Inauguration Take Two

FOURTEEN hundred and forty days ago, give or take, we sat in bleachers and looked out over the Washington mall and witnessed, perhaps 30 feet from us, Barack Obama become president. And now, four years later, I saw it like everyone else -- and I must say regretted that we hadn't flown to Washington, and stayed with our friends, and found a spot -- no matter how far from the podium -- a spot on the mall just to be there. And yet I did have time to look up at the waxing gibbous moon and see that Jupiter is sitting right above it never again to be so close until three inaugurations hence (three inaugurations and a year). Surely an omen, a sign, like the Ansel Adams photograph of "Moon over Hernandez, New Mexico" -- that surely something bigger and universal is watching over us.



And I did have time to go to the sea and feel the thunder of storm waves pounding into rock. And I did recall the three hurricanes, one that undid a presidency and two others that confounded two political conventions. But I do not believe in omens nor miracles, only in hard work and truth. So much has happened in fourteen hundred and forty days and so much will be done in the next.