Enter the Christmas Tree

The Capitol Christmas Tree arrived today on the West Steps! 

  (A few days later, updated Wednesday, November 13)

Give us a few more days and we'll be looking like this, Christmas 2010.

Presidential Taste

One of my favorite pastimes is presidential history. While in Fremont, Ohio, in October, I had occasion to visit the home of President Rutheford B. Hayes. They had just done a $1 million renovation inside to bring several rooms back to their original splendor. Pictures weren't allowed inside, but I shot these of the Hayes house while waiting for my brother to arrive for the 3:30 p.m. tour, where we were joined by two sisters driving from Chicago to Boston on I-80. They dropped into town just to take in the place.

The house in Spiegel Grove, a huge park filled with large trees and endless walking space. Hayes is buried on the grounds with his wife and horse.

I sat here awhile and thought great thoughts on the benches. What a porch!

And the view!

Again, the View! Great time of year to sit on the President's porch.

My Home Town

I recently spent most of a week in Fremont, Ohio, visiting family and enjoying the full colorful spectacle of an eastern autumn. It's a small town of about 16,000, built by pioneers with great taste. They've left us dozens of great monuments, especially beautiful churches and public buildings.

When I grew up this was the county jail, blackened with soot and dark as coal. My brother helped organize a cleaning and burst of adaptive reuse that turned it into offices for the county commissioners.

Built in 1890.

The Sandusky County Courthouse. Dignified.

Pioneer history in the park out front of the courthouse.

Classic. Built to last by ancient founding father Lutherans.

Another Lutheran Extravaganza just blocks away. Grace Lutheran. 

Catholics were no slouches, either. This is St. Joseph's. Less than a mile away is St. Ann's, also built of red brick. Both beauties and speaking to the high aspirations of the county seat of Sandusky County.  While I was home it occurred to me that there are literally thousands of small

American towns with this kind of architecture. I don't have pictures of the houses, but the whole town is filled with giant old two-story's, many of them kept up, many struggling and selling for less than $100,000. Great place to visit, town of my father's people and cemeteries filled with my relatives.

The ambience of 15th and L

  I walked east to buy chocolates at Ginger Elizabeth on Thursday and strolled here through the tree canopy at downtown Sacramento's lively corner of 15th and L streets. There's always a lunch gaggle here, the office crowd and lobbyists gossiping about who's up and who's down. Eye-catching. Great little detail there with the rickshaw. 

The Indefinable Look of the 2000s

The 1990s and 2000s have possessed a certain indefinable look - especially in infill housing of the sort that just opened in downtown Sacramento. This is Mercy Housing's income-qualified housing project  near the courthouse and county jail on a formerly very dead corner. It's a great little piece of infill development - the kind you see featured in one of my favorite magazines of all time, Urban Land from the Urban Land Institute. They love this stuff. So do I.

The Continuing Echoes of Rome

Forgive me the brief ramble of history, but I am engrossed this winter in the first and second volumes of  Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." That means being hyper conscious of the Roman Empire's influence still visible in our lives. I'm a guy who took Latin throughout high school. I visited Rome twice, in 1978 and 1981, to soak in the ruins of what must have been a truly magnificent display of architecture in its time. I came across the Sacramento County Law Library on a recent lunch time walk. It's a little corner place near the Amtrak station, all tucked away and invisible to most of the city. The ancients' good taste endures.

Room With a View

We went to the Crocker Art Museum in downtown Sacramento last Sunday and ran into a huge crowd visiting for the Norman Rockwell exhibit. It was great. So was this million-dollar view of downtown from inside the museum. Even better on a rocking chair.