A happier inauguration

 Sam Smith - The last inauguration before I left Washington was for Barack Obama. We were living on Capitol Hill about six blocks from the Capitol and the neighborhood was as quiet as it always was. I had lunch at Jimmy T's - about five blocks from the action which I watched on their TV set.

Then I wandered over to my former office - about 8 blocks from the action. There standing on the corner was a National Guardsman with one hand holding a rifle resting on the ground and his other hand holding a cup of coffee. The scene struck me as strangely familiar. Where had I seen this before?

Then it hit me. Forty years earlier a National Guardsman had stood on the same corner with a rifle and a cup of coffee in the wake of the 1968 riots some of which had occurred nearby. Now, forty years later, America was electing its first black president.

It's a metaphor that refuses to leave me.