diversifiedminds

So I have been delaying this post for some time. For the first time in my life I feel that my words are inadequate to describe an experience. For those that know me well, that is a rarity. But after many requests, here goes my experience on Inauguration Day. My true inauguration experience began Monday night. My friends and I decided that we wanted to head downtown and see some of the monuments and the sights of the city. As we got off at the Smithsonian stop, the amount of people mulling around was amazing. It was well after sunset and thousands of people were milling around the Mall, taking in the moment that was a few hours away. We walked around, took pictures, saw the Capital and the Washington Monument and just breathed in the air and energy that was around us. After dinner we headed back to the station to head back and prepare for the day. While in the station we saw many people with blankets, pillows and sleeping bags heading in the direction that we were coming from. They all ...

It appeared that it was highly unlikely that I was going to make it down to DC this weekend for inauguration festivities. Financially things were tight and I did not see a clear way of me making this happen. My mom asked me Thursday if I thought I was going down. Clearly things did not look promising... But a divine intervention would have it, I awoke Friday to a check in the mail from my grandfather. It was the Christmas money that he had promised. The way I saw it, it was destined for me to make it to DC. I scrounged together some more last minute cash and booked my ticket. Nothing was going to stop me now. As I awoke Saturday morning and began the trip to the bus station, there was an interesting feel in the air. I had made a few trips to DC for a few big events, the most recent being the Million More March and the Affirmative Action March. But there was a decidedly different feel this time. With those times there was a sense of anger and frustration in the journey. Anger and frust...

President-Elect Barack Obama has decided to have the pastor of Saddleback Church in California deliver his invocation at his inauguration. Rick Warren has one of the best selling books in history, The Purpose Driven Life and is regarded as one of the leaders of the Evangelical Christian movement. His role at the inauguration would be fairly minimal. He would be blessing the ceremony and essentially that would be it. While his role is minimal, it is regarded as an important one by many. Gay rights activists and others have become enraged at Obama's selection of this man to deliver the invocation. Many regard his stance against homosexual marriage as the number one issue as to why they are against him. Others decry his stance on abortion as another reason that he should not deliver the invocation. My opinion is that anyone Obama picked to deliver his invocation would be a huge issue. As long as you are picking someone who is a religious figure, more often than not their stance on ...