Moving Day

TW: I have read before about the abrupt transition within the actual living quarters at the White House when the occupants change but I always find it somewhat amazing and metaphorical for the overall transition. The whole concept of waking up the most powerful person in the world and hours later being a footnote seems disorienting in the extreme.

From NYT:
"...President Bush and his wife, Laura, will wake up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday morning, just as they have the last eight years. But by the time the new president, Barack Obama, returns from the inaugural parade with his family in late afternoon, there will be nary a box of theirs left to unpack. Clothes will be neatly folded in drawers, pictures will rest on dresser tops and walls, stuffed animals will lie on beds, as if the Obamas had always lived there.
The highly orchestrated quick-change operation, conducted by the 93-member White House residence staff, has no parallel in the outside world. The entire affair is over and done with in a matter of hours, without a single moving man setting foot inside the Executive Mansion.

“It’s controlled chaos,” said Ann Stock, who was social secretary in the Clinton White House. “They have about four to five hours to completely unpack, put everything away in the closets, put the family pictures up and to really make the house the Obamas’ home by the time they come in from the parade. It’s really quite an extraordinary switchover.”

...“In the morning, the president and first lady are saying their goodbyes to the White House and to the residence staff; there’s a very emotional meeting and a goodbye,” he said. “Then the staff has to turn right around and become the staff of the Obamas by the afternoon. It’s not an easy task.”

...If the past is any guide, Tuesday’s move will begin about 10:45 a.m., right after the Bushes, who will have hosted the Obamas for the traditional Inauguration Day coffee, leave for the swearing-in at the Capitol. Veterans of previous White House moves say that typically, a moving van arrives to deliver the new first family’s belongings to the waiting residence staff. Each member of the staff will have a task, assigned well in advance. If all goes well, the exercise will unfold with the precision of an orchestral piece.

It helps, of course, that there is little, if any, furniture to move; the White House maintains a warehouse of antiques and furnishings for presidents to choose from. When the Bushes arrived in 2001, they brought with them just one piece, “a special chest of drawers” that had belonged to the president’s grandmother, Ms. McDonough said. The Obamas are leaving all their furniture at their house in Chicago."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20move.html?ref=politics


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20move.html?_r=1&hp