I heard it - really, by accident on NPR. Television-free, all images were baked in my mind by the broadcaster's description.

“We are one! They are calling it, We are one!” I said to my husband, and the tears began to flow, “I can't tell you how much it means to me that the inaugural celebrations are beginning with a concert called WE ARE ONE.”

I knew my nephew was somewhere in that crowd gathered before the Lincoln Memorial. Like the President Elect, he is the son of a black father and a white mother, and like Obama, he is tall, handsome, intelligent, and personable.

His mom, my sister  (whom I love with a depth of emotion that perhaps only siblings can hold for each other in spite of differences, arguments, and downright fights) has of late, exhibited a set of political principals that on its surface seems the opposite of mine. Oh, let's state it plainly: she voted for McCain.

Yet, her son was there, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and I wish I had been too. They said it was cold, but I would have traded the 72° temperatures outside my California home if finances and circumstances had only made it possible.

I listened to the music, joyous, opening with Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man. There was Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, of course, and Bono. We heard the Stone's Gimme Shelter, Seeger's This Land is My Land, Shout! American Pie, and so many more!

In 1967, the Summer of Love, in an innocent world of my youth, it seemed as if humanity was finally awakening to a shared destiny —one that spoke of love, peace, reverence for mother earth, willingness to sacrifice, to give, to serve, to embrace. But the promise darkened.

These ideas were somehow too threatening, too outlandish. The vision dimmed as a focus on the outward packaging of long hair and tie dyed tee shirts obliterated the message.

But the message didn't die. The seeds were still there. Oh yes, as the Seventies wore on it wilted; in the Eighties, it submerged, stripped away from top priority like the solar panels on the White House, then buried deeply in the hedonism of the 90's, it seemingly disappeared in the winter of the what ever THAT was of the last eight years.

The ideal went undergound. It hid. It slept fitful dreams, but it never completely went away. And now, 40 years later, those seeds are sprouting, watered by many tears of both sorrow and joy. And now, we have a President, who in his first truly public directive, calls us all to a National Day of Service.

So, as I listened to my radio today, I realized that, after all, it is my deep, enduring belief that sweet seeds such as these will eventually fill our halls and malls and public spaces with lush foliage, and the coming eight years — or, with luck the next 80 or 800, will be a garden of tender green leaves of vision and courage, and re-connection.

2009, a new American Pie. The year our music was reborn.