Club Desvelado ripped through the essays in "Wasn't the Grass Greener?: Thirty-three Reasons Why Life Isn't as Good as It Used to Be" (Barbara Holland). She laments the passing of, among other pleasant institutions of the past, the great department stores. I wish I could find an image of the interior of Frear's Cash Dry Goods Bazaar, with its skylight, mezzanines, grand staircase. and amazing early electrical fixtures She also mourns the notion of accommodating yourself to the weather and speaks of the way that people, including Austinites for the most part, pass from their air-conditioned houses to their attached garages to their air-conditioned vehicles to their enclosed parking spaces to their air-conditioned workplaces. There are a couple of "modern" houses in this part of town whose inhabitants are never to be seen, only their so-called landscapers (better said, wielders of obnoxious power mowers, edgers, and blowers). Those of us completely sans a.c. are dwindling in numbers.