A brief moment in Grant Park: What the silence said

[DeepModem Mom]

CNN: November 5, 2008
Greene: What the silence said
From CNN Contributor Bob Greene

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– There was a moment last night– this was just before Barack Obama and his family walked onto the stage in Grant Park for his first public appearance as president-elect– when the throngs of people in the park fell almost completely silent....

***

In that quiet there was the recognition: Here comes the part of this drama that is unknown and unknowable. Here – in the days and weeks and years ahead – comes life; here comes events that know no schedule, that can’t be planned, that will appear on no carefully constructed itinerary.

The silence from the crowd was like an intake of breath.

The silence said: Here we are– we, the people in Grant Park; we, the people of the United States; we, the people of the world. Here we are, and none of us – not even and especially the man on the stage, the man just elected to be the 44th president – can be sure of what lies ahead.

If some in the audience – those of us in the park, and those watching around the world – sensed perhaps the slightest sliver of a subdued tone in Obama’s voice, a perceptible difference in his timbre, if not his words, from how he had sounded on the campaign trail, the shift was understandable.

It may have been his own version – intentional or involuntary – of that sudden silence that fell over the crowd. He can’t be silent, in any sense of that word – he is going to be the president. But during that same span late last night when the audience, in its brief hush, seemed to be acknowledging that everything – everything – had just changed, so, too, Obama appeared to be sending the signal, to the rest of us and maybe to himself, that he was well aware of the change, and was already beginning to deal with it....

The silence of the crowd ended and the roar greeted him, and as he, a man just hired for a new job, looked out at the people and at his city’s glorious skyline, you asked yourself if the thought may have been crossing his mind: There will, in my life, be other good nights. But none of them will ever be as good as this one.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/05/greene-what-the-silence-said/#more-29410

[But....]

1. Damn it, every time I think I'm done..

I read something like this and start again:cry:

[unpossibles]

2. me too.

:D

[kayakjohnny]

3. Even I. Damn what an emotional few days. For me and many others I talk with.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. A moment of history..

[quiet.american]

5. Also thought he was subdued because of three deaths of those he was close to in about as many days.

Beloved Toot. Dick Durbin's daughter. His Nevada state director.

Still, Obama was there for us.

He is an amazing human being.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. I'm sure you're right about that, quiet. nt