On the top of my bookshelf is a row of musical instruments. There are two drums from Africa, two Lakota drums painted by Sonia Holy Eagle, a pair of click sticks from Australia, a wooden flute and a pair of maracas from Central America, and a cow bell from Switzerland. I’m pretty sure that there are lots of people who wouldn’t consider the cow bell to be a musical instrument. Then again, I don’t know how to properly play the wooden flute and I suspect that the beats I make on the djembe are far from traditional African sounds. The various instruments have taken various paths to end up on the top of these particular bookcases in northwest Washington.

The cow bell has a fairly harsh sound. I’d be pretty careful introducing it to a baby, and probably wouldn’t ring it close to a particularly young one. Older children get a kick out of it and like to make it clang, often to a bit of dismay of their parents. My mother brought that cow bell home on one of her trips to Switzerland. I think it came home on the trip that we took together with them in 1978 just after we graduated from seminary. It was on display in her cabin for years and when the time came to clean out that cabin the cow bell ended up at my house. For many years I had a photograph of a Swiss cow with a bell that was on the wall in one of our children’s rooms. Children grow, rooms change, and the picture went into storage. I don’t think it made the move to Washington with us, but there is quite a bit of framed art in storage still, so it may be there among other pictures that I have no idea where to display or how to move to new homes.

The cowbell, however, seems to have a home on the bookshelf for now.

In Switzerland, where the bell came from, rural communities are located not far from urban centers. Aarwangen is a small town that is less than a hour from Bern, Zurich, and Basel. As such it is an attractive place for urban workers to find homes in the rural setting. The town is on the banks of the river Aare, with the Bernese Alps in the distance. It has a medieval castle. There is a church and traditional farmhouses in the city center. A number of new houses and apartments extend out from the village center. It is from those new houses that a problem arose.

At least two families complained formally to village council and asked that the bells be removed from dairy cows at night. Those bells, it seemed, were disrupting the peace of the village for the new residents. Those complaints, however, raised a storm. Long-term residents and farmers were outraged at what they saw as an attack on their culture. The farmer who owned the herd in question viewed it as a personal insult to him and his cows. A petition was organized demanding a vote to keep the bells. Over a thousand signatures were gathered. One of those who complained has withdrawn that complaint. The other has moved away. Nonetheless, there will be a public meeting and a vote next month on the future of bells.

Cow bells are relics of the past. In modern farming they are no longer necessary. Years ago the bells helped farmers locate cattle that were grazing in the hillsides and mountains. In those days the farmers could identify individual animals by their distinct bells. There were no fences and the animals were allowed to roam freely until time for the farmer to gather them to milk twice each day. A lost or missing cow was a big problem, hence bells were tied around the animals to identify their locations.

I’m pretty sure no one asked the cows their opinions of the bells. The animals, however, are very adaptable and don’t show any signs of distress. Switzerland, however, has a modern high tech economy. Cows are chipped for identification. The bells are much more about tradition than about a necessary element of farming.

I don’t have an opinion on whether or not cow bells should be removed at night in Switzerland. I’ll allow the Swiss to make those decisions. What interests me about the story is how tensions arise between traditional communities and those who have recently arrived. I think about it in terms of our own living. We’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for a little over three years now. And we aren’t the only newcomers. Communities around here are rapidly growing with the influx of new residents. There is a housing shortage because of the number of new arrivals. The subdivision where we live is a new community, constructed on what once was pasture land. Our son’s farm was an active dairy in recent memory. This is not, however, a farming community. The farms have been subdivided into small acreages owned mostly by people who commute from urban areas or telecommute from jobs that allow remote working. While the land still has value for agricultural production, farming is not the main income for very many people around here. Our neighbors almost all drive to other places to work. A few work remotely. A few, like us, are retired. We don’t see ourselves as city folk and are happy living out in the country a bit.

But we have displaced the way things used to be. I know that change is inevitable and that things cannot remain the same, but I think of those who made their homes in Birch Bay when it was a tourist destination for those seeking to vacation away from Seattle or Vancouver. In those days the village pretty much shut down in the winter. And before those times it was the location of seasonal fishing and gathering of shell fish by Coast Salish people. Their ways of life have now been displaced.

I don’t want to be like the Swiss villagers who complained about the cow bells. I am careful not to complain when a tractor slows traffic. I try not to stand out as a newcomer. But I know that I am part of the change for better or for worse.