Here’s what MADD should be mad about
drunk, high, naked driver crashes into parked car while masturbating.

Instead, they have their knickers in a knot over the proposal by a group of college presidents and drinking experts (how does one apply for the latter job?) to lower the drinking age back to 18.

Drunk driving is a menace and should be vigorusly attacked. Turning 3/4 of the college kids in this country into criminals is not the way to do that. But, as others have pointed out, MADD has turned away from combatting drunk driving and into a rabid temperance movement. I don’t drink so I don’t particularly care what the angry mothers are up to but I do have three kids, all over 21 now, who, I suspect, imbibed a beer or two at school, just as most college kids have done for, say, the past 150 years. If educators think banning such behavior is a bad idea, maybe we should at least discuss it, rather than leave the decision to MADD.

Don’t tell my peers here in Greenwich
But things are bad all over, even in Bulgaria

And Martha’s Vineyard

Copy Editor!
The Greenwich Time, fresh from laying off half its editorial staff, announces today that Cops Relish in Golder Verdict. It seems to me that one may relish a verdict but, unless you’re a hot dog, can you relish in anything? And if that’s the intended meaning, shouldn’t the headline have referred to the Goulden’s verdict?

Havana, I hear you calling
The Wall Street Journal article I link to below mentions “Climate Crime Cards” that kids can use to spy on, and report environmental crimes committed by their parents, friends and relatives. I wondered if the editorialist was indulging in a bit of satirical stretching so I Googled the term and damned if he wasn’t exactly right. Wow. This all seems eerily reminiscent of stories I’ve read about life in Nazi Germany and, later, communist paradises like Cuba where children are encouraged to spy on and rat out their parents for impure thoughts. In protest, I may just start tossing #3 plastics into my blue recycling bin.

Or buy fresh ammunition for my guns.

Update: reader Juan comments: Juan writes…
“Reminds me of the story of little Pavlik Morozov, who became a Soviet Hero and was adopted as patron saint of the Young Pioneers for denouncing his father. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to become informers, even at the expense of family ties.

http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biom6/moro1.html.

The back story is that the distressed mother, abandoned by her husband for another woman, instigated the child’s denounciation. And in the end, most of the family and extended family, except the mother, were killed by the Soviets.”

The New Yorker article
The Greenwich Time has discovered Nick Paumgarten’s article on Greenwich. Paumgarten’s tone may be a bit pessimistic on the current state of our real estate market (could be because he spent too much time talking with me) but I think he’s right on, naturally. Leave it to our local paper, however, whose last revenue source is real estate advertising, to seek out and quote those Realtors still capable of whistling past the graveyard.

But local brokers say that explanation only gives part of the picture. While it’s true Greenwich’s upscale market is not as robust as it once was, it’s certainly not bad enough to doom a well-planned project to failure, many said.
“I don’t think Greenwich has been that hard hit,” said Jackie Hammock, a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker. “There are still plenty of these houses that are selling.”

[Coldwell Banker - isn't that the firm that got your column axed for saying mean things about real estate? Ed. Why yes, I believe it was]

While I’m delighted that there are still optimistic agents working the beat and while I don’t believe that the market has died forever, I personally stopped whistling awhile ago.