Today’s post comes once again from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing all the water surface area in the State of Minnesota.
My Dear Constituents,
Well, what with the long wait beforehand, the political stargazing, the ceremony, the speeches, the ride/walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, the delay before the parade, the parade when it was new, the parade at middle age, the rest of the parade, the parties and balls and endless evening hours of whatnot, I now feel completely and thoroughly inaugurated.
I loved my vantage point on the swearing-in and the president’s speech. From where I stood, he was about as big as a large freckle on the knuckle of my left hand. I was too far away to make much of the fashion conversation that was swirling around the event, though even at that distance I could tell the First Family was dressed in complimentary shades of blue. And my hat is off to the designers of the formless color blobs they were wearing.
Inspirational!
I sure am glad I grabbed something to eat while I was on the way to my post. Try the corned beef from The Star and Shamrock Tavern and Deli at 1341 H Street, NE. It’s amazing, and unlike my neighbor’s cup of chili from the Union Station Potbelly, it was able to pass through security without a glitch!
Lots of commentators were pointing out that from now on, Obama is free because he doesn’t have to face the voters again. That may be so, but at no point during the day did he look to me like a man who could do whatever he wanted, especially during that parade. It might have been nice to take a nap right then, but I don’t think he would be allowed to do it, even inside that awesome car he was riding in. No question – the president and his family were kinda stuck. I guess it makes a perverse kind of sense that to be officially installed in an office that you spend years running for, it takes up an entire day.
And although there was plenty of adulation, anybody who has ever held public office knows that nonsense stops as soon as the last marching band turns the final corner, and the criticism begins.
I could only hear some of what the president said during his speech, but as the person who represents an all-water district I have to say I was dismayed that he didn’t mention fish, fishing, cabins, recreation, docks, lures, worms or speedboats at all in his Inaugural address. You’d think it would be easy to insert something so appealing into a big crowd-pleaser of a speech. Something like, “We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity and a bucket of live bait alongside a Minnesota lake.”
Simple, but apparently too difficult to do. Sigh.
Am I offended? Let’s just say that I’m kind of thinking I’ll never vote for him again!
Anyway, now that the pageantry is over it’s time to get back to the business of governing. Thanks as always for your support, especially since I seem to have such trouble accomplishing thing. But remember that as your Congressman, I am here to do what you would do, and I suspect you’d have a tough time producing results too! In that regard, I am proud to say I’m probably your perfect representative!
Sincerely,
Hon. Loomis Beechly
It sounds like Representative Beechly has a little bit of regret that he committed to the full slate of inaugural festivities and also to another full term as a phony member of Congress. But like a good public servant, he persevered.
When have you felt locked in to participation in an endless event?
Trail Baboon 
Yes, as a matter of fact, I was unexpectedly locked into watching history being made from 9AM this morning (actually yesterday now) until 9PM. My tears spilled over several times as I watched a man I’ve come to believe is the finest president in my lifetime. Some are saying that his inaugural
speech was the most important one ever given although it was only in reexamining it a second time that I was struck by the boldness and eloquence of it. I really wasn’t expecting to be so moved and engaged in this day-long event, but tonight I’m flooded with gratitude that this president-in-training for his first four years has now emerged as a fully in-charge commander in chief. The metamorphosis is just plain awesome, in my opinion.
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I think Congressman Beechly was closest to the truth when he indicated the inaugral event seem to be an endless exercise that was not much fun. However, some people seemed have enjoyed it and I think that is okay. I’m not one of them.
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i spent the inauguration in the tub enjoying the pre and post discussions of the whos who and the big picture discussions of the event. i was impressed with how the blacks in the audience were not as out of the ordinary as they seemed at the first one. the forst one four years ago was like a screaming volcano of emotion celebrating the new place we had come to where yesterday was the realization of the second go round for a leader who was been asked to put up with a four year filibuster from his esteemed colleagues on the hill. he gets it and they get it and maybe it is necessary to put up with the bs for the good of the country and get it headed in the right direction. god bless him. i wouldn’t have handled it as well. look at what he has to celebrate and what he has left to do but the congratulations for the remarkable patience he has endured on route to what we hope will be a path long remembered and admired.
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Well said, tim.
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Yes.
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I had yesterday off and dipped in and out of the inaugural coverage (I caught his speech and the inaugural poem, happily, but missed the swearing-in and the GLBT marching band). I’m deeply interested to see what Obama will be able to do with his second term. My hopes are high, we’ll see how they play out!
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You are a curmudgeon indeed, Jim, if you couldn’t see joy in the faces of the folks attending those Inaugural events. Nothing moved you? Not the poem? Not the speech? Not Beyonce? Now is not the time for silly optimism, but maybe the next four years will be better than we have feared. tim has it about right.
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I’m not the only curmudgeon. I think Obama, himself, seemed to be much less enthusiastic. I didn’t see many of the more progressive people in this country participating in the inauguration. Beyonce is good, but not equal to Aretha..
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Considering Obama’s experience during his four years in The White House, you can hardly fault him for looking less enthusiastic. To me he looks more determined but with an unmistakable aura of that he gets it: it’s not going to be easy. I think these next four years will really show his mettle. I think he’ll go down in the history books, and not just for being our first black president. I agree with Cb, probably the finest president in our lifetime. Not the most charismatic, but the finest.
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I’m curmudgeonly with you, Jim. I’m moved by some of the speeches but I dislike the endless pageantry and all of the talk about what Michelle Obama is wearing. I wish she’d wear blue jeans and a sweatshirt with some good hiking boots. I just don’t think clothes and pageantry and spectacle matter that much but I’m sure someone who is thinking about rituals and archetypes will argue with me. I think they should make it a shorter ceremony and, okay, perhaps a parade, but the balls cost a lot of money and I think it would be more respectful to the average American if the cost and time spent was reduced by at least half.
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Ah, Krista, is that fair? From what I’ve heard, Michelle Obama is a blue jeans gal when she isn’t doing lawyer stuff, when she’d wear a suit. I personally think she dislikes the whole fashion scene. But she has learned that a significant share of the public expects her to be showy, so she does it while mostly wearing inexpensive clothing. I think she does all this stuff somewhat against her will but out of a sense of duty.
Watch what she wears when she leaves the White House. She can’t wait to get back to Chicago.
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“inexpensive clothing,” ha! I bet that coat cost more than most of us spend on clothes in a year or two. Of course, “inexpensive” is a relative term. Inexpensive compared to Jackie Kennedy’s or Nancy Regan’s clothes, probably, but they’re traveling in a different universe than we are.
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referring to her target wardrobe and the dress she must like because they have seen her wear it 10 times and it is a target 29 dollar dress
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Oh, come on! Everything is relative. Of course much of M Obama’s clothing is costly, but she would be savaged if she wore truly inexpensive clothing at state events. When she can she wears J Crew clothing, stuff from catalogs that my daughter can afford. Do you think she should greet foreign dignitaries in something she found at Goodwill??
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Good morning. I look on many of the college classes I took and much of the whole education process as having been locked into an endless event that was not as much fun as it should have been. At the start of most classes I was usually hopeful that I would enjoy them. By the end of many of them I could barely force myself to do the work necessary to complete the class. I agree with Carl Rodgers’ criticism of graduate education in which he said it that much of it is a game of forcing students to jump needlessly through a bunch of hoops.
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preparation for life dont you think?
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Well, it could be that schools are trying to prepare us for life, but not the kind of life I wanted and still want.
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I sometimes think schools primarily teach youngsters how to shut up and follow the arbitrary demands of authority figures, which is critically needed for our workplaces to function. Someone can post a link here to “I Did It Their Way,” the song that rhymes “cruel oppressor” with “full professor.”
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teaching as a subversive activity, summerhill, why johnny cant read, all great books on teachers of the dream. it still goes on but the message is tired. the kids arnt but the mesage is. i dont see the thirst for things today i saw in the 70’s. might just be me. i hope so.
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Yes, I was SO excited to make changes when I started teaching in 1970. It took four years for me to realize it was going to take a lot longer than I was willing to wait for the changes to take root. My dad (a lifelong educator) said it would take an average of 25 years in a bureaucracy for most major changes to happen – due to the inherent inertia.
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The question implies a negative. Can I do a positive into which I am locked forever: our marriage of now 48.5 years.We did it so quickly and really stupidly as many told us then, She just may make it to 50 years, not that the number itself matters much, which I used to think would not happen. As long as we can keep from letting the flu bug find her. I think we will celebrate the 50th if we make it by declaring bankruptcy but the long sentence however long it goes has been very fine.
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I will have to concur, Clyde – 32.5 years and counting, second time was a charm. Thurgery two years ago made me appreciate.
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I was once, over twenty years ago, coerced into attending a live performance of “Cats”. It pains me still to think about it.
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Funny. But you may just start a cat fight.
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i love memories. i was at cats and the two litlle old ladies next to me who were so taken with the lights and the grandeur of the theater before the performance and when they got up for intermission never came back. i am fairly certain they didn;t know there was another half and like you bill i am sure there are those who envied their ignorance and its result
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I got suckered into sitting through Tosca one night, and it turned into one of the longest weeks of my life.
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puccini and/or opera in general or just tosca?
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I think I might like Puccini, but if you try to rope me into sitting through another night of opera you might be surprised at how fast my old arthritic legs can carry me. I don’t have enemies; that’s not in my character. But if I had an enemy, I might send him tickets to Tosca.
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Hey! I kind of liked Cats.
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Lots of people did, obviously. Personally, I’d rather have root canal.
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Laughing out loud! 😀
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I get the feeling that you really, really disliked Cats, bill.
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what musical has been your favorite bill?
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Life, itself, sometimes seems like being locked into an endless event. That seems to imply a negative outlook on life. There any many things about life, today, that seem negative to me, but I do continue enjoy life in spite of all of the negative things.
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Being in labor seems like an endless event until the epidural starts to work.
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life is kinda like that too
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i tried being on committees and discovered i hate all that crap. the littlepeople who want to puff up their chests and stand at the podium for their moment of glory make me want to choke em. tne lack of substance and the effort of birthing a result is more than i can stand on an ongoing basis. its like a harold pinter play you cant get out of. i am ok as the coach of a kids team and of being put in a position of responsibility ordained to get something done , but make e a co chair of a committee and i will slit my wrists
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Committee meetings, annual church meetings, airplane flights to Alaska, Phantom of the Opera, election seasons, the two weeks before the Super Bowl (and I don’t even watch it), Wheel of Fortune (which my wife watches every night), medical waiting rooms, Pomp and Circumstance marching-in’s, GWTW, history lectures, milking cows, mowing and raking hay, riding the school bus, wedding receptions, waiting for the order from Sears or Monkey Wards, buying clothes, visiting my wife’s sister in the nursing home, talking to either of my brothers-in-law, The Hobbit, Part I, moving, thinking of things which seem like endless events.
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great list, speaking of moving… are you staying put?
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GWTW being Gone with the Wind?
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In the first week of my graduate school career, the prof heading the discussion group for American Studies majors asked us what we were trying to accomplish. He told us a PhD in American Studies was only good for one thing–preparing us to teach American Studies–but that nobody would hire an American Studies PhD because the academic world worships specialization and American Studies is a refutation of specialization. In other words, we all faced spending five or six years of hard work and thesis writing and countless papers and blue book exams . . . just to get a degree that wasn’t worth its weight in toilet paper.
The alternative to that plan, however, was to leave school, get drafted, and then fighting in the Vietnamese War. When I thought about all those blue book exams and all those papers about symbolism in The Scarlet Letter, I wasn’t sure which was the most miserable path. I wasn’t as worried about getting killed in the war as I should have been, but I couldn’t bear the prospect of going to another country to kill some kid who was just defending his homeland against me.
Graduate school is a tedious slog if you have a sense of purpose about it. If you have made a cynical choice of grad school over combat, time slows down to a crawl. The eleven years I spent in grad school came as close to an “endless” exercise as I hope ever to experience.
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good thing the war ended huh? you be studying latin and nanocybernetics by now
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Morning all. I had to take work home last night and inauguration stuff was keeping me from focusing so I had to turn it off.
Being in corporate America, I often feel like I’m stuck in endless events. It is well known that I detest my department’s biweekly meeting. I doodle copiously, which everyone accepts, to keep my head from blowing off.
And please don’t get me started about mandatory training.
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does your company do mandatory training? really?
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Oh yea….
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Got to watch some of the parade at my mom’s yesterday – most moving for me was when they got out of the limo (did anyone else see how thick those car doors were??) and walked. They are literally taking their lives in their own hands by doing that – but then so are all the Secret Service people, I suppose.
When have you felt locked in to participation in an endless event?
Once my dad was put on a respirator, it seemed like watching an endless decline till he died 3 years later. At the same time, I was so grateful to be able to be there with him the last month of his life.
My mom’s current mental decline has the same element of difficulty.
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Sorry, BiR. Good luck with your mom. That’s so hard.
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Yes, sorry, BiR. That is hard. It’s like watching them drift away from you but they’re still there and they still need you.
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Sorry, I misspoke – I meant to say my dad was put on oxygen for 3 years, with the little tubes in his nose… not a respirator. You’re right, though, Krista – it is still hard to watch them drift away.
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glad you got her moved up here . the decline from a state away is very difficult, the one from three blocks away is merely excruciating.
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Although I don’t want to elevate the occurrence of my fall last February to the status of “an event,” the four hours I spent lying on the cold, tile bathroom floor before I was rescued were no doubt the longest four hours of my life. The ensuing 12 hours in the emergency room when they were trying to determine whether or not they needed to operate, and therefore didn’t give me food or water, were no walk in the park either, but at least at that time they had my pain under control and kept me warm.
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Ish da. That must’ve been a nightmare.
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Krista, when I think about it, I’m amazed at how calm I was during that entire ordeal. I tried to reach for the bath towels to have something to cover myself with. Alas, they were about 6″ beyond my reach. I was able to reach a roll of toilet paper to put under my neck to elevate my head off the cold floor. The band to my wristwatch had broken when I fell, and the watch had slid under the bathtub, so I had no way of keeping accurate track of time. But i knew when the sky started getting lighter that it couldn’t be that much longer, but talk about time ticking away in slow motion. I did spend a lot of time contemplating what someone living alone would do in a similar situation. Had Hans been away on one of his Paddle Brothers expeditions, who knows how long I would have been there. I was very, very lucky.
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I hate thinking about it. What an ordeal.
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but at least you got to have one of the best answers to the question today.
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glad you are coming along. good luck with the rest of the rehab
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The inaugural festivities were on the TV all day at work yesterday. One of my coworkers was fascinated with all of it. I mentioned once that it must feel endless for the Obamas – the camera was focused on them all day long. They’re very gracious and put up with all of it far better than I would do. I think it’s important to recognize him as our President but I think it could be done with far less extravagance.
Some days at work feel endless. I’m scheduled for 10-hour shifts without a break once or twice a week. If there are no doctor appointments or outings, and if my coworker is unfriendly (over half the time), those 10-hour days feel like an eternity.
I’ve been reading Cormac McCarthy. His books flow by like a river in spring.
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and that air hammer would come in so handy at work by the sounds of it
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Duh, what’s a presidential inauguration? Haven’t watched TV in ages.
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its that thing on the front page of the paper
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🙂
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Had an event this evening where I felt locked in after locking myself out. It’s kind of a long story.
I went to an open house at the site where I volunteer during tax season. I was the last one to leave after the open house ended, but I hadn’t really expected to be the one to close up the office, and didn’t have any instructions on how to proceed. For one thing, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to set the alarm. I managed to lock myself out of the office without my jacket or hat or mittens or keys, so I went to the day care upstairs and prevailed upon their supervisor to let me go through their stairwell to get back in. But that set off the alarm system, which I hadn’t even known was armed.
I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to contact someone who would know how to shut off the alarm. First I made a couple of calls to the alarm company, who couldn’t do much to help, because I didn’t have the passcode for the alarm system. After a time a police officer arrived, sized me up and decided I didn’t fit the profile of someone who goes around breaking into offices, and helped me track down one of the employees to come and turn the alarm off.
It wasn’t helpful that I’m a little overly sensitive to noise. An hour of the alarm cycling on and off had me whimpering “Can I please just go home now?”
No real harm done, though, except to my reputation. Now I’ll always be that woman who set off the alarm at NeDA.
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good news is ill bet they never leave you to be the last one out again and responsible party will get their head out of the clouds.
kind of a cold night to be out with no jacket or mittens or keys. glad they were open upstairs. its funny about places who rely on volunteers, they dont value your time correctly. if they had to pay you for the time they call open houses and then for the time you needed to stay to cover their mistake they would be a lot more responsible about making sure the bases were covered correctly, volunteers make it possible to cover lots of chinks in the armor
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and by the way instead of whimpering that you would like to go home you can always ask what the consequence is if you leave. someone else is inconvenienced? maybe thats ok.
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Wow! Good thing you weren’t wearing all black or had your pick locks on you, as would Kinsey Milhone (see Sue Grafton references).
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Yes, if you want to burglarize an office, wear a nametag that says “Volunteer” on it, and carry a partially-consumed veggie tray – if the police show up they won’t suspect a thing.
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