leafblowers

We interrupt this pregnancy journal for a pregnancy topic reprieve. (The following story actually does relate to pregnancy et al. in at least two ways: 1) when you're pregnant, naps are crucial and leafblowers are loud; 2) if everyone is right, and all this will end in an real child, how will I explain the social structures of this world we live in to said being?)

Let me start by saying my neighbors are all very kind and very friendly. They are also all very rich and very white. Their gardeners are all very brown and equipped with leafblowers. Where should I begin...?

Am I outraged at the social and economic advantages of having light skin? Sad for this gardener out my window who, for all I know, was a sculptor or a chiropractor or a veterinarian in his home country before coming to the US to discover none of his schooling or experience count? Am I horrified by the fact that my town - although diverse - hides its minorities so well they are virtually invisible in every aspect of society until appearing in my ESL classes, and my neighborhood is one of the least diverse areas I could ever hope to live in? Am I thinking those very rich, very white, very retired neighbors should just do the bloody gardening themselves instead of spending weekends at conventions of fellow classic car collectors? Except that then the foreign-born veterinarian wouldn't have any job at all and wouldn't send home Western Union envelopes of the little money he's able to save each month so that his little brothers and sisters can eat and go to school so that the next time the US Empire decides to attack social freedom there, perhaps one of his siblings would have become the union leader or literacy specialist that will stand up and fight for the rights of the village and get international recognition but still be thrown in jail without a charge making this whole employment situation way too complicated for an idealist writer to figure out?

Sure, sure, I'm upset about those things. But what really gets me are those paradigms of noise and waste - the fucking leafblowers!