This is the text of the inaugural speech of our 44th president as created by Flickr User Emily Chang, who is selling this image on pins and mugs via Zazzle. Or, make your own at Wordle.
The 44 Words Project, which combined a photograph and forty-four words about our forty-fourth president, rolls on at peapods. Can you limit yourself to that few of words?
My father tells a story… of two buses pulling up to a stop sign, the windows going down, spit, rocks, and rotten fruit flying. The combatants from each bus were primed for this, well armed for this morning-by-morning war that pitted the Caucasian kids against the African Americans.
It was a four-way stop, which lasted maybe thirty seconds. Thirty seconds, every day.
The buses carried kids to new schools… to be integrated.
Integration… wasn’t that the dream? But it was a thirty-second nightmare every morning for those kids, the resumption of a war their parents’ started, that they felt called on to finish.
And does not the war go on?
I don’t believe in miracles — no, that’s wrong. I do believe. But not in miracles involving people, maybe. I’d sooner believe that large bodies of water could part, to allow us to walk on dry ground. People can change, but they rarely do. People can do the right thing, but it’s not within us to do that naturally, for sure. It makes me wince to hear people referring to the new president as if he’s Jesus Christ’s baby brother, and will walk on water, raise the dead, and possibly fly everyone a cup of coffee to boot. The fervor of the crowds makes me… terrified. Raising someone so high can only cause them to fall. He’s not God! He’s only human! He’s not Irish, OR Scottish (which is the newest thing — yeah, he’s going to rush out to the Burns Night dinners in Edinburgh this week, didn’t you know?)or anything but what he is — which is one individual man.
But.
Like all of us, I’ve seen people building bridges out of hope and optimism. I’m a believer in God. I’m willing to believe in miracles.
I’m willing to be convinced.
“For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.”
-President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009
