[I've read earlier versions of this story a few years ago, and you may have seen it already. But, I just had to share it here. Every now and then you just need a good story to lift your heart!]

In a supermarket, Kurtis the stock boy was busily working when a new voice came over the loud speaker asking for a carry-out at register 4. Kurtis was almost finished and wanted to get some fresh air, so he decided to answer the call. As he approached the checkout stand, a distant smile caught his eye ~ the checkout girl was beautiful. She was an older woman (maybe 26, and he was only 22) and he fell in love.

"The world is moving so fast these days that the one who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it."

Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1878-1969, Pastor, Riverside Church, New York, New York, 1925-1946

After having a "snow day" earlier this week, I was finally able to put together the video from the inauguration. Here is our trip to the inauguration...

You think you have tough choices to make these days?

Me, too.

I recently did a painting for a coworker on the Obama Inaugural. I did two different versions, because I wasn't really satisfied with the upper left corner of the first painting. I really wanted to show the people who made Obama's election possible, people like Martin Luther King Jr., Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois and all those who fought for the rights of African Americans and paved the way for the opportunities that all Americans have today. The struggle continues, but it was good to celebrate how far our country has come.

The city council must have the political courage to say no. Council members should go even further and impose a moratorium on all new special use permits for liquor-related businesses in South Dallas until neighborhood redevelopment plans are completed. To do otherwise is insensitive, demeaning and disrespectful. - (Gerald Britt, Dallas Morning News)

After each election when everyone is exhausted from working 15 hour days another election sneaks up on us that is too often ignored. City elections in many areas of the country spring up in April, May, and June in odd years and present another great opportunities for young candidates to get involved.

While starting out in local government isn't mandatory for young candidates (both Rep. Tim Ryan and new Rep. Jared Polis started with state positions then Congress), its a great way for young people to get involved with their communities.

Everyday Citizen buddy Jason Croucher started out with the Osage City Council in Osage City, Kansas and has worked his first term to increase broadband access with a city wide wifi service while also looking at new and innovative ways to retain young people in their city. If we could clone him across the country we would never need those aircards!

Candidate for Topeka, Kansas School Board Rebecca Crawford thinks her age gives her a different perspective.

After 9 exhilarating months, Bogue's Great Dismal Swamp project has been scuttled, the leak fixed, and the hole mostly filled. The mayor's benevolence with the public's water supply was disputed by the KDHE. So far as it is required by law, I apologize for having raised expectations (and for irritating the local Pooh-Bahs).

Medicare. You knew that Medicare administrative costs are approximately 2 percent, contrasted with private companies costs of 10 to as much as 30 percent, right? Seniors (like me and Better Half) spend an average of 20 percent of disposable income on health care. A single-payer system would save taxpayers $300 billion a year, according to several sources, including the American Medical Association. So when?

As I read this article, Study Sees an Obama Effect as Lifting Black Test-Takers, I winced.

Researchers have documented what they call the "Obama Effect." Researchers from Vanderbilt, San Diego State, and Northwestern administered a 20-question test four times throughout the presidential campaign. When they administered the test after Mr. Obama's nomination acceptance speech and then again after President-elect Obama's election victory, they concluded that the difference between White and Black performance had become “statistically nonsignificant.”

I do believe that having a Black man in the highest office of our country is bound to change the thinking of Black students about themselves, as well as change the perceptions people of other ethnicities have of Black people. However, to say that this effect happens literally overnight is disconcerting. It opens up the floodgates of being able to "blame the victim" and exclaim that Black people are responsible for their own inability to achieve.

Mark Davis is wrong. He very often is.

Mark Davis is a columnist with the Dallas Morning News and a local conservative radio talk show host. His views are not just conservative in that they present an alternative oppositional view. And I don't believe that he is wrong, simply because he doesn't think like me. Its that his viewpoints are often so - well - illogical. And often insulting. There seems to be this idea that there is a 'mainstream' point of view that is often Republican (not necessarily conservative), and Anglo-Saxon in its orientation and which disregards the validity and the reality of life experiences that are not his own. So that often leads to generalizations that are indefensible on their face.

Take, for instance, a current offering, in which he suggests that the Inauguration of Barack Obama was at least as political as it was historical (duh!). No problem there.

Then he makes a few assertions that undermine what could have been a fairly benign, but plausible perspective on how this presidency is more about the ascendancy of an anti-Bush fervor, so much so that the country was willing to elect a black man to sweep Republicans out of the White House.

Grameen Bank founder, Muhammad Yunus believes that companies engaged in capitalist enterprise can have a dramatic affect on poverty.

He is not alone. We're reading more and more these days about "social enterprise" as a tool for impacting impoverished communities.

Last week I sat in on the final sessions of the annual meeting of a Fortune 500 company held here in Dallas, Texas. I was encouraged and, frankly, overwhelmed to hear and see this major worldwide corporation's plans for and growing commitment to social enterprise here in the U. S. and around the world.

"I, El Rushbo - and I say this happily - have hijacked Obama's honeymoon." - Rush Limbaugh

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has some advice for those looking for answers about how to make our economy work for everyone: restore the freedom to form unions, and give workers the bargaining power they need to improve their own lives.

In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, "The Union Way Up," Reich says the nation can get out of our economic slump and on the road to a sustainable economy by passing the Employee Free Choice Act:

The sooner it's enacted, the better--for U.S. workers and for the U.S. economy...making it easier for all Americans to form unions would give the middle class the bargaining power it needs for better wages and benefits. And a strong and prosperous middle class is necessary if our economy is to succeed.

Though I am passionate about education, I didn't vote for Barack Obama based on his stance on education. Actually, I didn't hear him talk much about education. It disappointed me, but I believed that, overall, he had the right vision so I voted for him anyway.

So, when I saw the New York Times article, Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education, I was pleasantly surprised... and actually very excited.

The $150 billion designated for education would more than double the current education spending and would go toward "school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students." It's about time we started thinking about education in a much broader sense than "No Child Left Behind."

Here's the deal. I'm running a little late this week because I was taking some Continuing Education classes for my insurance license. In order to sell you a home or auto policy, I need an hour ethics class, along with another 11 hours of a la carte classes. To maintain my life and health license, another 12 hours is required, including the all-important hour-long ethics class.

Why is there so much hostility and resentment to police in the inner city and from the Black and Hispanic community?

Here is a new cell phone video that has just been released on the Oscar Grant case showing a different police officer punching him in the face before the other officer shot him in the back and killed him:

So as currently proposed, how would Texas benefit from the Obama economic recovery plan? Where would those dollars go? According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, the plan, which could bring some $27 billion to the state, could break down like this -

• Highways - $2.42 billion
• Transit and rail - $336.53 million
• Food Stamps - $1.8 billion increase
• Job Training for youth, displaced workers, and adults - $163.48 million
• Unemployment Insurance - $846 million
• Medicaid - $5.12 billion
• Specific potential benefits to Dallas:
• $70.7 million - Low income schools
• $48.06 million - Special Education
• $82.73 - School Rehabilitation and construction

There is more than $100 million for homeless assistance, and $400 million in block grants. Governor Rick Perry's reaction? "Just bad message. Bad policy."

Gran Torino is a must-see film for community builders. I got the feeling watching it that Clint Eastwood did this film because he knew it needed to be produced.

Walt Kowalski, Eastwood's character, a veteran of the Korean War, lives in a radically changed community in Detroit, Michigan. His long-time home neighborhood is now populated largely by immigrants.

A call has sounded and President Obama leads the chorus for the next generation to find their way serve the country. Mayoral, city council, and school board elections in Kansas are now in full swing and there are two in the small town of Oskaloosa that have stood and asked to be counted for election.

I can't help but love it...