still buzzing
OK, I know you're all probably getting sick of my obsessing over the inauguration, but indulge me for one more post. I'll get back to being my usual jaded wonky self soon enough, I promise.
I loved these pictures of Obama's first day on the job. It still hardly seems real that he's actually the president. So it's amazing to see him in the Oval Office, getting down to business.
At work, everyone was trading their inauguration stories. It sounded like the people who just wandered down to the Mall and found spots near the Washington Monument generally had a better experience than many of the people who had tickets, who spent a lot of time on lines to get through security (and some of whom didn't make it in at all).
I really enjoyed reading about the experiences of these kids from Chicago who were selected for a trip to DC at Share My Inauguration.* They clearly appreciated the historic moment, but also had a definite kids' perspective on the whole experience.
As I said yesterday, I had a better time at the inauguration for not being responsible for keeping D safe and happy. I think he probably showed good judgment in turning down my invitation to come with me. But I'm also a little sad that I don't think he appreciates quite how momentous a day it was. He's learned about segregation and Martin Luther King, Jr. in school, but it's a pretty abstract concept to him. And there's something lovely about that innocence too. But I wonder if 8 years from now, he's going to be pissed that I didn't schlepp him down to the Mall so he could claim bragging rights.
One of the things that was interesting about the inauguration is that everyone there was consciously aware that it was a Historical Moment. I wonder if the people who attended the March on Washington knew right away that it would be Important. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who attended Woodstock (the other comparison I heard a lot) didn't know that it was an Event until after the fact.
* Full disclosure: I was asked to plug this site as part of MomCentral blog tour, but I'm happy to do so. They seem to be great kids, and I'm glad that they got the opportunity to be here.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 am
I love the first day pictures too. That clean desk. He doesn’t even have any family pictures out yet.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:32 am
If you read books and articles written in the immediate aftermath of the March, it does appear to stand out as a major moment. But, there were a lot of other major moments, and this one was sort of acknowledged as a media-oriented one. MLK Jr. comes in for criticism for his pie-in-the-sky ideas from a lot of folks, and not just the predictable radicals. There were a lot of people who didn’t think the march would make much difference (and I have to say, I’m not sure it would have had such an immediate effect, in terms of the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, if JFK hadn’t been shot, and shot in Dallas at that, but that’s a gut instinct, not a carefully-considered argument).
The cultural revolution stuff is tougher for me to think about, because it was a lot more commercialized and self-consciously hyped than Boomers want to acknowledge.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:33 am
Oh, and yeah, it still doesn’t seem real. The kids have never lived in a world where George W. Bush wasn’t the president.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Oh, keep buzzing. I love hearing the stories.
have you seen this: http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/Default.aspx?
It’s a satellite picture of the Mall during the inaguration, collected by the GeoEye-1 satellite. I’d love to hear where you were — that is, which little dot you were in the picture.
This event is different from others, because it is a predictable historical moment. I heard a news report in which they were talking with older black people. In it, they said, that they *still* don’t quite believe it. The quote was “Yes, we marched, and fought, and sang “We shall overcome.” But, we didn’t really believe that it would happen in our lifetime.”
I think we come from the generation that believed that it could happen, but saw how unlikely it was. My husband, who is white, believed it more than I did, reminding me today that he contributed to Obama’s campaign when he formed his exploration committee in 2007. I couldn’t believe in the possibility until after Iowa, and it wasn’t until after New Hampshire that I committed to Obama, because I couldn’t quite believe it was possible.
I still get a shiver when I hear “President Obama.”
Our children, now, may well grow up in a world where they think that what happened on 01.20.09 was not only believable, but not even unlikely. I hope D will never regret his decision not to go, because in his future, what happened on Tuesday will be ordinary.
(Jody, you and I all have eldest children almost the same age — for us, too, the era of George Bush is associated with the era of motherhood. My daughter was born on inauguration day, so 01.20.09 is the day she turned eight years old, and the world changed. The whole family now has t-shirts with the date on it).
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
PS: It’s my personal belief that Michelle Obama didn’t believe that it could happened until Wisconsin.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I can understand how young people may not be as in awe of this moment. Whenever we get a woman president are young women going to be that excited? I doubt it will impact them as much as boomer women.
I also think that education has to do more than just introducing a handful of historical figures into the classroom. In Germany they take students to Holocaust sites. That may not be possible in the U.S., but there has to be methods to help children understand history on a personal level.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I also wanted to add that watching the entire election season I kept thinking “are we not past all this?” Have we not evolved as human beings and Americans that a black or female president is not that unique? I guess my mind is more ahead than society.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
“I also wanted to add that watching the entire election season I kept thinking “are we not past all this?” Have we not evolved as human beings and Americans that a black or female president is not that unique? I guess my mind is more ahead than society.”
Of course we’re not. But, this is how we do get past it.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
someone elsewhere made this comment, and then i realized that it was true for me, too: this is the first president in my life who is younger than I am. I’m sure that will likely be true for the rest of my life, but still, it seems to add to the gravity of the inauguration for me.
i’m glad you got to go, l. i was thinking of you that day.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:26 pm
bj, I’m not in the frame in picture 1 on the GeoEye page. In picture 2, I’m in the first block to the west of the reflecting pool, directly north of the American Indian museum. There’s a dense black clump of people, centered on the jumbotron. I’m pretty much in the middle of that clump, which is why I couldn’t move enough to scratch my nose.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
No, we aren’t sick of it! Talk more! Show pictures! I don’t think I’ll ever be sick of inauguration talk this year…
I got super-homesick last week for my family in DC. I think it would have been really nice to be there. But, it wasn’t in the cards so I am living vicariously through all of you who were there.