Inauguration Day

 

Above is a photo of Chase and Keane Yahn-Krafft, the children of our hippie composting friends Michelle and Steve at the Inaugural Parade this afternoon in ultra-lefty Santa Cruz, California. They're all coming down to L.A. this weekend and are staying with us. I hope they bring the sign! had no intention of writing a post today but I’m sitting here with my daughter Leah and she is literally forcing my hand, refusing to let me go to bed until I write something on my blog. “You have to write a post, Dad, it’s a historical day! You know how you are—you’ll want to look back and see that you marked it in some way! You wrote one about Bush, you HAVE to write one about today!”

When I dropped Leah off at her progressive school this morning in North Hollywood, they were projecting the inaugural festivities on a wall in the gym and the kids were going ballistic. Most of them were wearing Obama-related clothes and paraphernalia (including full face Sharpie tattoos and letters spelled into hair with spray dye). The entire student population was carrying on like they were in the opening scene in “Hair” and were welcoming the Age of Aquarius. “…then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars!” Oy. I only hope that like President Obama, they will have a more sober approach to the changes that are at hand, knowing that the road will be slow and painful at times.

Leah was six when George W. Bush was “elected” and she can’t remember anyone else ever being President. She’s 14 now and if Obama serves two terms she’ll be 22 when he leaves office, a full adult! (But, as she just reminded me with acrid bitterness, she’ll never be able to vote for him because at the next presidential election she’ll be one month shy of her 18th birthday).

After dropping her off, I had to work in the library all day but I pulled into a Barnes & Noble parking lot and listened to most of the Inauguration in my car, sobbing uncontrollably at several points, and looking around to see several other people sobbing in their cars. Now I feel wasted, both emotionally and physically, but in honor of my daughter’s request, nay, demand, here are a few random thoughts of the day.

I feel very “in the closet” about this among my liberal friends, but I just couldn’t get into that much of a lather about the choice of Rick Warren to do the invocation. Sure, I hated that he supported Proposition 8 and I don’t agree with many of his views, but as popular evangelicals go, he strikes me as someone who may be willing to enter into dialogue with people with opposing beliefs, unlike many of the other pastors who think gays and lesbians will be turning on a spit in eternal hellfires. There was a lot of ballyhoo about whether he’d use the “J-word” but the way in which he invoked Jesus didn’t bother me that much either since he clearly couched it in terms of how Jesus has changed his life, not the role Jesus plays in the life of Americans in general. On the other hand, why do we even have these religious invocations at all? All this Heavenly Father talk at national events does make me squeamish, can’t we keep it in church? Leading the nation in the Lord’s Prayer at the end was questionable but on the other hand, that is one well written prayer. It’s almost impossible to read it aloud and not sound brilliant. “…for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.” Damn, that’s good.

Aretha Franklin’s voice, figure, and ego have seen better days but I, for one, am thrilled that she was there. She is an American institution. I remember her singing her guts out at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral in 1968 so to have her there today was especially poignant.

How did Dianne Feinstein get the MC gig? She did a fine job but I admit that whenever I hear her slightly grating voice for more than a second I am taken back to that awful day in 1978 when she made that brief, shocking speech in San Francisco: “As president of the board of supervisors, it is my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed.”

How beautiful was that number with Yitzchak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma? (Oops, I can’t remember the names of the other musicians.) I love that Obama became President as he was listening to them play. The Constitution says it happens automatically at noon even if he hasn’t taken the oath of office. I hope that bodes well for the arts in the coming four years.

What was with Chief Justice John Roberts? For a split second I wondered if he was screwing up the words of the oath on purpose, but then I thought better of it. For a while I was worried someone was going to say that since Obama didn’t get the words quite right he’s not really President. Poor Roberts—he was reciting it from memory instead of reading. Next time bring some notes, John. And what was with the way he asked Obama at the end “So help you God?” Um, that’s not in the Constitution, Mr. Constructionist. Was he trying to make sure that President Obama believes in God?

I thought Obama’s inaugural speech was moving and hit the right notes, but I don’t think it’s one for the ages like Lincoln’s or Kennedy’s. Maybe that’s just as well. He’s been doing everything in his power to lower people’s expectations that he’s some kind of Superman who will immediately fix the country’s ills. I wonder how different my perspective would be on the speech and other parts of the day if I had been watching it instead of just listening. The negative stuff at the beginning of the speech about all the problems we’re facing was necessary but went on a bit too long for my tastes. You don’t want to drive your nation to mass suicide during your first fifteen minutes in office! But the rest was great. I believed what he said about how we’ll approach foreign governments differently, how we’ll work alongside people of poor nations. That alone is reason to rejoice after the last eight years. And I cried at the simple, predictable, but breathtakingly moving statement that not long ago his own father would have been denied a seat in a Washington D.C. restaurant and yet here he now stood as President of the United States. God love him for wanting the job!

The speech contained multiple implicit jabs at former President Bush (ah, that’s the first time I’ve written that beautiful word—former!) but as two human beings standing there, they could not have been more cordial and even affectionate with each other. Cheney, on the other hand, in his wheelchair, looked like Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as I heard someone mention, waiting to steal the $8,000 from the Bailey Building & Loan and then blaming George Bailey for it. Some people say Obama needs to spearhead war crime charges against Bush and Cheney but I’d stake my life that this will never happen. There’s nothing in it for Obama and I think most of the country is too eager to see Bush fly off to oblivion in that helicopter. Moving on.

I was moved by poet Elizabeth Alexander's “Praise Song for a Day.” I think her reading would have benefitted from my seeing her on television instead of just hearing it on the radio. Was that slow, stilted style partly because she was nervous performing her work for millions just after the most anticipated speech of the decade, or was it more intentional than that? I tried to get Maya Angelou’s gorgeous inaugural poem “On the Pulse of Morning” out of my head so I wouldn’t compare it to Alexander’s. I liked the simplicity of the images (“Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges...”) and her snapshots of American moments that ended with “A teacher says, 'Take out your pencils. Begin.'” 

I know a bunch of people who were there today and who I assume are dancing the night away at the balls. My sister and brother-in-law didn’t go in the end because Jeff was still recording in New Zealand and is only coming home tomorrow after six weeks there. I’m still hoping for a Wilco command performance at the White House at some point during the next four years. Hear that, Mr. Rahm? But I heard reports today from my ex-wife Sophie and from other friends in Washington who were in the thick of it.

Here are three random shots of the day stolen from Facebook. The first was taken on the mall by my friends and former colleagues Bob Clark and Maria Sosa. The next one was taken by my cousin Tammy Korolnek (she’s not the Redneck), and the third by my neighbor who worked so hard for the Obama campaign, Roger Stewart. Roger was there with his wife Marguerite and their young daughter Makende who one day, many decades from now, will be able to tell her grandchildren that she witnessed some history being made.

 

Comments

[Tammy K]

Thanks for the photo credit! What an amazing time to be living in DC...

[therapydoc]

It's a good idea to listen to the kids. She's right! Aren't you glad you posted? And what photos!

[RD]

Leah was right--you HAD to write about this day. For posterity. It was fantastic. I had the same thought about Justice Roberts--hmmm... and whether someone would make a legal issue of the bungling. We heard a collective sigh of relief rise over the country at 12:01 eastern time yesterday.

[La Framéricaine]

That's a great daughter you got there, Mr. Miller!

I'm still crying. I too was emotionally drained after my self-imposed inauguration holiday from work, during which I drank champagne and ate carrot cake.

Oddly enough, I didn't take any of the words of the speech as thrusts at the Bush cohort. I just took them as pavers in the foundation of the ground of being from which we will now go forward.

The subversive genius of Obama seems to me to be his assertion that we have to do this together, that he cannot do it without US, and that he is willing, if we are willing.

Yesterday will live on in my memory as the singularly most positive day in my life re: the intersection of the political and the personal.

Re: Feinstein and that godawful announcement that she was responsible for making--I felt that she had earned the right to make such important and joyous announcements as she made yesterday and I was moved that she got the opportunity.

Amitiés,

[Julie Voss]

Thanks Leah! I really enjoyed this post.
I was crying too and glad to know I was not alone. Who's to say whether it was the IMMENSE RELIEF to have the Bush years behind me or the confident eloquence of Obama's words, but I was completely swept away.
Didn't Yo Yo Ma look blissed out?

[churlita]

I wish I could have seen it. We weren't allowed to watch it at work and I answer phones, so I wasn't able to listen to it. At least my daughters got to watch it at school. What a wonderful day. It sounds like everyone I know is ready to pitch in and help too.

[Judy]

It was such a great thing to watch. I thought of all those who died during the Civill Rights movement...Megar Evers, those four little girls who died in the church, Goodman, Schwerner and Charney...all those who never lived to see this with their own eyes. What a great sight to behold..the millions on the Mall...even though the two smart boards in the school cafeteria had an annoying 7 sec delay so we heard echoing. Aretha looked so good, so old school as I told some girls near me. The Queen of Soul. I just basked in the reflected joy of everyone on the mall. I got home to watch the Parade and later saw the Inaugural Balls.

[Gordon]

Dear Danny,
I feel like we had an evil dictator running our country for the past 8 years. And, now we've got our country back. We've got our freedom back.

[michelle]

i loved our crazy parade yesterday! and yes i'll bring my sign!
several folks brought american flags! and that was also very nice to see!!!....it sort of feels like the other team hijacked our flag! and i want it back!!! now! it belongs to all of us!

[joy]

Have you had a chance to read the text from Gene Robinson's prayer from Sunday? It is fantastic - and made me oh so much more grossed out by warren. Check it out if you haven't.

[Larry]

Thanks Danny, for another great post (and thanks to Leah for demanding it).

Oh, and I'm assuming the friends in the first sentence of this blog were hippies who compost, as opposed to people who compost hippies (yeah, I know, but I grinned at the image anyways).

And I assume it's just the cynical lefty/centrist in me, but I worry that for the next four to eight years, the Obama administration will get blamed for most of the ills, perceived or otherwise, of this country, no matter the improvement. I fear we're just too jaded and divided for another 'Camelot' (and I've never wished so much to be wrong about something).

[Jane]

You did Leah proud, Danny! This was a wonderful post, and contagious - just as I was coming down from my high, I read this and got all pumped up again.

My only point of difference with you is that I do believe the actions of the Bush administration do need an investigation, and if wrongdoing is found, it needs to be punished. In my mind, not to do so is only green-lighting abuses by future administrations.

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

It was a Great Great Day! I think you might want to print out Obama's speech Danny, because it is truly eloquent in every way....There may not be one of those 'one sentence' quotables, but for me, I think the whole speech is really really amazingly wonderful and filled with a lot of "poetry".....To be able to see the whole thing was a fantastic experience for me.....the Sea of people waving their little flags....The Obama's walking along the street having gotten out of their car....Those dear dear charming little children....It is ALL such a Breath Of Fresh Air. And finally, The Toads are gone. What a relief. The last video of Bush with his cabinet---I swear they all looked like a bunch of Old White Men Toads---even Condi Rice and especially Cheney!
(I love your saying he looked like Mr. Potter in that wheelchair....lol...SOOOO TRUE.....) But They Are Gone. Thank God!
And we have this young energetic thoughtful beautiful family in our White House now.....
These two people have a real relationship with each other and to their children....
AND.....He truly gives me hope that things WILL be alright! It is truly A New Day!