1/20/09 TIME TO IGNORE THE SIGNS

Tuesday, 8:00 AM. 13 degrees, wind NW, calm. The sky is overcast but lightening, an inch of snow has fallen, and the barometer predicts clearing skies.
As President Elect Obama is inaugurated this historic day, it is impossible for me not to recall my own introduction to racism, “Jim Crow,” and the legitimacy of the then-incipient civil rights movement. It was early 1953, when I traveled for the first time to the deep South with my parents (and the last trip I would take with both of them). Milwaukee in those years had relatively few black people, and I had little contact with them. However, I was raised to have an inherent sense of justice, and the sudden realism that “colored” water fountains, and “colored” restrooms (not even for both sexes) and “colored” waiting rooms actually existed mystified, embarrassed and infuriated me. These things became indelible in my memory, and it would take a long time for myself and everyone else to sort it all out.
Many years later I reflected on these memories as I stood alone at dawn on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the black scar of the Vietnam Memorial on my left, the more distant and traditional Jefferson and Washington memorials on my right. I was humbled and gratified by what it meant to be an American, and to be free, regardless of race, religion, social status or national origin, with no secret police dogging my early-rising footsteps, or bureaucratic lackeys questioning my thoughts or actions.
So, today it is with a vivid sense of the true greatness of our country that I welcome the advent of the Obama presidency, centuries in the making; and may God continue to bless America, the land of terrifying, relentless, ever hopeful change.
The Ice Road is open today, even though the signs still say Closed, and Unsafe. Sort of like the new road we are going down as a nation. It may appear to some an unsafe road to travel, but we have traveled unsafe or even closed roads before, and always made it across to the other side. Occasionally we have gone through the ice, but have always pulled ourselves out. The new road beckons, and it is time to go down it.