The fall after the Midwest’s great cicada awakening of 1995 I took my daughter Joy camping on South Manitou Island near Leelanau, MI. On the first night Joy remarked how quiet it was, as if all the wildlife—birds, insects, and even the frogs—had left the island.
“Except the cicadas,” I said. “That racket kept me up half the night.”
“What cicadas?” Joy said.
“Those—don’t you hear them?”
She didn’t.
When we returned to Crawfordsville Dr. Keith Baird ’56 diagnosed my condition as tinnitus, drew me the obligatory picture showing possible causes, told me he suffered from his own hearing loss.
“No way to treat it,” his voice boomed (I never had a problem hearing Doc!), “but a hearing aid can help.”
He urged me not to be embarrassed to wear one.
“There’s so much to hear, you know,” he said, making some
reference to his grandchildren’s voices. “You don’t want to miss a thing.”
I resisted his suggestion until years later, when I feared I wouldn’t be able to do my job. I’m a listener, a gatherer of stories, and I was struggling to hear the voices that told them. Even playing guitar—cheap daily therapy since my teen years—was becoming more frustrating than fun as I struggled to gauge how loud I was picking, my intonation, and how I was blending with other players.
The louder the cicadas got, the more muted the sounds and voices
I loved became—not a quiet world, but a world that hissed.
When I finally walked into Crawfordsville Audiology years later to pick up my first hearing aid, it was a nearly silent early Spring day. When I walked out there were robins and cardinals singing. I heard the scuffing of my feet on asphalt as I walked to the car, the CLICK of the door mechanism when I opened it. When I started the car, the radio was blaring!
It was like getting my first pair of glasses, the world snapping back into the sharp focus I knew as a child. Life was suddenly unmuted.
This edition—a collaboration with those who presented this year’s Wally Tunes symposium—celebrates our noisy planet and the sometimes taken-for-granted power of sound to shape and enrich our world, and we focus here on music—the joy it brings and the talent, determination, and dedication of those who offer it to us.
In March we lost Doc Baird, a man whose good works were accompanied by a distinctive voice that brought even more compassion, comfort, and healing than it did volume. Doc, a Glee Club alumnus, had asked that the ensemble sing at his memorial service in Detchon Center’s International Hall, but so many people arrived to pay their respects that the group had to perform from the second- floor balcony. So the singers’ voices spilled down on the guests. Most looked up to listen, some with tears in their eyes, some smiling. Others bowed their heads and listened. Music created a moment’s respite from the social obligation of conversation, allowed us each to honor, remember, grieve, or wonder in our own silence, our own way. A pause—then the Glee Club sang Alma Mater, many joined in, some of us quietly humming the sections whose words we didn’t know, the music bringing us back together in a common bond.
So this one’s for Doc—who urged us not to be ashamed of our disabilities, whatever they may be—in gratitude for his wise words: “There’s so much to hear—you don’t want to miss a thing.”
Thanks for reading.
Steve Charles | Editor
charless@wabash.edu