Category: Jillian Jorgensen
New Hampshire Residents Flock to the Capital
Photos by Caroline Bridges
MondayWrap
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen and Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 19, 2009
WASHINGTON–When she was young, Nicole Fellian was overjoyed when she was allowed to stay up late to watch the results of the 1992 election between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. Now, 16 years later, the Hopkinton resident who stayed up late to watch the political process unfold will get to watch it firsthand at the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.
“It’s definitely something historic that I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren about it,” Fellian, 28, a law student at Franklin Pierce University, said while she waited in line Monday outside the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington to pick up tickets from the office of Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
Thousands of New Hampshire residents converged on the capital this week to witness the historic swearing-in of the nation’s 44th president.
“The day after the election, I e-mailed Sen. Gregg,” Fellian said. “It wasn’t a second thought. If we could get tickets, we were coming.”
Meanwhile, 200 New Hampshire residents, expatriates and the full congressional delegation gathered at the New Hampshire State Society’s inaugural reception Monday night at the Willard InterContinental Hotel.
“This is a fulfillment of the American dream,” Sen. Gregg said. “It is a restatement of the American creed that for people with mobility and talent, the opportunities are limitless in this nation.”
Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., said, “It’s absolutely tremendous that New Hampshire is alive and well in D.C. I think that folks feel sober about the challenges we face, and hopeful and optimistic that the Congress and the new administration are ready to tackle those challenges.”
Earlier on Monday, outside the office of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Ken Goodrow, 46, and his son Stephen, 17, from Plainfield, waited to pass through security and pick up their tickets.
“It’s ridiculously exciting and utterly amazing to be here, and that’s as close as I can come to describing it,” Stephen Goodrow said.
As people arrived to pick up tickets from Shaheen’s office, the senator spoke with reporters about the inauguration and the issues to be addressed by the Senate.
“It’s exciting. It’s nice to see so many people here from New Hampshire,” Shaheen said.
People entering her office, she said, were expressing excitement at being in Washington “with a new president and how exciting it is to be here in the office, where we have a new senator, a Democratic senator for the first time in almost 35 years elected from New Hampshire.”
But Shaheen said there was also work to be done on issues including the staggering economy, health care and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Allison Browne, an African-American mother of three from Plymouth, arrived in Washington on Saturday to be part of the inauguration celebrations.
“What is so interesting at this time is that, as a parent, you tell your children they can be anything they want to be, but now you can actually see past the boundaries,” Browne said. “Since the inauguration of Obama, three different people have said to me out of the blue; wow your sons could be president some day.”
“I really admire Obama; his words are very powerful,” said her son, Alexander, 11. “He has a lot of confidence when he speaks and he believes in what he’s saying.”
Teresa and Jim Gocha, also from Plymouth, brought their three children to Washington to celebrate Obama’s victory.
When Margaret Gocha, 9, from Plymouth, heard that she would be going to the inauguration, she expected to be staying at the White House with Sasha and Malia Obama. When her parents explained that they won’t be allowed, she threw her hands in the air and said, “Well, what’s the point in even going then?”
Margaret met Michelle Obama before the primaries last year. Her mother recalled that “Ms Obama knelt down and said ‘Hello, beautiful girl.’”
Margaret campaigned for Obama with her friend Bella in New Hampshire. “We made signs saying ‘One Vote Counts’ and ‘Go Barack Obama,’ and my mom made Obama cupcakes.’”
Outside Hodes’ office, Jean Cowan, 57, and her husband, Bob Cowan, 61, from Concord waited eagerly for the tickets and reflected on the meaning of the big event.
“I was a child of the sixties. To me, there is a complete cycle here,” Jean Cowan said. “And a big breakthrough of racial barriers.”
Among many New Hampshire residents waiting in line, there was a desire to not just watch the inauguration, but to be a part of the historic moment.
“I want to hear the speech and I want to see the people. I want to be part of that gathering,” Bob Cowan said.
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New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson Delivers Invocation at Inaugural Kick-Off
ROBINSON
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 18, 2009
WASHINGTON –V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, led a crowd of hundreds of thousands in prayer at the opening concert of the presidential inauguration at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday, calling on a “God of our many understandings” to bless the country, its people, and its president and asking for unity.
“Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger,” Robinson, the nation’s first openly gay Episcopal bishop, said during the invocation.
The celebration began with Robinson’s invocation and included performances and historical readings by scores of musicians and entertainers, all while President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden and their families watched from the side of the stage, behind thick glass. Biden and Obama also delivered brief speeches to the crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.
“I don’t mind being an opening act for any of them,” Robinson said with an easy smile Saturday afternoon, in an interview the day before the event. “It’s very exciting and very humbling. It’s just an indescribable honor.”
In his invocation, Robinson asked for the nation to be blessed with anger at discrimination against any group, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, discomfort with easy answers from politicians, and humility, compassion and generosity.
Robinson then asked for President-Elect Barack Obama to be blessed with wisdom, stirring words, strength and safety.
“Give him a quiet heart, for our ship of state needs a steady, calm captain in these times,” Robinson said.
“Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims,” he added.
Robinson said he decided to address the prayer to a non-specific deity after he read older inaugural invocations and prayers and found them to be “aggressively Christian.” He said he wanted to write something more inclusive.
“All I could think about when I read them was, my goodness, what does a Jew think hearing this? What does a Muslim think? What does a Sheikh or a Hindu think?” Robinson said during the Saturday afternoon interview. “Having been not included, as a gay man, in so many instances, the last thing I want to do is exclude any American from this.”
President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church in California and a strong opponent of gay marriage, to pray at the swearing-in ceremony Tuesday had disappointed many gays and lesbians, including Robinson himself.
“I think they just hadn’t thought through how painful that would be to gay and lesbian people only six weeks after the passage of Proposition 8 in California,” he said.
The inaugural committee told Robinson that his invocation at the concert had been planned before the Warren controversy, he said.
Robinson was not invited by the archbishop of Canterbury to attend the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of the Anglican Communion that occurs every 10 years, in England this summer. The Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican Communion.
“I was being more included by the society and the government of the United States than I was by the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which I’m a bishop. There’s something very ironic in that,” he said.
The Sunday event, titled “We Are One,” was an inclusive event, including a stirring performance by U2 of “Pride,” a song written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an impression of the president-elect by actor and musician Jamie Foxx that got big laughs from the crowd, and performers Usher, Stevie Wonder and Shakira collaborating on “Higher Ground.”
Garth Brooks sang a medley that had the Obamas bopping in their seats and the crowd raising their hands enthusiastically during his rendition of “Shout,” and Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen led the crowd in Woody Guthrie’s classic, “This Land is Your Land.” To close the show, singer Beyonce led all the performers in “God Bless America,” a finale that brought Robinson back on stage, singing along.
“The Obama campaign definitely did a great job in terms of bringing together people from many different backgrounds to commemorate this important moment in American history,” David Imamura, the president of the Dartmouth College Democrats, said after the show.
Robinson’s consecration as a bishop in 2003 has caused significant division, but not yet a formal schism, in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
“In my life and ministry, I have tried to be inclusive of everyone,” he said. “It’s not anything that I do that’s divisive, I think. It’s just who I am that is divisive. And you know what? I can’t do anything about that. And I wouldn’t do anything about that.”
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