57) A sea change - 3 am Ozzie-time

"Full fathom five thy father lies:

Of his bones are coral made:

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange."

(The Tempest; Shakespeare)

We set the alarm, set up a borrowed LCD projector, leapt up at 2:30 am to make popcorn and watch history on streaming video via the NYT website. He can not fix such a thoroughly thrashed system on his own, but he may cause us to open our eyes and begin to make it work.

"Be the change you seek in your world" (Gandhi)

As an added bonus, he speaks in complete sentences, is capable of speaking his mind rather than just saying things, and he knows how to pronounce "nuclear".

"Change your thoughts and you change the world" (Norman Peale)

"In Europe and elsewhere around the world, celebrations began hours before the inauguration. In Paris, a party at the ornate Hôtel de Ville on the banks of the River Seine was followed by less formal merriment around the city. At Queen, one of the city’s best-known gay clubs, live television footage of the new president’s triumphant parade was shown to a thumping back-drop of music by Grover Washington Jr. British cities, including Belfast, Liverpool, Leeds and London, also offered big-screen viewings of the inauguration. In Tottenham, a multi-ethnic neighborhood in north London, Juliet Alexander, the organizer of an inauguration celebration in an arts center, said the significance of the American election lay in the belief that “he is not just a black president, he is a politically educated man who has touched the imaginations of people all around the world.”“He represents a movement to people — and we are happy to celebrate that,” she said. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/world/europe/21reax.html?hp)

It was a good hour to be alive.....