Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
OPENING DAY!
Yankee game postponed after a half-foot of snow blankets the stadium.
If MLB owners really felt it necessary to start the season in March, instead of mid-April, you'd think they'd at least have the common sense to schedule the first three weeks' games on the west coast or southern climes, but no, television contract commitments to local markets lead them into this inanity.
Going up? #metoo!
The Easter story is just another MeToo story, told 2,000 years ago.
An article from CNN.com published Friday bewilderingly claims that the biblical story of Easter is a #MeToo story from Mary Magdalene’s perspective.
“The men refused to listen to her story,” the article begins. “She was publicly smeared as a whore. And when she emerged as celebrated advocate, powerful men tried to silence her because she threatened their status. Nevertheless she persisted.”
“The woman we’re talking about, though, is not a leader in the #MeToo movement — the viral campaign raising awareness about sexual assault and harassment against women,” it continues.
“She is Mary Magdalene, the first person Jesus appeared to after his resurrection, according to the New Testament, and the first person to preach the good news that he had been raised from the dead.”
The article’s author, CNN’s John Blake, draws another comparison between Christ’s crucifixion and #MeToo — the use of “sexual humiliation.”
Blake argues that Jesus being stripped naked on the cross is analogous to stories of sexual harassment exposed by the #MeToo movement.
“If linking the Easter story with the #MeToo movement is offensive and bewildering to some, perhaps that is fitting. The Easter stories in the Gospels have a jarring, unexpected quality about them as well,” Blake argues.
Coming our way
In 1973, French author Jean Raspail wrote Camp of the Saints, dystopian novel where huge waves of Third World immigrants set sail from their various shit hole countries in a flotilla of rusting, barely-running cargo ships and land in mass on French soil. By sheer numbers, the overwhelm the meager forces sent to prevent them entrance, flood through France and bring civilization to its knees. Far fetched? Consider this:
New wave of Central American migrants headed for the U.S.
Thousands of migrants, mostly from Honduras, are crossing Mexico and headed toward the US border.
It is an organized attack on the American border by open borders activists, aided and abetted by Mexican authorities. Men, women, and children are all hoping that, when they arrive at the US border, that authorities will be forced to take them in and offer them asylum.
For five days now hundreds of Central Americans — children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras — have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them.
Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants.
Organizers like Rodrigo Abeja hope that the sheer size of the crowd will give immigration authorities and criminals pause before trying to stop them.
When they get to the US, they hope American authorities will grant them asylum or, for some, be absent when they attempt to cross the border illegally. More likely is that it will set up an enormous challenge to the Trump administration's immigration policies and its ability to deal with an organized group of migrants numbering in the hundreds.
About 80% of them are from Honduras. Many said they are fleeing poverty, but also political unrest and violence that followed the swearing in of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández after a highly contested election last year. The group often breaks into chants of “out with JOH.” They also chant “we aren't immigrants, we're international workers” and “the people united will never be defeated.”With detention centers on the border already full to bursting, what are we supposed to do with this wave of humanity? No doubt the activists' plan is to overwhelm the system so that immigration enforcement officials simply release them into the general population.This is not only a direct challenge to US sovereignty, it could be considered an act of war. These illiterate, uneducated "international workers" are simply pawns being used by the Mexican government and international migrant activists. They don't like the new US immigration policies and are trying to change them.
Nothing to see here, move along, move along
Come back tomorrow — today was a bust, unless you want news of rentals, and then you're out of luck, because I pretty much don't follow those.
Imagine if they'd been so disrespectful of any other president.
317 Overlook Drive, in Millbrook, asking (these days) $1.995 million, reports a contract. It's a fine house, to my taste, though in some serious need of a new kitchen and other improvements, but this seems like a reasonable price.
What wasn't a reasonable price, said the market, was its 2015 ask of $2.750. It's always best to be the second, even the third agent for projects like this because by the time the owners have been beaten down by the market, they're ready to listen to reason.
Remember that story about the mule skinner whapping his recalcitrant animal with a 2 X 4, saying "first, you have to get its attention"? The market is a 2 X 4.
I've been writing about the former Leona Helmsley place at 521 Round Hill Road since 2008, when David Ogilvy first listed it for $125 million. (he didn't get it: it eventually sold, in 2010, for $35 million, and that $90 million mark-down remains the largest miscalculation of the value of Greenwich real estate since the Wiechquaesqueek Munsees sold the entire town for "twenty-five coates" to Elizabeth Feake and her friends ). The whole process occasioned great hilarity here, as have all the subsequent futile attempts to unload it by the saps who bought it.
First they spruced it up a bit (the place was in shambles) and put it back up for sale in 2011 for $42.9, on the apparent assumption that they'd achieved a rare bargain at $35 million. When no one stepped forward to reward them for their investment perspicacity they yanked it from the market, performed a massive renovation/re-do costing millions, and raised its price to $65 million. That proved to be the wrong tactic and a complete waste of money, so the disappointed owners eventually dumped their agent and hired the current trio, who took over in 2016 and set the price at $49.895; which proved to be yet another failure.
Today the price was dropped to $28.995, so we (they) are now ten years older and $6 million poorer, plus, of course, the millions spent on renovations and the carrying costs incurred over the past decade (taxes are $230,000, and God knows what it costs to heat the place, maintain the 40 acres of lawn, and pay an overseer to beat the serfs, but, what, $400,000 for the package? $500,000? Per year.)
Stupid is as stupid does, but they didn't ask my opinion before they bought it in 2008, and I'm sure they won't now.
So I'll never make a commission on this place, but I've certainly enjoyed many a chortle over the whole misguided adventure over the years
Which is ironic: like Leona herself, I don't have to pay taxes on a good belly laugh.
In England, plaintiffs in cases like this are often awarded a shilling in damages, Works for me.
Stormy Daniels sues Trump's lawyer for defamation. To prevail, she'll have to prove that has a reputation capable of being harmed. I'd think that a half-hour showing her in action would be sufficient for any jury (except, perhaps, a San Francisco jury) to toss Stormy and her case right out the courthouse.
I'd suggest the defense assemble a montage of her famous hits, including, if available, and I'm sure it is, the simultaneous penetration of all three orifices.
20 Windabout Drive, asking $2.650 million. This property sold for $2.4 million in 2003, was extensively renovated, and it's been on and off the market since 2012, when it started at $3, 495. It was pulled in 2014, returned in 2015 at $2.995, pulled again 2016, then came back in June, 2017 starting at $2.795, and dropped to todays price of $2.650. It won't surprise me if its final selling price turns out to be very close to that 2003, renovations notwithstanding.
The owners of 450 Lake Avenue, $4.850, did quite a bit better, waiting just 10 months to find a buyer. It's quite a nice house, built in 1939 and renovated in 2017, so I'm surprised that it took all those months, and a price cut from $5.250 to its current one. I'd blame at least a portion of that delay to the fact that 2017 wasn't a particularly hot market, while 2018 is looking much better.
20 Grahampton
And as if to demonstrate that improvement, 20 Grahampton Road, built in 1997, renovated in 2007, came on the market this past January 19, priced at $4.5 million, went to contract in 10 days, and closed yesterday for $4.275. As I've pointed out here before, it can easily take a week, or more, to move from accepted offer to contract, so this property likely had a buyer within a day or two of its listing.
I don't know whether it happed here, but often quick sales like this at the beginning year can be attributed to buyers who spent the fall looking at houses, without success, but educating themselves on the available. When a new listing comes on that they do like, they're ready to pounce..
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