The Rural Ethicist: Modern Alarms

By Katharine Adams

September 2025

Are you, like many owners of smartphones (which means 54% of the world’s beings on two wheels), enamored with your device’s alarm function? With an array of options at your fingertips, including a world clock, timer and stopwatch, has customizing multiple alarms ever become a guilty pleasure?

You’re not alone, if so. At Sleepopolis.com, one person fesses up to 52 random alarms, while another found time to build a library of 377 alarms.

With 1,440 minutes in a day, it’s not as unreasonable as it sounds to amass such an (ahem) alarming collection. A collection that large may have been built by someone who values the land of options over routine. Or maybe it was built by somebody seeking expedience and structure to allocate time for tasks on a “to-do” list. Or maybe the builder of such a detail is a shift worker grabbing meals and groceries, showers and shows at a variety of times.

Imagine having so many unique, personal “convenience” alarms set on your phone that their management interferes with that which you’re after: efficiency.

Many of us tending our private phone-alarm gardens can’t pull up and delete the weeds, in case we “might need them again.” After all, a lot of plotting went into them. So, much like old magazines, clippings, bread bags and bent-but-still-useful old nails, we stash digital alarm assets the way some might … collect vintage Telechron clocks.

I counted a shocking total of 35 alarms I’ve managed to plant on my iPhone’s Clock app.

No surprise: my widest array of alarm choices land between 5:00 - 7:30 am, with a surprising option I don’t remember having set for 5:55 am. The hour between 6 and 7 am clearly proved to be challenging during one era, with eight choices of alarm, mostly generated during the wee hours. That’s when I sometimes wake up and end up indulging in a long reading (or column-writing) session at 2:30 am, realizing I will require a few more minutes’ slumber in the morning.

The alarm sounds on our devices are available in a remarkable variety. I hunted for and installed a custom “birds” tone to rise by that I’ve been relying on for years; however, it was only meant to be a temporary crutch until I can find one more “natural” and pleasant. The one I still use erupts in a muffled sheet of white noise with birdsong highlights, like a flock of distant geese flying before a waterfall.

Telechron clock

If I can’t unearth a prettier bird alarm soon, I may go back to my beloved, built-in crickets tone.

My heart longs to recreate those lovely 1980s days of rising to the gentle 7 am birdsong of former public radio station WGBH host, Robert J. Lurtsema. Amid slow-building, soft chirruping for five minutes, selections like Handel’s “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” would slowly infuse into the mix. Finally, in his sonorous, just-woken voice given to pauses, Lurtsema would greet his risers: “Good morning … on this … [insert date] … and welcome … to Morning Pro Musica.”

It was a greeting that held many of us under his spell.

“What’s so special about Robert J’s program?” mused WGBH member Keon Cyrus in an old station print ad, “It’s sanity, in a world soon to become insane. It’s an opportunity to take that last, deep breath, before you get on the fast track.”

Why tune into my present, phone-y birdsong, when nature already provides? Why not just take advantage of the season of birdsong outside the Otis summer window, where a Red-eyed Vireo chortles as lead singer, an Eastern Phoebe announces its name and an Ovenbird keeps staccato accompaniment?

Simple reason: while I relish hearing those early morning birds, my climate gauge insists upon a steady supply of cool, electric breezes. So here I am, blaming the poor bird alarm, while the white noise drone could be courtesy of a fan flapping its blades, rather than real birds on the wing.

Maybe I could build an app called the “Lurtsemeter.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Rural Ethicist is a column about the culture of the daily mundane. It tolerates an occasional spider, values the bull in horse sense and seeks the gleaming, stainless steel wisdom beneath a film of cooking grease. Above all, it cherishes the gem of our shared existence: family. ruralethicstudio.com