Today on the subway

Most of the way through Brooklyn on the A, there was an Afro-Carribean woman singing hymns. I tried to turn up my iPod as loud as possible, but to no avail, really -- she was quite loud, and my headphones are not. So over my Radiohead I could hear this woman, and then recognize the song from many years ago when I used to go to church -- "How Great Thou Art." I'm not a religious man, but I have to tell you, she was giving it all she had. It annoyed me at the time, but I came to admire her, at least a little, when I realized she was singing every verse and every chorus. And at the finale, when she reached the crescendo, her voice broke badly the way old women's voices do, but she hit the final note. Then, at the next stop, when nobody would yell out "praise the lord" with her, she insulted us and left.