Inaugural Remembrances

Good morning friends! TV is front and center today as we ALL give praise and Thanks for the "Miracle on the Hudson" yesterday. To distract myself from my news obsessions, I've been paying close attention to as much Inaugural hoopla as I can :-)

When we first moved to suburban MD outside of DC in 1964, we lived in-between Bethesda and the Town of Rockville. Rockville was considered so rural that despite our actual mailing address being "Rockville" my mother from Texas told *everyone* that we lived in "North Bethesda". It was considered swank by comparison to anything further north or east of DC, wry grin. Most of my friends' fathers worked at NIH (no Metro...) and the Shrivers (of Kennedy relation) had a farm hidden in some woods adjacent to our high school where their cows would sometimes get out onto our football field. I believe White Flint Mall is now near what used to be that farm!

I will be *glued* to the TV all day on the 20th; one of the things I adore about Washington is the Pomp and Circumstance of an Inauguration! Back in the 60's, we could drive downtown to my father's office and stand on the curb out front to see an Inaugural Parade :-) Once, my mom heard on the Inauguration TV coverage that Lyndon Johnson &Co. were quietly leaving the White House for the last time and going for lunch to Averil Harrimon's house in Bethesda, and we rushed over there, just about beating the press, to watch them get out of limos and go inside. I think that was one of the only times I saw LBJ in person. I was young enough to fit under the arm of a LaRGe TV cameraman (and boy, were TV cameras huge back then) to get a good look at the then "Former" President :-) Mom always prided herself on figuring out where politicians lived (especially in Bethesda, lol) (no CNN, no People Magazine, maybe even no National Enquirer back then!) and was extremely proud of the fact that she had figured out where Camp David actually was because we used to camp at a Nat'l Park Service camp in the mountains of northern Maryland near there regularly. It's location was considered Top Secret back then...no GPS or Google Earth either, just my mom's keen observations and deductions :-))

OK, confession time too....I can't WAIT to see what Michelle Obama is going to wear to all the events, sigh, just call me a First Lady Fashionista? We were even lucky enough to see the 60's version of the First Ladies Dresses display at the fairly new Museum of American History at the Smithsonian back when they had a dress from every First Lady on display...they were in sad need of repair and conservation even then, but no matter how they "improved" the exhibit, I sure did love that original one.

Doodles of Remembrances and Hope