Something I never told Abe Kleiman, my friend who died in the last month, is that the exercise he taught me to do with my two 5 pound dumbbells is the exact replica of the gesture at the origin of the very word "dumbbell."
In earlier times, church bells summoned people and tolled the hour. Sextants in towers pulled the ropes that brought the clappers in contact with the bells. Someone saw a good exercise in this. String ropes up over pulleys with weights on the other end. Pull the ropes down and let the weights pull your arms back up. "Tumb" means "silent" in German, whence English "dumb." "Dumbbells" are "silent bells."
I think of Abe every time I swing the two weights from down at my sides to overhead and back.
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I love this etymology, and this way you ring a bell of memory for Abe.
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