This week, Mrs. Rieux and I are joining millions of our fellow Americans heading toward Washington, D.C., to see our forty-fourth President--my former law school professor--inaugurated. I'd like to record the events of our nine-day trip in diaries; even if no one reads them, at least I'll have a nice scrapbook.
But if you're interested in following along as two Obama volunteers take a trip to the Inauguration and points beyond, read on....
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I want to thank all the speakers and performers for reminding us, through song and through words, just what it is that we love about America. And I want to thank all of you for braving the cold and the crowds and traveling in some cases thousands of miles to join us here today. Welcome to Washington, and welcome to this celebration of American renewal.
Sunday dawned cool and overcast. Mrs. Rieux and I set out with her Cousin D to get supplies for our trip to the "We Are One" concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Acting on a tip from Sui Juris, we made our way to Casual Adventure, a locally-owned sporting goods store in Arlington. (A taped up sign on the door read "WE ARE OUT OF HAND-WARMERS," though it appeared that they got a new shipment while we were there.)
Suitably equipped with insulated boots (the first hiking boots I've worn since an Amherst College Outing Club canoe trip on the Delaware River in late summer 1994), glove-liners and the precious hand-warmers, we lunched at the barbecue joint across the parking lot and then headed toward the Metro.
Getting out at the Smithsonian stop, we were immediately greeted by Washington police herding riders toward separate exits; the concern appeared to be preventing any one exitway (say, the one closest to the Lincoln Memorial) from being overloaded with people. Upon hitting the street, we saw the crowds--hundreds of people and then thousands of people, crowding in from every direction. At about 2:15, shortly before the 2:30 concert, we made our way around the Washington Monument and then found ourselves stopped well short of 17th street, the cross-street at the east end of the Reflecting Pool.
So right there, in the shadow of Washington's obelisk, we spread out our waterproof blanket on the ground among the gathering crowd and sat down. Immediately next to us was a similar blanket belonging to a family from Mountain View, California, and we talked with them for a short while--but soon enough Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson's face flickered onto the JumboTron screens in front of us and it was time to stand back up (watching while seated was impossible, given the thousands of standing bodies packed in all around us) and watch "We Are One" unfold. (Nonetheless, the blanket proved extremely useful; it blocked out some sight lines for us, given that none of the three of us are over 5'8", and it provided us a place among the maddening crowd for periodic spells of sitting and leg-resting.)
The folks around us were a predictably heterogeneous lot; in addition to the blanket-sitting Californians directly in front of us, there was a Baltimore family decked out in Ravens gear (sorry, guys!), a couple speaking an Eastern European language, and two young Englishwomen of African descent ("African-Britons"?). These last were the most amusing to watch with, especially when the film of Marian Anderson led to a performance of "My Country 'Tis of Thee"--as they noted, that's actually a British national song. (They also were covered nearly head-to-toe in Obama souvenir paraphernalia, which made for an interesting contrast with their accents.)
Sitting and standing in the crowd, the most-fun highlights of the show were unquestionably Jamie Foxx's audition for the inevitable Obama biopic, the renditions (Garth Brooks?!) of "American Pie" and "Shout," and the closing "This Land is Your Land." (The Britons were fascinated by the latter; I personally thought it was an absolutely perfect closing number. That song, suffused as it is with progressive spirit, is sorely in need of a revival. It's sort of the anti-"Proud To Be an American.")
The end of the show, and the efforts by all of us to exit, made it clear how enormous this crowd was. We tried to leave the Washington Monument area through the northwest corner--the intersection of 17th Street and Constitution Avenue--but found the way irretrievably blocked by the thousands and thousands of people attempting to use the same exit. (The other stunning thing was the unbelievable number of portable bathrooms lined up in a row on the southern side of Constitution, from 17th to 15th and well beyond. "Porta-potties as far as the eye can see," someone said.)
We finally got onto Constitution Avenue through the 15th street intersection and, along with several other people, we decided to make our way back to Arlington on foot, walking down Constitution, past the Lincoln Memorial (with limousines pouring out of it in droves) and toward the Potomac. Capital Police had blocked off the street from all traffic except for emergency vehicles and V.I.P.'s, so the mob had the street to ourselves.
We crossed the river on the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge (at this point my feet started to remind me of the downside of wearing heavy, warm boots) and headed toward Rosslyn, on the Virginia shore. At that point, Cousin D arranged for us to be picked up by her sister, Mrs. Rieux's Cousin L, who had been unlucky enough to pull work duty on Sunday; The pick-up performed, the four of us ended up at Busboys & Poets, a happily lefty-ish cafe in Arlington.
We dropped, exhausted, onto the couch at Cousin D's place. I turned the TV on in time to see Troy Polamalu ice the Steelers' trip to the Super Bowl with an interception return for a touchdown... and then I promptly fell asleep (snoring, I'm told) on the couch. Inauguration attendance is freakin' tiring!
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