Rick Warren Opens for Aretha Franklin in Once In a Lifetime Show

You have to have a heart of stone to not be excited about this time in America. So much lies on the shoulders of Barack Obama, yet earlier today he gracefully and tactfully addressed the nation he now leads.

All but one of my teachers cancelled class today in order to pay respect to the moment. With this gift of time, I decided to wake up at 7am and drive over to a coffee shop I found while going to Bible college in SE Portland. It's called the Bipartisan Cafe, and I hope you can guess the theme. I don't know where they got some of the decorations, but the place is littered with old presidential memorabilia. You just have to go there, it's awesome.

Anyway, I knew there would be a crowd there because they have a flat screen and it's just known for hosting political events. All of the debates were there and yada yada. So I went thinking there would be a good sized crowd, therefore arrived at about 7:45 and IT WAS FRICKIN' PACKED. Quite the scene. I loved every minute of it. I grabbed some "Obama Blend" coffee that Bipartisan threw together and stood sandwiched in between an agnostic and a young dad of twins. It's SE Portland, so everyone is a Democrat, and while normally Pre-Coffee Democrats act a lot like Post-Whiskey Republicans, today was a different day. Everyone offered one another chairs, and got out of people's ways, people constantly apologizing...it was lovely.

We were talking for a while about the year and the campaigns and Bush, but when the ceremony began the whole place just shut up. I mean, not a word was spoken. Eyes glued to the television. We stood like ice in the arctic and listened to a new era beginning.

I've been over his speech a thousand times. I had to write a rhetorical analysis of it for one of my classes and I have to say that Obama is a brilliant writer. If this whole "leader of the free world" thing never worked out, I think he'd have an easy time finding a writing job. But he stumbled into this gig so we'll see how it goes huh? I will say, that if I were to say all of that to his face, he would most likely credit this guy, his 27 year-old speechwriting director who says he "channels" the voice of Obama. The guy carries around Dreams From My Father like a Bible. He rarely sleeps and wrote the speech that turned Iowa to Obama in the summer of 2008. What a punk. Yeah, this generation knows nothing about anything. He's 27. 27 means he's got three more years until he's 30.

I have more to say, but there's another paper to write. I just felt like I had to write all of this to validate its reality.

I'll post some pictures soon.