Local photographer shares views from nation’s capitol

By LEN MILLARD and JOEL BRUESKE, Special Correspondents

If you’ve looked at TV or a national newspaper in the last day or so, you’ve seen the scene. From the cameras mounted on the dome of the U.S. Capitol, all of America can see the aerial shots of our Washington, D.C. gradually filling with people who have come from far and wide just to be in the crowd. From up there, the throng of people looks like a tide moving along a shoreline; a solid mass, moving with the pulse of each person’s own motion.

As part of the mass on the ground, we have seen every color of the rainbow in the faces and the clothing keeping them warm in the freezing cold. You heard the performances on the TV feed. We’ve heard the voices of the crowd joining in. It is an amazing sight from either perspective.

Over a half-million people, and growing each day, all here to celebrate a momentous event. John Bruggeman and Susan Swendsen are here from Ranier. They applied for inauguration ceremony credentials back in March from Congressman James Oberstar. Brock LeMieux is here via New York City. He will be attending the Black Caucus Inaugural Ball. We are all here to add our film and pixels to the image that will be recorded for the history book of our nation.

Press credentials were requested by nearly 20,000 news organizations from all over the world. And just 2,400 were issued and The Daily Journal of International Falls was one that will be on the reviewing stands tomorrow. We can’t be sure how it came to be, but our little town is represented here and it is phenomenal and humbling.

Our country faces one of the worst crises we have encountered as a nation, but the mass is moving folks, and we are thinking good thoughts; moving toward hope and change in the sea of optimism created by individuals. Just like it has always been in America! Join in the moment up there in Frostbite Falls. We’ll tell you the tales when we return.