It is a special pleasure for me, a--despite what Bob says, a simple country lawyer from Connecticut Avenue in Washington to be here on this glorious Charlottesville day. I'm happy to be the bandleader here at the Thomas Jefferson Center's chalkboard, or maybe we should just use the more formal terminology and recognize it as Charlottesville's FIrst Amendment Monument.

In an age when communications are more and more digital, and messages are more and more virtual there's something very comforting about having an old fshioned physical board on which people can express their views. It seems especially fitting that such a site should emerge right here in Charlottesville under the eyes of our three eminent founding fathers, through a happy collaboration between the City and the Thomas Jeffrson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

The idea for the chalkboard was born in Josh Wheeler's brain nearly a decade ago, and it has been all that time to become a reality. And from this day on, any person in this community who has something to say, and wants to put his or her thoughts in physical form, will have a unique place in which to do so. And any other person who disagrees with what's been said has a ready remedy: either making a counter statement on the chalkboard, or erasing what's there. We have absolutely no idea what thoughts and ideas may emerge here, although we do have a sense that Mr Jefferson, Mr Madison and Mr Monroe would probably have applauded both the choice of the site and the very concept.

We have some wonderful speakers this morning.

When the proposal for this monument was apporved by Charlottesville's City Council in 2001, the Boston Globe ran an editorial that said "the idea is gutsy, scary and fascinating. Not many cities would have the nerve, but Charlottesville, Virginia, in Thomas Jefferson country, decided to honor its patron with a living memorial to his ideas."

It gives me great pleasure this morning to introduce you to the mayor of the City of Charlottesville, a mayor who is gutsy and fascinating and not particularly scary, Mayor David Brown.

(April 20, 2006)