Bells from around the world

I’m home. It was an enjoyable two weeks. I’m glad I went. I’m also glad to be home. I left home two weeks ago Monday. From then to the following Saturday afternoon I visited Niece’s family. Brother was also there as was his second daughter. Niece has four children, three boys 8½, 6, and 1, and a girl 4½. We had an outing most days and one evening friends with children of similar ages came over to see the Miyazaki movie Whispers of the Heart. I enjoyed that one. I left Saturday afternoon and drove on to Nashville. The national handbell event began late Sunday morning. It was held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. This is a huge place. It’s the largest non-casino hotel with over 2,800 rooms and enough convention hall space for 4-5 simultaneous conventions – there were three during my time, the Knights of Columbus, a Stream Revitalization group, and us. And there were convention halls not in use. The space includes three grand atriums with lush plants, fountains, and waterfalls. I didn’t stay there. Rooms were over $200 a night. That might have been tolerable for one night, but not for eight. I found a hotel nearby with a rate of $130 a night. It was only a mile away. Even so I drove my car from one to the other. And that first day I found the resort charges non-guests $33 a day for parking. I had lots of thoughts of greedy corporate types making a buck anyway they could. So I drove back to my hotel and walked. At event registration I learned one could drive to the mall just beyond the resort and park just outside resort property and do it for free. Even so it took 10 minutes to walk from the car to the event convention area (rather than 30 minutes to walk from my hotel to the convention area). The national event ended and the International Handbell Symposium started Monday evening. That program included the parade of flags and an international handbell choir of college students (plus a few adults) who had been rehearsing since Saturday. They did a difficult program wonderfully well. Much of the international event was taken up by all of us forming a mass handbell choir. I heard the number of ringers was about 330. That’s small for this event that has been happening alternate years for almost four decades and has prompted much of my international travel. Usually there are 500-800 ringers and one event (about a decade ago) getting up to 1200. The international event is organized by handbell guilds in the US, Canada, Britain, Japan, Korea, Australia-New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. This year the normally large numbers of ringers from Japan and Korea didn’t come. We did get a college age choir from Iceland, a five member team from Hungary, a choir from Puerto Rico, and a single ringer from Brazil. In addition to all the rehearsals the schedule included some classes. I attended one about Iceland and one about saying a few words in Cantonese. I also took part in a session on what we want to see in future International Symposiums. The attendees of that session said clearly the big draw for the Symposium is getting to know people from other countries. So make sure there is time to do that, such as during meals and other events. Draw people together. And in our tiny way promote peace. The final concert, featuring directors from each organizing country and music from most (the Korean’s chose an American hymn arrangement), went very well. The concert was livestreamed, though from one stationary camera showing about a third of the ringers (the video guy was stuck at the Denver airport because of weather). Alas, that means the video doesn’t show the extra percussion, the flutist, the speaker to introduce each piece and conductor, and many times not even the conductor. The music sounds pretty good. The images are not so great. I just watched it online. I did it partly to hear some of the music that happens while I’m playing my few particular bells. In the pop tune from Singapore I heard the melody while playing, but didn’t notice the many other things going on in the music. I also watched because I was told the video will be up only through today. After hearing the pieces again I’m going to have them as earworms again. The massed ringing concerts for 2016 and 2018 (the 2020 event was canceled) are still on YouTube (search for International Handbell Symposium) and if this one stays it will be there too. I started home on Sunday. I drove through a long and strong rainstorm between Louisville and Cincinnati. I got into Cinci in time to spend a couple hours at the Underground Railroad Museum. I then walked along the Riverfront for a bit. Then I drove up to the Eden Park Overlook. After that I had dinner, then found my motel. I had considered going to the Cinci Zoo this morning (and had chosen a motel near it). But the weather forecast said sunny and would feel like 90F by 11:00. So I skipped it and came home. I had chosen the zoo only because the many interesting museums in town are closed Mondays. A few days before the trip I took my car in to repair the air conditioner. The coolness had been lasting only a half hour and I was planning 5-6 hours of driving a day. I was told it was low on coolant, so paid to have it topped up. Yesterday I noticed the AC wasn’t always blowing cool air. Today it stopped. The trip home got quite warm. Whoever checked the coolant didn’t check why it was low. They probably thought with a car this old (16 years and 200K miles) the coolant was low just because of age. I’ll have to give them a call soon. I did read some of the news while sitting in hotel rooms in the evening. I saved a few links to share – some other day.