Word: lawn
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Graf, Courier, Stich and Edberg may be gone, but as Wimbledon moves through its final week, Gangji and the other 359 umpires employed by the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club for the tournament stoically march through the draw. Underpaid and often abused by the churlish multimillionaires they judge, umpires must display the probity of a Supreme Court Justice, the acuity of a marksman and the patience of a marriage counselor...
...wait! There's trouble in paradise. You can hear it on most summer mornings and evenings, and sometimes all day long, in the distance or as close as your next-door neighbor's: the whine and roar of power lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws and other unbelievably grating gizmos, grinding away to keep that cherished patch of lawn tidy and green...
...noise is the least of it. It turns out that America's 89 million small garden engines are fouling the very land they tend. Gas-guzzling lawn mowers, leaf blowers, weed cutters and the like produce 5% of U.S. air pollution overall, and a good deal more in many metropolitan areas. A dirty, inefficient 3.5-hp. gas mower emits the same amount of hydrocarbons in one hour as does a new car driven 340 miles. A chain saw operated for two hours produces hydrocarbons equivalent to those emitted by a new car driven 3,000 miles. Furthermore, the Environmental Protection...
...grass-roots rebellion -- and it has. Across the nation from Greenwich, Connecticut, to Palo Alto, California, environmentalists and their allies are taking aim at the noisy machines that rule the neighborhood from May to October. In Takoma Park, Maryland, for instance, free-lance writer Mike Tidwell founded Citizens Against Lawn Mower Madness, a group seeking to limit use of gas mowers in the town. Says Tidwell: "I'm committed to spreading the gospel of power-mower reform...
Boston offers a similar experience with the annual Fourth of July concert at the Hatch Shell, also known as the Esplanade. Throngs congregate on the lawn with their ice chests and settle in, anxiously awaiting the climactic "The 1812 Overture" which always ends the concert and is the cue for the fireworks to begin. Many of the radio stations in the Boston area broadcast the show so if you can't make it you can at least listen to it. And you can see some of the fireworks from Weeks Bridge...