Katie thanks for the photos! I was in the silver ticket standing area also, with people from all over the country who waited in sub freezing temperatures for hours to be a witness for our country's hope and renewal, with cheers and tears when Obama was sworn in.

Nice photos Katie, thanks. I'm buying into the "hope" just not the "renewal" part, we are not as bad as has been portrayed the past 6 months. We need to be very careful of the doom and gloom message, I think many of us have bought it, hook, line and sinker. I think we also have to do a better job of defining "renewal" that seems to be the buzz word lately, but there's nothing attached to what it really means?

I'll take a stab at defining "renewal", Nice: to re-establish, to restore, to revive.

So the next step is to define just we want to re-establish, restore, revive. Here's my partial list:

* Renew our commitment to the democratic principals, Consitution and Bill of Rights our country was founded on.

* Re-establish our moral authority around the world by condemning such notions as pre-emptive war, "either you're for us or you're against us," and that it's acceptable to overthrow governments and support dictators in the interests of making their resources OUR resources, and OUR political ideology their ideology.

* Renew our commitment to education, and to taking care of the sick, the helpless and the impoverished.

* Revive our commitment -- through tax policy, campaign finance reform, and regulatory policy -- to a government of the people, for the people and by the people.

Is renewal possible? I can only hope.

After 8 years of shame, it's nice to feel hopeful about our country.