Dirigo

Oh my goodness. I am feeling frazzled and frenzied, with a dose of fired-up. My poor eyeballs are totally over-stimulated, what with all the articles and posts and tweets they've had to read in the past 36 hours. It's one thing to witness history; it's another to absorb it in every shade of pixelated, digitized, character-counted madness.

My guess is that you feel the same way. My guess is that if you read one more thing about politics, the election, or poll trends, you risk spontaneous combustion. My guess is that, like me, you still have 514 CNN Breaking News alerts to sift through.

So I'm going easy with today's post. I can't muster the energy for commentary, and I don't think you need it. And yet writing about almost anything other than what went down last night seems kind of odd.

All I'm going to do, then, is preen and gloat a little bit. Because Maine made history last night, and it's the kind of history I'm proud to be a part of.

For the first time in history, a popular vote - of the people, by the people, for the people - led to the approval of a gay marriage initiative. The people of Maine legalized same-sex marriage last night.

Six other states and the District of Columbia have same-sex marriage laws on the books, but those were the result of court decisions or legislative acts. Great result, but slightly less awesome path to get there.

By filling ballot boxes with more yes's than no's, Maine men and women went over and above their resident judges and legislators to extend the state's recognition of marriage to Mr. & Mr. and Mrs. & Mrs. Hurray. And also, finally.

Maine's state motto is Dirigo, or "I lead." Last night, we did.

Come join us, won't you?

Image courtesy of thedailybeast.com.