First Quarter Congrats

From l to r: Derek Wilsden, Kathryn Tucker, Cathy Brown, Charley Heilker, Alice Heilker and Mark Phillips.

Congratulations to Alice Heilker on her first quarter peal ever! She admitted she felt very jittery at the beginning, though none of us detected any hint of nervousness. Alice has worked very hard on her striking and it showed during this quarter. May it be the first of many! Details of the quarter peal are listed below:

MARIETTA, Georgia
29 December 2007
St. James Church
1260 Mixed Doubles (Stedman, Grandsire and Plain Bob)
1 Catherine P. Brown
2. Kathryn E. Tucker
3. Charley Heilker
4. Mark Phillips
5. Derek J. Wilsden
6. Alice Heilker
First quarter - 6. First multiple methods quarter - 4. Rung for the wedding of parishioners Heidi Cash and John Setchel.

"Happy Clapper"

St. James is now once again an 8-bell tower. Our own intrepid Derek Wilsden finally received the part needed to fix the #3 bell, and did all the necessary work to bring St. James back to normal, even-numbered bell glory!
Many thanks to Derek, Mary Platt and Cathy Brown for calling changes and conducting methods under "odd" circumstances. And thank you to all the ringers who steadfastly endeavored to ignore bell #3 while ringing!

St. James Bells on the Radio

The bells of St. James are featured in a 30-second spot on Atlanta's public radio station, WABE. When the producer of the show, David Barasoain, asked Kathryn Tucker why the bells were rung at Christmastime (and this was back in October!), she did her best to give a concise explanation. Another spot featuring St. James will air in February.
Copy and paste the following link into your browser and listen to the spot: http://www.pba.org/programming/programs/atlantasounds/1606/
Then find the "listen here" link on the "St. James in Marietta" paragraph on the page.

Practice continues at St. James

Though it will probably be weeks until the #3 bell will be back in service, practices and service ringing will continue at St. James. As we found out at our most recent practice, it is a challenge to ring methods without this bell, but not impossible. We hope that all North Georgia ringers (and any visitors who might come along!) will continue to support the ringing at St. James.

Derek Wilsden's expalanation for the incident: "The clapper was ejected downward on to wood and suffered no damage (the only bell that does not have concrete under it!). The problem was not the usual loss of the crown staple pin in this type event, but a surprising failure of the welding of one of the side lugs of the staple and then a fatigue failure of the ‘pin’ - which is a 5/8-nch bolt. We are in contact with Taylor, Eayre and Smith for repair options."