It's a Friday afternoon in downtown Washington, DC and I should be happy. The skies are clear blue and the sunshine is streaming down, warming me as I sit - just blocks from the White House - eating my lunch on a patch of green grass. Not only the spate of Indian Summer weather we're having here on the first day of October should cheer me, but so should the recent news - welcomed by the entire region, it seems - that Major League Baseball will once again be played in the nation's capital.

But no. Happiness is elusive today. As I take myself for a noontime stroll, an ominous air has descended on this fair city. Or at least on the several square blocks I'm traversing near the World Bank. Noticeably well-armed police officers are posted on every block. Ugly white bollards are positioned along sidewalks, forcing pedestrians to walk to one side. The streets are nearly barren of traffic now as the authorities have positioned tank-like trucks and similar vehicles directly in the intersections. Passersby such as myself gawk at the display. It seems so incongruous with the bright, warm weather, with the pleasant expectation of weekend that should accompany a Friday afternoon.

Locked down. This city - or at least the heart of it - is locked down. As the shadows lengthen through the afternoon, a state of siege imposes itself, more and more intractably. My colleagues and I - Federal workers all - trade quips about how appalling it is, what a travesty daily life in this city has become. We look to the southeast and spy a blimp hovering over the Pentagon. It's not the Goodyear blimp, poised to promote the return of the Senators or this Sunday's Redskins game. It's a blimp operated by the Powers That Be, casting its wary eyes 360 degrees around and below, skulking across the horizon with the hint of taking up permanent residence.

What is it we have become so afraid of, I wonder? Is the enemy from without or within? When did free and industrious people take to locking their capital city down, become accustomed to a paramilitary presence? Are we so fearful that the Government can no longer trust daily commerce? That the humanity we carry in our hearts takes a back seat to the weapons carried in a holster?

"Gone forever," my friend at work remarks, "are the days when you could see Ike out on the South Lawn, practicing his golf swing." Indeed. Today the Government is preparing for a demonstration of a different sort. A citizens protest is to take place this weekend outside the World Bank and International Monetary Fund headquarters. Hundreds of people are expected - perhaps thousands judging from the fortifications - but right now I doubt it. For as I circumnavigate the area, I see no one, no gathering group, that might be mistaken for a partisan or an Enemy Combatant. Only a few media hounds are present, or rather their advance crews, setting up shop.

This entire area has the feel of a ghost town, as most Federal workers were enjoined to take leave or work from home today. Consequently, this stretch of town seems well-nigh abandoned. Many eateries didn't open, and there is not a vendor in sight. Crosstown, maybe, but not here. The SWAT-like preparations suggest a gathering storm, but the threat seems hollow.

Thankfully, the college students at neighboring George Washington University stroll down the streets as they usually do on their way to and from class. Several of them stop to chat with the uniforms, and the police, to their credit, return the favor by chatting amicably. We are, after all, just people - some here to study, some to protect, some to serve in other ways - but here we are, together in the midst of a mightily odd situation, and we might as well make the best of it.

Come the evening, it is time to head home and my thoughts meander to an email my parents sent me earlier in the day. Seems that Yusef Islam - nee Cat Stevens - will be interviewed on 20/20 tonight. That's an interview I want to catch. I'm a longtime fan, having bought nearly all his albums in junior high and high school, and listening to them over and over again, wearing down the proverbial vinyl. Of course, since his conversion to Islam, not a lot has been heard from him, at least not in America. But, of late, everyone knows the story. He was flying with his daughter a few days ago to Nashville by way of Washington. And, as his name was on a U.S. 'no fly' list because of suspicions he might be a terrorist, the flight was diverted to Bangor, Maine, where the former pop star was apprehended, questioned, and then deported to his native England. A sad and silly turn of events for the soft-spoken man who penned 'Peace Train.'

So I gather our Government is over-reacting a wee bit. Now, setting ourselves up for embarrassment in the world's eyes is one thing, but it is far more visceral to feel under a marshal thumb on one's own streets. I have been a resident of the DC area for nearly a quarter-century now - yes, I will admit it - and have never felt so convinced that we have lost our collective grip. At least here, in this small sector of the Federal city on a magnificent early fall day. What should be a vibrant pulse is merely feeble. And what should be the inner strength - and the American ideal - to allow a band of protestors to gather peaceably to voice something of the growing discontent - is becoming a hollow mockery. Indeed, the entire Pennsylvania Avenue frontage of the World Bank is obscured by trucks, nose to front, nose to front. Think Big Brother and multiply by twenty.

September 11th, plainly, did change everything. We have become a fearful people. I walk the now desolate streets feeling nothing if not disconsolate. The day is done, perhaps carrying our accustomed liberties in tow in the gathering twilight.

The writer works for the Public Buildings Service of the U.S. General Services Administration at 18th and F Streets, NW.

CODA It occurred to me that I might be well advised not to attach my name to this essay. I am, after all, a Federal employee, pledged to work for the common good. Yet for that reason I won't shirk from identifying myself. For if I do cower, if I do give in to worry, I will simply be reinforcing the prevailing ethos. And I would rather stand apart from what is troubling, witness it and describe it. "E Pluribus Unum": the many make up the one, not vice versa.

###