The factory is silent. Its assembly line stands motionless. Somewhere off in the darkness, a buzzer sounds. One by one, lights begin to flicker and illuminate on long-unmanned diagnostic panels, giving a sense of enormity and complexity and scale to the machinery. The low hum of power supplies warming up comes next, followed by the higher and louder whine of turbines and electric motors. A whistle sounds, and one by one, employees begin to file in and take their places at the controls. Purposed for a single task, whose time has now come, the factory slowly comes to life...

Thursday, January 22, 2009

An Historic Day


When something as big as your first child is on the way, sometimes it's easy to think that the world stands still, holding its breath in anticipation. For better or worse, though, time marches on. January 20th, and with it the inauguration of our nation's first African-American (first non-white, even!) President felt like I imagine the fall of 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, must have felt to some. At nine years old, I don't think I was able to grasp at the time the historical significance of what I was seeing on TV. But I'm old enough now, to know radical change when I see it. And I do believe it's change for the better.

Some day, I hope to sit my child down and tell him or her about Barack Obama, the son of an immigrant who rose to our nation's highest office even as we were waiting for our own child to be born. If he did that, I'll say, there's no reason you can't do whatever you set your mind to.

Here's to the long road to economic, political, and moral recovery, and making this country back into a place where we can be proud to raise our children. With the help of our new president, I'm sure we'll be able to do it.

Yes, we can.
by at

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2009 at 6:39 PM

    So I'm a big dork and saved the front page of the paper so Alex could take it to school some day or use it for a project... Here's to being a parent....lol

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJanuary 27, 2009 at 8:11 PM

    I must be a big dork, too. I took a few snaps of Elise in front of the tube during his speech: http://picasaweb.google.com/ross123/Elise7Months#5294301563878010514

    ReplyDelete

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