What you don’t imagine is what ended up recently taking place and turning D.C. But for the sake of keeping the peace, you play by the rules and occasionally offer a wave or a “thank you” to the men and women simply doing their job. Capitol, mostly by the presence of waist-high barricades and police officers on the east and west entrances’ steps. Meanwhile, across town, not far from where I live, a perimeter of sorts was established around the U.S. The following June, as Black Lives Matter protests heated up, Lafayette Square was fenced in completely.

In the summer of 2019, after decades of complaints about the ease with which the daring or deranged could jump the White House fence, a heightening project began. It’s also where, a year and a half ago, D.C.’s backdrop began moving to the foreground. It now served as an extension of nearby Lafayette Square, a park where people could snap photos, peacefully protest, or simply admire the north portico of 'the people's house.' The stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed to vehicular traffic in 1995 after the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. One, it turns out, was a stroke of genius. But for a suburbanite moving to the Capital, these fixtures were just backdrop and easily skirted as I worked my way, usually on foot, from one monument, museum, or neighborhood to another. When I moved to Washington, D.C., five years ago, they were all part of the landscape, a collection of mostly post-9/11 precautionary measures intended to repel potential acts of terrorism. Alumnus and freelance journalist Rich Shea shares his account of life in the nation's capital during the fraught two weeks leading up to Inauguration Day.

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