Sorting Through Life’s Noise Twenty-one years ago, I moved from a city of about three hundred thousand people to a somewhat rural setting outside Lisbon, Portugal. Having grown up in an urban environment, life outside the city limits was unfamiliar to me. Despite our proximity to Portugal's capital city, our new neighborhood had many animals. Over time I did my best to become accustomed to the sounds of dogs barking, cats meowing, roosters crowing, doves cooing, sheep bleating, and over one hundred parakeets for a time chirping in our backyard. One day a new sound joined the animal menagerie. A mooing sound seemed to be coming from inside our apartment. I soon realized that this latest sound had been programmed as my husband's cell phone ringtone. It must be true what they say, "You can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy." The unique rings we give to our phones help us distinguish them from the phones of ot...