Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009
At last!
I didn't take the day off from work, so watched the event in our break room. At least Rick Warren was first and over and done with quickly. The one upsetting note in an otherwise glorious day.
Loved Aretha's hat! As TLo described it in their More Inaugural Fashion post, Aretha Franklin in whatever the hell she wants to wear. I liked Jon Carroll's remarks about it (heck, I like this whole column).
The John Williams piece was gorgeous. (I was glad to learn that it was recorded. Poor fingers!) The clarinetist is another Chicago south sider. We're taking over! ;-))
And how cute were Sasha and Malia?
The speech was good, not great. The rhetorician in me kept expecting trilogies that never came: "So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans." "All this we can do. All this we will do." ". . . these things are old. These things are true." These all needed a third thing. "All this we must do. All this we can do. All this we will do." I liked that he included "non-believers", but wish that he had credited Tom Paine properly.
I didn't cry until the Reverend Joseph Lowery's benediction. Just seeing him standing there was so incredibly moving. At that moment, I truly felt the weight of history, seeing him standing on the Capitol steps, bringing to a close the inauguration of the our first African-American president, realizing that he must be looking down the Mall, past the Washington Monument, to the Lincoln Memorial, where, forty-five years earlier, he stood with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. looking towards the Capitol. What he must have been feeling!!
I know that many people missed a lot of what he was saying, missed the fact that he began with words from Lift Ev'ry Voice, the "Negro National Anthem", misunderstood the reference to the bitter saying, "If you're black, get back; if you're brown, stick around; if you're white, you're all right." I had to explain to the twenty- and thirty-somethings in my office who he was, and why I was choked up. I'm sure some of them never even heard of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, that Lowery founded with Dr. King.
I must say that, having read about all the glitches people had getting to, and at, the Inauguration, I'm glad I was sitting in the break room watching!
I also think I had more fun at the Inaugural Ball I attended. Everyone was saying that the balls in Washington have long lines, no food, and no place to sit down. We had lots of passed hors d'œuvres, plenty of tables and chairs, and an open bar, where you could have an "Inaugural on the Baracks" or an "Obamapolitan", among other things.
I decided against the $175 event at McCormick Place, and went to a much less expensive event at the historic Parkway Ballroom. I did wear my "statement jewelry" (which made the local paper).
Here I am, with my date:
(I can't believe they misspelled "Inaugural"! It's correct, though, on the smaller souvenir version of the poster that they were selling.)
More photos.
I didn't take the day off from work, so watched the event in our break room. At least Rick Warren was first and over and done with quickly. The one upsetting note in an otherwise glorious day.
Loved Aretha's hat! As TLo described it in their More Inaugural Fashion post, Aretha Franklin in whatever the hell she wants to wear. I liked Jon Carroll's remarks about it (heck, I like this whole column).
The John Williams piece was gorgeous. (I was glad to learn that it was recorded. Poor fingers!) The clarinetist is another Chicago south sider. We're taking over! ;-))
And how cute were Sasha and Malia?
The speech was good, not great. The rhetorician in me kept expecting trilogies that never came: "So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans." "All this we can do. All this we will do." ". . . these things are old. These things are true." These all needed a third thing. "All this we must do. All this we can do. All this we will do." I liked that he included "non-believers", but wish that he had credited Tom Paine properly.
I didn't cry until the Reverend Joseph Lowery's benediction. Just seeing him standing there was so incredibly moving. At that moment, I truly felt the weight of history, seeing him standing on the Capitol steps, bringing to a close the inauguration of the our first African-American president, realizing that he must be looking down the Mall, past the Washington Monument, to the Lincoln Memorial, where, forty-five years earlier, he stood with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. looking towards the Capitol. What he must have been feeling!!
I know that many people missed a lot of what he was saying, missed the fact that he began with words from Lift Ev'ry Voice, the "Negro National Anthem", misunderstood the reference to the bitter saying, "If you're black, get back; if you're brown, stick around; if you're white, you're all right." I had to explain to the twenty- and thirty-somethings in my office who he was, and why I was choked up. I'm sure some of them never even heard of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, that Lowery founded with Dr. King.
I must say that, having read about all the glitches people had getting to, and at, the Inauguration, I'm glad I was sitting in the break room watching!
I also think I had more fun at the Inaugural Ball I attended. Everyone was saying that the balls in Washington have long lines, no food, and no place to sit down. We had lots of passed hors d'œuvres, plenty of tables and chairs, and an open bar, where you could have an "Inaugural on the Baracks" or an "Obamapolitan", among other things.
I decided against the $175 event at McCormick Place, and went to a much less expensive event at the historic Parkway Ballroom. I did wear my "statement jewelry" (which made the local paper).
Here I am, with my date:
(I can't believe they misspelled "Inaugural"! It's correct, though, on the smaller souvenir version of the poster that they were selling.)
More photos.