UNEXPECTED JOYS!

This is our week of gathering our new group of doctors.  We have 3 days of medical appointments before us just this week.

Our plan today was to ride the subway to Columbia University, eat lunch in the area, and go to my first doctor's appointment

Once on the subway we noticed the advertisement above our heads.

This was a great start for the day!

After a really neat lunch we realized there were two problems.  We were early and it was quite cold and windy.

One block from where we ate we noticed The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

http://www.stjohndivine.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Saint_John_the_Divine

"The cathedral disputes the title of the largest cathedral and Anglican church and fourth largest Christian church in the world."

"The Great Organ was built by the renowned organ builder E. M. Skinner in 1911. Speaking on fifty inches of wind pressure, it is among the most powerful organs in the world. The Great Organ is currently valued at over eight million U.S. dollars."

It was wonderful!  We went all the way to the choir area right next to the alter where we sat between the left and right banks of pipes.  We were surrounded by sound.

I measured a sustained, reverberated sound of 4 seconds following the release of a note.  The organist later told us that the sound has been measured at 8 seconds!  That's a whole lot of reverberation.

Amazingly, the organist was a student at Juilliard and was one of the artists we heard previously at the Juilliard organ recital at Alice Tully Hall.

Mundane became spectacular!