YES WE CAN!!

"...they [the cynics] have forgotton what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose"

That was one well written speech. Seriously. I took notes, a few pages of notes in fact. He used the word humility twice in reference to America, and that in itself is a very nice (and needed) change. The overall tone of the speech was very fitting for the very unstable time we are in. He enforced the chance that we have to change, and instead of focusing on the things that HE was going to do, he instead focused on the things that WE could do. He put a lot less sugar on the issues of our times as I think some other "mavericks" might have done. It is very clear that these next few years are going to be rough to say the least. We need all of the Obama encouraged imagination and courage we can get! I hope that this kind of hope that most of America has right now will create chain reactions upon chain reactions of imaginative solutions to our problems with poverty, war, and health care.

For the ADD of us (myself very much included), the coverage I watched (CSPAN) did a very good job of breaking up the speech with smooth transitions to various shots of people in the crowd, and some very, very smooth panning shots of the enormous amount of people in attendance. They kept repeating this one shot, an upward panning shot of the White House. It was a really great shot, but I feel like I saw it at least once a minute. I was glad that there weren't very many graphics on the screen during Obama's speech. Even the CSPAN graphic was a bit big for me, I really just wanted it to focus on the event, and not so much on advertising the news station, but thats just how it goes I guess.

I really hope that we can "become the change that we want to see in the world (Ghandi)". because it sure isn't going to be easy.