Massachusetts (our neighbors to the south--hi guys!) installed new Gov Deval Patrick on 1.4.07. He comes in high in hopes and rhetoric, but relatively short on experience. His inaugural address has some great rhetoric, delivered with some force and credibility--at least credible passion. It also included this moving gem:
I got a letter from a woman in Worcester named Stacy Amaral a few weeks ago. She told me how she -- like my own mother -- had raised two children on her own, now both grown and doing well. Stacy now helps care for her mother, a frail 82-year-old woman of just 85 pounds, who is recovering from cancer and a broken hip.
On Election Day, when Stacy went to collect her mother to go to the polls, she arrived to find the elevators in the building weren’t functioning. She had to walk up six flights of stairs to her mother’s apartment. When she told her mother that she was sorry she wouldn’t be able to get down (or back up for that matter) because the elevators were not working, her mother got her coat and started down the six flights of stairs. Half an hour later, one cautious step after another, her daughter following her with the walker in one hand and two pocketbooks in the other, Stacy’s mother got down those six flights of stairs. I have no idea how long it took her to get back up again later on.
That frail 82-year-old did not walk down six flights of stairs for us to conduct the business of government the same old way. It is time for a change. And we are that change.
I hope he can honor that. I hope that the people of Massachusetts and their representatives help him to honor that. Truly, the Commonwealth has long lead this nation in advancing and preserving the rights of people and has always kept the guttering flame of American idealism from dying out completely.
Here's my toast to a New Day for the joeys. I hope Patrick is everything he seems to be but I think you'll be OK. There's one thing he is most assuredly not: Mitt. That can only be a good thing.
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