Before I get to today’s Hymn, I thought I’d pass on few related links, including mention of the Poynter Online website that has a nice comprehensive list of links and resources on Barack Obama’s Inauguration.  Daylife will likely post some beautiful photography of the day’s events in their photo section.

Alltop also has added feeds from some top news sites, live bloggers and Twitter search terms and hashtags to their Obama collection; their Washington collection can also give you an idea of some other inaugural-related news stories.

The Inaugural Committee has also set up a number of their own resources, including the Inaugural website itself, a special Inauguration YouTube channel, a Twitter feed, and a Flickr/photo feed.

Whether you agree with Obama’s politics or not, without question, his team fully embraced and utilized the social media sphere (more on that in a future post), and is clearly continuing to do so. He even seems intent on keeping his Blackberry.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has designated the 2009 Inauguration’s theme as “A New Birth of Freedom” as well as a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. And, the official swearing in ceremony will have some Canadian content.

OscarPeterson.com notes that they are:

…very proud to announce that on January 20th, 2009, Oscar Peterson’s “Hymn To Freedom” will be one of the six songs to be performed jointly by The San Francisco Boys Chorus and San Francisco Girls Chorus as part of the inaugural ceremonies for President Barack Obama.

Hymn to Freedom was composed by Canada’s own Oscar Peterson in the early 1960s, during the height of the US Civil Rights Movement; lyrics were later written by Harriette Hamilton. (To read up on the origin of how the song came to be, in Dr. Peterson’s own words, you can click here.)

Soon enough, there will be time to speculate and discuss any political or socio effect of an Obama presidency on us here in Canada; but, at least for today, we can look to our neighbours to the south and acknowledge and participate in a truly historic event.