handel epitome of incomprehensibility A few weeks ago, I was walking to Guy-Concordia metro when a street preacher with a loudspeaker read the King James Bible verse starting with "For unto us a child is born..." ...and all the way down Guy from St. Catherine to Maisonneuve I had the song stuck in my head: "For unto us a child is born," where "born" is fifty-seven notes. I'm singing that tomorrow in the choir concert. I can't do that fifty-seven-note bit without a breath. The trick is not to breathe at the same time as the person on my left or right. 231201 ... e_o_i Last week it was a longer street: Pine Beach from the lakeshore to the tunnel, with Dad and the dog. Dad hypothesized that Handel was partly responsible for the current war in Gaza. "Why?" was my response. Shiloh's response was to sniff at the grass to my right, in case any important dogs had peed on it. You see, Handel's Messiah was part of a trend towards putting more of a focus on the Old Testament in Christian liturgy, to emphasize the continuity between Old and New, and since people are fond of music, his Messiah popularized this trend, and that went along with the idea of resettling Israel as a state in continuity with biblical tradition, although you can never really get back to the past and you might, no, will, create new problems in the attempt... "Dad," I went, grumpy. "I don't want to talk about that. I was just going to tell a funny story about a street preacher and 'For Unto Us a Child Is Born' getting stuck in my head." (But less eloquently.) So I have told it. But now that I am cozy-warm, eating chocolate even though it's probably not the best thing for a soon-to-be-singing-more throat, I reimagine the dog-walking scene and picture myself flipping to flippancy: "Don't put all that responsibility on George F. You really think he can handel it?" ...But my favourite Handel-related dad_joke is the line from Anguished English, supposedly quoting a line from a student's essay: "Handel was half French, half English, and half German. He was very large." 231201 what's it to you? who go blather from