Church Bells

[jesm]

The church adjacent to Instituto LaSalle on Paseo de La Presa recently reactivated their automatic bells after a two year hiatus while undergong renovation. There is a clear pattern to the chiming.
At 15 past, two bells;half-hour, four bells and at 45 past, you hear six. At the hour you get an introductory eight bells then immediately the time of the hour is counted by a series of stronger rings that peel out the hour at hand. Thus for example at 12 noon, or midnight, we hear 8 + 12, twenty total rings. On Sunday mornings only, the call to mass occurs at 11am then repeated at 11:15am, this bears no relation to the automatic time-telling and seems to be a manual, joyfull peeling of loud and succesive strikes without a fixed number of rings. What great sounds to fill our neighborhood around the clock.