I have no illusions about the chances of my always being happy with the Obama administration throughout the next four to eight years, but I've been watching television much of the day (something I haven't done since 9/11) and my eyes have't been dry since some time shortly after I awoke.

Don't pinch me yet.

I found this faded 48-star flag in Rhode Island when I was going through the merchandise at a barn sale over thirty years ago. Thereafter, for several years, on each 4th of July I would hang it in the doorway of my pre-revolutionary house on Transit Street in Providence. Then came Reagan and the flag-waving crazies: display of a flag looked like a demonstration in support of everything I despised. I packed it away in an old camphor trunk and didn't display it again - until this afternoon. It's now hanging from the arch which separates two of our front rooms.

Looking at it no longer hurts, although I still think it is best honored as the symbol of an ideal we must all continuously pursue, and not as a boast.