The inaugural festivities had already begun on Wednesday when I realized I had not hung our little flag. I stopped what I was doing (exercising on the elliptical), grabbed the flag and ran outside to the mailbox with it, where it proudly “flew” for the rest of the day.

It was not alone. Down on the National Mall, a “field of flags,” almost 200,000 of them, stood in for the people who would usually be there, waving their own flags. 

Wednesday was windy, a good day for flying flags. Their rippling made them look alive, the embodiment of all the hope and promise of a new era. 

(The flags seen from space, courtesy Planet Labs Inc.)