Although the recent cut back of the distribution of my beloved home-grown "Detroit Free Press" has given rise to the theft of our paper almost every Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, today I managed to get out to the edge of the driveway and snatch up my copy before one of my neighbors decided he deserved it more. And as usual these days, I found within the paper such a reason to hope, making me grateful and proud to be part of this city and this country whatever failings they may have.

The reason for such optimism was an entire section of the paper entitled "You Could Have Michelle's Garden," devoted to growing an organic garden like the First Lady's. I feel like it's the 1940s all over again--in the best way. As a nation we can look to our president and know that while he is living a privileged life, no doubt, he and his wife are working on ways to live more conscientiously and intelligently; while a war rages on a distant front. Doesn't it feel like we're all in this together, like at any moment Rosie the Riveter is going to pop up on TV with her durag and flex her muscles, telling everyone who's listening--"we can do it"?

Telling people "yes we can" seems to be this President's take on the old phrase, sort of subliminally restoring peoples' faith in themselves while calling them to roll up their sleeves for the nation. What I admire most about the Obamas is that they are not all talk and rhetoric; everything they said would get accomplished while then candidate Obama ran--has happened in one way or another.

It's this kind of virisimilitude in the White House that gives me more hope than any of the slogans crowds chanted. Watching this historic family is like being a kid listening to Roosevelt on the radio, knowing that he was struggling too, and that he really DID feel your pain--not in the superficial way that Bill Clinton seemed to when he said "I feel your pain." There is nothing superficial or put on about the Obamas. But President Obama also offers solutions to assuage his peoples' pain, though he's not reluctant to tell them straight out the sacrifice may be difficult. He stresses sunlight after the rain, not the gathering storm.

I for one am just relieved that this family has come at this time in history-- a president who talks to Americans like cognizent beings, and a First Lady who shows through example how to better yourself and the environment. For the first time in well over two decades I feel like I'm in good hands under Washington's gaze, and I'm proud of Detroit for having a newspaper that also feels that way-- enough to spread the word to its readers.