Cupertino DailyAt Ground Level - the Inauguration of Pres. Barack Obama
story & photos by Joe DiNucci
11/4/2008: MSNBC calls Ohio for Barack Obama. Old friend Jim calls from Seattle to thank me for urging him to get behind Obama in early 2007, and we should go. My wife Linda says, “You go, you worked hard for this.” I booked 2 roundtrips, and a room in Fairfax VA for $425. per night.We’re going, by God.
11/5 2008:#1 Son David says He’ll go (Great!); Can he bring his roommate Krystal? (Sure!); and Let’s get an apartment and not a room (he finds us a 2 BR/2BA place in Arlington for $650 a night; done!)
Nearly every day until January 17th: When I say we’re going to the Inaugural, people answer, Wow! How’d you get tickets? I reply Didn’t, can’t, won’t, does not matter. We just want to be there. The whole city will be a celebration. I just know it. I’m not worried about anything.
1/16/09: Weather.com says highs in the mid-20’s, find a down North Face coat, long johns and wool socks, thankfully all on sale.
11/17: SFO to Washington Dulles. 8:00AM, oversold by 16 seats. Median age 18. Lots of enthused youth. Land in crisp cold clear DC ten minutes early, all luggage accounted for, rental car waiting, nav system working, apartment bigger, nicer and better appointed than expected. This is too easy. Day ends with about 1500 tasty calories of perfect comfort food each at the Silver Diner on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington. We’re not in California any more.
11/20/09: Metro to Smithsonian station, up on the street greeted by very small businessmen offering Obama everything, 1 for $10, 3 for $12 a typical value pricing scheme. Hats, shirts, gloves, earmuffs, flags, blankets, calendars, photo albums, magnets, chocolate bars, mints, and action figures. And buttons - 18,264 different styles of buttons, all beautiful. Everything saying I Was There.
Police security checkpoint, approached at stall speed in a very long and very patient line, not an impatient syllable to be heard. As we micro-inch forward, I make eye contact with an elderly (as old as me, Class of ’64) black woman next to me and I ask her Can you believe this is happening? You’re going to make me cry, is what she says, and that makes me cry for the first but not last time this trip.
We gawk at the Washington Monument and the WWII memorial, then head for the Mall, destination the free We Are One concert with Beyonce, Bruce, Queen Latifah, Tom Hanks, Jack Black, John Mellencamp, to name a few. And Pete Seeger, for God’s sake. I mean For God’s Sake, how old must he be?! Pete and Bruce singing, “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land” together in front of the Lincoln Memorial (my favorite spot in this city of compelling spots.) So, so American. There are a LOT of people there, slightly outnumbered by the portapotties, everywhere. Don’s Johns will have a record month. Makes me wish I could drink more.
We did a wave. Just like at a Forty Niner game only a LOT bigger: around the Reflecting Pool! All this and Beyonce singing “America.” Rest in peace Ray Charles, she’s got it covered.
The positivity on the street is surreal. Where’s the nearest Metro station? generates one accurate response, plus four other faces looking disappointed that they didn’t get to tell you. Mickey D’s is selling their tasty poisons one block from the White House, and they are graciously hospitable with their wonderfully warm and clean restrooms. Don’s Johns are handy and clean, but they are neither warm nor wonderfully clean. The last time I felt such a sense of community was after 9/11. But of course that was mutual shock and grief, while this is a slow-building, Oh My God, We’re Getting Our Country Back spirit of comfort and joy. And how nice people are to each other!
A non-Inaugural side trip to Baltimore Sunday evening to watch my hometown Steelers (I do not write Stillers, because I know that Steelers is pronounced Stillers) defeat the Ravens for the AFC Championship. Baltimore may seem an odd destination for such an occasion, unless you have two nephews there, one who is my Godson and both of whom are lifelong hardcore Steeler fans, which I do.
11/19/09: Martin Luther King Day and there are MLK clips on CNN and everywhere else. Realizing he’s now been gone longer than he lived, then realizing he is so not gone. He is here: if Barack Obama is here, then Dr. King cannot be far away. Actually Barack is having lunch with John McCain. No, I was not there, but yes, that John McCain, and think about it: We all see the president-elect’s intellect, and oratorical skill, but consider the civility, the humanity and compassion of him, to meet with Sen. McCain at this time. We can all take a lesson.
At the Smithsonian Museum of American History, an energetic and competent MLK impersonator sets the scenes and then plays recordings of the great speeches, ending with Memphis, March XY, 1968. Thousands of my fellow travelers flooding the lobby and the balconies are transfixed, barely breathing, experiencing it again as never before (writing about it now floods me with emotion). Then silence.
Then we are invited to join together singing “We Shall Overcome”, and we do, and this 66 year old white guy from Pittsburgh tries to sing along but cannot, my throat is closing on the words and the front of my North Face coat is dripping with tears. I am not the only one either.
Out on the sidewalk, I meet Susan Walther of the Smithsonian Visitor Center. I ask her Can you believe this is happening? It hasn’t really sunk in yet, she replies. I tell her I need a scoop for this story, and she delivers a bombshell: every day since Friday, they have been At Capacity, and while that’s not surprising, here’s the thing: Total number of complaints at the Visitor Center – Zero. That NEVER happens, she tells me in astonishment. This civility thing may be contagious. It may not last long, but seems to be catching on.
The Vietnam Memorial phenomenon is as I remembered it: As people approach the shallow end, they are chatty, busy with each other or their Blackberries or whatever. At the point where the granite panels, carved with the names of the lost sons and daughters reach eye level and above, conversation stops, as each of us considers what this means: every one of these 56,000 Americans had their life cut short; they are dead and gone, at least 34 years now.
Same thing at Arlington, where the crowd schlepping up the hill is on a hike til we get to the Tomb of the Unknowns. Then we’re at a sacred observance, keeping watch with the sentry. How did that particular fate not claim any of us? How lucky are we, to be here on this crystal bright afternoon, breathing this clean cold and free air, in our capital city, so full of power and money, but also of tributes and memorials? Silence again. Peaceful quiet, for thinking and for feeling.
Now if you have an apartment in Arlington and not a hotel room in Fairfax, what do you do? You have a party, meaning you invite everyone you know who is in town or lives there, and you buy a basket full of snacks and wine and order large pizzas. And nearly all of them show up–it is that great thing that happens when people who don’t know each other but know me and are much liked by me meet, stories and tales are told, and an excellent time seems to be there for the having.
Tuesday, November 20 2009: Some of the folks last night were planning to be en route at 5:00AM, along with nearly everyone else, but not us. No, we got to the Virginia Square Metro station about 8, and it was hardly crowded. A Metro officer tells us you’re lucky you weren’t here an hour ago, couldn’t even get into the station, she. Ha, we think, procrastination pays off again. All we need do now is hop on the Orange Line and go east about 5 stops to Foggy Bottom. Then the eastbound trains started rolling in, two or three minutes apart. Train stops, doors open, and the mass of humanity therein recalls the 1960s crazes of phone booth- and Volkswagen beetle stuffing. No way are we getting on these trains.
My wife did not raise any dummies, so when David crosses the tracks to take an empty westbound train to the Orange Line’s starting point at Vienna so we can cross back over to board an empty eastbound train, I’m right there. And when we roll into Virginia Square, cheek by jowl we may be, but also smugly mobile. Not the most civil, but we have been up since about 7:30. We disgorge and Foggy Bottom never looked so good. People everywhere, walking fast partly from excited anticipation, partly to keep from freezing solid on the spot. Can you believe this is happening?
We hike down 23rd Street comforted by the thought that since we wasted no energy securing tickets for anything, we need waste no energy trying to get anywhere in particular. And my original theory that It Just Won’t Matter/ the Entire City Will Be The Place to Be proves to be utterly correct. David leads us back to my favorite spot, and at 11:00AM, we are perfectly seated on a granite bench right smack in front of the Lincoln Memorial, about as far from the capital steps as you can be and still say you were there. It was perfect. We had a splendid and panoramic view of the Washington Monument, the dome of the Capitol, the Reflecting Pool, and a crowd estimated at around two million people. We could also sort of see a Jumbotron monitor. But we had a full-throated public address system to deliver us the entire program. It is really going to happen.
The introductions, the Invocation, Aretha delivering “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, Itzhak Perleman, Yoyo Ma and others performing that amazing new composition, then the swearing-ins of Joe Biden and finally, Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States of America. The experience was so transporting that I was grateful for Chief Justice Roberts’ screw-up to provide proof that this was really happening.
The Inaugural address worked for me. Not inspiring, some have said; didn’t swing for the fences, opined others. President Obama got that the scene spoke volumes for itself, no need to tell us what it meant; if we didn’t know we wouldn’t have voted for him and he’d not be there. He GETS it, gives us credit for knowing what we know, and in a few spare phrases he righted our badly off-course ship of state: no false choices; America ready to lead again; restore the place of science; we will defeat you; put aside childish things. Yet more evidence that our president is a man intensely aware of where he is, what it means, and what is called for. It’s happened.
A poem was a tough assignment, and Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” probably succeeded in reflection. That is, reading her spare and simple words and thinking on the work and lives of all of us, how we move ahead, how we deal, reading them again illuminates the wisdom of choosing her for this. At the time, with the wind chill around 10 degrees, the only line that really landed with me was “…the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables…”
The Rev. Joseph Lowry, closing this amazing event with a benediction (good speech) looking forward to the black no longer asked to get in back, brown sticking around, when yellow can be mellow, the red man can get ahead, man, the white can embrace what is right. And there is President Obama, beaming and laughing at the sheer wit and ingenuity of the wise old preacher, he has seen so much before this fine day.
Ceremonies complete and there’s a palpable air of community, of shared experience, shared humanity. The wind is no more, 25 F. never felt so good. All around us were people obviously appreciating the moment, the momentousness, living an especially important point in history. Lots more eye contact than on your normal, less momentous days, and nearly always the eye contact is followed by a smile. The expression says We are here, aren’t we? We are all brothers and sisters after all, right? It’s going to be better now, right? It has really happened.
11/21 2009:
Traveling home day; Dulles airport a’swarm with folks who all have been there too, feeling not morning after-ish but energetically swapping tales and watching CNN on the monitors at the gate. And there’s this weird sense of Hey, I used to cringe when the news from Washington come on (what’s he done now?), now I can’t wait to see what’s He doing now? It’s like coming out from under an inadequate bomb shelter to find sunshine.
11/ 22 2009:
Back on home turf, how’s the afterglow? First off, the cable newsies seem obsessed with finding some dark side to everything that’s happened: Envoys like Ross, Holbrook and Mitchell – hmm, that must mean that Hillary is being marginalized. (Are you speaking of Hillary Clinton? Hello!) It sounds laughably petty and small time. I hear the President Obama’s voice on the radio or TV, and there’s the calm surety, the steady hand, that voice says to me, Be patient, be calm we will find the way; and I recall an earlier voice saying
And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man!
I saw Jack Kennedy when he visited Carnegie Mellon in October 1960, a month before his election. Nixon was the past, JFK was the future; he glowed in the dark. My bet is that our new president, blessed by not being born an aristocrat but rather forming a view of America and the world essentially from the outside, will serve us all even better. I thank God, Democrats, Republicans and Independents for electing him.
Tags: barack obama, joe dinucci, saragtoga
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