Sound Memories

I love driving late at night, sitting in the darkness with the 4 and 5am news anchors telling me about the world with an accent that makes everything seem just a little more exciting, proper, and yet a little more close to home. Perhaps that's because the BBC includes so much of the world, all mixed in to create an assembly of sounds, translations, and stories that reminds me that we're all human and dealing with the same kinds of struggles, drama, and triumphs.
The last story I heard was one about a project called 'Save our Sounds' that aims to capture the sounds of life all over the world. The term they used was "Audio Ecologists." I was incredibly intrigued (and dryly amused at this time to also see that police had stopped someone who had tried to go the wrong way on the one way street I was driving). The theory behind audio ecologists is that just as we try to save our natural environments, the sounds of our world are rapidly changing. The two components of the project are 1)the Save our Sounds collection where people record the sounds of life around them and submit to the collection, and 2) the Desperately Seeking Sounds of people who may want to hear a sound they no longer have access to. One example of this was a man from Kansas now living in Brussels who wanted to hear the sound of cicadas on a summer night.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specialreports/saveoursounds.shtml

The story got me thinking of what kinds of things I'll miss hearing, either this summer or in the next few years if I'm no longer in Indianapolis. I'll start my list here and maybe I'll make a point of recording them and sending them in...

• Daddy practicing trumpet in the next room - sometimes on mouthpiece, sometimes with different horns. Many times this sound is a tune I've grown up hearing, sometimes it's a tune I recognize, always it's someone great playing.
  
• Pots and pans rattling in the kitchen as I wake up - this one just makes me feel cared for and pampered. Sometimes it's Mamma, sometimes Granddaddy, other times it's a friend.
  
• Sirens passing in the night. This may sound odd, but after 4 years of living nestled between 4 major hospitals, two of which have level 1 trauma centers, the sirens have become familiar and a normal part of life.
  
• Children thumping and crashing above our heads while we study the Word at the Berends'. Although this is a direct result of leaving out insulation between the first and second floors, it's good to hear the play and even the mess of life going on when you know and love so dearly those involved.
  
• Box fans in the window, sometimes accompanied by crickets or cicadas - this is the last one as I think of my lovely bed with the small fan in the window blowing across my legs.
  

Add your own as a comment - I'd love to hear your ideas :)