At exactly 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Bonie Allen of Petaluma and her daughter, Nina Kelsey, were crossing Donner Pass “after having struggled in the dark to put on our never-before-used tire chains”.

They had been up since 6 a.m., spending the day in Reno going door-to-door hanging get-out-the-vote fliers. The roads were icy, the radio reception was unreliable, and they were tired. Then they heard the news that a winner had been projected in the 2008 presidential race. It was Barack Obama. “We were very happy,” said Allen. “We started cheering,” Even in the cold and dark of their car, Allen said, “it felt like a new day.”

At that same moment, Linda K. Ross of Santa Rosa and her husband were walking across the parking lot of the Longs Drug Store on Fourth Street heading to a party at the Flamingo Hotel. “Immediately, the horns began blowing all over town, ” Ross wrote. “We heard people whooping, laughing, singing in the streets. It sounded like New Year’s, the Fourth of July and Christmas all rolled into one.” At the party, strangers hugged and danced. “Mostly we just looked at one another, stunned, our eyes filling with tears… We struggled to process the enormity of what was occurring, the sheer weight – delicious as it was – of history.”

Meanwhile, Carey Hobart of Guerneville was at home. When she heard the news she thought of a lady in Killarney, Ireland, named Mary O’neill. “She runs a shop called O’neills Fine Goods and Fishing Tackles,” wrote Hobart. “She welcomed us into her shop in 2002 and desperately wanted to know what was going on in America and what was George Bush up to with his saber-rattling and threats to bomb Iraq… Mary spoke from her heart, being from a country that closed down for an entire day of mourning after 9/11, something that did not even happen here. Today, I want to say to Mary, ‘Look what we did! What a great country!’ “