Guess who’s marching in the Obama inauguration?
Yes I am! I am one of three Seattleites who is going to march with the Lesbian and Gay Band Association at the inauguration next month. I still have trouble believing it’s happening to me, just as I still have trouble believing that Obama is our president-elect! Below is an excerpt of email I just sent to my cousin Katherine…
Here’s a link which talks about the upcoming gig and the history (or lack thereof) of openly gay bands at presidential inaugurations.
The process of choosing who gets to go was like a card game. It started out being disastrous. LGBA (the Lesbian and Gay Band Association) emailed us all a link where we could all go to register on the same day, at exactly the same time. Having worked for an Internet Service Provider in the past, I was worried that LGBA hadn’t chosen a provider with robust enough webservers to handle the inevitable flood of traffic that would occur when the time came.
I was right. At the moment the registration was to start, the traffic crashed the webserver. There were attempts to bring it back up, but it kept crashing. LGBA sent out email to their Yahoo! group asking people to stop hitting “refresh” in order to reduce the traffic, but any student of Intro to Political Science knows about the Tragedy of the Commons.
It was in our collective interest to stop hitting the server with so much traffic, but it was in our individual interest to hit as often as possible, on the off chance that the server came back up and started letting in requests. As it turned out, the server never came back up that night, and no one got to register.
LGBA sent out another email overnight with new instructions. They would have online registration again the following day, but it would be by section (instrument). Each hour on the hour, a different instrument would get to register. The registration would close for that instrument as soon as the requisite number of spots were filled.
So at the appointed Hour of the Trumpets, I went online again, with only a slim hope of getting through the process. I had already heard that other instruments were selling out in 5-10 minutes. I was very nervous - my hands were shaking - and I was trying to be both as fast and as accurate as possible in filling out the various screens. I had my instructions in a printout next to me, and whenever a screen would come up with a question that threw me for a loop, I would re-read my instructions to get back on track.
And in the end, I got through! I couldn’t believe it. I got an online chat request from a fellow trumpet who had failed in her attempt to get through. She’s a medical resident, and the other residents were looking over her shoulder as she went through the process, cheering her on. I felt really bad for her that she didn’t get through. I tried to stress to her that it was really just a lottery, that it was all luck and no skill, but she was inconsolable. Poor dear. I am crossing my fingers that another trumpet drops out and she gets to take their place.
Our band president emailed me later that night, letting me know that she’d been contacted by LGBA to confirm that I was indeed a member of the Rainbow City Band. She noted that only three Seattleites had gotten through the laborious process - I, one other trumpet, and a baritone.
So there we are. I bought my plane ticket as soon as I got the email confirming that I was registered. This whole trip is going to cost me an arm and a leg, but it will be well worth it.
One story you might enjoy: Growing up in Ruidoso, we were on the edge of the Mescalero Apache Indian reservation. Our high school marching band had its own version of Homecoming Court every year, called Band Court. We elected a Band Sweetheart and Mr. Rhythm from our ranks. (How much more band geek can you get?) My junior year, we elected a girl named Sharon Kirgan to be Band Sweetheart. Sharon was Apache. I’d guess that our high school demographic was 60% white, 35% Hispanic and 5% Apache.
We had our Band Court during halftime of one of our home football games, and as always, the jocks and pretty much everyone else laughed at us and called us “band fags” and so forth. But we were proud of our band.
A couple of weeks later, during band rehearsal, our director told us that everyone in marching band was getting out a half day early on Friday. We were all to go down to the football field, where the Mescalero women were going to serve us homemade fry bread (fried right there in oil drums on the field) with refried beans. Which, as you well know, is like manna from heaven.
We were very excited, but also very confused. Why were the Apache women doing this for us? Well, our director explained, as it turns out, no Apache had ever been elected in a popularity contest in Ruidoso. Ever. I (and probably everyone else) was dumbfounded. Why not? And then it began to hit me - racism. My parents were conservative Republicans, but they also believed that everyone is equal and that you should treat everyone with the same respect. I had never been exposed to racism at home, and I lived in a state (New Mexico) where no ethnic group held a majority. I had never thought about how/why there would be discrimination against Apaches. It was really my political awakening. And it was all because of marching band.
And now it’s like it’s coming full circle, marching as an openly gay man in an openly gay band for a new president who was elected without regard to race. We still have a long way to go to overcome hatred and discrimination in this country, but this inauguration truly is a milestone for all of us as Americans.
3 years ago