How the Grinch Stole Ramadan

I'm going to try to write this out quickly because it's midnight and I have to get up in six hours for yet another day of singing myself hoarse.

Tonight was the final night of Alexander Nevsky at the NY Philharmonic (which went very well, by the way) , and there was a little bit of panic backstage before the beginning of the concert. The chorus is usually called 15 minutes before curtain, but on nights when we get paid, like tonight, most people show up early to collect their checks. So it was incredibly strange that a handful of very reliable people did not show up at call time, or five minutes later, or even ten minutes later. A mere two minutes before we went on stage, they showed up, dripping with sweat (one of whom wasn't even in his tux yet!), with reports that someone had been hit by a train on the 1 line and the trains were suspended from 28th Street all the way up to 96th (Lincoln Center is at 66th Street, so this was clearly a problem).

Normally, we singers budget extra time in case things like this happen, because it's New York, and it's best to be prepared because you never know what new disaster might strike. And normally in situations like this when the subway service gets suspended, we all get out of the subway and try to hail a cab along with the rest of the hundreds of riders.

However, tonight is the final day of Ramadan, and about 80% of the cab drivers in the city were at prayers, so there were hardly any cabs to hail. These poor schmucks had to hoof it or bus it from as far away as 110th Street, and they barely made it there on time. Oy. I'm just thanking my lucky stars that I wasn't on any of those trains. And I'm hoping against hope I don't get stuck in traffic tomorrow when I have to zoom from my church job 100 miles away in NJ back to Lincoln Center for a different concert. Please, send good thoughts my way. Or if you happen to have something good to offer the traffic gods, I'd appreciate a sacrifice or two in my favor...