Sunday started at 8:30 with a gospel breakfast at the National Building Museum (another grand and glorious marble-clad room).  Dick Durbin (the other senator from Illinois) started it off, proud that he had been one of the earliest people to advise Obama to run.  “Sometimes we choose the moment, and sometime the moment chooses us. I told him this was one of those times.” He also said it was great to see African American culture take center stage for the mainstream community.  Everything over the weekend reinforced that shift. It wasn’t all about Obama’s being African American, but there was a pervasive sense that Black culture was taking its rightful place in the nation’s center.

There was an excellent breakfast buffet which mixed southern and yuppie – lots of ham and bacon, patisserie, and a collard green and butternut squash quiche.  The musical program included a gospel choir, Yolanda Adams, BeBe Winans and Carole King. 

Congressman John Lewis, the only one of the ten speakers from the March on Washington who is still alive, spoke eloquently. I was moved by the speech, which evoked the memories and echoes of the civil rights movement. Lewis twice ended up unconscious, bloodied, and arrested in demonstrations.  It was interesting later to overhear as we were on the busses to the next event a young African American saying that Lewis’s speech was a downer. In the midst of all the music and great feeling, he was bringing out the old bad stuff. “We’re past that now.”  I hope he’s right.

From the breakfast they provided us with busses to the Inaugural “We are One” Concert at the Lincoln Memorial. After going through security, we got into a seating section that was pretty close to the stage (as those things went with the zillions of people) and we had a long wait. We had bundled up so that cold wasn’t a problem, and sat with Sam and Lisa. Carol had a long chat with Lisa about growing up as the child of a CIA secret agent in many different countries.  But that’s another whole (fascinating) story.  In the meantime I took pictures. I got a good single-lens-reflex digital camera for our trip to India in November, and really enjoy shooting pictures of interesting looking people. Lisa commented to Carol that I looked like a boy who had just been given a new toy!

The concert was great. We were swept into being part of the energy of people on the mall, seeing historical clips on the jumbotrons that showed many events that had been in this same place over history – The Lincoln Memorial is a tremendously impressive setting, with the giant Abe looming over the proceedings. Over the years it has attracted many events of symbolic value about freedom.  It was the scene of the famous Marion Anderson concert in 1939, organized by Eleanor Roosevelt after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall.

The acts and the speeches didn’t softpedal the race issue at all. The concert was in many ways a celebration of diversity arriving in Washington (or to be more correct, in government in Washington, which as a city has been non-white for eons).  I won’t list all the performers, who you can see on HBO but it was certainly a star-studded cast.  Interestingly, it was black and white (with many of the acts consciously mixed) with practically no other ethnic/national groups. No Asians, Latinos, etc. 

It started with an invocation by Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop from New Hampshire who advised Obama on gay rights issues, which was by far the best invocation, and possibly best speech we heard.

It was interesting that the segment of the concert that dealt with America’s military was not about trumpets and guns and bravery, but completely focused on military families and their hardships, their valor in supporting their troops, and their love.  A far cry from what Bush would have done!  This was the way the military theme was played throughout the inauguration.  The military weren’t ignored, but were addressed in terms of their humanity, not their ferocity.   This was in keeping with the whole theme of the concert, which was “Love, love, love.”

Our final event for the day was a reception by the Congressional committee (with Nancy Pelosi) at the home of Smith and Elizabeth Bagley. It turned out (after I embarrassingly asked him where he had been ambassador to) that it was Elizabeth who was ambassador to Portugal under Clinton and Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from 1997-2001 (as well as a professor at Georgetown).  Smith, in turn, is an heir to the Reynolds tobacco fortune, and it is quite visible. In addition to their original Toulouse Lautrecs and a Rembrandt, there is a marble-clad pool in their basement, a full gym and game room, etc., etc.  It was our one look into the private lives of the rich and famous.