Inauguration Celebration!

I took most of the day off yesterday to watch the inauguration on television. I have waited for this day, hardly daring to believe it was really going to come and I couldn't take my eyes off it happening. The inauguration brought tears to my eyes! I cried over 2 million people being there; shouting, cheering, dancing, standing with tears running down their faces. I cried over the inaugural address, soaking in its message of change and hope. I laughed through tears over the Rev. Lowery's benediction. The sense of relief and hope lifted a weight from my heart I had been carrying so long I didn't know, until I put it down, just how heavy it was.

For the past four years especially I have watched as my small business and the business of my clients got harder and harder, making ends meet financially got tougher and tougher, and knew we were not even part of the statistics the government was keeping. I cringed over the violations of human rights being done on Guantanimo in the name of "national security." I was outraged that we were dragged into an exhausting and expensive war because we were told "weapons of mass destruction" were an immediate danger. There never WERE any weapons of mass destruction. Not one was ever found - just like the United Nations investigation said. We never got an apology from President Bush for his mistakes, to the end he left office declaring that "I always did what I thought was right." That times have become hard comes as no surprise to those of us who have been living at the grass roots during eight years of his administration. I'm just glad that if the stock market had to inevitably crash and foreclosures become an epidemic these things happened on the watch of the president who was responsible for them. I don't know which part of America he actually "cared about" but it wasn't the part I live in.

So I turn to this change with hope. I embrace the idea that we can solve our problems if we work hard and work together. I embrace we can have the audacity to hope that things can get better. I wanted a president who would care about global warming issues and our relationship with the rest of the world as well as about affordable health care for all and good education for our children. I'm glad he announced, with his predecessor sitting just a few feet from the podium, that America would no longer sacrifice our values in the name of national security and that torture being done by our government will end. I can start holding up my head again amongst my international friends and stop being ashamed of American policy.

Let this be a beginning for all of us! If you haven't done it yet, you might want to go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ and see the ways in which our new president has already started making his administration "transparent" to us all. I'm looking forward to the weekly videos Pres. Obama will do on Saturday mornings and the blog updates that will keep me informed of what our new government is doing day to day. I am going to make a point of taking Pres. Obama up on his offer to review all legislation that crosses his desk before he signs it and sending in my opinion of it. I am going to look for ways to do my part - and one of these ways will be to donate a percentage of my work time to helping business owners who currently can't afford my kind of consulting but badly need it. I look forward to joining with others in my community to do volunteer work.

I DO believe we can create a different and better American life together. I am profoundly grateful to have witnessed this change.

Yes we can!