anarchist_nomad (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
anarchist_nomad) wrote2007-04-19 09:35 pm
anarchist_nomad) wrote2007-04-19 09:35 pm
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I Think The Loveliest Time of the Year is the Spring, I Do. Don't You? ('Course You Do!)
First things first: Once again, just after sunset tonight, look to the Western sky. The two day old sliver of a crescent moon returns to hovering nearby Venus. Very pretty! I am amazed that the clouds of England have permitted me to see the one and two day old moons thusly for two months running!
That duty tended to, here is what I have been up to lately:
Last night, after a yummy dinner prepared by the marvelous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheshcat, I was off for a dip at the Ferry Sports Centre. Swam another mile, which feels wonderful. I am amazed to find that I can already see a difference in my arms from these workouts. Have to remember to stretch more, though. When I last swam regularly (1993 - 1999), I never stretched and, thus, lost much flexibility.
Today has been a very pleasant day. The weather is phenomenal -- warm with clear skies -- making every moment I spend outside a joy. At lunchtime, I attended a meeting of the PGJCC. This god-awful acronym -- don't even try to pronounce it! -- stands for the "Post-Graduate Joint Consultative Committee." Essentially, it is a council that responds to the concerns of graduate students and post-docs here in the Oxford Physics Department. There are six graduate student members, one to represent the students at each of the six sub-departments, and there are two post-doc members, each representing the post-docs at three of the sub-departments. That's right -- yours truly represents the post-docs of Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Theoretical Physics. Ooooh, I can feel the power going to my head already! Actually, the meeting was pretty good, and I brought up issues that have been of concern to me since starting my post-doc here. Foremost of which was the isolation that we have from each other -- heck, I don't even know the vast majority of the people I am supposed to represent! Fermilab, for all its bureaucratic flaws, did a good job of organizing interaction time for its post-docs, and I made suggestions based on my experiences there.
Other than the meeting, work is going pretty well, too. After finishing some electronics work on the cryostat, we mounted an old proto-type detector onto the experimental plate of the Kelvinox-400. When next we cool down, I should actually be able to make some measurements. So things are proceeding apace... and are very exciting! Wish I could say more about where this is all heading, but it is best not to do so in a public forum. Those of you who have requested private e-mail can probably expect something on this topic in a couple of weeks time.
In the evening, I crossed the road to get to a bell ringing lesson at St. Giles. I ascended into the bell chamber for only the second time, and watched the #5 being tied so that it would be silent during my lesson. I need to take a picture of the actual bells; those old things ave quite a beauty to them! The process of tying a bell is different from what I would have expected. I'm sure thatresourceress -- rope-goddess that she is -- would have an easy time of it! After practicing on #5 for the better part of an hour, I ascended again and I untied the bell so that it would sound during practice.
Over the course of the practice, I rang several bells. I rang rounds and called changes, as well as practicing my dodging. However, I spent a very sizable part of the practice ringing on the tenor -- usually covering as the lower five or six bells rang a method. I am starting to feel a fair bit of affection for the tenor. This is the oldest bell in the tower, as well as the heaviest. It was cast in 1632 and bears the inscription "FEARE GOD HONAR THE KING" on it. It is an F-sharp bell[*] and has a mass of 13 cwt (or "hundredweight"). To translate units, that is 1456 pounds of bell that I was swinging about less than an hour ago! Being so heavy, it is a challenging bell to control. I don't always have it right, but I can say that it feels so fantastic when I hit my groove and it all flows smoothly! Alas, I suspect that my affection for the tenor is likely to mean little to her; with a life so much longer than mine, I must only be a flash in the pan -- just another in a very long line of lovers!
By the way, for anyone who is interested, the bellringing webpage for St. Giles church can be found a picture of the ringing chamber can be found here. There is also a picture taken inside of the ringing chamber, though it is not terribly impressive, I'm afraid! Especially since you cannot see the horrendous patchwork carpet!
Off to Skullcrusher Mountain now, to spend a little time with my belovedcheshcat before the evening is out...
[*] There is a very, very obscure Green Lantern reference here. I will be extraordinarily impressed if anyone other thanashnistrike knows what it is.
That duty tended to, here is what I have been up to lately:
Last night, after a yummy dinner prepared by the marvelous
cheshcat, I was off for a dip at the Ferry Sports Centre. Swam another mile, which feels wonderful. I am amazed to find that I can already see a difference in my arms from these workouts. Have to remember to stretch more, though. When I last swam regularly (1993 - 1999), I never stretched and, thus, lost much flexibility.Today has been a very pleasant day. The weather is phenomenal -- warm with clear skies -- making every moment I spend outside a joy. At lunchtime, I attended a meeting of the PGJCC. This god-awful acronym -- don't even try to pronounce it! -- stands for the "Post-Graduate Joint Consultative Committee." Essentially, it is a council that responds to the concerns of graduate students and post-docs here in the Oxford Physics Department. There are six graduate student members, one to represent the students at each of the six sub-departments, and there are two post-doc members, each representing the post-docs at three of the sub-departments. That's right -- yours truly represents the post-docs of Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Theoretical Physics. Ooooh, I can feel the power going to my head already! Actually, the meeting was pretty good, and I brought up issues that have been of concern to me since starting my post-doc here. Foremost of which was the isolation that we have from each other -- heck, I don't even know the vast majority of the people I am supposed to represent! Fermilab, for all its bureaucratic flaws, did a good job of organizing interaction time for its post-docs, and I made suggestions based on my experiences there.
Other than the meeting, work is going pretty well, too. After finishing some electronics work on the cryostat, we mounted an old proto-type detector onto the experimental plate of the Kelvinox-400. When next we cool down, I should actually be able to make some measurements. So things are proceeding apace... and are very exciting! Wish I could say more about where this is all heading, but it is best not to do so in a public forum. Those of you who have requested private e-mail can probably expect something on this topic in a couple of weeks time.
In the evening, I crossed the road to get to a bell ringing lesson at St. Giles. I ascended into the bell chamber for only the second time, and watched the #5 being tied so that it would be silent during my lesson. I need to take a picture of the actual bells; those old things ave quite a beauty to them! The process of tying a bell is different from what I would have expected. I'm sure that
resourceress -- rope-goddess that she is -- would have an easy time of it! After practicing on #5 for the better part of an hour, I ascended again and I untied the bell so that it would sound during practice.Over the course of the practice, I rang several bells. I rang rounds and called changes, as well as practicing my dodging. However, I spent a very sizable part of the practice ringing on the tenor -- usually covering as the lower five or six bells rang a method. I am starting to feel a fair bit of affection for the tenor. This is the oldest bell in the tower, as well as the heaviest. It was cast in 1632 and bears the inscription "FEARE GOD HONAR THE KING" on it. It is an F-sharp bell[*] and has a mass of 13 cwt (or "hundredweight"). To translate units, that is 1456 pounds of bell that I was swinging about less than an hour ago! Being so heavy, it is a challenging bell to control. I don't always have it right, but I can say that it feels so fantastic when I hit my groove and it all flows smoothly! Alas, I suspect that my affection for the tenor is likely to mean little to her; with a life so much longer than mine, I must only be a flash in the pan -- just another in a very long line of lovers!
By the way, for anyone who is interested, the bellringing webpage for St. Giles church can be found a picture of the ringing chamber can be found here. There is also a picture taken inside of the ringing chamber, though it is not terribly impressive, I'm afraid! Especially since you cannot see the horrendous patchwork carpet!
Off to Skullcrusher Mountain now, to spend a little time with my beloved
cheshcat before the evening is out...[*] There is a very, very obscure Green Lantern reference here. I will be extraordinarily impressed if anyone other than
ashnistrike knows what it is.
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By the way, I will reveal the true depths of my geekery by revealing that, back in college, I made a minor hobby of memorizing different Green Lantern oaths. Which is how I remembered this one when looking up the note of the St. Giles tenor...
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I really liked the old Green Lantern Corps stories. They were some of my favorite things to read when I used to go through my dad's collection.
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Even
So my hat, dear sir, is way off to you!
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That's a very nice-looking pipe organ, too; how does it sound?
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There is some discrepancy between what is displayed on the St. Giles web page and what I have seen from other sources. While I have not gotten the matter entirely sorted to my satisfaction, I currently believe that the tenor is indeed the oldest bell and that the information about the treble and the second from the website is simply wrong. I want to find out more about this, though... and will be happy to share the information once I have it.
By the way, in 1632, Charles I was king. So the "FEARE GOD HONAR THE KING" inscription was made in his reign. Ironically, about eighteen years later, the monarchy (still under Charles) was overthrown! Just a bit of history trivia...
As for the pipe organ... I guess it sounds okay? I must confess that my ear is not really that of a pipe organ connoisseur.
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Thanks - coming from the Knave of Numbers, that's quite a compliment!
There shouldn't be very much functional difference between a bell cast in 1602 and one cast in 1632 - I don't think the techniques of bell-making changed that drastically in thirty years. But I do understand the historical importance of knowing the exact date.
As for the organ... you have enough musical sensibility to be able to hear whether it's out of tune, or wheezy, or lacking some of the notes. Pipe organs can deteriorate badly if they don't get routine preventive maintenance, and/or they aren't used for some period of years. But some very old organs have either been kept up well, or renovated intelligently, and there's just nothing that can beat that kind of sound! (There must be some liturgical music that combines a church organ in full cry with the equally majestic sound of bells...)
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