“As we live and as we are, Simplicity – with a capital “S” – is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.”
-Frank Lloyd Wright
November 28, 2012, Washington, DC: I paid my first visit to a Frank Lloyd Wright house on Saturday. We just so happened to drive by the Robie House on Chicago’s South Side on a cold afternoon with time to spare. It probably won’t surprise you that I wandered inside and signed up for a tour.
What we’d signed up for, actually, was a perfectly timed reminder about simplicity on the advent of a season that quickly overflows with clutter.
November 21, 2012, Washington, DC: “Are you going home for Thanksgiving? Where are you from?” I’ve met more new people than usual in the months leading up to this holiday, so I’ve fielded these questions a lot lately. It’s friendly conversation, intended to get to know a newcomer, and yet the questions and the assumptions people make about their answers perpetually throw me.
November 17, 2012, Washington, DC: Something significant happened today in the Washington neighborhood of Navy Yard — something we’d all been waiting for. Today was the day the children arrived. They came to skate at Canal Park during its opening weekend, scurrying around the icy surface. They slipped and slid and infused new life into a neighborhood that up until now has been too quiet and empty on weekend mornings. Until now, we’d believed in the 
November 6, 2012, Washington, DC: The second anniversary of our move to Capitol Hill came and went last week in the days preceding today’s election. While I sensed our move to southeast DC was part of a larger trend, I got a better sense of the actual growth of this side of Washington from the information shedding light on Election Day. According to Washington Post District reporter Mike DeBonis, Ward 6 where we live has seen a 30 percent increase in the number of registered voters since four years ago, with 16,000 more of us voting here since 2008. Part of that equation is due to redistricting, but much is due to growth. It’s been such fun to become part of this ever-changing slice of the city, and the list of things we love about it grows longer by the day.