Last week the Steen-Koppells decided to haul ass down to Washington for the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States, you know who. And for anyone who might admire our spontaneity, let me come clean and admit that this was really a typical procrastinate-and-decide-at-the-last-minute Steen-Koppell operation. I had been entertaining the idea of going since Election Night, when I envied the communal joy and excitement of the folks partying in Grant Park. And of course, with my Herculean effort for the Obama campaign (45 minutes of GOTV calls on Election Day! WOOOOO HOO!) I obviously could have scored good seats (next to Bon Jovi??!!) if I had tried. But did I acquire tickets or ball gown in advance? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Did we even check the calendar for the date of the big free concert at the Lincoln Memorial (Bon Jovi from a distance!!)? Negatory. Did we bother to tell Carla (JK’s sister) we would be taking over her guest room? Not until the day before we arrived! So we headed down to DC with a cocktail dress in the garment bag and without tickets to a ball or the swearing-in ceremony, and hit the Beltway at just about the time concert was ending.
As luck would have it, I was not forced to wear a woefully informal dress to a fancy ball because we never acquired ball tickets! Thank goodness. Actually, our friend Ross (who must have made 60 minutes of GOTV calls) found ball tickets for us, but we decided that $1000 was too much to spend for the Home-States Ball, since we don’t even know anyone from Hawaii or Illinois. The Idaho ball would have been another matter. Readers of previous entries might recall that we also passed on tickets to the Olympic Opening Ceremonies offered at a similar price and lived to regret that choice. Happily, that was not the case this time.
We also never acquired tickets to the swearing in, but had an exciting day nonetheless. Actually, for us the inaugural activities kicked off on Monday, when we participated in the National Day of Service. While Barack Obama was painting a shelter for homeless pregnant teenagers, the Steen-Koppells (and Koppell-Topas) were also engaged in the Lord’s work. . . cleaning up a park in an affluent neighborhood! Boy, did we feel good about ourselves! Ha ha ha. But seriously, we were operating under serious constraints – we wanted to bring all the kids, our own plus our three nephews, ages 4, 9 and 10, and so we needed to find an activity that would not result in some or all of them whining “I’M BORED!” or whatever. There was also the small matter of being too lazy to drive two separate cars to our service event, so with Teo riding on Benjamin’s lap we needed to go somewhere close by. You know, to minimize risk of getting a REALLY big ticket. Oh yeah, and also to minimize risk of maiming one of our dear seatbelt-less nephews. So park clean-up seemed perfect, and off to Forest Hills Park we went.
And you know what? Even though the world was not saved by our raking leaves in a lovely playground in Cleveland Park, the event was awesome. It was over-enrolled – there were probably about 100 people there. We arrived about 45 minutes into the event and there was not much left to do – all the litter and broken toys had already been cleared out, but there were still leaves to rake. It was just so nice to see so many families and individuals turn out to participate, and it really did feel in a way like we were working side by side with Obama and the folks at the teen shelter, as well as the people at RFK stadium assembling military care packages, the people visiting residents of nursing homes and hospices, the servers at soup kitchens, and the like. Everyone was in high spirits. Ben (age 10) & Teo (age 9) were so awesome, they both picked up rakes and went right to work, and when they had finished clearing their patch they looked for other tasks to do. Elsa & Alessandro were very happy in the playground, and Jonathan and I pitched in a little while we weren’t supervising the two little nuts or, in my case, documenting the event photographically. Sadly, Mr. William didn’t get to join us because he got sick on the way down from New Haven, and his temp had even reached 104 the night before. (He was OK on Monday but we thought it would be stupid to take him out.)
Our plan for Tuesday morning was to leave Carla’s house by 8 am and take the Metro downtown, then walk to one of the public entrances to the Mall. When we all got downstairs and were suiting up for the freezing –ass cold day ahead of us, Carla turned the TV on and we saw that the Mall was already filling up and the Metro was insanely packed. In a stroke of luck, our friends Craig & Karen Tinsky called us as we were walking down the hill to the Cleveland Park Metro station – they were in their car a few blocks away and there were NO OTHER CARS ON THE STREETS AT ALL. All the dire warnings about the horrible traffic had deterred everyone but them! So they swung by to collect Jonathan, his mom Kathy, and me. (Oh yeah, have I not mentioned that we did NOT take the children to the swearing-in? This was hugely disappointing to Elsa, who said on the way home from Leaf-Raking Service, "I can't wait until tomorrow when Ale and I get to go to Barack Obama's inauguration!!" Uh, not exactly, pumpkin...) In another stroke of luck we found a parking space just a few blocks back from the traffic barriers! We then hot-footed it south toward the Mall and eventually split from the Tinskys, whose amazing powers of persuasion and schmoozation had earned them seated tickets.
As the Sunshine-Steen-Koppell contingent approached the Mall we encountered the first of many, many frustrations of the day. The map we had downloaded from the inaugural committee site bore absolutely no resemblance to the actual situation on the ground. Entrances and access routes that were clearly indicated on the official map were essentially non-existent in real life. Furthermore, the public-safety personnel –DC police and national guardsmen, mostly – had no clue about anything. Most of them had no idea which routes were open, which entrances were open, etc. We ended up having to double back – i.e., walk further north to resume going south – several times because we could not cross Pennsylvania Avenue (the route for the parade later in the day).
The sheer number of people walking the streets of downtown Washington was amazing! And the number of people lined up to get access to the parade route was staggering. These folks chose to forego the swearing-in itself to stand in the cold from whatever time they arrived (we saw them at 9:30 am) until the parade’s scheduled start at 2:30 pm. (CRAZY!)
When we got to 18th Street and were told to go even further west, I knew that our chances of making it onto the Mall were dwindling. I decided to go for it on my own, left Jonathan and Kathy behind and booked to 19th Street, where I turned south toward the Washington Monument. When I entered the Monument grounds people were just starting to congregate in front of the Jumbotron on the northeast corner, but instead of staking out a spot I hustled across the street to try to get onto the Mall. Alas, the last entrance closed, so I turned around and hoped to reunite with Jonathan at the Monument. In the span of just five minutes the Monument grounds had filled up! I found a patch of grass with a view of the Jumbotron and planted myself. It was only 10:30 am. I tried to call Jonathan and got his voicemail, and snippily suggested that he should have set his phone to vibrate. It may have been at that exact moment that he was leaving a voicemail for me, snippily suggesting the same thing! Cell phone service was completely overwhelmed. I think it was about 11:30 am when my phone started to beep and buzz and all at once I received 8 text messages, including 5 from Jonathan, and notification of 3 voicemails, which I couldn’t retrieve because I couldn’t get a line out.
SO it was a little disappointing that Jonathan and I didn’t get to watch the swearing-in together, although we later learned that we were probably only 20-30 feet apart. I knew that once he got my coordinates via text message (“I M due N of center of the Wash Mon, about 40 ft from fence”) he would be trying to find me, so we were together in spirit. We did finally rendez-vous about 30 minutes after Obama took the oath.
What a mood in the crowd! Everyone was happy and friendly. No one was pushing or shoving. It was crowded, but everyone kept a civilized radius of space around them. I took a bunch of short videos of the Jumbotron just so I could capture the crowd sounds – wild applause and cheering when Obama appeared, booing when Bush appeared, even louder booing when Cheney appeared. When the camera paused on Joe Lieberman some people booed and someone said aloud, “They hate him in Connecticut, too!” I responded, “I hate him in Connecticut!” and thus made two new friends from down I-95, a Lieberman-hating couple standing next to me. I was especially delighted to see that upon his entrance the president-elect was framed by TWO CHICKS FROM SAN FRANCISCO!!! YAY!!!
So then the ceremony started, and here is my brief review. Dianne talked too long and said nothing interesting. I found Rick Warren’s invocation to be totally inoffensive, and I appreciated his implicit acknowledgement that not everyone believes as he does (“the name of the one who changed my life”). For the first time in my entire adult life I felt the urge to recite the Lord’s Prayer. I have been a devout observer of the principle of NOT saying words that do not have meaning to me even though I know them and sometimes it’s a little awkward to stand silently. But I was tempted this time because the recitation seemed like a GIGANTIC community ritual, and I wanted to be part of it! (Somehow I doubt that my Jewish husband and mother-in-law felt the same urge.) Obama’s speech was great – loved the substance (including the shout-out to non-believers -- very unusual and much appreciated!) and, especially, the length, because at about 12:15 the cold finally seeped through all my layers. When I left Jonathan & Kathy I remembered to get my Metro ticket from Jonathan, but I forgot to get the hand-warming pouches he was holding for me. Big mistake. I spent the last 20 minutes or so shivering and hopping from foot to foot. (And also compulsively checking my cell phone to see whether my last text message to Jonathan had gone out yet.) I thought the poem sucked – as Jonathan said, that’s what you get for choosing a Yale professor.
I had binoculars lashed to my belt but never bothered taking them out because I was so far from the Capitol that even with magnification I still wouldn’t have been able to see anything. I had to explain to Elsa later that no, I had not come close enough to hand Obama the picture she drew of and for him! Although it turned out that we came about 100 feet from the president-elect earlier in the day – we were walking by the church when he exited. I was totally oblivious and had no idea why the crowd suddenly went wild. So basically my inauguration experience was similar to many of yours – I watched it on a TV. Except unlike you I was wearing two layers of long underwear, a turtleneck, a wool sweater and a knee-length coat, I had no access to a restroom, I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before, I had been on my feet for 5 hours, and I was all by myself. Except I wasn’t really all by myself. I was with a million friends.
