As we waited in its candle-lit, stained-glass exquisiteness for things to get going, a Windsmoored woman beside me read the Financial Times, while her tiny son played chess on her iphone.
But there was PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, standing at a podium in its candle-lighted Temple of Dendur, announcing that the museum had no works by Donatello, Verrocchio or Caillebotte, and scarcely any archaic jades, a high point of Chinese art.
Speaking of small audiences, the once formidable "Commander in Chief" had its candle snuffed out on Wednesday.
One of the PicoCricket guides, for instance, instructs users on how to turn a birthday cake made mostly of felt, cardboard and drinking straws into an ingeniously interactive one, a cake that can be programmed to shut off the lights in its electrical candles when someone blows on them.
Time being what it is, national priorities have changed, and today's younger generation in Iran lights its candles before lesser, or just different, gods.
These are songs for a deoxygenating little dive bar in a dystopian metropolis, its candles slowly sputtering out.
The church puts candles in its windows; houses on the green follow suit.
But if it's the luck-attracting red string you still covet, Slatkin & Company has included a blessed bendel with each of the eight candles in its new Kabbalah line -- further proof that the mind-body-wallet connection just gets deeper.
On a recent Thursday, a waitress delivered a Key Lime Fizz with a lit candle suspended in its froth to a riotous table.
The candle flickers in its glass lantern, illuminating the little theatre of surgery: fingertips, his and hers, and the tip of the arrow in equal tension, light soothing his leg like a balm.
An oversize fireplace, with pillar candles burning in its hearth, is the centerpiece of the space, which seats about 14, and both the vibrant papaya-red walls and luxurious Asian throw carpeting add to the general warmth.
