[text version] Full version with photos is at http://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/inauguration
As we were getting ready to go to the inauguration, some of our friends suggested that we blog from the Capitol. It’s the fashionable thing to do nowadays, especially with Obama’s embrace of Internet communication. We thought it was a great idea, but couldn’t quite deal with the practicalities of real blogging.
A blogger carries a computer (or deals with the difficulties of typing on the tiny keyboard of a phone or Blackberry) and is always turning attention to the computer in the midst of events, in order to get the latest thing entered. We ended up coming home at the end of each day with a lot of memories, which we tried to capture in notes that could jog our memory for writing later.
“Later” turned out to start on the flight home. We did a couple of drafts and went through them together, so this is a joint effort. I also took photos erratically – some events were better suited to wielding a camera than others. Lots of them are just interesting people – a habit I started when I got my new camera for our trip to India in November. I’ll put a few of them on the text pages. Click on any picture to get to the full-size version, and you can browse from there. They are all in an album in my Picasa account. The full text (without pictures and all on one page) is also available here.
Friday, January 16 – Getting there
We were exhausted from the start. The night before leaving we had the first full session of our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class (that’s worth a separate blog). So we arrived home after ten, with a lot of the packing and preparation yet to be done.
We had been collecting information in bits and dribbles for weeks. I kept a spreadsheet of events we might go to, and it filled in bit by bit, with an exact time here, a location there, and a detail on what we needed to do to get the “credentials” to get in. Up until the last few days, there were still a lot of gaps and along with them an anxiety about whether we’d actually get to the places we wanted to, at the right times, with the right tickets.
We had been warned many times that transportation would be a nightmare and that neither taxis nor the Metro could be counted on when things got crowded. Although we’re generally very happy to walk, we weren’t in great shape at the moment. I still have weakness/soreness from my ankle fracture, and an on-and-off bum knee and toe from arthritis. Carol was recovering slowly from a cold that ended up in bronchitis and some pneumonia, which left her generally weaker than her usual not-stellar shape. After consultation with various doctors, especially our pulmonologist, Andy Newman, we decided we could go, taking along her wheelchair in case we needed to take extended walks that she couldn’t manage. It was a bit comical trying to figure out if I could manage to push the wheelchair after my recent shoulder surgery (the lame leading the blind, or something like that). In the end we figured if we were smart about how and where we used our energy, we could make it, and we certainly weren’t going to miss it. [In the end, we only used the wheelchair in airports, and except for the day of the Inaugural, transportation worked out very well].
So we left San Francisco in a state of excitement but also a bit of apprehension. The travel was generally uneventful, and the inauguration excitement began on the flight. We transferred in St. Louis, and pretty much everyone on the plane seemed to be going to the inauguration. The kind of multi-racial multi-generational group you might expect. Carol ended up talking to a frail Africa-American woman who was 86, and needed two people to help her onto the plane. She and her daughters were going to Washington even though they didn’t have tickets to any of the events. Carol said “You have a lot of courage.” She responded, smiling broadly, “If I can breathe, I have to be there.” As we were getting into our seats, the attendant announced “Please get all of your luggage into the overhead racks and get into your seats so we can get you all to the inauguration on time.”
Saturday, January 17 – Getting Settled
In getting tickets to the inauguration events, we had made an early donation to the Inaugural Finance Committee, when the only package they were offering included tickets for 4 people. Since Avra and her boyfriend Justin couldn’t go we split the package with a friend, Sam Perry, who had been one of the main organizers of the Obama Campaign in Silicon Valley. Some of you may have seen him – he was the unidentified man on whose shoulder Oprah cried on election night in Grant Park. He ended up having his fifteen minutes of fame, being on Oprah’s show as “Mr. Man” whom she had befriended.
Pairing up with Sam turned out to be one of the smartest things we ever did. In addition to much delightful conversation with him and his wife Lisa (the CIA Kid – see later), he turned out to have an equally wonderful brother Art, who lives in the DC area. On Saturday when we expected to be trekking from place to place collecting tickets, Art and Sam came by and drove us. Art is a hoot, the logistics were great, and we even managed to get to the official Obama Memorabilia store, where we picked up a wide variety of, as they say in the hood, “tchatchkes”. This included a stocking hat I ended up wearing almost all the time and a big warm Obama/Biden blanket for being out in the cold.
Waiting for Sam and Art to come pick us up at the tchatchke store, we went into a Starbucks (not our favorite, but it was right there). As everywhere, we got into the inauguration spirit. For this one weekend in Washington, you could approach anyone and start a conversation without hesitation. There was a shared topic, a shared feeling, and a party mood that extended everywhere. Sort of a Woodstock without the sex and drugs (at least as far as we saw).
We talked with Karen, an African-American woman who had come from the South with her two young kids, Tanner, and Sydney, to stay with her sister in Maryland. I oohed and ahed over the baby, and Carol, of course ended up hugging her and becoming old friends. They could not go to the inauguration itself but just wanted to be there on Saturday to walk on the mall and get a feel for the scene – and know that their children some day could tell their children, “We were there.”
Back at the hotel we went to room they had set aside to provide inauguration information. Yakelle, one of the concierge staff, patiently went through our schedule step by step, plotting out Metro routes, walking distances, and times. I had my laptop with me for the schedule spreadsheet. When we went to the neighborhood gourmet store next door to get lunch and stock our hotel room with just-in-case food, I didn’t feel like taking it back to the room.
You can guess what happened next (especially if you know me). When we got back to the hotel with the hot crab bisque and tomato soup, which were both delicious, I had one of those sinking moments where you realize you’ve screwed up big time. I ran back to the store, and the computer was sitting right where I had left it, along with a pair of gloves. Thinking that Carol had also been forgetful, I grabbed it all and went back. When I got to the room, we realized they weren’t her gloves (half the people there had the same back leather gloves with pleats on the back). I ran back again, just as two fellows were coming out of the store to see if they could find the grey haired guy who had run out with their gloves. That was the kind of feeling – I’m sure there was crime and less-than-generous behavior going on in Washington, but it sure didn’t feel like it. [I learned later that on inauguration day, there were no arrests at all]
Finally, back in the room we did our daily meditation exercise. We were pretty faithful about doing it every day, and pretty much every time we fell asleep within the first few minutes. That’s not exactly the idea of meditating, but we did make an effort!
That evening we had two receptions – the Democratic National Committee Reception for outgoing chair, Howard Dean, and the Finance Committee party. The Dean reception was in the National Museum of American History, an impressive building as are so many in Washington. The architecture in that city is indeed monumental (and not just the official monuments). Designed to impress and intimidate the “common man”.
The reception was very pleasant with excellent food, and started us off on our meetings with new friends with amazing life stories. Carol wore the antique purple embroidered dress we got on our trip to India, to an event where most women wore black cocktail dresses. As we walked across the room balancing our plates of lamb, beef, corn pudding, asparagus, etc., a woman wearing an equally non-bland African dress invited us to the table (because of Carol’s dress!).
She turned out to be Sarian Bouma, who came from from Sierra Leone where as a teen she had been a television broadcaster. I won’t try to tell her whole story, but you can read it in her book, From Welfare to Millionaire. She got married, abandoned, was a single mom, ended up on welfare, then started a janitorial business, got rich, was featured by Oprah, now has a flower business and is an inspirational motivational speaker. She has been a big supporter of the Democratic Party in Maryland. Her (WASP) husband John is in charge of some aspect of computer systems for the VA. A very nice guy, but a big contrast to her dynamism (hmmm, maybe Carol and I come across that way…). A side note is that whenever Carol wore out-of-the-ordinary clothes like this, she got lots of compliments, almost always from African-American women.
There were speeches in front of a huge art work based on the Star Spangled Banner, where Kaine (the new chair) said nice things about Dean, and Dean said nice things about all the people who worked for the party. I actually got tearful when he talked about the activism of young people and what it had meant in this campaign. It is of interest that Kaine opposed Dean’s 50-state strategy, which was obviously very successful. Now there seems to be some conflict about next time around.
On our way out, Carol stopped at the women’s room (a standard procedure) and took a very long time coming back (I browsed the American history exhibits, all very carefully politically correct). She had struck up a conversation with a woman who said that the whole Obama phenomenon was surreal for her. She grew up in a small town near Birmingham, Alabama. At age 12, her mother insisted that she be among the first group to integrate public schools. She didn’t want to go and was very frightened on the first day. She and the other African-American students who integrated that year came from an academically solid segregated school. She said that they all did very well academically because they “had to” and had been well prepared. After a relatively short time, most of the white kids really did accept the black ones (though many of the teachers never did). Her story tied back for me to Dean’s youth theme – change comes from them, not us. We also met an African-American couple who had grown up in the Bronx, went to college in Nebraska, and stayed. She is a lawyer who works in the courts with non-English-speaking immigrants, and did a major project to use video to explain things to them so they could effectively get out on bail when a translator wasn’t available.
The Finance Committee Party was for a smaller group (the Dean event had a thousand or more) and we expected elegance. But there was no food, loud music, so you couldn’t talk, and not much of interest if the open bar wasn’t enticing. We did run into Owen and Audrey Byrd. Owen was another major organizer for the campaign in Silicon Valley and drove us and helped at the Obama event in San Francisco when I was on crutches. He also is the one who hired Avra into her position in the campaign. The Silicon Valley group was a major factor in getting the Obama campaign going, both in funding, in spirit (startup culture and lots of technology) and a horde of volunteers. We really enjoyed being part of that and saw a number of our friends from the campaign at the Inaugural.
In discussing the campaign, Owen he said that after it was over, he drove past the now-empty headquarters with his ten-year-old son, who asked if he planned to do another campaign soon. Owen started to explain about two year and four year cycles for elections, when his son interrupted with “I hope you don’t do it again soon. While you were doing it I felt like I lost my dad.”
Sunday, January 18 - A day of music and diversity
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.
We Are One
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.
Towards the end came the one performer who made me cry. Pete Seeger, now 89, led the singing of This Land is Your Land, with his grandson and Bruce Springsteen. Thinking about the decades in which he was blacklisted, struggled, sang, and never gave up hope, I wondered if he really ever thought he would be on an inaugural stage feeling the way we all felt about the change that had happened. It is so wonderful that he lived to see this day.
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.
Monday, January 19
Monday morning, another breakfast, but instead of the joyful spirit of the Gospel Breakfast, we experienced the stuffy feeling of the Senate. The event, sponsored by the Senatorial campaign finance committee was in the Willard, one of Washington’s fanciest hotels (my mother remembered it as the premier one when she grew up there, 80 years ago). The room was full of important looking white men, many of them probably senators or the equivalent. The speeches were formulaic thank yous and acknowledgments. Food was fine, but overall not an impressive event. It’s going to take a lot for Obama to change the culture of Washington. Seeing the contrast between this, and the style of his events, presence, family, and smile was sobering.
Lunch, on the other hand, sponsored by the corresponding House committee, was very different. A ‘haimish’ event with good mood, good food, and good music (Sheryl Crow and Bon Jovi). Carol attributes the difference to the influence of Nancy Pelosi, whom she describes as “much more people savvy, charming, and engaging”. It was in the most amazingly impressive and ornate room we were in, the Mellon Auditorium. Speakers included fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, who turns out to be the daughter of a holocaust survivor and a big supporter of the democratic party. Her first husband, Prince Egon had a previous wife who was heir to the Fiat fortune.
On one side of us at the table was an African-American who had trained with Carol at San Francisco General Hospital those many years ago, with his son, a lawyer in Indiana. They described the Obama rally at the state fair in Terre Haute, at which one voter after another got up saying “I’ve always been a Republican but I’m voting for Obama”. That was when they decided he really had a chance. Zack worked with the group of lawyers protecting the vote, and they are now staying organized to help Barack push his agenda forward. When we had run into him at a fundraising event during the campaign, he was coy about whether he was expecting a position in the administration. Today he described it as “waiting for the cute boy to call for the prom but I haven’t bought my dress yet.” Being in the position we were in as donors did raise the questions of just what kind of access and position comes with money, and what should. Of course Obama is miles beyond the Washington standards in being sensitive to this, but it is always there.
On the other side were two amazing women. Dr. Odette Nyiramilimo is a gynecologist from Rwanda. She was one of the people saved in the Hotel Rwanda, as 16 of her 17 siblings were killed. After the war she became part of Gacaca, a traditional tribunal for the genocide perpetrators, going village to village working with people accused for war crimes, and promoting economic projects. She was was working in her private clinic with more than 30 patients a day, when she became Secretary of State for Social Welfare from 2000 to 2003, then Senator 2003-2008, from where, in May 2008, she went to that Regional Parliament that is the East African Legislative Assembly. She has the kind of presence and bearing that can only come from deep experience and deep personal strength that comes from it. A very impressive woman. She pointed out, by the way, as Speaker Pelosi spoke, that Rwanda has 60% women in their government, the highest in the world.
She had been brought to Washington the previous day by Paula Comstock, founder of an organization called One Tribe, which has provided aid to develop medical education and care in Eritrea and other African countries. Paula is passionate about her work, operating as a small grassroots organization, and she has achieved amazing things. She said "“I am honored to be able to work in both Eritrea and Rwanda, and inspired by and learn much from the way both peoples respond to their challenges.”gs. She wanted to give Odette the opportunity to make contact with people in the new administration, but didn’t have tickets to any of the events. As part of our package, we had tickets to that night’s Bipartisan Gala Inaugural dinner with Colin Powell, who was one of the people she had previously contacted and wanted to meet with. Although we would have enjoyed the food and the glitz (which we later heard were excellent), we knew that she could make much better use of the opportunity, so we gave them our tickets.
On amusing note was at the toast to Obama, at which we raised glasses, and I said “L’Chaim” I got a L’chaim back and a smile from the person sitting behind me at the next table – Debby Wasserman Schultz, the very Jewish congresswoman from Florida – maybe I should have talked to her a little about Gaza!
Speaking of women, it was amusing to be outside afterwards and see Nancy Pelosi getting in her car to leave, amidst a crowd of cheering people, just like a rock star!
In the evening, since we had given away our dinner tickets, we just went to the Kids' Inaugural Concert at the giant hockey stadium (Verizon Center). On our way there, we encountered one of the very few people who weren’t Obama fans (and we talked to a lot). Our taxi driver, who sounded Russian, was listening to right wing talk radio, and was very pleased when they announced that the border guards got pardons. Overall it was amazing to be part of a giant population that all seemed to be on the same wavelength. More of that Woodstock feeling!
We weren’t sure what the concert was, and Carol expected the kind of concerts we took our own kids too back in the dim past – gentle whimsical music (remember Raffi, Charlotte Diamond and Tom Hunter?). Well it turns out that’s not what kids concerts are any more, even for the 6-12 year old audience that were there. The big draws were Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) and the Jonas Brothers. They seem to be somewhat milder versions of the same sexualized pop culture that brought us Britney Spears. The innocence and simple fun of childhood is history, at least in mass culture. Carol wasn’t so keen on the music, nor was the elderly African-American woman next to us, who was apparently brought (and left) by her son, and said she expected it to be a better group of performers. Wrong generation!
But Jill Biden and Michelle (with kids and grandkids) were there, and there was a range of videos, talks, etc. to get the kids to think of themselves as part of the nation and its politics. It was labeled “The Kids Inauguration” and Michelle pushed her agenda of national service, saying that even at a young age they could visit someone who was sick, provide food for the homeless, or write a letter to a service person overseas.
The crowd, in fact was primarily from the military. Tickets weren’t sold but were given out free to military families. Again part of the big theme that Obama appreciates the military people, as people, emphasizing their family connections. The guy behind us was from the National Guard, and had been in Iraq. Carol ended up helping him find where the low-carb food was available in the stadium.
When we got back to our hotel, we stopped at the little gourmet café next door and started up a conversation with a guy in a tux and a correspondingly-dressed woman. They were staying in the same hotel and we asked if they had been to a bipartisan gala dinner – and it was the same one we were supposed to go to. Starting the usual “Where are you from” smalltalk, it turned out that she is a professor of French and comp lit at Stanford who lives a couple of blocks from us, and her husband worked at Xerox PARC when I was there in early 70s. And they were staying in same hotel. The old “small world” line was proved over and over.
Tuesday, January 20 - The Main Event
We got up at 5, to meet our new friends in the lobby at 5:30 to get a cab to the Rennaisance hotel (a couple of miles away and still outside the driving-excluded security zone which stretched for miles around the Capitol and parade route). We had tickets to get onto a bus there that would take us to the Capitol. There was no Taxi, and they ended up taking a pedi-cab. The pedaler offered to have his friend come for us too, but when he arrived, he had no wind-shield and it looked like an awfully cold ride, and luckily we had managed to flag a taxi.
It was cold! We were each wearing layers on layers on layers, including long underwear, padded vests, coats, gloves in gloves, and more. The morning was fine, but we had a long cold afternoon waiting for the parade (see later), and we felt like stuffed penguins.
At the hotel, we waited in the lobby, only to discover that we should have gone to the security line when we got there. I ended up waiting in it for an hour, and then after passing us through with metal detectors, they sent us out into the open street to go to the busses. I think a lot of the security around the Inauguration was like that – they wanted to make it highly visible, but there were holes. In the end, though, it worked. Watching the Obamas walking in the open street at the parade, I breathed a sigh of relief when they got to the enclosed reviewing stand. The sense of his fragility and the many hostile forces (both domestic and foreign) against him, made the security seem bearable, if not believable.
The busses went in a convoy to get through the police lines, and somehow we managed to be on the one bus that missed the convoy. After a lot of phoning and anxiety on the part of the driver and our volunteer staffer, we did get through. When we learned later about the many people who stood in security lines and never got into the Capitol grounds, we breathed a sigh of “there but for fortune…”
Because we were on the bus, we got into the seating area before the general gates had been opened, so we got good seats towards the front. We had several hours to wait. Carol had her oxygen, and a medic, Commander Jones from the Public Health Service came by to check (medics were very available and extremely nice, throughout all the events). She ended up taking Carol into the Red Cross tent for warmth and extra oxygen for an hour or two, while I roamed around taking more pictures.
Our section (section 16 – see the ticket) was for semi-VIPs. Not the political big shots who got onto the platform, but people who had given money or otherwise had some status. I took pictures of a few (see if you can recognize them). Two rows in front of us was Madeline Albright. Carol talked with her, having met her at a congressional fundraiser in San Francisco last year. At that point she was an avid Hillary supporter. Carol asked what she thought about Hillary being Secretary of State. She said that she was delighted and Hillary would be great. Carol asked what she thought about there being a sequence of her, Condi, and Hillary, and she said in a satisfied way, “We’ve broken the mold.”
The one discordant part of the day came as people jockeyed for position, standing next to the barrier between our section and the next one, making it impossible to see from the seats. The sparse (and seemingly untrained) military people in the section tried vainly to get people to move back out of the standing area, and go to the empty seats in the back. After a good deal of urging, some yelling, and some slightly (though only slightly) hostile shouting by those being blocked, they did manage to get everyone to sit or squat down. A guy squatting right next to me seemed uncomfortable. I tapped him on the shoulder and his look showed he expected me to yell at him. I asked if he wanted to use our blanket as a cushion, which he did. Another guy saw us eating and we gave him a sandwich. So even when people got a bit pushy, the community spirit was there.
Finally the ceremony started and although we were distant from the platform and couldn’t see anything but the very front of the stage, there was a big jumbotron next to us (though blocked with trees) so we could see the same things people saw on TV. I won’t repeat those, since you all saw them as well. With a telephoto lens, I got some pictures that made it look like we were much closer than we were!
It’s hard to describe the feelings. Although the talk was received as not having memorable rhetoric, I find that as I keep hearing quotes from it, I remember his saying them and they ring in my ears. Carol cried through the entire length of Obama’s speech, and I got teary from time to time. My recurring strong feeling was one of “can this really be happening?” In so many ways, not just the racial ones, this is a turning point that I would never have expected. I still stop once in a while and think “Where did he come from, so fast, with so much power over our imaginations?” I can only hope that the feelings from today fuel real progress as the hard work of governing sets in.
After the ceremony as people filtered out, some women from Code Pink unfurled their banners. In general, there was very little in the way of protest. We saw some signs and petitioners on the street (e.g., the “Arrest Bush” group), but no mood of aggressively pushing an agenda. Everyone had some amount of the “hope”.
After the ceremony, Carol had a long talk with a reporter from the China Sun, and an impromptu dance. We watched on the big screen as George and Laura got into the helicopter, and watched it sail over us on its way to Texas (indirectly, at least). The crowd waved and cheered good riddance, and we joined in.
As we watched the Bushes going to the helicopter, accompanied by the Obamas, I had a realization about the passing of generations. Laura’s hand was on George’s crooked elbow, in classical fashion. Barack and Michelle were holding hands. A posture of proper dependence, versus one of equality. I realized I had been thinking “It’s great to see our generation taking over from our parents’ generation”, even though by age, we are exactly like the Bushes. Maybe we were right back in the 60s, that the counterculture was seeing the future. I really do feel like we now have “our people” in the White House, more for the way they hold hands and banter with each other than anything to do with their color.
The Parade
We dashed for the bus thinking we were late after all that celebrating (we were but we waited there anyway) and when we got there, we realized we were sitting for the third time behind the “woman in the fox coat.” (also at the Lincoln Memorial concert and the bus that morning). The fact we were with a group meant that in the huge masses we really felt that we connected with people and were part of a community.
The bus took us (this time, in the convoy) to a reviewing stand for the parade (right next to the President’s reviewing stand, in front of the White House). As we drove up the parade route with a police escort, we felt that we were really privileged to get this special honor. As it turned out, it was an honor to be avoided!
I’ll repeat again. It was cold!! My joints had stiffened up to the point where Carol could walk faster with her oxygen than I could keep up with. We got there around 2, and the parade was scheduled to start soon after. The announcer kept saying the kind of things that airlines do when a flight is delayed – “ It should be starting soon.” “It will be a little longer,” “We’ll keep you informed.”… By 4 we were frozen, bored, and anxious that we had planned to go to a reception, then home to the hotel to change clothes, then to the Western States Ball, which started at 6. Given the traffic closures and slowdowns on the Metro, any one piece of that transportation could take an hour, and we weren’t in any shape to walk. Also, the batteries on Carol’s oxygen concentrate were all empty. When we first sat down, they told us that there would be no way to get out until the parade ended (which turned out to be 7pm instead of the scheduled 4pm)..
We finally decided that Carol had to get out of the cold and talked to one of those wonderful medics, who said he could get us out of the crowd. We decided to stay just a few more minutes to at least see the Obamas walk by (which we did). Carol says: “The heartfelt highlight of my day was being in the emotional presence of Barack and Michelle as they walked down our section of the parade route. Shockingly, they had no security plastic around them, just secret service guys. I’m sure they enjoyed not being cooped up in the bullet-proof limo. They seemed genuinely happy to be there and together. We were pretty close to them. I felt their waves and smiles connecting with mine and their fans around me. I will never forget that feeling of joy in “being with them” and the exhilaration of hope and possibility.”
After they had passed, we followed the medic who pushed through the crowd saying “Make way, medical emergency!” After spending a while in the medical tent so that Carol could warm up breathing some of their oxygen, we did manage to get the Metro back to the hotel. They were full, and at one point we had to simply push our way onto a car that already seemed overstuffed, in order not to miss train after train. The Metro is a good system in general, but not for that load! We also took it back from the hotel to the Ball, since the taxi driver we hailed said there was little hope he could drive to the Convention Center in any reasonable amount of time.
One benefit of taking the Metro was more chances to meet people. On this ride we talked with Sean and Brandon, a gay couple sporting fancy tuxes made of gorgeous garments from Africa. Sean is a producer for Black Entertainment Television. They had waited in a security line that morning until 11:20, then realizing they wouldn't make it in, dashed back to watch it in their hotel.
The ball turned out to be a huge disappointment. We had some kind of vague glamorous image of an “Inaugural Ball” and wore our super-fancy clothes (painfully stylish shoes, the silk tux I inherited from Uncle Joe, and the coat Carol inherited from her mother with the beaded peacock on silk – which has its own story). We should have figured out that any ball with 11,000 people, done on a limited budget couldn’t be that elegant!
The Metro stop at the Convention Center was shut down for overload, so we ended up going past, turning around, coming back in the other direction, then walking far too far for the cold. Carol was barely able to walk by the time we got there and through yet another security line. There were multiple balls in the Center, and it felt like being herded around at a big sporting event.
The Western Ball was in this huge barn-like space, with little décor, light, or any kind of charm. There were no chairs and people mostly were standing around in the lines to buy drink tickets or the equally long lines to use those tickets to get drinks (water was $3, after people had paid substantial amounts to get in!). The food was the kind of “crudite” plates you get at Safeway (a few carrots, celery, broccoli..), pasta, and a rolled-up chicken. Enough not to be hungry, but hardly sumptuous. I ended up borrowing a chair from one of the ticket sales areas so Carol could sit down and user her oxygen, and taking a glass over to the drinking fountain to get water.
There were name-band performers who we didn’t know, no real dancing, and not much going on. We did run into some of our friends from California (Sam and Lisa again) and had a chat (mainly about whether we should leave). We wanted to stay and see Barack and Michelle dance (which was the big attraction of being at an official ball), but it turned out that since everything was running late they weren’t expected until after midnight. We did see Joe and Jill, and Joe was poetic, quoting from a poem by Irish poet Seamus Heaney:
"History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”
At least in the foyer on the way out we saw a TV with the Obamas dancing at another ball, so it was almost like being there. Then we left and with sore and suffering feet started the walk back to where there was an open Metro station. Carol had to decide between painful shoes and cold feet, and ended up walking most of the way with her shoes in hand.
The most disappointing part of this was that in choosing to go to the ball and finding the going so hard, we ended up missing the Google party, being held at the Mellon Auditorium (the same impressive place as Pelosi’s lunch). We had run into Larry Page at the swearing in and he gave us an invitation. It was just too late, too cold, and us too tired to make it to another event, so we went back to the hotel.
Wednesday, January 21 – Letting go
It’s clear that after the experience it is hard to just move on. We have found ourselves pulled back again and again into talking about it, reading about it, thinking about it.
I guess we should start the Wed. blog entry with the 12am-2:30am session after we returned from the ball. Since we needed to get up and get to the airport, and were already pretty sleep-deprived, reason said we should get to bed. But after the disappointment of the ball and missing the Google bash, we decided to have our own little post-inauguration party. On the way into the hotel we bought a couple of glasses of champagne at the bar, then went up to the room and brought out our stash of food we had been saving away (not too shabby – pate, aged gouda cheese, banana bread and chocolate chip cookie (from the busses), Trader Joe chocolate, grapes,….). We turned on CNN and watched the repetitive but mesmerizing round of showing Barack and Michelle at one ball after another, commentary on her choice of fashion designers, reminiscences of the day, and general human interest stories. In the end, I think we’re not big socialites. The two of us together was just the right size for a meaningful party.
Another aspect was Carol’s, dare I say it, “obsessive” collection of newspapers. We brought home days worth of USA Today, Washington Post, local sheets we bought on the street, and a New York Times. Even though the repetition is mind-numbing, I still found myself brimming up with tears when I read one more article talking about the racial/ethnic diversity of the extended Obama family (including the Rabbi), or one more interview with African American pilgrims who had traveled far to the event to Washington, saying how they never dreamed this would happen in their lifetimes.
On the plane, the flight attendant spent most of the trip hovering beside our seats, telling us what he had seen on TV while we were shivering in the cold, with all the details of how Barack rushed over to an ailing Ted Kennedy, what Sasha and Malia were doing during the swearing in, and who was looking like what up on the platform. In a way, this text is the final step. By writing it, we are still holding on to the feelings and emotions (I actually get teary-eyed while typing these words). Sharing them with our friends and family is the best way to keep their meaning in our lives.