Fired Up, Ready to Go, Wearing Christmas Red!

Whatever you may think of the 44th President of the United States, and no matter how history may ultimately come to judge his tenure as such, the above photograph is one for the ages.

According to the caption on the White House's flickr page, the President and the First Lady are greeting "Edith Childs, from Greenwood, S.C., in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, during a holiday party, Dec. 4, 2009. Childs coined the campaign slogan "fired up, ready to go."

What I like best about it is the decked-out (literally!) head-to-toe Christmas red of Child's outfit. She popping out of this photograph like a chestnut on an open fire! The First Lady looks elegantly 50's retro. And the President is caught, somewhat awkwardly, coming in for what looks to be a spirited embrace of all that red. Or he's doing a Ray Charles imitation. Behind them, serenely staring out from his framed vantage above the fireplace, is George Washington.

Election Day

I'm hoping to roll out a lot more of these more personal mini-documentaries over the course of the next year. This one, this awesome slice of history, was too good to pass up. And while its dedicated to Abby and Sean, its impetus was the passing of Studs Terkel, whose spirit was right there in the streets of Chicago with us.

Yes We Can Can Can!

That's what I'm talkin' about. So, so sweet.

Vote

We voted this morning. We're feeling very good about it.

Roman Candle Lightning Lights Up the Sky

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are crated equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness."

Those simple words are our starting point as Americans; they describe not only the foundation of our government but the substance of our common creed. Not every American may be able to recite them; few, if asked, could trace the genesis of the Declaration of Independence to its roots in eighteenth-century liberal and republican thought. But the essential idea behind the Declaration-- that we are born into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can't be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make our lives what we will-- is one that every American understands. It orients us, sets our course, each and every day.

Indeed, the value of individual freedom is so deeply ingrained in us that we tend to take it for granted. It is easy to forget that at the time of our nation's founding this idea was entirely radical in its implications, as radical as Martin Luther's posting on the church door. It is an idea that some portion of the world rejects- and for which an even larger portion of humanity finds scant evidence in their daily lives

-Barack Obama, from The Audacity of Hope