It is a transformational moment. We are being asked to pay attention. Barack Obama stands today as a beacon of hope against the tides of racism and division of the last eight years. Will we remember this one gentle moment as the day that everything changed? Sometimes great change is heralded by days and weeks and years of loud protest. The sixties brought noisy change for civil rights and for peace. And sometimes a quiet person walks on the moon or invents email and the whole world gets smaller in a second.

The presence of this good man on our national stage whose father was an African with three wives and whose single mom was a white woman from Kansas, changes everything for all of our children. My twelve year old will not remember a time when black people weren’t on the news or running companies. Our children’s frame of reference will be very different than ours.

We are being asked to pay attention. The market woes will not be so easily solved. Neither will the wretched business in Iraq. But one thing changed overnight. African Americans have no glass ceiling in this country anymore. Black kids can dream as big as anybody. White people settled this election and that crabby old racist uncle in the corner will no longer be tolerated. Today is a day of glory and celebration for civil rights and for our standing around the world. Imagine that kindly family in our nation’s rose garden.

Thank you Mr President Elect and thanks to your smart wife and adorable kids too. You wandered up and down a million rope lines and ate a lot of bad fair food for us in states you might never have wanted to go and where plenty of folks didn’t want you to come. Thank you sir. Now go do a bunch of right things, end torture maybe, hire some smart Republicans, start transitioning Iraq back to Iraq, help every single American find affordable heathcare, surprise us. Good luck sir.. Traveling mercies….