From the Washington Post (He's a dead ringer for his brother!)
At one end of the 20-foot rope is Tessa Lightfoot, a 13-year-old American teenager topping the scales at 90 pounds. At the other, directly above her head, is a British-made bronze bell weighing more than a quarter of a ton.
Together, they make beautiful . . . silence.
Tessa heaves gamely up and down on the rope as the 627-pound bell, swinging madly through 360 degrees of arc, makes not so much as a ding. During ringing class in the bell tower of Washington National Cathedral, the clappers are stopped as a courtesy to nearby residents.
"We don't want to drive the neighbors crazy," explains instructor Quilla Roth as eight middle-schoolers line up to take their tugs behind her. "Especially when they're just learning, we don't like to sound horrendous."
It's an unusual elective - in several ways. The bells make no noise, and the ropes are hauled by bubbly little Quasimodos in skinny jeans and Aeropostale hoodies.
"It's actually really fun," says Tessa, an eighth-grader at National Cathedral School, next door to the Episcopal church on Mount St. Alban, the city's highest point. "There are really not many other places where you can do this."
More here-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/25/AR2010112504065.html
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