Warmth by Inauguration window light

January 24, 11:41 AMDC Corporate Ethics ExaminerJim Cunningham

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With millions in attendance, the gates and securitycheckpoints that were often closed, and lack of accurate news given to those still waiting to gain access, I failed to make it into the National Mall to position myself in front of a jumbotron on Inauguration Day.

Instead, I stood huddled with a crowd of similarly afflicted individuals outside a bar two blocks away. We stood there, braced against the cold, peering though a little pub window at the TVs inside. We ducked down or craned our necks – coordinating our body positions so that as many people as possible could get a view between the letters of “HARRY’S” at the screens which were silent to us on the other side of the glass. Several of us dialed a phone number that was given to us through the grape vine which broadcast sound from the Inauguration (I shutter at what the call will cost). Those of us who dialed the number put it on speaker phone so the others could hear – and that’s how it was – with the sound being live and the TV images on a slight delay...

I had too much on my mind to remember to take a picture of the actual window.

In silence, we watched.

It was in this way, as a member of a ragtag group - forlorn - like a gang of refugees huddled around a trashcan fire – that I experienced this moment in history. This is how I will remember it. This is how, many years from now, I will recount the story when people ask, “Where was I?”

I’m not complaining. Hell, I have a unique story. That’s something.

It was totally worth it. It counts.

I was there.