It really doesn't matter who's right on this, because we'll discuss the proposal for another twenty years and then let it die.

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“If I owned Texas and Hell, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell” — Philip Sheridan

Freddie Camillo and the First Selectman’s Advisory Committee want to get the town’s Board of Education department out of the Havemeyer Building, lease Havemeyer, and move the Board down to Railroad Avenue, and already the opposition is forming.

The building’s a wreck, and has been for decades, so Camillo, Andy Duus and other Committee members have a strong argument here, but that’s not the way Greenwich operates. Those with a long memory will remember the decades we spent arguing about a parking garage on or near Greenwich Avenue, without result. When Richards was moving across the street and building its new flagship building, for instance, the town was offered a chance to build, at very little cost, two floors of municipal parking beneath it. We dithered, we lost.

Back in 1954, the real estate agent who helped my parents find a house assured them that my sister Lorin would graduate from the new high school soon to be built. The town broke into several camps: we need one new school; we need two; we don’t need a new one at all, we can just dust off the blackboard at the old one. It took a decade before we decided on one new school, and another decade to decide on where to build it before we finally compromised on the worst possible site, a swamp on Field Point Road. The high school graduated its first class in 1971.

So don’t worry, Jim Finn and others who demand to know, “what’s the urgency?” — there is none. You can relax.

(The Greenwich Historical Society provides an interesting history of the building here.)

Mr. Huncho may no longer be among us, but Darwin is alive and well

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“he took control of the grip, appeared to shut off the safety and pointed the gun to his head before saying 'fuck y'all, niggahs' and pulling the trigger.”

Fun fact: Even in the unlikely event that he had no criminal record, at 17, Mr. Huncho was forbidden by federal and state law from possessing a gun.

America as envisioned and brought to you by your intellectual superiors

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Pasadena City College will celebrate an “UndocuGraduation,” “Lavender Graduation,” “Black Graduation,” “Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Graduation,” and “Latine Graduation.” 

“UndocuGraduation” will take place May 29 in honor of illegal alien students. The school states that “Undocugraduation celebrates our undocumented students’ educational success at Pasadena City College,” and adds that “[p]articipants are strongly encouraged to apply to the DREAM Scholarship: Ready Behind Degrees.”\

Pasadena City College is not the only school to hold such a graduation, with Rutgers-Newark having held a similar ceremony for illegal immigrant students on Thursday, and California State University, Northridge having hosted an “Undocu-Graduation” before as well. 

Pasadena City will also host a “Lavender Graduation” for LGBT-identifying students on May 30. 

Other segregated graduations are a “Black Graduation” on May 31, an “Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Graduation Celebration” on June 6, and a “Latine Graduation” on June 7.


Other colleges that have held or will hold segregated graduations this year include Middlebury College, North Carolina State University, Salem State University, St. John’s University, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pennsylvania State University.  

Related: Harvard DEI office plans another year of segregated graduation ceremonies, finally adds one for Jewish students. “It’s not that Jews are intellectually incapable of reading their degrees, unlike our other minority students,” Harvard’s chief diversity officer explained to FWIW, “but no one else wants to be near them, so we’re segregating them for their own protection.”

Where be Corn Pop?

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Well, if Hamas is an ally of the left, and Iran supports Hamas, doesn't that make Iran our ally too?

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Some people weren’t as sympathetic to the Iranian mullah’s loss, and said so:

To drive how crazy this is home, we need to discuss who Ebrahim Raisi was, though the fact that his nickname was the "Butcher of Tehran" kind of gives the game away without the need for further details. Specifically, Raisi signed an execution order in 1988 that led to the mass murder of thousands of dissidents who opposed the Islamic regime. He became no more moderate in his old age, arresting thousands of women in an attempt to quash protests that broke out in 2022. Hundreds were confirmed to have been raped and executed while in custody. 

That's just a small taste of the murderous tyranny Raisi partook in throughout his time in power. Yet, here is the Biden administration offering "official condolences" for a man who was on the same level as some of history's most violent and oppressive authoritarians. This is no different than had the United States offered condolences to the Germans for the death of Hitler. For context, there have been no American diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980. 

In other words, there was zero requirement or even expectation for condolences to be offered in this case. This was a choice made by Biden and Antony Blinken, the secretary of state who recently did a bad cover of "Rocking in the Free World" in Ukraine because he cares so deeply about "democracy" and freedom. 

Biggerbetterbrighterwider

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Unhappy Greenwich board OKs huge Benedict Place affordable housing project: 'Incredibly frustrating'

(Robert Marchant, Greenwich Time)

GREENWICH — The largest construction project slated for central Greenwich in years has been approved: a six-story structure with 120 units, nearly half of which are designated affordable.

The building would set aside 40 percent of the total, 48 units, as affordable dwellings. The development is merging 12 existing lots in the area of Benedict Place and Benedict Court containing homes and offices. The current lot is about 1.2 acres in size, 51,306 or square feet.

The construction is taking advantage of state law 8-30g, which can override some local zoning codes for the goal of creating affordable housing.

The plan has drawn substantial public criticism from local residents because of its size.

The development does not meet town zoning regulations in multiple ways. It will provide 180 parking spaces, while the town code would require 260 spaces. The structure will be six stories tall, at 77 feet, while code permits three stories and 40 feet. The building coverage — the percentage of the new construction measured against the lot size — would be 71 percent, while 30 percent is the standard.

Commissioner Nicholas Macri said he opposed the project and criticized the state law that allowed affordable housing developments to skirt town regulations.

"The residents want affordable housing, but not to the sacrifice of the very fabric of this town," he said. "Many residents have voiced their opinions on these issues and are fed up.... In short, the development gets everything and the town nothing."

Chairperson Margarita Alban said the commission had to follow the law and had little choice in the matter.

"This is a state law, and it's been in place for 35 years. So this is a state law, and we live in the state of Connecticut, and our job is to follow the laws. ...That's just the way the legal system works. I know it's frustrating... It's incredibly frustrating that we have to do this," Alban continued.

She noted that the project would offer 40 percent of the total units as affordable, "which is much higher than would normally be."

The developer, Nimbus Properties, seems to be quite legitimate, and the partners no fly-by-nights, but we don’t have to necessarily like it, nor like the Westchesterication that’s on the horizon.

UPDATE: Searching for information on the principle of this firm, Phil Wharton, I came across this post; at least his head, if not his heart, is in the right place.

Philip Wharton’s Post

Philip Wharton

Real estate investor and developer

5mo

If you, like me, are worried about the leadership and atmosphere at Harvard today, I have one concrete step to take. Samuel W. Lessin '05 is running a write-in campaign to be nominated for the Board of Overseers. He would offer a fresh (and younger) perspective to the Board, and I know personally that Sam will be committed to help Harvard refocus on academic excellence. Sam also happens to be my nephew!  If you're a Harvard alum and would like to learn more and/or sign the petition for Sam's nomination, please go to www.samforoverseer.com 



I have no problem with this; you have a problem with this?

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“corn pop, can you hear me? we gotta go to motor city”

Biden bizarrely suggests he was VP during pandemic in latest blunder

President Biden declared Sunday that things got “kind of bad” when he was vice president during the COVID-19 pandemic — even though the virus hit more than three years after he left office.

The 81-year-old Biden, who finished his eight years as Barack Obama’s veep in January 2017, suggested he was still in post at the time of the outbreak during a campaign event with the NAACP.

“When I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic and what happened was, Barack said to me, ‘Go to Detroit! Help fix it,'” Biden said.

We've been following this home's downward path since it hit the market last fall; here's the latest installment

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2 Edgewood Drive has cut its price to $11.1 million, down from $11.750. Back in February, on the occasion of the home’s third price, cut I wrote the following:

The owners of 25 Edgewood Drive paid $12.250 million for it in December 2021 but soon tired of it — blinded by its all-white interior, perhaps — and last August they placed it back on the market, unchanged, for $14.250.

It’s possible they felt they’d scored a coup on their original purchase because the house had initially asked $14.880 in 2020, but the market apparently feels that it was fully-priced then and remains so; this morning the owners trimmed its price back to $12.500.

We first pointed out this property’s aggressive pricing ambitions in October of last year “ A Modest House, But Then, It Has Much to be Modest About; and again this past January: Price Cut; and again in February: Too Soon? ; nothing’s changed since then except the price.