Fences
June 20, 2005
The most conspicuous thing about Washington right now is the ubiquitous construction. Every kind of temporary barrier is employed somewhere around the capital. Streets are being dug up. As I make my way to the Library of Congress this afternoon, I will pass down a fenced sidewalk, and to my right will be a tunneled street between the Supreme Court Building and the Library of Congress.
The entire open area behind the Capitol itself is closed off, surrounded by a wooded wall. When I was here in the summer of 2000, that was where a crowd lined up informally to walk into the Capitol and look up at the dome.. to get an official tour meant getting there a lot earlier.. but I just wanted to see the painted apotheosis of George Washington. The area had the pleasantly unkempt feeling of our capital, but now it is closed. The reason for the closure of this open as area, noted on the surrounding wooden walls, is that a visitor center for the Capitol is under construction. That may be, but I also feel pretty certain that there are secret security precautions being put in place as well.
Fences and walls are not the only addition. The Capitol, like the White House, now has armed security forces walking around on the roof, scrutinizing the crowd below. The Capitol Police appear to keep a close eye on what kind of vehicle travels down the roads surrounding major buildings. Yesterday I saw a flat bed trailer truck that had been stopped by the police. The truck was hauling three painted wooden sheds.. the kind of sheds you might put in a back yard to store a lawnmower or something. But I could see that it did indeed look suspicious, and I could imagine the police shouting “What the hell gave you the idea to haul that past the Capitol and Senate office buildings?” Emily reports from her morning jog that there are plenty of military personnel out running on the mall.. some quite fast.
As with many things done by our government, it is hard to analyze the reasons behind certain actions. Security plans and precautions are not exactly made public.. I even felt a little timid taking pictures of security personnel in order to illustrate this short essay.. I did better with fences and walls. Maybe our capital was in need of a major overhaul, and 9/11 was the catalyst for that. Or, conversely, maybe this is a fundamental change. The same uncertainty could apply to our nation as a whole. How changed are we? It is hard to know with all the temporary walls and fences still up.