Was thinking this morning down by the river, watching fresh snow melt onto the breaking ice, about Matt Bai's piece in yesterday's NY Times Magazine. One thing he says is that in addition to brains and political skills, Barack Obama, all during his career, has had a lot of good luck. This came to mind because seriously, what could be more meaningful than for the first black President to be sworn in the day after Martin Luther King Day? Of course, King having been born mid-January, Presidential inaugurations have been close to this holiday since it was declared. But the day right after? In times when Dr. King's courage, optimism, and steadiness are so needed, when it's been long enough that those attributes had started to fade from the cultural memory?

We all know people whose luck just seems to be good, people who, when things can break either way, way more often than not end up with the long end of the stick. We know the other kind of people, too. And then there are the rest of us, stumbling along at about 50-50. Larry Niven, in, I think, RINGWORLD (but maybe it was THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE) postulated a gene for luck. Or you could go with the concept of karma. Or grace. Whatever does it, I'm clinging to the idea that this president wears good luck like a suit. I'm hopimg that as he tries to set this country back on the right track after almost a decade of greed, corruption, and corrosive cynicism, he'll have not only the skills, the smarts, and the moral compass, but that he'll have the good luck he needs, too.