The New, 44th President of the United States – Barack Obama

Here we are, a day after President Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of these United States.  Did you all get to see it, either on tv or in person?  Unfortunately, I woke up too late to see the actual swearing in (at 7 am Hawaii time), but I did see a little bit of the luncheon at the Capitol and the motorcade ride and walk up Constitution to Pennsylvania Avenue and on to the White House.  If you missed the speech, you can see it on YouTube.  I also saw the Sunday concert on HBO — it was fabulous!

Hope Teddy Kenedy is doing ok.  He suffered a seizure during the event and had to be taken to the hospital.

Memories of Walking on the National Mall in Washington DC

But seeing the National Mall sure did that bring back memories.  I used to walk several times a week from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and back — a 4-mile walk round trip — as a form of exercise.  On other days, I’d just make it to the Washington Monument before heading back.

But the entire Mall is a lovely space and, because of the sacred geometry that Lafayette built into the design, an energetically powerful one as well.  The Monument is supposed to be the center of a vortex, and you can feel the shift in energy when you’re on the hill it sits on.

And A New Graduate

Just shy of a week earlier, my daughter, Adrienne, graduated from Hawaii Pacific University’s School of Nursing with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.  How proud I am of her!  There were actually two ceremonies, a School of Nursing Pinning Ceremony on Monday night at the Blaisdell Concert Hall, and the actual Winter 2009 HPU graduation on the following Wednesday.

Both events went off so smoothly you wouldn’t even know Mercury was retrograde.  The weather was absolutely beautiful, and, fortunately, the Wednesday evening graduation ceremony came just a few hours before the wind started to pick up and then howl through the islands most of the following day, with a brief loss of electricity in Kaneohe-Kahalu’u.

My friend, Cherryl, from Washington, DC, who I’ve know since the early 80s, came over to see Miss A (or AJ as her friends call her) graduate and get a taste of O’ahu and the Aloha spirit.  She’s the one who got the photo of Adrienne and me on the Blaisdell stage just after I “pinned” her.

Funny story … I thought I would actually be inserting some kind of pin into her lapel or dress.  So when I got the pin, I made sure I knew how to open and close it, only to discover that the blue ribbon it was attached to was to be placed around her neck.  Whew!  That made it a lot easier.  Let me just say that I’m really not as short as I look standing next to my daughter; she’s only a few inches taller than me but chose to wear these killer heels that make me look like a munchkin next to her.

Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hanneman was the keynote speaker at the Wednesday evening ceremony.  Boy, is he tall!!!  And look!  Sharky, the HPU Mascot is graduating, too!  And his parents have come to see him walk across the stage … awwww, how sweet!  Adrienne persuaded them to pose with her right before the ceremony.

So now Miss A is studying for the NCLEX exam which all RNs must take in order to be licensed to practice. She has this “will the studying ever end” look on her face when I stop by and she’s studying for it.  I can’t blame her.  She’s put in a lot of work and overcome some pretty stiff obstacles to get her degree.  But, in the long run, it was all worth it, right Miss A?