NIMBY, Etiquette and Pleasant Valley Sundays

In today’s language, an earworm is not a worm, nor does it have much to do with your ear. It’s a song or melody that keeps repeating in your mind. Ever since returning to State College 15 years ago an oldie-but-goodie song has occasionally given me an earworm that reminds me of Happy Valley. The song is “Pleasant Valley Sunday” by The Monkees. Written in 1967 by Carole King and her then-husband Gerry Goffin, it’s a catchy, upbeat tune, but it is generally described as having a slightly sinister side with social commentary on suburban life. 

But the visuals evoked by the lyrics — “serenade the weekend squire who just came out to mow his lawn,” “charcoal burning everywhere,” “Mrs. Gray she’s proud today because her roses are in bloom” — do make me think about Happy Valley, or at least parts of it, even though the song’s purpose might be to make me feel oddly about such things. 

Be that as it may, around dinnertime this past Sunday afternoon my wife and I were sitting in the shade of our backyard and enjoying a very pleasant summer day. We had spent portions of the previous two days working on the flowers and shrubs around our house. There was a nice breeze that kept the temperature perfect for shorts and short-sleeved shirts, the birds were chirping and cawing, children were playing in the neighboring yards, dogs were barking, burgers were grilling nearby and we could hear a lawnmower in the distance. 

Not coincidentally, given the surroundings, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” got stuck on repeat in my head. 

Except the opening line from the song was missing from our experience: “The local rock group down the street is trying hard to learn this song.” Which was a relief because I can only imagine how we would feel if there were a local rock group down the street trying hard to learn a song. Not very happy or pleasant I imagine. The eponymous garage band may be the storied beginning of many a popular rock group, but I’ve never encountered one in real life and expect their existence would be short-lived in a suburban setting. 

Which reminded me of an interesting use of the internet that I’d recently read about. My July issue of Harper’s Magazine contains a short list of posts that appear on a Japanese website. The website is DQN Today, and is a crowdsourced interactive map of anonymous gripes — many noise-related — about the area where the users live. The stated purpose is to help people who are looking to buy houses become aware of the irritating sights and sounds that they might run into in certain neighborhoods. Some of the posts are:

• Children and rabbits are left unattended.
• Stupid mothers playing with balls in the road with their children.
• A dog is kept outside and barks at all hours. The sound of it lapping up water is awful.
• When they gather and barbecue, I can’t hang up my laundry. 

Certainly a novel way of letting your current and potential future neighbors know about any issues with the cover of anonymity. Having lived and worked in multiple places, I’ve encountered various levels of these types of concerns in our country as well. What often surprises me though, is that in many cases the people who are complaining should have been aware of the issue before they moved in – even without a straightforward website such as this. Just a few of the types of issues I’ve seen become public fodder:

• Residents living near schools complain that school-related activities such as sports, band and other gathering events are taking place.
• Residents living near a park complain about people playing in the park.
• Resident living near an airport complain about the noise planes make. 
• Residents living near a rail line complain about trains.
• Residents living near an industrial area complain about the sounds and smells of industry.

Taking that one step further we have people who live near undeveloped land that they don’t own – farm, woods, fields – and complain when it gets developed. We even have a special acronym for this: NIMBY, which stands for Not in My Backyard. This acronym seems to have started in response to the construction of nuclear power plants in the mid-1970s.

It must be noted that in regard to NIMBYs, over the years the term has acquired a negative connotation, which is deserved if the land in question was zoned for the use of the development at issue. But if the zoning of the land was changed so the development at issue could be constructed, then this is clearly a topic for the democratic process and being a NIMBY is a valid response.

The public landing place for these types of issues – in Japan or here – is in front of our local governments. In most cases our local governments are comprised of elected officials who feel their duty is to listen to all sides regardless of how cut-and-dried they may feel about them (“So, you didn’t expect high school sports to take place at the high school, huh?”). The result is our elected officials spend time and tax dollars ameliorating concerns by serving as mediators – a function for which many are untrained.

Which is where etiquette and manners come in. And for that, we’ll use the words of Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners. In a November 1997 interview with Wired magazine, she talks about etiquette and the law: “… etiquette is a voluntary bargain we make to live peacefully together. It’s not something you can figure out through common sense. You have to learn it… We have two regulatory systems: legal and etiquette. The legal system prevents us from killing each other. The etiquette system prevents us from driving each other crazy.”

In other words, if you find yourself as the protagonist in any of the bullet-points listed above, perhaps etiquette – a learned skill – should be your guide. Know where you fit in the voluntary bargaining equation of life at that moment. And although it’s not an earworm because it’s not set to music, it might be helpful to heed the well-known and well-quoted advice recognized as the “Serenity Prayer”: 

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; 

Courage to change the things I can; 

and wisdom to know the difference.