Inauguration 2008: The Lincoln Memorial Concert

I'm just back from the concert at Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama. Yes, I know, I didn't tell you I was going. Frankly, I was surprised myself, but I'm sure glad I did it. It was exhilarating, even though it was really cold there. The crowd was huge. I'm really glad I had my super long lens with me or I never would have gotten these shots.



The show opened with The Boss doing The Rising, joined by a choir. It was great. I've always loved that song and it was surely a good way to start off the concert. He was dressed for the occasion in what looked to be like fairly new black jeans and a pretty new leather coat. I was disappointed that Little Steve wasn't with him. Of course, he may still be recovering from the wounds he suffered as Silvio Dante.



There have been a lot of parallels drawn between Barack and other presidents, particularly Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Of course, I wasn't alive when Roosevelt was inaugurated, but today's concert took me back to JFK's ceremony where I, like everyone else was stirred by his call to service. I snapped this picture from a very good vantage point at that speech. President-elect Obama warmed up to that today and will likely issue a Kennedy-like call with Roosevelt-like challenges. I'm anxiously awaiting his speech, even though I won't be able to attend it personally.


One of the high points today for me personally was when our own Sheryl Crow was able to play for the President- and Vice-President-elect and their families. For those of you who are loyal readers of the page, you will remember that Nancy and I were central to the rescue and recovery of Sheryl this summer after she flew into one of our windows. She seems to have recovered and, I am happy to say, after her last molt, she's looking a lot better than when she was perched in our bushes.




Another highlight was to see those Obama girls--are they cute or what? I'll bet it will be hard for them to go to school on Wednesday. "Hey, what did you guys do over the weekend?"

Bono and U2 gave a really nice performance and reminded us that people around the world are watching this event. Then the President-elect addressed us and told us, basically, to take our expectations of him down a notch and up our expectations of ourselves several notches. It's an important time to be telling us the truth. Speaking of which, have you seen the snow storm of revisionist history coming out of the Bush administration lately?










The concert closed with Beyoncé Knowles singing a beautiful rendition of America the Beautiful and then she was joined by all the other performers.

So, I've finally warmed up, I've flown back to Oregon, and I've written this blog. What? You're asking about the red border around some of the pictures? And maybe some of the strange colors and resolution? What, you don't think I was really in Our Nation's Capital for the concert? Well..., er..., gotta go...