Inauguration Day

Well, since we were cut off from the virtual world yesterday, I sat in my house, day off, and watched the coverage of the Barack Obama inauguration. As you know I spent election night in Grant Park as they announced the president elect. So to sit in my living room and watch him and his family enter DC as the new first family, it felt surreal. I couldn't help but wonder if this is how it feels to be witness to history. When we grew up reading history books about the emancipation proclamation or the Million Man March or about JFK getting shot, it feels strangely odd and out of reach to us. But sitting in my living room listening to newscasters and commentators talk to us LIVE about the gravity and emotion about the day-I felt so much a part of it. And for the the first time, I realized that the stories my grandpa used to share with me about WWII were his way of passing down a part of him that still lived until his dying day. I know that when I am old and talking to the youth, I will tell the story of a time when millions of people came together and made history by standing for honesty, integrity, and change. And I will tell them to also be part of change and that it is always best to do what is most difficult. I love Obama's inaugural address quote:

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

Amen.