A Time to Reflect

Take a moment and reflect over this week.

Monday, we celebrated the life and legacy of a powerful, inspirational and humble human being. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. squeezes so much in his short life. Even though he was taken from us too soon, he left a legacy for us to live up to. He just wanted everyone to be treated equally and not based on the color of their skin.

CNN replayed the I Have a Dream speech in its entirety. No matter how many times I hear that speech, by the end, I have chills. You can see as the camera scanned the crowd there was a mixture of shades of color hanging on his every word. He was all of our Dr. King, not just African Americans, but he was for everyone.



Tuesday, everything stood still. I know at my office, everyone in the entire building (including the managers and directors) were all watching the inauguration and swearing in. We all have individual televisions sitting on our desks, but we went to the director’s office to watch the swearing in and inaugural speech in the director’s office on the large color television set.

This is my opinion – No matter what your political affiliation, you have to admit that Tuesday was monumental, not only because we had a changing of power but the coming together of the American people. This image here says it all.



There was a mixture of races, shades, and colors throughout the crowd. Here was another man that was no only for African Americans but for everyone.

During this election, I was reminded of a lot of the information I learned, or just held onto long enough to pass my Civics and American Government classes. James is a history buff and when we have gone to DC, it is always interesting to hear him talk about the different places; he gives a lot of information on the buildings and the Presidents. I can handle that because I can see what he’s talking about and that makes it interesting. Sitting in a classroom and looking in a book – uhhh not so much.



This election has done that for a lot of people. Young people that had no interest in politics; they didn’t think their vote mattered, and didn’t really care. Now, there are children who are changing their hero from Michael Jordan to Barack Obama; I think that says a lot about where the young people are growing and realizing you do not have to dribble or pass a ball to be looked up to. It is not uncool to be smart, and anything is possible.

Something else about this time has shown – people can get along, and once we get over that hurdle, anything is possible. We all have so much more in common than we realize. All we need to do is just talk to one another, and you will find that out. Just hold a conversation with someone, that’s all it takes.

Dr. King has to be looking down and realizing all of his work was really NOT in vain.




Inaugural images from Boston Globe, King photos Bob Adelman