I’m aware that you and Margaret are huge Obama supporters, but I like you anyway ;)

And feel free to nitpick. If we didn’t care about the details, we’d just watch a 30-minute news broadcast.

Here’s a link to his talk at BYU that includes his testimony and his life story (as well as some political stuff):
http://english2.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/reid.pdf

Some on the list may know me as the husband of Margaret Young. She and I are great Obama fans (and resent being called “mindless,” by the way). To see photos and share in our election and inaugural festivities, you can go to
http://faceofother.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-election-night-party.html and
http://faceofother.blogspot.com/2009/02/inaugural-festivities-with-youngs.html

Plus I have a political blog ( http://bruceyoung-election2008.blogspot.com ), which may not have persuaded anybody, but it helped some Latter-day Saints who were inclined to vote for Obama feel they could withstand the harangues (sometimes pretty hostile apparently) from friends and family.

And in case any of you didn’t see these yet, here’s some Church related inaugural news:

http://www.mormontimes.com/around_church/general_authority/?id=5918
(my favorite)

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/church-leaders-attend-president-obama-s-inauguration

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/latter-day-saint-leaders-attend-national-prayer-service

Interesting bunch of comments here on Mormon Mentality, by the way, though sometimes incredibly nitpicky (but I guess that’s what blogs are for). I’m tempted to “correct” everybody I disagree with. But I think I’ll let that temptation go unheeded.

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

Road to the inauguration

A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; we walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” Others by “First do no harm,” or “Take no more than you need.”

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

Seriously, that would be insipid piece of crap even it were nothing more than a bloggernacle post. Honestly, I think that this poem automatically generated by the the Adolescent Poetry Generator is superior:

i am a caregiver,, someone who
cares if you
eben know what i
saw years of never daring to
dream, and not thinking
of you it’s hard to
hide.

i feel as if hes
sucked on a lake there’s
something in a few tears of pain and
pain turns us into creatures of
dissatisfaction, sitting
with arthritic, curled fingers,
scowling ant the
horizon, furious
at the
same as one another ? to me, i know
it’s not the way friends can
make it gleam. i wish that you
cared for me, you had
already left me alone. all i
ever need.

just tell me of what is
in my
mind was so
silly, how i broke up with
my toys i am eccentric and
complicated i
wonder if this
ever will
end cat,kitten,kitty,feline,
whatever you call them,
they’re just plain
fine!

they’re something you was to
face that dare. friends
told me to do thinking
about how life makes you wanna be cool
if i could
see why i still love you even
though tears swelled up in heaven,
where you rest, i hope u make the
nation really fun and stay all
day, and only listen, to your
voice that had kept him sane.

For example, many, if not most, of the BYU Homecoming Suck-tacular acts are prerecorded any given year (though not an outdoor venue, it’s still an acoustically ungainly basketball arena). When I was in BYU Singers, we prerecorded our whole set because we had to come on fast and perform right after a dance number. It would have been too much trouble to try and set the necessary choral mics that fast. Lots of the other groups had prerecorded stuff for similar reasons. The “live” aspect is often sacrificed to enhance the flow of the event, to make the spectator experience more “seamless.” Similar things are standard practice in Broadway shows and their ilk as well. As a rule of thumb, if you see headphones on the conductor, you can bet that at least something you’re hearing isn’t live.

In any case, the inauguration wasn’t an Ashlee Simpson situation. With the acoustic instruments involved, the excuse about the cold isn’t a cop-out.

As for the poetry, I like to think I’m an informed and open-minded critic. I’ll echo ESO in saying that I hesitate to say anything definitive about any poem without first “spending some time” with it. That said, the kindest thing I can say about it right now was that it was “unremarkable.”

It was nice though.

I thought Michelle Obama acted funny, a bit stiff, in the dance. Maybe she was nervous, but he kept pulling her close and she kept pulling away. It seemed to me. She looked absolutely beautiful, though.

I think much of Obama’s speech was more poetic, more ear-catching, than the poem, though, and plenty of people would have said that we, modern Americans, had outgrown oral prose presentations, too.