President Barack Obama began with a recapitulation, an attempt to recall in lyrical fashion who came to Washington in 1963, where they came from, how they got here and why they made the journey.
They were "seamstresses, and steelworkers, and students, and teachers, maids and Pullman porters," he told the crowd gathered on the National Mall for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
At least three items on that list of humble occupations are now footnotes to history, and so it went throughout much of the speech, and much of the day: Nostalgia fed the desire to remember, to know the details, to make lists, and yet the lists only reminded us of how much the world has changed.