In keeping with the brevity of this column, I offer only the best thing I heard that historic day. It's only three words long:

"We HAVE overcome."

-CW

I watched the inauguration on a projector-screen at work. The screen usually has informational slides or a sports event on it, but there's never any sound.

Today was the first time the call center has ever put the sound feed though the PA system. A nice gesture (though the channel they picked was, of course, Faux Noise).

Most of us stopped taking calls for the oath of office. I was one of the unlucky ones who still had a call going on when Roberts flubbed it, but I could still hear. The call was just finished when I heard, "So help me God" -- and the place exploded in cheers, applause, and whoops. The call floor can get loud but it has never, ever been like that before.

Mind you, the janitor's been unscrewing light bulbs to save electricity, and we're using two-ply toilet paper. They're looking for any excuse to fire anyone. Last week they laid off eleven people and asked the rest of us to voluntarily switch to part-time. And this is a huge, mega-company that thrived in the Great Depression.

A thousand miles away, anxious as hell about our jobs, for just a minute...we were there.