The Messiah

Are there words to describe it? Here's a try.

Handel's Messiah. Glorious, inspiring, humbling. I know it well and love it just as well, having listened to at least three recordings of it every year since I was 12. Having sung parts of it a few times myself.

But last night was better than that. Last night I sat with thousands of others in a packed Morrison Center on Boise State's campus as we heard and were thrilled by it. The Boise Philharmonic and the Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale--in which Lola sings--and those four excellent soloists played and sang their hearts out.

And so our hearts were filled.

We came in a snowstorm and drove in snarled post-Humanitarian Bowl traffic to get there--the people who sat next to me had driven up from Bruneau--but from the first note to the end of the Amens we forgot all the outside world.

I know. It's just Boise. Just Idaho. But people could be surprised by the high quality of this performance. People were.

I hope Lola's dad could hear it. I am thankful she has this experience in her life. I am thankful I was there last night.

Nuts Added

I just slid the pan of yum-yums into the oven. I'm taking them to the party tonight.

But here's the thing. Because none of my children, and clearly not my husband, will be eating them, I put nuts in them. I like nuts in cookies and brownies and yum-yums. I also like my family, and they don't like nuts. For them nuts prove the ruin of many good things. So I leave out the nuts for their sakes.

But tonight . . . well, the nuts are in there. And I'm pretty sure no one will ask--and certainly not in that strange slurred way Wayne sometimes used for being funny--"Does it have nuts in it?"