Window Decorating

   Old American movies often highlight a time when people went "window shopping," especially at Christmas. Big cities, giant department stores, lavish window displays.

  We don't get much of that in the average American city/suburb/county seat all now filled with Targets and Home Depots. So, what a pleasant surprise to amble into ye olde window display on J Street at the Citizen Hotel in downtown Sacramento. It's not just the nostalgic Santa memorabilia. Check out this great naughty and nice list below. How refreshing to see a corporate institution like this - especially in a political town, or maybe because it's a political town - go out on a limb like this with actual opinions on our world today.

 Thank you, festive and savvy Santa!

 The Nice List

And The Naughty List 

The authors 

Elegant 

The Classic American Two-Story Home, Retooled on California's Mare Island

Yesterday, returning to inland California from a trip to Marin County, I ventured off Highway 37  in Vallejo for 45 minutes to visit the old closed Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The 5,285-acre shipyard operated from 1857to 1996 and did much of the shipbuilding, overhaul and repairs of U.S. Navy fleets operating in the Pacific Ocean.

Driving into the property on Walnut Avenue I was struck by the rusting, dead hulks of warehouses, barracks and low-slung industrial buildings that may never be restored in an area the Navy is still cleaning up years afterward.

But I was especially interested in seeing some of the new development that started there during the housing boom. I found some on Flagship Drive near 7th Street in a new residential neighborhood built by Miami's Lennar Homes. The area was chock full of new houses built in the old styles, with front porches, second-story balconies and no garages out front.

 I am partial to this style from having grown up in a Midwest American two-story farm house, part of a Northwest Ohio filled with big families living in big houses. This newer neighborhood offered a certain retro nostalgia about how homes looked before the car changed them entirely. Nothing's ever as good as the real authentic oldies, but these are good.