“I feel like I have road rage and I don’t even have a car”

Car alarms are a minor annoyance for me. They usually go off in my neighborhood during thunderstorms. Or in the parking lot when we are viewing the Fourth of July fireworks.

Yesterday afternoon I was reminded of just how obnoxious car alarms can be. There was a wedding at our parish. A most beautiful, eargerly planned wedding of a friend’s only daughter. The bride was beautiful, the church was beautiful. Everything - from my vantage point in the rectory office - was beautiful. About fifteen minutes into the wedding, a car alarm sounded from the street. One of those goofy alarms that goes through a variety of different sounds. It took approximately an eternity before it was turned off. On the one hand, I hoped it couldn’t be heard in the church and cause a distraction to the ceremony. On the other hand......the car most likely belonged to someone in the church and I prayed that they would hear it and silence it ASAP>

Silent Majority aims to give a voice to the thousands of New Yorkers who seethe over car alarms, but who until now could only complain to their neighbors or throw eggs out of their windows. Their website is most amusing.

A recent New Yorker article, mentions noise pollution of another time. In London a hundred and fifty years ago, for example, Charles Dickens and his illustrator John Leech, among other members of the new professional class of men who worked out of their homes, started a movement to stem the aural assault of the hurdy-gurdy players, who wanted to be paid before they would go away. Eventually, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Everett Millais, and Wilkie Collins signed on to the cause, and the Act for the Better Regulation of Street Music in the Metropolis was passed. Organ-grinders gradually disappeared. Later, writers became nostalgic for them.