Our Nation's Capital

This is my second trip to Washington DC since Obama was inaugurated and the entire feel of the city has changed. It's always been a young city, with ambitious recent graduates pouring in every four years to grab those jobs on the Hill and if their party is out of power, at the various think tanks around town. But this feeling, as summer is delayed with rain and cooler temperatures is different from anytime I've been here before.

I lived here from 1966 to 1970 through the Johnson and Nixon administrations. And one thing that was nowhere to be felt then was: hope.

Now the city is full of hope and pride.

Riding in a cab through rush hour to a meeting yesterday, I got into a conversation with the driver, a man, exactly my age--60--dark skinned from the islands with a seventeen year old son, because like me, he didn't marry and have children until he was in his forties. First, we pandered and told the other how damned good we looked for sixty!

Then we got down to the business of Obama. He spoke about his pride, how much he loves listening to him speak, how he might not be doing as much as we want him to, but that if he continues to speak and keep our spirits up that we have hope now.

"We didn't have any hope during the Bush years," he said.

His sadness was that his seventeen year old son seemed lost already. "He was such a good kid until he hit those teenage years," he confided, "and now, now I don't even know him."

Will the Obama hope reach into the hearts of these young African American men who seem to be getting lost in shameful numbers, having internalized racism to such a degree that they cannot learn in school or find the discipline to work at a job. Have we lost yet another generation despite the narrative of Barack Obama: he, too, was lost for a few years. That's what makes his story so powerful, that he was lost and then he found himself again. Redemption.