Our new President (hallelujah AMEN!) is looking like a kid on Christmas in this pic in The New York Times today.  I am utterly excited, please please don’t get me wrong.  But I spy only one chick at this table.  I’m optimistic that Obama’s emerging transition team will include a few more!

And in that spirit, I bring you this STELLAR (if I say so myself!) forum convened by the National Council for Research on Women, over at their new blog The REAL Deal.  Check out these messages to the Transition Team now up at their site:

Women Leaders Dream Big and Urge Transition Team to Bring Women and Women’s Issues to the Center of the New Administration, Notes Council President Linda Basch

Says Women’s Media Center President Carol Jenkins, “Our Work Has Just Begun”

Women’s eNews Founder and Editor-in-Chief Calls for Office of Maternal Health, Title IX Task Force, and More

Women’s Funding Network President and CEO Urges New Government to Embrace Women as Experts and Decision Makers

White House Project President Calls for Presidential Commission on Women and Democracy

National Women’s Studies Association Leader Calls for Federal Dept of Women’s Affairs

National Women’s Law Center Says The Nation Has No Time to Spare

Excerpts are also posted at Huffington Post. Feel free to add messages of your own in the comments section over at HuffPo!

Well THAT was fun last night. And today, I’m going to be offline much of the day, gone consulting. Tallulah is coming with me. Thought I’d leave ya’ll with this pic.

Start watching at 7pm ET! And join us for a “chat” in comments, or on the mogulus site itself!

Ok Penners, we’re excited to try this newfangled technology out tonight! At 7pm ET tonight, we’ll have a MOGULUS video feed running the live panel of national leaders and feminists discussing what happened on yesterday, Election Day, and where we go from here. The panelists will be in Cambridge, we’ll be here online, chatting it up with each other in the comments section of the post, and posing our own questions to the panel. A few last-minute details:

1. As we watch, we’ll be chatting it up over here in the comments section. But we just learned, if you want to ask questions of folks at the live event, use the MOGULUS CHAT FUNCTION, not our comments thread, because the event has grown and the organizers of the panel (The Center for New Words ladies) can’t monitor all the comments threads. They’ll be monitoring the mogulus chat thread ONLY. Also, if folks are on the mogulus chat thread you can also chat with other readers on all the other blogs – everyone who’s watching the feed.

2. For Bostonians planning to attend the offline panel: The new venue is LESLEY UNIVERSITY AMPITHEATER, 1815 Mass. Ave in Cambridge.

See you online over here in a few hours!

I just can’t resist. Here’s one more, from dear friend of GWP Daphne Uviller:

Yesterday I threw together a ham sandwich, some coffee, and a bag of cookies and grabbed my baby boy and hopped in my car to drive two hours each way to pull the lever in my hometown. Currently in exile in suburbia, with McCain signs on either side of me (lovely people, though, I’ll be the first to say), I needed to go vote at the Gay and Lesbian Center in the West Village, my polling place since the moment I turned 18. The line was around the block; we waited 45 minutes and I loved every second. And can I just add, even more than the racial history we made, I’m thrilled that America elected a brilliant, erudite man, instead of someone they wanted to have a beer with. Perhaps the dumbing down of the this once-great nation can yet be stanched. I love Obama. I feel hope. And I feel proud of this nation again.

On a less sanguine note, Daphne’s and my exuberance is today mixed with heartbreak at the news of setbacks for gay and lesbian rights.  The following updates on ballot initiatives come courtesy of Ann from feministing. Writes Ann:

Proposition 8 in California: Passed. This is such a crushing loss. I went to bed last night before the final results were in, and woke up to the news that the people of California actually approved the gay marriage ban. So devastating.

Amendment 2 in Florida: Passed. Yet another gay marriage ban.

Proposition 102 in Arizona: Passed. As Dana noted previously, “Arizona became the first state in the nation to reject an anti-gay marriage amendment in 2006, but they’re likely to pass the measure this year, now that it has been stripped of language that also denied domestic partnership benefits to hetero couples.” Looks like that was the magic change to make bigotry palatable to Arizona voters.

Act 1 in Arkansas: Passed. Now gay couples are unable to adopt or foster-parent children. This from a state with 3700 children in the foster-care system, and only 1000 foster homes. Disgusting.

Steps forward, steps back. We have much work to do from here.

I woke up and turned on the radio to make sure it wasn’t a dream. I am so moved by this moment in our history, and, after eight years of mortification, proud once again to be an American. Can’t wait to confab with all of you tonight, online!

(Thank you for this amazing video, Jackie!)

O.M.F.G! I’m speechless. The cat, the kitten, and I are all doing a happy dance and listening to the roar of voices outside our window here in NYC.

I know it’s far from over yet, but I just had to post this one in honor of my Borinquen, Marco.  Watch, anticipate, and get your groove on!

Tears alert.  This just came to my Inbox, via GWP’s Virginia Rutter, via Talking Points Memo.  Someone in Maryland wrote in:

My polling place is at the fairgrounds in Southern Maryland, about 40 minutes from Washington, D.C. This used to be tobacco country, but is slowly being developed, or other crops are grown. We waited until 10:00 to vote, to avoid the lines. When we got there a 97-year-old Black man was being wheeled out of the polls in his wheelchair. It was the first time he had ever voted in his life. When he came outside he asked if anyone could give him an Obama button. There were none left at the Democrat’s booth so I gave him mine. He was so proud and I started crying. He looked at me and said, “why are you crying? this is a day for glory.” I am still crying.

Writes Anniegirl, via Canada (and Annie, we at GWP are so very sorry for your loss, and send you comfort and love):

I voted absentee a couple of weeks ago because I live in Canada. Around that same time, my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. He refused to get an absentee ballot, insisting that he would cast his vote in person even though we all knew he would not live that long. When I cast my vote, I thought of him and his desire for change and to “vote out all those incumbents” who he felt were responsible for the troubles of America right now. So, I voted as he would have had he lived to see today. He died a week ago but not before I told him I had voted for us.

Writes Afrogeek Mom and Dad:

The women who helped raise me had such simple, yet profound, dreams for me and for themselves–to vote, to ride in a big boat, to marry someone I love rather than someone who can take care of me–that it seems almost unbelievable that I got to vote for a major party black candidate for president this morning. These women cleaned white people’s houses all their lives and never did get to see that I grew up to be a college professor and the first black women to do a lot of things (a surprising number of things, really, considering that I was born in 1973, not 1903). But I hope they were watching somewhere this morning as I took their great-great-granddaughter into vote.

Writes my Dad, from Chicago:

This morning, as on all election day mornings, I wanted to be at the poll when it opened at 6:00AM. It’s part of the pride I feel in being able to vote. When I go I always think of my father who spent 2 years in Europe, during my childhood, fighting in WWII in order to preserve our way of life. Usually I get to the poll at 5:45 and am first in line. Today I decided there might be a few folks ahead of me so I arrived at 5:30AM. To my surprise 5 people were already there. I was stunned. “What is happening?” I wondered. Shortly after 6:00, when I finished my vote, well over 100 people we waiting in line.

Worries Heather in MI, “I just hope it goes that quickly everywhere, so those that can’t afford to take 3 or 4 hours off from work will all get to vote, too.”

Writes GWP’s Allison Kimmich in NJ, ” I think this election is going to introduce us to democracy’s real potential.”  Kristen and Caroline feel like “kids on Christmas.”

Says Frau Sally, “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so emotional over this election until today. I’ve been a teary mess all day.”

Says GWP’s Virginia Rutter in MA, “I have this delusion that every single person I see feels as joyful as I do, and in my eyes they are all smiling with the same connection to the day, the moment of having the opportunity to cast an historic vote, and obtain an historic, and game changing result.”

Writes Faith in the NY suburbs, “Husband voted at a different location and the person working the table said he was #135 around 9am. Working guy also said that last election they only had about 200 people show up total.”

Writes GWP’s Jacqueline Hudak, “Contemplating driving into the city to be outside in Times Square – kinda longin’ to be outside, celebrating with kindred spirits…I’ve been waiting for folks to take to the streets – seems like tonight’s the night!.”

And here are some more great voting stories from Gloria Feldt, Courtney and Samhita over at feministing, PunditMom, and about 400 more at Talking Points Memo, including this tearjerker one Marco just sent me.

Thanks to everyone who posted their stories here with us today! And if you got em and haven’t posted em, we still wanna hear!

Happy Election Day, Girl with Penners! On this potentially HISTORIC day, we invite you to share your voting stories with us in comments.

How’d it go? Long lines? Exuberance? Fear? What’s it like to vote this vote in your part of the country? Tell us, tell us! We will collate into a post.

Me, I’m off to vote right now, feelin that audacity to hope….

(Photo is Inez Milholland, at a Suffrage Parade in 1910, ten years before white women got the right to vote)