Tag: lifestyle

Springing into Fall

Our panoramic view of Cape Town, with the Company Garden in the foreground
and the Table Mountain range being swallowed by a bank of clouds on the horizon.

TODAY IS THE 21st OF MARCH. The Vernal Equinox. 

For the 87 percent of the world’s population inhabiting the Northern Hemisphere, this is the start of Spring.

But we are in South Africa, along with 800 million or so other humans living below the equator. And while the days and nights may be equal in length in both hemispheres (equinox is a portmanteau derived from two Latin words for “equal night”), it is the first day of Autumn in these parts. I’m still trying to get my head around this. 

The climate over the past few weeks has been stultifying, no different than a late summer heat wave in the Northern Hemisphere. And today, as though on meteorologic cue, you can feel the crisp morning breeze signaling the change of seasons.

IT IS SATURDAY HERE IN Cape Town. Regardless of season, this means in a few hours we will hear the drummers drumming and the singers singing in the Company Garden park across the street. These are congregations of kids, organized by age, intoning African folk songs.

They are good. The harmonies are tight. Their voices are clear and strong and carry for quite a distance, echoing through the surrounding concrete buildings.

Hadeda Ibis, the noisiest bird in Africa.

Others voices — much less pleasant — also reverberate through the park and environs. One is the Egyptian Goose, which apparently is closer in species to a duck. They quack more than honk. They are highly territorial and begin complaining the minute any other creature — human, avian, mammalian — infringes upon their perceived space.

Their noisy objections are rhythmic, like a metronome, and quite persistent, with a beep-beep-beep that can last for several minutes before they finally, thankfully, give it a rest. 

But they have nothing on the Hadeda Ibis, a large, somewhat plump bird with a long tapered beak, which squawks in a tone and volume reminiscent of those “ayuga” car horns, which, by comparison, seem mild and pleasant to this raucous creature.

These guys are considered the noisiest bird on the continent. No argument from me on that description.

A pair of these birds has been foraging on the lawns near the pool at our complex, pulling up the occasional grub or worm. They are not only loud, they are confident, showing no signs of shyness as they peck the soil and waddle within an arm’s length of humans.

Ayuga!

THE COMPANY GARDEN, by the way, is so named because it is where the Dutch East India Company cultivated this plot of land nearly four centuries ago to grow vegetables and fruits to refresh the ships en route between Amsterdam and Jakarta. In those early days, they had yet to appreciate the value of leafy greens and citrus fruit providing the necessary Vitamin C to prevent scurvy. Healthful benefits aside, the sailors, no doubt, welcomed any change in cuisine from a steady diet of hard tack and salted fish.

This cultivation endeavor, in what was then known as Kaapstadt, commenced in 1652. Not quite as old as the mythical Garden of Eden, but, on the other hand, still in existence to this day, albeit in a ceremonial rather than utilitarian capacity. Also, at least to my knowledge, no one here has been evicted for tasting any fruit arbitrarily deemed forbidden. 

The view from our eighth story apartment is panoramic and mercurial. Although it is clear at the moment, it is bound to change. It reminds me of the old saying in Maine: If you don’t like the weather, just wait 20 minutes.

The pale blue sky is at the moment unobstructed and inert, but low hanging, lenticular clouds will at some point in the day begin to seep through the crevices of the sandstone ridge on the horizon, draping over the iconic Table Mountain like a table cloth. It’s a mesmerizing show, not unlike the fog rolling through and hugging the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

The slow-motion change in the landscape is like one of those high definition nature videos looping on a flat screen in the waiting room of most dentists’ offices these days. Only here, the view is the real thing, and there is no shrill whirring of a high-speed drill bit chewing away at some suffering patient’s corroded enamel to audibly and annoyingly interrupt the reverie of the scene.

Here, the view is a paradoxically bucolic urban setting, with just a few noisy birds as the soundtrack.

For whom does the bell really toll?

In France, the ringing is incessant

SHOULD YOU DESIRE to escape the din of daily life and decompress by soaking up the local culture of a quaint, quiet village or town in France, here’s a pro tip: Stay away from churches.

To be clear, I’m not advising you against visiting or patronizing a place of religious worship. But if you enjoy sleeping in on vacation, beware that these houses of the holy contain bell towers, or what can easily be described as the world’s largest alarm clocks.

Turn sound on: The bell tower of the church of
Ste. Thérèse ringing out in Rennes, France

As a seasoned traveler who is also a light sleeper, I have an exhaustive list of places to avoid when securing lodging: busy streets and intersections, hospitals, fire departments, sports stadiums, bars and clubs. But until now, “church bells” was not on the list.

In France, there are somewhere around 45,000 places of worship, most of them of the Catholic persuasion. The overwhelming majority of these temples possess a lofty tower where a hefty tube of cast bronze is suspended. And when that metal-alloy cylinder is struck with what is known as a clapper, the reverberation can be heard and the resonance felt for great distances.

Moreover, the knell of the bell is not a rare event. Every occasion seems to warrant a clanging. They chime to announce the hour. They toll vigorously to recruit parishioners for services, of which there are many throughout the week, especially on Sunday. They peal excitedly for what seems hours on end to honor a multitude of saints on the days of their birth or their martyrdom.1

On the town

WE ARE TEMPORARILY residing in the city of Rennes, France, situated at the confluence of the Ille and Vilaine rivers, which drain into the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean some 100 Km to the southwest. The weather here is mild, often overcast and sometimes rainy, as is typical of a coastal town.

Front view of Church of
Ste. Thérèse

This city is the administrative capital or prefecture of Brittany. And although Rennes boasts a population of nearly 750,000 in the greater metropolis, it’s really more of an aggregation of tiny villages and neighborhoods, many with the requisite cobblestone streets, provincial-style residences and small shops (which seem to be closed most of the time). There are also many modern apartment buildings and offices. This city even has a subway system. But in general, the place feels unhurried, relaxed, low-key.

The city of Rennes, France, along the Vilaine River.

In our little quiet neighborhood, we may hear magpies, crows, seagulls, pigeons and an occasional backyard dog voicing objection to its aerial companions. Cars, trains and the usual hub-bub of city life are barely audible. We rarely detect jets overhead, even though there is a regional airport just six or so kilometers away.

And then this serenity is interrupted by the ding-donging.

We are across the street from the Eglise de Sainte Thérèse, an impressive neo-Gothic structure built about 100 years ago. They spared no expense on the bell towers. And whatever that cost was, they have gotten their money’s worth. From 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., they ring on the hour. (Occasionally, however, someone might lose count. )

A view from our apartment of Rennes, France. The flat terrain allows ringing bells to be heard at great distances.

For religious services, there is a preamble — a warning of sorts — of three sets of three rings. And then, after a brief interlude, all hell’s bells break loose. This carillon2 cacophony may endure for ten or fifteen minutes. For the musicians reading this, I detect four tones: 1. The tonic, 2. A major second, 3. A major third, 4. An octave. If you remember singing class in school, this would be DO-RE-MI-DO.

Every neighborhood has its own church with its own bell tower. Because the terrain is flat, the sound carries unimpeded. Frequently, not just one, but as many as three or four churches nearby compete for attention with Sainte Thérèse.

All this chiming got me to thinking how this tradition got started and, perhaps more to the point, why this anachronism persists.

Hear ye, hear ye

LOUD SOUNDS HAVE BEEN used to communicate for just about as long as humans have been assembling in social groups. Whether its a conch shell or a drum, any reverberation that can carry for long distances has been used to convey a warning (enemy is approaching), or perhaps an invitation (festival tonight to celebrate the solstice).

Once organized religion became commonplace, trumpets, gongs and other such instruments were used to invite the masses to, well, Mass. It wasn’t until 604 A.D. that a Pope Sabinian sanctioned bells as the most effective method of communication.3 And the rest, as they say, is history.

Image by Peggy and
Marco Lachmann-Anke 

The question, though, is why continue? In this day and age, we certainly don’t need any reminder of the time of day. And, let’s face it, the bell-ringers are not going to be as accurate as a smartphone clock, which is synchronized over the air with an atomic timekeeper (located in some secret bunker in the Colorado mountains) right down to the millisecond.

As for the announcements of religious services, wouldn’t a group text be more effective? (Add a link to a Patreon page to skip the fund-raising basket that’s passed from pew to pew during services.)

In fact, all this ringing can unequivocally be defined as noise pollution. Studies in Switzerland and the Netherlands have concluded just this. But tradition is strong here in the land of the Gauls, and it is unlikely the musical tones emanating loudly and clearly through villages, towns and cities will be silenced by some silly, modern notion of what constitutes clangour.4

So I, consequently, have developed my own tradition to cope when the boisterous bells erupt, which is to mutter under my breath: “Off with their heads!”

FOOTNOTES

  1. France boasts 1,376 Catholic saints, of which 656 died as martyrs. ↩︎
  2. Carillon is derived from Old French quarregnon, which means the peal of four bells. ↩︎
  3. Pope Sabinian was only in charge for two years, but he certainly achieved a rather notorious kind of immortality with his bell-ringing decision. ↩︎
  4. Clangour is defined as a loud non-musical noise made by a banging or ringing sound. ↩︎