Kaboom

Yippee. Once again, the Maine state legislature and Governor LePage have come through with important legislation. Right up there with the new, official designation of whoopee pie as the state dessert, it’s now legal to buy fireworks.  

Do note, however, particularly those of you who might not have known this was such a pressing issue, the new law doesn’t go into effect until January 2012, despite the efforts of the bill’s author, Representative Douglas Damon, who, back in February, argued for its swift passage by calling it “emergency” legislation. Said Damon, “Within the meaning of the Constitution of Maine, it’s immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety.” Seriously.

Specifics about what kind of fireworks can be sold have yet to be spelled out but it’s likely missile-type bottle rockets and mortars won’t be included. Maybe so, but among best-sellers just over state lines in New Hampshire and likely to migrate here, is “MegaBanger.” That may tell you all you need to know.

Predictably, supporters of the new law joined with Damon in saying fireworks sales would bring in more revenue through taxes and licensing fees. Also, legalization would produce more jobs, which as we all know in these economic times is both a real need and the game-changer when used in just about any proposed legislation, even if jobs aren’t many and are likely to be part-time and seasonal. And never mind that the fireworks themselves are nearly all made in China, an economy hardly in need of a jump-start. Further, as Damon pointed out, fireworks are widely used within the state already so “we might as well just make them legal and tax them.” Does this mean marijuana might be next?

On the other side, critics did abound, although one, John Dean, the state’s fire marshal, was prohibited by the LePage administration to testify against the bill. Because you know, the state’s expert on explosives and fire safety might throw water on the issue. As might the Maine State Federation of Firefighters who, through its spokesperson, admitted that it was hard-pressed to believe anyone thought this bill a good idea.

Predominant among critics’ concerns was safety. The injuries to hands and eyes and ear drums. But, admonished supporters, look at Maine’s current low incident of firework-related injuries. Further, pointing to the number of injuries caused by inappropriate usage and often occurring in young children suggests our state is rife with "ignorant morons" and a widespread lack of parental supervision. Key to the bill, they said, is that you must be 21 to purchase fireworks (and we know how well that’s worked with booze and cigarettes). Also, safety training is required, amounting to, best many of us can tell, a pamphlet on safe usage given to fireworks buyers – and funded by tax revenue.

Already national fireworks chains, likening their stores to big-box type “fireworks groceries,” are staking out their territory. And so, folks, soon, at any party or gathering, along with beer and burgers or chilled chardonnay and lobster rolls, it’ll be easier – and legal – to spice things up with some pyrotechnics. On a Sunday afternoon. A Saturday night. A Tuesday morning. How much more convenient now for the pranksters to see how high an empty beer can fly or how many people in an unsuspecting crowd will jump. Given the store locations being scouted, Phantom Fireworks may well be sandwiched between a local Rite Aid and Wal Mart, thus making the purchase of Big Bombs, Ground Blasters or Screaming Rattlers as easy as toothpaste or paper towels. 

But who am I to judge how people choose to spend their discretionary income or leisure-time activities? Personally, I’m content relegating fireworks to the big high-in-the-sky displays, to the ritual of hiking down to Town Pier on the 4th of July or joining in the celebration of a sesquicentennial or game-winning homerun  with aerial Chrysanthemums, Willows and Spiders.  As for safety, kids and short-fused firecrackers will no doubt always mix. Eyes and fingers will be damaged or lost. Pranksters will be pranksters, the worst of them, such as the few in the neighborhood where I grew up, will find disturbing ways to be cruel to turtles and frogs. But let’s not go there.

What I object to is the noise, to another legalized and presumably about to become more routine assault that robs us of quiet, of what precisely a lot of us moved here to find. Bad enough we now get occasional Jet-Skiers churning up the waters just off shore, pummeling the customary quiet with a piercing buzz and whine, with wave-whacking slaps and revving engines in what appear to be mind-numbing laps and loops. To my way of thinking -- and hearing -- at the end of a summer day, as the light over the Bay, though barely pinking up but already coaxing from the resident birdlife its familiar a cappella, the kind of accompanying music I’m convinced the sinking sun itself would request, such JetSki activity borders on the felonious.

Who can argue that it’s not getting harder to find quiet in the modern world, places abuzz with only the natural world’s soundscapes? Even in our national parks, it’s being extinguished by the loud hum of RV generators, the whap of overhead sight-seeing helicopters, the throbbing engines of ATVs. Were there an endangered species list for such things, quiet would likely reign at the top.

No doubt a lot of folks would object to the charge that nearly all the world’s noise is made by man and his inventions and machines. And it’s only fair to point out that the ears can be assaulted by what the natural world mightily dishes out. Like, say, the roar of a tornado bearing down. Even the noise-queasy among us must concede that certain man-made sound – noise? – is unavoidable, even welcome. For example, hospital machines with all their incessant squawks, whirs and beeps, not to mention the hurtling, siren-screaming ride that often precede them. Certainly this island is not without its man-made noise, its summer orchestra of piston-banging lobster boats leaving Stonington harbor at dawn, whining chainsaws after a storm’s blow-downs, assorted power tools and generators, rumbling granite trucks, the occasional dynamite blast at nearby Crotch island quarry all of which, I’d like to note, is mostly necessary. But noise, we might say, is in the ears of the beholder. A recent houseguest from New York stumbled into our kitchen at 6 a.m. mumbling “What racket!” and looking as if the rowdy congress of crows on our lawn had in fact physically assaulted her.

I sort of think other houseguests, though mum, might've felt the same, but I can’t say what some recent visitors, week-long renters of a house down shore, thought about our island and its quiet gifts. I do know though, that a few nights ago, well past dark and well past the 4th of July celebrations, on a still and amber moon-lit night, when a couple of softly yodeling loons had yet to call it quits, when a moth banged at my screen and the lapping of a high tide kissed the shore, loud fireworks seemed in order. Shrill whistling, explosive booms and bangs that on and off lasted more than hour. And what, now, is a harbinger of things to come.