The MetaNarrative

Back on the AMTRAK and headed home. After five days of running around the cold, chasing history wherever we could, history of the past, history being made and a historical prelude to the future. First the travelogue piece of the narrative, we ate at the Georgetown Grill last night, nice enough place in a fancy hotel. There are few cheap meals in DC that don’t come out of a cart or fast food joint. I had a jones for a cheeseburger before it’s back to reality and a normal, middle aged guy diet, also had some lobster bisque, which is nothing like the lobster bisque in New England, they also had Manhattan clam chowder on the menu, call it clam tomato soup or whatever but don’t call it chowder you heathens. Becky had a nicer meal, but I just wanted that damn burger and beer. Not sitting well with the lingering stomach flu. I can’t believe I went my entire vacation without once touching whiskey, damn digestive system.

We went to take the early train out of DC, lugging around all of our stuff and our child. Union Station was crowded, for those of you who are traveling with toddlers, always take the first, front seat in the train. There are no trays, but definitely more room to “run” around. This train was packed, a post-Inauguration train out of town. People are overloaded with their Obama gear. So we slowly and methodically leave DC, the land of the self-important, the pinnacle of power, where the local news in the news making capital of the world ironically is 90% traffic and weather.

I’m trying to get some collective thoughts together, most of this again if for my two year old, so we can somehow remember this week. And for my wife who engineered this whole extravaganza. What I really want to write about is the speech. I love rhetoric and often feel like I’m playing chess with the speaker and speech writers and overanalyze. I’d like to see the first and former drafts and find out what the initial direction was. The time to note where the Scripture was used and why, to understand all the hidden messages. Unfortunately we heard the speech through speakers walking away from the ceremony to the bus due to a sick child, I need some time to read the text and sit down with a glass of scotch and watch it on c-span.

Going Home
Like everyone else, I’m often asked “where you from?” and like most people who have lived in different places there are different answers. If I’m out of state, I usually tell people I’m from Boston; it’s a common reference even though I’m about 8 miles from the city itself. For work friends, colleagues and folks like that I usually say I’m from Melrose, but I grew up on the Cape, lived in Framingham, Somerville and Malden as well. For people who are looking for a familial context, my mother’s family is from Massachusetts and the Bronx and my father’s family is from Puerto Rico. But really my young childhood was spent in Northern Virginia, Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax County to be precise and most of my school vacations, etc were spent at my grandparents’ house down there.

When we were at dinner Inauguration night, the waiter asked us where we were from, when Latino people ask you that (he was Honduran), it usually means what country did your family come from, but in this case we said the usual, Boston (since there were folks in town from all over the country), but then I remarked but I was born right over here on Pennsylvania Avenue in the District. “Wow”, he remarked, “you’re only the second person I’ve met that was actually born here, the other one was my daughter.”

DC is quite remarkable in its mobile population, certain there are Washingtonians who have lived here for generations, but mostly and particularly in the Northwest part of the city, there is a constant churning of the population. You are as likely to be born in Tegucigalpa, Denmark or Nairobi as in Columbia Hospital. Being born in DC, meant that I really only spent the first three days of my life here before being taking home to Virginia. I do have some roots in the DC area, still a Redskins fan, but as time has gone by in my life I have become more disconnected. I tried living down here for a while after college, thinking it would be a good start to a professional career but it lasted about 10 months, I ended up going back to cooking over the summer and then into graduate school and living in Somerville to never look back. Since my grandfather moved to Florida and later passed away, my connections weakened even more, to the point that now I’m just a tourist.

So, home is now Boston, or Melrose technically, it’s where my heart lives, it’s where I’ve buried the stakes of my life. Washington is now like it is to most people, a center of power, and a center of history. A nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Color, Caste and Class
On every news broadcast from Fox News to American Pravda Weekly, the inauguration of the 44th President was announced as “historic”. And that is that nobody ever thought that a dark complected individual would ever be President. Certainly this is a man that can negotiate many cultures, a White culture in which he was raised by his mother and grandparents, an immigrant and specifically African culture by blood, an African American culture by context and surely the culture of the corridors of power, greased by Harvard and access to the best education. What lies underneath this talk of a “historic” inauguration is a lack of conversation on color, caste and class and whether truly this “historic” event has knocked down the vestiges of racism and classism.

It is hard to talk about race. It is often easier to talk about class or even “caste” which to me is the institutionalization of class. . You are maligned as either a “racist” or on the other end of the spectrum being “too PC”. The argument is that we should really talk about class, meaning we have de-racialized the entire discussion. To me this is a coward’s way out; you can’t talk about one without talking about the other. Today, for example, schools are more segregated then ever, but ironically one of the biggest destructive mechanisms to the black middle class in the south was desegregation, which cost thousands of jobs for middle class African American adults who were employed as teachers and administrators in segregated “black only” schools. While “Jimmy Crow” ended for the youth, “James Crow” locked out a lot of adults from decent paying jobs in “desegregated” schools, but I digress…

In nowhere but DC is the range of color, caste and class so apparent. As I noted above there always seems to be few people who were born in the wealthier part of the city. However in southeast and other parts of the city there are people who have lived there for generations, perhaps descendants of freemen or even folks who were auctioned off as little as 200 years ago in the district itself.

Most of the African American population in the District is the “underclass”. This very term is hard to define, I’m not an economist and can’t tell you what the actual income levels would be but suffice to say for my purposes it’s the poor, both working and non-working, on public assistance or not that are struggling day-to-day to make ends meet. For some of these families, people may have been on public assistance for generations, many of the folks are ill-educated, underserved by DC public schools in the past, large numbers of males (and growing numbers of females) have been institutionalized in prisons, so prison culture begins to match that of the streets and vice-versa. It’s a depressing scene, for the very poor; the homeless it is even more extreme, particularly in the cold and particularly for those homeless people that are severe substance abusers and/or mentally ill, it is extremely difficult for these poor folks to access the most rudimentary social services such as food and clothing. I am sad to say I saw a man with flip flops on, no socks, walking by and in a moment that I could have given him my own socks, embarrassingly just passed him by, not my best moment but my fear of possible mental illness and the threat to my family caused this lack of charity.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter mile away, one could spend over five dollars for a single cup of fancy coffee. A mile or so away, a celebration for a new President cost tens of millions of dollars. I believe in capitalism and the right of all to rise to the best of their abilities but certainly this fella should have a pair of socks when it’s ten degrees out.

Many of the poor have had a terrible shot at the American experience. The best and brightest have always risen to the top, particularly those that were blessed by strong families and teachers who led them down a path of success. But many continue to be cursed by multi-generational poverty and general lack of access to the good parts of capitalism, be chewed up and spit out by life. In many ways, Obama never had this experience, the experience of the urban cycle of poverty as a child, the legacy of slavery, not to say that there wasn’t racism at every turn but not the type of virulent institutional racism that faces many urban African Americans. As a community organizer in Chicago he worked in these communities, but his scars are not as deep. Nonetheless he is a hero and an icon to those that live in these communities and I think more so in those communities that have risen above it.

The amazing part about this trip to DC was the turnout of these folks. The amazing numbers of African American families that came out for celebration. And when I say families I mean multiple generations of families, grandparents (maybe even great-grandparents) parents, children, aunts, uncles, close family members that came from all over the country. All with a certain level of affluence to take time off there jobs, get everyone together and travel. I felt for the southerners and Californians who had no idea of the concept of layering clothing and discovered on the fly that many layers of Obama gear would help to keep them warm.

I could see Dr. King smiling amongst these hordes of people, but I was wondering, was he truly smiling on seeing the President himself standing there, feeling the same pride I felt as he snapped salute after salute to passing military honor guards? I was wondering, was he truly looking at John Lewis and other veterans of the civil rights movement that had gone beyond the fire hoses, birdshot and police dogs to the very highest levels, the corridors of power? Actually, I think Dr. King was looking down on the Mall far beyond the Capitol from the same spot where he gave one of his greatest speeches at a horde of successful people both African American and not, sometimes literally hand in hand to mark an enormous change in America. At a place where a shantyville was build by the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 where King had merged his racial justice movement with that of an economic justice movement, Americans of different colors, classes and creeds had come together to celebrate the unshackling of part of their former selves.

To adapt Winston Churchill’s quote about the battle of El Alamein, “certainly this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.”

Is the US Government the only people who buy US cars?
While watching the parade I started to think, are federal, state and local governments the only people who buy American cars? Outside of rental agencies, most American cars I see have government plates of some kind. A lot of these security vehicles are SUV’s, limos or high horsepower police vehicles and for more pedestrian state employees, Malibu’s, Taurus’s and the particularly brutal Chevy Aveo. With the cap values of these American car companies being greatly exceeded by the current and future government bailouts (I think Avon at this point is worth more than General Motors, which was once the most valuable company in the world) would it make sense for the government to take the ultimate step of simply adopting these company, nationalizing them into some wing of the Pentagon.

Wes Clark, who I usually side with on most issues but disagree on this, argues that to let these companies fail, to diminish American industrial capacity is a national security issue in the same way that pre-WWII (read Depression) capacity hurt the initial buildup of US force infrastructure. If had not been for some recovery governmental spending and the roughly two years before the US became involved in the war officially, the argument is that the Arsenal of Democracy would have flunked the test, and that the industrial support particularly of the Red Army who turned the Nazis back would have been diminished greatly. I’m not one to argue with a Rhodes Scholar and a national security expert but this seems not to be fighting the last war, but probably 4 wars ago. I’m trying to envision a scenario in which the US would have to produce that level of tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc., would it be WWIII, a land war in Asia, a return to fighting the Russians across the Fulda gap?

I’m no national security expert but this seems to be a very weak argument for not letting these companies fail. Certainly this industrial capacity if necessary could be developed in current auto plants in the south that are building smaller, more efficient cars. If not then there is a case for nationalizing these plants and drafting car makers into a reserve component of the armed forces, OK sounds crazy and it is.

Message to Elena
On Christmas, your mama engineered this whole trip to DC. I had half joked about going, but knowing my grand opposition to crowds and spending money, I didn’t think it would actually happen. How crazy one may think, bring a toddler in the middle of the winter to stand outside in the freezing cold, never getting a chance to actually “see” the event. Well, baby, I guess 90% of life is just showing up and you were a part of history this week.

You won’t remember anything about this, which is why I tried to write a bunch of stuff down and take some pictures, we’ll tell funny stories about how horrible we were as parents to take our girl with stomach flu all over the city in the cold and how you threw up on my back. How I taught you Lincoln’s house and Obama’s house. We even made sure to include some embarrassing photos of you eating crackers in bed with just a diaper on, that I’m sure to show every first date that you have and maybe if I’m so lucky use it as an 8 by 10 as your wedding photo.

So there you were in Lincoln’s house looking down on the crowds watching the end of the Bush administration. It was the end of an era as well as the beginning of another, it had been a run of Reagan/Bush and Clinton for 28 years, not far removed from Nixon and a 4 year outlier by a peanut farmer from Georgia, at a time when people would have voted for an outsider, any outsider unblemished by Watergate. At this point we have rolled the dice with a young man (relatively by political standards) from Hawaii via Illinois. It’s hard to say what kind of President he’ll be, “historical” yes, but so was Andrew Johnson.

He’s got a rough trail ahead of him. An uncharted trail filled with hazards, both foreign and domestic. Not only a “War on Terror” and an economy that seems to be broken but also the image of America in the world as a bully and not a “City on the Hill”. Not only crumbling infrastructure, meaning physical infrastructure such as bridges, roads, and buildings but human infrastructure such as education, health care, and retirement. I’m not sure there’s a roadmap for this. The traditional Democratic roadmap of “relax, government will take care of everything for you” seems as flawed as the Republican roadmap of “every man for himself”.

How to regulate but not over regulate? How do you get the right people in government, not only elected officials but those that execute the orders of the legislative and executive branch? How do you run a government that is not so small and ineffectual that “you could drown it in a bathtub” but also not so big and arduous that it runs every aspect of everyone’s life and stifles opportunity for wealth and production?

OK, a two year old likely isn’t going to understand this or answer these questions. In fact the hundreds of think tanks and politicians have yet to figure this out. But my challenge is for you to answer these questions and to grade President Obama not on his transformative nature but on his execution. He does not have the benefit of being a caretaker president, the train for the most part has jumped the tracks, and this is not to say that the tracks and the train don’t exist, but the engineer has got to get things in gear.

Inauguration Day

The long awaited day, a new chance, a new start. Now the right wing has played up that Obama is being played up as the Messiah and after being in Washington for a few days among his most fervent followers, I can’t say I disagree with them. I’m all about being optimistic but one man doesn’t make a miracle worker outside of the movies.

People need to realize that the new President really is in a world of you know what. Putting out the fires that exist today while promising “change” for the future. It is hard to make change, turning the ship of federal bureaucracy around while getting sniped at from the right and the left on every possible move that he makes. Right wing radio has already ripped Obama’s “socialist” policies and I have said before there is just not enough revenue to fulfill the left’s dreams of more social services and aid to education and the environment. I’m unsure if the polarization of the past 16 years is reparable, I think we are a nation with way to much pressure from the edges, this pressure causes intellectual paralysis. Will an Obama administration with a frustrated middle in Congress of both parties be able to overcome the gridlock, to make real change and home and abroad. Wow, now that would be a real American revolution.

Another Sickie Morning
Elena was sick again in the middle of the night, she seems to throw up and then feel better. It’s still touch and go with her digestive system but we’re off to inauguration. It’s cold this morning in DC, colder than yesterday with a wind. We got on a crowded bus, again people don’t really understand public transit and of course don’t understand their surroundings, one woman said that Elena could sit in her lap, and even as a guy who believes in the kindness of strangers, we’re not about to hand over our daughter to some weird lady in a fur coat talking into a voice recorder. A woman finally gave her seat to Becky and Elena, preventing them from falling down on the metro bus. We got off on Washington Circle and started down 23rd towards the Lincoln Memorial. For some reason, taxis were still allowed down this road but not the buses. So it was just some bicycle rickshaws, taxis and National Guard humvees. People were pouring out of the GW/Foggy Bottom stop into a ad hoc flea market that had been set up outside with Obama merchandise. No McCain merchandise to be seen anywhere. The only merchandise that I found really annoying were the American flags with imagery on them. The American flag stands for us all and should not be used for personal gain or celebration, burning a flag is one thing, it makes a statement, but adding one’s personal touch is an insult to us all.

We managed to leave Georgetown a little after nine, TV reported that people were arriving long before dawn. Our objective was to be somewhat realistic; you just can’t spend that much time out in the cold with your toddler and I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be close enough for a clear sight anyway. We were happy with the jumbotrons and set sites for the Lincoln Memorial.

The Crowd and Setting
I love the Lincoln Memorial. The idea of Lincoln keeping the country together in reality and his seeming overlooking of the Capitol and the country as a whole in some sort of eternal marble vigilance. Also as the place where King made amongst his greatest of speeches in a place of one of the greatest of gatherings. A lot of people had the same idea as we had and took a seat along the steps, we spent sometime and took some photographs among the Lincoln Memorial and then headed down into the throngs of people around the Mall. There were some nice volunteers in red knit caps wishing everyone a good morning with a smile that I later deemed the prozac patrol.

The beauty of DC is despite a million, two million people whatever, there was still enough space available to move around, as long as you didn’t need to have your face pressed up against the window upfront. Where we were going, security was limited, meaning while there were hundreds of guardsmen around and other security folks, you could carry bags, strollers, whatever. A couple of smart people had actually brought chairs and as much as I know could have had flasks of bourbon (taking notes for my next historic DC event). There were some bottlenecks of barricades and people who are either electronically or intellectually distracted and didn’t really understand the nature of crowds and that they did not move at their whim. Also for the tens of millions that were spent on security, 100 sheets of Xeroxed paper with some arrows point where you could and couldn’t go would likely have been helpful. I can save that for my after action report.

The crowd had an amazing energy and incredible diversity. I would estimate that 40% or more of the crowd consisted of African American families from all around the country, as contrasted with the large underclass of Black people in the District itself it was amazing to see these extended groups of families and friends, students from HBCU’s, sororities and fraternities joining in the celebration. It looked beyond King’s dream to Cosby’s creation. When Elena started to cry, she was offered cookies by a father of twins with Down syndrome, it was a crowd that was ready to cheer, as if a heavy weight had been pulled off them. As I have said the cult-like adoration was somewhat disturbing but if this enthusiasm can be channeled into work and service then maybe this country has a fighting chance after all.

By this point about a half hour or more before the swearing in, Elena finally had enough, it wasn’t that she was cold but “her belly”. And just starting uncontrollably crying. Nothing we could do about it, there were a bunch of folks around but still room for people to move around. Kids were playing, people stomping their feet to keep warm, walking around, some stupid people who had brought bikes through the crowd, stupider people who had brought dogs, and a stupid guy who was rollerblading. The jumbotrons were cool, but we had a sightline through a leafless tree in exchange for more room to wander around. The sound was great, occasionally picking up on live mikes just general chatter on the stage.

The Ceremony

Slowly dignitaries, including the living Presidents (OK, bringing Lincoln himself would have been kind of gross) were introduced getting jeers and cheers by an overwhelmingly Democratic partisan crowd.

Rick Warren came out to do the prayer. Rev. Warren has been under some fire for his homophobic tendencies, many of which are shared by many of his evangelical flock. I’ll say this, outside of this, I do like Rick Warren. He reverse tithes, giving 90% of his money to the church and is concerned about economic and environmental justice issues. I’m not nearly conservative enough to join his church but I like to hear him speak. He gave a fairly long prayer and a Christian prayer at that which may be disturbing to our non-Christian friends but Rick Warren and his followers can be a positive if unlikely ally to the Obamamaniacs. He stresses service both to God and to his fellow man. Certainly there will be a great deal of disagreement between progressives and evangelicals but both of them have some common views on a few important issues. Evangelicals make up 20% of the US population, anointing Rick Warren despite his views on homosexuality pay homage to those folks and maybe a bended ear to the Oval Office by a leader of the Evangelical community, some may call it pandering and some a reach across a dangerous chasm of misunderstanding. There was limited reaction in my area to this, some sneers from some of the more “progressive looking” folks but mostly just listening in anticipation to the main event.

The swearing in of VP Biden brought a small clamor from the crowd and Aretha Franklin really warmed them up. Then came the main event, the swearing in of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States. Wow, people just started going crazy, the equivalent of Elvis or the Beatles, or just hundreds of thousands of people celebrating. I was as if the Sox had won the World Series in front of 1.5 million people live in 2004.

Unfortunately Elena’s crying had become crazy and we had to leave as the President made his speech. (More comments on that tomorrow). I carried her back up past GW to the bus, as efficient as the buses were getting people in, is as confusing as getting people out, the buses and stops lacked appropriate marking, showing the focus on the complicated instead of the simple like signage. We made our way back and were able to warm-up nap and watch the parade on television, how sweet it was to see Barack Obama snap out those first salutes as commander in chief.

Day 4

Uggh. Damn stomach flu, why, why now. Seems to be a quick spin through the body, but pretty darn brutal, Elena as I said threw up on my back in the backpack and we’ve had to do several loads of laundry (ok, Becky has). Becky had it and then it hit me hard, I was pretty depressed but then I rallied. We caught our favorite Circulator bus got off at GWU and took the train over to Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery
As I have said in a pervious post, http://theangrymiddle.blogspot.com/2007/05/on-behalf-of-grateful-nation.html Arlington is an incredible place. Not only for members of my family obviously but for thousands of other families. Today, Arlington was a mob scene of buses and people. Thousands coming to “see the sites”. I still have never seen the eternal flame or the changing of the guard, my visits are personal and to my grandparents. As much as I’d like to see these things, I’m usually ready to go on my way.

Going through the throngs there are few people that are actually seem there to visit loved ones, most are there to see the sites, and pay their respects to those who have served in a more general sense. There was a small group of 82nd Airborne troopers in loose formation, who I imagine were in the city on some type of security duty and I later thought probably there in the cemetery to visit someone that they have loved and lost. The soldiers are so young, so many of them look like they are a couple days out of high school, not having felt a razor to their face but likely visiting a lost friend.

Elena got to meet her great grandparents, or in the least a monument to their memory and we got to visit a monument to America’s greatness, or actually the greatest of its people and specifically its warriors.

Walking the Mall
Washington has become on odd place since the days of my youth. Well, I guess it was always a little off, as any place that it the seat of government of the free world would be. A certain sense of self importance by a set of residents that tend to not be long time denizens of the city, brought back and forth by political winds of change. However, today, unlike the days of my youth it is a fortress.

Security since 9/11 has been tantamount, to the point that our Department of Justice looks like something out of a dystopic, post-apocalyptic nightmare. Flowerboxes serve a dual function, the vessel for plant like and also to protect from suicide bombers. Including at some places that I’m unsure if al Qaeda, Baader Minhoff gang or Earth First would ever consider attacking. One thing though it the NEA ever becomes the terrorist group that the former Secretary of Education insisted it may be, it is one of the few buildings that a F-350 could get a good hit of pavement to hit.

The security changes are not only the physical walls and barriers but the absolute exponential growth of security forces, both public and private. You can’t go anywhere without seeing an armed security guard of some kind and often turning in different directions you will see representatives of many different law enforcement organizations. This weekend security of course was at an extreme but on a usual day the capital is an armed camp. Curiously, the National Guard present (estimated at over 10,000) was unarmed, unsure if that is due to posse comitatus or not. Also somewhat concerning was the physical fitness of some of our guardsmen, which was fascinating in these days that the guard is so frequently used in active duty.

The Mall is America’s backyard. When I was little there would be dozens of football games, soccer games, whatever being played upon it. It also is a place of history, with protests and celebrations that have provided the flavor for the vanilla that DC can often be.

We walked the entire mall after walking over from Arlington, it seemed a balmy 35 degrees at that point, it was impossible to get up to the Lincoln Memorial as they had all the stuff still up from Sunday’s concert. Walking through the throngs of people and vendors to the Capitol where the cold started to take over. We got a passing glance at Soledad O’Brien through the crowd, I was shocked, she was like a rock star. I’m just glad I’m taller because I wouldn’t have had a shot. The plethora of Obama gear is still amazing to me, and people are just scooping it up

The on-demand Sesame St. Elmo is a good relaxer for Elena, and gets her to downshift through her stomach issues as we drag her around town, she managed to fall asleep in the backpack for a couple of hours. She got to visit baby Nate this evening and Carrie’s cats Marbury and Madison.

Day 3: The Stomach Flu

We tried to get an early start this morning but during our bagel trip, Elena threw up so we came back to do some laundry. Met a fellow Red Sox fan at the bagel store, a young kid from DC, the nation grows. We tried to make it out again and Elena threw up again in the knapsack and all over my back. OK, today looks like a washout, it may just be NFL football in someone else’s basement. But he has a 50 inch TV so it may not be a washout altogether. And they sell Yuengling at the Safeway. Hopefully everyone will be healthy enough that I can start that million person “USA, USA” chant. NOTE: Now we all have some version of the stomach flu, hopefully we’re all healed by Tuesday.

Obama: Cult v. Substance

There is something discomforting and odd to the Obama phenomena. He has been the darling of the liberal press, first because the mainstream press while not likely “liberal” itself consists of mostly liberal (at least in the classical sense) people outside of Fox and talk radio. Liberal meaning a constant interest in change and accepting difference, a certain curiosity in life as opposed to the more accurate leftist/socialist label that is put on the press by the right wing. This press was interested in Obama because he was interesting, not only a good narrative but smart, well educated and the ability to communicate beyond soundbites and clichés. McCain had a great narrative as well, and was the only Republican with a chance to win but he ran away and took bad advice to go to the right, rather than the vital center that had fed his whole career.

Outside of the press adoration there was a strange public adoration by Obamamaniacs. For people of color it was a transformative candidate, beyond the poverty pimping and race card playing to a man being judged by the content of his character, his intelligence and talents. For left liberals there was a change from the odd last eight years of administration and for those far to the left (that saw Clinton as a conservative) a possible end to some 40 years of conservative presidencies (outside of the Carter outlier). For the young and even Generation X it was the potential election of one of their own.

But like I said for many of the deciding votes that put Obama over the edge it was just the change that people felt was needed. A sinking economy was what put people over the edge and the seeming addled commentary by McCain and his followers that the economy’s fundamentals were strong. We who lean to the left should always remember that it was a single digit swing that led to the Obama victory and that the tough decisions that will need to be made will lead to further defections from this vital middle.

My initial observation is that there are too many people who are putting their faith in the man, rather than the management and leadership of the system. The number of folks with Obama wear and jewelry is incredible, albeit the inauguration is a celebration of a historic event and not the kickoff of a cult of personality. There are more images of the leader than any other leader this side of Pyongyang. I mean, t-shirts, hats, necklaces, sweatpants, sweatshirts, etc. I’m a man who holds on to clothes for a long time, and it’s hard for me to think of my Obama knit cap during a future Jeb Bush administration. There is a tremendous amount of Obama gear around the city, including Obama/Biden earrings. I’m holding out for the Biden story telling doll.

I’m afraid of people’s disappointment. That a President Obama will not be able to pull the magic that people think he will be able to do. I face the same frustration with some Christians who will pray for money or for God to help them through some magic or miracle, rather than praying for the strength or wisdom to make these decisions. It will take some fierce effort and wait for it, some sacrifice to help make things change. After everything is swept up and the port a johns are put away the work begins. There likely will be millions of disappointed people, frustrated with the speed of change, the seeming same old same old in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a deepening economic recession based on some real issues.

The father of the Red Sox fan had flown in from overseas on business. He commented that at the airport he had never seen so many overseas visitors and that most were here to see Obama inaugurated, now that’s something. You have a whole world, well at least those with the money to travel to the US who may be thinking the same thing, that’s a lot of weight on one man’s shoulders.

Listening to the right wing radio already talk about the failure of the Obama administration, you hear the other side. The frustration with the anointed Obama, the frustration of looking at a man who some authentically feel to be too inexperienced, too liberal/socialist or more disgustingly too black, too foreign or too Muslim.

I feel that Obama has the substance to get the job done, the willingness to listen to other smart people and make the right final decision, the understanding that his constituency is the entire United States of America and in fact the world. The world is going to have to be patient, these growing pains of globalization and misorientation of resources towards the extreme wealthy are going to take time to iron out. All the brilliant rhetoric in the world won’t help.

The Coming Wage Deflation

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. The auto industry has come hat in hand to Congress making some political missteps along the way. What kind of auto industry doesn’t understand the right political move here, a convoy of their products heading through various states and having various events in factories in the states where they make their products. Oh, I guess the type of auto industry that makes crappy products that no one wants to buy.

You’ll hear everyone screaming about the UAW and the onerous contracts that make each car $1800, $2200 or $3 million dollars more expensive than their Japanese equivalent. Most of these are due to “legacy” costs, the costs of health care and pensions of those damn retirees who just keep living longer. Of course, all these contracts were made in good faith (Disclosure: As a grad student I was a member of the UAW) but made at a time where no one could see that Americans would go and buy Hondas and Toyotas that were more reliable. The US companies continued to make SUV’s and trucks that were great, but since few of us work on farms and we continue to drive farther and farther for work, these options didn’t make the sense of buying a Civic and knowing it wouldn’t be in the shop 6 times a year.

Recently some Republican legislators by Bob Corker (dooshbag-Tenn.) have come to say that there should be no bailout unless the unions agreed to terms similar to those of the Japanese companies that are running factories in you guessed it, Tennessee and other southern states. So essentially, you have a Republican senator leading a movement to have American wages determined in the boardrooms of Tokyo. It would make one wonder which side of the desk the winning side was on the USS Missouri in 1945. It’s enough to make your head swim.

I’m not one to say that these agreements don’t put American automakers at a competitive disadvantage but to blame the terrible planning and implementation on workers is just insane. And the fact is, they signed the contracts. What is scary is not so much these companies going the way of horse glue factories, but the effects that good, strong unions and high pay have had on the rest of the working public. The benefits and pay levels that many Americans now take for granted came from competition for workers with these companies that are now coming to pass.

So the economy retools in the next few years, there is the potential for wage deflation, that is fewer benefits and less pay for the same or equivalent positions that may actually require more education and qualifications, for most gone are the days you could walk out of high school and get a good job for the rest of your life.

What the danger here is, is the threat to the whole middle class. A class of people who have already overextended themselves to overreach to the class above will now likely have to stretch farther to own homes, get health care, care for both their children and their parents. We lose sight of this as we get frustrated with what seems the outrage of unions that protect the worst employees and continue to get high wages on the taxpayer’s dime while the layoffs continue across the country in other businesses.

Let’s remember that during this crisis, the big banks and the big moneyed class are starting to restructure themselves as well, using huge taxpayer bailouts and the gun to the head of the American government to fiercely protect the ultra rich, likely at the hands of the middle class.

Day 2: The Cold

This should be interesting. I mean it’s fricking cold. I mean February northern New Hampshire cold, cold as a witch’s teat, cold enough that gasoline freezes, cold enough, well you know where I’m going fellas.

There are people coming from all over the known world. We met a woman from LA today, where it was 87 degrees. People aren’t used to this. Like I said yesterday, people here dress to look good. You see the certain crazies, people running, and of course people who ride bikes, but they actually appear to prepared for the weather, along with the bicycle rickshaws.

It struck me as obvious things often do, to look at the poverty around the opulence here in DC. The wealth in DC is concentrated in Northwest, the Capitol area and then through Georgetown on up. Seeing the homeless and beggars within the shadow of the White House and the other circles of power is quite striking. This is nothing new of course, but it made me wonder of other national capitals and whether the contrast is as amazing.

The sign of three homeless folks, waving happily at my daughter was incredible, people who have nothing, having a nice moment with my little girl. Sigh, ok time to put my head back into the sand for a while.

MASS TRANSIT

“Public transportation is for losers” Homer Simpson

I’m not sure that public transit will ever work in this country. First, we are all too fat, lazy and uncooperative. If we have to do anything at all that will inconvenience us then we just don’t want do it. It’s hard to tell a date, “yo, meet me down at the bus stop, I’ll be moving by on the 106, just check the schedule.” And often frankly, it’s just not convenient or doesn’t go where we want to go.

The other issue is that it is sometimes just so nonnegotiable unless you grew up with it. If you have never taken buses in a city for example, you have no idea where they go. Before the Internet you needed the Rosetta Stone of buses, that being a 47 year old woman who grew up in Somerville to figure out how to get anywhere. You could sit on the side of Mass. Ave and chronicle the goings on, write your anthropological master’s thesis and still have no idea what’s happening. Or you learn the essential buses, which doesn’t help if someday you need to do something you ordinarily don’t do. You know an MRI or something, because the best time to figure out how to get to Beth Israel is when you’ve torn your ACL and there is three inches of ice out.

The Internet has made it somewhat easier with rider tools and whatnot but that 47 year old woman is still going to tell you “that’s retarded” because she knows the bus driver from the 62 bus is hooking up with a girl from the Newtowne Grill and always takes his time on that route.

So that’s what I’m trying to say, there is absolutely no consistency even within one city when it comes to public transportation. Washington, DC who has exactly 892 people who actually were born and have lived in the District all their lives and actually leave their own neighborhoods is a prime example. The major issue is, I don’t know that 47 year old woman from Southeast who help me out and lets just say that as a government employee I know that the worst gov’t employees go to work for transit. Why? Because it’s one of the few places left where you’re uncle’s friend’s city councilman can still hook you up. If you are in the capital of the free world you should be able to explain how the system works, but mostly it’s not their fault. They just keep building stuff on top of itself, there are like 12 different types of machines with the same functions, to sell you a card so you can take various type of transport. And God forbid you rip a flimsy little card, because you’re going to take half a day to fix it and we’re only going to have one teller on the biggest weekend ever. OK so between my wife and I’s multiple advanced degrees we eventually figured it out but still I have two different cards, because God forbid you could transfer the huge sum of 17 dollars to a new card.

So my answer is standardization. Like EZ pass or whatever. Use the same damn system across the country. You take federal dollars you use the same system taking people’s money. You use the same way of communicating how the hell you get somewhere. You don’t need NASA to help you to put up a sign telling what bus that 90% of the people want to go on goes to and where it picks up. The thing is with transit is that it is extremely expensive, fares cover only a small piece of the pie, you gotta fill those trains and buses to make it worthwhile.

That being said the Metro for all of it’s typical Washington area “flavor”, that being boring, sterile and confusing is very clean and efficient. The no food thing could be annoying on a regular basis, but damn compared to Boston it’s like being on a Finnish airliner. And they make up with bus service to where people want to go at the cheapest prices. The circulator was great, no thinking to it the perfect tourist bus. Once of course you consulted the Oracle to find out where it went.

Smithsonian History Museum

There is no better gift to the nerdy American public than the Smithsonian. OK, so you rook my wallet for the Farm Bill, knock some of my bucks away to fake a moon landing and give out some nice corporate welfare to some fatcats, but I can see the Hope Diamond for free so let’s call it even.

The history museum was closed for about two years. I can’t really tell the changes but I do love this place. So much cool stuff. If I was an eccentric Bond billionaire it’s the type of crap I’d have in my carved out volcano. They do a good job in kind of finding regular people and put them into the entire historical picture. You know the kind of thing that pisses some people off, the kind of people who think that Napoleon conquered half of Europe by himself with only the assistance of a well trained horse and a flintlock pistol.

Elena really liked the trains, maybe because she has been on some type of public transport for most of the last 30 hours, for some reasons I don’t think toddlers understand the significance of Lincoln’s signed documents.

At first, there didn’t seem to be that many people in DC. Maybe people were just showing up, maybe people thought it was too cold, who knows. We managed to get to MetroCenter, consult with the Oracle of the Metro and get our SmartPasses, although at first she would only let me buy one. I asked her if my wife and I had to make separate purchases and eventually she let me slide. I’m thinking that she may have actually been holding people up in getting to spend money in the city.

There was a guy who was dressed as Lincoln, a dead ringer and a guy dressed as Jefferson and as Washington. I was looking for the guy dressed as Andrew Johnson. How cool it would be to be an Andrew Johnson recreator. I also voted for him in the survey as best president ever. Why? Because it was a stupid survey, a survey of people dorky enough to stop and answer an electronic survey of best presidents ever.

The crowds started getting larger. A lot of youth and their chaperones, chaperoning has got to be one of the most thankless jobs ever. I would say it is the equivalent of working in a chicken factory, everyone loves chicken but nobody wants to process them for 10 hours a day. We had a thirty dollar lunch that likely had the markup of Peruvian cocaine, I have no idea why everything in DC costs so much, particularly food, food seems to be about 1 and half times the amount of any in Boston, which is an expensive city in itself.

A good history trip though. Stuff about Jewish immigration to Cincinnati that seemed kind of random that I’m excited to tell my friend Josh about. Also a gorgeous Indian motorcycle and an M-1 carbine that I’d like to add to my Bond villain collection.

The Rest of the Day

We had planned on making our way to the Natural History museum but time was running short. Instead we walked up to the White House. On the way, I thought that we should try to have our pictures taken with random strangers from as many states as possible. When we got to the Second Division memorial we took our first one then realized that we didn’t have any paper to record who was who. So that’s a mission for the next few days.

The amazing thing about DC today compared to my youth is the level of security. While this weekend obviously has a heightened level, it still is amazing. It is difficult to walk in a straight direction to go anywhere and the presence of the various different public security forces is astounding. We made our way to the White House, which Elena has termed as “Obama’s House”, although she could have been talking about the Washington Monument actually, who knows. We’ll go with her bring precocious if not premature. Our bid to walk to the Lincoln Memorial at this point was brought back by the cold and the understanding that we were terrible parents for keeping our child out in bitter cold for hours at end. We made our way for another 20 minute walk to the Circulator or what I would like to call the best bus in the world outside of the bus that takes John Madden to football games.

The baby backpack is an amazing thing but damn are my shoulders hurting. After a little Elmo time, we got a chance to go out for some pizza and beers in Glover Park at Kavanaugh’s or what I would call Newtowne Grill at twice the price. Ah, it hit the spot though.

No Arlington today. And I didn’t here from my cousin. Maybe Monday. Tomorrow it may hit 40, maybe I’ll wear shorts. Initial pics are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/nyalfuentes/InaugurationPics#

Blogging Our Inaugural Vacation Part One

It’s been a while since I’ve written, the post-election downshift in energy, the lame duck period in political blogging despite very weird and exciting things happening, Blago, the continuing economic downturn, a somewhat commitment by President-elect Obama to Clinton 2.0. So the following few posts are about our family’s trip to DC for Inaugural/MLK Weekend. Mostly for my daughter, to remember and anyone else that may be interested.

There may be a bunch of political content based on we are going to the biggest political milestone in a long time. Certainly the changes of 9/11 was the last, preceded by the death of American left liberalism on Jan. 20, 1981 but this has special appeal to a lot of people. As I have said previously it’s a day where we can honestly tell our children that if you work hard and are smart you can rise to the top. Certainly Bill Clinton was among those, but as a southern white Democrat with moderate leanings he had a certain “in” with many voters.

Senator Obama is different. Young, the son of a mixed marriage and from modest means (although I’ve always hated the term, “mixed”) who came out of nowhere. I can understand the nervousness of many people. Untested and coming from a strange coalition of people to elect him, certainly the Bush bashing activists, but also those who were scared for the financial future, for the future of their children and mostly lets be honest in a country where people really have no choice but the old albeit likable war hero from Arizona from the party that couldn’t shoot straight in administrating the world’s strongest government or the other guy. Let’s never forget that Obama could have never won without the coalition of those who to them picked tweedle-lesser of two evils.

Nonetheless, I’m focusing more on the transformative nature of the next few days rather than the future of the nation. The future of the nation begins with a Congress that will attempt to wrest a little power from the growing Imperial Presidency. And a lot of folks that will let the political get in the way of the rest of the country.

So here we are off to DC.

Out of My Brain on the Train 1/16/09

9:30 AM from the Amtrak Coach

On our way down the eastern seaboard to DC. Washington, DC, specifically Columbia Hospital on Pennsylvania Ave. is where I was born, so I’m headed back to my roots. Family lore says my uncle took my mother to the hospital in a stolen car (later returned by my young uncle).

For Xmas, Mrs. AngryMiddle surprised me with train tickets to DC and secured a rental from a friend of a friend in Georgetown. Quite a surprise actually, I had half considered going but generally as a misanthrope I hate crowds unless I’m actually speaking in front of them. The other issue is that my daughter just turned two. The prospect of traveling to DC, being in an overwhelmed city with a toddler can seem somewhat insane. So we’ll see how it goes. It’s a historic moment for all of us, growing up, I could never imagine that a president could be anyone but a really old, white guy and that generally these things were handed down to the next person in the aristocracy who’s turn in was to rule or at least the proxy of this person. I imagine my little girl won’t be fazed by Vietnamese-American senators, Dominican corporate titans and WASP dishwashers, which I suppose is the whole purpose of America.

Despite their growing wealth and regrowth to power if not superpower status, few people move to Russia or China for opportunity. is a beauty in the American dream, work hard, get educated, get economic success. But in America there is not just the possibility of economic success but with it, freedom. The freedom of expression, the freedom to live your life how you wish, the freedom to dream and the freedom to fulfill those dreams. For all my problems with the American system, it is the best place on Earth at any time on Earth. I will always have a constant quarrel with my country, but it’s a lover’s quarrel, one which will never be fully resolved.

We started the morning early and it’s damn cold here in Boston. -2 was the temperature when we woke up. Getting to the train in South Station is a little bit of a feat. Gone are the days when I could back my “markie” bag full of “health and beauty needs” and some clean underwear and make my way or even the more recent days where my wife and I would pack a couple little backpacks. Now it includes diapers, extra clothes, a backpack to carry my little girl, cameras, food and of course winter wear to spend hours outside, etc. Oh yeah and this laptop, oh yeah and some homemade stout. I felt like a Sherpa carrying likely 120 lbs of unbalanced luggage and bags while my wife carried my daughter.

My little girl has never been on a long trip. We’ve been to Rhode Island and the Cape, etc but never anywhere for an extended range of time. While the mass transit in Boston is good, we still have to take the commuter rail for a couple of stops, take the T and then switch trains before we get on the Amtrak. Fortunately it’s rush hour we are trying to negotiate. Tenzing Norgay was fit and could carry a lot but he never had to bash through rush hour commuters. I was done with being polite and eventually just knocked through the horde.

My wife hates flying and yesterday a plane crashed into the Hudson so today would have been quite a day to fly. The train takes a while but is somewhat civilized once you’re on. This is the non-Acela so there is no wireless access so my references will likely be misspelled because it’s tainted human memory and not Wikipedia. The issue with the train is like a lot of transit,(ok a lot of things) if you don’t do it very often, you feel confused.

I’m hoping the weather in DC will cooperate, a friend of mine (quoting someone famous) once said that DC has the speed of southerners and the politeness of northerners. It also has the fear of weather. Cold and snow cripples the DC metro area. Cold and snow that people from Massachusetts (at least it seems until very recently) just see as a part of their being, nothing that a hoodie, some gloves and an extra layer can stave off. Give me 32 degrees and no wind or rain on Inauguration Day and we’re good to go. Georgetown for better or worse is kind of a hike from all the activities. We have no tickets and my goal is to make it to the jumbotron at the Lincoln Memorial on Tuesday. The security would likely be hell to us with a backpack and baby sundries anyway.

CLINTON INAUGURATION 1993

In Jan. 1993, some 16 years ago, I had graduated from college and I was living in Northern Virginia. To me, Northern Virginia has all the charm of a crappy suburban strip mall and all the history of a Kohl’s Department store. The positive highlights included a really good used bookstore out past Manassas, seeing my friends’ bands tour through DC, meeting Ian McKaye at a Fugazi rally for the homeless, and of course Bill Clinton’s inauguration. There were a ton of events and music tents at that time, my sister, now brother-in-law, Chez and I attended a bunch of events before and on inauguration day itself, Chez and I attacked DC.

It was a good time for young, progressive folks, some 12 years of Reagan-Bush had come to a close and there was some hope coming out of that early 90’s recession. So obviously it was time to set the record for malt liquor and southern comfort consumption for the city. 42 cent drafts at bars and masses of people we had never seen before stretched across the Mall. Working no collar jobs for lawyers sucking the blood out of America was not the best way to spend all your days, so a day off of drinking and celebrating was something.

Yup, all the details are a little sketchy. Drinking 22’s in Dupont Circle and a host of other youthful activities that this father of a toddler will likely not participate in this time, nonetheless, I have hope for a similar post-inaugural feeling of a positive future.

Back to the Train

As my wife says, we New Englanders are scruffy folks, the manner of dress that is, and once you kind of cross into the New York side of Connecticut you sense the change, people tuck in their sweatshirts, and mainly dress for cleanliness and fashion and not function and warmth. Let me remind you, my ripped UMass sweatshirt is warm as hell and when it’s near zero and no one is paying my to look and talk nice, I’m all done with any rudimentary sense of fashion. Once you cross the Bridgeport Line, people also become infatuated with cellphone communication, I mean everyone was jibber jabbing about everything.

The train is fairly slow but efficient, you started to sense some security action in Wilmington, setting up for Saturday’s train trip for Biden and Obama, likely checking every bridge etc. for the potential of an attack. Going through Baltimore is generally depressing, I mean these buildings have been boarded up for years, and some buildings seem half missing, like it is on the Hezbollah side of Beirut. Very odd for someone from the northeast to think that there would be any vacant housing, pretty depressing.

To DC

We arrive in DC and it’s cold here, too. Colder than I ever remember it as a kid or in any of the visits in the past 30 years. Union Station is packed, it’s around rush hour and a Friday to boot on MLK/Inaugural weekend and we’re carrying said huge load of stuff. Elena has been pretty damn good up to this point and I’m actually much crankier than she is.

Public transit in general is confusing. (more about this tomorrow/later) but in a nutshell, everywhere you go is different, there is no universal theme to public transportation. The Metro is clean and organized, so organized that the doors shut before the train is even full. In Boston, someone would break a window if that happened. We get a train to Dupont Circle crowded in by commuters, tourist and city residents alike, people don’t seem to be used to the crush of crowds on the train which in Boston is a daily occurrence. Then we switch over to a bus, Becky’s card got ripped and of course the bus didn’t take this particular card anyway, the bus driver waved us on and we got to Georgetown to Becky’s friends house.

We are renting a mother in law apartment from Becky’s friend’s friend. My mother was a cocktail waitress in Georgetown as a younger person. It has the funky feel of Cambridge if it were located outside London with a touch of Manhattan, very upscale. We ate Turkish food takeout and went to the apartment, nice place, a little chilly as I don’t think DC homes are prepared for this kind of cold. The owners had left us a bottle of expensive champagne and apparently donated half our rent to a homeless shelter. And then smartly left for the Bahamas.

Off to bed, and then attack tomorrow.