Stepping into paradise . . .

Saturday, May 2, 2026. It's the Satyr's day . . . another cool, sunny day for Green Country and TulseyTown. Moderate Northerlies are forecasted to hold temperatures in the low 70's. Southerlies and warming return overnight tonight.

Every step we take is a miracle. – Thich Nhat Hahn

President Eisenhower said, “In a very real sense, the world no longer has a choice between force and law. If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.” Trump is doing everything he can to ignore and avoid the rule of law. – Heather Cox Richardson, in yesterday's Letters From An American.

Classical music contains many memorable themes. Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake has several. It and Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto come immediately to mind. One of the most memorable themes in musical history is the opening dance in “The Polovtsian Dances” of Borodine's only opera Prince Igor. The “dances” score opens in the opera’s second act with a song, the text of which translates into a poem about longing for a time in the past in a land of true freedom. Here's link to the “Polovtsian Dances” by Alexandre Borodine, performed by the Sorbonne University Chorus and Orchestra. Now a concert staple around the world, that opening theme was was adapted into the score for the broadway musical Kismet and into a motion picture featuring a duet “Stranger in Paradise.” I lost count of the number of times “Stranger in Paradise” is listed on youtube. It's a perfect “duet” … attesting to the fact that Borodine's melody remains forever with us as among history's most beautiful and romantic themes.

Even silence can seem to the world like happiness –

like praise – from the pool of shade you have found

beneath the everlasting.

– Mary Oliver, “Just Lying On The Grass At Blackwater,” from Blue Iris, Beacon Press, 2004.