As Inauguration Day Grows Closer

It is difficult not to get caught up in Inauguration excitement. It occurred to someone on Friday that every student, at least in the high school, should see it, and the techs are scurrying like little mice to make it so. It looks like I will have it on in three places in the library: in the computer lab, on the TV, and projected (via computer) onto the big wall screen. I'm having extra chairs brought in, as well as trash bags, because I'll be allowing people for just this day to eat in the library, since the festivities coincide with the lunch periods.

It is exciting. It is exciting to feel ... enfranchised, if that's the right word. There is such a sense of hope about this new president; my hope, of course, is that it carries through into real change.

I was just talking to my principal, who's about my age. He says he remembers when his immigrant Italian grandmother took him and his brothers out of school one day because John Kennedy was speaking at Journal Square in Jersey City and she wanted them to have that experience. I was too young to feel the excitement of Kennedy, although I remember watching his inauguration on TV, as well as going into the voting booth with my father on election day that year. This must be similar, but for a new generation. I can't say "our" generation, because the baby boomers, although still strong in numbers, elected as one of their own George Bush, so as a generation, we need to lose some credibility for that. (Although not personally, as you can be sure.) But this is the excitement we see and feel for the generation we have created, for our children, who don't all even understand why it's such a big deal that Obama is black. So what, what's the difference? How cool is that, that today's kids don't even see what the big deal is?

I look at Obama and I don't see a black man either, or a white man, or a Hawaiian, or whatever. I see a man who gives me hope that things can change, a man I want to see as our president. It's time that the other side has a chance, since the side leaving power now didn't do such a hot job. I'm very excited that his background is in Constitutional law, since that makes him more likely to uphold the laws, and the laws and the Constitution are the foundation of what we are.

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In other news, because my school district feels no compulsion to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., apparently, we had school this morning and an in-service for teachers this afternoon which I did not attend. I came home and went food shopping with K, since we didn't go yesterday, and now I'm preparing my lunches for the rest of the week, which is infinitely more worthwhile.

It's snowing softly outside as if it will never stop snowing this winter, kind of like living in the eternal winter of Narnia. If so, I'll need to relocate to sunnier climes, perhaps at last that little apartment over the candy store on Main Street USA. Anyway, we're in, we have food, it's not snowing hard, and there certainly is a lot to watch on TV.

WATCHING Law'n Order :: ENTRY #1968
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke