About a month ago when I had nothing better to do with my time (or else an overwhelming lot of stuff to do with my time — same thing) I started a new blog on blogger called the Word Verification Game.
It’s kind of like the dictionary game where people make up definitions for words. But in this case the words are manufactured in the word-verification thingy on the blogger comment form.
I must be getting older. Things that never bothered me before are really bothering me and one of those things is [most] man-made noise.
I’ve already mentioned here and elsewhere that I don’t like background noise — apart from my year-long experiment with audio-books, that is. I rarely listen to music or radio unless I’m in the car, and then only sometimes. I like the sound of my thoughts in my head.
In the spring, summer and autumn when it is not cooler than 70 or hotter than 90 or raining sideways we have our windows open. I love hearing the bird sounds in the spring. I love hearing the wind rattle the autumn leaves. I even like hearing the sound of children playing at the local park. And at night? My favorite sound is the sound of a train in the distance.
Right now, though, at possibly ear drum damaging decibels, the neighbor’s lawn-care folks are mowing and weed-whacking their lawn. They’re mowing the lawn with a huge riding lawn mower. The lawn is not huge. It is so small that I don’t know how the lawn mower can fit through the gate in the hedge. And it is loud.
This morning when I awoke at 7:30, I heard a loud noise. At first I thought it was Dean washing the floor with the floor washing machine he loves so much, but then realized it came from outside. It sounded like an airplane. I looked in the sky and did see two large (and low) vapor trails, so perhaps a couple of military airplanes flew over the house.
Have you seen the movie Noise? I saw part of it, but it made me too uncomfortable so I quit watching it. I could sympathize with the Tim Robbins character so much it was scary.
Recently I read about a study suggesting that song sparrows were beginning to sing louder in places that had loud manufactured noise. I’m glad for the song sparrows — that they can adapt, but sad for them too. They should be able to adapt in fun ways, not to sing louder than a weed-whacker.
At night, in Bethesda, with the windows open, not only can I hear train whistles, but I also hear the sound of the beltway. I didn’t realize it was the beltway until I heard Susan Coll read from her book, Beach Week, where a woman hears a sound she thinks is the surf of the ocean but is the beltway instead. Sometimes I also hear Suburban Hospital’s heating and air conditioning unit. I might even be able to hear noise from NIH at night.
Next life I hope to live in the country where all I hear are owls and coyotes at night and birdsong during the day.
Last Tuesday evening I updated my Facebook status: Glee or Lost
I was debating which program to watch that night, if any, knowing that I could watch both the next day on Hulu or ABC or whatever station Glee is on.
One of the responses, from Sandy — a mutual friend of Frances Lide, was DVR.
That got me thinking. There were times, in my life when I actually had to choose what program to watch because there was no DVR or Hulu or Tivo or VCR or On Demand programming. If you missed an episode of a program you could only hope a friend could explain the entire show to you or else you’d have to wait for reruns.
Of course, back when I was a kid growing up outside Chicago, we only had a few stations to choose from: 2 (CBS), 5 (NBC), 7 (ABC), 9 (WGN), and 11 (WTTW — Public TV). It was not often that there were two programs I wanted to watch on at the same time. The only time I can think of where there were two programs on television that I wanted to watch was when I was in the third grade and Lost in Space and Batman were on at the same time. I probably would have watched both, had they been on at different times (or if we could have taped it), but I chose Lost in Space*.
We only had one television when I was a kid and my brother was far enough behind me in age that we rarely clashed over what to watch on television. I only recall one time that I wanted to watch a television program (Woody Woodpecker) when my parents wanted to watch something else which ended with me in tears and quite possibly a throwing a temper tantrum**. When my cousin, Bob, lived with us, we argued, once — that I recall anyway, about the TV. It was a Sunday night and I wanted to watch Masterpiece Theatre and he wanted to watch something else***. That too, probably ended with me in tears and throwing a temper tantrum.
I wonder if we all watched television together peacefully, or if we found other things to do when others were watching what they wanted to watch. I wonder how it was for larger families. Who got to choose what to watch? Did television stations compete like they do now? Did they pit family members against each other over what to watch? Were people less obsessive about television programs? Were the programs less addictive?
What do you remember about the days before the ability to record television programs? Who chose what to watch in your family? How did you choose?
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*My third-grade class was divided into the Lost in Spacers and the Batmanites. We Lost in Spacers made up a rhyme about Batman that we thought was hilarious at the time, but I can only remember the not hilarious part of it now:
“Batman and Robin
Batman and Robin
Something something something something
That’s what Batman and Robin are!
**It turned out that Woody Woodpecker was not on that night and my temper tantrum was wasted.
***I think I won because 1. The only television I watched at the time was on Sunday evenings when I watched Masterpiece Theatre and Monty Python & 2. Bob didn’t want to be in the same room with a crazy cousin who threw temper tantrums at age 19.
