A loud sneeze from deep in the box seats resounded, heard even from the conductor's podium by conductor Bramwell Tovey, who promptly extended a gracious "Bless you!" in mid-lecture.
Wainwright admitted that he and Brion took their time recording the album in Los Angeles, and considered the extended time a "blessing" and "luxury", claiming that "most people have two weeks to record their first album".
In the same year, the future president of the World Trade Union Conference, George Isaacs, called upon the Trades Union Congress to extend its blessing and help to the Jewish people in building, "a new Jerusalem in Palestine".
However we each understand the Source of our vitality, and the Source of our capacity to extend blessing to others - and however each of us may see this day - this is a time for each of us drawing into ourselves the fullness of all the blessing we ever have felt.
During his call prompted by the discovery of a gash in the Shuttle's fuselage the Pope extended his blessing to Kelly's wife, Gabrielle Giffords, who had undergone skull surgery earlier in the week.
Nearby, in "Coyote Inalienable," from 2013, a soldier becomes a kind of Christ, hanging high on a wall, its arms extending outward, as if in a blessing.
Extending an olive branch.
A 35-foot statue of the Protestant theologian (1603 -1683) stands high in Prospect Terrace Park, with right hand extended, as if blessing the city he founded.
As the late John O'Donohue writes in his wonderful book, To Bless The Spaces Between Us, offering a blessing opens the heart and extends our generosity.
Her vibrancy for life and for those dear to her will remain a blessing to her nieces, nephew, cousins, extended family and friends.
We are talking, instead, of the indulgence that will always be extended to an epoch blessed with prosperity — one that has the leisure, and the cash, to indulge its fancies, not least the cheap thrill of pretending that the blessing could be wiped out.
