Untitled by Blackbeard Ben

This morning I found kind of a cool video showing all 43 Presidents and President-elect Barack Obama. It was pretty neat watching the march of familiar faces like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR peppered with the less familiar John Tyler, Chester Arthur and two-time President Grover Cleveland and then to see at the end a face that was not the same shade as all the others. It reminded me of this poster by Patrick Moberg. More than that, it said to me that times are changing - that we will see the office of President held by a woman, by a Latino, and by people of so many races that one day, the color of the wrapping paper might not matter at all.

To me, that is the promise of America: we are who we live our lives to be, and not what we look like.

At Wikipedia you can learn about the number 44. It is apparently a happy number, and is the number of Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, Floyd Little, Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Jerry West and George Gervin (and Rick Mahorn). In less glamorous sports news, it's also the number of years William Clay Ford Sr. has been chairman of the Detroit Lions ... number of playoff wins over that time? Just one.

As far as I can tell, today's inauguration will be the first to be massively webcast, and those of you who are working may want to tune in via CNN/Facebook or the Presidential Inaugural Committee web site to watch online and also see all kinds of maps and schedules for the days activities. Flickr's most recent inauguration and most interesting inauguration slideshows will probably be pretty interesting as well. If all that's too old school for you, you can check out the Inauguration on Tumblr, and Mike Wendland points out Current/Twitter's plan to let you tweet about the inauguration on TV. If it's not old school enough, check out "I do solemnly swear" ...Presidential Inaugurations from the American Memory at the Library of Congress.

Just before dawn on the 7 degree morning that is January 20, 2009 here in Leland, Michigan, I am doing much the same thing that I have on Tuesday mornings for the last 11 years: poking around the Michigan internet, looking for things I can share with my neighbors.

Today, I think I'd like to share with you my excitement not for the inauguration of Barack Obama. Athough I am pretty excited about that, I'd most like to share my belief that despite the grave local, national and international challenges on political, military, economic and environmental fronts we are facing, we are a can-do people, and by whatever God or gods or goddesses we do or don't believe in, we - meaning all of us, together - are going to do something about it.

What do you think?