So, even though I'm feeling a bit under the weather, I'm getting ready to head out for the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. I was lucky enough to be able to get hold of two tickets from a friend that works in the office of a Congressman that I know. I've attended one inaugural and never thought I'd attend another, but of course this one is different. Even though something on the order of 1.5 million people will be expected on the Mall in Washington and a much better view will be had on television, I wouldn't miss this for the world.
Because it is the inauguration of the first African-American as president, right? No, not totally. Sure, that is part of it. I want my thirteen-year old son to see this moment in history happen, personally. We got involved in the campaign almost a year ago when we saw then-Senator Obama speak in Baltimore, and went on to work in primaries here in Maryland and in Pennsylvania, and in the general election in New Mexico, Colorado, California and Nevada. A few days before the election we found ourselves in Chicago, outside headquarters on Michigan Avenue, and I began to have the feeling that is peaking in me right now. Father and son, standing there in the perfect Halloween night, people all around -- leaving the symphony, in costumes running from one party or bar to another, ducking in for pizza or getting ready to propose marriage at the top of the Sears Tower -- a night where despite the animosity of the campaign and the amazing events of the past few months and seeing everything up close in tiny towns and in the faces of people across the country, everything seemed so perfect that time briefly stood still. It doesn't often do that.
What was it that made it happen? My son studies composing and had written a fanfare for Obama. A Fanfare for Hope and Change. We were there to give it to a staff member. We'd been trying to get it to him for months, and finally we were at the end of the campaign, off Route 66 and Route 50 and in the big city itself, right there in the place that lived and breathed Obama. We walked along the avenue and at the intersection of Michigan and Adams, we saw a sign that read "Begin Route 66". We'd driven the whole thing together, this "main street of America". My wife had been along until San Francisco but had flown home, and now it was just the two of us, there at the end, and at the beginning. I looked in his eyes and saw something I hadn't seen in a long time. Right there, at that spot, across the street from the site of the 1968 demonstrations and forty years from the beginning of the erosion of my own boundless optimism in America, I was seeing it again.
There's something about youth that fills us with hope. When we are young, we feel invulnerable, and when we see the young we can absorb a little of that energy, if we just let it happen. But growing old can be a process of jading ourselves and even though we might fight it, insulating ourselves against that energy. And yet without it, who are we? JFK said that the energy which we bring to the endeavor of citizenship will light our country and can even light the world. What happens when we let the glow from that fire inside each of us begin to dim?
To be American is to be an optimist. And to cease being optimistic is to lose an essential component of being American. As I write this, the economic calamity that I have feared for over a decade is upon us. All around, people turn inward, divorcing themselves from their communities and even from their families. The lifeblood of the country slows, and into the lurch steps government to try to supply the waning energy. But since when has government been able to do that? Even in the Great Depression, the People had to be animated by the specter of tyranny for the clouds to part. Government could provide the spark, but the People had to provide the flame.
My son was never able to get his fanfare to that guy. He had left headquarters to see Obama speak outside the city in Indiana -- right where we had the RV parked. We'd come into town because it seemed to make more sense to try to hand it off at the HQ rather than to actually try to negotiate the chaos of a rally. I wondered how much it bothered my son. We walked back to the rental car quietly, and then he spoke up. "Are we still going to Cedar Point tomorrow?" he asked. I said that it might be the next day, but that yes, we were going to that home of the greatest roller coasters on the planet. "Good", he said. "I'm going to ride the biggest roller coaster in the world!"
And he did.
So, now we set off for the inauguration, and the journey is ending. And beginning. Yesterday we saw Obama's train roll through town and I was reminded of going out to see RFK's funeral train in 1968 with my father. That was at the beginning of the night. But now, I feel my son's energy beginning to trickle into me and no matter how much I might try to insulate myself, that optimism beginning to return. Call it cultish or call it childish, but there is something extraordinary about a candidate that can do that. I look at this man and I see a mind that is alive and I know that for the first time in a long time, the sacred words will be spoken not as platitudes but by a man that knows -- truly knows -- their meaning.
I'm psyched.
Because it is the inauguration of the first African-American as president, right? No, not totally. Sure, that is part of it. I want my thirteen-year old son to see this moment in history happen, personally. We got involved in the campaign almost a year ago when we saw then-Senator Obama speak in Baltimore, and went on to work in primaries here in Maryland and in Pennsylvania, and in the general election in New Mexico, Colorado, California and Nevada. A few days before the election we found ourselves in Chicago, outside headquarters on Michigan Avenue, and I began to have the feeling that is peaking in me right now. Father and son, standing there in the perfect Halloween night, people all around -- leaving the symphony, in costumes running from one party or bar to another, ducking in for pizza or getting ready to propose marriage at the top of the Sears Tower -- a night where despite the animosity of the campaign and the amazing events of the past few months and seeing everything up close in tiny towns and in the faces of people across the country, everything seemed so perfect that time briefly stood still. It doesn't often do that.
What was it that made it happen? My son studies composing and had written a fanfare for Obama. A Fanfare for Hope and Change. We were there to give it to a staff member. We'd been trying to get it to him for months, and finally we were at the end of the campaign, off Route 66 and Route 50 and in the big city itself, right there in the place that lived and breathed Obama. We walked along the avenue and at the intersection of Michigan and Adams, we saw a sign that read "Begin Route 66". We'd driven the whole thing together, this "main street of America". My wife had been along until San Francisco but had flown home, and now it was just the two of us, there at the end, and at the beginning. I looked in his eyes and saw something I hadn't seen in a long time. Right there, at that spot, across the street from the site of the 1968 demonstrations and forty years from the beginning of the erosion of my own boundless optimism in America, I was seeing it again.
There's something about youth that fills us with hope. When we are young, we feel invulnerable, and when we see the young we can absorb a little of that energy, if we just let it happen. But growing old can be a process of jading ourselves and even though we might fight it, insulating ourselves against that energy. And yet without it, who are we? JFK said that the energy which we bring to the endeavor of citizenship will light our country and can even light the world. What happens when we let the glow from that fire inside each of us begin to dim?
To be American is to be an optimist. And to cease being optimistic is to lose an essential component of being American. As I write this, the economic calamity that I have feared for over a decade is upon us. All around, people turn inward, divorcing themselves from their communities and even from their families. The lifeblood of the country slows, and into the lurch steps government to try to supply the waning energy. But since when has government been able to do that? Even in the Great Depression, the People had to be animated by the specter of tyranny for the clouds to part. Government could provide the spark, but the People had to provide the flame.
My son was never able to get his fanfare to that guy. He had left headquarters to see Obama speak outside the city in Indiana -- right where we had the RV parked. We'd come into town because it seemed to make more sense to try to hand it off at the HQ rather than to actually try to negotiate the chaos of a rally. I wondered how much it bothered my son. We walked back to the rental car quietly, and then he spoke up. "Are we still going to Cedar Point tomorrow?" he asked. I said that it might be the next day, but that yes, we were going to that home of the greatest roller coasters on the planet. "Good", he said. "I'm going to ride the biggest roller coaster in the world!"
And he did.
So, now we set off for the inauguration, and the journey is ending. And beginning. Yesterday we saw Obama's train roll through town and I was reminded of going out to see RFK's funeral train in 1968 with my father. That was at the beginning of the night. But now, I feel my son's energy beginning to trickle into me and no matter how much I might try to insulate myself, that optimism beginning to return. Call it cultish or call it childish, but there is something extraordinary about a candidate that can do that. I look at this man and I see a mind that is alive and I know that for the first time in a long time, the sacred words will be spoken not as platitudes but by a man that knows -- truly knows -- their meaning.
I'm psyched.
