How about that hat!



Some say Aretha Franklin stole the fashion show at the presidential swearing-in with a big, glittery, dove-gray hat, adorned with the biggest bow ever. It’s certainly the talk of the Internet, and the Detroit milliner who made the $179 chapeau is being swamped with requests for a replica.

But this hat was more than a fashion statement.

Playwright Regina Taylor is the author of a musical called Crowns, about the tradition of wearing big, bold, and beautiful hats in the African American church, where such head coverings are indeed referred to as “crowns” and women who have a large collection of them are known as “hat queens.” Hat queens tend to be of an older generation, says Taylor. “But I see more young African American women wearing hats.”

In her research, she learned that these church hats have African roots: “Adorning one’s head for worship crossed the ocean from Africa and survived through slavery.” In West Africa’s Yoruba culture, she adds, a head covering had other roles. People believed that spirits could enter through a person’s head. Women would cover their head to keep out bad spirits—and invite in good ones.

As African slaves in America turned to Christianity, they found additional reason to keep the tradition. A passage in Corinthians states: “For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head.”

With no resources, slave women improvised. They would wear a wreath of flowers, or decorate a straw hat they used for work.

Eventually, the African American community began to mix fashion and faith with elaborate hats. “Black women tried to take it to a whole other level,” Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, a history professor, has written. “The church was a place where black women's moral character, beauty, [and] style was openly recognized and appreciated. At church a black woman could walk down the aisle holding her head up high topped with a fancy and heavily decorated hat and wearing a style that reflected her African American heritage.”

The hat also reflected the wearer’s personality “It is an expression and celebration of the soul, and of the individual’s spirit,” says Taylor. “Some women may wear a small pillbox hat. People who go big, with bells and whistles—that’s who they are.”

As for Aretha’s bow, she says, “Miss Aretha is a gift, so of course she would have a sparkling bow.”

Photographer Michael Cunningham, coauthor of the book Crowns, which shows off dozens of hats and is the inspiration for Taylor’s play, sums up the Hat That Upstaged Obama: It shows respect to God. It shows that Aretha Franklin is both a prosperous woman and one who’s unafraid to take fashion risks. And it kept her head warm on a very chilly day. “It’s a triple threat.”

- Marc Silver

Did you see us? Pop Omnivore was in the mall! Not the Mall of America, in Minnesota. The other mall of America—that beautiful stretch of green in Washington, D.C., framed by monuments, museums, and the Capitol, where more than 1 million people gathered to watch (via Jumbotron) the swearing-in of President Barack Obama.

Our job was to serve as a volunteer, directing the masses. This was sometimes easy. People would come up and ask, “Is that the mall?”—and point to the Washington Monument. “No,” we’d say. “That is an obelisk commemorating the first president. This,” we’d say, using a Vanna White–style arm point to indicate the flat grassy area where the throngs were gathering, “this is the mall.”

Other times it was hard. Have you ever tried to give directions to people from out of town (or out of the country) when streets are constantly being closed and you have no idea when or where or why? But everyone was very nice, even when they’d come back an hour later and say, “We did what you said, but they wouldn’t let us through the checkpoint.”

But enough of crowd control. The real beauty of the day was to be found in crowd anecdotes.

Here are a few we gathered firsthand or collected from friends:

• On a crowded subway-train ride down to the ceremony, someone said, “Shh, everyone be quiet, my friend is about to call into work sick.” So all the passengers got quiet, the friend made the call, and then announced, “I’m done.” A cheer went up, and everyone resumed talking.

• When President George W. Bush appeared, on the Jumbotron screen, a chorus of boos went up among the masses. “Vote, don’t boo,” said one proper African American woman. “Booing isn’t nice.” But maybe people are a bit too nice when a woman in a camel coat, beret, and Diana Ross hair is standing on a truck, waving flags like a cheerleader and blocking everyone’s view. People called out, “Please sit down!” When the announcer on the Jumbotron said the people in the ticketed (and seated) viewing area,  “Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats,” we all laughed—first of all because WE HAD NO SEATS. And then someone shouted to the flag-waving woman, “He means you!î” Eventually she got the message.

• When Obama said in his speech that his father couldn’t have eaten in some American restaurants 60 years ago, an African man in the crowd simply said, “Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.”

• One man appeared to be the first official protester in the Obama era. He rapped with a reggae lilt, “Obama promised to give me a job, now he’s president, I don’t have a job, I call him up, he won’t answer his phone.” This protester did not have any followers.

• After Obama’s speech, many began to push their way toward a mall exit, or what they thought was an exit. Turned out there was no opening in the chain-link fence along Constitution Avenue, and at one point the confused crowd seemed on the verge of stampeding. Fortunately, cooler—and taller—heads prevailed, as a couple of big guys who could see over the masses calmly directed everyone to safety. Also fortunately, everyone listened.

Do you have inaugural anecdotes to share that capture the culture of the day? Please do!

- Marc Silver

Happy January!

Everyone knows January is the first month of the year. And in the dim recesses of our brains, we might even recall learning—in what was it, fourth grade?—that the month is named for Janus (below), the two-headed Roman god. Janus could look backward and forward at the same time, making him the perfect figurehead for a month that ushers in a new year, marks the change from days growing shorter to days growing longer, heralds a farewell to one American president and the inauguration of another, and starts the new season of American Idol, with a supercool fourth judge added to the tiresome old mix!

Only here’s what they probably didn’t teach you in elementary school: January wasn’t always the first month of the year. In Roman days, it used to be the 11th month. Back then, March was the first month of the year. Named for the god of war,  March was the time when the Romans planted their fields and went off to battle. “War was very, very important to the Romans,” explains Judith Hallett, professor of classics at the University of Maryland. “The Romans loved war. They benefited from it.” The spoils of war included land and the ever popular plunder.

Meanwhile, January and February brought up the end of the Roman year. “They were two depressing months,” Hallett says. The only bright spots during those times were certain festivals, like Lupercalia, the February bash during which men ran around naked and whipped women to promote fertility. I’m guessing the men enjoyed that festival more than the women did.

But I digress.

So how did January go from No. 11 to No. 1? Blame it on politics!

A couple of hundred years before the reign of Augustus Caesar (31 B.C. to 14 A.D.), the Romans began thinking of a better way to wage politics. Instead of inaugurating their consuls in bellicose March, why not install them in office in January, two months before the country went off to war? To mark this political upheaval, the 11th month of the year thus became the first month.

I know what you’re thinking: What an uncanny parallel to American history! Our president used to be inaugurated in March, too—until the 20th Amendment, ratified in 1933, changed the date. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to take office on January 20. The reason for the change? To cut back on the long period of lame duckery.

So here’s a tip of two hats to Janus, god of gates and doors—and a much better symbol for new presidents than Mars.

-Marc Silver