Make a Joyful Noise!

What I might hope is the last post on the noise problem.

While pursuing the inner calmness and detachment described by the Stoics and by Seneca in particular, I found it necessary to make some noise of my own.  The tall grasses were beginning to be a problem and the string trimmer seemed the perfect tool now that the grasses were pretty dry.  Last month I couldn't find it when I tried to use it.  I've had it for a year or more, but have only used it once, during which experience I discovered that you have to hold it up.  Somehow, I had thought it would be more like using a vacuum cleaner.  This month, when I went to look for it again, there it was, in the shed, hanging right on the wall.  Previously, I hadn't found it because I thought it was in the shed in its box.  Frequently, I find, performing the same act and expecting a different result does not result in schizophrenia but in a different result.

So, the string trimmer in hand and the headphones on my ears, I went out and trimmed for a half hour or so.  What impressed me was how the headphones made it sound, to me, as if I were making almost no noise at all: a gentle buzzing sound, at worst.  Who could object to this sound, even if it were being made at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning?  My second realization is that headphones are the answer to the dog noise.  I can wear them when I'm in the quilting workshop (where I most directly face the dog noise).  I never have worn them there because I'm usually there alone and just listen to music directly.  But I can wear earphones and it will mightily reduce the dog bark sound.  And I will just assume that the dogs' owner similarly goes about his life with earphones on and thinks, as a result, that his dogs sound like bees.

The Quiet Country Life

I spent most of the day yesterday in my quilt workshop working on this quilt piece which is now finished.  The activity conjures up such a pretty picture, I think: the quilter working calmly and purposefully with her needle and thread, hour after hour on a quiet, country, summer afternoon, to produce a homely item that she or he or child or friend can toss over him/herself on a cool fall afternoon while lying on the couch lookiing out the window at the fall leaves or reading a much-beloved 19th Century novel.  (I'm not sure there are any 'much beloved' 20th Century novels, other than among the genre of children's books.)  The quilt surely will be filled with that calmness and steadiness.

So pretty to think of it so.  But in fact, by choosing to spend so much time in my workshop yesterday, I was giving myself the opportunity not only to get this quilt finished, but also the opportunity to listen to my neighbors' workpeople attach a new roof to their house.  Well, it's noisy, but it's a limited time issue, and it has to be done, and better to do it (I guess) in the sun than in the rain, although the temperature in this sun on a roof must be highly debilitating or at least dehydrating.  So that's all right.  But accompanying the hammers were the steady barks of the neighbor dogs.  Were I to walk out on my porch, absolute barking hysteria erupted.  Were anyone to come by, or to walk by, or to bike by, all the same.  And after a spell of barking, the dogs are joined by their owner, who yells into the summer afternoon at them to stop, which they do not.

Eventually, they go inside and quiet returns, but by then, I have left the workshop and am somewhere where I can't hear them quite as well anyway.  But there you have it, a quilt made not with quiet and calmness, but one that includes, at least in the final hours, constant noise from without and irateness from within.  Somehow, I think that calling the law to report excessive barking of dogs is not going to turn out well if the law is the owner of the dogs.  I'm thinking of investing in a voice activated recorder.  Then I will make a 24-hour recording of one of those days when the dogs go at it unrelentingly.  Then I will submit it to a notary to document its authenticity.  And then I will send the tapes anonymously with the notary's sealed paper to the higher law.  Or maybe it's time to deal with a journalist who has a shield for the anonymous source.  Nudge, nudge; wink, wink.

Or maybe not.  This afternoon, I am reading Alain De Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy, and, as it happens, after lunch I started on his chapter on the Stoics.  This is Seneca's advice, via De Botton, about being in the vicinity of excessive noise: "To calm us down in noisy streets, we should trust that those making a noise know nothing of us. . . .  We should not import into scenarios where they don't belong pessimistic interpretations of others' motives.  Thereafter, noise will never be pleasant, but it will not have to make us furious." (Ital. added)  Well, I didn't think that the dogs' owner was tolerating the noise in order to drive me crazy, but rather was tolerating the noise because he didn't care whether I was driven crazy or because he didn't notice that it was a crazy-making noise.  However, I recognized Seneca's advice as well advised: "All outdoors may be bedlam, provided that there is no disturbance within."  So, I hope the guy will work with his dogs to quiet them down, and in the meanwhile, I'll work with my within to reduce disturbance.

Protection on the Point

We are of course protected 24 hours a day by the Customs and Border Patrol here in Point Roberts.  But we are also protected by the Whatcom County Sheriff in the person of a couple of deputy sheriffs.  They used to live at the Sheriff's Station on South Beach Road.  There were two weary-looking, pre-fab kind of houses, nicely surrounded by a 6/7-foot wire fence.  Well, nicely if you like the idea of being fenced in.  With a big sign saying there is No Trespassing or No Unauthorized Entrance.  (I can't remember at the moment what the sign says, but it has a forbidding quality to it.)

It looked sort of prison-like, I'm sorry to say, since it was actually the home of two deputies and their families.  Then, about 3 or 4 years ago, the deputies and their families moved out.  The word on the street was that the houses were rodent-infested, or mold-infested, or just not nice for human habitation.  The deputies and their families then took up residence in rental properties and you would see their official cars parked at their little cottages here on the Point.  And the Sheriff's Station lay vacant.

I follow this a bit because I live near the Sheriff's Station and I used to be able to tell people how to get to my house by using it as a landmark.  But since the deputies moved out, newer residents to the Point seem less likely to know either that there is a Sheriff's Station or where it is.

Then, two or three months ago, much activity was suddenly manifest at the Sheriff's Station.  The old and infested pre-fabs disappeared over a week and then, in a bit, new pre-fabs appeared.  And much construction of additional amenities, including decks on the two houses, was undertaken.  And then a couple of weeks ago, I saw a moving van drive into the forbidden area.  And now, there are people there.

Not only people, presumably Deputy Sheriffs and their families, but dogs.  Several dogs, perhaps as many as three dogs.  Black dogs, of about the size of German Shepherds.  They could be short-haired German pointers, although I don't remember that they are ever solid black.  What they really are are barkers.  Insistent barkers.  They are committed to protecting the Deputies and the Deputies' families from any attacks from people walking by and especially from any attacks that arise from people walking by with some other dog on a  leash.  Those Deputy Dogs, they bark and bark and bark. 

Unfortunately, on a sunny, summer Saturday or Sunday, somebody walks down South Beach with a dog on a leash about every twenty minutes.  So we are treated to the sound of the Deputies and their families being provided with all this dog protection quite steadily.  All this protection AND a 6/7-foot wire fence that completely encloses the compound?  And a 24-hour CPB with cameras and radiation detection and all?  We might well ask, as a 7-year-old grandchild once wisely asked, "Why do the Sheriff's Deputies need so much protection?.

Dogs Day

We are well past the Dog Days of summer, the ones at the end of August where it’s hot and sultry and we lie about drinking cool lemonade and thinking about the fact that Sirius, the dog star, used to be on the horizon at sunrise during these days, thus giving them the name.  But we’re not there anymore.  Today we are instead at Dogs Day which was a remarkable Point Roberts event, far more deserving of the ‘festival’ name than most of the festivals I’ve seen this year.

What we got was a dog show at the Community Center with a prize for every dog, because every dog competed only in his/her own category.  I counted forty dogs, so I imagine there were closer to 50 since there was considerable moving around of animals during my counting period.  All kinds of dogs showed up with their people, big ones, little ones, barky ones (but not too much of that), very quiet ones, friendly ones, nervous ones, some of everything for our entertainment and admiration  And not a sign of anybody being paid to entertain us.  We were entertaining ourselves, for the most part.

I don’t have a dog, so I was truly just a spectator, but I felt like I had a dog there today; felt like I might have a dozen or so of these dogs.  What a bunch of good sports!  And their owners too. 

Unfortunately, the weather was September and overcast and drizzling off and on.  The organizers got permission to conduct the judging indoors in the hallway of the Community Center (all the other rooms that might have been used were engaged in a big raffle, yard, and bake sale, all of it, including the dog show part, to benefit PAWS, the local organization that cares for our domestic animals in need of care). 

It was a little crowded in the hallway, so most of the 2-leggers stayed outside while the dogs and an owner took them indoors, in turns, to be addressed by the judges.  The task of the judges was to determine the category of dog in which the particular dog before them was the clear winner.  Brownest eyes in a black dog?  Shortest legs on a big dog?  Cutest dress?  Nicest bowtie?  Most dignified dogs?  Dogs with reddest scarf?  Most welcoming dog who is also a border collie? Every dog a winner!  Yes, indeed.

                                                                     Bring it back next year.