images and the imagination

My neighbor (a teacher and someone I respect for her political savvy) and I were sharing our experiences of the day, on Inauguration Day. Henry was home from school. Her five year old had kindergarten as usual that day and the little ones watched on TV the ceremony and the speech following. The self-aware five year old confessed to her mom she didn't understand a word of the speech, and her mom questioned the value of her having seen it. I reported to my neighbor that when Obama stood up to take his oath I urged Henry — woozy with the flu, lying down with his head cuddled up in a blanket — to sit up and SEE the event.
I repeated this story to my Documentary Studies class the next day.

There are certain events that define a generation. So much is written about the Vietnam War as one of those. More significant to me is the knowledge of JFK's assassination. I often call this “my first memory”. I would have been just three at the time. I have an image of myself sitting on the stairs leading to the second floor of our house in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I can see the door just in front of me and the banister to my right, and the living room beyond that. The is some discussion of who shot Kennedy. This may be a conflating of several events. Maybe I was sitting on the steps getting ready to go to the Pittsburgh Zoo with the water fountain in the whale's mouth. (Do I really remember being there or is this a memory recreated from photographs?) What is significant to me is that I have an image—a visual picture—that allows me to verify that I WAS THERE. The chronology speaks for itself, so clearly this event happened during my life time and that it was a defining moment for our generation. The loss of a hero. The loss of safety. I could write at length about any number of interpretations. On Tuesday afternoon I am sitting on the guestroom bed where we hide our TV and I am juxtaposing the image of JFK slumped over in the blue convertible next to the image of Barack and Michele Obama out of their armored vehicle walking down Pennsylvania Avenue---("is he really doing this NOW? Am I really watching live coverage?" I am stunned by the message it sends to us: that he is safe in his country and that we are too. More than that, I am very anxious and notice I am holding my breath.

It may be that the girl next door and all the kids in her class listened to Obama's speech with no comprehension of such things as "petty grievances", but they did SEE Obama looking out onto the Mall packed with a crowd that stretched back to the Washington Monument. Living as close as we do to D.C., many of these kids have probably been to the Mall (and they know how long a distance it is even from the obelisk to the dinosaur museum) but never looking as it did that day. And as we know that we are visual before we are verbal, I am confident that they will store some image
that will afford them the privilege of owing this event as their. As belonging to their generation. I am so happy for our children to be part of this.