inauguration – Christopher Wink

Flat Stanley in Washington D.C. for the Obama inauguration with Christopher Wink

And I thought children hated me.

Debbie Reinhardt’s second-grade class at the Kiel School in Kinnelon, N.J. sent me Flat Stanley, the title character of a children’s book from 1964. The flattened boy from the book gets sent around the world in an envelope.

I’ve been charged with showing our pal Stanley around Philadelphia, but before I get to that, I took him on the road to our nation’s capital earlier this week, where I was for the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. Check some dispatches below.

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How are those portable toilets going to hold out at the inauguration?

Portable toilets near the FDR Memorial in Washington D.C. on Jan. 19, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. — I’ve heard fears about the available public toilets at the grounds of the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Oh, portable toilets, our most unloved friend. I’m off to the National Mall now, far behind millions who may have gotten there when security opened this morning at four a.m. What’s going to happen when all of those folks have to go?

Continue reading How are those portable toilets going to hold out at the inauguration?

Strange encampment near FDR Memorial in Washington D.C.

The entrance of the Roosevelt Memorial, tonight adjacent to a strange cluster of unidentified tents.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is in left field of a well-worn baseball field, wedged between the icy Potamac River and the city’s Tidal Basin.

Tonight, so is a strange encampment of brown tents, bright lights and vehicles with federal government license plates.

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Really, how crowded is the inauguration going to be?

Tomorrow I’ll be in D.C. to cover the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.

It seems it’s all anyone is talking about in a way no inaguration in my short life – even the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, another young Washington outsider popular with young people.

Folks in D.C. are already complaining of the growing crowds. There might not be enough public toilets. I filed a story for CampusProgress.org suggesting this inauguration may not only be the largest, but also might have more college students than ever before (perhaps disinegnous because there are more American college students today than ever).

But will the cold and these calls of crowd drop that total? Check here for details and for updates, check my Twitter account, where I hope to link to photos via Twitpic.

Photo courtesy of RPG.