dawn

Where am I? What day is today?

Oh right. It's the first day of a whole new world.

Yes, it's also the exact same world. Yes, President (President!!!) Obama faces some of the biggest challenges ever confronting a leader of this or any other country.

But did you notice? He's actually facing them. Naming them. Saying they won't be easily surmounted. That they certainly won't be surmounted by him alone. We must participate. We must work. We must make hard choices.

Never has "Hey folks, let's be clear: this will, in some ways, totally suck" been more hopeful and reassuring.

I thought his speech was tremendous, both the first time I watched it in the Montpelier City Hall (photos from the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus newspaper)...

(that's a life-size cardboard cutout of

Obama to the left of the screen,

looking out at the crowd)

...and the second time I watched it, back at home around 1:00 in the morning after driving home to Brattleboro, making a rosemary goat cheese cheesecake for the evening parties, driving down to Northampton for the first party, back up to Greenfield for the second party where I very nearly fell asleep in front of the woodstove, and back up to Brattleboro where suddenly I wanted much more to watch the speech again on YouTube than to actually go to bed. (Did I mention I started the day in Burlington, about 2.5 hours north of here? But that's a whole other story.)

And then to watch Obama's Election Night speech yet again. And to read all the inauguration coverage online that I hadn't had a chance to look at yet, and look at my brother's photos from actually being on the National Mall yesterday and attending festivities in DC all weekend before that. And look up the text of the poem, Praise Song for the Day, which I think was actually pretty gorgeous, though unfortunately not really well delivered.

I marveled again at the fact that we elected a president who speaks in complete sentences, much less knows how to turn a phrase to make my breath catch. Who has repeatedly used the word "humility" in his biggest and most important speeches. Who respects the Americans who did not vote for him as much as those who did, and respects those outside our borders as human beings of equal worth. It should not be revolutionary. But.

"And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

(I know it's cliche at this point, but...) Yes, we must. Yes we can.