The 804 household has hosted many an event, but none more sophisticated, gratifying and all-around fulfilling as Words Aloud.

The idea, originally inspired by two gentlemen from North Carolina, Jason Mott and Justin Edge, who put together their own event hosted in Wilmington, was to give aspiring writers an open forum to share their work with a literary appreciative crowd.

Fellow 804 Horseman and former UNC-Wilmington classmate of Mott and Edge, John-Mark Davidson, shared details of the Wilmington event while hanging out among friends in Old Town Alexandria. The first domino was tilted forward by a single question posed by a lovely young missus by the name of Emily Saulsgiver: “Why don’t we do that here?”

And with that, Words Aloud was born.

John-Mark and I hosted the event, as eight total readers took to the podium on March 7, 2009, for the 1st Annual Words Aloud (listed in order of appearance):

• Stuart Smith
• Nicholas Thomas
• Jason Mott
• Thadeous Goodwyn
• Emily Saulsgiver
• Justin Edge
• Timothy Hopkins
• John-Mark Davidson

Each person shared a poem, story, or topics ranging from love, old wisdom, drinking mishaps, vanity via mirrors and trysts. The crowd of 30-35 remained awake from what I could tell, and seemed to receive the original pieces quite well, making the evening even more successful than we could have hoped for.

The event would not have been possible if not for the help from a few people/places:

• Roommate John-Mark for co-hosting.
• Roommate Thad for all his help and his sonnet.
• Roommate Mike for his help and the food.
• Justin Edge and Jason Mott for coming up from Wilmington, and for the idea originally coming from them.
• Emily Saulsgiver for asking the simple question, “Why don’t we do that here?”
• T.J. for providing the microphone and mic stand.
• Jessica “Vila” LaFever and her father for building a wooden podium specifically for the event.
• The lovely crowd of friends, family and just plain folks for coming out and being receptive and appreciative.

Considering the event’s turnout, attendee feedback and the foundation of our place still remaining intact, count on there being a 2nd Words Aloud in the coming months.

Stay tuned to this website, as well as my Facebook and Twitter pages for the exact event date.

So to all participants, both readers and attendees alike, I’d like to personally say thank you kindly for helping to make Words Aloud go above and beyond our expectations!

** Here’s the piece I read [PDF] **

As of the past year, my intake of books has increased tremendously. Call it the “reading bug,” or whatever seems appropriate, but going from reading one book every two months to about two a month is fairly significant.

Topics range from autobiographies, social theory, web design, and fiction.

Here are the last few –

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

President-elect Obama writes of finding his own identity, chasing the trail left behind by the Kenyan father he met only two times. Starting the book with the news of his father’s passing away, he takes us through a journey of his upbringing, which spanned across the globe — Honolulu, Jakarta, New York, Massachusetts and eventually, on to settle into Chicago, Illinois.

The book is a raw, inner guide to the young president-elect as he tried to find his place among his peers, and in the world, as he constantly felt out of place. His stories are vivid, his travels are vast, and the in-depth revelation in Dreams from My Father is a perfect introduction to the mind of the soon-to-be President of the United States of America; his balancing of good and bad, just and unjust, black and white.

Definitely pick this up if you’re looking for insight as to what went through the mind of the man set to be The Man in a matter of days — written well before he was the iconic figure he is today.

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

As a journalist with The New York Times, Filkins is given vast resources for digging into the inner cities and towns within Afghanistan and Iraq, during their some of their most contentious times. His stories paint a raw picture of American occupation in a foreign land — Iraq mostly — and the struggle in keeping peace when embedded in areas where insurgents are scattered about, and not always easy to weed out.

Forever War talks of the struggle between Iraqi and Afghan residents coping with foreign occupation, all the while trying to keep their families out of harm from insurgents terrorizing their land. It also talks of the many risks American troops face, laying their lives on the line to bring peace in countries they are not always welcomed “with open arms.”

In this book, Filkins does not editorialize his stories. They are simply reported as they occur, and in their raw detail each one reveals the relentless spirit of the many who are trying to bring peace to these war-torn countries. In the process, we really get a glimpse of the difficulty and life-risking maneuvers a journalist like Filkins must go through in order to relay the stories from beyond borders where stories of old used to never escape.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Once again, Gladwell makes the reader put on a thinking cap and take a look into what makes a person successful. Is their success a credit to being geniuses at what they do, or is it also thanks to fortunate placement in a time or place? Outliers takes us through an in-depth look into situations where some “geniuses” are born into situations with great opportunities. The 10,000 hour rule — where to be a true and complete expert at a particular field, one would generally need to spend over 10,000 hour practicing — can only be achieved if someone like Bill Gates lives in the right area (Michigan) who gave him a unique opportunity to practice programming at a very young age. The child in the inner city single-parent home who gets chosen to attend a charter school where classes are more engaging than public schools, and because of their more intense workload, those who graduate gain a higher quality of education later in life.

Mostly, Outliers is a view into situations where it is revealed that success can be achieved through other means than being born a genius. It reveals cultural blockades that tend to occur even when it doesn’t seem immediately clear — in one instance he reveals how Korean Airlines went from being nearly shut down to becoming one of the safest airlines worldwide, all by addressing the way Korean culture traditionally communicated in the work place.

This book is a great, short read for those of you interested in finding out how some of the more conventional thoughts of success may not be entirely correct. Why did Joe X become a millionaire, and one of the best at what he does, and John Y not get beyond his initial show of intelligence, even when they both scored equally as high on aptitude tests? Was it that Joe X had more ambition than John Y? Or was it that Joe X happened to be born into the right situation where opportunities to succeed were readily available? Gladwell does not say this is the case all the time. However, he does make you ponder the endless possiblities of what less fortunate children could be if they were placed in a better situation to succeed.

Currently reading:

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

In a bold attempt to increase my general productivity — at work, in freelancing and hobbies — in 2008, I took to utilizing resources around me. Books, websites and mentors helped tremendously. What came about was a more motivated, efficient me, with a few more kinks to iron out — but who out there is perfect, really?

Using Twitter, I followed my favorite Web Designers — Jason Santa-Maria, Chris Coyer, Cameron Moll, Jeffrey Zeldman, to name a few. Their tips and links to resources on their Twitter updates and websites have been incredibly helpful in working on the craft.

Using Facebook, I found a way to keep up with hundreds of friends from both yesteryear and yesterday, from this continent all the way to the one on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Thanks to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I managed to compile a quite lovely book collection of all sorts of genres — from Web Design, to Non-fiction to Fiction, to literary classics to language books — for reasonable prices. (Double thanks to the family and friends who passed along books as gifts!)

Using the tips from Zen Habits, I managed to work my finances into a manageable level of order, unclutter my desk, work on the minimalist approach to Life Hacking, and set goals moving forward. (Hence, this particular post on the 2009 outlook.)

One of the tips from ZH was to make goals known outright, so those around you can help motivate and keep you in check if focus is temporarily lost. Here we are, looking into 2009 and setting a few main goals:

Write weekly. The goal is to keep up writing, even about nothing. Though Twittering is essentially a bunch of persons writing 140-character Seinfeld story plotlines, at least ideas and thoughts are expressed. Practice makes perfect, although I’m not sure where on the 10,000 practice hour scale I am on — In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, the 10,000 hour number is given as how many practice hours it takes to be a  true certifiable expert in a particular field — I do recognize repetition will help in the long-run.

Stay far, far away from credit cards. While the instant gratification of having a certain stylish, entertaining electronic devices in-hand immediately is great, there is a reason we are in the current financial crisis. Credit cards are part of the problem. Self-discipline, in spite of what the “burning desire of want” is, needs to be contained. Work on saving for necessity first, then the want-items last. Leaving the plastic cards out of the equation makes life much easier.

Increase freelancing business. Available to write, create e-marketing campaigns and websites, the work I completed in 2008 was a learning experience. Worked on invoicing and time management, coordinating deadlines with both paying and pro-bono clients. The goal here is to market better once a full portfolio site is completed. I will announce that site everywhere once it is live.

Keep reading. Last year, I read more books than ever before. In college I had a few textbooks a year and the occasional leisurely read. In 2008, I managed to skim through books with topics like: biographies, web design, marketing, literary classics, even down to the random “6 Word Memoirs” book worth mentioning because of its many great one-liners.

Keep happiness at the forefront of all things in life. Be it work, play or family, happiness is the key to prosperity. Finding what it is that makes you happy — including working at a place you enjoy — and focusing on how positive internal happiness and positive thinking translates into success is key. I have not read The Secret, though I hear its topic is essentially what those first lines just mentioned. I’ve lived by this mantra for a while, had those moments where focus was lost, but found my way back and continue to maintain smiles throughout. I recommend this for all, but this is a key goal in sustaining all of the others.

Using those goals, 2009 should be prosperous and full of joy. Through the process, I expect fun and the occasional hurdle. The biggest hurdle we tend to encounter is self. Allowing distractions to veer you off the path happens if you allow it. But good self-discipline will push you through to attaining a clear, victory-filled bigger picture.

Plenty of cheesiness in this list, but I will quote my least favorite saying and retire it from this point on: “It is what it is.” Take from this what you will, and trash the rest! But you know where I am focused at moving forward, and I appreciate any motivation and assistance through the process.

I must give kudos to the SNL folks for going to town on the disgraced Illinois governor, Rod Blagojovich, in their “Really!?!” segment on Saturday. It came off like an old “joanin’” battle back in the day when two kids would go back and forth making fun of each other. Only with Amy Poehler (one of my favorites) and Seth Meyers, it’s a double-team on a man who — if all evidence and witness accounts turn out to be true — is as disgraceful an elected official can possibly come.

Seth Meyers:

“And when Illinois politicians think you’re too corrupt, you’re too corrupt! That’s like Amy Winehouse telling you to go to rehab. Really!”

Amy Poehler:

“It’s 2008, did you not know people tap phones? Really!?! You’ve never seen a TV show or a film? When you’re doing something illegal, you need to speak in code. When I call up my weed dealer and I ask for $50 worth of circus tickets, you know what he doesn’t give me? Circus tickets!”

Not sure if this happens to everyone, but at the end of the year when the holidays approach — Thanksgiving in particular — I tend to step back and reassess what I am doing to positively affect the lives of those around me.

We hear a lot of talk about how a “carbon footprint” left behind by humans will effect the Earth in the long-term. But what about the long-term effects of charitable, selfless acts — or the lack thereof? I call this impact the philanthropic footprint because it seems just as important on the long-term well-being and survival of humanity.

(I’m thinking of a phrase that flows better than “philanthropic footprint,” so suggestions are welcome.)

Of course, until my older years it was mostly ideas and not nearly enough activity. One year I would donate old clothes to GoodWill; another, volunteering at a church event.

This year, I have done my best to step up my own philanthropic footprint by:

• Donating multiple bags of clothing to a church program providing assistance to children in Nicaragua
• Attending and donating to a breast cancer fundraising event hosted by a friend
• Participating in a charity bowling tournament, Bowling For Hope, hosted by Trevor’s Treasures, a charitable organization aimed at providing gifts to children in the long-term care section of the pediatric ward of hospitals.
• On October 15, 2008, I shamelessly promoted a few different charities aimed at stopping poverty around the world in cooperation with a great event, Blog Action Day. I can only hope next year’s event is just as successful.
• Volunteering at D.C. Central Kitchen

I have tried to step up my philanthropic footprint in the world, and the best way I know how to encourage others is to make an example of myself.

Cheesy line of the day: Today is always the perfect day to begin working on your philanthropic footprint!

Yesterday, I took the day off work to join a friend and his company in volunteering at the D.C. Central Kitchen. The DCCK is an organization that makes over 4,000 meals a day to distribute among various homeless shelters and halfway houses across the district. According to their orientation leader, as well as their website, they are not just a “soup kitchen” that provides food alone:

As a community kitchen, we recycle over one ton of surplus food each day that would otherwise go to waste and turn it into 4,000 meals for the hungry in the greater Washington, DC region. Among the people preparing these meals are the students of our Culinary Job Training program; once homeless and hungry individuals themselves, these aspiring men and women are equipped with professional and life skills. DC Central Kitchen uses the existing ingredients of our society to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.

My particular group prepared items for a salad, peeling carrots, chopping up and cleaning lettuce, peeling carrots, cutting onions, chopping tomatoes, cutting up cheese squares and — oh yeah! — peeling carrots!

(As you can assume, my least favorite part involved my favorite orange vegetable! Peeling carrots down to little bits was a tedious process but well worth it in the end, of course!)

In the end, we mixed the items together and created dozens of salads we packaged up into big catering trays, set to head out shortly after we finished. We did these things under the command of a very friendly older woman who joked with us despite our inaccurate tomato-cutting, mishaps in following storage directions and overanalyzation of the most simple tasks. Most of the supervisors there were graduates of the work program offered by DCCK, many whom were homeless, incarcerated or were otherwise without work or training until the program provided it.

Many charitable organizations have the central idea correct, which is helping out those who are in need. Soup kitchens generally provide food to the homeless, but fail to take a step further and find out how they could use their program to assist in the long-term. DCCK is on the right track with their long-term connection, providing cooking, computer and career training classes throughout the year, in order to change the lives of those who could use the help.

This idea reminded me of the old Chinese proverb that holds true through time, addressing this very issue:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Let’s end poverty, folks!

Blog Action Day 2008 is a day in which members of various online communities yap about a particular cause in order to raise awareness and effect change. This year’s topic is poverty.

Not sure if you know this, but… there is no insta-cure for poverty. Seriously.

But as fellow human beings who do not — or should not — take joy in the misfortune of others, the least we can do is take a moment to focus on a way to help, if we are so fortunate enough to be in a position to do so.

For my part, today I am officially scheduling a pickup of multiple bags of clothing I have been putting off for a while. If you have items you would like to donate, but are either too lazy to make the trip to a local Goodwill or Salvation Army drop-off or just don’t know where or how to do it, I will help! Shoot me an email, or give me a call (if you have the digits!) and I will help you arrange. This may not seem like much, but the saying “one persons trash is another person’s treasure” is quite true. That’s why Craigslist is so popular!

Here are some ideas of items you should think about donating:

• Shoes you’ve outgrown
  Stop clinging to those fresh pair of Nike kicks you can’t fit into without curling up your toes. Someone out there is shoeless and those relatively decent tiny toe-squeezers may brighten up their day. Just. Let. Go.
• Jerseys of players who no longer play for the same team
  In the back of many a closet lies the forgotten team members of yesteryear. I had a few of these stuck in my closet that I will never wear again. They are included in my donation stash and you and yours may want (and need) to part ways as well. Remember, your old throwback Stephen Davis Washington Redskins jersey may be junk to you, but bring joy to some other kid who has never had a jersey before in their life.
• Hats!
  Your head may have expanded through your years of education. Why not give up those that you used to love wearing, but can no longer fit? One day you’re a collector, the next a pack rat.
• Plain Old Old Clothes
  Maybe your style has changed from geek to chic. Maybe you used to wear small shirts to make you: look muscular (dudes) or chest-clinging “Angel” tees (girlies). It is time to let go. Why not donate that stuff to someone two can appreciate the retro style and/or actually fit in that extra SMedium t-shirt?

Feel free to leave a comment about other suggestions for folks to donate. Like I said, let me know if you need my help. Or, if you find a place online to donate, post it in the comment section. At any rate, let’s do our part for THE CAUSE!

To me, it is a matter of human decency. America is grand because we one of the most charitable nations of the world. I take an enormous amount of pride in that. You should too.

The economy is bleak right now and some of us are swimming in bills, but if you can do one tiny thing today to help out the life of someone else, do it!

Resources

• Blog Action Day List O’ Resources
• CharityGuide.org: How to make a difference in 15 minutes
• Change.org
• Military Order of the Purple Heart
• Salvation Army

Look, my friends, at various points in last night’s town hall debate in Nashville, I felt fairly certain Senator John McCain would rear back and launch himself at Sen. Barack Obama.

I am also fairly certain McCain was not referring to Obama in the roundabout 2,823,892 times he used the phrase “my friends…”

(Note: That is an unofficial count. Consider the error margin: +/- 2,000,000)

Not that the two were especially heated and firing back and forth at any particular point, but the intimate, podium-less setting provided the imaginative type (I know I’m not the only one) a visual for the 1-in-1,000 chance that the town hall debate would turn into a town hall brawl.

(Ah, fisticuffs! Where would democracy be without it?)

McCain’s demeanor was as fiery and pointed as a candidate down in most every national poll should be.

Obama’s demeanor was as calm and poised as a candidate ahead in most every national poll should be.

Despite the McCain campaign implying that for the rest of the campaign it would “turn the page” on the economy and focus on Obama’s ties to various persons of controversy, the questions from the town hall debate were mainly focused on how everyday working Americans would pay their bills and be optimistic despite the current poor state of the economy.

Each candidate spared no time limit – much to the dismay of NBC moderator Tom Brokaw – to explain their key campaign talking points, no matter what the question was.

For every figurative punch, an appropriate and long-winded counterpunch followed. That was, except for when McCain would just toss in the “he’s gonna tax you!” jab as his time ran out and subject moved on.
Neither candidate seemed to blow the audience away. Each had their moments, but it barreled down to being more of the same rhetoric heard at every campaign stop in the country. (Granted, McCain did not mention William Ayers, and Obama did not mention the Keating Five scandal.) Polls and the questioners showed that the number one issue on Americans’ minds is the economy; leave your political finger-pointing and personal jabs at the door, we say.

A rather interesting moment in the debate came early when the candidates were asked to name who they would choose to be Treasury Secretary. Neither candidate gave an outright answer. Instead, McCain answered first by throwing out either a bad joke or jab: “Not you, Tom.”

I laughed at what seemed more like a joke to me. Unfortunately, the moderator did not seem to feel the same way, judging by Brokaw’s demeanor throughout the rest of the debate. At various points throughout the debate, Brokaw took time away by restating rules and time limits in an agitated tone. Of course, Brokaw was determined to keep within the rules each campaign agreed on, as was his job as moderator, but this was assuming that any two chatty politicians (redundant: politicians all seem to be chatty) would ever fully comply.

Another odd moment came when McCain answered a question from a gentleman, possibly in his early 30’s, about Americans paying for mortgages in this economy by telling him, “I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis.” It seemed like a tone parents give to their children when saying, “This is probably way too grown up for you. You’d never understand.” He may not have meant to phrase the words the way he did, but McCain came off as demeaning and very offensive.

And last, but not least, was the demotion McCain gave to Obama. At first, Obama was mocked for being a celebrity of sorts, and called “The One” by the McCain campaign. This time around, McCain brushed off Obama’s relative importance by referring to him simply as “That One,” as he gave a sideways head nod in his opponent’s general vicinity. Maybe McCain was trying to put Obama in the way old veterans do the new kid on the block, but it ended up coming off as a “grumpy old man” moment.

My own simple conclusion of this night came down to this:

The key difference between the town hall format and other campaign debates is that the candidates get a chance to be face-to-face with questions of regular, everyday Americans – you know, Joe Six Pack and whathaveyou – and delicately walk around their questions just as if they were sitting in the moderator’s seat.

After all, hockey moms, Joe Six Packs, construction workers, emergency service workers, town hall debate attendees and moderators, each only get one vote come November 4, 2008. Might as well give every voter fair and balanced treatment.

For all intensive purposes, Governor Sarah Palin hit the ball out of the park in last night’s debate versus her Democratic counterpart, Senator Joe Biden.

She was well-versed in her studied key words of “maverick,” “reform,” and “hockey mom.” She managed to avoid diving too deep into any subject she was not adequately prepped to defend her candidate’s position; instead, she would steer the discussion toward her stronger topics — energy independence, drilling and reform. She took very little chance at making the same mistake of rambling off into space with topics she did not have adequate amount of information on, which was a key flaw exposed in her latest interview series with CBS’s Katie Couric.

But something about her demeaner made me especially curious:

Either Gov. Palin has a twitch in her eye, or she’s trying to flirt for votes!

Maybe she has a bad poker face; or, she may even have a physical ailment I am unaware of. If that is the case, please forgive the curious observation.

But my own two eyes saw what appeared to be a politician flexing every ounce of charm, using every bit of her experience (she’s been a politician since the early 90s and is former beauty pageant winner) and charm to be provocative to “Joe Six Pack” and I (Or am I considered “Joe Six Pack”?).

How many times did Gov. Palin look directly into the camera, smile and wink?

I counted four times where Gov. Palin would take a break from looking at her notecards, look directly into the camera, smile real big and then wink.

At first, I playfully joked with my roommate that she was flirting with me. She may’ve just done it once by habit, because she appears to be a personable, playful, fun person by nature. By the last time she pulled off this “charm moment” it seemed a step beyond just playfulness, and ventured into provacative territory.

Gov. Palin pulled out the “flirt card.”

Undoubtedly, male politicians have used the same tactic for years upon years. They dance for dollars — figuratively, of course — campaign events for votes and donations. Supporters need to know they can trust the person they are investing their vote into. But this time seemed different. This is a candidate who was coming off a bad string of interviews, and even though she and Senator John McCain decried the media as using “gotcha journalism” — a term which means the same as saying, “That was taken out of context!” — the polls continued to lean toward Senator Barack Obama.

Now, regular “aw, shucks” charm is one thing — she used it plenty last night, which is why she did manage to move her positive poll numbers up — but Palin crossed the line by openly flirting with ol’ “Joe Six Pack” sitting at home.

The first Saturday Night Live skit this season comes to mind, where Tina Fay and Amy Poehler give a parody of what a public address with Gov. Palin and Senator Hillary Clinton would be like. At one point, Poehler’s Clinton character yells out in frustration, “No… mine!” … going on to explain that she didn’t want just any woman to reach the white house, she wanted to be the first. After this battle for the “Veepstakes,” Hillary Clinton was probably sitting at home throwing random items at the television screen.

All the time she spent working her way to the top, meticulously going through issue-by-issue to be sure she was well-versed, conversational and specific, only to have a less-qualified politician be plucked from the snowy state mainly because she is a woman — a poor an insulting attempt of the GOP trying to take away women voters who supported Clinton but were having second-thoughts about Obama.

Even if the McPalin ticket is falling behind in the polls (how reliable are those, anyway?), it is insulting — to both Hillary Clinton and “Joe Six Pack” — to have a candidate taking the “flirty” route to swaying voters back to the GOP ticket. Her natural “gee golly, Joe!” charm alone makes her a likeable candidate. No need to muddy up the waters by using the demeaning “flirt card.” It has no place inside the political arena.

Related:

• “Palin The Populist” by Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal)
• “Projecting through the screen” by Rich Lowry (National Review)
• “Hockey Mom on Thin Ice” by E.J. Dionne (RealClearPolitics)
• “Palin Scored Points, But She Did Not Win” by Howard Finneman (Newsweek)

My thirst for well-balanced knowledge is endless. I am fairly certain yours is as well.

This particular request from me to you, fine group of 3-4 readers, is that you share your bookmark of web links, Amazon wishlists, must-read essays, articles and political cartoons with with me.

The 2008 presidential election is the most exciting, frustrating (misdirections galore!) and important of my generation. I am embedded in this White House race more so than I have in any other, and many fellow voters across the nation are in the same boat. My goal in reading and understanding the distinctions between the competiting candidates and their parties, is to know exactly where they stand on the various issues. This particular election seems to have more misdirections about personalities and low-blow smears for one glaring reason — it’s the election of the present. We Americans are in the process of choosing between the candidates before us, and realize that even a slight variation in their positions may change our vote.

So, in that respect, I’d like to know what everyone reads. I’ll list places I visit and try to be as specific as possible. Transparency is vital — I hold that high in my expectations list for my elected officials as well! But do your part — help a yearning mind out! — and give me particular columnists, magazines, newspapers, TV shows and whatever you find helpful in your decision-making moving forward to election day.

Your assistance is appreciated, and will be rewarded — intrinsically! Ok, maybe there’s a Reese’s cup (the tiny one… budget is tight these days!) in there for you.

Don’t leave me and your fellow Americans in the dark — be kind, share your resources.

A Few Of My Recommended Web Links

• Real Clear Politics
• Mark Halperin (TIME Magazine)
• Stuart Rothenberg (Rothenberg Report)
• Eugene Robinson (Washington Post)
• Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal)
• Chuck Todd (MSNBC)
• The New York Times
• National Journal

*This was written just during the Al Gore speech, but my internet went crazy just as Obama took the stage. Coincidence? Hmm…

Just a bit of a round-up before the historic speech tonight from Senator Barack Obama in front of the Invesco Field crowd of 70,000 –

• If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he’d be in tears today. A candidate with half African-American roots is the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States of America. I think it’s safe to say this is one of those “mountaintops” MLK Jr. said we could reach. Any and every American can and should be proud of this accomplishment, whether or not you believe in Obama’s policies.
• If I had to rank the speeches given this week from the prime time appearances, it’d go (top down): Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton (VERY close 2nd), Joe Biden, Bill Clinton (he’s back!), Mark Warner (distant last, although he did shout out the roommate’s hometown of Danville, VA). Michelle stepped on the scene as someone to not forget down the line (Hillary would agree). Hillary reassured her voters of her support of the Democratic ticket and took plenty of good “meat” shots at the McCain policies. Biden told us the story of his life of tragedy and triump (sorry to sound so cliche, but it is just that), jabbed his “good friend” and his policies.
• I think the Clintons BOTH did the right amount of passing the torch along, encouraging the 18 million folks who voted for Hillary to stick to the Obama/Biden/Democrat/Obamican ticket that holds most of the same policy positions. Hillary was gracious from her wonderful, non-bitter speech, to her speeding along the official nomination of Obama during the roll call vote. Bill Clinton forced along the words, “Obama is ready to lead,” as many times possible, proving that he’s at least ready to grin and bear the fact that his wife just barely lost the closest, most historic Democratic primary in history. Glad to see the fired up, happy William J. Clinton, as opposed to the red-faced, “my way or the opposition” one who appeared on the primary campaign trail. Unity reached thanks to these folks.

Back to the big speech. I’ll have a follow-up, but shoot your reactions my way. Either here or email me at tim@timothylukehopkins.com.