I had a favorite uncle who lived in Washington.  He served on a Navy ammunition ship during the War, and when it ended, he became part of a little group that created the Consumer Price Index that measures inflation in the U. S.  Later he entered liberal politics and became the head of Americans for Democratic Action, the left wing of the Democratic party.  

I was influenced by my uncle in many ways.  He read a great deal, and although silent and shy, he was daring in his everyday life, spending months in Ghana as an economic advisor to its government and even more time in Korea, helping to create the government’s council of economic advisors.

 My uncle loved silence. He worked alone in his garden.  He trapped raccoons and quietly drove them across the Key Bridge to release them onto the grounds of the CIA.

One of his favorite leisure activities was to rise very early on Saturday mornings, drive himself into rural Virginia, get into his boat and spend the whole day fishing in silence, listening to birds, savoring nature, talking to no one.  

He was a connoisseur of nature, a silent one.

One evening the three of us – my aunt, uncle and me, were sitting in their large yard at the very end of Chain Bridge Road, overlooking the Washington Canal.  We were drinking gins and tonics and probably gossiping.  

Suddenly one of their neighbors cranked up a gas-fired lawnmower.  

Bird scatters from the trees, and my uncle said softly, “The pollution of sound.”  

“You mean noise,” I said.

 “No,” he said.  “Yes, it is noise pollution.   But it’s also the pollution of sound.”  

I understood immediately the distinction he was making.  Noise pollution is loud sounds.  Sound pollution is when pleasant sounds are replaced with unpleasant sounds. 

 That distinction has stayed with me for 65 years.

During the 17 years I lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, a not-so-fancy suburb of Washington, I used a hand mower.  I don’t even know if they make those anymore.  I loved the quiet rhythms I made as I pushed it back and forth.  I loved the sound of the blades spinning freely as I reached the ends of the lines I created in the grass. I loved the straight lines I made with the mower; I loved the smell of pure freshly cut grass not mixed with the smell of gasoline.   

Sometimes as a little joke to myself I cut ovals in the grass.  No one cared.  I was alone with myself – and the hand mower – and my sense of humor.

What gave me the most pleasure were the whirling sounds of the lawnmower’s blades.  It was a soft, peaceful sound, very comforting.  There was little other noise on that street in that neighborhood, and I felt quite alone.  It was almost like meditation – and I am not the meditative type.  

But there is something about those quiet, solitary tasks – mowing, raking leaves – that encourages restful thoughts, pushing oneself inside oneself.  The rhythms of such tasks soothe me and, I think, others too.

Bakeries are somewhat like that.  Large, mechanized bakeries can be assaults on the ears; they use lots of big machines that make lots of big noise.  What a shame that it is for the people who work there.  They miss the kind of music one can hear especially early in the morning when the bakers are alone:  the clatter of trays, the whooshing of the oven’s gas going on and then turning off when its temperature is reached, the thumping of dough on the shaping table, the drop of raw shaped dough into baskets.  

These are sounds of craft, the sounds of care.

When I first started a bakery in the early Nineties, Marvelous Market, I regularly worked through the night.  I left the front door of the bakery open just to hear the few cars that passed by at 2 am and 3 am.  At 4 am I loaded loaves of olive bread into the oven and then retreated to a little bench on the sidewalk in front of the bakery to get away from the smell of roasting olives that I found nauseating.

I wish my uncle were still around, but I am glad he can’t see and hear what we have done with our world.  Harsh and loud sounds surround us all the time.  We’ve filled our world with loudness that contributes to sound pollution.  

Outside my windows, just a block from Connecticut Avenue in the Kalorama neighborhood I live in, I hear electric leaf blowers, the never-ending beeps of trucks backing up, ambulance sirens, the obnoxious cavalcades of motorcycles that lead and follow dignitaries.  (I especially detest the parade of motorcycles a few blocks away from me that are taking the vice president back and forth to his lovely home just up the street from me.

The older I get the more I value the quiet sounds.  Often, I take off my hearing aids simply because I can hear nothing without them.  That’s the point:  I can hear nothing without them, and I don’t want to hear the sounds that I could hear – like leaf blowers or the vice president going home.

When my hearing aids on the table in front of me, I can remember more vividly the sound of a bamboo rake on the sidewalks of Paris, the quiet scratching of brushes on the surface of a snare drum.  They were wonderful soothing sounds, much like my hand lawn mower.  

I would like to hear sounds like these more often during the day:  the sounds of quiet work, of customers talking over coffee, interrupting themselves to greet neighbors.  Those are the sounds worth putting my hearing aids back into my ears to hear.