Always great to hear from Scott Turner of Rocky Sullivan's in Red Hook

Greetings, Pub Quiz Moment in Historians…

Big, big day.  The anticipation is rife.  A new era is beginning. 
Hope springs eternal.  A moment in history.  An assemblage of the
masses.  People jostling for a good spot up front.  A clarion bell in
the nation's long march.

Yes…we're two days away from the next Rocky Sullivan's Pub Quiz.

But before that, this quaint, subtle, low-key event down D.C. way.

It is
an amazing day.  Tears in eyes, and the quickening of heartbeats.  But
collectively, our rose-colored glasses need to be left on the
nightstand.  The commentators on this morning's television machine fell
over themselves in a back-slapping orgy of self-congratulatory hype. 
To listen to these practitioners of putrid punditry, it's morning in America on a day when the sun can never set.

Diane Feinstein's opening remarks trumpeted the triumph of
the ballot over the bullet.  While peaceful transitions trump violence
— kinda, you know, duh — Feinstein's
up-with-good/down-with-bad sentiments were disingenuous and selective. 
Hey, Diane, since you supported W's policies the last few years, you're
obviously comfortable with easy, simplistic notions.  Next
inauguration, be sure to come out against puppy torture, nuclear
meltdowns and gingivitis.

Um, Senator Feinstein, could you just stand over there by Senator Liberman?  Er…thanks…

This little nation of ours exists because of the bullet, musket, cannonball and harbor-dumped box of tea.  The U.S.A.
has stayed top dog with more bullets than can time could ever count. 
And we've handed out bullets like candy every time it was in our, not
their, best interests.

If you're gonna tell a story, the warts-and-all version always has the moral center.

Still…this day is something.  Aretha Franklin's "My Country 'Tis of Thee" made us forget that anti-civil-rights demagogue Rick Warren has just given a trite, uninspiring invocation.

The Queen of Soul, strangely, came gift-wrapped for the occasion.

President Obama's speech didn't set the speech-making world
on fire.  It was calm, measured and determined — a textbook example of
substance over style.  The Prez declared his intent to change how the
country functions, how the rest of the world views the us, and how we
view ourselves.  That's good enough…that's what we need to hear. 
We've been read the riot act.  Time to kick up some dust.

Today's D.C. sky was bright lemony-blue — winter cold and crisp and not a cloud in the sky.  New Yorkers remember that 9/11 was a cloudless sky.  It would be grand if this stunning day can return to us the undiluted joy of cloudless skies.

Ultimately, you wanna know why today was so great?  Why it seems
like the future is so bright rose-colored glasses only confuse the
issue?  Why the lemony-blue sky is so encouraging?

The World Famous Lawn Rangers of Amazing Arcola, whose slogan is "You're only young once, but you can always be immature" were smack dab in the middle of the Inauguration Parade.  Back in 2003, when then-state senatel candidate Barack Obama was working the local St. Patrick's Day parade, the Lawn Rangers asked if he'd like to join them.  The young Obama didn't hesitate:

And
now, on Obama's biggest day ever, he and his team remembered the Lawn
Rangers, remembered that they were in each other's orbit back in the
day, and remembered to invite them to the Big Soiree.

According to a pre-inauguration piece in the Chicago Tribune:

The 48-mower contingent will include one topped with a 5-foot replica of the Washington Monument,
another with a well-endowed mannequin wearing a T-shirt declaring "D.C.
or bust," and another called "Obama the self-starter." It features two
hands emerging from the mower and grabbing the starter rope.

The Tribune also reports that the Rangers' inaugural credo is "Bringing dignity back to Washington."

For my money, the new thinking on
race/class/cultural/progressive stuff is fabulous.  What makes it a
giant blinking neon sign that can be seen from outer space, though, is
the embrace of memories that treasure the raggedy edges, the eccentric,
and the deep-down soulful.

Will our nation embrace raggedy-edged eccentric deep-down
soulfulism?  Will we understand that raggedy-edged eccentric deep-down
soulfulism is far better than the last eight years, the last four
hundred years?  Will we realize that, at the core, our country has
always been raggedy-edged, eccentric and deep-down soulful?

Was today the Day One of the new era, the really new era?

Time will tell.

It always does.