Tactical Hedgehog

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

[https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/145359468]

Barred Owl || Strix varia

If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.

If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.

Take the deepest breath you can and feel out your limits. It is more than likely not what you expect.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC300808/

and

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

retrieval team for objects in the backseat

custodian of the parking garage tickets

"All clear my way"

en-route dining concierge

The art of change ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. To the musical Belgian, for example, it appears that the proper thing to do with a carefully tuned ring of bells is to play a tune upon it. By the English campanologist, the playing of tunes is considered to be a childish game, only fit for foreigners; the proper use of bells is to work out mathematical permutations and combinations. When he speaks of the music of his bells, he does not mean musician’s music – still less what the ordinary man calls music. To the ordinary man, in fact, the pealing of bells is a monotonous jangle and a nuisance, tolerable only when mitigated by remote distance and sentimental association... His passion – and it is a passion – finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed.

- Dorothy Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1934)

Grandsire Triples is very much real but I've never rung it because we usually only have enough ringers for Grandsire Doubles. Grandsire is my favourite method actually - as far as I know it's one of the oldest methods & it's different from the others because there are two hunt bells but which ones they are can change depending on when bobs and singles are called.

triples - 7 bells because there are 3 pairs of bells that can swap with one staying in the same place

doubles - 5 bells (same as above because 2 pairs + 1 extra)

from 3 up: singles, minimus, doubles, minor, triples, major, caters, royal, cinques, maximus

(this is one of the things i love about bells - you get silly words to know)

sometimes ringers decide to ring for over 3 hours without stopping or repeating any sequence of notes. that's a peal! it's based on the time it takes to ring every order of 7 notes (7!)

A lot of bellringers are old and retired and can use html so there are some pretty good resources out there BUT they will be completely incomprehensible at first.

you can look at Dove's Guide to see if there's a ringing tower near you. England has an insane number of towers, the US has a few, Australia has like 60. pakistan has 1 apparently

you should be able to find an email address pretty easily & arrange to go and visit some bells. they are friendly (in my experience! it could be nasty sometimes i don't know!?)

do you find this beautiful and helpful

In my town we have a nice secular carillon that the piano nerds can go and punch out their little classical tunes on (apparently it's set out like a piano but instead of a keyboard you hit the levers with your fist).

I finished the book and um...

at this point convinced that the bells themselves are the ones killing people.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.