What a day

I’ve been enjoying watching all the Inauguration Day activities–spirits in Washington, D.C. seem good and refreshingly bipartisan. Wish it could always be this way.

I’m remembering photos I shot during the inaugural festivities of 2009. Tim was over with Rex and his foster dog Tyson, and I caught Rex playing with his Nylabone while we watched the parade.

Today, Margot is napping through the parade, probably to conserve her energy for the inaugural balls tonight.


I rarely buy Barbies anymore, but because the box was damaged, this one was deeply discounted at Target recently, so I brought her home with me.

She’s part of Mattel’s White House project and has a web site providing ways for Barbie fans to develop leadership qualities.

On the back of the box, we learn the good advice that might be called Barbie’s platform:

On a more serious note about dreams, in a year that marks the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech, I’m struck by the symbolic power of Barack Obama taking today’s ceremonial oath of office on both Lincoln’s Bible and MLK’s traveling Bible. Our nation’s history is not without its less than impressive moments, but every step taken in a march toward justice or awareness, in a parade celebrating what is best about us, up a difficult hill, and toward creating a better home, town, city, state, country, or world, is a step each of us takes as an individual on behalf of all of us. Of course, MLK said this more powerfully than I can:

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Associated Press, 1965

6 thoughts on “What a day”

  1. Our thoughts, yours and mine, were in the same place at the same time! Even the same network. Wasn’t it fun? I still marvel that the dream of Dr. King was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, today. We’ve come so far, and yet have so far still to go. I would love to be able to see it.

    Wasn’t Al Roker a hoot? And he was so tickled by it all.

    1. Yes on Al Roker–I think a lot of us would have liked to be standing where he was today, calling out to the president and vice president with such enthusiasm and excitement.

      I divided my time between watching ABC/Yahoo coverage online, and going into the living room to watch NBC. We’ve been lucky, you and I, to see the great strides that have been made during our lifetimes. Sometimes when I feel particularly disheartened, I think of that (and I stop reading comments to online stories!).

  2. Renee and I spent the day watching. And I spent a lot of time thinking how much has changed since the first time I voted for president … for both better and worse. If we could only get both parties to sit down together more often than every four years at the inaugural lunch. I was also impressed that the King family requested that Obama put his signature in MLK’s bible.

    1. They asked Chief Justice Roberts to sign it, as well. I can dream that maybe the next four years will be a little less acrimonious–but regardless, we have the systems in place for checks and balances, a free electoral process, and civil transitions of power.

  3. Glad to hear Margot was just conserving her energy. While I certainly support her right to vote for whomever she chooses, I can’t say I wouldn’t have been a tad dissapointed to learn she’d taken to her bed because the inventor of “Rover’s Rooftop Rollercoaster” lost the election.

    1. She doesn’t care, because Margot is President AND First Lady of her world, where her policies consist mainly of FOOD: GET IN MAH BELLY.

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