Quietnorth required reading-A case study on how we talk about noise issues:

Read the three letters to the editor in the Vilas County-News Review about leaf blowers: The first letter is here, http://www.vilascountynewsreview.com/letters.html?-database=eagleriver.data&-layout=lasso&-response=vilascountydetail.html&-recid=42407&-search and two responses follow. A couple complains about the noise of a leaf blower, and suggests that if we rethought our idea of lawn care, we wouldn’t need leaf blowers.

For this heresy, the couple is excoriated, one writer suggesting that if they don’t like leaf blowers, they are free to move to another country.

I am not suggesting that we ban leaf blowers. We don’t live in a wilderness in the Northwoods, we live in a neighborhood, and its unrealistic to expect that our neighbors won’t make noise. On the other hand, why do we automatically assume that there is there more right to make noise than to be free from noise? I don’t know why, in a part of the state where most people earn a living from the quiet, it has so little standing that defending it cannot be brought up without derision.