Hold onto the inauguration's spirit
On the day after President Obama's inauguration, Chicago-based United Airlines announced another 1,000 people will be laid off and Schaumburg's Filene's Basement joined the lengthening list of suburban store closings.
As many Americans celebrated in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Conference of Mayors predicted over the weekend that another 80,000 Chicago-area people will lose their jobs this year.
Not all the news is bad - the Dow rose 279 points Wednesday after the worst Inauguration Day decline ever - but even our anxious fixation upon that number reveals what we know to be true: after a day of hope, of unity and of a tapestry of Americans celebrating along the National Mall, the full force of our problems will come crashing back.
It's no surprise.
Obama said as much, evoking "gathering clouds and raging storms" to describe these times as he challenged us to withstand their destructive force. We know all too clearly what he means.
Many of us live every waking moment with worry for soldiers half a world away. The year just past left many of us with an up-close view of families in economic strife - if not our own, then others who are dear to us.
Maybe that's one reason Tuesday's celebration shone so brightly. Well into a rather grim period for our nation, we were more than ready for a good party.
And a grand party it was.
With the spotlights on, hundreds of stories of hope and inspiration poured from the millions on the Mall: the black woman who said she'll finally recite the words "liberty and justice for all" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance; the 105-year-old who sat outdoors bundled in a sleeping bag to await the Oath of Office; the sentiment - voiced in Washington, D.C., by Naperville teacher Donna Mohn - that "today is a good day to be an American."
As it turned out, her words captured our national mood.
By a three-to-one margin, Americans said they ended Inauguration Day feeling "more optimistic," according to an Associated Press poll released Wednesday. Fifty-three percent of those surveyed expressed that emotion, compared to 15 percent who felt more pessimistic.
That overriding sense of hopefulness should not end with the close of the inauguration party, even as war and recession immediately jump back into the nation's headlines and into our thoughts.
Each of us needs to hold on to that spirit through what are sure to be more trying times in the months to come. We're reminded that belief in a brighter future remains a linchpin of our American heritage.
While the administration and Congress get down to work, and while the anxiety and fears of joblessness and foreclosures and Iraq tug at the rest of us ever more strongly, we must find a way to keep in our hearts a little of the optimism we feel today.