What a great birthday

I got up at 1:30 am which was 8:30 pm EST to watch the election. Obama was pretty far ahead even then, and the red states in the south, less Virginia and Florida, came in and he was still ahead. Soon after I started watching, Pennsylvania was called blue, and then Michigan. I finally went back to bed about 4:30, still a couple of hours or more to go before Obama would arrive at Grant Park for his big moment. But before I flagged, I saw the electoral college vote cross the line when California and then Washington came in. Virgina, Florida and New Mexico were all but in the bag. The carousing, the ecstasy, the weeping and hugging, had begun in Times Square, in Grant Park, in Obama's father's village in Kenya, in ex-pat parties in the UK, in the student union at Morehouse College and many other places round the globe. I saw John McCain's very gracious, noble and dignified concession speech and that's when it hit me that change really was sweeping not just the US but the planet. Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe it was a sort of self-selected crowd, but the tearful faces of the Republican faithful seemed to be saying "maybe it won't be that bad, maybe we can stop all the frenzied red-blue crap and get on with it, like he says".