A Walker in the Suburbs

Day before yesterday, as often happens on Wednesdays, I was a walker in the city. And because it was the first full day of shutdown (many federal employees having come in on Tuesday to sign papers before being furloughed), I strolled through an eerily quiet D.C.

I angled down New Jersey to the Capitol and walked around it to First Street, N.E. The police were in full force and I remember thinking, this is probably not a good place to be today.

But the blue sky and mild air drew me along, down the hill to the Botanical Gardens (closed), past the American Indian Museum (closed), the Air and Space (closed) and across the Mall itself. Even the grass was closed.

Finally, crossing Constitution and Pennsylvania, angling up Indiana to E Street and the courts (not yet closed), I found people again, and some of the liveliness of a typical weekday afternoon.

Yesterday, as I heard police sirens racing down Constitution from my office (on lockdown), searching for news of the shooting at the Capitol (also on lockdown) I thought about Wednesday’s route.

Twenty-four hours later and I would have been crouching behind a tree.

(Yesterday’s car chase along Constitution Avenue passed a shuttered National Archives, pictured here on a more typical afternoon.)

 

I looked it up first thing this morning. The Navy Yard is a little over two miles from my office. I could walk there in 40 minutes. That’s how close it came this time.

But despite how close it came, despite how horrific it was — the worst loss of life in a single violent incident here since 9/11/2001 — what’s most notable about this tragedy is how routine it has become.

At least there were no children killed this time, I caught myself thinking. Yet undoubtedly children were affected. Children and other innocent people. The 12 victims all had loved ones — husbands and wives, kids and parents, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues — and their lives will never be the same.

There has always been anger and hatred in the world. But anger plus gunfire is a potent combination. As Janet Orlowski of Washington Hospital Center said as she updated reporters on the condition of the wounded: “I grew up at a time when people were mad at each other, they put up their fists and they hit each other. And for some reason people have gone from fists to knives to guns.”

(Photo: Wikipedia)

A view of the Capitol Fireworks I’d never seen before, from across the Potomac and down a few miles. The fireworks in miniature but just as splendid.

The spectators were a mini United Nations; they spoke Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Tagalog (maybe). Babies toddled, parents chased, teenagers stared not at the sky but at their phones. Some people sat on blankets, others on the grass. Some had packed elaborate spreads, but more had simply wandered over with a snack and a soda.

Like the fireworks, the venue was a miniature, a snapshot of our country now.