Posts

Showing posts from January, 2009

This Land Is Our Land

Image
The post I want to write will take me a little longer. So let me simply offer a few snapshots. I am very fortunate in that I live, work, and attend church in places which have ethnic and other kinds of diversity. But not everywhere I go looks like that. The people on the Mall looked like America. The buses came from everywhere. I talked with a teacher from DeKalb, Illinois, a group of Native Americans from eastern Oregon, local folks from DC. The American idea has always been that we are more than the sum of our parts. [The photo is of Lisa Bellan-Boyer, singing "This Land is Your Land."] During the inauguration ceremony, the area surrounding the Capital, Mall, and parade route was temporarily the 5th largest city in the U.S. The DC folks should have consulted with United for Peace and Justice on crowd management. The numbers were through the roof – the planning was not. My favorite official picture of the day: President-Elect Obama with his hand on the Bible used to swear in