The Whitmires are going to Washington

This is an opinion column.

Sometimes, the universe winks.

From above me came a noise I had heard only in movies — a shrill high-pitched announcement alerting onlookers below that the show was on.

“Here I am!” it seemed to say.

It couldn’t be, could it? Here? Now? No, way! But then I looked up, and there it was.

“Is that a %#*ing eagle?” I said, hoping someone nearby would tell me I wasn’t the only one seeing this.

And not just any old eagle, but a bald eagle coasting on the wind high above the U.S. Capitol.

It was the first time in my life I had seen one. And that it should happen the first time in my life I set foot in that place seemed a little too on the nose. Perhaps I was still in my hotel bed and didn’t know it, sleeping through the hearing I was there to cover.

I tried to take a picture of the thing. I captured a tiny silhouette — enough to show folks back home I hadn’t made this up — and then it glided away.

Well, that was weird, I thought.

I went back to the business I was there for, but I never quite put that bird out of my mind. I’ve had a feeling ever since then I would be going back there someday to look for it.

As it turns out, someday will be early next year.

Recently, my wife accepted a job in D.C. We’re packing our things and tidying up our home for someone else to live in. The Whitmires are going to Washington.

This, however, is not goodbye.

Beginning in January, I’ll be what we’re calling the Washington watchdog columnist.

But I’ll be leaving the place I’ve called home since I was six months old.

Alabamian for life

Where are you from? In the South, that question means three things.

1. Where were you born?
2. Where did you grow up?
3. Where do you live?

I was born in Georgia — a fact my mother reminded me of every time Alabama acted out in some embarrassing, national-news sort of way.

I grew up in Thomasville, Ala., where my family moved when I was three. It was two hours from the nearest movie-plex and a great place to do a lot of reading.

Nearly 30 years ago, I moved to Birmingham to attend a small college that sadly no longer exists. This city is where I met my wife. It’s where my children were born. It’s where I covered the mad foibles of a lunatic mayor and chronicled the once-largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States. And it’s from here that I watched the poisonous politics of my home state seep into the national bloodstream.

Alabama has been good to me, although not so much for others. I’ll be sad to leave it.

Alabama has been and always will be my home.

Alabamafication of D.C.

There’s a great change happening in our nation — that thing I’ve nicknamed the Alabamafication of America. The epicenter of that shift, however, was never Montgomery, but Washington, D.C.

Hating on Washington has become a national pastime and a gimmick charlatans use to win public trust they never earned. What George Wallace started, long before I was born, now threatens our national character, our stability and our standing in the world. When a president-elect chooses a Fox News TV personality to lead the Defense Department, you know something has gone an Alabama sort of way. When Matt Gaetz could be our next attorney general or Tulsi Gabbard the director of national intelligence, the universe isn’t winking anymore. It’s pulling the fire alarm.

My wife and I made the decision to move to D.C. before we knew the outcome of the election, and since then, friends have asked if we were certain this was the right thing for us. I’ve never been more certain of anything.

If someone is going to cover the Alabamafication of America, who else but an Alabamian?

There, I will follow around Alabama’s elected officials, sit through their meetings, get my nose up in their business, and let folks back home know what they’re up to. What I once did at Birmingham City Hall, and then did for Alabama state lawmakers, I’ll do on Capitol Hill.

Alabama has prepared me for this as only she could. For that and so much more, I am grateful.

I’m excited to explore, examine and report back what I see there — not writing about Washington for Washington, but for Alabamians.

And just maybe, I’ll find that damn bird.