Pending on Sawmill

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31 Sawmill Lane, guide price $8.950 million; began at $9.5 million July, 2025, dropped to $8.750 October 15, 2025, pulled on October 25th, spruced up and returned to market May 2026 @$9.750, dropped to $8.995 August 2026.

Convoluted, but still a better performance than its previous run on the market, when it began at $9.850 in April 2004 and, after long stints on and off the listings, sold for $3.7 million in 2019.

At least, I assume this will prove to have been a better performance; we’ll have to wait until the final sale price is disclosed.

Will the fifteenth time be the charm?

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25 close road, built in 2004, erased in 2024, but it lives on in memory and the printed page

25 Close Road, its Russian oligarch’s tribute to garish bad taste having been consigned to the dustbin of history, is back (again) as a land listing, this time asking $9.950 million for its 5 acres.

The history of this property is convoluted: built in 1998-2000 by, I believe, by one of those newly minted Russian oligarchs, it was so lavishly over-decorated that even The Donald might have thought it a tad ostentatious. The Russian disappeared, probably defenestrated in Moscow or resettled in a Siberian gulag, and whoever ended up with its title tried selling it in 2005-2006 for $15.75 million. That didn’t work, it sat fallow, then resurfaced in 2020 for $12 million, an effort that also failed. The house was then razed, and the land was offered in 2024 at $10.995. Now those acres can be yours for $9.950.

I’ll always be grateful to the original owner here because when I was working with Andrews McMeel Publishing to finish up The New Millionaire’s Handbook, their St. Louis-based illustrator couldn’t seem to grasp the full, gargantuan size of what we were seeing go up in Greenwich and other Fairfield County towns; he kept drawing homes that might have dwarfed their peers in Kansas City, but would have been spurned as obscenely inadequate servants quarters by Greenwich domestics. Finally, exasperated, I drove up to 25 Close Road, then still under construction, took some pictures, and sent them west: “Here!” The result can be seen below:

Your Greenwich tax dollars at work: $20,000 — $50,000* for one evening of hysteria and agit prop

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Official town website

I certainly have no objection to private citizens and organizations gathering together to listen to whatever crackpot speaker they choose, but this particular campfire kumbaya anti-Trump rally is being paid for by the Town of Greenwich and tax-dollar-supported Perrot Library. Is anyone over there in Town Hall minding the cash register?

Here’s HotAir’s John Sexton on the speaker who’ll be dining on Greenwich dollars tonight — you’ll be relieved to know that McKibben has added the AI hysteria to his standard stump speech.

The Left's Fear-Mongering Over AI Was Inevitable

“There's a pretty good example of this last point in today's NY Times. Eco-leftist Bill McKibben has an opinion piece adding AI to the number of things that progressives have to feel overwhelmed and depressed about.”

The climate crisis now consists of walls of water sweeping down Nepali rivers, obliterating entire towns in the blink of an eye, and wildfires that wipe out California neighborhoods in hours. And we’re confronting the birth and Bunyanesque growth of a new technology, artificial intelligence, that, according to some of its creators, is fairly likely to kill us all in the near future. We have to sit and listen as men worth unfathomable sums speculate about whether our species will survive their companies’ initial public offerings.

We definitely weren’t designed to cope with all this — our bodies, our nervous systems, our brains. Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they’re simply wearing us out. A lot of us would like politicians to offer, alongside their promises of affordability, even a glimpse of serenity.

“So if you feel down and...Liberal, that's how you should feel. That's how we should all feel. That's his pitch. If you ever wanted a clear peek into the mind of a Harvard-educated eco-progressive here it is.”

A kind of overwhelming weariness and even sadness is increasingly the default state of what, in living memory, were optimistic, get-up-and-go-ish fellow Americans. I think if we had some way of surveying Americans at 3 a.m., we’d find huge numbers of people awake, wondering what new strain might be in store come morning. I don’t think it’s fragility at work — how are we supposed to respond to the now almost daily news that roving bands of A.I. agents are up to mayhem, or that the onrushing El Niño will take temperatures to heights no human has ever experienced?

President Trump’s main response to our A.I. fear is to rename it “superintelligence”...

I hope we won’t choose quietism or escape. I’m hard at work volunteering in this fall’s midterm elections, for instance; we simply can’t tune out.

If we elect serious leaders who can take control of Congress and the presidency, they’ll have to work hard — we need all kinds of reforms to prevent a relapse of the sickness to which we’ve fallen prey...

I’d be happy to listen to Jon Ossoff or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for half an hour every Thursday if either of them runs for and is elected president. And then I’d be happy to think about something else that weekend; civic participation should be a part of life, not something that keeps you up at night.

It's almost impossible to live in America today and not be adversely affected by something the Trump Administration is doing. If you aren't feeling those effects then you are probably not paying attention. Unfortunately, many of our undereducated electorate are doing just that - not paying attention, not reading up on policy decisions, not following the details...or the money. Some people just don't care and don't see politics as anything they need to be involved in or pay attention to. That's partially why we are in this situation we find ourselves in today. Many people just vote a certain way because that's the way they've always voted...that's the way their neighbors vote. But are they paying attention? 

The reason many of us, who are paying attention, feel so exhausted is because this is the first Administration in American history whose sole purpose is for destruction, to break down, to dismantle, to roll back environmental protections, science & medical programs at all levels, and to rule as if they were a King...with no regards to the rule of law. 

And for the most part, they are getting away with it. 

Dealing with at least 2+ more years of this is going to be hard.

(Much) more about this Middlebury College professor New Yorker contributing writer here.

*AI Overview

Bill McKibben’s speaking fee generally ranges from $20,000 to $50,000 for live, in-person keynote events.

Some booking agencies quote a narrower baseline range of $20,000 to $30,000, depending on the specific nature of the event.

Old Greenwich sale price reported

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52 Center Dive, listed at $1.495 million, closed at $1.6. And sure to make Mamdani and his fellow commies happy, the buyers came from NYC’s Gramercy/East Side neighborhood (10003).

And Mandami’s fellow DSA member, Seattle’s living-with-parents Mayor Katie Wilson, will no doubt take a vicarious pleasure from this family’s departure:

The passengers probably should have been suspicious when they saw the airline's name while boarding

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(Probably?) too soon?

Passengers thwart attempted hijacking by Omani pilot

A commercial flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after a bloody clash in the cockpit that Israeli officials suspect was an attempt to wrest control of the plane and crash it in an act of terrorism. None of the 180-odd passengers, most of whom were Israeli, were reported injured.

People who were on the plane, and loved ones to whom they’d spoken, told Hebrew media that it appeared the flight’s copilot had stabbed the captain, at which point the plane went out of control. The plane initially plummeted some 17,000 feet in under a minute.

A group of Israeli passengers managed to storm the cockpit, subdued the stabber and stabilized the plane, witnesses said. Daniel, an Israeli passenger, said another pair of pilots, who were on the plane, took control of the flight. About an hour later, it landed in Saudi Arabia.

Mamdani may be quitting

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They say this as though it's a bad thing

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now ramp up deportation of those already here

Cato Institute calculates that Trump has accomplished a 96% Reduction in Muslim Immigrants

The CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank that is about as open borders as it comes, published the report, "Legal Immigration from Majority-Muslim Nations Was Cut 96% Since 2024."

“During his campaign in 2016, President Trump repeatedly proposed an outright ban on Muslims entering the United States. He then claimed that this policy idea morphed into the travel ban to avoid potential constitutional problems. During his 2024 campaign, he said he would bring back an even stricter ban than the one in his first term. He has succeeded. 

“Data from the State Department through February 2026 show that the Trump administration has cut legal immigration by nationals of 45 majority-Muslim countries by 96 percent since December 2024. Monthly immigrant visa issuances and permanent lawful refugee admissions fell from 21,096 in December 2024 to 808 in February 2026.”

Will the last one out at the Episcopal Church please shut off the lights?

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hide-and-seek at the tombs (Swathed as he was, it would have been cruel to demand that Lazarus “come out with your hands up”)

“…… friend, which in my mind's eye ranks right up there with being a friend of Dorothy."

*Episcopalian? But of course!