Look! Up in the Sky!

We finally did it. We inaugurated him. I’m not a fan, but I want him to succeed. What worries me is how he will do it. And what will we have in the end. The inauguration was bland to me. The speech was ok, but not memorable. It wasn’t John Kennedy, Lincoln or FDR. Obama approached it as let’s worry about today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It was a working presidential speech. It is a call to service and a warning to our enemies.

There was nothing new here. Bush’s second inaugural address was much better and substantive. Bush the first, I read his inaugural and found it an excellent speech, though it was ridiculed, it had at its core the values of America.
To me Obama took the best of many previous presidents’ speeches, put them in his own words and trotted it out there for all to hear. Of course there are many inspired by it. They should be. The speech borrows from several such speeches in the past. Compare it to Kennedy or FDR and yes even Lincoln and Bush I.

The good news for Obama is he doesn’t have the enemies that Bush II had coming into office. With the hatred that developed after his first term election, Bush could do little right, and the critics never let up until the end. There were things to criticize. St. Reagan had things to criticize. His Highness Bill had lots to criticize. The good news for Messiah Obama is that no one will criticize now or probably ever, because that would be wrong for the country and a bad show in race relationships. After all the prayer made sure the Whites will do what is right, does any one else have to do what is right?

The bad news is Zeus Obama is on such a high mountain top he has a long, long way to fall. The expectations are so high, he can’t reach them. Even if he gets halfway there he fails to live up to expectations. Of course, the media will couch it in other terms, until he gets on their bad side, if ever. The media loved Kennedy to the end, so who knows it may never happen. But Obama will not live up to the billing. I don’t wish him ill. We need him to succeed. But please in the process please remember it is capitalism that made the country great, not socialism.
Though the poem was strange it is good for him to read over again. In it he’ll see what the average person lives. YoYo Ma and Pearlman were great, but Alexander’s poem was down to earth.

Praise Song for the Day
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other,catching each other’s eyes — or not — about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and in, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform,patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oildrum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers thechanging sky. A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”
We encounter each other in words — words spiny or smooth,whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someoneand then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side. Iknow there’s something better down the road.”
We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised thebridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick theglittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle. Praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Others by “first, do no harm” or “take no more than you need.” What if the mightiest word is “love” — love beyond marital, filial, national; love that casts a widening pool of light; love with no need to pre-empt grievance?
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made,any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, praisesong for walking forward in that light.