Who better to deal with the little beasts and their aging helicopter parents?

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Zoologist/gerontologist appointed new Assistant Principal at Riverside School

Weir earned a bachelor’s degree in Zoology and Gerontology from Miami (Ohio) University and a master’s in Teacher Leadership and sixth-year diploma in Educational Leadership from Quinnipiac University.

I have real hope for an educator who has trained in and taught in the sciences rather than one who, say, holds a degree in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies or taught classes on “Unsettling the Whte Gaze” .

The game goes into extra innings up on Lake Avenue

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A year and month ago, I reported on the woes of the landlord and the baseball star at 928 Lake Avenue:

June 21, 2025:

A whiff and a miss — Landlord strikes out

Former NY Yankee Josh Donaldson wins lawsuit against Greenwich landlord over moldy mansion

Something to grouse about, for sure.

GREENWICH — A former New York Yankees third baseman won a jury verdict expected to total about $500,000 after suing his landlord William Grous for mold problems, pests and other issues in a leased Greenwich mansion.

Josh Donaldson filed the federal suit against the Lake Avenue property owner in 2022 after paying a $110,000 security deposit and leasing the 4,480-square-foot home for $55,000 per month. The jury in U.S. District Court in Connecticut issued its verdict Wednesday.

Now retired, the three-time All Star and American League Most Valuable Player in 2015 had been traded to the Yankees from the Minnesota Twins in March 2022. Donaldson and his partner, who was six months pregnant, and their 17-month-old daughter moved into the Greenwich house in April, the complaint says.

The house sits on about 4-1/2 acres, has five bedrooms and 4-1/2 baths and is appraised at about $2.4 million, according to court documents and the Greenwich assessor. [But it sold to Grous for $3.325 million in 2005 — Ed]

However, instead of the luxury home Donaldson and his partner expected, the house was rife with problems, including an ant infestation throughout the main floor, non-working showers, broken toilets, an "unsightly, unusable pool" littered with shards of tile and concrete from a botched repair job, and an infiltration of squirrels nesting above the ceiling in one bedroom, the complaint said.

Shortly after moving in, Donaldson's partner and their daughter both developed lung congestion and lingering coughs, the suit said. An environmental testing company's inspection on April 19 revealed "an extensive and widespread infestation" of chaetomium and aspergillus mold, both of which can cause serious health problems, the complaint said.

Donaldson, through his lawyer, demanded that Grous immediately return the home to "a fit and livable condition," the suit said. The landlord, however, did not fix the mold infestation and the lease was terminated in May, the complaint said. Grous refused to return the security deposit, which led Donaldson to seek relief in court, according to the suit.

The jury verdict issued Wednesday totaled about $331,000, including $82,393.76 for costs for substitute housing, moving, transportation and other expenses, $220,000 for the security deposit (the $110,000 that Donaldson paid is doubled under Connecticut law), $1,341.87 for out-of-pocket expenses and $27,500 for emotional harm, according to the verdict form.

Donaldson's attorney, Craig Cepler, said Friday that he anticipated a judge would award in excess of $170,000 in legal expenses, which would bring the total to about $500,000.

"We're evaluating an appeal," Grous' attorney, Philip Russell, said Friday ….

I’d say the jury has already evaluated the defendant’s appeal, and found it lacking.

7 Comments

And now the next chapter

Mr. Donaldson was finally awarded $722,845,37 this April, but unfortunately, his claim is behind the $2.5 million foreclosure suit against landlord Grous by Deutsche Bank; it will be years before he collects, if ever.

FWIW’s Legal Eagle, Gideon, tipped me off to this suit, by the way, and also included a very interesting list of other properties tangled up in foreclosure actions. I’m not certain where he got the list, so I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but I did spot-check some of the properties, selected at random, and they’re in play; might be some relative bargains here.

UPDATE: Few, if any of these properties are actively listed on the MLS — the owners have hunkered down and are going nowhere, and why should they? A lot of these cases are close a decade old, and the owners are still in possession)

Mortgage Foreclosures

• 176 Old Stone Bridge Rd – Deutsche Bank v. Hayes

• 23 Gregory Rd – Deutsche Bank v. Toscano (Start date, 2019 and continuing)

• 81 Strickland Rd – Wilmington Trust v. Green (This one was fired up in 2017 and is still going)

• 362 Davis Ave Unit 3 – Deutsche Bank v. Souliere

• 4 Driftway – U.S. Bank Trust v. Petersen

• 43 Maple Ave Units 1–4 – JPMorgan Chase v. Allen

• 44 Edgewood Ave – Deutsche Bank Trust v. Ribeiro

• 453 E. Putnam Ave Unit 3G – U.S. Bank v. Holland

• 67 Holly Hill Ln – Wilmington Trust v. 67 Holly Hill LLC

• 28 E. Lyon Farm Dr Unit 28 – Nationstar Mortgage v. Guilfoile

• 345 Round Hill Rd – JPMorgan Chase v. Ryder

• 7 Will Merry Ln – Wilmington Trust v. Brodsky

• 74 Glen Ridge Rd – Wilmington Savings Fund Society v. Pogosian

• 84 Pemberwick Rd – U.S. Bank Trust v. Gojani

• 9 Seton Ln – JPMorgan Chase v. Supp

• 928 Lake Ave – Deutsche Bank v. Grous

• 969 North St – Patriot Bank v. Altavista Investments LLC

• 6A Lockwood Dr – U.S. Bank v. Maze

• 30 Willowmere Avenue – JPMorgan Chase v. Amodeo

• 83 Lancer Rd South – Astoria Bank v. Olbrych

• 23 Carleton St – U.S. Bank v. McGuire

• 14 Highview Ave – Bank of New York Mellon v. Arsenault (Tax evader on his way to prison)

• 58 Tomac Ave – Wells Fargo v. Blinten

January 6 = raping little girls? In Minnesota, yes.

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Let the little children come to me and suffer

Firestorm erupts online after Minnesota paper praises Tim Walz's clemency for child rapist

The opinion column compared the rape case to January 6 pardons, drawing widespread condemnation

You can read all about it at the link, but it was this quote from Walz that caught me eye: a pedophile who repeatedly raped a 10-year-old girl “was just having a bad day”?

Days after Vang's deportation, Walz doubled down on his decision to grant clemency.

"Did that make us any safer?" Walz questioned. “Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?"

Was it the sellers' insistence on retaining title to their pizza oven?

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New to the Cos Cob market today, 59 Dandy Drive, 1963 construction that was remuddled in 2015, is offered for sale at the perhaps aspirational price of three-point-five million dollars — which would beat the previous high sale in this 60s development by $700,000+.

We had some fun last week at the expense of a new listing at 59 Dandy Drive, and apparently the weekend crowd of lookers-maybe-buyers shared our sentiments: its price was dropped this morning from $3.5 million to $3.3.

What parent would pay for this nonsense? For that matter, why would any taxpayer allow a single dollar to go to this school? (Updated)

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Trinity College course will teach students to ‘unsettle’ the ‘white gaze’

“Unsettling the White Gaze” appears on the school’s anthropology course schedule for spring 2027.

“White supremacy and racial capitalism structure our world, setting in motion the systems of domination that Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly describes as a ‘racially hierarchical political economy constituting war and militarism, imperialist accumulation, expropriation by domination, and labor superexploitation,’” the description states. 

During the class, students will be instructed to turn their “anthropological gaze upon whiteness itself” in order to understand “its insidious modes of self-and-other construction,” thus “destabilizing its ocular power to define others.”

“We will pay special attention to how the white colonial gaze has operated in the liberal discipline of anthropology and explore ethnographic methods for studying whiteness and white supremacy,” the description explains.

And of course …

Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot, an assistant professor of anthropology, is teaching “Unsettling the White Gaze.”

Eisenberg-Guyot’s profile describes the scholar as a “white, disabled, trans anthropologist whose work focuses on how criminalized people who use drugs envision and experiment with abolitionist horizons of transformation, healing, self-determination, and solidarity beyond incarceration and forced-cure.”

UPDATE: Saw this on another site, and thought it’d be appropriate here:

Old Greenwich Sale

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I have to do what?

13 Mortimer Drive, $2.3 million, $2.495 asked. Seems like plenty for a 1921, 2,228 sq. ft. house on 0.12 of an acre in the AE Zone, no garage, a basement that flooded most recently during Hurricane Sandy, and flood zone requirements that will compel the owner to jack the place up another 10 feet into the air should he wish to make any improvements.

Sold to Upper East Side transplants.

Socialist paradise, but at a cost. And don’t tell Bernie Sanders, but ...

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A depressing percentage of the population truly believes that the “free” stuff promised by their political leaders will be truly free to them, and to the question of who will pay for all of it, they answer, “someone else”. It doesn’t work that way, even in Sweden.

And there’s this: the Swedish social welfare system was based on a homogeneous population of people with a strong work ethic who produced as well as consumed. That model is failing as third world immigrants have flooded in, many of whom, even after two, even three generations among the fjords, have neither assimilated nor progressed beyond being mere conumers of others’ efforts. That can’t last.

Fact check*, per ChatGPT:

Sweden has both a VAT (called "moms") and a personal income tax. They are separate taxes that apply to different things.

Here's how the system works.

1. VAT ("moms")

VAT is a consumption tax, much like sales tax, except it's collected at every stage of production. The final burden falls on the consumer.

The standard VAT rate is 25%, and it applies to most goods and most services.

That means the 25% VAT is typically charged on things like:

  • Clothing

  • Electronics

  • Furniture

  • Haircuts

  • Legal services

  • Accounting services

  • Plumbing

  • Electrical work

  • Auto repairs

  • Most professional consulting

So if a plumber quotes you 2,000 SEK (before VAT), you'd normally pay:

  • Labor: 2,000 SEK

  • VAT (25%): 500 SEK

  • Total: 2,500 SEK

2. Are there exceptions?

Yes. Sweden has reduced VAT rates and some exemptions.

Item

Typical VAT

Most goods & services 25%

Restaurants 12%

Hotels 12%

Books, newspapers, passenger transport 6%

Healthcare Exempt

Education Exempt

Banking & insurance Exempt

(As of 2026, Sweden has temporarily reduced the VAT on many grocery food items to 6%, but restaurant meals remain at 12%.)

3. What about rent?

This is an interesting exception.

Residential rent is generally exempt from VAT.

If you rent an apartment, you normally do not pay VAT on your monthly rent.

Commercial real estate is different. Businesses renting office space may sometimes pay VAT depending on how the property owner has elected to treat the property for tax purposes.

4. Is there also an income tax?

Yes.

Every worker pays income tax in addition to VAT.

Sweden's income tax has two main layers:

  • Municipal income tax, paid by nearly everyone (roughly around 30%, though it varies by municipality).

  • National income tax, which applies only to higher incomes.

So a typical employee:

  • earns a salary,

  • pays income tax on that salary,

  • then spends what's left,

  • and pays VAT when buying most goods and services.

Suppose someone earns the equivalent of $100.

  1. They pay income tax.

  2. They take home perhaps $70 (very roughly).

  3. They spend some of that.

  4. Purchases are subject to VAT.

So Sweden's tax system has three major layers that people often confuse:

  1. VAT (moms): paid by consumers on most goods and services.

  2. Income tax: paid on wages and salaries.

  3. Payroll/social security contributions: paid largely by employers to fund pensions, health insurance, and other social programs.

Together, these taxes finance Sweden's extensive public services and social safety net.

Q 2: is it true that Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US?

Yes—using Forbes’ 2025 billionaire count, Sweden had substantially more billionaires per capita than the United States.

  • Sweden: about 45 billionaires among roughly 10.6 million people → about 4.2 billionaires per million residents.

  • United States: about 902 billionaires among roughly 341 million people → about 2.6 billionaires per million residents.

That makes Sweden’s per-capita rate roughly 1.6 times the U.S. rate. This accords with a Financial Times analysis describing Sweden as having about 1.5 times as many billionaires per capita as the U.S.

The qualification is that billionaire lists are estimates, and comparisons can differ depending on whether a source classifies people by citizenship, residence, or primary business location. But under a consistent Forbes-style comparison, the claim is broadly true.

One reason this can coexist with Sweden’s high taxes is that Sweden taxes labor and consumption heavily, but abolished its general wealth tax in 2007 and its inheritance and gift taxes in 2004. Consequently, Sweden can simultaneously have a large welfare state and relatively favorable treatment of accumulated capital and inherited fortunes.

*The 180% tax on cars cited in the illustration is not accurate: Swedes pay the standard 25% VAT tax on purchase, while Denmark was the country that until recently taxed cars @180% — it’s since been lowered, according to Chat.

Learing centers

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Future barista

The Disastrous Failure of 'Gender Studies' in Higher Education

Ward Clark, RedState:

…. A recent piece from Campus Reform documents that, at least at one midwestern university, the enrollment in these programs is crashing and burning. …. Northeastern Illinois University’s enrollment in its gender studies degree program has remained below 10 students for five years running, the school’s data shows.

The university maintains a page tracking five-year enrollment trends every spring. The data reveals that gender studies is not a popular major at the school.

In spring 2021, only two students were enrolled in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Bachelor of Arts. That number rose to six students in spring 2022 before declining to five students in 2023 and four students in both 2024 and 2025.

The university had an enrollment of 3,749 undergraduate students in spring 2025, which means that 0.11 percent of the student body was enrolled in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies degree.

That's an encouraging statistic, although it begs one primary question: Why is Northern Illinois University still offering this corral's litter to be taught?

[Because there are 15 professors and 29 administrators in these departments, and where else would you place your graduates? — FWIW]

Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies aren't the only garbage degree this university offers - and it's not the only one with enrollment in single digits. There are nine others, among them "Urban Community Studies," "Latina/o/x & Latin American Studies," and "Global Studies." These are, again, enormous outpourings of the kind of stuff one finds in small heaps in pastures where cattle have been grazing. And the electives may be even more ridiculous.

A description for “Feminist Activism” says that students will “create and participate in activist projects during the semester.”

Options for electives include “Contemporary LGBTQ+ Literature,” “Studies In Women’s Literature,” “Re-Thinking Race And Gender,” and “Latina/x Feminisms & Social Media.”

It's not just Northern Illinois University that is seeing its numbers in these programs crash and burn. Campus Reform has more:

A Campus Reform public records request revealed in July that the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s gender studies minor had 42 enrolled students for the 2025–2026 academic year out of almost 20,000 students at the school.

The low-enrollment programs come as some universities are raising tuition or reducing staff while citing broader enrollment declines.

Temple University announced a 3.4 percent tuition increase and staff reductions in July due to low enrollment.

Good. That's how it should be. 

Of all these horse squeeze programs, though, it's hard to imagine one that would be more useless than Gender Studies. It's not completely impossible that someone who took a Latin American Studies degree may find employment, say, as a low-level staffer in the United States embassy to Nicaragua. But Gender Studies? The only possible hope for employment that doesn't involve a Starbucks apron might be getting a job teaching Gender Studies, and, given the crashing university enrollment, that seems one of the longest of long shots.

Still, for all the microscopic enrollment, there are, according to one source, still 123 universities offering bachelor's degree programs in Gender Studies, another 93 offering bachelor's degrees in Gender & Sexuality Studies and possibly another 276 offering similar curricula in bits and pieces. 

But the crashing and burning in enrollment may be changing all that. Already, several institutions, including Georgia State University, the New College of Florida, and Wichita State, have already round-filed their Gender Studies programs, mostly due to catastrophically low enrollment.