Sunday, January 18, 2009

Obamapalooza (2) "Like, a million Happy people."

The Middletown Eye's Official Count of Middletown Residents at Obamapalooza is now up to five. As my family rode the train from New York City to the Capitol, they ran into Holy Trinity's Maggie Minnick, also on her way to the events in DC.

It looks like our local folks were on the train right behind Obama's Whistle-stop. Just outside of Baltimore, they finally got to pass his vintage railcar, snapping photos wildly (which I've yet to see.)






That put them at Union Station before PE Obama's train arrived. So they got a quick photo with a surrogate instead.








Today (Sunday), they toured the city and took in the preparations. Lots of media and plenty of barricades.






Here's a shot of Blair House, where the Obama family is staying until Tuesday.








Mark and the kids were at the concert on the mall, which from their descriptions sounds more like a New Year's Eve party than a political event. I thought you'd like to hear what my teenagers had to say by cell-phone:


from my 14-year-old:
It's really exciting, even though nobody could see anything - we were all smushed together. Maybe the angry people just haven't arrived yet, but there are just all these happy people. Nobody is yelling or doing protests except for peace. At the convention in Denver there were all these people broadcasting about things they hate. It's not like that at all here -- it's so weird. It's like a million happy people.


from my 16-year-old:
Crazy! The crowd was a couple miles long -- ok, that might be an exaggeration. We couldn't see at all when Obama was speaking...but when the front of the crowd did something - like chanting -- or started dancing - it would spread really fast - the entire crowd was like an entity.


And that's today's postcard from the Inauguration. See you tomorrow.


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