Posted on 10/29/2006 7:28:48 AM PST by sionnsar
Wall Street heard the sound of 12 bells on Saturday _ announcing God, not money.
While the bell that opens the stock exchange was silent, the landmark Trinity Church at the top of the street rang $1 million worth of new chimes, pealing for hours according to a mathematical formula dating to the Middle Ages.
The so-called ‘change-ringing’ bells _ the only 12-bell set in the United States _ were installed about five years after the terrorist attack on the nearby World Trade Center that filled Trinity with ash and debris. The church was closed for two months after the attacks.
‘I am delighted to continue the tradition begun in the 18th century when the British introduced change bell ringing to the colonies,’ said Martin ‘Dill’ Faulkes, a British computer entrepreneur who worked on Wall Street in the 1980s and financed the project. ‘The glory of change bell ringing is perhaps even more resonant in today’s stressful environment.’
Starting at 1 p.m. Saturday, a ‘band’ of British ringers started pulling the sallies at the Episcopal church for a full peal of at least 5,000 ‘changes’ _ each a mathematically calculated sound sequence for all dozen bells, instead of a particular melody. The rich cascade of sound was to be heard again on Sunday morning.
The Rev. Mark Sisk, bishop of New York’s Episcopal Archdiocese, was at the altar to bless the ringers, including Faulkes, himself a change-ringer since he was 12.
He had first contacted the church about the project before the terrorist attack. Last year, Faulknes donated $1 million to refurbish the bell tower and 10 older chime bells, and to install 12 new swing bells that were created at the Taylor Foundry in Loughborough, England.
The bells _ ranging in weight from a few hundred pounds to over a ton _ were cast by pouring a molten bronze alloy into molds that were hand-crafted using a mixture of sand, water, chopped hay and horse manure.
On Friday, the inaugural chime was rung, but not a full peal.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. . . . change-ringing didn't begin until well into the 17th century.
. . . unless their argument is that permutations were discovered in the Middle Ages. But I don't think so. It's pretty abstruse stuff, they didn't even invent logarithms until well into the 17th century either.
I was reading a NYT article (byline: Sarah Lyall) in the local paper today about speeding cameras in Britain and the paper actually published the following and I quote exactly:
"Using something called thermite, a pyrotechnic substance often used in underwater welding, Moore succeeded in wrecking the camera...""something called thermite"? Gimme a break -- I've known about thermite at least since 1968 when a friend managed to burn a hole through a workbench and into the garage floor with same. His father was not pleased.
And then the article continues:
"...but unfortunately for him, its [the camera's] hard drive survived -- along with videotape of his van driving toward it and then driving away, as the picture dissolved in a cloud of fiery sparks."Videotape? Hard drive? What was the video stored on anyway? If it was videotape, what's the relevance of the hard drive's survival? If it's the hard drive, what's this talk of "tape"?
IMHO there is way too much focus in the self-professed "mainstream media" on being Politically Correct and far too little on being factual. And it shows in articles such as these. Boy, does it ever show....
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