
One
solution is to put these things inside your house. I know a woman who keeps
hers hanging in the doorway between her kitchen and dining room. That way
whenever she’s in the mood of a little clank, clang-clink she can just
walk by and give it a whack. And it all stays within the privacy of her own home.
-
Ron Blascoe