Who is Virginia?  To most of you, she will mean little.  To me, she was my mother.  She died, after years of struggle with Multiple Sclerosis, Post-Polio, and kidney failure, passing quietly late Thursday night, the 12th of June, in St Vincent's Hospital in Portland.

How many Presidential candidates even get asked this question: "what is the meaning of life to you?" How many would give it more than a dismissive response? And, how many could actually say something meaningful?

For decades, I have been hungering for inspirational leadership within out political ranks. Today Obama demonstrated, yet again, why he fits that bill.

At a political gathering, an attendee asked Obama, "what does life mean to you?"

There's been too much talk lately about the deep (but healing!) divisions the Democratic primary has caused. I'd like to take a moment to step back and talk about the reason why things got that way: we were passionate about someone that inspired us. That's a good thing!

But I wanna know more. Who else inspires you? Who in politics and the media has made you passionate about politics?

Here's my short list (in no particular order, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few):
Bill Moyers
Keith Olbermann
Tony Benn
Dennis Kucinich
George Carlin
Jon Stewart
Arianna Huffington
Barack Obama
Ed Murrow

Update: Just to clarify, I included only people who I have personally seen/heard/read and were inspired by. You need not hold yourself to such strict rules, but that's why there are some obvious, glaring omissions here.

It's been 40 years to the day since Robert Kennedy was killed.

I was 14 years old and I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the news. I was 'camping' in the back yard with my best friend Jim.  

In the years that have passed, I have grown more acutely aware of what was lost that day, but even then we could sense both the grief and the fear in all the adults that gathered in our living room to watch the dreadful news.

In that time, in that year, there was a sense that the fabric of our society was ripping away.  There was a sense that what made us who we were as a country was slippping away.  But there was hope that this younger Kennedy could capture some of what his older brother had brought and building on that legacy could help our country regain its true direction and begin to heal.

That hope ended on June 5, 1968.  But the legacy of of Robert Kennedy lived on to inspire millions, even to this day.

Today, my little sister turns 15 years old.  As her oldest brother, I feel deep pride and love for my sister as she turns a decade-and-a-half-old.  I remember when she was born - I was in kindergarten, and my brother was finishing preschool.  I had been wishing for a little sister for years.  On Halloween, 1992, my parents called my brother and I into their bedroom.  They told us that Mom was pregnant with our little sister.  I remember jumping up and down in celebration, and putting my head against my mother's stomach to listen and feel her kick.  I was the happiest kid on the planet.

Having written my fair share of political diaries of late, today, Sunday, seems the day to post something a little different, something outside of the political box. The kind gift of your precious minutes in reading will make me glad, and I hope that my words will return the favor.

I am to give a commencement speech at a local high school later this month. I was asked to keep it short, inspirational, and relatively apolitical (my community knows me too well). What follows is my best effort.

If after you read this you feel so inclined to leave a tip, I thank you now. If you know someone who is graduating from high school or college this month or next and feel so inclined to pass this on to them, I thank you again. And if you wish to leave a constructive comment on how I might improve this, I would be grateful for advice.

I would've posted this diary sooner, but my week-long wait to post a diary just ended today.  I'm a long-time lurker (love this community) and a first-time diarist.

My impressions of being on the ground in Indiana last weekend and on election day after the jump...

Updated: Just got off the phone with my sister and we're going to Oregon to wrap this thing up.  Who's going with us?  :)

We are all inspired. We all have the power to inspire.

Eric, my professor for my Introduction to Leadership class, mentioned earlier in the semester that we would be doing a powerful activity in class that would help us get a better sense of the true meaning of leadership. The activity was delayed due to a couple of class cancellations (snow days, to be exact), but finally, near the end of the semester, Eric was able to set aside some class time for it.

What was the activity? What was my humble contribution? Come below the fold and find out - and then share your story!

I deal with proof of certain propositions, not mere speculation or fantasy.

This training and mindset spills over into my spiritual life. I have problems with most organized religions that ask me to suspend my logic and desire for evidence.I wrote this in response to all the bad things going on in the world and give people hope in the time of need. No matter your belief system.

Dear Senator Obama,

Congratulations on your splendid achievements thus far in this campaign. You are the presumptive nominee, and for that America should be glad.

You are correct when you say that one year ago precious few thought you’d be where you are today. And I believe I am correct when I say that one year from now you will be charting a new course for our nation from the desk of the Oval Office.

Certainly there were moments, many moments, when you doubted you would ever make it this far. But you kept going, step by step, and stop by stop, and here you are. Sometimes that is all you can do in life, is to put one step in front of the other, to move on from one moment to the next. In doing so, you will always come to a new day, no matter your darkest hours.

I want my kids to hear what Obama has to say.  

Obama teaches our kids how to relate to a global world.

Obama invites them to participate in goverment.

Obama inspires them to hope, to keep going, even when they get knocked down.

Just some thoughts about my own personal reasons for choosing Obama.

Messer Leonardo da Vinci ... duly considering the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its time, has acknowledged and declared ... his testament and the declaration of his last will, as follows...

-- The Last Will and Testament of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1566

I have always admired the poetry of that line in Leonardo's Will.  It certainly captures the situation of most mortals.   But what if the uncertainty was gone?   What would you do if you knew you had six months to live?  Would you run off to the Caribbean?  Would you collapse into a never-ending pity party?  Would you indulge yourself in the realm of the senses?  Would it be all about you?  In our current society that is how most folks would react.  Fortunately for us, Randy Pausch is not like most folks.

In response to the campaign message of hope promoted by the Obama campaign, his competitors were fond of saying that his rhetoric was only words... and words weren't action.

Clinton or Obama.  Whose shoes would you rather be in?  Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were dead even in terms of pledged delegates, votes, big states, and small states.  We could split hairs and count the number of Starbucks’ in each state and find that they are even in that tally as well.  As the Democratic convention approaches, the notion of "electability" begins to take center stage.  Of course, each candidate would adamantly claim that they were the most electable.  But this is a subjective argument, and one that is not easily supported by any tangible metric.

What is inspiration? Is inspiration the aesthetic appeal of a great speech from a great speaker? Is inspiration when we think something is really quaint, and we say to ourselves, damn, this guy makes sense!

No. That's not what inspiration is. Inspiration is taking those words, and acting upon them. Inspiration does not exist in a vacuum. Today, Barack Obama inspired me to do two things. First, I donated $50 to his campaign. And then, I started thinking about this strike. I started thinking not about race relations, but about relations between people in the Democratic Party. How do we treat each other? Differently, after Obama's speech, I'd hope.

I know that there has been a lot of animosity on this site here lately.  I feel that hatred has replaced hope and inspiration.  

Make the jump and let’s get inspired again.

Dear Hillary,
     This is a note urging you to gracefully resign from the campaign for the nomination.  Here are the benefits: The party can pull together behind Obama with you leading your people.  You will not be giving up.  You will be joining a powerful movement for change in congress and in the whitehouse, change in the way regulatory agencies are run, change in the way we solve problems, change in the way we as Americans see ourselves.

You will be joining a movement where all of us, young and old, rich and poor, come out to participate and solve our problems.  You will be joining a movement for transparency in government.  You will be taking the government away from the cronies.  You will be assisting in letting us take back the reins. In concluding this, I have been guided be my children.