Originally uploaded by chaesq.

My third day there, we hit up the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library. Now, I'm no great fan of Reagan. I confess, he was the first President I even really knew, and even so, I had no inkling to follow him in the news or know more about him other than as the guy who hung with Gorbachev, who I thought was a more interesting character.

But I'm a big nerd and I love American history, and I especially love American history when I can remember seeing it happen with my own eyes.

Here, quotations referencing the coming of democracy to Germany, preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I love stuff like this. I just eat it up. Feed me, then feed me more! I don't care if all of these words have been scripted, rehearsed, edited, rehearsed again. They were spoken, they carried weight, they meant something and they had great impact.

All the more reason to believe in the power of words, and to believe in the need to use them for good, not evil.