BETTER

I don’t know about you, but I can get really sappy about some stuff. I always was “a sentimental Irishman” but as I age, even more so.

Like a lot of men, I never cried for decades—now I cry at commercials!

And I got a little teary eyed today, watching the first woman become Speaker of the House.

Her speech was pretty good too, and the mentions of, and concessions to the children (inviting them up to the podium to touch the historic gavel), I bet have never been a part of that tradition before.

Some things do get better.

Maybe that’s just part of my immigrant heritage. Having a grandfather who grew up in a thatched roof cottage with tons of kids and a dirt floor and the pigs in there with you when it was cold, who made it to Amerikay and had a family that lived in a house with indoor plumbing.

Having a father who dropped out of seventh grade to go to work to help support that family and worked long hours of almost every day to support his own family when he had one.

And me ending up having lived in houses bigger than anything either my grandfather or father had ever known, having in fact OWNED houses that were bigger (no longer necessary, if ever, back now in a little old apartment that reminds me of my grandfather’s home).

As a result, I’ve always had a pretty optimistic outlook. Some things DO get better.

Watching the first woman in history be sworn in to be in line behind the vice-president to become president, if either of them (the prez and VP) are incapacitated—even though it’s about time, it's still pretty sweet.

Someday it might even be a gay black woman.

Hopefully by then, nobody will give a shite.