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On Saturday, my family and I boarded the Carolinian and traveled from Durham, NC to Washington DC. And we would have been on time too, if it hadn’t been for Barack Obama’s own rail journey. So we sat for an hour and a half. But we were in a forgiving mood.

It was to be a weekend of waiting and standing in lines. On Sunday we went to the We Are One concert and waited for 90 minutes to go through the security checkpoint. Once inside, the family found a place near the jumbotron. I waited 90 minutes to buy food. While there I marveled at the sea of humanity and how cheerful everyone was, even those of us with hungry and cranky children and those of us who couldn’t feel our toes.

The concert was fun and had a lot less schmaltz than I expected. Bruce Springsteen singing “The Rising” backed by a massive choir was as moving a performance as I’ve seen. Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow, Mary J. Blige, James Taylor, Bettye Lavette, U2…all were stirring and inspired. Even Garth Brooks’ THREE songs couldn’t ruin the moment.

More lines: People were queued up around the block in front of both the House and Senate office buildings to retrieve their inauguration tickets.

Everyone seemed to be cognizant of the significance of the moment, Corporate America included:

Tuesday–Inauguration Day–was pandemonium. The streets around the Capitol were clogged for a mile in every direction. It took us over an hour to go a few blocks. We wound up on the lawn “near” the Washington Monument. The family and I sat down on the grass for a while. But soon the crowd became progressively more dense and we had to stand up. It reminded me of the Who concert I attended in 1979. You could lift up your legs and the press of the crowd would keep you airborne. People literally could not move. It got to be rather scary; eventually I decided to get my kids out of there because I wanted them to be able to live through the next eight years.

We made our getaway and took in the scenery on the way home.

Despite lunatics like the one above, and despite my kvetching and congenital cynicism, it was a spectacular experience. Because of course,

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

There is much to admire about President Obama, but what appeals to me about him as much as anything is this: he is an empiricist. Which brings us back to the same forces that have driven the development of genomics:

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Amen. Now back to work.