In Which Your Old Scribe Learns New Tricks...

As you may recall, I was bothered yesterday by my inability to create "hot links" to the AB's and AW's sites, even though I followed carefully the HTML instructions provided by blogspot. During my subsequent leaf-peeping expedition, the thought occurred (not for the first time in my life) that perhaps I was overthinking the problem. Why not try the age-old (well, decades-old) cut-and-paste technique?

Well, dear reader, if you go back and reread yesterday's now-updated post, you will see that it worked like the proverbial charm. Thus encouraged, I began to wonder how the Author Whiz added various colors to the text in her blog (Diana's Diversions), and pointed the cursor at the tool icons appearing at the top of the "Compose" window. Bingo! - the third one turned out to be "Text Color", and gave me my choice of hues to brighten up my already sparkling but boringly monochromatic text. Whee!

I immediately went back to the "$2.3 Million and Counting..." post in which I recounted the story of Lincoln Steffens and the town meeting called to refute his "libel" that Greenwich is as corrupt a town as any city in the country. Behold the results:

As it happened, the editor of the LR of the time was standing nearby when Steffens made that statement, and challenged him to prove the "libel" on the fair name of Greenwich. The story goes that Steffens called a town meeting, had them elect a respected citizen as the moderator, and proceeded to make his case as follows:

"I will start with the reminder that at the last election you saw me, lots of you saw me, standing in the undertaker's shop, watching you pass through there getting your $2.50 per voter. We both knew that, but I know something you don't know. I know and you don't that while you were getting your $2.50, the Italians were getting $2.75 a vote."

The meeting, attended mostly by old-line Yankees, erupted in an uproar. Was it possible that their gardeners and stonemasons were getting more money than they were? Why, it was a scandal! When the political bosses at the back of the room failed to deny Steffens' charge, everyone knew it was true. The following resolution was offered by Steffens:

"We, the people of Greenwich, in town meeting assembled, admit that we are as corrupt as any community so far exposed in this country."

It passed, dear reader - not without dissent, but it passed.

How about that? Green for the money factor, that drove Greenwich then as now, and red for the embarrassment when Steffens got them to admit their venality. Pretty nifty, no?

So beware, dear reader: your scribe will most likely go on a hot link and color rampage in posts to come. I'll try not to overdo it, but as Oscar Wilde famously said, "I can resist everything except temptation." And blogging.