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....
Previous installments in the Travelogue: 0 1 2 3
In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
6:15 a.m. arrived, the digital watch I'd planted next to the head of our snazzy air mattress went off, and the big day began for Mrs. Rieux and me. After a (mostly) warm shower--water heater misbehaving in Cousin D's condominium--we started putting on the several layers of clothing that the Inauguration cold called for. (One thing Minnesotans know about surviving cold: layers.) I went with T-shirt, turtleneck, thick sweater, ski jacket, flannel pajama pants, jeans, thick socks, insulated hiking boots, winter hat, and double-layered ski jacket with hood. Mrs. Rieux, who hails from a more tropical climate, wore about twice that much clothing. Mrs. Rieux's Cousin L, our companion for the day, was somewhere in between. (Cousin D and her fiancé had much-sought-after tickets to the big show; they stayed in D.C. overnight and were able to get underway toward their V.I.P. seats much earlier than we were. As it happened, they got stuck in the clogged Silver Entrance and only barely made it to their seats, but we wouldn't find that out for hours.)
So, at 7:15, we hit the door. First came a car trip to Cousin L's apartment, then a bus ride to the Pentagon City Metro station, and then we hurried our way to the train platform--all went off without a hitch; things appeared to be going swimmingly. But the first Yellow Line train that arrived was chock full of bodies. As was the second. And the third. And fourth. Meanwhile, the platform was filling up rapidly behind us. It appeared that we'd never be able to get on a train.
We suddenly hit upon an idea (at just about the same time about fifty other people on our platform did): we'd go up the stairs, cross to the opposite platform, and take the Yellow Line train in the other direction, to Huntington. (We'd noticed that those outbound trains had been effectively empty every time we'd seen them going by.)
So a small crowd of Metro riders clad in inauguration swag trickled onto the outbound-train platform and got on the next available train. Plenty of empty seats on that one! Heading out (the "wrong way") from Pentagon City, we noticed three more inbound trains go by that were solidly packed with human sardines, so we decided that our strategy was paying off. It took well over half an hour to reach Huntington, turn around, and get back to Pentagon City, but it sure seemed worth it.
Then the next hurdle hit--just as Nate Silver was learning at that moment in a train going the opposite direction, the powers-that-be at the Metro had decided to close the L'Enfant Plaza--the key access point to the National Mall--because, we were told, the platform was overcrowded. So we breezed through the station that had been our intended destination, noting ruefully that the platform was nearly empty. (The escalators were crowded, though, suggesting that the platform was at that point near the end of a slow process of emptying.)
So, shortly after 9:00 a.m., an entire trainload of us were deposited at the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro stop and left to fend for ourselves there. Getting out of the station in the first place was a problem--the sea of humanity overwhelmed the turnstiles and escalators, squeezing all of us around obstacles like so much grain in an elevator. (Midwestern metaphor--sorry.)
But the big problem with keeping us out of L'Enfant Plaza is that we had all been dumped on the north side of the Inaugural Parade route--an impenetrable barrier--and flailing for a way to get to the National Mall. My faint memory of the Mall Access Routes map I'd seen was that all of the access points were on the south side of the Mall, and the widespread understanding was that we'd have to wait in long security lines anyway. Cousin L remained skeptical that we couldn't just walk southward, but a few half-hearted attempts at approaching Pennsylvania Avenue--blocked at every turn by huge security barriers--dashed any hopes of getting through that way.
So morale was low, especially among our little party. We overheard a D.C. police officer tell a fellow tourist that she ought to resign herself to the fact that she'd never make it to the Mall and just look for a TV she could watch the ceremony on.
I don't know how that tourist responded, but we (and especially Mrs. Rieux) had no intention of giving up. Recognizing that our only hope was to outrun the entire parade route by looping all the way around the White House, we headed to the Northwest Passage that was rumored to exist through the intersection of 19th Street and I. So here, in yellow, is the route we ended up taking, with the impenetrable wall of the parade route in red:
Not too long into the trek, we noticed that we were following a growing crowd of people--fellow refugees from the L'Enfant closing?--on this same route, which was encouraging. After what seemed like an endless march, round about 10:45, the mob of people we were marching with finally made it to the Mall and were shocked to find no security checkpoints in our way. Stumbling past the first JumboTron we saw, due west of the Washington Monument, we proceeded eastward until the crowd got too thick for us to continue. At that point, north and slightly west of the Monument, we spread out the camp blanket I'd been lugging all morning and finally got off our feet. Lucky for me, when the satellite that CNN has made famous made its pass at 11:19 a.m., it got my good side:
* * * * *
After all of this trouble, then, we ended up with a tolerably good view of a screen and a reasonable amount of time to spare before the Shrub's presidency ended. (At five-foot-not-much, Cousin L was regrettably not able to catch more than fleeting glimpses of the ceremony. And on her birthday, too!) The air was cool but tolerable; it helped to have thousands of people crowding around to keep off the wind. And the sun was shining, which helped more than one might expect.
It was immediately evident that there were weird delay issues with the JumboTron broadcast. The screen image was well over a second ahead of the sound, and when I listened to WAMU (D.C.'s NPR station) on a portable radio I'd brought with me, that audio was even further behind. If, watching on TV back home, you noticed us in the crowd cheering at odd times, that's why.
Watching the ceremony in the middle of a crowd of many thousands of happy, fidgeting people was a memorable experience. We booed at each sight of Dubya or Dick "Mr. Potter" Cheney, cheered Carter and Gore, and had no particular reaction to Senate Sergeant at Arms Terence W. Gainer. For some reason, my enthusiastic "All right, Fritz!" at the first glimpse of former Vice President (and fellow proud Minnesotan) Walter Mondale was met with more confusion than enthusiasm from the Obamaniacs around us.
The Rick Warren invocation was just plain ugly. Taking a cue from this Vanity Fair piece by C. Brian Smith (especially its killer closing line), I decided I'd turn my back on Warren as a silent protest. This got me some curious looks from several people behind me, and I didn't see anyone else turn around. The worst part, though, was when Warren launched into "Our Father" at the end of his shtick. In the middle of an inauguration ceremony for the highest office in a secular government, amid monuments to men who toiled to create and maintain a state that neither favored nor hindered religion, I suddenly found myself in the middle of a massive prayer meeting, with people all around me mumbling prayers declaring that God's "is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever." Holy shit.
"Disgusting," I said as I turned back around to face the JumboTron.
Replied the portly guy on my right, "I'm a Christian minister, and it makes me sick."
"Well, I'm a loudmouthed atheist, and I agree," I said.
Then came the flubbed oath (nice job, Roberts), and Obama's chance to shine in the speech. Like Atrios, I appreciated Barack's shout-out to my kind:
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.
Still stinging from Warren's attempt to blow his nose on the Constitution, I yelled "Thank you!" as soon as that line was out of Obama's mouth. The crowd around me chuckled. (I guess I was the local cut-up.) The minister's wife gave me a kind pat on the shoulder.
Then came the passage I quoted at the top of the diary:
In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
This, to me, was a subtle shout-out to us nonbelievers as well, although it would have helped a little if our new President had identified the author of those lines. The passage he quoted was from an essay--the one Washington had read to his troops--called "The Crisis," by Thomas Paine, America's first outspoken infidel.
As luck would have it, I'm currently reading Freethinkers, a book by Susan Jacoby that chronicles the largely forgotten role that skeptics and critics of religion have played in American history. A certified hero of the Revolution, Paine is the first major figure in our freethinking history, a man whose commitment to his ideals later led him to publish works that were acidly critical of the Bible and of Christianity--which in turn led him to be cast out of polite society, and indeed nearly left by the Jefferson Administration to die in a French Revolutionary prison.
The dismissal, if not outright abuse, of Americans who have dared openly to challenge mainstream religion has been an abiding characteristic of our history, much to our discredit. Hearing Paine quoted--albeit without attribution--provided me with a little solace on that point.
* * * * *
When Obama finished speaking, the crowd immediately started to break up. On our portion of the Mall, poet Elizabeth Alexander was basically ignored. Even Joseph E. Lowery's benediction got stepped on--I heard the cute "brown can stick around, yellow will be mellow" bit on WAMU over my headphones on the way out, but no one around the Washington Monument seemed to be paying attention.
Our object at this point was to get off of the mall and make our way to The Dubliner, an Irish pub near Union Station that Cousin D and we had agreed on as a meet-up point after the ceremony. (Cousin L noted ruefully that that spot was notably convenient for folks, such as D and her fiancé, in the V.I.P. seats.)
Unfortunately, the mobs of people blanketing the Mall made it next to impossible to proceed straight eastward; we decided we were going to have to head southward in order to get east. So off we went (now in blue):
As you can see, our east-by-south strategy (which, in hindsight, was pretty dumb) led us on a wide sweep around the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and then down Independence Avenue, past several of the Smithsonian buildings. (Long lines snaked out of each of these, full of people desperate to get in out of the cold.) The wind biting at my cheeks was uncomfortable, but that was really the only issue I had with the temperature--more pressing to me was the soreness of my feet in the @#$@& heavy insulated boots.
Shortly before we reached the Capitol on Independence Avenue, we saw police blocking pedestrian traffic on the roadway ahead--so, throwing caution to the wind, we decided to cut northward, directly past the Reflecting Pool and the near vicinity of the long-since-concluded inauguration ceremony itself. Then, miraculously, the Capitol Police had opened up a route through the parade route exactly where we needed one--so we were finally able to escape the Mall and head north toward The Dubliner.
Predictably, there was a line snaking out the door. "Forty-five minute wait," the bouncer at the door told us.
We tried to raise Cousin D, sitting inside, on our cell phones, to no effect. I texted her instead: "45 minute wait--we give up--heading home via Metro." Surrender!
Union Station was only a block away, but getting in required surviving another wringer as thousands of people attempted to wedge themselves into a Metro entrance at the same time. At this point, the Metro folks seemed to have wised up somehow, because we were able to get onto two successive trains--the initial one at Union and then a transfer to the Yellow Line at Gallery Place/Chinatown--that had plenty of room to sit down. What a concept!
On the Yellow Line, then, we finally made our way out of D.C. and back to the Pentagon City area. Safely off the Metro for good, we looked for food and found Siné, another Irish pub. This led to the first genuinely relaxing experience of the day; we got to take a load off our feet while watching the inaugural parade on the pub's high-def TVs, with Obama fans filling all of the tables. When the new President got out of his limousine, we led the applause. A far superior experience to stomping down Independence Avenue unnecessarily in twenty-degree cold.
After that, our energy petered out. We took a bus back to Cousin L's place and staked out prime real estate on her couch. The Obamas were at various inaugural balls by that time, and the MSNBC quartet of Robinson, Matthews, Olbermann and Maddow were analyzing furiously. At Mrs. Rieux's urging, we left inaugural matters behind for a few hours and took in Gran Torino at a cinema in Alexandria (my review: thumbs down; I know ten Hmong kids in our neighborhood in Minneapolis who are better actors than the two non-Clint leads). After that, we went back to D's place and effectively collapsed.
All in all, an utterly insane day ... that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
Previous installments in the Travelogue: 0 1 2 3