I'm Back. Yay.
Well, I finally have a power supply back for my laptop. You see, the battery had long since died and then my AC adapter broke. So now I have a new AC adapter, but still no battery. So, fun.
In other news, I spent Election Night alone in a crowded room. I'm not being poetic, either. I'd invited several people to meet me at the Been and watch the results come in. They all, to a person, went into the Cellar for karaoke, and I was alone when the three things for which I'd been hoping and working toward for 11 months were announced.
Virginia has two Democratic senators in Washington.
Virginia voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1964.
Barack Obama is President-Elect of the United States of America.
And not one person was there to share it with me. It brought home that for the past year, I've been putting all my energies into my civic duty to consider vigorously the politics in my country, the better to make an informed and conscionable decision in the polling booth, to the detriment of my personal life.
Because of the absence of friends who could join me in celebrating, I pretty much wondered why after ten minutes of experiencing a light head, short gasps of air, and trembling hands and heart, I felt somehow emptier, not fuller.
I had with me a copy of The Declaration of Independence and Other Great Documents of American History: 1775-1865, and opened it up. I read Lincoln's First Inaugural Address.
So when Pres.-Elect Obama evoked Kennedy by talking of sacrifice instead of entitlement, the responsibilities of being an American in addition to the privileges, and directly evoked Lincoln as possibly our greatest President, a man from Illinois who "carried the banner of the Republican Party into the White House," I was speaking the words along with him.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
But I kept reading, even after President-Elect Obama had continued on. While it may not have been prudent for him to quote the entire valedictory paragraph of Lincoln's first address as president, I do want to complete it here.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
President-Elect Obama did not give a victory speech, nor did he quote one. Instead, he made a plea for partisan competition and strife to be set aside and for us all, supporter and rival alike, to accept a measure of sacrifice to restore the sense of optimism and prosperous condition this country is blessed to have as its default setting. The fact that he uses the symbolism of oratory with ease, like a second set of limbs, just goes to show that he is concerned not only with the future, but the legacy of America, and thus also the way posterity will judge this generation.
Good night, God bless you, and God bless the America.
In other news, I spent Election Night alone in a crowded room. I'm not being poetic, either. I'd invited several people to meet me at the Been and watch the results come in. They all, to a person, went into the Cellar for karaoke, and I was alone when the three things for which I'd been hoping and working toward for 11 months were announced.
Virginia has two Democratic senators in Washington.
Virginia voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1964.
Barack Obama is President-Elect of the United States of America.
And not one person was there to share it with me. It brought home that for the past year, I've been putting all my energies into my civic duty to consider vigorously the politics in my country, the better to make an informed and conscionable decision in the polling booth, to the detriment of my personal life.
Because of the absence of friends who could join me in celebrating, I pretty much wondered why after ten minutes of experiencing a light head, short gasps of air, and trembling hands and heart, I felt somehow emptier, not fuller.
I had with me a copy of The Declaration of Independence and Other Great Documents of American History: 1775-1865, and opened it up. I read Lincoln's First Inaugural Address.
So when Pres.-Elect Obama evoked Kennedy by talking of sacrifice instead of entitlement, the responsibilities of being an American in addition to the privileges, and directly evoked Lincoln as possibly our greatest President, a man from Illinois who "carried the banner of the Republican Party into the White House," I was speaking the words along with him.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
But I kept reading, even after President-Elect Obama had continued on. While it may not have been prudent for him to quote the entire valedictory paragraph of Lincoln's first address as president, I do want to complete it here.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
President-Elect Obama did not give a victory speech, nor did he quote one. Instead, he made a plea for partisan competition and strife to be set aside and for us all, supporter and rival alike, to accept a measure of sacrifice to restore the sense of optimism and prosperous condition this country is blessed to have as its default setting. The fact that he uses the symbolism of oratory with ease, like a second set of limbs, just goes to show that he is concerned not only with the future, but the legacy of America, and thus also the way posterity will judge this generation.
Good night, God bless you, and God bless the America.