November 4

So many things to say...it was simply the best day in American politics in my lifetime. We were fortune enough to get some of the free tickets to be there in Grant Park for the Obama victory celebration. However, as you can see from this picture, there were many many people there. We were in the large crowd off to the top right, and couldn't even see the stage. All we could see was the jumbotron broadcasting the results and the speeches.

When the West Coast polls closed CNN called the election for Obama and the place erupted. We were all cheering, hugging each other, crying...it was an incredible surge of emotion. I'm sure that with time we'll forget what this was like, and how momentous it seemed. Just for a moment, we could let go of our guilt. And in the days that have followed, I have felt that there is someone in charge who believes that it is important to take care of the future: my future, our future. Of course things like this can't be quantified, but I feel that maybe 15-20% of the unhappiness that I've felt over the last eight years can be attributed to the political direction that the country had taken and the lack of action on things that matter. Now I feel no bitterness towards Bush, just relief.

Just as it was hard to see, it was hard to get a picture of anything down there. There's a hat in the way here, but if you enlarge the picture you'll be able to see the crowd and get a sense of the scope of things. Obama has finished his speech here and you can see him with his family on the screen in the upper left.

Finally, you owe it to yourself to look at this sequence of photos, taken at a rally in Virginia. Hope indeed. Update: the original photographer has come forward: she's a 17-year-old named Nida Vidutis, and her site is here.