Through the Jumbotron Darkly
The day of the inauguration I was at work. The university and library were inexplicably open, I suppose somebody was expected to work. That meant that Sundays activities on 18 Jan 2009, the concert at the Lincoln memorial, were the focus of my attention . I set out with my sister Susan and nephew Grant for that event around noon from her house in Bethesda. It was a long cold afternoon. Principally I remember the line that ended, and the crowd that didn't. The line's ending wasn't physical it ended temporally when the event staff came up to the line and said 'I know you all have been waiting here for a couple of hours, but we're not letting any more people through the check-point so...goodbye.' The crowd didn't end at all. It was everywhere you went, milling and waiting. The scale of it surprised me and I admit timing and sight-line wise we were behind the power curve the whole day.
My sister had gone down the day before with a neighbor to watch the rehearsals (the neighbor knew someone in one of the choirs). From this my sister had lost her favorite pen, but gained Bono's autograph, a fair exchange almost any day. Sunday may have seemed a little anticlimactic to her.
The acts as I remember them included Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Stevie Wonder, and Garth Brooks - hopping about the steps of the memorial singing American Pie. More puzzling but no less welcome: Jack Black and Shakira. Then U2 and finally a full speech by President elect Obama. None of this I saw directly, the crowd's density arrested that. The view I had was of one of the many Jumbotron screens. Even there, through the legs of the police department's improbable Baba Yaga howdah. My nephew , being ten and still short of stature (I should talk) saw nothing of any of this, merely the back sides of many adults, and when I dared look I was sure to catch his baleful glance.
I felt a little tricked to be working the day of the inauguration, but it was my own fault. I'm just not quick enough on the uptake. My boss a few weeks prior asked me if I was working on the 20th. I said yes because it takes me a moment to match abstract data like numbers to real world experiencials. I had an odd sensation or vision right after I said yes, that my boss spun around and announced to the others: "the fools gonna do it" I shook my head to clear my thoughts and it went away but for a moment I had the strangest sensation that I was Cleveland Little. I was only one from my unit working that day.
They had a big screen projection TV set up in the Library so at the time of the Inaugural Moment I went upstairs to watch it there. Trân also was in on Tuesday, but not in as well. At the time of the swearing in she left and went off to church briefly, it being one of the little hours.
 My niece and nephew Nicole and Lou's had their adventure planned out. They would preposition themselves camping out in their father's office (which I recall is somewhere in the vicinity of MacPherson's square so as to be downtown in the morning. In the end their parents my (other) sister Ann and brother-in-law Al joined them because they scored themselves standing section tickets to the actual event. I expect they should be found somewhere in the now legendary gigapan photo, or failing that one of these from the Boston Globe. I could add; though, that the McKeldin Special Events room where I watched the oath, is the same room that a scene from National Treasure ii was filmed in. The one where the Presidents people are trying to book a venue for his birthday as our protagonists are locking them out. So in a way it was just like being there.
9:01:35 PM  ;;
|
