Good words to start with.

Notes to Obama: Maya Angelou

I am a poet. What I'm going to say to you now, however, is not a poem, it doesn't pretend to be. These are ruminations or reflections upon the advent of President Barack Obama.
We needed him. We the race needed him. We the American people, we needed him.
Banks, automobile companies, insurance companies needed him. The stock market in Japan and Germany, in France and Britain, in China, in New York City needed him.
And out of that great need, I believe he came. Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama came.
Intelligent, facing forward, including everyone, excluding no-one. He came with some charm - not enough to make him seem glib.
But what he did is he brought something we cannot live without, and that is hope. He brought the possibility that we might really see ourselves as we really are. A great country.
I believe in the secret part of every heart of an American is the desire to belong to a great country.
I think that President-elect Barack Obama offers us the chance to have a great president with whom we can identify.
Not as a black person, not even as a male, but really as an American citizen who will speak for the voiceless, who will not forget the poor black or the poor white, who will remember the out-of-work Asian and the dislocated Spanish-speaking person.

I found this in the New York Times this morning. Maya Angelo expresses both my thoughts and feelings this morning.

Mervi