Obama's Inaugural

I didn't take this picture from my cell phone. Allison Price, former Western Pa press spokeswoman for Barack Obama's campaign, did. Allison, who I am still in touch with, posted this photo on her facebook page and I pilfered it. Thanks, Allison!

I was too busy back at the Lincoln Memorial shooting video... which I never was able to send due to technical difficulties... to take still pictures of what was going on around me. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I went down to Washington on Friday, Jan. 16, after finishing two preview stories and flying out the door into single digit temperatures... It was COLD..... the snow blowing across the fields as I drove into the Laurel Highlands. But I had Gabriel Faure's Requiem playing on my Mp3... and when I heard the exquisite, ethereal final movement -- "In Paradisum" -- all my anxieties about the challenges of the upcoming week melted away. I think music has that affect on me... whenever I get nervous about an assignment, I just put on some Ravel or Chopin and I'm fine.

You can listen to Kings College Choir of Cambridge's version of "In Paradisum" here.

D.C., thankfully, was warmer than Pittsburgh... I arrived at Rebecca Trafton Frischkorn's fabulous Washington apartment that evening, and after some social time with the dear girl and her great and good friend Dodge and a few others, collapsed into bed.

Here's a photograph from my BlackBerry of lovely Becky/Rebecca the next morning, sipping cappucino made FROM HER OWN MACHINE:














And here's a photograph(below) of what she USED to look like, back in Wyonegonic days. She's the little girl on the far left, deeply immersed in sewing something on her teddy bear -- or at least PRETENDING to, for the photographer.... I actually remember when they made us pose for those pictures. I think I'm at the table but obscured by the girl in the white headband (sigh).















Oh, wait... I was supposed to be writing about the 2008 presidential Inaugural, not Wyonegonic camp, circa 1963. But it's late and I will write more about my incredible adventures tomorrow....

SUNDAY JAN. 25th...

Okay, where was I? Oh, yes. Here's a picture of your correspondent, blogging and bleary eyed, the next morning (Saturday, Jan. 17) in Rebecca's apartment (actually POSTING TO THE BLOG is a more correct way to put it, I've been told... in this case to the "Early Returns" blog). You can read some of the blog postings here and here and here and here and here and here and here
and here.

That Saturday was spent gallivanting around visiting old friends while posting to "Early Returns" which is mostly a product of my colleague Tim McNulty (who also writes great pieces like this on about Steelers Nation ) but since it was the weekend, I was on duty. Maybe it was crazy, or rude, or both, but I was tethered to my laptop, posting things that I found on the Internet that I thought might be relevant to our readers. We don't always do original reporting on blogs; we serve as aggregators -- hunting down interesting fragments of information and color that might otherwise get lost in the blogosphere...

Then it was on to Dad-and-Ele's apartment, just a a short ride away. D&E were a Godsend on this trip... they not only gave me a free place to sleep, and free food, but free parking in their apartment building with AN AUTOMATIC GARAGE DOOR OPENER!!!!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank D&E -- there they are in a photo from Thanksgiving a few years ago, with my husband, Gary Rotstein. And props to you too, Gary, for holding down the fort while I was gone.

At any rate, after depositing bags in D&E's apartment, it was time to head to the Walter Washington Convention Center to pick up media credentials: a mission undertaken with some dread, given the talk of traffic gridlock.

It was not to be: there was a parking spot right in front of the Convention Center, and after being ushered through four security checkpoints, I found myself in media credential land. As there were NO OTHER REPORTERS there... the Inaugural volunteers actually seemed glad to see me. They gave me a packet of credentials, some hand-warmers, which would prove INVALUABLE, and I was outta there.

Then it was time to visit Jayne Clark, the lovely, effervescent, tart-tongued travel writer for USAToday:








She was battling a cold but received me graciously in her charming little Georgetown house and allowed me to post to my blog in her living room while she tended to some family business. Then we headed over to her colleague, USAToday columnist Craig Wilson's equally charming Georgetown house. Here's a picture of Craig from USAToday:





There, we had drinks with him, his supernice partner Jack (who works in health care statistics and probably contributes far more to society than I ever will) and Olivia Barker, another extremely nice USAToday reporter. Is all this friendliness a USAToday thing? Sure, we talked about how the troubled newspaper industry, but generally, the mood was cheery and even a bit riotous... as it will be when reporters get together to gossip.

The next day, Sunday, it was up bright and early to meet PG columnist Tony Norman in front of the Georgetown Starbucks to head over to Capitol Hill to pick up yet more media credentials. Tony has been to DC before but I drove him around a bunch of neighborhoods he'd never seen, to help him get the lay of the land. Again, despite all the dire predictions, Capitol Hill on Sunday morning was empty too. I ventured into the Russell Senate Office Building, where I'd spent so much time as a young aspiring field producer for public television, and again, I was the only print reporter in line for credentials.

















Of course, all of this quiescence wouldn't last... I gather it was bedlam up there on Tuesday... but I wasn't to see it, since I was down at the other end of the National Mall, thank goodness. More on that later.

After dropping Tony off near DuPont Circle, I headed over to the Washington Hilton to cover the wild n' crazy Emily's List lunch for Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, et al.



There, I ran into my old colleague, former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summer intern Indira Lakshmanan, now, after a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe, the diplomatic correspondent for Bloomberg. I've run into her a few times on the campaign trail... she is delightful. We sat in the back of the room and laughed hysterically when U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore banged her high heeled shoe on the podium to emphasize a point.

I filed a breaking news story about the lunch for the Web, and, later, a more polished print version. But, I have to confess, a far better piece on this event was penned by Salon's Rebecca Traister. She said everything I wish I could have said -- but I had only 12 inches allotted to my story, after all...

Sigh.

That evening it was out to dinner with D&E and Aunt Anne, at DeCarlo's, a terrific restaurant in Spring Valley. We had a great time. I felt so blessed to be spending time with them, especially since all three are the liveliest, most acerbic, most fun dinner partners you could ask for -- and they don't mind if you steal bites of their dessert!!!!

More later.