January 20, 2009 & Beyond

Ok, my family is jinxed when it comes to trips to DC recently (last one canceled as Mom ended up in ICU due to a Flu bug’s effects no less) or I jinxed myself with the note (on Facebook the day before) about even if we don’t make it to the Mall comment. If you didn’t get it from my whinny, pathetic status updates on Facebook, we didn’t make it to the actual swearing in. We had great tickets, a hotel with access to the Metro system, great plans on leaving early, bundling up, back ups, warming areas, post speech shelter, etc.

The only problem was we didn’t have contingencies for Kurt waking up at 3 AM, instead of 5 AM, with the stomach flu. I will not go into any sicker details than to say I dare not be more than 15 feet from a bathroom for the next 48 hours after that wake up call, and kept nothing down in the next 3 days save a baked potato (on the evening of day 3), 3 saltine crackers, water and Gator-aide. I totally kidded myself and Cheri from 5 AM until 5:30 AM with the idea I was still going though, to the point of dressing. But, finally, Jamie said he wasn’t going and the six year old and I were staying at the hotel.

So, Cheri and Becca bravely set out from the hotel. Despite the fact that as they left, we all watched Barbara Starr of CNN report that she was at our Metro stop, the end of the line in Virginia , and the trains were arriving full and she wasn’t making it in. Despite the traffic being so bad to get to the Metro that the hotel shuttle had given up, they pressed on. Despite the freezing temps they walked the mile plus to the Metro station. Despite the full parking deck, busloads trying to unload still, and lines as far as the eye can see, they pressed on. Finally, though, as the line didn’t move in forever, they too packed it in, and thankfully rejoined us. Jamie was better equipped to take care of me than I him. So, like many of you, we watched the actual day on TV.

And actually, probably not a bad thing to have failed there and been left in comfort, with the resources of several networks, etc. Local DC TV news was packed with stories of the system breaking down. A woman was knocked onto the tracks, and almost killed, in a Metro station we would have been in. Many families with tickets in our section being turned away as security machines broke down in the screening area, etc.

Cheri and the kids did go in the next day, hit all the sights they could do including standing where MLK did to give a pretty important speech. However, it gets worse too. Becca came back to the way too expensive hotel, ate dinner and then joined me in the gross stomach flu ward. About 5 hours later, Cheri, our last hope, joined us. So, there we are, in DC, 8+ hour drive from home, no way to check out, a hotel charging us an arm and a leg, three sick people, and 12 hearings in the next 48 hours. Thankfully, my staff is incredible as are the staff with our administrative court system, and my friends and the client’s issues were continued or covered by others. Cheri did the correct level or research/whining and our hotel bill was lowered to a reasonable level (still in light of the economy, the costs, etc, our last vacation trip of the year), a friend got our dog out of the kennel with my mother in law. And finally, mercifully, with me partially packing the night before, Cheri packing the day of (using all she had in her), and me driving 10 hours (8 for those without sons who need breaks every 60-75 minutes), we made it home Friday night. By the way, based upon the trip home, I will travel with these kids is my phrase, not the I won’t.

Despite all that, a trip of a lifetime. Becca and Jamie both talk of serving their country now as a possible career. Although I don’t know how Becca fits a run for the Presidency in saving dogs and training horses, living in the country life (she thinks cities are too crazy, but we keep telling her judging cities based upon DC the week of January 20th is no way to plan a life) ;nor James in inventing hi tech stuff, creating video games and business and running for Congress, but that’s their issue. They have the bug of doing something to make the Country better and no longer say “What the Point” about Independence Hall. So, contrary to what the phrase has become thanks to the 43rd President, Mission Accomplished!

We’ve all heard the pretty speeches; and despite the flub by the Chief Justice (Cheri said “give him a break, it’s tough to remember”, until on the verge of saying take me to the ER for fluids and fever, I repeated the words to the Oath properly from memory), Obama is the President. What’s next? (with great respect to Aaron Sorkin, and Jeb Bartlett, who I still wish had taken the oath in January 2001 not W). Even with the brightest kid in the class running the place, what are we going to do?

Thanks to TiVo, I just watched the Daily Show from January 21, 2009. David Sanger was the guest, a writer for the New York Times. His new book is called The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. If you want to get a terminal case of insomnia, per Jon Stewart, read this book. It’s 400+ pages on the mess we have in this country right now, as the author put it when Stewart joked “I wish your book was a pamphlet”, “it was pretty well done before the economic crisis, so I really have more” (YIKES). I’m gonna wait a bit. With an undergrad degree with half it’s political science credits in international defense and policy issues and the other half in running a government politically issues, I know what were up against.

This is our time as a generation. We cusp Boomers/Gen Xer’s (Current age about 35-50, I won’t point fingers), aka the Survivors (what did I survive again, until this came up) the demographics people call us, have to shed our reputation of being a bunch of couch potato, slackers. Now, those who truly know Gen X, know that isn’t true. If you look at the folks who ran to danger on 9/11/01, the folks at the Pentagon who ran to the fire, the rescue people who ran into the Twin Towers (and yes, they knew they were going to at least partially collapse, even I sitting in Toledo, Ohio knew that) and the folks who ran towards the cockpit on Flight 93, the bulk of them were Gen X. The same is true for the former and new folks who ran to the recruiting centers for both the military, the Red Cross and Americorps afterwards.

Gen X is not a generation of slackers. If you show us a cause is just, we’ll run into the burning tower, we know is going to collapse, to try to save that one more person. But, if you don’t convince us your cause is just, we’ll watch it from the couch while drinking our energy drink and surfing or blogging on the net.

My hope is that each of you reading this finds your calling now. Cause it’s gonna take all of us, not just the new occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to fix this mess. But, if you want a little video hope in the face of what could be hopelessness, and hey it’s got an African American, articulate, although older, fictional president in it, watch the end of Deep Impact. Yes, it’s cheesy, but Morgan Freeman, after a tsunami, created by an comet impact, has wiped out the East Coast of the US and the Americas, West Coast of Africa and Europe, giving a great speech, including “let the work begin”, I bet you’ll forget the cheese factor and imagine picking up something to do.

And in case that work for you might include the possibility of helping start a church that restores that word and Christian as well, to something not to be avoided, come check out what we’re doing with The Village here. Our little bit is going to be creating a church that is a force for progressive political values, because we are followers of this Community Organizer by the name of Jesus, a guy who cared about the poor, the disabled, the environment, veterans, etc. Along the way, I hope to teach a few Democratic politicians, and maybe a few Republicans too, how to truly apply that Bible thing to politics. You know, take care of those without a voice or power appears a few thousand times, take care of the planet a few hundred. Those passages about gays and arguably abortion. Well, you can count them on your fingers and toes.

How about we fight about those last two, after we fix the first two?

So say we all?