Last weekend, while visiting Jamie in the surprising cold of Washington D.C. in winter, I couldn’t help but be reminded of another cold January day in our nation’s capital, January 20, 1961, the day President Kennedy took the oath of office.
Nearly fifty years later, Kennedy’s words that day still ring true. While there are many elements of the speech that have become part of the American policial vocabulary, one of my favorites follows the section in which the new president calls upon both sides of the Cold War to work together to address old challenges and seize new opportunities:
“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
***
With the 2006 elections firmy behind us, with a new Democratically-controlled State House taking charge in Lansing and with a wealth of challenges demanding our attention, it’s time again to get to work.
Over the next few days, I’ll be re-working the look of danscripps.com, recreating a blog in which all of us in Northwest Michigan can share ideas on where we go from here. I’ll again post ideas, stories, and links to the work being done by others in the region, but I also need your comments, thoughts and the unique perspectives that we share as neighbors along the Lake Michigan coast.
I’m looking forward to continuing to build on the key themes I identified over the course of the last campaign – making Northwest Michigan a global leader in renewable energy; working to expand access to new technologies; building a strong and sustainable local business environment; finding innovative ways to combat poverty in our region; and building the coalitions necessary to ensure we live up to our responsibility as environmental stewards.
This is a big list. There is much to do and our efforts can affect real change in our communities. It will take hard work, without the comfort of knowing that we’ll be done anytime soon.
But let us begin.
