Grand Central Market at night, 23 December 2008

Lillian Blauvelt (1873-1947), Brooklyn-born soprano, sang at the Asbury Park Casino in July of 1904, followed a month later with the Bar Harbor, Maine Choral Society in a program attended by Alice Longworth Roosevelt, and then in the 1904 Christmas performance of the Messiah at Carnegie Hall.

Bianca and I drove downtown the other night to take pictures.  I love this city at certain times, and night is one of them.  Plus I am trying to improve my nighttime photography.  

We stayed pretty much around Broadway.  If you go much further east, near the Midnight Mission and Los Angeles Street, if it's raining it can be a lot like Blade Runner, or if it isn't raining, then like Night of the Living Dead, the streets teeming with the lost and forgotten.  But where we were it was pretty quiet and empty.

I have become interested in music again and have discovered iTunes.  Call me crazy, but I think this whole download-your-favorite- song thing could really catch on.   I purchased the soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire and Dave Matthews Band's "The Space Between" and ColdPlay's "Fix You."  Now I am listening to the Messiah because it is Christmas Day and my friend Joe always loved a good Messiah on Christmas Day.  Then I am going to the Arclight to see Benjamin Button with Jim and then meet Carlos and Rob and maybe Eduardo later and then come home and burn more of my CDs into the iTunes library, and read "Wishful Drinking" by Carrie Fisher. 

Soprano Air.  "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold the King cometh unto thee..." Zechariah IX:10

Merry Christmas.