Watching History Happen

I know why this donkey is smiling.

6-8 November 2008, Washington, DC

It's like getting to a party after it's pretty much over: we can see the aftermath, the lingering festive mood, a few goodies left on a table here and there.

A Union Station crewman says, "Welcome to Obama Country," and I don't know if he's talking to just the conductor or all of us. I turn and smile anyway. Jack and I drag our bags upstairs.

This is Union Station:






We head towards the line for a taxi. A woman in the queue recognizes Jack and waves us over. "Are you going to Georgetown?" After the usual formalities you get at conferences -- Where do you teach? What's your specialty? Big classes? Tenure? -- we have to ask each other the inevitable: "Where were you at 11 o'clock last Tuesday night?" and not, "Did you work on the campaign?" but, "What did you do for the campaign?"

At the front desk of the Georgetown University Conference Center hotel it's the same thing, more tales of dancing in the streets.

Out on the streets on our way to dinner with Sean, Dale, Kevin, and Rebecca, we learn that Sean owes Dale a dollar because he didn't think it could happen but it did. Dale says, "I put my 'I voted' sticker on it and hung it up."

The next day, after everyone has put in their obligatory conference time, it's off to the Smithsonian museums to be tourists with Sean and Dale. We decide on the Air and Space Museum and stand beneath Soviet missiles, jet engines, Apollo capsules ("They fit a guy in there?"), one of the Wright Brothers' flying machines.

Then there's this cool sculpture outside:



Dale shows me pictures of the 20-foot long tribute to Obama at the Lincoln Memorial and I want to go. They don't mind seeing it again, so we pile into a cab, me in amazement how far everything is from everything else, and drive through rush-hour traffic. We don't have much daylight left by the time we get there.

The tribute is easy to find: it's where the crowd is.



I zero in on the tribute. Even if I could think of something original to write, I don't know if I'd find room to put it.





Behind the tribute is the edge of the Reflecting Pool. I kneel down to catch the Washington Monument's reflection.



When I turn around I'm facing the back of the tribute. Having run out of space on the front, people are signing the wood on the back.



We climb up to the Lincoln Memorial. Near the top I turn to ask Sean, "Where's the spot that Martin Luther King--" but we're looking down and I'm standing right on it. There's an engraving in the stone step. Sean and Dale have a picture from yesterday; someone had laid flowers here then but they're gone now.

I look up and out towards the Reflecting Pool. Behind me is the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves in 1862 and died for it. Under my feet is where Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream" in 1964, and died for it. And now it's 148 years later and 42 years later and there it is at the edge of the water, the end of something, the beginning of something, history cascading down the steps onto white panels on wood and the Washington Monument beyond. There are ripples of joy seeping into the gloom we felt for so long now that we no longer even noticed until three days ago when the gloom started to lift.

Another taxi takes us back to Georgetown where we meet up with Sharon, Nora, and Sonia on a restaurant's rooftop patio. We eat lots of skinny breadsticks. I watch the moon through the trees as it slides past half the branches and the night gets colder. Sean disappears, is gone too long, and emerges again with a Georgetown University sweatshirt for Dale. She puts it on before the shivers even happen.

The next day we pass this on our way into town:



And this, in a store window:



On a street corner is a stall selling Obama paraphernalia. Outside of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station you can buy Obama t-shirts, hats, and buttons, but this guy has Philly beat:




After filling up on Thai food, Dale, Sean, Rebecca, Jack, and I pile into yet another taxi and head for the Museum of Natural History.

We don't get too far in before we're wading into a sea of children. We get as far as the stuffed moose.

Two stuffed moose:



I duck into the gift shop to buy another stuffed moose for Jack.

There are too many people here, so we try for the minerals, give up on that, and find ourselves in the midst of dinosaurs. I like the expression on the face of this flying critter:



We give up on the Museum of Natural History and cross the mall in search of our second choice, which is closed. We wind up at the Museum of African Art.

This is a view from one of the lower levels, looking up:



On the lowest level of the museum we find an exhibit of photographs from the Civil Rights Movement. A crowd of whites taunting the first integrating high school students, a black photojournalist being beaten, a bus being burned, marches, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lying in state. I'm ashamed of what our country was, is.

The man in the gift shop upstairs had said, "There's only one picture missing. President Obama."

Back in Union Station the next morning we pass a store with a curious table outside:



If there's this, there has to be the other. I go around to the opposite side of the column to find it:



I still have my Obama pin on my denim jacket.

*****

Three days later, at work, I run into a friend who volunteered for the campaign in Philly. He's wearing a huge Obama pin. I flash the little one still living on my fleece cover-up. "How much longer are we allowed to gloat?" I ask him.

"Forever," he says.