Howdy -

    I had originally intended to write at least two, maybe three separate blogs about what it was like to be in DC for the inaugural. But as I was swept in the vortex of all of it, I found I had no time to even collect my thoughts, let alone write them down, accidentally delete them, curse at my computer, and then write them down again, which is my usual writing process. 

   Thus, as I lie on my hotel bed with my laptop, freshly returned from my 10 hour Inaugural ordeal, I can do nothing but offer one grand, sweeping first-hand account of history. It will be epic, like "Gone with the Wind" except things turn out better for Atlanta, or like "Moby Dick" except that calling me "Ishmael" is likely to just confuse me. It will be like the Torah, except with very little religion and much less begetting. It will be grand poetry, like the stuff that doesn't rhyme, a trilogy in two parts, a haiku with infinite syllables, a legend, a myth and a self-help book. And it all starts with my car getting towed. 

   My wife Jen, our friend Dina and I drove to DC at about midnight on Sunday night. This was my idea, the theory being that there would be no traffic at that time. The theory was correct, but apparently so was the theory that there would be no traffic on Monday morning. THAT theory would have allowed us to sleep at home, drive at a reasonable hour, and not park my car in the private garage of my friend Adam. 

   Be that as it may, we slept at Adam's place for a few hours Sunday night. When we awoke Monday morning we had a difficult time finding our car in his lot. That's because it wasn't there. It had been towed by a man who called himself "Turtle" and for the low, low price of $205 I could have my very own car back. When I went to pick up the car I tried to show Turtle my disapprobation by giving him the cold shoulder. I discovered however that Turtle was remarkably taciturn and refused to demonstrate any noticeable interest in the health of our relationship. To demonstrate, allow me to recount a portion of our conversation

                   ME

   What do I owe you?

                   TURTLE

    Give me  205 dollars

                    ME

     Do you find that you are self-actualized in this job?

                   TURTLE

     (scratches his arm)

Pause

     (blows his nose)

                     ME

      Where'd you get the name Turtle?

                    TURTLE

       Give me 205 Dollars

   After I got my car back, we checked into our hotel. It was the hotel hosting most of the Pennsylvania contingent. The decor was really nice...in 1956. Now, not so much. The first thing we did was watch some news. One of the interesting phenomena that occur when you go to one of these huge historic events is that you are right in the middle of things, yet since your perspective is limited, you have no idea what is going on. This was the case at the Democratic National Convention in Denver and I was committed to trying to keep up with what was happening as I witnessed it. 

    After that we had to go to a restaurant near Union Station for a dinner I threw for about 25 people. We got in a cab and quickly realized that the carefree-no traffic morning was gone. The roads were packed. After paying $21 to go three blocks in 45 minutes we got out and walked. It was then we first recognized that Washington had become Obama-city. Each street corner had bling-stands selling everything from Obama buttons and T-shirts to towels, jewelry and "Obama Cologne". That's right. Apparently, for $15 you can smell like Barack Obama. 

    As we walked further (there was a lot of walking this week) we noticed that almost every store had some Obama sign or painting in the window. Delis had ads for various Obama sandwiches or salads. Thousands of people were scurrying on each crowded street with the word "Obama" on them somewhere. I was here in 1993 and 97 for the Clinton inaugurals and they were nothing like this. Now, I am a huge Obama fan. I was an early supporter, a delegate at the convention and a Barack vote in the Electoral College. Sure, I've shaved Barack's visage into my hair and have the permanent "Yes We Can" facial tattoo. But the hero worship I saw in DC this week was a bit much even for me. 

    Later Monday night we went to the Pennsylvania "Yes We Did" party at the hotel. It was seemingly packed with everyone who had ever been to Pennsylvania. The featured band was "Sister Sledge", whose last hit "We Are Family" came out slightly before "Billy Don't be a Hero" and was first played at the Eisenhower Inaugural. But some things are timeless. Not that, but some things. At one point, Midge Rendell, our First Lady, elegant, and surprisingly rhythmic took the stage and danced with the band and for a brief moment, all 248 candidates for Governor in 2010 seemed to embrace Barack's call to unity. We went to bed feeling like we were about to witness a new era being born. 

   On Tuesday, Inauguration Day, the alarm went off at 6:30 a.m., interrupting the recurring dream I have involving me repeatedly hitting Celine Dion with a goose. I'm not sure what the dream means, but I find it very relaxing. Our entire posse than gathered in our room and prepared as if going into battle. The forecast called for wind chills in the low teens, so each of us had a detailed layering plan. 

    We also gathered our tickets and maps. Each ticket had a color which determined how close you were going to be to Barack at the magic moment. Jen and I had highly coveted orange tickets because I was an elector (although I told my friends that the orange tickets were for "smart people"). People with orange tickets had seats, as did some of the people in the purple section. There was also a green section and a silver section which involved standing and started a full half mile away from the stage. All of us had some color but no more than a few of the same color, so we all had to split up. 

    As we left the hotel at 8:15, we began the two mile walk to the Capitol. At first, the crowd was thin, but thickened with every block. It was frigid, but there was a palpable purpose in our collective strides. We all really felt that we were walking into history and everyone knew that everyone else felt the same. There was, however, a problem. 

    All of the streets were blocked. We asked a police officer where we should go to get in and were told to go to First Avenue. When we got there we found we were joining 10,000 people or more already packed into a narrow street. After about an hour the crowd had ballooned to over 20,000 and they were not letting anyone in. As the crowd compressed, the risk of someone being tramped to death became dangerously high. Fearing that "someone" might be me, I became panicked and used my brute force and my talent for irony to force my way (along with Jen) out of the pack an onto another street which was much better organized. Of everything I experienced this week, the (what I am calling) "Purple Ticket Apocalypse" was by far the biggest and potentially most consequential glitch. 

     Finally, we made it into our seats about 80 yards away from the podium and dead center. The seats couldn't have been better and by now the weather was sunny and brisk. I stood on my seat and looked backwards and saw a sea of people stretching back past the Washington Monument. It was breathtaking. I felt at last that all of my effort; the long drive, the cold, the endless walking, the near-death by crushing, dealing with Turtle, it had all been worth it. Now, all I had to do was sit back, on the same ground where Martin Luther King said "I have a dream", and face the same Capitol dome Martin faced while I watched that dream come true. 

    The ceremony was started by a man with a deep voice announcing each dignitary as they came out. When the man announced "The President of the United States, George W. Bush," 2 million people spontaneously started singing "Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye". I thought this was uncalled for. I'm certainly no fan of President Bush, but insulting him as he departed seemed gratuitous. I tried to distract the crowd by starting another song, "Don't sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me", but it never really caught on. 

    Finally, Barack approached the podium to take the oath. Dozens of people around me broke out in tears even before he said a word. Almost all of them did so from the sheer historical heft of the moment, (the one notable exception was the woman whose tears were the result of me crushing her foot with my chair leg). 

    Then something amazing happened, Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the oath of office. Keep in mind, this is a 39 word oath that every second-grader has memorized. The Chief Justice knew for the past 4 years that this moment would come. You'd think he'd have nailed this. Him messing it up is like the Pope mis-stating the Lord's Prayer, or a groom completely getting tangled up during "I DO".

       After the Inaugural address, there was a great moment. The tradition is that the incoming and outgoing Presidents and Vice-Presidents go to the back of the Capitol where there is a farewell ceremony. There are handshakes all around and then the Vice President gets in a limo and the now ex-President gets on a helicopter and flies back to Crawford, Texas (I think that's where they all go, at least since Milliard Fillmore, but I'll have to check on that).

    Dick Cheney apparently sprained a back muscle and thus was in a wheelchair. It was a fitting end to his tenure as the Torquemada of the administration to see him wheeled into his car, whacking small children with his cane to get them out of his way. Sometimes, when they weren't in his way, he'd swoop his chair over to whack them anyway.

    Then, President Obama hugged President Bush and walked him to the Helicopter. The crowd in front of the capitol was slowly dispersing to the exits. But many of us stopped to watch the ceremony on the giant TV screens dotting the nation's mall. It seemed like an eternity but eventually the helicopter blades started rotating, and hundreds of thousands of people started chanting "LIFT, LIFT!!" Finally, it did, to tumultuous applause.

  But then the helicopter went off of the TV screens and emerged over the dome of the Capitol directly above us. The crowd went crazy and started jumping up and down and waving wildly. To George W. Bush it probably looked like the crowd was waving "Good-bye". But on the ground, it was clear the crowd was waiving "good riddance". Then, the copter gone, we walked out onto the familiar sidewalks of First Avenue. And although the streets of DC looked the same, the world felt completely different.

   I'm a big fan of the prog rock group Jethro Tull (the one thing I share with Dick Cheney). One of my favorite Tull songs is entitled "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day". As I walked down Mass. Ave, looking for the Obama Lava Lamp I promised to buy my daughter, I thought of a line from that song. "Do you ever get to feeling that...everybody's on the stage and it seems like you're the only person sitting in the audience?" Well today, even though I wasn't literally on the stage (thanks to some particularly aggressive and well-armed secret service agents), I felt that I joined the entire nation (even Turtle) on the stage, standing with our new President. As we skate away on the thin ice of this new administration, I know that I wouldn't have missed this day for the world.

 

-Daylin

 

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As I prepare to go to DC for the Inauguration of Barack Obama, I feel like I'm about to embark on an epic journey. Like preparing to board the Orient Express, or the Schuylkill during rush hour. I am at the base of Everest, packing my rucksack and telling the Sherpas one more time that they shouldn't expect a tip. I am on the coast of Antarctica, about to speed to the South Pole with a hearty "MUSH" to my sled-poodles. I am on the Nina, pushing off of the shore to the new world, waving to the Pinta, and all the Pintonians.

I deliberately chose not to employ the "Enterprise" as a metaphor because I am clearly not going to where no man has gone before. In fact, as I write this, I am told that there are already a million people in DC, camping out, lighting fires, eating the freshly-killed moose culled from the wild plains of Adams Morgan (the National Zoo is most upset). Stated another, less weird way, this is going to get crowded.

Here, some perspective is in order: If you know the Mall in DC, visualize the area from the Capitol steps, where Obama will be sworn in, to the Washington Monument , (which incidentally, I don't think looks like him at all). That 3/4 mile space holds about one million people. Keep going back all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. Now you can accommodate about 2.5 million people. Some estimates say that as many as 4 million people plan to come. All of this is to say that I am becoming pessimistic about my chances of getting a primo parking space.

Not only is it going to be crowded, it's also apparently going to be cold. The weather forecasts all say that the temperature will be in the teens. Many say there will be bitter winds. Some are even calling for locusts. Of course, we've all heard that the secret to staying warm is "layering". So I plan to wear all the sweat-shirts I have in my closet,. That is unless the Eagles make it to the Super-Bowl, in which case I'll just be wearing gym shorts and painting my chest green.

Even though we have tickets, we were told to get there no later than 7:00 AM for the noon festivities. Walking for miles at dawn and standing in the bitter cold for 6 hours next to complete strangers has the potential to be occasionally unpleasant. I'll try to pass the time by striking up conversations with those lucky enough to stand near me. I've even been thinking of conversation starters I could use, like "Yo, you gonna eat that Granola Bar?", or "Can I borrow your coat?" or "Tell me again why I can't borrow your coat.". Hey, at least I'll make some friends.

Even with all of this effort, and despite having tickets as a member of the Electoral College, I'm still likely to be about as close to Barack as I would be if I just went to a pub in Ardmore. The Capitol itself will be a small dot in the distance and Barack's inaugural address will probably sound like someone confirming my filet-o-fish order at a drive-through window. The majestic "Hail to the Chief" will probably be drowned out by the sounds of Sarah Palin drilling Ice-fishing holes on the Potomac.

Some folks have asked why I'm willing to brave all of this when I have a perfectly fine television set in my warm living room. But those people are missing something. I haven't paid my cable bill, so there is no TV. But they are also missing something else. The fact is that all of the inconvenience and the pain will actually help punctuate the experience in my memory. This is first degree history. I'm not looking to just see it, I'm looking for a story, an experience. Someday I want to tell my great-great grandchildren (fish oil - you live forever) what it was like. What it felt like, what it tasted like. I don't want to just say that I watched it on the TV of a neighbor who pays their bills and hopefully stocks their fridge.

So I'm down for the discomfort. If you see a guy in a traffic jam smiling and clapping his hands, that will be me. If you see someone whose lost a finger to frostbite, but is still dancing the Macarena, that's me again. If you notice a person who is gone into cardiac arrest due to severe hypothermia, and is being given CPR. and is still singing "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves between chest compressions, you can bet that's your new State Senator, witnessing history, and walking towards the light.

The next installment of this blog will be on Sunday night from DC. Wish me luck!

I believe it is important, whenever possible, to witness historical events first-hand. This can be somewhat tricky, in that we often don't contemporaneously know when history will be made, and we've missed a lot of the best history, not having been alive in the past and all. That explains the relatively few eyewitness reports I've written about Charlemagne, although you can bet that if I were alive in 768 I would have hopped on a bus to see his father, "Peppin the Short" bequeath Charlemagne his lands!

In my lifetime, when I sensed history was proximate, I've done all I can to be there. I was at the past 6 Democratic National Conventions. I was at both Bill Clinton Inaugurals, and once spent a weekend drinking with George McGovern (true story).

Sometimes I've guessed wrong about when history will be made. In retrospect getting that "I voted for President Morris Udall" tattoo across my chest was probably a mistake. And when my buddy "Stimps" wrote asking the Beatles to reunite for his high school prom in 1979, I thought it was unlikely they would, but I showed up just in case. The reunion never happened, but I did wind up getting his date to help me wash my car, and we got to listen to a lot of Styx that night.

This past year has seemed to simply crackle with history. We had both the first woman and the first African-American with a serious chance to be elected President. I wanted to be there for as much of it as I could. The first thing I thought was important to do was to back the right candidate (aka: the eventual winner). In an election, backing the winner means access and reflected glory. Backing a loser can mean spending the key moments of the election eating Cheeze-its and flipping channels between CNN and Rachel Ray making tuna-nachos.

The problem is that I almost never back the winner. In fact, my support for a candidate usually guarantees that they are indicted and/or eaten by crocodiles (or both) within days. I've had grown men weeping at my feet begging me to endorse their political opponents. You may have noticed that George McGovern was never President. My guy! You won't be reading many books about Gary Hart's first term. While he was in Biminy on the "Monkey Business," I was at my kitchen table hand-lettering "Go Gary!" yard signs. Tom Harkin? All mine! Ted Kennedy? Quit my work-study job to work for him. Fred Harris, Paul Simon, John Edwards? Me, me, me!

With this history, I was not particularly optimistic as the 2008 cycle got started. There were times when I thought I'd just start the "I [heart] Mike Gravel Fan Club" and be done with it. But then, a miracle happened (no, not Celine Dion's record contract being cancelled, but that would be good too!): I decided to back Barack Obama, and he actually won.

When I came out for Barack, I was one of only a small handful of Democratic elected officials who supported him. Most of the Pennsylvania political establishment was for Hillary. As a result, I had incredible access, and the chance to participate in amazing events. I was asked to speak at rallies and introduce Barack. I got to go to lots of events with famous surrogates. The highlight for me was introducing actress Jessica Lange at a coffee in Bryn Mawr. We really hit it off, although she did give me a funny look when I claimed to be her body-double in all of her action films. I was a delegate at the National Convention, and a member of the Electoral College. Now, I am completing the circle and heading down to DC for the Inauguration of the first man I ever backed from day one as the next President of the United States.

Some of you (Hi Mom!) will remember that I blogged from the Convention in Denver. I will be doing the same from DC. I will try to impart to you some small sense of what it is like from the first hand perspective of someone who loves history, and who thinks they're really funny after their second virgin egg-nog. I hope you enjoy the eyewitness account of Barack Obama's swearing-in.

As I pack for the trip (lots of warm clothes, granola bars, and Dr. Phil tapes) I am mindful of the unique opportunity I have. Even though I will be a small speck in a sea of people, and Barack will probably just be a distant voice on a distorted amplification system, I will be there. I will be there, like the folks in Gettysburg when Lincoln spoke were there. I'll be there like the people at Carpenter Hall or the moon launch or Woodstock were there. I'll have the chance to taste history in a way that watching TV or reading a book can't touch. I hope I can do it all justice.

I also hope that Barack gives me a shout-out during the Inaugural address. I'll keep you all posted!

Daylin