heard at the park that morning had been a drop of water, we’d all have drowned. There was no actual rain. On the contrary, the sky was a wintery blue. Despite the chilly weather, the park was a popular place this morning. In the distance, graceful figures danced across the basketball courts and tennis courts. Runners ran, and congenial-looking groups of people, mostly women, walked briskly, as if determined to shake the blubber off their thighs. A few dozen delightfully assorted dogs fraternized in the field, while their self-proclaimed parents exchanged the human equivalents of sniffs and play bows.
If it hadn’t been for the intervention of a certain supposed dog expert, the whole sunlit scene would’ve been a sort of impressionist study in the mundane beauty of middle-class recreation. The appearance of harmony was illusory. When I’d picked Ceci up that morning, she’d shown me two letters to the editor she’d clipped from the Newton Pulse.
Ban Dogs!
Bad enough that Clear Creek Park is already polluted by dog feces without the latest, which is noise pollution from loud noisemakers blown at all times of the day and night to supposedly stop dogs from fighting with each other and attacking innocent persons like myself who seek exercise and peaceful solace in the publicly owned woods. Enough is enough! It’s high time to clean up Newton’s parks by banning dogs totally and outright.
-DOUG HARE
NEWTON CENTRE
People Will Be Next!
Regarding grumbling throughout the City about “noise” in Newton parks, Newtonians are harboring under a false assumption. Concerned dog-owning citizens in the futile (!) hope of placating anti-dog factions at Clear Creek Park, in fact, sought the advice of a professional dog training expert who recommended the application of loud auditory stimuli as a scientifically proven method of modifying the behavior of dogs which were offending non-dog users of the park. Now those same complainers are whining about the efforts to modify the very same behavior which was the cause of the original complaints! Some people are never satisfied. Watch out! If dogs are banned from parks, people will be next! –
LIONEL BROWN
NEWTON HIGHLANDS
As it was, the jolting blasts of air horns and personal alarm devices kept interrupting the harmony of man, woman, and dog. No sooner did the joggers resume jogging, the walkers walking, the dogs frolicking, and the mommies and daddies chatting, than someone just had to go and try out one of the damned noisemakers. The most active experimenters with the gadgets were the adult human males, who seemed determined to support the stereotype that men are no more than large preadolescent boys. Two outwardly mature men kept miming a quick-draw contest with their air horns. Or, maybe they were reenacting the gunfight at the OK Corral. Miming was at least silent. The shrieks of the personal alarms were, if anything, worse than the sick-cow blasts of the horns.
“It’s a good thing for Quest that he’s a little hard of hearing,” Ceci said. “But the other dogs! Their poor ears! Men! They’re nothing but little boys.”
“Where did all these things come from?” I asked. Boston is, of course, on the Atlantic Ocean, and the Charles River, which empties into Boston Harbor, has lots of small-boat traffic. Even so, the marinas and marine-supply shops are mainly in the seacoast towns north and south of Boston, not in the western suburbs. As it turned out, someone had bought a whole case of air horns for almost nothing at a gigantic discount store and handed them out to all the dog walkers. The personal alarms had come from electronics shops, both local and online.
Wilson’s corgi, Llio, had her ears flattened. She looked miserable. “This is misguided,” Wilson said reasonably. “Among other things, if the dogs get used to the noise, it won’t stop fights. And Pia had to go and get a personal alarm after what happened with the, uh, sick individual in the ski
If it hadn’t been for the intervention of a certain supposed dog expert, the whole sunlit scene would’ve been a sort of impressionist study in the mundane beauty of middle-class recreation. The appearance of harmony was illusory. When I’d picked Ceci up that morning, she’d shown me two letters to the editor she’d clipped from the Newton Pulse.
Ban Dogs!
Bad enough that Clear Creek Park is already polluted by dog feces without the latest, which is noise pollution from loud noisemakers blown at all times of the day and night to supposedly stop dogs from fighting with each other and attacking innocent persons like myself who seek exercise and peaceful solace in the publicly owned woods. Enough is enough! It’s high time to clean up Newton’s parks by banning dogs totally and outright.
-DOUG HARE
NEWTON CENTRE
People Will Be Next!
Regarding grumbling throughout the City about “noise” in Newton parks, Newtonians are harboring under a false assumption. Concerned dog-owning citizens in the futile (!) hope of placating anti-dog factions at Clear Creek Park, in fact, sought the advice of a professional dog training expert who recommended the application of loud auditory stimuli as a scientifically proven method of modifying the behavior of dogs which were offending non-dog users of the park. Now those same complainers are whining about the efforts to modify the very same behavior which was the cause of the original complaints! Some people are never satisfied. Watch out! If dogs are banned from parks, people will be next! –
LIONEL BROWN
NEWTON HIGHLANDS
As it was, the jolting blasts of air horns and personal alarm devices kept interrupting the harmony of man, woman, and dog. No sooner did the joggers resume jogging, the walkers walking, the dogs frolicking, and the mommies and daddies chatting, than someone just had to go and try out one of the damned noisemakers. The most active experimenters with the gadgets were the adult human males, who seemed determined to support the stereotype that men are no more than large preadolescent boys. Two outwardly mature men kept miming a quick-draw contest with their air horns. Or, maybe they were reenacting the gunfight at the OK Corral. Miming was at least silent. The shrieks of the personal alarms were, if anything, worse than the sick-cow blasts of the horns.
“It’s a good thing for Quest that he’s a little hard of hearing,” Ceci said. “But the other dogs! Their poor ears! Men! They’re nothing but little boys.”
“Where did all these things come from?” I asked. Boston is, of course, on the Atlantic Ocean, and the Charles River, which empties into Boston Harbor, has lots of small-boat traffic. Even so, the marinas and marine-supply shops are mainly in the seacoast towns north and south of Boston, not in the western suburbs. As it turned out, someone had bought a whole case of air horns for almost nothing at a gigantic discount store and handed them out to all the dog walkers. The personal alarms had come from electronics shops, both local and online.
Wilson’s corgi, Llio, had her ears flattened. She looked miserable. “This is misguided,” Wilson said reasonably. “Among other things, if the dogs get used to the noise, it won’t stop fights. And Pia had to go and get a personal alarm after what happened with the, uh, sick individual in the ski
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