Click the image to the right to go to the story at the New Yorker website. We are not the only generation to be concerned about the boundaries between the beautiful and necessary sounds of life, and the excessive sounds of noise pollution. Even a century back in New York, sound had its judges and quiet had its activists:
…Sound does not persist, neither across space nor across generations, so the tremendous rattle of horse-drawn drays, the clink of cupboards, the sneezes and shuffles of domestic life fall into the vacuous, silent crevices of history. “How did diners respond to the switch from pewter to china?” Schwartz wondered aloud. “How did a midwife register the sound of a new baby coming into the world? How did a person walking out in the woods register the sound of thunder or lighting?” In the course of nearly two decades of research, Continue reading

















