Thank you to Barack - and to Aretha -and to Bob

[johan helge]

Thank you, Barack, for giving us this moment.

Thank you, Aretha, for singing (I love Aretha):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psp06SBFIzQ

And thank you, Bob Herbert, for this column (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/opinion/20herbert.html):

"My grandparents, who struggled through the Depression and World War II, and my parents, who worked tirelessly to give Sandy and me a wonderful upbringing in the postwar decades, seemed always to have believed that all good things were possible.

Even if the doors of opportunity were closed, they didn’t believe they were locked. Hard work, in their eyes, was always the key.

Still, the idea of a black president of the United States never came up. Perhaps even for them that was too much to imagine. I wish they could have stayed around long enough to see it."