The Sound of Much Ado about Nothing — and Nothing Worthwhile
My Dear Columbia, It is the fourth of October, and I write to you from the window of my bedchamber, where I have been awake since half past two, not by choice but by decibel. On a typical evening: Pickup trucks, each one a thundering confession of some private insecurity, rattle the china in the cabinet. Then there are the Harleys, belching and loudly passing gas. Then the shabby little cars, backfiring and sounding like their mufflers are hanging on by duct tape and prayer. And at three o'clock in the morning, when the taverns have closed and all decent noise has gone to bed, the indecent kind comes out to play. Somebody is yelling on the corner about a person named Kylie. A door slams, a dog answers, a second dog answers the first, and the whole neighborhood becomes a choir that never rehearsed and never will. But I confess that none of these troubles me half so much as the noise of the season, for it is election time, and the politicians are out strutting in the streets, each on...