This is Cool

Check out the 52to48/48to52 with love project, one that is meant to bring together our divided nation. My family contributed this.

Hope is in the air

For days now, whenever I think of the election, I am consumed with emotion. I feel like I want to cry (McCain supporters can insert snide remarks here). During the campaign, I remained very emotionally distant because I wanted to choose my vote on rational and sensible logic, not emotion, and I did. But then, in the moment Obama walked onto the stage, I wept, something I do not generally do with ease. I still weep when I think of it, because I am overwhelmed by the power of hope and change, in a way that is not a campaign slogan, but a tangible reality, palpable in the attitudes of people I meet at the bus stop, in the grocery story, and the coffee shop. There is an exuberant positivity that is noticeable everywhere. Further, I don't think I fully believed that my country, much less my home state of Virginia, would really be able to overcome racial divides to see the man of strength and grace who is Barack Obama, but they did. And that moves me. I know that the task ahead is daunting and four years will hardly make a dent, but true leadership is a powerful thing and moving forward has got to better than the current state of our American affairs.

President Obama

I am listening to the cheers on TV and the wOOts on twitter with the announcement that Barack Obama is our President Elect. I am filled with hope and moved by Obama's feat. In all of the celebration though, I am filled with emotion. I cannot recall an election ever feeling so important to me, or to our country. I am saddened, too, that in the middle of this extraordinary time for Obama and our country, all of those who loved him as a child and raised him are absent in his victory. The passing of his grandmother, days before he is named the President Elect, makes my heart ache for him. I imagine her absence is glaring. After listening to McCain's concession speech, I can see that Barack Obama does have the power to bring people together in a way that our country so desperately needs. I feel privileged to be a part of this great time in our history and to recognize what this means for the progression of our country in so many ways. Although those who raised him are gone, his own children will live in a world that his parents and grandparents could not have imagined. I have heard the phrase repeatedly, "Not in my lifetime." I am honored to be an American and know, that here, now, in my lifetime, change is here.