I've been staying at my son Tom's house on Capitol Hill in Washington...six blocks in back of the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court. It is a dense residential neighborhood of row houses, manors, modest frame dwellings...most of which lie within a tightly regulated historic district. The district ensures that almost no change can be made in the exterior of the houses. So each trip around its many blocks reveals its many shapes and forms; each residence having its own unique story and lore.
But besides the structures, the neighborhood ("near""dwelling""place") is the people who live there. The children who ride in wagons for their afternoon "walk" from the local day care center. The woman trying to decide on flowers in Eastern Market, built in 1873 and still housing all range of food vendors. And folks in their houses and flats, sorting out their lives and possessions and networks. The neighborhood is a kind of tapestry of structural and human interactions, played out in a live street museum, set just in back of the major institutions of our federal government. A place for people behind the people's courts and legislative bodies.
