Yesterday an old friend from high school posted pictures of me on Facebook that I have not seen in almost 2 decades. I decided it would be funny to show off the atrocity that was my teenage hair. (The braces are a bonus.)
Mock at will. All of these were from my sophomore year.
(I think I look vaguely like a young Lauren Ambrose, but also like a collossal geek. Which, y'know, kinda fits.)
I promised these a few days ago but just finally am getting around to posting them...blame the illness I contracted from my roommate on this trip, which is making me want to do nothing more than lay in bed and sniffle.
Anyhow, here are my pictures from our very cold but wonderful day witnessing history. Enjoy.
Our view of the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony, which we could hear but not really see:
A look backwards at the million or so people behind us on the Mall:
The crowds in every direction were HUGE:
We were so so very cold, but so happy it didn't matter:
Afterwards, some fool people were walking across the ice of the frozen reflecting pool (and a few fell):
Before the inauguration itself, there was the We Are One concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday the 18th. We arrived just before it began due to brunch running a little long, but secured a decent spot just behind the WWII Memorial near a Jumbotron. It wasn't terribly cold, and the pushing and shoving was mostly down to a minimum (though we did have a near altercation with a tall nasty man who cut right in front of a few of us and stood there, splitting apart our group, and then refused to move or even be civil about it. We nicknamed him "Bitter Sasquatch.")
By now you have probably seen the HBO airing of the concert, so you know who all performed and what they sang. I started crying when the gospel choir sang the first words of "The Rising" before Bruce began strumming, and cried through most of the concert. It was such a wonderful outpouring of joy that so many dreams were finally being realized. Soon thereafter, Jon Bon Jovi and Betty LaVette performed Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come." I would never have expected JBV to pour the soul on like he did on that song, but it was really amazing. That is perhaps my favorite song epitomizing the civil rights struggle. My other two favorite moments were U2 performing "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and Pete Seeger, Bruce and a gospel choir performing "This Land Is Your Land," as the entire choir sang along. To see old hippie Pete Seeger's joy in the culmination of his hopes and hard work...it was spectacular. Everyone cried at that one.
Here are my pictures from the day:
The best part may have been after the concert, when we inched forward with the throngs for over an hour trying to get off the Mall. We ended up finally darting down a side street, where we were screamed at by a police officer when we tried to cross the street. With tails between our legs, we walked along the sidewalk until we came to a point where the sidewalk was closed, and another police officer told us that we had to wait there because the President-Elect's motorcade was about to come through. Suddenly, there it was! And because we were so close to the vehicle, you could actually see Obama wave at us from inside the back of the limousine. I was trying to snap a picture and failed somewhat, since what you see here is really the back of his limo and the front of the SUV behind it. But was still very very cool to have been that close and to have been acknowledged by Obama as he rode to his destination.
This is me this last weekend, firing a gun for the first time in my life:
It was a strange feeling. I did not mind the shooting, and even the kick was not that bad. The noise scared me, though. And as soon as I could get up to the target and see all the holes from the birdshot, and think about how those operate to kill dove or pheasant or what have you, I felt a little sad. I still don't think I could shoot a living thing.
The rifle scared the shit out of me. There are no pics of me holding that.
