Ring In the New Year with Keyser!
You know, Keyesr once saw a carillon concert in the rather inappropriately named Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago (it’s actually a huge Gothic structure that’s a lot bigger than many churches). You had to walk all the way up to the top of the main building via a spiral staircase, then walk over the vaulting and climb up to the top of the tower, where you saw some sort of maniac play this incredible contraption to get the bells to work:
One of Keyser’s cherished memories from the distant past is sitting outside with a friend eating lunch at the time of the once-a-week carillon concerts (Wednesday, if memory serves). You know, Keyser’s mother was a talented organist, but Keyser never inherited any practical sense of music (luckily, Keyser has never had any desire to play music, and Salieri can tell you how bitter it can be to want to make music when you don’t have the talent).
Fun (and not so fun) carillon fact. In the anti-religious campaign of the mass murderer (and new Russian hero) Joseph Stalin, the carillon of the Danilov monastery was to be destroyed in 1929, but an American diplomat saved the bells and got them installed at his alma mater, Harvard University. Recently, Harvard agreed to return the bells to Russia and to train bell ringers (the bells were legally Harvard’s but they returned them in exchange for replacements in light of the murderous illegitimacy of the Bolsheviks who sold them). Here’s a news story about their arrival in Russia:
The vile Bolsheviks used the monastery as a detention center for the dreaded NKVD (“security service”) during the horrors of the 1930s. It warms the cockles of Keyser’s godless heart to know that the bells will ring there again in triumph over the bloody tyranny of the USSR.
May God bless, as Clem Cadiddlehopper used to say.
[These good tidings of great joy were heralded by a stray angel over at Keyser's Lair.]
