R. Neal in comments said:

I've never seen anything like this.

Obama's remarks about the 106 year old woman and the change she's seen and what the future might hold for the next generations... that was something.

I think about what my parents have seen in their lifetime, living through the Depression and fighting in WWII and seeing a man walk on the moon, and sometimes I wondered if America had reached it's peak.

And then you have days like today.

I am not ashamed to say I wept during that portion of the speech. Big salty tears. The truth will move you that way sometimes if you let it.

R.'s comments about his parents and the change they saw in their lifetimes reminds me of my own grandparents and parents. My grandfather was born on a small farm in Anderson County. Today, it is the front gate to Y-12. When he was born in 1909, man had just learned to fly. By the time he held me in his arms for the first time, we were just six months away from walking on the moon. On his family's land, he learned to split wood as a boy and then the nation called upon him to sacrifice that land as an adult, so we could learn to split atoms.

The first time he ever got to vote, he cast a ballot for FDR because, as he often told me, "We needed someone like him to help us figure out how to change." He spoke of the electric power lines that TVA soon connected to the farm house as if the President had personally run the cables up to the house himself. He spoke of the willing sacrifice made by his own family and friends for the cause of World War II-- when he and his neighbors were asked to not only volunteer their land, but their lives as well.

A popular politician, he would remind me, might stroke your ego and make you think you are better than you are. A great leader like FDR, however, makes you become better than you are.

Pappaw did not live to see this day in person, but I have wondered about the delight he might have found in it.

My mother and father attended a school that was segregated until their junior year. It-- Clinton High-- became the first southern school to be integrated under court order. In the years following, through protests from white supremacists, a bombing, and the rallying of a community, I attended the same school with only the thought that separating my friends from me based on race seemed like something out of a science fiction novel.

What changes are still to come? How will the children of future generations look at us? That's the reason I voted for change.

I am reminded of my physics professor at Memphis State. One day in class he asked us, "How many of you think that-- in your lifetime-- man will not only walk on Mars, but settle there?"

No one raised their hand. He looked around the room with a stunned expression on his face.

"That's what's wrong with this country right there," he said. "You lack imagination anymore. Did you know that my father arrived in Texas in a covered wagon train? Did you know that the last time he came to visit me, he flew to Memphis on a jet? If his generation was capable of producing that sort of change, what must you be capable of doing? Why aren't you working on it right now?"

That was 20 years ago and I am still gnawing on the ideas he planted then. I know he was right and I am grateful for the reminder today's election has given me that I have work to do...