Installment 2.5 - The Illinois Inaugural Ball
The table was set with a lighted glass brick, lettered “Illinois Inaugural Ball,” a beautiful salad, roll and a butter pat shaped like the Capitol dome. This Illinois Inaugural was like New Year’s Eve on Times Square but without the kitsch and with a dream come true story turned real.
There were “swag bags” at each chair, full of everything from a mini iPod speaker to a lucite paperweight of the Obamas at the Grant Park Victory speech to Walgreen’s ibupofren and Jim Beam Kentucky bourbon miniatures.
“Abraham Lincoln” posed for pictures with arriving guests. The cocktails were the “Yes We Can” and “The Bailout,” among the other Obama-inspired concoctions. The professional photographers circulated, snapping couples and families, older, younger, black and white, young, younger and young at heart.
They served fillet, rare and roasted potatoes and squash and a square of swordfish. There was wine and coffee and cheesecake stamped with a square of meringue inked in a blue American eagle. Later, there would be a buffet. I saw a roasted turkey hoisted up near a carving station. Unlike the rumors I had heard, at least the dinner crowd had bountiful food and drinks. The rest of the 6,000 guests who arrived for dancing and buffet might not get the same royal treatment, but the Renaissance was giving its all.
You could sense a bit of jealousy from the out-of-state guests at the table. They came from Georgia (bought tickets online and felt the Iliinois ball would be the place to be) to Minnesotans, wishing the topic at home was the Presidency and the Olympics and not Al Franken.
Everyone was beautifully dressed: men in tuxedos, women in long gowns – gold, melon, plenty of black, white, caramel, crimson. Children, the few lucky ones who came out, had a ball, literally. One little girl, barely a yardstick high, looked like she would be perfect on the top of a wedding cake, frothy in white tulle.
Washington’s Renaissance Hotel hosted the Illinois delegation, on the eve of the official balls with NO sign of a delineation between the two, except a missing Barack and Michelle. No matter. The East Ballroom (not even the main dining room but a hot spot nonetheless) played host to Ernie Banks, Senator Roland Burris, Senator Dick Durbin and Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Dancing was one ‘70s pop party. Picture jamming to “I Will Survive” while tablecloths are changed from gold to white satin and then littered with inflatable air guitars. It’s all a fun, fabulous, fairy tale come to Illinois. Dick Durbin cuts a rug with his wife. The slide show of Barack’s history in speeches reminds any doubters of how far this campaign has come – cold Springfield to Iowa to Grant Park to DC. Nothing short of miraculous, or as Durbin reminded the crowd, “Sometimes you wait for the right tine in history and sometimes history chooses you!”
Not sure when it all ended, and I never made it to the Illinois State Fair room, but for now, I hope the fun lasts just a little while longer. The real work will be so hard, that this moment has got to be savored – at least one more day!