It's the Song About Love Between My Brothers and My Sisters All Over This Land

Today I watched history take place. Unfortunately not in DC but instead at the Market Square in Old Town where George Washington so often strolled. Just across the river from DC, TL and I watched the Inauguration on a Jumbo Tron, cold and huddled with a mass of people cheering OBAMA and waving flags. 

As I was listening to President Obama's (makes me grin ear to ear to type those two sweet words) Inauguration speech and watching the pan views of the millions of people in the Mall area I started thinking about how proud, at the very moment, how proud I was to call the USA my country. It was the sort of feeling I had when I was little kid, before I was jaded by the spirit of America. I remember when I was in the third or fourth grade and I thought I was truly lucky to live in America. We were doing reports on various countries in the world (I had Poland) and I remember thinking how sad it was for all those kids my same age living in a world outside of America. I thought these kids had to have a horrible life since they were not Americans and I thought how they all must envy us that were. I also wondered if they even had McDonald's or knew what SweetTarts tasted like. 

But then I grew up, read often and took some great history classes in college. Thanks to some good professors and good friends I opened my mind to the real American in which we live. The one that goes to war for no reason, does not treat its people with equality and refuses to recognize its own failures. I started to understand the impacts of slavery and the Trail of Tears and how it shaped the bitterness and anger within our nation. I took classes that focused on the unsung successes of women in history and found myself rejecting the traditional great American dream and all the consumerism that accompanies it. And these past eight years, wow. America, thanks to the leadership of Bush, turned into this mean, wa-hungry country hated by the rest of the world. At the end of 2007 the Fulbright Global Peace Index, ranked the US as the 97th most peaceful nation. Iraq bottomed the list, ranked 140th.

But today is a new day. I feel the hope in the air. I can feel the love and happiness sweeping this country. Watching President Obama (smiling again) addressing the country and asking for the help of the American people reminded me that we are a strong nation full of smart, innovated people and together we can make America a place of envy once again. We don't have to do this by flaunting our power or forcing our beliefs on other nations. We can do this instead with peace and by listening to the voices of all people from all races and religions across this country and around the world.  

So today I was bit disappointed that it wasn't in the cards for me to travel into DC but I was happy to share the energy overflowing across the Potomac into Old Town. And although the energy couldn't compare to that of the Mall, it was beautiful to share this joy with several hundred others as we anxiously and proudly watched history in the making. I just wish I could give all my friends that feel my same joy a great big huge victory hug. We did it!