Pending after just 12 days, which suggests a cash sale

8 Hobart Drive, in uplands, $4.995 million. This was a very nice house back when it was new, and a client of mine made a run at it while its builder was sinking. He rejected our admittedly low offer of salvation and lost it to Patriot Bank instead — dumb move, but spec builders always think they can hang on, until they can’t.

In the event, Patriot grabbed it in 2010 and eventually sold it in January 2012 to these owners for $3.675 million. I’d say they did well.

The builders are stirring

26 Old Wagon Road, Havemeyer, asking $899,000, contract in 14 days. It’s certainly possible that the buyer is an end-user; Havemeyer’s a nice neighborhood, and even with some money sunk into upgrades this would be a relatively cheap entrance into Old Greenwich. But I’m guessing builder.

Black window is the new colonial

43 Mianus View Terrace, Cos Cob, has sold for $1,8 million on an asking price of $1.875. 150 DOM.

The original house sold via bidding war for $817,000 — ask was $795,000 — in December 2018. This buider took it down to its foundation and built new, finishing by December 2019.

Circa 2018

Last of the Palmer Hill/Hillcrest subdivision finds a buyer

18 Hillcrest Lane, priced at $3.985 million, is under contract. The design is a bit too stark for my taste, but builders’ colonials wore out their welcome with me long ago, so why not?

This land was originally part of the 9.7-acre lot at 269 Palmer Hill Road purchased by this developer for $4 million. He razed the existing 1900 house, which wasn’t unjustified, and carved the land into four lots, selling two at $1.6 and $1.750 respectively, built a house on what’s now 20 Hillcrest Lane for $3,697,500, and now this one. Total revenue, $11,032,500. There were obviously some substantial hard costs incurred in preparing this subdivision, but it seems he made out.

BRRR

Democrat Party sets sights on another part of our history

Mt. Rushmore’s next

And independence Day celebrations glorify white supremacy

Raising monsters

And a komodo dragon is born

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:On White Fragility

A core principle of the academic movement that shot through elite schools in America since the early nineties was the view that individual rights, humanism, and the democratic process are all just stalking-horses for white supremacy. The concept, as articulated in books like former corporate consultant Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility(Amazon’s #1 seller!) reduces everything, even the smallest and most innocent human interactions, to racial power contests. 

….

DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to be less white.” To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as “leaving the stress-inducing situation” – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the “ordeal by water” (if you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.

… Yet these ideas are taking America by storm. The movement that calls itself “antiracism” – I think it deserves that name a lot less than “pro-lifers” deserve theirs and am amazed journalists parrot it without question – is complete in its pessimism about race relations. It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors. 

…. One of the central tenets of DiAngelo’s book (and others like it) is that racism cannot be eradicated and can only be managed through constant, “lifelong” vigilance.

…. Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that will be familiar to students of Russian history, [and French — ed] accusers are beginning to appear alongside the accused.

…. People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of “anti-black racism” to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other’s careers before they’ve even finished growing?  

“People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I don’t want people like that to keep getting jobs,” one 16 year-old said. “Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives… I love twitter,” wrote a different person, adding cheery emojis.

A bizarre echo of North Korea’s “three generations of punishment” doctrine could be seen in the boycotts of Holy Land grocery, a well-known hummus maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks it’s been abandoned by clients and seen its lease pulled because of racist tweets made by the CEO’s 14 year-old daughter eight years ago. 

Taibi’s essay is long — these are just snippets — and very much worth reading in its entirety. Taibi hmself is a bit of a wonder, an anti-Trump, liberal Democrat, who has clearly been disturbed and alarmed by the Russia Gate conspiracy and abuse by our intellegence services and Democrat whoremongers like Schiff, and his recent columns have been focusing on those issues. I give him two months before he’s driven from Rolling Stone and canceled.

Add this to Progressive hero and racist Woodrow Wilson's sins.

Woodrow Wilson High School

Williamson Evers, National Review:

Blame Woodrow Wilson for Americans’ Lack of Historical Literacy

…. We need to hold him responsible for the fact that many Americans don’t know the timeline of world or American history and don’t know much about how constitutional government works in the United States: One hundred years ago, in 1916, the Wilson administration put the clout of the federal government behind a new curricular development – social studies.

…. The new curriculum prescribed that any history taught in school should be studied because it is practical or functional: Ancient Athens was studied not as part of the political and intellectual development of Western civilization, but rather in connection with the contemporary problems of city planning. …..

The Progressive era worshipped a cult of efficiency and kowtowed before scientific management. In this vein, the social-studies report concluded that the “key note of modern education” is “social efficiency.” It postulated that whatever the value of social studies in terms of the development of the intellectual knowledge and personal potential of the individual, the social-studies curriculum would “fail” in its “most important function” unless it contributed “directly” to “the cultivation of social efficiency on the part of the pupil.” Students should be taught to look at their own future jobs in terms of overall workforce planning and should take a job based on the service the job “rendered” to “the community” and which jobs were “most necessary,” rather than choosing a job based on remuneration and the job market. 

As citizens, we need to understand history because the present comes at the end of a long chain of cause and effect stretching back into the past. Instead of recommending that students study the social sciences in order to form an independent mind knowledgeable about the past, the 1916 social-studies report effectively encouraged students to conform and adjust to prevailing views. Ever since this paradigm change, social studies has been bedeviled by fads, fashions, and indoctrination in the name of relevance. Unfortunately, many Americans educated by our public schools don’t know what happened or when in American history. Nor do they understand federalism and our system of checks and balances. For this calamity, we can place much of the blame on the Wilson administration’s intervention in the school curriculum. It gave us the abomination we call social studies.

Notice that the media has switched its hysteria from COVID hospitalizations to number of cases? There's a reason for that

Because otherwise there’d be no story. CT prisons complete testing of all 9,504 inmates: 832 tested positive, only two showed symptoms.

All of the offenders who tested positive were isolated for two weeks. None beyond the two who showed symptoms developed symptoms during their monitoring periods, the department said in a press release.

Meghan Lynch announces for Stanford

Meghan Lynch

We’ve been following the swimming career of Meghan Lynch, outstanding daughter of a FWIW reader and sometime-commenter for what seems like 20 years, but since she’s only 16, I suppose it’s actually closer to 8 or 10. Regardless, and without any help from movie star parents or cash under the table, she’s accepted an offer from Stanford and will matriculate there after her upcoming senior year at GHS.

“I’m not completely positive about what I want to major in, but the Stanford majors Mathematical and Computational Science, and Bioengineering interest me,” said Lynch, who noted she made the decision to attend Stanford in December, then had to wait for the admissions process, which concluded this week.

Lynch’s swimming accomplishments and honors for both the Greenwich and YWCA Greenwich Dolphins squads are plentiful — too many to keep track of.

She won the 200-yard individual medley title for Greenwich at the State Open and Class LL championships as a freshman, sophomore and junior, breaking state, Class LL, FCIAC and GHS records in the process. Her efforts earned her National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association all-America honor in the 200 IM three consecutive seasons.

In the 200 IM during Greenwich’s 2019 season, Lynch placed first in the event at the Class LL meet in a state record time of 1:59.13. As a sophomore in 2018, Lynch made all-America in the 100-yard freestyle, breaking the Class LL and GHS records along the way.

Also in 2018, Lynch won the 100-yard breaststroke title at the Class LL finals (meet-record performance) and the State Open Championships. She also set the FCIAC record in the event and was named an NISCA all-America honoree. Lynch swam on the Cardinals’ 200-freestyle relay squad, which set an FCIAC record when she was a freshman and was part of the team’s 400-yard freestyle relay quartet that won the State Open the past three seasons (2017-2019), set a state record and earned NISCA all-America accolades.

“I have always loved the high school season, it’s my favorite time of year,” said Lynch who holds five Greenwich High girls swimming records. “It is great to be a part of such a fun team environment. The Open and Class LL meets are so loud and so much fun for everyone.”

A competitor for coach Nick Cavataro’s YWCA Dolphins program since she was 6 years old, Lynch currently holds an astounding 110 Dolphins swim records.

While competing for the Dolphins at the USA Swimming Winter Nationals in 2018, she qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 200-meter individual medley (2:17.03). The U.S. Olympic Trials, which were supposed to take place this month, will be held in 2021 in Omaha, Neb.

Lynch currently holds 68 Connecticut Swimming age-group records, while competing for the Dolphins. She broke the national age group record in the 10-and-under 100 breaststroke and 50 breaststroke — short course and long course.

At the Connecticut Swimming Senior Championships, Lynch was the High Point winner each year — from 2016 through 2020. She was also the High Point champion at the Connecticut Swimming Age Group Championships from 2013-2018.

Pretty cool kid.

How do you move an old sleeping bag?

808 North Street

Kick her. Or these days, unleash a deadly flu in the City. After 12 long years, and after starting at $11,750,000, 808 North Street has closed at $5.3 million. Note that that final price was agreed upon while the house was still listed at $6.5, so buyers aren’t blindly throwing money at houses, nor are they rescuing owners from unfortunate buying decisions they made in the past: these people paid $11,368,580 for the place in 2005.

Ow.