At emotional and intellectually rich times like these, I crave  context and honest feelings,  two of the things I love Open's sister-community,  The WELL for.  I was moved by stories we told each other last night and this morning. 

We cried.  Starting midstream,  with kissing strangers and crying on the street by watadoo, this is what our conversation was like.  (watadoo's real name is  available when you are logged in at The WELL. Some asked me to include only usernames, instead of real names, when I got their permission to re-post here.)

from Election '08: The Tearful Topic

politics.2704.111:   (watadoo)  Wed 5 Nov 08 09:14

 I went to an election watching parting in the Mission last night.
 Champagne, sauteed cheney chicken hearts, condeleeza rice, lame duck
 bush, and more champagne on the call for the win.
 
 After listening to McCain's largely classy concession and Obama's tear
 inducing acceptance (you're gonna get your puppies in the white house
 girls!) we went out in to the streets.  We lept off a bus near 19th and
 Mission as there seemed to be lots of people gathering. Within minutes
 there was a sea of dancing, smiling hugging kissing people as far as
 the eye could see. A small car got caught in the middle of the crowd
 and the driver popped out and was handed champagne. People were
 dancing on his car, shooting video, and smiling laughing crying. a sea
 of joy. I've never felt such a rush of relief and happiness. I wonder
 if this is a small bit of what it felt like on VE day in 1945.  I was
 kissed by what seemed like dozens of strangers and felt more like a
 collective member of this country than ever before.
 
 We hung out and partied for 2 hours not wanting to let the moment go.
 People blowing trumpets, break dancing, spraying the crowd with
 champagne with a couple of cops looking on smiling. No trouble, no
 negativity as far as one could see or feel.
 
 Just as we decided it was time to start hoofing it back the 12 blocks
 to home the crowd spontaneously broke out in singing the star spangled
 banner. I'm not making this up. Thousands of young people, old people,
 black/white/tan people, hipsters and crazies all just flat out
 relishing the end of the darkness holding hands and singing.
 
 I had my son and his best pal with me and I hope I didn't tell him too
 many times that this was a moment he'll likely remember for the rest
 of his life. I have photos and video but I'm too hung over to deal
 with it now. 

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politics.2704.114:    - Lolly Lewis - Wed 5 Nov 08 09:27

 Got in from Las Vegas last night at about midnight. Our group of four
 carpetbaggers listened to the victory speech in the airport bar with a
 jubilant group from northern and southern CA, until the Burbank plane
 left, and then it was just Bay Areans. The celebration continued on the
 plane. We were all so shell-shocked after four days of walking until
 our feet were bloody stumps that we kept saying, did this really
 happen??? This morning, on my way to Aquatic Park I had the radio on,
 and they replayed some of the speech and it finally hit me - and I
 totally started weeping in the car.
 
 Canvassing in some really poor neighborhoods was amazing. The very
 last place they sent us was a tiny all-black housing project stuck in
 the middle of a really sad bunch of little ugly nondescript ranch
 houses that were almost like mini-compounds: fences, big dogs - felt
 almost survivalist in each home's isolation and remove. But in this
 housing project the little kids were running around yelling and playing
 and there was such a great sense of community even though obviously it
 was a very rough place. And when we talked to people about whether
 everyone had voted and they saw our stickers everyone was so great and
 warm. And then this one little girl, maybe 8 years old, came up and
 said, are you voting? My parents need to vote! And she took us to their
 apartment full of lots of people - evidently the parents couldn't vote
 for some number of reasons, nothing we could solve at 5pm on Nov 4, so
 we just stood around together and marveled at the whole notion of
 Barack and what was happening. We gave the little kids "I voted for
 change" stickers. Lots of high-fiving with folks on the way to our car.
 
 I feel that maybe now we all get to live in the same world at last.
 

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politics.2704.115:  - Therese Flanagan -  Wed 5 Nov 08 09:34

I was in Grant Park last night -- in the spillover crowd -- and I have never felt such energy and joy and pride...ever. What a night. They closed Michigan Avenue from Grant Park to the Wrigley Building, roughly a half mile, and as everyone left the park we walked down Michigan Avenue chanting "OBAMA" "Yes we can" "Yes we did". There were cheers and tears and much dancing on the street.
 
I witnessed so many events that brought me to tears. One woman was taping her husband as he spoke about what this day meant to him and how he wanted this moment preserved for his children and grandchildren and he was so raw with emotion I couldn't stop crying.
 

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politics.2704.117:  - Jeff Dooley -  Wed 5 Nov 08 10:00
 
 I had one tearful moment just after 6pm when, momentarily alone at my
 kitchen table, I saw the MSNBC website post Pennsylvania for Obama.
 It was at that moment that I actually began to believe it was going to
 happen.

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politics.2704.123:  - Thea Greenhalgh -  Wed 5 Nov 08 11:35

 I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed when it was called at 8:00 PM our time.
  The people I talked with during those next few hours were limited to
 those I knew had shared my adult political life of assassinations,
 resignations, generational, cultural, and two illegitimate wars, riots,
 and of course, 9/11.  Interminable societal PTSD. 
 
 A friend this morning pointed to this as the real beginning of *this*
 century.  What cataclysms the Twentieth Century contained. And what
 destruction they have caused.  While I'm neither ignorant nor naive
 enough to think or believe all problems will now be solved, the return
 of hope for our collective and global future is an almost unbearable
 thawing of what I'd frozen into numbness.  My god.  What a nightmare we
 have been living.

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... and you?  Did you kiss a stranger?  Did you cry?