I watched two very magic things yesterday. First, this country transitioned power peacefully and quietly (besides the cheering) from one person, one group, perhaps one half of the country to another. Regardless of all else, you really do have to respect our ability to do that. Nobody died, nobody got shot (that we know of...) over our new president. That’s magical, even if you don’t agree with Barack Obama, his administration’s ideas, or the people that voted for him. Yay for us.

Even more magical, I watched @kbarrick my roommate sit with a friend in the hospital last night. Our friend had gone in for routine surgery that went incredibly well by all accounts. I met Krisin at Prentice Women’s Hospital in downtown Chicago (which is an amazing facility, by the way) and walked up with her to see our friend, who Kristin knows much better than I do. She (our friend) was tired and a little dopey with all the pain meds floating through her system, but as I sat with them I really wished that my camera had not died last week. I could have snapped scores, maybe hundreds of pictures of Kristin and others just hovering, caring for their friend and making sure that she was not alone when she was (infrequently) awake and cogent.

The heart (or one of them) of what our president has been arguing for of late is personal responsibility. I have long been convinced that one of the biggest failings of our culture in regards to most of our children is the fact that we (I’m speaking in the BIG we) don’t teach many of them how to take care of themselves or responsibility for their own actions. I know that I’m guilty of not always blaming myself when it’s needed, but I like to think that when something serious is up, I do what’s right and lay claim to my own issues and mistakes.

And last night, I watched two women come to the side of a friend who was bed-ridden and in pain, bringing her lotion that smelled like her home, her favorite chocolate, flowers, and the gift of their own company. No one was patting them on the back for this, as often happens with those who care for others. No one was paying them in any way, and they still did it. This is really what people need right now, in a time of uncertainty and almost infinite, inexorable hope. Turning together to support one another in tough times.

This is not the same thing as circling the wagons. Not at all. Kristin and her friends were not excluding anyone from the community, support, and love that they were offering one another. They were embracing and welcoming. They were happy to bring more people into their fold.

I wasn’t sure how to write about these moments until just this second, but here it is: there are times when every group, every person, every project, every government needs to lay down, get a morphine drip, and try to heal. It is the duty of the people who love and honor this wounded thing to gather around it, to create the same environment and effort that Kristin and her friends did. I am ashamed to say that I have sometimes failed at that task, but in realizing that, I hope it will only make my resolve to meet the challenge in the future that much stronger.

This is a bit of a heavy post, and I’m sorry for that. But it was needed, at least for me to write it so that I could feel as though I’d gotten it off of my chest. I’ve said it now, that we all need to buckle down and get ready to work with one another. At my job, in Chicago government, down in Springfield, in DC and everywhere around the country. That’s the only way we’re going to get anything done around here...where ever "here" is.

Thanks for your patience...I’ll get you something a little less serious soon. So here, in the words of BoingBoing writers here’s a unicorn chaser.

(If by unicorn I mean an AWESOME picture of God of War II concept art with a fire-horse and lots of things-that-could-kill-you-ness)