Support for the Radio West podcast comes from Harmon's Grocery, celebrating the new year with fresh catches and tastings during the seafood frenzy on December 31st.

The event includes samples and demonstrations of fresh seafood favorites, available at all Harmon's locations.

The historian Charles King knew what a lot of us know about George Frederick Handel's oratorio, the Messiah,

that it's maybe the greatest piece of participatory art ever created, that its theme of Jesus's prophetic birth and resurrection draws thousands and thousands of believers and non-believers to see and hear it performed around this holiday season.

King says people say they find something in the Messiah, something true and intimate and

magnetic, and that's certainly how he felt about it. But then he heard the

Messiah in a different way. This was a while back in the middle of what he says turned out to be

the worst few years people can remember the COVID-19 pandemic, the insurrection on January 6th.

He and his wife Maggie live in D.C. so they aren't far from

Capitol Hill. And in a new book, King says they felt hemmed in by what seemed like a dark future.

So he was looking for something to let in a little healing light.

And a few years earlier, I had purchased for Maggie for Valentine's Day, one of these old

bonographs, the VV50 of Victrola.

And I thought, what if I could find the oldest recording of Handel's Messiah, which is a piece

of music that we loved, and Maggie is a singer and a writer

herself. And I thought, if I could find this ancient recording, I'll put it on this ancient

device, and then somehow the world will be set a right. And I did what anybody would do, which

is go to eBay looking for this thing and found a seller in London and bought this 1927 recording.

So we put the record on.

Yeah. There's a kind of overture that moves from a minor key to a major key.

And the violins kind of rock back and forth for a while.

And then they stop.

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