Move over JFK...

America seems to have a new prince.

He's charming.

He's debonair.

He's handsome.

He's articulate.

He's intelligent.

He's multicultural.


I didn't intend to be a tvaholic today.

In fact, I had no plans to watch at all.

Then about 10:30 am I realized how important this was to mom, and how this was probably the first MAJOR event that she was going to experience without Dad there.

Dad would have been taping every second of every station broadcasting the event. That was Dad. He has endless video at the house of the Loma Prieta earthquake and aftermath. He has endless hours of videos of many big news events. He has thousands of VHS tapes. My dad, the cameraman.

So, at the 11th hour I jerked on my boots, didn't bother to tie them and bolted out the door headed for mom's. I drove well over the speed limit to get there before 11. I watched the inauguration with her until they left for the luncheon.

I kinda got sucked into his boyish charm and infectious smile.

It was also nice to hear sentence after sentence come out making sense and with all of the words in the right order.

When I got home, the TV ran until 11:30 pm.

I listened as reporters talked to older black Americans who sadly never thought they would see this day.

I listened to the young people of the country express that now anything was possible for them, that feeling of total invincibility.

Not that naive feeling of a young kid, but the feeling racing through young adults, already experienced enough with life to know they are not invincible. Yet, today, they knew they could do anything.

Be anything.

I know that feeling. I have had that feeling as an adult.

Something happened that night, in rural northern CA, under a blanket of stars, barefoot in the dirt, making tobacco offerings in honor of my native ancestors, beating that drum, raising my voice to the cosmos, purging my most closely guarded secrets to total strangers, invoking the energy of the goddesses, all the while feeding and stoking the fire that I would help rake into a bed of hot coals.

It was a workshop at a women's music festival in Hopland. It consisted of four hours of ritual ceremony that culminated in my firewalking. A workshop that I was not interested in attending, but went to, in support of two others who intended to walk.

That feeling changes lives.

Somewhere in a moving box in the attic I have a green index card with a rubber stamped image of a dragon. On it, on that night, I wrote the words "I walk on fire, I can do anything I desire."

It changed my life in the years that followed: it permanently altered the course of my life.

Millions of people had their firewalking ceremony today.

May all those young people realize their new found potential.

Here's to you, Mr. President...

the hot coals for a nation,

nay,

world of young hearts.


Hey... he is the son of an anthropologist.