Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
70 Sherwood Avenue (off Riversville), priced at $3.495 million, reports a contract. This was gut-renovated back in 2006-2007 by a good local builder as a spec project and put on the market in 2007 at $5.775 million, which proved overly ambitious; it sold to these owners in 2010 for $3.375. They in turn added more features and tried for $4.975 for three long years from 2013 through 2015 before giving up. They had better luck in this market, and found a buyer in 138 days.
With schools closed and teachers on paid vacation, Kampalla and her underlings demonstrate proper wiping hygiene to us children
Hey @nbcsnl, if you were looking for your chance to mock the Biden administration, here it is. https://t.co/VvFCs7S39V
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) March 16, 2021
Go Fund Me site to pay off Harry and Meghan’s mortgage comes to an abrupt, dispiriting end
A GoFundMe page set up to pay off the mortgage on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s $14.6 million California estate has gone bust — after raising a measly $110, a report says.
Anastasia Hanson, 56, of California told Britain’s the Sun that she started the fundraising effort because she seriously felt sorry for the multimillionaire royal couple — after Harry publicly whined to Oprah Winfrey about being financially cut off by Buckingham Palace.
“When they came to the USA, they were without jobs and with limited funds,” said Hanson, who lives about 25 minutes from the princely pair’s palatial estate in swanky Montecito.
“They’ve stated that they’ve had a very rough time, so this fundraiser is a way to give help, compassion, and love by paying their home loan in full.”
Absolutely brilliant woman; I think I’m in love.
Oh, dear. Reading the linked-to Sun article raises this period’s existential question, the Bee, or Not the Bee? It seems that Ms. Hanson was not engaging in deadpan humor but was in fact serious, so she must be placed in the Not the Bee slot. I’m back to my lonely, heartbroken existence.
Anastasia, from Ventura – just a 25-minute drive from the prince - told The Sun: “I like to help people and help them in any way I can.
“That gives me happiness. If you needed a home, I’d do the same for you. It’s a good deed.”
Asked about Harry’s big-money deals, Anastasia confirmed: “I am aware of them.”
Her GoFundMe stated that she wanted two million of Harry and Meg’s fans to donate just $5 each in order to reach her ambitious goal.
She repeatedly reiterated that it was a “legitimate” fundraiser.
….
“I personally relate to mental health, racial equality, diversity, and inclusivity.
Forget it, Jake, it’s California
23 Cliffdale Road has dropped its price to $3.999 million. It’s a magnificent 9.5-acre meadow, with stunning views west to NYC and a 1905, 2-bedroom cottage (1905 per listing, 1728, per descendant of the original owners — see below) ready for visitors. Purchased for $5 million in 2004, the owner has been trying to unload it since 2007, when he started at $9.995 million, and here’s the problem: the idiot has built a 7-car garage, with a basketball court alongside and 2 bedrooms atop right smack in the middle of the very best spot to build a new house. Years ago, I had a client who loved this neighborhood and this land, and was ready, able, and willing to pay $5 million (we sniggered at the then-asking price), but he couldn’t get past the waste involved in razing the new garage/arena, which would be necessary if he were to build a house. So he passed, but fortunately, I found him something else and we both made out, while this owner is still paying for his mistake. (To be fair, ownership of this property has been murked-up by a foreclosure procedure back in 2010, so if the current owner wasn’t party to this ill-advised building project, my apologies.)
All that said, at this new price, or perhaps a lower, negotiated one, you couldn’t find better land, and maybe razing the future home of the Nets won’t be so painful.
Or, as an alternative, there’s this proposal, submitted by reader Jeffrey Bingham Mead: a perhaps Quixotic proposal to preserve the land because of its historical significance. I don’t see it happening, but it would certainly be a boon to the town if it did. As I note in a comment, this is intended as a project entirely funded by private, not taxpayer money, and that’s lauMr. Mead offers a fascinating read, so read it.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Initiative Launched to Acquire, Restore and Open to the Public The Benjamin Mead II Farm (Circa 1728) at 23 Cliffdale Road, North Greenwich
\Contact: Jeffrey Bingham MeadEmail: JeffreyBinghamMead@gmail.com
Phone: (808) 721-0306
Jeffrey Bingham Mead -historian, podcaster, lecturer and a descendant of the founders of Greenwich, Connecticut- has announced a new historic preservation initiative to acquire, restore and open to the public one of the Mead family's ancestral farmsteads in North Greenwich. Mead is calling upon the public to join this effort.
The nearly ten-acre farmstead is located at the intersection of Riversville and Cliffdale roads in the backcountry. The original house dates from circa 1728, making it one of Greenwich's oldest historic homes. Another, larger main house -built in circa 1808 and a stop on the Underground Railroad- was senselessly demolished along with barns and outbuildings- in the early 2000's.
"We have a seller and listing realtor who are very interested in parting with the property and in its preservation in perpetuity," said Mead. "The farm is truly one of the town's most breathtaking and beautiful."
The farm was the scene of a raid during the American Revolutionary War. Obadiah Mead was shot and killed. From an article that was published in 1895:
“…a raid was made upon this place. The son, Obadiah, hid himself in a neighbor's barn, standing just south of the southeast orchard. Some one of the Tory neighbors, knowing the fact, informed the red-coats who surrounded the barn, threatening to set fire to it and to smoke him out. To escape their clutches, he ran from the barn across the orchard to jump down the rocks to "Dyspepsia Lane." He was followed, however, by the soldiers. Obadiah, seeing the impossibility of escaping, surrendered. He was then at once shot, the ball passing through his left arm and entering his side, killing him instantly. The coat he wore, showing the bullet holes, which has been so carefully preserved all these years, was inspected by all the company present.”
The coat Obadiah Mead wore was preserved by the family. Today it is kept in the collections of the Greenwich Historical Society. (click here)
"What I envision in part is returning this property into a working farm under a non-profit educational organization," Mead said. "I'd like to see the old house dating from 1728 turned into a learning center, providing immersive, hands-on experiences focusing on Greenwich's agricultural history. We'd like to see the restored farmstead as a setting for public events."
Mead continued, "I applaud Greenwich Country Day School's acquisition of French Farm on Lake Avenue in 2019 (click here). I'd like to see this farmstead in North Greenwich as the setting for where other schools -private, public, in Greenwich and beyond- could offer similar interdisciplinary educational opportunities without them being required to acquire a farmstead such as this one."
In March, 1995 Mead relocated to Hawaii where, at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, Mead was able to learn more about the farm, its inhabitants and the history of Greenwich from letters and journals penned by 19th century Greenwich residents and Greenwich-born Congregational missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands. Since then, Mead has been going back and forth between Greenwich, Honolulu and other locales in the Asia-Pacific. Transcripts of those letters and journals are on-file in the Greenwich Historical Society's archives. (click here)
One of the last of the prominent Mead family members to own the farm was Solomon Stoddard Mead. He was a well-known stockman who boarded horses on the farm for wealthy New Yorkers. After 1911, the farm became a "summer place for such well-known persons as Walter Huston and J.C. Penney.
A large main house built in circa 1808 once prominently occupied the corner closest to the Riversville Road and Cliffdale Road intersection. It was demolished in the early 2000s. "To this day, the destruction of that house was one of the most senseless demolitions in Greenwich's history," Mead said. "We believe it may have been a house on the Underground Railroad; North Greenwich was a center of abolitionism. I'd like to see a replica of that remarkable home built on the same spot."
The farmstead also includes an ancestral Mead family cemetery. Lost for decades, Mr. Mead with the assistance of two daughters of one of the caretakers when the family owned the farm, rediscovered the cemetery in July, 1989 -leading to the establishment by the family of The Historic Mead Family Burying Grounds Association, which has continued to maintain the site.
"What we envision is a working farmstead that combines the best of the Greenwich Historical Society, the Greenwich Audubon, Greenwich Land Trust in a setting that is truly extraordinary. I and others who grew up here hold fond memories, the kind that I'd like to extend to our town's newcomers," Mead said. "I'm an avid fan of Eri Sloane, the writer and artist who did so much to remind all Americans of the value of learning from our past and cherishing our culture. As he wrote:
“Farm life offers the complete satisfaction of knowing that each day’s work has been truly productive, a joy scarce in present times. Yet strangely enough, the early American farmer’s greatest satisfaction came not from his daily chores, but in his ability to make provisions for the future and an awareness of his part in fashioning the nation to come. He equipped his home with far heavier foundations than were necessary. He built his barn to last for centuries and he laid a rail fence to survive ten generations. He built stone walls that have lasted so long that they are now a permanent part of the landscape. None of these things are done now, nor do we often consider doing them.”
"I cannot accomplish this alone. We've much work to do, much to learn and much to share with our neighbors in a setting that is truly remarkable with a bright future available to all."
Those interested in joining with Mr. Mead and his associates are encouraged to contact him at JeffreyBinghamMead@gmail.com.
The property is NOT presently open to the public and available by appointment only through Ginny Hamilton, listing broker:
https://www.houlihanlawrence.com/property/469876322/23-cliffdale-road-greenwich-ct-06831
UPDATE: I’d been waiting for Greenwich Free Press to publish Mr. Mead’s missive, but when it failed to appear after several days, I worried that it never would, so I reprinted it here. But now it has been published, with photos. Link to that site is here.
969 North Street, up in Greenwich’s Siberia, is back with us, this time priced at $7.3 million. It had expired unsold at $4.950 this past December 31, but resurfaced with a new broker on January 6, 2021, priced at $5.850. That failing, the owner has decided to punish you stupid peasants by jacking it up to $7.3.
It started at $12.750 in 2004, so you can understand a Russian oil oligarch’s fury — in the mother country, you need only drug and cage a recalcitrant refusnik to get him to follow your wishes. Next week, $100 million!
The old 1900 house at 77 Park Avenue (Greenwich) has been razed, and something new is being built.. Yours for $6.250 million.
No comment, but feel free.
6 Khakum Drive, asking $4.995 million, reports a contract. Owner paid $8,899,888 for it in 2014 and has been trying to sell it since 2017, when he began @$7.9.
Perfectly nice 1925 house on 3 acres, but houses from that era aren’t in high demand these days.
What do Swiss nurses know that we don’t?
“It’s those damn Republicans”, the AP frets. Maybe so, but there must be a lot of them, all over the globe:
Worldwide, health care front line workers are refusing COVID vaccines
According to a January analysis by Gallup, 51 percent of health care workers and first responders polled in December 2020 were unconvinced of the merits of getting vaccinated, even if the vaccine “was free, available, FDA approved and 90% effective.”
Gallup found these results especially concerning since those at highest risk of exposure to COVID-19—the professionals required to meet America’s health, safety, and critical economic needs and whom the National Academies of Engineering, Science and Medicine defines as “Tier 1A workers”—were the likeliest to refuse vaccination (34 percent).
The front-line workers proved to be as defiant as Gallup’s survey of their intentions anticipated. In California, more than half of Tehama County’s hospital workers at St. Elizabeth Community Hospital, an estimated 50 percent of front-line workers in Riverside County, and 20 percent to 40 percent in Los Angeles County refused the vaccine, according to a report in the L.A. Times.
In Georgia, according to an estimate in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, only 30 percent of health care workers have been inoculated. In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine reported that 60 percent of nursing-home workers refused the vaccine. In Texas, the Texas Tribune reported in February that home-health and assisted-living agencies may not be able to service their clients because so many caregivers are refusing to be vaccinated. A CDC survey of skilled-nursing facilities published in early February found that fewer than 40 percent of staff took at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Outside the United States, frontline workers are likewise skeptical. On March 2, Reuters reported that at most half of the nursing staff in Switzerland’s medical sector, only 30 percent of the staff at Germany’s BeneVit Group care-home operator, and about half of the health workers in French care homes were willing to be vaccinated.
PBS, on the same day, reported that since “India started administering the second vaccine dose two weeks ago, half of the frontline workers and nearly 40 percent of health care workers have not shown up.” In Canada, CTV provided an anecdotal report that many long-term-care workers in Montreal are “flat-out refusing” to be inoculated.
For health care workers around the world, their dilemma is deciding who to believe. Their government employers and the pharmaceutical companies, who insist the vaccines’ benefits far outweigh the risks? Or their own eyes?
While concededly, pseudo-Republicans like the Orange Man have not only claimed credit for getting the vaccines developed and distributed in the face of public health experts’ declaration that it was impossible but also urged Americans to take it, true, bible/gun-clinging Republicans like president-in-waiting Kampala Harris and Obama spiritual advisor Louis, “Vial of death” Farrakhan have spread the word among the faithful. Stop them before they kill again
Fortunately, with Trump gone, Jennifer Lopez need no longer worry about the seas rising
Biden’s handlers planning huge tax hikes for “the rich”
I have no sympathy for most of these people; they spent millions to turn the country over to the Democrats, but I’m sorry for the country, because stripping money from investments and giving it to public employee unions and other teat-sucking parasites will drag down all of us.
Next up, of course, will be restoring the deductibility of the Blue State’s new tax hikes on these same people, so that Flyover Country rubes can ease the pain of their betters in Park Avenue Co-Ops and Malibu Colony ranchettes.
New M1 Abrams to come equipped with changing tables
But wait, there’s more!
In addition to the changing table, each new tank will also be slightly larger in order to fit a private lounge for breastfeeding. So far, women in the military love the new components. “It’s really great as a mom to have these additional features,” said Private Lorraine Hodges, though she said the tank isn’t great for small children since it’s “very noisy” and “constantly under attack.”
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