A full service broker

 Brother Gideon, having sold a house on Carriglea, in Riverside, was faced with a problem: neither the seller nor the buyer wanted the old boar’s head that was mounted on a wall, so Gid removed it and delivered it  tonight to his Comedy Club in NYC, which was delighted to receive it.

More on impervious surfaces

I still can’t figure out how to link to specific articles in Greenwich Post (or they can’t) but here’s more on what our P&Z has planned for us. Turns out, even a gravel driveway is deemed ‘impervious”, so we’re going back to dirt. Central heating and electricity is next.

The YMCA’s woes continune

Mary Washbourne, heir to the original Witherall who donated the land the Y now occupies, is resisting an attempt by Chase to declare s restriction in the deed of gift, limiting the land’s use to the purpose of the YMCA, invalid. If Chase prevails, it can continue with its pending foreclosure, sell the place and   build an office building on it, or sell it to Greenwich Hospital. . Should Chase lose,Ms. Washbourne may get the property back and then do the same thing, while pocketing $20 million or so. She’s represented by Greenwich attorney Dean Montgomery, so my money is on her. Either way, I wouldn’t buy a long-term membership at the club.

Snow

I haven’t even attempted to dig out my car, preferring instead to give the sun a chance to melt its ice casement. But now I hear there’s more snow on the way tonight and perhaps another big storm coming Tuesday or Wednesday. I may have to buy a humongous snowblower because if I do, it will never snow again. Seems like a small sacrifice.

Chickahominy in the 30’s

Great, nostalgic article in today’s Greenwich Time. Simpler times, and probably better.

Mickey Sherman’s law license suspended

Well, I don’t suppose he’ll need it in jail. I feel awful for Mickey – he’s a terrific guy, but a celebrity defense lawyer, licensed or not, should have a fairly easy time of it in the pen, because his fellow inmates will want him to help with their appeals. As I said at the time of his sentencing, the feds may end up regretting ever setting Mickey loose among the pigeons.

From Swing Trader:this script had to have been written by a real estate agent

NSFW, depending on where you work

Some recent sales, reported today

151 Park Ave (Greenwich)

This is a beautiful 1900 house that I admired in 2008, when it came on asking $3.355. I didn’t like that price, nor did any buyer, but it just sold for $2.4 million, which is more like it. The seller paid $2.235 for it in 2003 and put a lot of money into renovations, but still, I think he got a fair price, in this market.

 

21 Meyer Place, in Riverside, asked $2.750 in 2008. New construction, with a pool (which took up most of the back yard), it just sold for $2.050 million. Again, I think that’s a good price for both parties.

 

 

 

 

Are you an American, sir, or a Chi-com?

A Californian politician wants a boycott of all advertisers on the Rush Limbaugh show because Limbaugh insulted the Chinese dictator and hence, “all Chinese Americans”.

California state Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, is leading a fight in demanding an apology from the radio talk show host for what he and others view as racist and derogatory remarks against the Chinese people.

In recent days, the state lawmaker has rallied civil rights groups in a boycott of companies like Pro Flowers, Sleep Train and Domino’s Pizza that advertise on Limbaugh’s national talk radio show.

“The comments that he made – the mimicking of the Chinese language – harkens back to when I was a little boy growing up in San Francisco and those were hard days, rather insensitive days,” Yee said in an interview Thursday. “You think you’ve arrived and all of a sudden get shot back to the reality that you’re a second-class citizen.”

During a Jan. 19 radio program, Limbaugh said there was no translation of the Chinese president’s speech during a visit to the White House.

“He was speaking and they weren’t translating,” Limbaugh said. “They normally translate every couple of words. Hu Jintao was just going ching chong, ching chong cha.”

He then launched into a 20-second-long imitation of the Chinese leader’s dialect.

The next day, Limbaugh said he “did a remarkable job” of imitating China’s president for someone who doesn’t know a language spoken by more than 1 billion people.

“Back in the old days, Sid Caesar, for those of you old enough to remember, was called a comic genius for impersonating foreign languages that he couldn’t speak,” Limbaugh said. “But today the left says that was racism; it was bigotry; it was insulting. And it wasn’t. It was a service.”

[Chinese Americans] say Limbaugh’s comments are inciting hate and intolerance amid a polarized atmosphere. A number of civil rights groups, including Chinese for Affirmative Action, Japanese American Citizens League and the California National Organization for Women [huh?] , have joined Yee in calling on sponsors to pull advertisements from Limbaugh’s program.

“I want an apology at the very least,” said New York Assemblywoman Grace Meng, a Queens Democrat. “Making fun of any country’s leader is just very disrespectful for someone who says he is a proud American.”

She added: “He was, in his own way, trying to attack the leader of another country, and that’s his prerogative as well, but at the same time he offended 13 percent of New York City’s population.”

Excuse me? Making fun of a dictatorial government is an insult to citizens of Chinese descent, and Chinese who have fled that dictatorship? An insult to the man responsible for holding in prison the 2010 winner of the Nobel Peace prize? (The 2009 winner of that same prize was conspicuously silent on the fate of the poor man). If so, criticism of Castro and Chavez is an insult to Cubans and Venezuelans and the left’s criticism of, say, Pinochet is a racial slur against Chileans. Why is it that the Left so adores Communist dictators? Hmm.

Funny signs, blistering attack on the NAR

 An anonymous reader sent along this link. Well worth reading.

Oops! Himalyian glaciers advancing, not melting, study finds

Last year, our best”undisputed global warming experts” said they’d be entirely melted in twenty-five years.

The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.

Dr Pachauri, head of the Nobel prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has remained silent on the matter since he was forced to admit his report’s claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was an error and had not been sourced from a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It came from a World Wildlife Fund report.

He angered India’s environment minister and the country’s leading glaciologist when he attacked those who questioned his claim as purveyors of “voodoo science”.

Price chopped, serial killer Joel Rifken’s house finally sells

The man did most of his disposal work in the basement, but one couple (Morticia and Gomez Adams?) wasn’t turned off. Full disclosure was made, and many buyers were, not surprisingly, turned off but at the right price ….

That he drives a Rolls Royce tells me all I need to know

UConn football players weren’t impressed with Greenwich donor Robert Burton. Insecure rich people bore me.

I think not

 I received a card in the mail yesterday, informing me that the GHS 1971 class would be holding its 40th reunion this coming August. Thanks, but no thanks. I hated high school, and have very few   no fond memories of the experience. I did return for the 20th reunion, and discovered – duh – that the few people I liked back then were still the only ones I liked twenty years on; those I hadn’t liked, hadn’t changed.

So, if I live so long, maybe I’ll come back for the 50th, but this year? Nah.