Hawaii Five-O: WSJ
Saturday, March 7, 2009 at 9:55AM Quoted via Wall Street Journal:
When I was 9 or 10, I met Barack Obama—a friend of a friend knew him. He must have been 19 or so, even slimmer than he is now. We were standing on a street corner in Honolulu. It was a sunny day. Most days are like that here. In my memory, he is backlit. He is much taller than I; maybe the sunshine gives him a faint golden glow. Because Obama is now president, the moment has taken on an iconography it didn’t have at the time. In fact, it was altogether forgettable. I don’t know what we’re doing there. I don’t know where I’m going next.
I’ve come home for the inauguration of the first president born and raised in Hawaii. I wanted to see it where we were both from, and I did, at dawn, the television’s reflection in my hotel’s sliding-glass doors, Diamond Head silhouetted behind. Later that morning, people gathered in Kapiolani Park as they always do, to practice tai chi, jog or head out into the ocean for a morning swim or paddleboard ride. The mood in the city is gentle and buoyant, sweetened, perhaps, by the humble pride locals have in the new president. But watching this island boy—born at the Queen’s Medical Center, off to the mainland at age 18—seems to have been mostly a private experience. more
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