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| From Inauguration 2009 Obama |
Aretha was amazing. She got two greetings from the crowd, once when her name was announced and one just for her hat. I really enjoyed the John Williams Air and Simple Gifts piece played by the quartet, and I was got a little tingly thinking that in the span of 10 minutes I heard Aretha, Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma play live!
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| From Inauguration 2009 Obama |
Dad noted that President Bush's term was officially over at noon, so the fact that they started a little late meant that during the quartet there was about three minutes when we HAD NO PRESIDENT. I don't think Dad thought the folks around him were suitably impressed with the potential implications of not having a President. One woman did argue that perhaps his clock was just fast...Dad, not wanting to make a scene slyly showed just me that he was reading the time from his cell phone and gave me the 'Three minutes without a president' eyebrow raise.
And then it was time for the Oath, and the fumble of the Oath. The odd thing about the jumbotron was that the video and audio weren't synced up, so we heard the fumble and then saw the fumble. The rest of the time the video delay was annoying, but at that moment it was pretty cool...kind of like it happened in slow motion. (aside...the delay was really annoying at first, but in a testiment to the way the brain works eventually you kind of didn't notice it again....like those experiments where they make you walk around with glasses on that make everything look like it is upside down until eventually your brain makes you feel like upsidedown is normal). I THINK I have this (the fumble not the glasses experiment) on video, but I'll have to figure out how to upload it.
It was incredible to be there for Obama's speech. Up until this point whenever a picture of Obama was on the screen the crowd started chanting his name. It was no different when he got up to deliver his speech, except that instead of doing the rock star response of smiling and waiting for the adoration to calm down, Obama started in, giving the crowd an "its time for business" look and within a second the whole crowd was silent. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I thought the speech itself was interesting. I liked that he took us all a bit to task for allowing ourselves to believe in the myth of unending prosperity. In the beginning where he started to talk about how the Bible says there is a time for all things, the crowd around us started to sway like in a revival, but stopped short when he culminated that section with the call to put away childish things (instead of "a time to dance"). It was clear that Obama was not seeing this speech as a love-fest celebration of an election won, but instead was an extended call for service and the crowd caught on fast. While one commentator said that the speech had a 'chilly spine', I actually liked that about it, and probably wouldn't have liked a 'rainbows and sparkles' speech given the times we are in.
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| From Inauguration 2009 Obama |
When Obama's speech was over the crowd started to dispurse quickly, which was kind of a shame given that the ceremony was not over. Because of the distraction of people bustling around I didn't get to really listen to the poetry reading like I would have liked. It didn't seem to catch on with the crowd, but I'm not sure there was much that could have followed well directly on the heals of Obama's speech...except for closing prayer, which was beautifully delivered and ended with a charming rhyme that had people giggling straight to through the Amen.
And so we have a new President.
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| From Inauguration 2009 Obama |
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