There are moments that touch your heart. You never know when they are going to come, when something is going to slip through our carefully constructed armor to find home. I am often struck by poetry. The way you can read a few lines and be forever changed by their message. I remember having to memorize Longfellow’s “The Tide Rises and the Tide Falls” in school. How those few simple words on a page encapsulated the permanence of nature and our short journey through it. How wonderful to be so fleeting. A moment in time, never to exist again. I kind of love that. How our true beauty as individuals and a species lies in the fact that we are both ephemeral and eternal. Not only that, but we are acutely aware of how small our place in the grand scheme of things may be, how we strut and fret our poor hour upon the stage, knowing that we are only a moment in the larger story of humankind. Yet we strive to make things better, to take the music further, if just for a little while. So, with that in mind, won’t you please join me as we stand and make, the Yardbird.

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