I should have seen this coming way back then, but at the time I just dismissed the kerfuffle as an incident of local idiocy

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The current craze for tearing down statues of abolitionist Walt Whitman and Ulysses S. Grant has now extended to Rhode Island, which is moving to drop “Providence Plantations” from its official name. “Plantation’ meant ‘settlement” in Colonial days, and the slave plantations had nothing to do with those in New England (the Mickster might bring up the Irish plantations here, but that’s a side issue). That’s not stopping the proponents of the change:

“Whatever the meaning of the term ‘plantations’ in the context of Rhode Island’s history, it carries a horrific connotation when considering the tragic and racist history of our nation,” [State senator Harold] Metts said in a statement to the Providence Journal.

In other words, it’s not the facts that matter, it’s how they are misunderstood.

All of which brought to mind the successful battle waged from 1992-1998 to prevent a statue of Portuguese princess Catherine of Bragazana, wife of Charles II of England, from being erected near and overlooking New York City’s harbor.

The statue's ''hands are bloody with the murder of millions of Africans,'' said Betty Dopson, the most vocal leader of a group formed to oppose the sculpture. ''Do we really need a statue of a slave mistress? To erect this monstrosity shows disrespect to every African-American whose ancestors were raped and shackled and shipped off.''

Dopson and her crowd stormed Borogh meetings dressed in bloody shirts, screaming and in generl havig a grand old time of it until after years of crap, the Borough caved:

While historians find Catherine's connection to the slave trade tenuous at best, the Queens Borough President, Claire Shulman, one of the statue's earliest and most devoted advocates, has come to agree with critics who say guilt by association is guilt enough.

''Decent people are offended and that troubles me,'' she said. ''I don't think of Catherine of Braganza as necessarily evil,'' but, she added, the queen did live in a slave-trading nation ''in an age that was terrible to a portion of the world.''

All this happened at the same time a Washington D.C. school administrator was fired for using the term “niggardly” at a board meeting because, even the word is of Scandanavian origin and has no connection withe the Spanish word for black (it means cheap, miserly), the offender should have known that his fellows on the board wouldn’t know that, and would be offended.

So Miss Betty Bopson’s reation to her own ignorance stuck in my mind. It turned out that she had confused Queen Isabella of Spain — Columbus and all that, don’t you know — with poor Catherine, who was despised as a Catholic in Protestant England, suffered three miscarriages and after the death of her husband fled back to Portugal, leaving behind her only contribution to her adopted land, the custom of drinking tea. Told that two hundred years and three different countries were involved, Bopson shrugged it off. It didn’t matter who that white lady was, there were people who thought she was a slave trader, and that was sufficient. And indeed it was, as was recounted by the NYT in 2017, “The Statue that Never Was”.

Logic and facts mean nothing today. Way back in 1976 a classmate of mine, a budding doctoral student in philosophy – I’d guess her age at 27 — responded to a flaying by our professor conducting a seminar on Plato, B.U.’s president John Silber, by conceding her argument made no logical sense, then wailed, “but don’t you care how I feel about it?!” Silber was outraged (“Madam, I don’t give a damn about your feelings”, and I was amused, unaware that I was witnessing the future. Today, Silber would have been fired, and the sensitive soul awarded a participation doctorate as compensation and reparation.

God help America.

Cause and effect

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Oppressed white folk arrive down east

Oppressed white folk arrive down east

Portland Maine protest turned violent — what could have triggered the crowd?

The city of Portland says in a report released Monday that a June 1 anti-racism demonstration sparked by the death of George Floyd was unprecedented in its size and violence, and that police were forced to monitor social medial to try to anticipate the organizers’ intent as citizens filled the streets.

At times, officers were swarmed by demonstrators who pounded on cruiser windows; demonstrators threw rocks, plastic and glass bottles, and containers of urine, and damaged multiple businesses and city property before police arrested 23 people early the next morning. Police estimate about 2,500 turned out to protest, according to the report, a number much larger than estimates reported at the time. Several businesses were burglarized [The Portland Press refuses to use the term “looting”, because “burglary” sounds so much nicer].

Police used canisters of pepper spray and air-powered pepper ball guns similar to paint ball guns to get the crowd to disperse, and dozens of officers were clad in riot gear and positioned in a line across Franklin Arterial next to police headquarters at 109 Middle Street.

It was the most violent and destructive of Portland’s mostly peaceful protests in recent weeks against systemic racism and police brutality. Portland city councilors are scheduled to discuss the report at a virtual

Here’s the money quote:

The report lays out a timeline of events that night. About 500 demonstrators gathered around 7 p.m. at the corner of India and Commercial Street. By 8:30 p.m., officers took a knee in solidarity.

“While the crowd cheered briefly, many then became increasingly agitated,” the city wrote. “Protest leaders encouraged the group to show respect many times.”

Kneeling in submission is an invitation to attack, and that’s what they got. Idiots.

Ten years on the market, so another, lower, price; good thinking

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50 Lafrentz Road, a 25-acre equine property, that hit the market in 2010 at $22.5 million. Land up there has never come close to selling for a million an acre, so I don’t know what possessed the then-listing agent to come up with that price but over the years different agents have brought it closer to reality. Today’s try is $7.750.

From what I’ve observed of our new Co-op refugees, equestrian sports aren’t high on their must-try sports, so the COVID panic may not help here.

So, I dunno, maybe $5? Lower?

California doubles down on crushing jobs

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Tech writers can always find other occupations

Tech writers can always find other occupations

Another $20 million added to enforcement of anti-gig law, AB5

AB5 and the spending increase are both opposed by the Black Small Business Association of California (BSBA), which “argues that the state’s costly plan to enforce AB5 would only exacerbate income inequality” in a letter sent last week to California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.

Another report says that “AB5 Leaves Women Business Owners Reeling.”

Passed last fall, AB5 “radically alters the definition of an ’employee so that independent Uber and Lyft drivers, as well as others who work in the gig economy, are brought to heel by limiting the amount of independent contract work a company can claim,” PJ Media’s Rick Moran wrote back in October.

As a result, musicians, writers, and other freelance creative workers have, by the thousands, found that their preferred ways of working have been effectively outlawed. Numerous festivalsacross the state have already been canceled.

Labor Union whore and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzales, proud parent of AB5 has dismissed the howls of the newly unemployed by claiming, “those were never good jobs anyway”. Leave it to a Democrat to determine that a freelance writing or consulting job netting $50,000 a year, part-time, isn’t up to her standards. Better you should have no job than not pay union dues.

I keep ranting on this topic not so much because I care about Californians — they put these thieves into office, they can live with the consequences — but because the anti-gig ban is going national. Joe Biden supports it, Granny Box wine Pelosi does too, and New York, New Jersey and other Democrat paradises are going forward with their own versions, all equally bad.

The spring market is now officially the summer market, something almost unheard of in years past. And getting hotter.

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Here’s a sampling of the many houses that are going

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14 Rockwood Lane, $6.995 million, hit the market 7 days ago and is already reported as pending. That sort of speed suggests no one was waiting for mortgage approval on this one.

7 Indian Head

7 Indian Head

7 Indian Head Road, Riverside, $4.950 million, pending. 93 DOM

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122 Butternut Hollow, $3.6 million. Twenty-four days listing to contract. A relocation sale, and those are often simpler because the repo company’s goal is to move the house, not hold out for the last penny. But still, quick.

434 North Street

434 North Street

And 434 North Street, which I reported was pending last week, has closed at $3.850 million. I’d thought that this beautiful old (1915) home was well priced at $5.995 million when it came on the market in 2016, but my taste and that of today’s buyer didn’t agree, and the house was pulled. At this price, I say that the buyer stole it, but “stealing” doesn’t apply to a sale, like this one, that was negotiated and agreed on after full exposure to the market, so I’ll just say that I think the buyer did very well.

It’s not the statues they’re after

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Where were the social workers?

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