Today I got to accompany some travelers from Princeton's Coalition for Peace Action on their journey to the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th (and the first of color) President of the United States. We left at 5am and returned to Princeton at 9pm, spending more time in one day on a bus than anyone should have to, not to mention walking many blocks through the streets of downtown Washington, herd-style Actually we were so close together, near the end we waddled more like penguins to inch closer to our date with history.

Here's what it looks like at 5am on a frozen winter morning.

Once our buses arrived at RFK Stadium in our nation's capital, from left, Michele Tuck-Ponder and her daughter Jamaica Ponder, 10, of Princeton Township, pause for a photo before boarding a shuttle bus to take them to the mall.

Here are the aforementioned mom & daughter at the closest spot they could get,outside the perimiter of the mall, which starts just on the other side of the tree line.

View from roughly the same spot, a man wearing an "Obama" cap captures video of the scene during the president's first speech as president. Several people in the crowd had cameras with them ;) I don't know if was cold-induced numbness, but I don't know if the people around me fully grasped the profoundness of what had just become a reality. It reminded me of grade-school science class when the teacher has a beaker with a red-colored liquid in it. From an eye-dropper she adds one drop of a mysterious clear liquid then another and nothing seems to change until one more drop and "Bam!" the entire beaker of liquid completely changes in one instant from red to blue. Forget the comparison to red states and blue states. I don't even know which is which. I just mean that when Barack Obama became the president of these United States where (taking from his speech) less than sixty years ago, a man like his own father might not have been served at a local restaurant, eveything changed.

Did I mention there were an estimated two million people?

The St. Patrick's Day Parade, only a couple of months away, is big in Trenton, New Jersey and it doesn't just happen all by itself. It takes huge amounts of hard work and planning. Tonight, an inportant part of that planning took place, the selection of 2009 Miss St. Patrick.

Emcee extraordinaire Vince McKelvey, hosts the Trenton St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee and Scholarship Foundation's selection of 2009 Miss St Patrick, held at Msgr. Crean Division #1 Ancient Order of Hibernians hall on Kuser Rd in Hamilton Township.

The judges tally their votes...

And the winner is...Margaret Walsh, 2nd from right.

Q: Could godmother be more proud?

A: No!

There she is... Margaret Walsh, Miss St. Patrick 2009!

Once the winners are announced, photographer Dave Schofield makes the official portrait of first runner-up Megan Dunne. At right is second runner-up Meghan Simmons.