Tuesday, January 20, 2009

oh happy day

unbelievable. overwhelming. inspiring. invigorating. i love America again. The defining point of a generation. We are going to change the world.

How refreshing that classical music and poetry still have a place in our American culture. The quartet: an Israeli man (with a lesbian daughter) and asian man, a black man (playing the clarinet which I played in high school and college) and an asian woman, all playing a traditional Shaker hymn arranged by a white man, which is best known from its use by Aaron Copland a gay man. That's America. And extremely well played, too. Aretha was great, too, no slight there, though I did wonder if she really knew all the words to the second verse. But who cared about words when there was that hat to marvel at? Spectacular.

RIck Warren's prayer was generic and unimpressive. The man is not a threat. I do like the way when he got to the obligatory (for evangelicals) "In Jesus' name" instead he personalized it to say, (not an exact quote) "In the name of the one who has changed my life." But Lowery was great. I loved hearing all those old hymn verses. I loved his sense of humor. I loved there was no "In Jesus' name" and instead he got the whole crowd to shout Amen! Amen! Amen!

Obama's speech was magnificent. It sounded like the truth. Honest about the stituation we're in. Unafraid to call to task and to challenge. He gives us something to do, something to believe, and shows the way. I loved that her personalized the moment when from all the lofty far-reaching rhetoric he reminded us that 60 years after a person who looked like him would have been turned away from a lunch counter he can be sworn in to the highest office in the land. That symbolism means something. It's not about him after all, it's about all of us, all of us who were turned away from our hopes and dreams and who are now finding our hopes and dreams installed in the greatest country on earth.

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