New Prez, New Day a Dawnin' . . .

Yesterday I woke up thinking: how is he going to possibly deal with this mess? 

Yesterday I listened to snippets of his goings on--the closing of Gitmo, the moving forward with using human embryos in the name of science, and of course his commitment to pumping endorphins into the economy. 

The daily news continues to be grim, grimace-inducing. 

The Dow just keeps falling (some days I wonder: could it go to zero? Who's to say it couldn't go to zero?) 

Every day more layoffs. 

I heard yesterday on the radio that for every one person laid off, another person gets laid off as a result. Example: Joe Schmoe loses his job, so he starts brown-bagging it. He postpones his vacation. He decides he'll read his favorite magazines at the local library instead of subscribing. He cancels his newspaper subscription, too, while he's at it. Get the drift? So then the guy who used to make his sushi gets fired. And then it goes from there. The former sushi guy is cutting back now too--he can't afford a new laptop. And on and on. I hadn't thought of it quite this way before (thanks for that, Market Place). 

But then we have this thing called hope. It's sort of infectious, you know? As in, this downturn is predicted to last 18 more months.  That's not so bad. I mean, I thought it would take years. 

And look at all the good stuff Obama has already been able to do in just three days! I mean, poor women can get abortions again! Hurrah! 

So that's where I am. Oh, and writing poetry about it. I wrote earlier on here about how exciting it was to know that people would be writing poems about Obama (never thought I'd live to experience that), but now there's (thank to Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker)  a poem-a-day First 100 Days poetry blog--and check it out: I'm the Day #3 poet, writing her heart out about what we all know is possible.