Granite Eyes Facing Eastward: Obama's Inauguration and Ole Miss
The Inauguration snuck up on me.
I watched the election as closely as anyone I know. Every AP wire story I could find. Every Tweet and every post that came across my RSS reader. I walked by the Ford Center Debate site so many times that I surely made it on some government watch list. I watched the returns in the hospital as my wife and unborn daughter were being monitored after an Election Day car accident (they were both fine, by the way). I saved the commemorative magazines and I congratulated my neighbors who had an Obama/Biden sign in their front yard.
But I wasn’t ready for the inauguration. It already felt like we had a new President. The swearing in seemed like an formality. It wasn’t until I saw shots of the crowds gathering, until I heard people chanting in the background of the NPR broadcast that I decided that this wasn’t an event that I needed to experience alone. I needed more definition than a webcast could offer.
I made my way to campus, where the festivities were being shown on the big screen in the Journalism Building. I parked near the Circle and cut through the Grove as a rare Mississippi snow fell and a biting wind blew. It was a gray day and campus felt cold and empty.
The room was warm and filled up gradually. People old and young, black and white, Americans and Internationals took a seat as the former Presidents found theirs. We watched the frail elder Bush, the defiant Clintons, the abivalent W.
The gravity of the moment was lost on me until I saw several people snapping pictures from the side of the room.
