It has been an almost entirely satisfying day, at least for those of us who watched on television. Bush is gone. The speech was good, though not one for the ages. For those on the front lines, braving the cold and the crowds, the reports filtering in suggest that the folks in charge of crowd control weren’t up to the task. One of our liberal drinkers, who had gotten a ticket to the proceedings, told us via text message that he had waited for hours and never got in to the mall, or anywhere near the Inauguration. My son, who braved the cold from about 5 in the morning, wrote and said he saw people give up after seven hours of waiting, and a woman leaving on a stretcher.
Here in Groton we had a crowd, but no problems accomodating it. Herewith, a few pictures.
Early Arrivals:
A group sporting an array of Obama T-Shirts.
My wife bought a silly hat, and a number of folks made the mistake of wearing it, their punishment being having their pictures immortalized on the internet.
The Noank Contingent
The Moment comes. Obama took the oath of office and the crowd went wild (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof)
Someone even brought a cake
My son sent some pictures from the parade. He was apparently pretty close to Joe Biden:
And he says that, if rumor is to be believed, this is the helicopter taking Bush out of our lives and into the dustbin of history (until, one can hope, he’s in the dock at a war crimes trial):
Tomorrow the hard work begins, but for the rest of the day we can enjoy the moment. A lot of people have worked very hard to make this happen.
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