JANUARY 11, 2021 Washington, DC: Like many, I’m having trouble coming up with words to describe how the events of January 6, 2021, are affecting me. Some of those words must be kept private. But I’m offering a little photo essay about a flawed city that I have loved enough to make it my adopted hometown.
One of my birdwatching spots in DC is next to an area where they dumped some of the stones that were intended but not used to construct the Capitol building. It has the feel of a sort of temple and is a monument in its own way. The human touch is evident, from delicate carved cornices to the rivets in the large stones that were used to separate and shape them. Many of the hands that touched these stones belonged to people who were enslaved.
The framed photo below hangs in my hallway. I bought it in an antique store in upstate New York soon after moving to the DC area. I think it’s a beautiful photo, and the copyright date is 1921. I can’t help but wonder what Theodor Horydczak, the German immigrant who served in the U. S. Army and created this photograph with such a gentle touch a century ago, would think about what happened on the first Wednesday in 2021.
My Aunt Marge and Uncle Tom lived near DC and are probably responsible for my adopting it as my home. On every visit, they showed me something new. More than once, I went with them to sit on the lawn of the Capitol to take in the “A Capitol Fourth” concert and watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July. They gave me this plaque, which reminds me of those good times.
It is a pretty building, isn’t it?
On Saturday, January 9, 2021, I took a bike ride on the Metropolitan Branch Trail to the Capitol. One purpose was to photograph Garin Baker’s beautiful and colossal 2017 mural depicting the planning and construction of the Lincoln Memorial in 1910.
I eventually made my way to the Capitol and photographed it. Three armed officers are visible in the middle of the photo behind a fence erected after the insurrection. The fence looks to me about eight feet tall. The people standing around, as well as the officers, seemed relaxed, but I had a sense that everyone felt awkward. I certainly did. It was a beautiful, quiet day downtown.
I don’t know why the old flags are draped. Below them you can see arched windows, now boarded up, that were broken by insurrectionists breaching the United States Capitol, just above the line created by the fencing put up to secure the Capitol campus. This is where my flowery words fail me, and the best I can do is adopt a journalistic tone. The events need no exaggeration or spin.
Flags were flying at half-mast to honor the Capitol Police officer who died in the line of duty.
This is the saddest photo I took that day and one of the saddest photos I’ve ever taken. The camera decided to auto-focus on the fence rather than the Capitol building.
Something people may not have been seeing is that there are many, many buildings in downtown DC that are boarded up. Most of the buildings are open, and they range from banks to Chipotle restaurants to the one photographed here, the Teamsters headquarters. I don’t know about this one, but many of the others put boards up in June after peaceful protests gave way after dark to violence. Some are blank, some have artwork, and some have graffiti. It looks to me like we are all scared of each other.
On September 11, 2001, I was a young adult working a starter job at the National Gallery of Art, which is in the next block from the Capitol. It is now almost certain that United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania after passengers tried to take control of the cockpit away from the hijackers, was headed for the Capitol building. I felt a sense of personal connection to the people who were on that plane, for risking and ultimately losing their lives in order to save others, possibly including myself. I visited the crash site in early 2002.
I saw a little of everything the year I worked at the National Gallery. A parade of dump trucks protesting something, the parade of Barnum & Bailey circus elephants before they were retired forever, and many peaceful and legal protests including demonstrations in front of the Supreme Court as the justices were arguing the Bush v. Gore case. I felt a bit of a thrill being in the middle of all the action.
As I was leaving downtown on January 9, 2021, I wondered who had hired the bald eagle to soar in circles over Capitol Hill. And I’ll leave it at that.
