All you Eden fans probably appreciate my photos of her. This one was shot while in Williamsburg with Eden's grandparents over Christmas. We were in the candy store, and Eden and I were goofing off.

Grandma & Pa in Town

My parents came to town for the holidays. It's been a pleasant visit; although, the weather hasn't always cooperated. Here's one of my Dad at Rudee Inlet on a nice day.

Some recent images of Eden, taken while she was working on a recent art piece.

www.change.gov

It's a monumental moment in the short history of our nation; with OUR work to elect Barack Obama to Presidency, we have swiftly restored our reputation as the greatest country on earth. Celebrations continue daily in our own communities and around the world. And I am a very glad soul.

But WE did this. We worked very HARD to recapture our hijacked nation and to return it to the hands of the people. And the President Obama will continue to need our help to create the change we want. Now that we've come together in this grassroots movement and created teams of politically savvy, civic-minded people from the ground up in our own neighborhoods, we must continue to play a part as watchdogs of our own government. We cannot allow even one slip backwards towards the divisive and ugly Rovian politics of the past. We have merely been given a CHANCE for positive change. We must be vigilant to BE SURE the change actually happens.

Stay involved. Go here to www.change.gov and continue or begin this journey with me.

And if you didn't vote for Obama, this is your chance to become active in your own goverment if you haven't before. Join us, and get involved.

While some people attempt to explain their loss, the heart of this glad soul soars to explain my own personal struggles over the last three months. I'm proud to say that while I "lost" attempting to lead some of my closest family and friends to even hear or see my viewpoint, I was able to lead my own precinct to "win" for Obama.

In the heartland of Ohio, my home state, struggles like those I had with some family and friends were all too common. This article from The Nation gives me great hope.

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On the last Saturday in October, the president of the Laborers' International Union took the stage in a packed labor hall in Cleveland and rattled off the ways Barack Obama was just like all the white guys in the room.

The crowd cheered, many of them laughing as they clapped. It was an audacious, maybe even outrageous, declaration of support--and it was exactly what many of them needed to hear. O'Sullivan was a middle-aged working stiff with a face redder than a beet as he assured his fellow laborers that not only could they vote for an African-American, they could pick up their campaign packets and canvass their own neighborhoods, too.

"You didn't join a labor union for social issues," he said. "You joined a labor union because you care about workers, and so does Barack Obama."

O'Sullivan knew exactly what he was doing, and why. For months, pundits had been insisting that these were the men who would abandon the Democratic candidate in droves because Obama was too different, too not-like-them. Increasingly, Ohio was a battleground not just in the presidential race but in kitchens and job sites across the state. Families were divided, often along generational lines, and longtime friendships were fraying. As one union activist in his 70s told me in July, "I'm hearing things come out of brothers' mouths that are breaking my heart." His blue eyes pooled as he added, "We did an internal poll of our union, and the results were so bad we didn't release them."

What O'Sullivan did, loudly and publicly, was the same thing an increasing number of private citizens had been doing quietly for months, one difficult conversation at a time. As the campaign progressed and it became clear that race was a lingering problem in some pockets of Ohio, brand-new activists were being born. Outrage begot courage in even the most timid of hearts. An uncle used a racial epithet, a best friend insisted Obama was a Muslim, a co-worker forwarded one of the endless loops of e-mail challenging his patriotism, and on the receiving end, patience snapped.

In the past four months, I heard from many readers in Ohio who wanted to let me know they were initiating some of the hardest conversations they'd ever had with people they love.

One woman with a nervous voice called me in September at my desk in the newsroom just to say that she had finally told her father, "Stop."

"He said he wouldn't vote for a black man," she told me. "And I held up my hand and said, Daddy, stop."

She said it was the first time in her forty-six years that she had stood up to her father, and that her knees were trembling after she did it. When I asked her what happened next, she laughed.

"Well, after he got over the shock, we talked. And we're still talking. I don't know if he's going to vote for Obama, but at least he understands now why I will."

That might strike some as a small victory, but one day after the election, it appears that there were enough of these little conquests to move the needle. The country's sudden economic crisis certainly helped Obama in a region already reeling from the downturn, but that alone could not deliver the state of Ohio. The groundwork had already been laid by ordinary people determined to deliver extraordinary change, one tough talk at a time.

In a nation hungry for heroes, Ohio delivered.