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Carter, a Democrat who became the
longest-lived American president in 2019, is among the many who landed musical heavyweights for his swearing-in. Queen of Soul Franklin, who also performed at Obama’s first inauguration, sang “God Bless America” for Carter, and Linda Ronstadt sang a cover of “Crazy.”
Alas, the 39th U.S. president, who has attended every swearing-in ceremony since his own in 1977, won’t be attending Biden’s inauguration due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Like Carter before him, Democrat Clinton invited a number of luminaries, including Michael Jackson, Elton John and Barbra Streisand to perform at events surrounding his first inauguration, ramping up the star power with celebrity cameos. His preinaugural events accommodated almost every musical taste with a wide array of events across several days leading up to his swearing in.
The Freedom in American Songs
Barbara Black
Once in a while, a writer comes along who speaks to your heart, gut, and funny bone all at the same time. Kathleen Winter is one of those writers.
Her story “Knives,” from her engaging short story collection
The Freedom in American Songs, starts breezily a boy with circus skills regularly strides by his birth father’s house on stilts in full view of the man’s wife, who doesn’t know about the boy’s existence. But the tone shifts at the climax in a gut-wrenching scene involving the husband, wife, secret son, and onlookers. Here, Winter spools out an extended metaphor that captures the moment the wife’s worldview shifts. The narrator says, “I glimpsed furniture and other large pieces of equipment being shifted within the darkness of her watchful eyes stagehands clad all in black moved silently in that darkness rearranging her set.”