Grant Park, Chicago (November 4, 2008)

They began gathering early, and the crowd grew through the evening. And kept growing, and kept growing. By one second after 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, when the polls had just closed in California and the television anchors were falling all over each other trying to be the first to announce that Barack Obama had garnered enough electoral votes to become the new 44th president-elect of the United States, there were thousands upon thousands of people in Grant Park in Chicago.

Above is a stunning photograph of a field of sunflowers, somewhere in France, that was taken by my French blogger friend, Papy Biou. For some reason known only to God, it reminded me of that crowd of well-wishers in Chicago on Election Night, and I wanted to share it with you. Papy recently changed the name of his blog from Le Monde Comme Je L’aime (The world as I love it) to Le Monde de Papy Biou (The world of Papy Biou). You can see more of his beautiful photography by clicking on his blog’s name at “Websites I like to visit” over on the left side of my blog.