Crowds

When I was in Junior High School English I was asked to make a poetry notebook. We had to hand copy or type poems we admired and assemble a book. I couldn't see the point. (Which was, I'm sure, to make us familiar with the poems in a way just reading could not and, of course, prove we'd read them. Today the kids would blindly cut and past and print and, well, there wouldn't be a point. You'd have to make them write about the poems but then they'd still probably plagiarize from the WEB. But I digress. We'll get back to that.)

It seems that everyone is euphoric about Obama's election and determined to be present at the historic inauguration of the first president whose father is African and who played basketball in Hawaii and the president upon whom hope is heaped (he asked us for it, our hope that is) that all the pains of the last eight years may be erased and world peace and economic stability achieved.

I get it. I think it is more exciting than the (upcoming) Super Bowl and Oscars. I think it is more exciting, probably, than any inaugural in my lifetime. I think it is probably the most riveting non-tragedy in my lifetime. Kennedy's assassination, LBJ's swearing in, Ruby shooting Oswald was something you couldn't take your eyes off. 9/11 similarly. But for a happy occasion (or if you were not for Obama at least a neutral occasion showing that the country is indeed a sort of democracy), this seems like the biggest deal in my lifetime. If I'd been alive for VE day and VJ day, that would have probably won.

But. Going to Washington? You'd have to pay me. I'm not even going to join a remote throng in Austin. I'm going to sit in my condo and watch coverage on my flat screen TVs. I might have to pay some attention to the Australian Open, however. It is a Tennis Grand Slam, after all.

So what am I getting at? Well, happy crowds or mad crowds, doesn't matter. Crowds are unwieldy, expensive and dangerous.

Bush declared a state of emergency because of the fear that more funds would be necessary to control the crowds. Cell phone companies warn that they won't be able to handle the traffic. ("Where are you?" "I'm by the Lincoln Memorial in the Obama shirt.") People are staying in hotels hundreds of miles away. People don't know how they are going to get around from party to party. (Or to and from the faraway motel room.) Think Super Bowl victory celebration times a hundred. (These celebrations have turned violent even. Euphoria and anger are too close together it seems.)

So what does any of this, any of these unintended consequences of large groups of celebrants gathering, have to do with that poetry notebook?

Well, I guess that as I wound it up, after typing the penultimate poem from some book, that I thought of all these kids in my class doing this same thing and it struck me as funny. So this was the last poem my English teacher would see, I decided, if she checked that far. (She did. She guessed who the anonymous author might be. I did not fail, however.)

Crowds may cheer;
But never fear,
They also jeer
And rarely hear
What is intended or recommended.
These uncivilized masses:
English classes.
-Anon

Too many people, too few resources. No matter how cheerful everyone is...I wouldn't be there. I'm doing my part and staying home. It's my creative answer to it all. I won't be at the Oscars or Super Bowl either. Wouldn't want to be. The Austrailian Open, though? Yeah, I'd like to join that crowd.