Opinion: Breakfast with Jane -- Now, that’s the ticket
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WASHINGTON -- It seems no one is immune from the crush of inaugural logistics.
‘I feel like a concierge,’ said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice). ‘All weekend I’ve been trying to get people tickets.’
Harman’s constituents gathered at the Phoenix Park Hotel on Capitol Hill to have breakfast with Jane -- and pick up their tickets to Tuesday’s swearing-In ceremony.
The hot ticket, of course, is the swearing-in -- and die-hard ticket seekers are trying their last-minute luck by pressing for cancellations and no-shows.
Harman said she had 3,000 requests and only 198 tickets.
One of those went to South Bay resident Virginia Tokunata, 78, who turned up to collect her highly vaunted yellow ticket -- a seat (most folks get blue or purple tickets, indicating standing areas).
Tokunata, who was a teen during World War II when she was sent to the Japanese American internment camp at Tule Lake in Newell, Calif., wrote Harman a letter about her life and her quest to attend the inauguration.
Harman said she was moved by Virginia’s story and those of others who have written to be a witness to history.
When I spoke with Tokunata, she was rather tongue-tied -- more excited about being in Washington and about to attend Barack Obama’s swearing-in than telling her own story. But she had no qualms (that she told me) about the cold or the crowds; she was just excited to be here.
-- Mary Forgione
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