20 Best Cordless Battery Powered Leaf Blower

Best Cordless Battery Powered Leaf Blower in 2023

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Noise: One Day in the Leaf-blower Era

A brief consideration of noise today, including experiences with mantle-punching leaf blowers, space-warping stereo systems and garbage trucks that create their own epicenter, also touching upon the history of humankind, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Mr. Softee.

If we really do live in an ordered universe, governed by overarching and inescapable laws, as discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Richard James, inventor of the Slinky, the level of noise emitted by a power tool should be proportional to the magnitude of the job it performs. By this formula, a leaf blower, rather than merely scattering leaves, should be able to uproot trees, before continuing on to punch a hole in the Earth's mantle. And yet, for the era in which we live, leaf blowers are the appropriate technology.

I decide it is best to escape, by way of a short jaunt around town. Later, returning home, my thoughts turn to a leisurely lunch. This proves difficult, however, on a moving table.

The stereo speakers in the residence nearby have been placed into operation. They are of such size and amplitude that even with the volume turned low, the effect of the bass on my kitchen makes me feel as though I am in a spacecraft that is alternatively losing and regaining cabin pressure. I've experienced this before, except Sigourney Weaver was there.

Question: How do you ask someone to turn down their volume when it is already down--when such a sound effect was, with premeditation, built into the equipment at the factory?

I start recalling back, so many years ago, when I first began noticing the term "noise pollution," and thought it too cute. Now it seems only too apt. Yes, but can we do anything about it?

Well, maybe. I live on the West Coast, but some say the national turning point came in June of 2004 when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his administration's push to overhaul that city's noise code. At the time some wags asked, "Noise reform is taking place in New York City?" But it proved popular with many, even if it meant a partial crackdown on Mr. Softee's musical ice-cream trucks. Today such official anti-noise efforts have spread throughout the nation, and it demonstrates how multifaceted is the problem of regulating noise that in May of 2020 a federal appeals court upheld a San Francisco anti-noise ordinance against amplified street preachers.

But could it be that the power to regulate Mr. Softee was the legal 'slippery slope' that will lead us someday to a fundamental change in Church-State relations, a searing controversy that goes back and back at least as far as the time of King Henry VIII and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and just maybe someday some distinguished black-robed jurist, seated majestically on a high bench, will have on the docket a landmark case upon which stands nothing less than the fate of our Republic, and in due course, and in the fullness of time, in a resonant authoritative you-can-hear-a-pin-drop judicial voice, fraught with decades of knowledge and experience in constitutional, common, case and celebrity law, will announce that the court's decision is firmly based on the hollowed and time-honored "Mr. Softee Doctrine"?

It is at this point that I realize my jurisprudential thinking has become significantly noise-impaired.

But that is okay because all noise has stopped. For a good 15 minutes the neighborhood is serene, as silent as a snow bunny's hop, as restful as a silvery sunset rain slanting down into a deep blue canyon. Or is it just that I've lost my hearing?

Not to Worry. The familiar big blue garbage truck groans to a stop outside my driveway. Serious, determined men hustle out and fork the trash bin onto its lifter. The assembly efficiently swings up, dumping the contents into the back of the truck. But the process has only just begun.

The complex innards of the vehicle now come to life. Judging by the resulting sound, the refuse is jostled, rearranged, compacted, imploded, and then molecularly reconstituted into such things as snow chains, assorted silverware, bowling pins and cowbells, which are then spun, shaken and winnowed into a giant tin kettle.

Finally, just about the time I am able to remember how to perform the 1960's "duck-and-cover" civil-defense drill, there is a decrescendo. The truck has moved on to establish a new epicenter.

How did we arrive at this state of affairs? History is complex. Suffice it to say, the past is replete with periods, each characterized by a major theme. Kings and queens were popular at one point. Also noteworthy were the ages of exploration and colonization peopled by courageous men and women involved in gripping stories with casts of thousands, which would later create a demand for Cinemascope. Today noise predominates.

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Sources:

Press Release, "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Environmental Protection Commissioner Christopher O. Ward Announce Legislation to Overhaul Noise Code," New York City Government, News from the Blue Room. URL:

( catID;=1194 doc;_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2004a%2Fpr141-04.html cc;=unused1978 rc;=1194 ndi;=1)

Bob Egelko, "Noise law enforced fairly, court rules - Street preachers claimed they were discriminated against," San Francisco Chronicle/sfgate. URL:

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