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.