We approach this inaugural eve with a sense of optimism, and the realization that history has a way of repeating itself. A recent article in the Virginian Pilot printed these words from previous inaugural addresses that could be contemporary thoughts.

From Ulysses S. Grant in 1869; "How the public debt is to be paid or specie payments resumed is not so important as that a plan should be adopted and acquiesced in. A united determination to do is worth more than divided counsels upon the method of doing."

From Woodrow Wilson in 1913; "With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient."

From Ronald Reagan in 1981; "The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem."

Something to think about.