January the 20th

Pearlington Recovery Center,Pearlington, Miss. (evening)

6:00 p.m.    I log onto the internet to read the New York Times. The headline reads, "President Obama Pledges a Remade America" with a quote from his inaugural address: "We cannot help believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve."

I call my parents as I walk to the dinning hall tent. I ask them if they watched the address. My father caught glimpses of it at the grocery store he works at in De Pere, Wisconsin; my mother has been watching clips of it on television since she got home from work; my younger sister watched it with her high school English class. I told them the reason I felt so good was because that, in my life, I have never experienced such a positive defining moment in the history of our nation.

I go to the kitchen, where my teammate, Walker, has prepared a dinner of stuffed peppers.

After dinner, I walk down First Street, a winding asphalt road through the middle of a marsh, to the home of Beth and Larry Randall. Beth and Larry own and run the Pearlington Recovery Center. Beth is lounging in the front room of the house with a pale-skinned girl with stringy black hair and a boy with a goatee. The room smells strongly of smoke and wet dog. Beth introduces the black-haired girl, who is named Tracy. Tracy was previously in the AmeriCorps NCCC, but is now moving to Pearlington. Tracy asks me if I want a beer. Before I respond, she yanks a bottle of Bud Lite out of the refrigerator, uncaps it, and shoves it in my hand. I walk into the living room and turn on the television. Beyonce is singing "At Last" while Barak and Michelle Obama dance with each other.

        "This is a fantayland!" I exclaim.

Nicole, who is also watching the Neighborhood Ball, agrees: "It doesn't seem real."

Beth invites a neighbor boy, Dakota, over to the house to talk to Nicole about AmeriCorps. Dakota is a tall, blonde, 16-year old boy wearing white sneakers and khakis. He is interested in joining AmeriCorps, and Nicole tells him about it. Beth's son, Adam sits on the steps leading down to the living room. Beth bursts into the room and lies on the couch.

        "You peel out of that driveway again I'm gonna beat your ass with a shoe," Beth yells at Adam. "I'm gonna beat your ass with a shoe."

Beth announces that she has a box of brownies. Nicole goes to the kitchen to bake the brownies.

9:57    The brownies are done baking.

St. Catherine's School, Richmond, Va.(12:38 p.m.)

St. Catherine's Middle School girls watching 11:30 - 12:30, streaming live from CNN on a big screen.

"Dude, that's his wife."
"I like her more than I like him."
Scene of the mall, "Whao, that's a lot of people."
"I can't wait 'til the president's speech."
Aretha sings...  "I like her hat," and, "I'm just glad they don't have Hannah Montana or someone like that."
Applause, cheers after the oath.
Applause, cheers and tears after speech.

Southern News Room (during speech)

Every reporter, editor and copy kid dropped what they did to watch. A newsroom may have never been as silent as it was during that speech today.

Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. (11:32 a.m.)

On main campus I watch as hundreds of students pour out of cancelled (and some not cancelled) classes and head towards the dining halls where big screen TVs await.

Atlanta, Ga. (day)

It is freezing cold—less than 30 degrees—but the sun is shining very very brightly.

St. Catherine's School, Richmond, Va.(10:18 a.m.)

School is abuzz with young ladies also going to classes. Inauguration is available in the theatre on the big screen-- streaming live!

St. Catherine's School, Richmond, Va.(8:46 a.m.)

St. Catherine's is abuzz with how and where to watch-- bandwidth increased in anticipation of major streaming.

Pearlington Recovery Center, Pearlington, Miss. (8:20 a.m. EST., 7:20 a.m. CST)

Wake in my bunk bed in Cabin B. The cabin is constructed of plywood and a tin roof. Dress and head to the dinning hall, a large white dome-tent where an elementary school used to stand. There are several rows of folding chairs and rectangular folding tables. Make "Bananas & Nut"-flavored instant oatmeal in the microwave while my teammate, Nancy, a tall girl with dark brown hair, toasts a bagel. A woman with black hair bursts into the dinning hall yelling about whoever left the door to the kitchen hanging wide open.Nancy says quietly, "I just walked out…"

    I sit at a table and Nancy sits across from me."Happy Obama Day," I say.

    "Yeah.It's exciting," she replies.

    "Can I have a smidge of your bagel?" I ask.

I eat a piece of her bagel; it is onion-flavored. I go to the kitchen to wash my dishes; the woman with black hair tells me to drop my bowl and spoon into the sink of hot water she is filling. I wash them myself and leave the dinning hall.

I walk across the parking lot to the blue portta potty.There is frost on the grass.

I walk to the shower shack to brush my teeth.I turn on the faucet, but the water stream is little more than a trickle today. I walk across the empty mud field toward my shack. There are tire tracks in the mud. The sky is cloudless but the temperature is very cold.

In my cabin, I log onto the Internet to read the New York Times. Headline reads "The Nation Awaits its 44th President" with a picture of hordes of spectators gathering on the National Mall.

Habitat for Humanity construction worksite,Waveland, Miss. (day)

7:58 a.m.    The Habitat for Humanity Bay-Waveland Area chapter construction staff is standing on the driveway of the house we are building (presently only the floor system is installed). There are about 28 people, including the AmeriCorps team and three elderly volunteers from Ohio. I lean against the floor system of the house. One of the elderly volunteer men points a large camera in my direction to take a picture of the progress on the house. He is wearing a brown hat, safety goggles, and a sweatshirt with the word "Maine" printed on the front.

Ben, one of the Habitat construction supervisors, announces to the AmeriCorps team that he proposed to his girlfriend over the weekend. The girls on the AmeriCorps team begin cooing and giggling. Stephen, a Habitat construction supervisor with curly brown hair, announces that this means "unlimited Popsicles." (Ben's girlfriend has occasionally brought Popsicles to our various construction worksites.)

8:19 a.m.    Stephen instructs us to nail off the edges of the floor system. We begin to work. A while later, I approach Nancy, who is hammering nails next to Maria.

        "You're hammering with a vengeance today, Nancy," I say.

        "Well, I have a lot to hammer…So I'm trying to get it done," Nancy replies.

Maria, who has been taking pictures of us, bursts out laughing. "Haha!" she chuckles. "I don't know why I thought that was funny.

9:30 a.m.    Stephen the construction supervisor is sitting on an upside-down bucket writing on a white pad of legal paper. He sets it down and approaches the deck. I sit down on the edge of the deck across from Stephen.

        "What's up, Sam?" Stephen exclaims.

        "I don't know," I reply.

        "Waitin' on lumber." (Work on the construction site has stalled because there are no materials.)

        "Huh?" I ask.

        "Waitin' on lumber," Stephen repeats. "…Spend lots of time waitin' on lumber."

There is a yellowish-brown stray dog that has wandered onto the site. It sits in the dirt and scratches itself. People stand around in small groups, bored. Stephen fits a large drill bit into a drill. A fat elderly volunteer man named Terry is unwinding an orange extension cord.

A while later, I am standing near Nancy and Nicole.

        Nicole: "I didn't bring a granola bar today."

        Nancy: "I know, neither did I…You're going to die!...I was looking at my watch at 9:22 and I was hungry…Just watch the lumber show up right at 10:30. We'll all have to boycott our duty [in order to listen to the inauguration]."

        Nicole: "I'm not going to not listen to it. What are they going to do, kick us out of AmeriCorps!?...Why does my hair always fall out!?"

        Nancy: "Probably because you never use a mirror."

I go over to the water station: two orange Gatorade coolers sitting on a piece of plywood between two sawhorses. The yellowish-brown stray dog approaches me. I approach Nancy and Maria, who are now sitting on the floor deck. I lay my brown leather journal on the floor.

        Maria: "You brought your journal?"

        Me: "I did."

Walker is using a large drill to drill a whole in the floor.

        Nancy, to Walker: "You havin' fun with that drill?"

        Maria: "Looks like Ben and Nicole are workin' on their birdhouse."

(Our AmeriCorps team has split up in teams of two to engage in a birdhouse-building competition.)

        Nancy: "I'm so glad this birdhouse thing is almost over."

Walker and Bailey show up.

        Nancy: "I mean, I feel useless [sitting around], but there's nothing for us to do right now."

        Bailey: "I mean…"

10:15 a.m.   Stephen backs his truck into the driveway, opens the doors, and cranks up the volume on NPR. A couple minutes later, the truck with the lumber shows up. The truck driver uses a forklift to put the lumber on the lot. Someone plugs in a large industrial radio. Our AmeriCorps team gathers around the radio to listen to the inauguration, most people sitting on overturned paint buckets, eating sunflower seeds out of a huge bag. Eventually, everyone on the construction site gathers around the radio except for three people: Sarah, from our AmeriCorps team, and Keenan and Brett, two Habitat construction staff, who continue to work on building the supply shed at the back of the house.

We listen to the inauguration. Several people clap at the end.

Afterward, around 11:30 a.m., several of my AmeriCorps teammates walk to our van to get our lunches.

        "I just feel so good," I tell Nicole.

Sitting in the van while eating our lunch, several of my AmeriCorps teammates and I relate where we were and what we were doing on 9/11.

During the afternoon, we build trimmer-studs and partitions in preparation for next week's Blitz Build – building an entire house in one week.

At 4:00 p.m., we clean up the construction site. Our AmeriCorps team drives to the beach of Bay St. Louis. We play a game of kickball as the sun sets behind the trees. It is very cold and there are many broken shell fragments in the sand.

Lexington, Ky. (3:24 a.m.)

36 year old mother wakes up. Quietly lays her sleeping 9 month old baby in the nearby crib. Baby stirs, crys and quiets as she holds her tiny hand a moment. She covers the child with a blanket and goes downstairs to get a drink - licorice tea with milk. She wonders if licorice is okay to ingest when breastfeeding. She goes to the computer to google it. She checks the weather while she's online to see how her favorite locations around the country are faring this winter day in 2009.
* Lexington, Kentucky: 16.4 F now, later today a high of 23 F chance of snow 20%. Overhead clouds cover a waning crescent moon where 29% of the moon is illuminated. The day should remain mostly cloudy.
* Lincoln, Maine: 7 F mostly cloudy with isolated snow flurries. Northwest winds around 5 mph. Later today - cloudy in the morning then partly sunny. Highs in the lower 20s. North winds around 5 mph.
* Taos, New Mexico: 20 F, lows 5 F. North winds 10 to 20 mph. Clear. Later in the day - sunny!! Highs in the 40s to mid 50s. Northwest winds 10 to 15 mph.
* Portland, Oregon: 36.1 F and clear. Later highs today 45 F and sunny!
* Bethel, Alaska: 11 F, windchill -5 F mostly cloudy, patchy fog. Northeast wind 10 to 15 mph. Later today, partly cloudy, highs in the upper teens.
* Chicago, Illinois: 17.8 F Light snow mist with windchill of 12 F. Later today  high of 22 F, low of 14F chance of snow 50%.
Small grey cat purrs in her lap. America sleeps still. The day has not yet dawned.