One of my favourite pieces of music to play on handbells is Make Me An Instrument Of Thy Peace by Kevin McChensey. It’s a beautifully moving piece of music, that takes full advantage of all the handbells my choir has. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve played it over the years, playing it both with just my choir and organ, and larger massed choirs, including in 2005 at a handbell festival in Ottawa with a huge number of choirs.

He based it on the 13th century prayer of St. Francis of Assisi and dedicated it to “the victims of the shooting at Columbine High School and other acts of senseless violence”. A few years ago, while talking to him (Kevin, not St. Francis) about commissioning a piece of music, I mentioned it. He told me that it was actually his second attempt at writing a piece of music in memory of those who died at the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999. The first attempt was apparently too dark and sad and not what he was trying to achieve. I’m glad he made a second attempt, but I wish he hadn’t had to write it at all.

The piece starts and ends with 12 tolls and a final chord. Each chord represents one of the people who were killed at Columbine.

Here’s a photo of the last couple of lines. You can see the chords starting at bar 109.

We’ve been rehearsing it for the last few practices, but yesterday evening’s practice was the first I’ve been at since the horrible shootings in Florida and I couldn’t help but think about the victims and survivors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. There aren’t enough tolls for them.

One of the many videos on YouTube of it being played on handbells…

Today we pause to remember those people who have made the ultimate sacrifice over the years so that we have the peace, security and freedom that we enjoy today.

To them and their families I say “Thank you”.

Tomorrow evening, we North Americans (well, most of us) are supposed to turn our clocks back an hour in the vain quest of pursuit of saving energy.

Why “vain pursuit”? Well, because although daylight saving time is promoted as leading to an overall reduction in energy consumption, there hasn’t been any proof that this has ever been accomplished. Check out David Prerau’s book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time (hardcover: 1560256559; softcover: 1560257962) if you want to learn more about the history of daylight saving time. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds.

If you’re a *NIX system administrator you probably updated your systems a few years ago, but in case you haven’t you probably should take a look at this. The zdump command should give you something like this:

[pastacode lang=”markdown” manual=”%5Bgordon%40seedling%20gordon%5D%24%20zdump%20-v%20%2Fetc%2Flocaltime%7Cgrep%202017%0A%2Fetc%2Flocaltime%20%20Sun%20Mar%2012%2006%3A59%3A59%202017%20UTC%20%3D%20Sun%20Mar%2012%2001%3A59%3A59%202017%20EST%20isdst%3D0%20gmtoff%3D-18000%0A%2Fetc%2Flocaltime%20%20Sun%20Mar%2012%2007%3A00%3A00%202017%20UTC%20%3D%20Sun%20Mar%2012%2003%3A00%3A00%202017%20EDT%20isdst%3D1%20gmtoff%3D-14400%0A%2Fetc%2Flocaltime%20%20Sun%20Nov%20%205%2005%3A59%3A59%202017%20UTC%20%3D%20Sun%20Nov%20%205%2001%3A59%3A59%202017%20EDT%20isdst%3D1%20gmtoff%3D-14400%0A%2Fetc%2Flocaltime%20%20Sun%20Nov%20%205%2006%3A00%3A00%202017%20UTC%20%3D%20Sun%20Nov%20%205%2001%3A00%3A00%202017%20EST%20isdst%3D0%20gmtoff%3D-18000%0A” message=”” highlight=”” provider=”manual”/]

There’s a lot of stuff on Twitter, some of it pretty scary and/or creepy. This tweet, however, probably jumps to the top of the holy-crap scary list:

***THIS IS AS REAL AS IT GETS***

***NOWHERE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS WILL BE SAFE***

***YOU STILL HAVE TIME TO EVACUATE***

Please RT. #Irma pic.twitter.com/VWLMEDWoUs

— NWS Key West (@NWSKeyWest) September 8, 2017

The City of Ottawa has set up a registry for people who want to volunteer to help out during the floods. You can go to the page here.

Early Sunday morning, at 2AM, we move our clocks forward an hour in a futile attempt to save energy. As I’ve mentioned in previous years’ versions of this post, daylight save time hasn’t been shown to actually save energy.

Instead of saving energy, there will be an increase in accidents because people are discombobulated by the change in their sleep pattern. As an added “bonus”, there’s a 10% increase the likelihood that you’ll experience a heart attack during the days immediately following the time change. Is it worth it? Not in my opinion. (more…)