Mr. Seth Goes to Washington, Part 2
(Written January 19th, 2009)
Dear Friends,
It’s hard for me to put into words what an extraordinary whirlwind of a day it has been.
I feel as if I am in the vortex of history.
I don’t know where to start or which theme to cling to. Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I feel psychically overwhelmed… and the Inauguration hasn’t even happened yet.
You can’t imagine what this city is like now. I can’t even imagine it, and I’m here.
The sense of historic precedence is everywhere, in every street, every restaurant, every metro stop, and the madhouse downtown by the Capital is beyond description.
It is like a mixture of Woodstock, Disney Land, New Years, July 4th, Superbowl Sunday, and of course MLK Day. In the evening I watch the news to see how they are capturing it, and you realize the limitations they are up against.
How do you describe the celebration that occurs spontaneously in the train when perfect strangers from different parts of the country just start talking to each other about where they’re from how’s they’ve come her: “I’m from Chicago”, “I’m from Ohio”, “I’m from Tennessee”, “I’m from California”, “I’m from North Carolina”, etc. This is everywhere.
I hear repeatedly from the Black people I’ve been talking to, “Anything is possible, now. Anything is possible.”
From the White people, a sense of joy that the nation has come to this historic threshold.
I actually saw the Obama motorcade tonight. The whole family was apparently going to concert. A bunch of young people on the corner were yelping with joy and waving to them.
I guess the central theme, and most mind bending aspect of my day was the visit to the Russel Senate Office Building to pick up my ticket for tomorrow. There were massive lines going around corners of all the entrances…full airport level security of course.
Once inside the Senate office building however, it was literally like a flee market or bazaar: large crowds of people, whole families, rooming the halls looking for their senator’s office in search of tickets. Of course many of these people had tickets waiting for them, as was my fortunate case, but many, to my surprise did not. They had heard that there were still tickets available and were literally going from office to office to get some. Wow!
Actually, their efforts were not without merit. Apparently some Republican and Midwestern state senators still did have tickets, and other folks were told that they could be on a waiting list and that after 5PM unclaimed tickets would become available, like willcall for a Red Sox game!
I feel like I’m just getting started now, but it’s 10:35 PM and I must go to sleep. I need to be up at 5:00 AM to be at the Mall check in by 7:00 AM.
I can’t even fathom what tomorrow is going to be like.
By the time this is all done, I’m going to need to sleep for a week.
I posted some photos at the link below, but unfortunately I was still just getting familiar with the camera and they don’t begin to tell the whole story. I do, however, have some excellent interviews on video, and I’ll post those in the coming weeks.
Best regards,
- Seth
http://picasaweb.google.com/seth.itzkan/DCJan1819#