Canadian Gardening: What's Happening in YOUR neighborhood today #11, 1 by ViolaAnn

ViolaAnn wrote:
Hi folks,

I'm just in from "Come Sing Messiah". The church was PACKED. Pretty full of singers - probably about 800 and another 200+ in the balcony as audience. They were sitting in a number of non-official seats. Attached is a picture from the event two years ago. The church was even fuller tonight.

And the weather was bad in the late afternoon. It would normally take me 15 minutes to get downtown to this church. Tonight it took me an hour and 10 minutes and I was late to the 5 pm rehearsal (along with a lot of others although I left shortly after 4 pm). I never got above 2nd gear all the way into town on the Queensway and most of the time I was in 1st gear. Never above 20 km/hr. downtown traffic when I got there was gridlocked.

A sudden snow squall between 3 and 4 pm made it very slippery close to home. Took me 25 minutes to get the first 5 km from home to where I got onto the Queensway. I thank my lucky stars that nobody had an accident - at least where I was. I guess contributing to the downtown grid lock might be one of the major bridges across the Ottawa River which was closed indefinitely yesterday due to deterioration of the supports.

Anyway, "Come Sing Messiah" might not be the most perfect version performed in Ottawa this season, but it has the most spirit by far. And at the end everyone applauds everyone else. Really good feeling. It's really glorious going through the Amen chorus with 800 singers behind you.

Rehearsal is a joy too as the conductor has a constant litany of one-liners related to the music and poking fun at the deficiencies of the "chorus". ("Ladies and gentlemen of the orchestra, we are going to get to the end (of the chorus) first") in regard to the chorus lagging behind, etc. We are kept in stitches. Anyway, the Christmas season has now begun!

Hope you all have a good night.

Ann