Glued to the TV

We did virtually nothing yesterday but watch the Inaugural. The TV went on at 10:30, went off with the last float of the parade (the weird NASA one that disgorged a white blob that then ran down the street trying to find a moon on which to plant the flag it carried). Except for certain biological breaks - canine and human - that's some nine hours of continuous, uplifting emotion.

What wonderful moments: Aretha making us gush, the all-too-human flub from both the Chief Justice and the President-elect, the sobering speech, the brilliant Obama females in their colorful coats, the tears and shouts on the Mall, the glory and the tension of the walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. We feel connected again to our government and our country. We're a little less nervous about our future. Our children might actually have a better world than ours.

As someone who's spent time overseas and worked for European companies, I was especially impressed with our President's words on foreign policy: strength, compassion, aid, respect. This is an unbelievable man. I went to bed early, exhausted by unaccustomed political fervor.

There was only one blot on the day - I can hardly write about it, it makes me so upset. There is a blank sign, the kind that stands in front of the Old Fellows announcing bean suppers, on Ash Point Road near the airport. That is, it was blank when we drove by on Monday afternoon to go snowshoeing. Sometime on Monday or Tuesday, in a despicable fouling of one of the most moving days in our nation's history, someone had spray-painted "KKK" in letters three feet high. What's left of my Christianity makes me want to ascribe this to a prank, or ignorance. But the awful rumors circulating on the web during the campaign seem to have become flesh. There is someone in this bucolic part of the world who is degenerate, desperately unhappy, evil. I don't want to believe it, but I must. The whitest state in the Union voted for Obama; would that he could now reach out in mercy and save one benighted Maine soul from hell. I can't.