Greenwich Gossip

Will We Ever See It Again?

2012-01-27T06:10:00.003-05:00

Yesterday the mural depicting the early years of Greenwich was removed from the Post Office and packed for shipment to Washington, DC. The story told to your scribe was that it was being sent for restoration, in accordance with a long-standing contract with the USPS to conserve these Depression-era works of art if a building were sold. A professional firm based in Chicago was handling the process, which gives one some confidence that the mural will be properly cared for on its trip south.

But will we ever see it again here in Greenwich? The Postal "Service" is in dire straits, running an enormous deficit which Tuesday's one-cent rise in rates will do nothing to alleviate. If it eventually implodes, what will happen to our mural?

The plan, as of yesterday, is to return it to Greenwich at some unknown date in the future, assuming a proper space can be found to display it. Lots of variables in that plan, which may mean that if the Town Fathers do not follow up and keep track of the mural's whereabouts, it may disappear into the maw of the Federal Government, to be warehoused, or lost, or stolen, or perhaps given to some political crony of the then-current administration.

Thus your scribe is somewhat skeptical that we will ever see the mural back in its native Town. Does anybody care? We should, you know; it is part of our artistic and cultural heritage. But who will follow up on this? Will Town Hall? Will Peter Malkin, the new owner of the Post Office building? Will the Historical Society, or the Historic District Commission, or the Greenwich Preservation Trust? Ideally, one would hope that they all take a hand in seeing that we are kept apprised of the mural's restoration status, its location, and the plans for its return to Greenwich. If this were to happen, there's at least an outside chance that someday we may in fact see our mural again.

January 1, 2012

2012-01-01T03:51:00.003-05:00

January 1, 2012 marks, unusually, the beginning of a new day, a new week, a new month, and a new year. Because it is a Sunday, some people will find themselves in church—an event which occurs only once every five years or so. Others will find themselves at the beach, where the polar bears rush into the water at Tod's Point at high noon to prove to themselves and the world how hardy they are. And some will probably spend much if not most of the day in bed, recovering from the excesses of the last day of 2011.

How one chooses to spend New Year's Day is a telling indicator of personality. My Uncle Jim used to cook a huge feast and invite all his relatives to his home in South Salem, NY. For him, there was no better way to start the year than with family. Many will watch football bowl games, cheering for teams that have become a sort of surrogate family, but to whom their ties are much more evanescent. In a few years, most of these fans will have forgotten what happened in those games. Not at all like the lasting memories my Uncle Jim used to create.

What will you do today, dear reader? At the start of a new year, we think we have a double heaping handful of days stretched out before us, with the lagniappe this year of an extra leap day. With such profusion ahead of us, does it really matter how we spend any particular day?

Again, the answer you give will tell you something about who you are. If you sleep till noon, then crawl down to the den to switch on the TV, your choice will lead you in one direction. If you get up at your normal time, take a hot shower, and go to church to give thanks and see friends, your life will tend in another direction. And if you get up early, take a cold shower, put on your swim togs, and head to the beach, you are clearly of another type altogether.

There are no right answers in life; there are only choices. This is the day (week/month/year) you have been given; how will you use it? The choice is yours. Happy 2012!

The Silly Season is Over...

2011-11-09T04:31:00.004-05:00

...and sanity returns to the Town of Greenwich. The tumult and the shouting dies, and as the dust settles God is still in His heaven and the voters have made all the right choices. The results:

The Board of Selectmen remains unchanged. Peter Tesei has won a third term as First Selectman; Dave Theis came in a comfortable second to retain his seat as Selectman, and Drew Marzullo handily out-polled his running mate John Blankley to keep his seat as well. This Board has served the Town well for the past two years, and we are lucky to have them at the helm for another two.

Carmella Budkins, already a Town institution, continues on as Town Clerk, and Tod Laudonia continues as Tax Collector. The Soviet-style elections for the Board of Estimate and Taxation produced no surprises: with no candidates to oppose them, the slate was unanimously swept into office. Ain't democracy wonderful?

For the first time in living memory, the voters did have a choice of candidates for the Board of Education. And choose they did, resoundingly rejecting the Maryannie/Annie ticket in favor of the O'Neill/von Braun slate by a margin of almost two-to-one. Reportedly Maryannie/Annie had seen the handwriting on the wall, and began to hand out a prepared concession speech as the results became clear. What a pity this document didn't get written and published three or four months ago!

And so, gentle reader, we can all take a deep breath and relax for another two years. That is, all of us who didn't win a post in Town government yesterday. For those good folks, it's back to the grindstone today, and your scribe would like to be the first to thank them in advance for all their efforts on behalf of us all.

Was That a Mountain Lion I Saw?

2011-11-08T04:10:00.003-05:00

While driving up Glenville Road yesterday afternoon, I saw a very large feline animal cross the road in front of me, moving gracefully and as calmly and coolly as you please. It moved confidently and quickly, but not hurriedly, leapt over a large stone wall, and continued on its purposeful way. Was this the famed Greenwich Mountain Lion, my good FaceBook friend, whose existence is constantly reported by ordinary people, and heatedly denied by the authorities?

At first I thought I was seeing an enormous fox, but the creature was way too large for that. It was at least two to three feet high, and at least three to four feet long. It had long skinny legs, and a surprisingly small head for its sinewy body. It looked as though it could easily run 20-25 MPH without breaking a sweat. I saw heads swivel in the car approaching me and in the car behind me, confirming that this was not a mere figment of the imagination. It crossed the road in three or four strides, cleared the stone wall, and went off to explore the Rockefeller woods. I would bet good money on it to make mincemeat of any dog of any size that had the temerity to cross its path.

And so, gentle reader, I am now a firm believer in the presence in our area of the Greenwich Mountain Lion. Which reminds me: the GML has threatened to bite people who do not get out and vote today. Be warned!

The Local Rag Blots its Escutcheon Yet Again

2011-11-03T11:10:00.004-04:00

Yes, folks, the local rag, aka Yellowwich Time, the paper that invariably gets the facts wrong and treats truth in journalism as a rib-splitting joke, has done it again. Flying in the face of sanity and good judgment, it has had the monumental assininity to endorse Maryannie/Annie in the forthcoming municipal elections.

Actually, this should come as no surprise. Had the local rag actually made the more sensible choice to support Barbara O'Neill and Peter von Braun, one might have had to consider revising one's utter contempt for its reportorial and editorial drivel. Thankfully, that will not be necessary.

So all is well in Greenwich, dear reader. We can all continue to disbelieve whatever we read in the local rag, knowing that unlike even the proverbial broken clock, it is almost never right. There is, of course, the occasional fluke, but that only goes to show that there are exceptions to every rule. Put enough monkeys to work, and eventually they will type the works of Shakespeare. But don't hold your breath.

Anybody But Maryannie/Annie!

2011-10-24T22:07:00.024-04:00

Well, gentle reader, the silly season is well upon us, and the election a scant two weeks away. Therefore, by popular demand, your scribe will take up his pen at last to try to make some sense out of the large helpings of nonsense that are being dished out around Town.

First and foremost, let’s look at the Selectmen race. There are four good candidates, but only three can win. How have the present incumbents been doing? Pretty well, one has to say. Peter Tesei is a consensus-builder, Dave Theis is his popular deputy, and Drew Marzullo has made a lot of friends around Town during his first term in office. The three of them have worked harmoniously together, and the Town is a better place for their joint efforts. Is there any reason to change the composition of this effective, smooth-running Board of Selectmen? Not in the slightest. Sorry, Mr. Blankley—perhaps another time your turn may come.

The non-race for Town Clerk was over before it ever started. Carmella Budkins is a local institution, and she has ably performed her functions for longer than most of us can remember. Not to see her face when walking into the clerk’s office would be like sailing into New York Harbor and not seeing the Statue of Liberty. Carm usually out-polls every other candidate on the ballot, and there is little doubt that she will do so again in two weeks.

The office of Tax Collector may be another story. Like Carm, Jimmy Branca and Lou Caravella were local legends. They did everything right. Tod Laudonia had big shoes to fill, and unfortunately he tripped when he tried to put them on. The snafu with the personal property tax bills in his first year was simply inexcusable. However, to be fair, things went much more smoothly during this current year. Bill Grad has more relevant work experience for the post, and if the election had been held last year instead of this one, he very likely would have won. But now that things are back in the groove, it would seem best to leave well enough alone, and give Tod another term in office. If it ain’t broke (which for the moment it’s not), don’t fix it.

Undoubtedly the most fun to be had will center on the Board of Education races. In the past, both parties have each nominated two candidates for the four open seats, which meant that nomination guaranteed election. This year the Democrats, to their shame, followed the protocols of the past, giving us no choice at all with their candidates. The Republicans, however, followed a wiser course, putting up four candidates for their two alloted slots. For the first time in living memory, the voters of Greenwich will have a choice as to who serves on the all-important Board of Education.

And what a choice it is! There are no shades of gray to be found here, dear reader; everything is purely black and white. The candidates divide neatly into two blocs: one pair of responsible, intelligent, community-minded citizens, and one pair of wildly irresponsible, mud-slinging, abusive, overbearing (and unbearable) wretches. To keep things simple, one need only remember the slogan at the head of this post: Anybody but Maryannie/Annie.

Why so? Well, let’s take Maryannie Cohen first. From her checkered days at Yale Law School, which she left after only a single year to finish her degree at NYU, to her checkered career at Shearman & Sterling in New York City, to her outrageous treatment of the former Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Sidney Freund, to her picaresque personal life that really should not be mentioned in polite society, Maryannie has left a welter of chaos and destruction in her wake wherever she goes. The dysfunctionality of the current Board of Ed can be laid almost entirely at her feet. She did her best to drive Sid Freund out of town, and succeeded. She did her best to block the renovation of Glenville Elementary School, and failed. Yet withal she has never allowed any of her children to darken the doors of a public school in Greenwich, and thus she knows as much as the Man in the Moon about how our schools really operate. A clinician might diagnose her as laboring under a dissociative narcissistic personality disorder, and he might well be right.

By all reports, her sidekick Annie Povinelli is cut from similar cloth. The mere fact that they seem to consider themselves a team is telling. There are times when guilt by association is not a mere suspicion, but an incontestable fact.

And so, gentle reader, let us all go out and vote for Barbara O’Neill and Peter von Braun on Election Day. Oh, and of course please vote for the Democratic candidates, Jennifer Dayton and Adriana Ospina as well. If you’re on FaceBook, check out http://www.facebook.com/BetterBOE for more information on why our community needs this balanced slate of people who actually know first-hand about our public school system and are committed to making it better instead of tearing it down.

Of course, your scribe, who tends to follow the KISS rule, will simply rely on the mantra “Anybody but Maryannie/Annie” when filling out his own ballot.

Ave Atque Vale

2011-10-17T05:02:00.005-04:00

It's a season of transition here in Greenwich, Connecticut. The first order of business is to welcome Alistair Reed back to the music staff at Christ Church, where he served so ably in his younger days before heading off to Coventry Cathedral in England. Yesterday afternoon he accompanied the Choir of Men and Boys in the annual Sydney Woodd-Cahusac memorial evensong, playing in his usual flawless manner (see http://greenwich-gossip.blogspot.com/2011/04/alistair-reed-returns-to-greenwich.html). Only the split-second-longer-than-usual pause between the verses of the hymns gave a hint that Alistair was still playing as though he were in a reverberant cathedral instead of the more modest dimensions of Christ Church. A festive reception followed at the Tomes-Higgins house, to give us all a chance to toast Alistair's return.

The second, sadder, order of business is to say farewell to Nancy Barton. Brilliant, talented, outgoing, socially conscious, dedicated, funny, indefatigable—Nancy was many things to many people, and a large number of them filled Second Congregational Church on Saturday afternoon to bid her Godspeed. Her youngest brother, Al (the afterthought of the family), acted as master of ceremonies, and forbade sorrow and sadness in favor of light-heartedness and joy. Yet there was much melancholy in what the various speakers, including her other siblings, had to say. Nancy died at the young age of 60 (which some say is the new 40, and others the new 30)—far too soon for her to be taken from us. She is, and will continue to be, sorely missed.

And so, as the rather colorless leaves are falling from the trees (we've had a summer of wild weather here in Greenwich), the change of the seasons brings the usual transitions to our Town. Ave, Alistair, and vale, Nancy. We're glad to have you as part of our lives.

Nomenclature

2011-10-03T04:42:00.003-04:00

I have been noticing what seems to me to be an unfortunate trend of capitalizing the common noun "realtor" as though it were a proper noun. Does this mean we shall soon be having Lawyers, Ministers, Priests, Bankers, Writers, Beachbums, Thieves, Merchants, Whores, Politicians, and the like?

Just askin', is all.

Irene Pays a Visit

2011-08-29T06:49:00.005-04:00

In her march up the Eastern seaboard, Hurricane Irene did not forget to visit Greenwich. Though diminished in power by the time she arrived, she still made a fairly impressive showing. Downed trees and power outages were the order of the day, not to mention a rather awesome storm surge:

Here we see GPD Marine Division head Jim Bonney enjoying a refreshing picnic at Roger Sherman Baldwin park. By the time this picture was taken, the donuts were already history. (Click on the picture to see it full-size.)

Greenwich Avenue was a ghost town. A dozen storefronts were boarded up, and many others had their windows taped. Almost every major church in Town was closed, an act of God preventing the institutional worship of God for the first time in living memory.

Ironically, it's six years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. Compared to that devastation, Irene was a mere summer shower. It may take a few days before power is fully restored around Town, but we should all be grateful that things are no worse. "We should consider ourselves very fortunate," as First Selectman Peter Tesei summed up the situation. Yes, indeed.

Hot Enough for You?

2011-07-22T14:58:00.005-04:00

The Midwest has been baking for days, and now their weather has moved on, as it usually does, to the East Coast. The Splash car wash sign read 91 degrees at 8:30 this morning, and will probably be well over 100 by late this afternoon. Even the ferryboats, usually the coolest place in Town, offered little relief from the stifling heat today.

People are nonetheless flocking from all over to attend the Sidewalk Sales, of course--almost all the license plates and car window stickers on Greenwich Avenue are from out of state or out of town. But the bargains did not appear to be all that great, at least to this observer, and probably 90% of the merchandise was oriented to the distaff side. Which ia no doubt why 99% of the shoppers were female.

The best bargains were the free bottles of water being offered by two local companies, Richards and Peoples Bank (the one at the top of the Avenue). The national chain stores were notable primarily for the quality of their air conditioning; one could frequently feel blasts of chilled air spilling out onto the sidewalks from their open doors. While other communities are experiencing brownouts and even blackouts today, Greenwich is consuming electricity at an insouciantly record rate.

At least this year we were spared the spectacle of the Chamber of Commerce gorgon, Mary Ann Morrison, walking around handing out "bills" to companies that were participating in the sidewalk sales (as some of them had for decades) without paying her for the privilege. But karma caught up with Mary Ann at last, as she abruptly resigned in April with no comment either by herself or the C of C. Over the years of her "leadership" the organization has steadily lost members and laid off staff until finally there was no one left to lay off but Mary Ann herself. Rumor has it that she was the only one to attend her retirement party.

The heat wave is slated to continue through the weekend, if not longer. The Town has established "cooling centers" at the various libraries and civic buildings, including the police station, but only the latter is actually open 24/7. So if you want a cool place to sleep at night, dear reader, that is the place to go. And if you can manage to commit an infraction--spitting on the sidewalk, say--they may even offer you a semi-private room for the night.

Seems like only a few months ago we were all complaining about the snow and the cold. Now it's the heat and the humidity. We Greenwichites are a querulous lot, and apparently there's just no pleasing us. Oh, well, in a few more months we'll be back to harping about the cold. Enjoy the heat while it lasts!

Le Jour de Gloire est Arrive!

2011-07-14T09:52:00.004-04:00

On a picture-perfect summer morning about a hundred people gathered in front of Town Hall to celebrate Bastille Day. The brainchild of Serge Gabriel, this ceremony has become a staple of Greenwich life, and has finally been emulated by the Americans, who began celebrating the Fourth of July in the same manner about eight years ago. Once again, it seems, we Americans are in the debt of France.

For it was the French who saved our national bacon back at the decisive Battle of Yorktown on October 19, 1781. The landing the year before of 5,500 troops under the command of the Count of Rochambeau marked a tipping point in the Revolutionary War; the "Route Rochambeau" transits Connecticut, and Col. Gabriel has worked tirelessly to increase awareness of both the Route and its namesake. Without the aid of Rochambeau, Lafayette, and Admiral de Grasse, we would all still be speaking the Queen's English as her subjects.

Our hosts were Renee Ketcham and Gail Covney, Co-Presidents of the Alliance Francaise of Greenwich, and the ubiquitous Bea Crumbine, Greenwich's tireless Ambassador-at-Large. First Selectman Peter Tesei read the Bastille Day proclamation; M. Jean Lachaud spoke of the work of "Le Souvenir Francais" which tends the gravesites of French soldiers who fell in America; and Deputy Consul General M. Patrick Lachausee greeted us on behalf of the French government.

France was the first country to recognize the newly-independent United States of America, and hosted the Treaty of Paris in 1783 which marked the formal end of the hostilities with Great Britain. A few years later, on July 14, 1789, the French began their own revolution, and the following month issued the great manifesto on the Rights of Man, which mirrors many of the concepts embodied in the American Declaration of Independence. Already our two countries were forming a pattern of mutual assistance and interdependence.

Surprisingly, no one mentioned yesterday's 3-1 soccer match between the US and France, which allowed the US to proceed to the finals for the first time in twelve years. La politesse at work, one assumes.

Then we repaired to Meli-Melo for a fabulous French breakfast, with madeleines, croissants, pain au chocolat, and their famous crepes, hot off the griddle. The restaurant has recently expanded considerably in size, but it was still plein a craquer, as they say in France. Owners Marc and Evelyne Pevenne, along with their hard-working staff, toiled tirelessly to be sure that everyone had enough to eat and drink. Merci!

This year marks the 230th anniversary of Yorktown and Franco-American friendship. May that friendship continue for many more years to come!

There Goes Trouble...

2011-06-10T05:04:00.006-04:00

Whenever the late Leona Helmsley used to make her appearance around Greenwich, people always said, "Here comes Trouble." Trouble, of course, was the Maltese pooch always to be found in Leona's arms wherever she went, even including Greenwich Hospital on the day the new Helmsley Wing was officially dedicated. Should dogs be allowed in a hospital? Trouble was.

Leona left Trouble $12 million in her will. Too much, the probate judge said, and lowered it to $2 million. Leona wanted Trouble buried with her in her mausoleum. Nix on that, said the cemetery officials.

Poor little rich pooch. In death, as in life, Trouble was dogged by trouble.

Leona, too, had her non-canine troubles, as everyone knows. My favorite Leona story concerns the Greenwich contractor who put in a new driveway at Dunnellen Hall, and then was stiffed by her on the bill. Finally, after many months of waiting, he took his crew up Round Hill Road and began to dig up the driveway. Leona's secretary, horrified, came rushing down to tell him to cease and desist.

He patiently explained that he hadn't been paid for his work, and was thus removing it. The secretary offered a check for the amount due. The contractor refused, saying "cash only". The work crew continued its demolition while Leona's minions rushed around town to assemble the cash. The contractor, duly paid, ordered his men to stop.

They packed up their equipment and began to leave. "Wait," the secretary said, "aren't you going to fix this mess?"

"Nope," replied the contractor. "Find someone else for the job. I'm never working for that [rhymes with rich] again." And off he drove.

Ah, the lore of Greenwich. The stories that have been written about our fair Town are only a fraction of the ones that could be written.

Here is Trouble's obituary from the New York Daily News:

Leona Helmsley's $12 million pooch dies

Greenwich Public Enemy Number One: Marianna Ponns Cohen

2011-05-20T16:06:00.004-04:00

No editorial commentary is necessary—this video says it all, in ipsissimis verbis:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150307515669638

Sid, We Hardly Knew Ye...

2011-05-18T13:47:00.009-04:00

Well, that's not really true, of course. Two years is long enough to take the measure of any man, and to judge by the FaceBook page that sprang up yesterday ( Bring Back Dr. Sidney Freund ) and already has 344 "likes", Dr. Sidney Freund has a huge base of support among the students, teachers, parents, and townspeople of Greenwich. Why, then, is he abruptly resigning with another year still to go on his contract?

The reason is not far to seek: internecine Board of Education politics. Apparently two outspoken malcontents, Marianna Ponns Cohen and Peter Scherr, have polarized the Board by their outspoken criticisms of Dr. Freund, and even stooped so low as to question his personal integrity. No public servant should have to put up with such disgusting treatment, and Dr. Freund has apparently decided that he is one of them.

Everyone in Town should check out the FaceBook page and read the comments posted on it. Your blood will boil, dear reader, just as mine did. Two misguided people, who seem to think that sowing contention and making personal slurs is their God-given right, have thrown the entire educational system in the Town of Greenwich into turmoil. Shame on them!

So here is a humble suggestion: in return for Dr. Freund's recision of his resignation and agreement to spend one more year in his post (as set forth in his original contract), all the current members of the Board of Education should resign immediately and forthwith. The Town should call a special election in June for a new Board (cheaper than starting a search for a new Superintendent), with terms running until the end of 2013. No current Board member should be allowed to be a candidate in the new election.

With a proper airing of issues and vetting of the candidates (who should, of course, outnumber the eight slots available so that the voters have some choice in the matter), a new Board of Education could be seated over the summer to work on a "fresh start" with Dr. Freund. My guess is that the level of interest will be so high among parents and townsfolk that we will wind up with perhaps the best Board of Education in the State of Connecticut.

How ironic that Dr. Freund should have recently been named "Superintendent of the Year", and is now asking to leave because, as is widely assumed, he doesn't wish to put up with the vilification of two rotten apples. So let's throw out the old barrel, and bring in a new crop of apples who can work with Dr. Freund to give Greenwich the kind of school system it needs and deserves.

How say you, fellow townspeople? Shall we try to start over and bring Sidney Freund back?

Holy Saturday in Greenwich...

2011-04-24T07:45:00.002-04:00

...started out windy and rainy. A tag sale on Stanwich Road was disappointing, especially for those whose cars were ticketed by a zealous policeman. Your scribe managed to avoid that fate by obtaining permission in advance for his parking spot, and was informed it was on "private property" and thus safe to use.

The local Apple store has finally reopened after a cleaning crew set off the sprinkler system and flooded the place. What a waste of iMacs, iPods, MacBooks, and iPads! Not to mention several days of lost sales. No word on who will pick up the tab for this debacle.

Then it was off to Stanwich Church for another in their fabulous concert series conducted and accompanied by Randy Atcheson. The program opened with Gigout's Toccata on the organ, which rattled the rafters and got everyone in the mood for the musical feast to follow. During Pastor Chuck Davis's invocation Randy moved downstairs to the brand-new Yamaha concert grand piano recently given to the church. He opened the lid to its fullest, and proceeded to play Debussy's suite Pour le Piano by heart, full of iridescent arpeggios and brilliant glissandos. Stanwich Church is not a small building, but the overwhelming power of this gorgeous instrument seemed to fill the space twice over. One had the impression of watching Randy play at Carnegie Hall, except that the sightlines were much better.

To set the stage for the main course the choir performed Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine and Gounod's "O Divine Redeemer", with Randy both directing and accompanying from the now only partially-open piano. The entrée was Fauré's Requiem, an appropriate choice for Holy Saturday. A six-piece chamber orchestra, including harp, balanced the piano accompaniment, and from time to time Randy would rise from the bench to allow the orchestra to take center stage. The choir did its usual commendable job of nuancing the score, from clear pianissimos to resounding fortissimos. For dessert, Randy played us Léon Boëllmann's famous Toccata from his Suite Gothique, once again rattling the rafters as people made their way to "Emmaus Hall"--an appropriate Holy Saturday venue indeed--for the post-concert reception.

As always, we here in Greenwich have much to be grateful for, especially in the musical world. Probably no other town our size has so many accomplished professional musicians, not to mention so many talented singers. Thank you, Randy, and thank you, the choir and chamber orchestra of Stanwich Church, for this gorgeous music that reminds us how truly blessed we are.

Alistair Reid Returns to Greenwich

2011-04-11T12:01:00.027-04:00

Christ Church seems to be a launching pad for the careers of young British organists, who come to Greenwich for a year or two as Organ Scholars and then go on to conquer new worlds elsewhere. Tim Smith went to the Riverside Church in New York City, James Kennerley is at St. Mary the Virgin in NYC, Isabelle Demers went to Trinity Church, Wall Street and has now become an internationally famous concert organist, and so on and so forth.

Alistair Reid is no exception to the pattern. After leaving Greenwich he went on to Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis for five years, and is now back in England at Coventry Cathedral. He has played at Notre Dame in Paris, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Last Friday evening saw him back on the organ bench at Christ Church here in Greenwich, where many of his former choristers and other friends in the community welcomed him back with a standing ovation.

Alistair's recital program was refreshingly familiar, including several staples of the organ repertory, while also exposing us to a few pieces less frequently heard but still in the mainstream tradition of their respective periods. The opening "Allegro" from Widor's Symphony No. 6 was crisp, strong, and well-articulated, showcasing the organ's bright reeds and mixtures. A perennial audience-pleaser, this piece is often used at the end of a recital rather than the beginning. Alistair was letting us know in no uncertain terms that his artistry begins where most other organists' leaves off.

This was followed by the quieter "Larghetto" by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the well-known 19th-century English composer and organist. What is less well known, as Alistair confided in us, is that Wesley was fired from no fewer than four cathdral posts because of his eccentricities, including the love of fishing that often seduced him away from the organ benches where he was supposed to be.

Mendelssohn's Third Organ Sonata is another staple of the organ repertory, in which two sunny passages in A major book-end a much darker fugal fantasia on the chorale "Aus Tiefer Not". Alistair performed the piece with a fiery energy that surely approximated that of Mendelssohn himself before his untimely death in his late 30s. The second (and last) movement of the sonata is, in Alistair's phrase, a "song without words", a peaceful envoi to the Sturm und Drang that preceded it.

Gigout's "Scherzo" showcased some of the tonalities of the gallery organ, as a musical cat-and-mouse game played out across the heads of the audience. True to form, both composer and performer earned an appreciative chuckle at the end.

Dan Locklair's "The Peace may be exchanged" gave a nod to contemporary American organ music. Quiet and meditative, it was part of the music chosen for the funeral service of President Ronald Reagan at Washington Cathdral.

Bach's Fantasia in G, also known as "Piece d'Orgue", shows the German baroque composer's familiarity with the virtuoso styles of his French contemporaries. The bright opening arpeggios give way to a dense five-part chorale-type middle section, which is all too easily allowed to drag by many organists. Needless to say, Alistair avoided that trap, harnessing his youthful energy and skillful articulation to give a performance that Bach himself would no doubt have approved.

One more relatively quiet piece set the stage for the grand finale, of which more in a moment. The palate cleanser was an impressionistic piece by an early 20th century French organist, Ermend Bonnal, entitled "La Vallee de Behorleguy, au matin". This tone-poem attempts, in a manner not unlike that of Debussy, to paint in music the Basque countryside on the border of France and Spain. Charming, if a tad insubstantial, it was a perfect lead-in to...

...Louis Vierne's famous "Final" from his Symphony No. 1, "perhaps his best work," as Alastair told us. Blind from birth, Vierne died as he would have wished, at the console of his beloved Cavaille-Coll organ in Notre Dame. This brilliant, coruscating piece was the perfect finale to a wonderful recital, bringing the audience to its feet with loud applause and shouts of "Bravo!" All in all, the evening was truly a memorable homecoming by Alistair Reid, and we all hope it will not be too long before he comes back for another visit. Well done, Alistair!

Peter Tesei Puts On His White Hat...

2011-04-01T07:23:00.003-04:00

...and rides to the rescue of the Greenwich High School auditorium project.

In a stunning reversal of fortune for the long-awaited, long-postponed MISA project, which less than a day ago seemed doomed to a negative BET vote of 6-5, last night's meeting resulted in the unanimous approval of a two-stage funding commitment that will catapult Greenwich High's music and drama facilities from last place in the State to first place. By offering to defer the Central Fire Station project until FY 2014, First Selectman Tesei paved the way for the fiscal conservatives in Town to approve the MISA project, spread out over FY 2012 and 2013. Brilliant!

Mr. Tesei, as well as many members of the BET, were clearly impressed by the breadth and depth of community support for this all-important project. They listened to the impassioned pleas of their fellow citizens, and found a way to make it all happen.

Well done, Peter! Well done, members of the BET! The people of Greenwich owe you a deep vote of gratitude for last night's outcome.

James G. Genovese June 12, 1966-March 22, 2011

2011-03-26T15:16:00.012-04:00

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Police Officer Jim Genovese died suddenly earlier this week. He was only 44 years old, and had seemed to be in perfect health. Everyone who knew him was, and still is, in shock at the news.

Even those who didn't know him by name knew him from his smiling face at the corner of Havemeyer Place and Greenwich Avenue, where for many years he directed the traffic. It was a job he loved. Constantly dealing with the vagaries of the insouciant pedestrians and countless out-of-state motorists who either carelessly or willfully tried to ignore his commands, Jim was always patient and courteous with everyone. "Do you think holding up my hand like this means it's okay for you to go?" he would ask sheepish drivers. "Oops, sorry," they would say as they backed up to the stop line. Jim could have made tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Town if he had handed out well-deserved tickets to all the jaywalkers and stop-sign runners he encountered. But he was never seen to hand out a single one.

Dozens of police motorcycles from all over Connecticut and Westchester led the funeral procession. The funeral mass at St. Mary's was packed--standing room only. Then everyone marched down to "Jimmy's corner", where a huge American flag hung over the intersection, and a memorial weath was placed in the newly-repainted circle where he used to stand. Suddenly a loud disembodied stentorian voice was heard coming from somewhere high above the crowd: "Officer James Genovese, report to Headquarters...Officer Genovese, you may stand down. Well done, Jim." There was not a dry eye anywhere as the loudspeaker link from the Greenwich police station fell silent and Christopher Hughes played "Taps" from the lawn of the Havemeyer Building.

What a pleasure it has been these past few years to walk down Greenwich Avenue and see Jim stop the traffic as I approached the curb. "Okay to cross, Mr. Clark," he always said. "Thanks, Jimmy," I would say with a wave of the hand.

The mass card distributed at the funeral bears a poem on its back, titled Afterglow:

I'd like the memory of me to be a happy one,
I'd like to leave an afterglow of smiles when day is done...

Well, Jimmy, you got your wish. We're all smiling though our tears at our fond memories of you. Rest in peace.

Best of Times, Worst of Times

2010-12-20T05:17:00.007-05:00

The setting was "Carols by Candlelight" at Christ Church. The lighting was low, and the choristers filed in, each holding a lighted candle to read their music by. The expectant hush was broken by Eli Abbasi's clear treble voice singing the first verse of "Once in Royal David's City", and then the choir processed to the back of the church and up the central aisle as we all joined in the hymn.

Slowly the lights came up. After the opening prayers, the Choir of Men and Boys sang Mack Wilberg's boisterous setting of "Ding! Dong! merrily on high", while the carillon of bells in the church tower rang distantly in the background. A chorister read us the story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, and then the men and boys sang Elizabeth Poston's setting of "Jesus Christ the apple tree." Emma Tebbe read us the story of God's promise to Abraham to multiply his seed as the stars of the heaven, and we all joined in Michael Praetorius's classic hymn.

Isaiah's prophecy of the Prince of Peace was followed by Handel's chorus from The Messiah, "And the glory of the Lord", performed by the mixed-voice Christ Church Singers conducted by Simon Thomas Jacobs and accompanied by Artist-in-Residence Philip Moore, organist emeritus at York Minster in England. It was a light and pleasing rendition, well-articulated, with none of the pomposity that can sometimes afflict singers of Handel.

Wendy Claire Barrie read us more Isaiah, the prophecy of the Peaceable Kingdom. Your scribe watched her son Peter in the front row as his mother said, "And a little child shall lead them," but his nose remained engrossed in the book he was reading. Perhaps he already knows Isaiah's story well, and is continuing to prepare himself for leadership by learning something new.

The combined choirs sang John Rutter's "What sweeter music can we bring," carefully noting all the elisions in Herrick's magnificently baroque poem. Director of Music Jamie Hitel, who conducted most of the music, read us the story of the Angel Gabriel's visit to Mary. This was highly appropriate, in that Gabriel is obviously the guardian angel of Jamie's daughter Gabriella, and helped to right the Hitel family car after it spun out and flipped over on the icy roads of Pennsylvania a few weeks ago. The roof right over Gabi's head was crushed in, but her head rest (and Gabriel) prevented it from crushing her. Then a quick flip of an angelic wing, and the car was right-side-up again, and the whole family walked away from the wreck with nary a scratch. True story.

Mother Teresa's dialogue poem between the pregnant Mary and and the somewhat alarmed Joseph, set to music by John Tavener, is appropriately titled "Rejoice, O World!" and speaks of things "inexplicable". Miracles then, miracles now. Gabriel is one busy angel, it seems.

Linda Austin-Small, the indefatigable music administrator, read us the story of the birth of Jesus. There followed the musical highlight of the evening, as Emma Tebbe sang the solo first verse of Harold Darke's sumptuous setting of Christina Rossetti's poem, "In the bleak midwinter". Emma performed the music with an exquisitely tender vibrato—was it a product of nerves? Superb voice control? Perhaps a combination of both?—which was heart-rendingly beautiful. Brava, Emma!

Ian Shearson took the third verse solo, showing us all yet again why he has been a mainstay of the Christ Church choir for over a quarter of a century. Your scribe heard Ian sing Stanford's lovely Magnificat in G in Wells Cathedral in 1987, and he still wears his Head Chorister ribbon awarded to him all those years ago. Bravo, Ian!

But then the service ended abruptly for your scribe. The woman sitting behind him decided to jiggle his pew, causing a torrent of hot wax to cascade down upon him from the candle above, all over his bare arms, his shirt, his pants, his shoes, and even his hair. "Sorry," she said perfunctorily, as he was picking the wax off his scalded arm and realizing that his clothes were probably ruined.

Sorry, lady, but "sorry" doesn't even begin to cover the damage you did. Your scribe had to leave the service forthwith to salve his arm and try (unsuccessfully) to scrape the molten wax off his clothes. One hopes that perhaps the cleaners can do something about wax stains, as otherwise his shirt and pants are toast.

"Sorry," she said, with complete and utter insincerity. Yeah, right, sure you are, lady. Of course, if it had been your mink coat that was covered with wax, then perhaps you really might have been sorry.

And so, dear reader, this evening epitomized both the best and the worst about Greenwich: the fabulous musicianship of our young people, the top-notch music programs here in Town, offset by the mindless, thoughtless self-centered boors, the "sorry" types who are lurking everywhere in Greenwich these days. You know who they are—the ones who run stop signs and red lights, use two parking spaces for their Hummers and SUVs, and flip you the bird if you try to assert your right to use a crosswalk. And unfortunately there seem to be more and more of them with each passing year. Isn't that a cheery thought as we prepare to welcome in another New Year?

Jesus Comes to Christ Church

2010-12-09T06:52:00.013-05:00

Well, He's actually a frequent presence here, what with all the numerous celebrations of the Eucharist, but last night His namesake college from Cambridge, England also came to visit. The conductor was Mark Williams, who himself is no stranger to Christ Church; see

http://greenwich-gossip.blogspot.com/search?q=mark+williams

The choir of Jesus College, some twenty-five voices strong, were arranged in mixed quartets, which helped to ensure a smooth blend of sound. Each of these singers seems to possess a solo-quality voice, as indeed became clear during the occasional solos and duets, but their firm sense of teamwork resulted in a crisp and even group dynamic.

Your scribe sat in on part of the pre-concert rehearsal, during which the choir worked on the opening selection, Purcell's Hear My Prayer. Mark urged them to use this piece to "grab hold of the audience and not let go." They did. The early bars, sung in a crystal-clear pianissimo, swelled into a fuller mezzoforte, climaxing in a rich fortissimo before fading back to the softness of the opening. Right away we in the audience knew we were in the presence of an extremely accomplished group of singers.

The selections spanned the centuries from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and right up to the present day. Particularly noteworthy were Benjamin Britten's Hymn to the Virgin, the Magnificat quinti toni of Hieronymus Praetorius, John Tavener's The Lamb, and the long-time Christ Church favorite, John Gardner's Tomorrow shall be my dancing day.

Mark singled out William Byrd's Vigilate for special mention. Byrd, a closet Roman Catholic during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, would use his music to send coded messages to his fellow believers. In this case, the message to those celebrating the mass in secret was "Watch out! Be careful lest you get caught!", according to Mark.

Harold Darke's version of Christina Rossetti's lovely poem In the bleak midwinter brought tears to the eye. The choir sang the original words as Rossetti and Darke intended, with none of the "PC" fiddling with the text one sometimes encounters these days. Simply gorgeous.

The greatest hit of the evening was Jingle Bells, in the stunning arrangement by Ralph Allwood, Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College. Your scribe has heard this piece sung many times here in Greenwich by the Chamber Singers at the High School, and had always (wrongly) assumed that the arrangement was of American origin. At dinner afterwards Mark was quick to set him straight. Allwood will be retiring in 2011 after more than 25 years at Eton, during which he has doubled the size of the music program.

Senior Organ Scholar Tim Lambourn is a student in geography at Jesus College, and thus music for him is "merely" an academic sideline. He accompanies the College chapel services, teaches theory to the choristers, and has toured many countries in Europe exhibiting his skills on the piano and violin (the latter as concertmaster of the Richmond Youth Symphony Orchestra). Not bad for a lad of a mere twenty summers or so. He treated us to a performance of Bach's Wachet auf!, using the gallery organ in the rear of the church.

The choristers of Jesus College (the choirboys) will arrive in the States tomorrow, and the full combined choirs will be singing at services and concerts in New York City, Philadelphia, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington, DC over the course of the next ten days. They are clearly not here on holiday. And yet, it must be said, the young people who sang for us last night were obviously having a good time, and enjoying themselves every bit as much as we in the audience were enjoying hearing them.

So, many thanks to them for coming here, and to Mark Williams for bringing them, and to Jamie Hitel and Simon Preston Jacobs for sponsoring them, and to Linda Austin-Small for making the arrangements, and to the numerous local families who hosted them for two nights. The icing on the cake—or rather, the ganache on the ice cream—was provided by Wendy Claire Barrie and her irrepressible son Peter, who graciously co-hosted a lovely dinner afterwards for Mark, John Hughes (Chaplain and Acting Dean of the College Chapel), Amanda Bauman and Rachel Flamm (the two young ladies who are organizing the transportation logistics of the tour), and your humble scribe. All in all, it was a wonderful evening long to be remembered!

Guardian Angels at Work

2010-11-26T10:11:00.010-05:00

Yesterday the Hitel family of Riverside was driving through Pennsylvania on their way to Ohio. The road was beginning to ice over. Without warning, their car slewed, went into a spin and veered off the roadway, flipped over, righted itself, and crashed into a stand of trees. The car was totalled:

Fortunately, the whole family survived unscathed. Jamie Hitel, his wife Sarah Harris, and their children, Gabi, Maddy, and William, walked away from the wreck in one piece. As Jamie put it, "I was driving west, but after some wet snow on I-80 am now facing east. But thankful to be alive. Could have been much worse."

Typical British humor and understatement, as usual (although Jamie and Sarah recently became US citizens). Jamie, as many folks in this Town know, is the Director of Music at Christ Church. His elder daughter, Gabi, is a mainstay of the choir (she was sitting directly under the crushed part of the roof, but her headrest stopped it from going any further). His younger daughter, Maddy, did a brilliant cameo on the violin during the exquisite performance of the Fauré Requiem at Christ Church last Sunday afternoon. The whole family is a powerhouse of talent, and we are very blessed to have them here in Greenwich.

There are, as some of you may know, four Archangels in the Anglican tradition: Uriel, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They are frequently to be found at Christ Church, but they also watch over their charges worldwide. Yesterday noon they snapped together to form an angelic safety zone around the spinning car. Here's how it probably went down: Uriel, the point man, cleared the path around them so that no other vehicles were involved in the accident. Michael and Gabriel stayed to the left and right of the car, which is how Gabriel was able to rescue his namesake by flipping the car right side up again. Raphael, the rear guard, pulled on the bumper to slow and then stop the forward momentum before more than the front end of the car was seriously damaged. Angelic teamwork at its best.

In two days we will celebrate Advent Sunday, the beginning of a new liturgical year. One hopes that the earthly powers that be will work in a few moments of thanksgiving for the miraculous preservation of the Hitel family in their hour of great peril. And also, perhaps, for the many gifts that they have shared with us in the past, and will continue to share with us in the future, thanks to their guardian angels.

And Soli Deo Gloria, as J. S. Bach used to write each time he finished a new composition: to God alone the glory.

Wills and Kate Wedding: Update

2010-11-20T08:37:00.011-05:00

The word is that Kate Middleton has paid a recent visit to Westminster Abbey to evaluate its suitability for her forthcoming wedding to Prince William. No surprise here; Wills is said to be opposed to St. Paul's because his mother's marriage there turned out not to be a happy one in the event.

Westminster Abbey is, it would seem, a far preferable venue. The reigning Monarch, Queen Elizabeth, was married there, and it is of course the place where royal coronations take place. Thus the next time Kate would play a starring role at the Abbey will be when Wills and she are crowned King and Queen of England.

As your scribe wrote in his novel, Winning the Lottery, back in June of 2008:

"In the autumn Wills and Kate were married in a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey. The general feeling in the Royal Family was that St. Paul’s, where Charles and Diana had married, should be given a rest for a bit. Like another half-century or so."

Once again, it is pleasant to see one's fiction becoming fact. And what is this string tied around the scribal finger? Ah, yes--a reminder to pick up a PowerBall ticket today. And to keep his eyes peeled for blonde TV reporters on Greenwich Avenue. Back in February there was a pleasant encounter with Kathryn Hauser of Channel 12 News, who looked for all the world like a dead ringer for Sarah King. But she was already engaged, and was in fact married four months later. So predictive fiction works at its own pace, it seems, and is not to be rushed. Still, it's nice to see that so much of it has already come true since the book first appeared in print just two years ago this month. And that Wills and Kate are making the right choice of where to exchange their vows.

Prince William of Wales and Catherine Middleton Engaged!

2010-11-16T07:27:00.008-05:00

And high time, too. Your scribe predicted this event over two years ago in his novel, "Winning the Lottery: A Tale of Greenwich and London." Since then he has been waiting patiently to learn whether his fiction would become fact. And today, it has.

One wishes the Royal couple all health and happiness in their new life together. They will bring new energy and verve to the monarchy, and undoubtedly a tremendous boost to its popularity. Wills is actively employed as a helicopter rescue pilot, and Kate, the first commoner in recent memory to marry an heir to the throne, is also actively engaged in her family's business. They are real people, not figureheads. Great Britain is lucky to have such a fine pair of young people as its future King and Queen.

Now, as you are all undoubtedly asking, what does this have to do with Greenwich? The answer is quite simple: we almost had Prince William's mother, Princess Diana, as our neighbor here in Town. Had she and Dodi Al Fayed lived, they might have married, and thus received as a wedding present the lovely house on Round Island, formerly home to Frederick and Patricia Supper of Greenwich and Palm Beach. The house is presently owned by Dodi's uncle, who carried out extensive renovations in anticipation of offering it to Dodi and Diana. Alas, it was not to be.

And so we fall back on your scribe's fictional novel, in which the protagonists meet, fall in love, and honeymoon in England, where they meet Wills and Kate and the Queen. Thus is cemented a strong relationship between Greenwich and the Royal Family. Perhaps this fiction--which almost became fact 13 years ago--may yet become reality.

After all, just as in the novel, your scribe, too, went off to London to visit with the Queen. See:

6/09/2009 07:13:00 AM

And then earlier this year he was invited for cocktails at Winfield House in Regent's Park, and to visit the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, both of which are important settings in the novel.

So little by little, it seems, the events of "Winning the Lottery" have been coming true. How's that for a tribute to the power of words? Simply write a story, and watch it turn into reality. Pretty nifty, wouldn't you say?

And so let us here in Greenwich send our best wishes to the newly-engaged couple in England (you can find Prince William on FaceBook these days), along with an open invitation to come and visit when they make their first trip to America together. As readers of this blog know, we enjoy frequent visits from British musicians and choirs; and our fellow citizen Natalie Pray is very active in both the St. George's Society and the English-Speaking Union. Probably no town our size in the entire United States has so many ties to Great Britain as does Greenwich.

Congratulations, Wills and Kate! Please come and visit us soon!

Angel Voices

2010-10-26T21:00:00.019-04:00

Just as the Christ Church girls' choirs took over the sung services at Exeter Cathedral for a week this past summer and took the city by storm, so too the choir of St. Paul's Girls' School, London, has now taken Greenwich by storm.

But the choir of SPGS is much more than just a vocal ensemble. Each girl seems also to be able to play two or more different instruments as well as sing. Thus we were treated to everything from a chamber trio to a full-fledged finale of a Haydn symphony (the "London", of course) to an a cappella octet to a performance of Franck's Panis Angelicus with orchestra and organ. The elite singing groups of Greenwich Academy, the Madrigals and the Pro Arte singers, joined with the St. Cecelia's girls' choir of Christ Church and our SPGS guests on the latter piece, and the result was truly emblematic of the concert's title: "Angel Voices".

SPGS brought over some 40 girls, along with four conductors and a music administrator (of whom more later). The programme [all spellings in this post will be Anglicised in tribute to our guests] opened with six short Roumanian Dances by Bartok, arranged by SPGS faculty member Angus Meryon. Composed originally for the piano, Angus transcribed them for the School's wind and brass ensemble. The quirky and striking tonalities gave new life to Bartok's music, thanks in particular to some brilliant scoring for the flute and piccolo. Young Emily Harper played the latter instruments superbly, and Angus Meryon himself conducted. Some in the audience were so impressed that they interrupted the set with applause after each piece, but the very professional young ladies did not allow this aberration to break their concentration.

There followed A Shakespearean Sequence of seven songs by Gardner, performed by the full chorus and accompanied by piano prodigies Chloe Lim and Gloria Lin. One again some in the audience insisted on interrupting the set with applause between the pieces, which was somewhat annoying; however, the spirited renditions were certainly worthy of the much louder and longer applause at the end. In particular, "It was a lover and his lass" was memorably performed. The group was conducted by Mark Wilderspin, SPGS assistant director of music and composer in residence. Great stuff!

The Trio pathetique by Glinka gave us a slice of Russian romanticism at its best. The piano, clarinet, and bassoon harmonised in a quite lovely manner, in a combination of rich sonorities rarely heard.

Torelli's popular Concerto in D for trumpet and strings was brilliantly performed by Charlotte Meakin on the trumpet and Emily Harper--yes, that same Emily Harper who played the flute and piccolo in the Bartok--as concertmistress. SPGS head of strings Hilary Sturt conducted.

Then the Close Harmony Group gave us their a cappella rendition of More than a feeling, arranged by Mark Wilderspin. The girls came right down to the front row of pews to add to the intimate feeling, and even managed a very passable American accent in their superb singing.

Moving straight from the small group to the large ensemble, the SPGS Symphony orchestra played the final movement of Haydn's "London" symphony, the last work he finished before his death. To see a full orchestra comprised of exclusively female players is an unusual sight, and to realise that they are all teenagers makes the sight even more unusual yet. SPGS director of music Yeo Yat-Soon conducted with the same spirit and energy that the girls evinced in their playing. "Papa" Haydn would surely have been pleased, had he been able to be present. Bravo!

Then it was time for Franck's Panis Angelicus, as mentioned above. The three different sets of singers from different sides of the ocean had less than half an hour to rehearse together. It was a tribute to these young ladies' professionalism that they melded their voices so beautifully together. Mark Wilderspin conducted his own arrangement of the piece, which was both shorter and peppier than Franck's 1872 original. One felt as though great waves of purest sound were washing from the chancel over the whole church. The deep notes of the Christ Church organ gave a firm musical foundation for the ethereal treble voices of the girls, such that one indeed felt that the bread of angels was being brought down to humankind.

The evening's finale was Gustav Holst's great hymn, I Vow to Thee, My Country. Holst was the first music master at SPGS, serving from 1905 until his death in 1934. To hear the girls talk about him, he is still a very real presence at the School. His hymn was sung at both the wedding and the funeral service of Princess Diana, as it was one of her favourites. The text was written by Ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice, His Majesty's envoy to the United States from 1912 to 1918. He was instrumental in persuading Woodrow Wilson to abandon his position of neutrality and to support Britain and France in World War I. You can find the full text and music in this link, as performed by the Westminster Abbey choir at Diana's funeral:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmeQ_M7fPMw

The Holst was performed by the SPGS Choir and Chamber orchestra, again joined by the singers of Christ Church and Greenwich Academy. It seemed as though these British and American teenagers were pledging allegiance to a common country here on earth, as well as the heavenly country of the second verse. Well, we all know that the Anglo-American alliance is alive and well here at Christ Church, Greenwich; this was merely one more glorious proof of that fact.

The audience rose to its feet in a well-deserved standing ovation. Mr. Yeo then conducted a reprise of the Holst as an encore, asking us all to join in. And, like our local St. Cecelia's girls, who had only first heard the hymn just a few moments before the concert, we in the audience were equally quick to pick it up. Does that now make us all honourary Britons? If so, so be it.

One of the most remarkable performances of the evening was non-musical, carried out by a young Oxford graduate named Alexandra Godfree, who seems to be something of a cross between a Christmas tree angel, a chess grandmaster, and a Royal Marines drill sergeant. Alexandra was the factotum, the stage-director genius, who organised the myriad details of a very complex concert and brought order out of chaos with the kind of effortless ease that the Italians define as sprezzatura. Each and every musical selection had to be separately choreographed, with additional music stands here, moving the piano there, and organising the different vocal sub-groups so that the programme flowed seamlessly from one number to the next. Hers was a truly mind-boggling job, and she performed it flawlessly. SPGS is lucky to have her.

Mr. Yeo concluded by thanking the host families of Greenwich Academy, and inviting us all to come and visit SPGS when we may next be in London. Let's see, how does next May sound...?

Lucia Jansen, WonderWoman

2010-10-26T07:43:00.003-04:00

After weeks fraught with discussion, some of it heated, and a concerted campaign by the members of RTM District 7 and the Budget Overview Committee, the Sense of the Meeting resolution co-sponsored by them and based on a brilliant report developed by District 7 member Lucia Jansen passed by a resounding margin last night: 135 for, 41 against, 12 abstaining. The resolution, as almost everyone in Town is aware, calls for greater restraint in municipal spending, and for more participation by all concerned in the budgetary process.

This is not the first time Lucia's heroic efforts have benefited the Town. Anyone who has used the newly-refurbished playground at Bruce Park can attest to how popular it is with children and adults alike. There should be a plaque somewhere in the complex giving credit to Lucia for the countless hours she spent getting first the Junior League, and then the Department of Parks and Recreation, to bring this project to fruition. It wasn't easy, but one look at the result will tell you, dear reader, how worthwhile those hours were.

Where would Greenwich be without the tireless efforts of people like Lucia Jansen? It would be a duller, dingier, less energized place, for sure. It's amazing to think how much one person with determination and drive can accomplish.

Greenwich does not yet have a Woman of the Year award, but we should. And its first recipient should be Lucia Jansen. Thanks, Lucia!

A Perfect Economic Storm Hits Greenwich

2010-10-14T12:23:00.002-04:00

An email to your scribe:

--- On Mon, 10/11/10, Lucia Jansen wrote: From: Lucia Jansen Subject: The RTM October call To: William Clark Cc: Valerie Stauffer Date: Monday, October 11, 2010, 11:46 PM

Hello Dear Bill,

A little heads up from your former District 7 friends. Check out our website www.rtmdistrict7.org and see the Sense of the Meeting Resolution and Historical Budget Report that was written and used as a reference point. Do you remember when I asked you some questions about the Town's labor....well, since then is all the research discovered. I think you will enjoy from at least a historical point of view. I would love your feedback.

Warmest regards,

Lucia

And his reply:

Dear L,

I think this is a fabulous piece of work. As you know, Greenwich has the highest per-capita number of town employees in the State of Connecticut, if not the nation. I believe we have twice as many municipal employees per capita as the next-highest town on the list.

Labor costs are going to kill this town. Unfunded pension liabilities will bury the corpse.

Meanwhile, the US dollar is nearing a post-war low as the printing presses turn out TARP money day and night. We're right on track to follow the lead of Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic.

Yet interest rates are at historic lows, and, from what I'm reading today, about to go still lower. What should a sensible person/municipality do at this juncture?

The answer is simple: borrow all you/we can at today's non-existent interest rates, build our town's capital projects with the proceeds, and pay off the loan over 15-30 years with vastly inflated, not to say worthless, dollars. It's a complete no-brainer.

Of course, many of the people in charge of the town's future welfare have no brains. P&Z, for example, neither plans nor zones. Enforcement of building codes and other municipal ordinances is almost non-existent. But the real problem is that the finance board--the BET--seems to have no glimmer of the fact that Greenwich has an historic once-in-a-century opportunity to turn this perfect economic storm to our long-term advantage.

I feel like John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness. As he must have wondered, so too do I: is anybody out there listening?

Feel free to circulate this to the District, along with my best regards to the members.

Best always,

Bill

58 Million Voters Kicked in the Face by the Democrats

2010-10-12T04:46:00.032-04:00

The recent rumors that Social Security benefits will be frozen for the second year in a row because of a purportedly “negative” rate of inflation will very likely cause this powerful bloc of citizens to vote ABD ("Anybody But Democrats") in the forthcoming election. The reason is not far to seek.

Have gasoline prices gone up? Check. Have home heating oil prices gone up? Check. Have electricity prices gone up? Check. Have food prices gone up? Check. Have telephone charges gone up? Check. Have Cablevision prices gone up? Double check. Medical costs? Triple check.

Do seniors benefit from the artificially low interest rates that underlie the apparently “negative” inflation rate? No. In fact, their other retirement income has likely decreased as a result. The banks are the prime beneficiaries of this strategy…but have bank fees been going up? Check.

The actual “Senior Inflation” rate over last year and the year to come will probably hover somewhere around 5-10%—and more, if the inflationary seeds of the current government’s reckless policy of running the Treasury’s printing presses day and night begin to take root. But does that government seem to care? Un-uh. This utter callousness towards 58 million of our country’s elderly is unconscionable. Do most of them still vote? Check. Look for a backlash at the polls three weeks from today.

John Scott Whiteley in Greenwich

2010-10-09T09:20:00.003-04:00

Many people have been asking why your scribe doesn't post more often. The reason is not far to seek: if he has nothing to say, he says nothing. If he does, he does.

And so he is breaking radio silence to tell y'all about John Scott Whiteley's recital at Christ Church last night, kicking off the 2010-11 organ concert series. It was a great mixture of English eclecticism, including only one piece your scribe has heard before (although not in decades). John began with his own Entrada for Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of York, 4 July 1987. To the rest of us, that would be Prince Andrew and Fergie, of course. Since the couple married on 23 July 1986, clearly they were not entering Westminster Abbey when John composed this piece for them. A shrewd guess would be that they were entering York Minster, where John has served as an organist for some 35 years until his recent retirement.

Next followed Bach's twelve-part Partita on Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig, rarely heard it its entirety. Each variation shows a different style of 17th or 18th century composition, and John's use of both the chancel and gallery organs, along with his baroque registrations, showed off beautifully Bach's own showing-off of his musical mastery. The final variation, in organo pleno, may possibly be the piece missing from the blank page of Bach's famed Orgelbüchlein, where it would have fit in perfectly.

Next we enjoyed a duad of pieces that John subtitled, "Thalben-Ball goes to the cinema." The short piece "Edwardia" was composed for the Duchess of Kent, who was taking organ lessons at the time, and sums up some of the least-inspired aspects of the Edwardian age. "Soupy" was how John described it. He then cleared the air with his own arrangement of "Imperial Echoes" by the pseudonymous Arnold Safroni, in which the organ sounds like nothing so much as a calliope, full of bouncy rhythms and cinematic harmonies. Whee!

The great French organists loved to improvise. Usually they would stay on the organ bench after the Sunday mass and hold forth for their respective groups of devoted disciples. One day back in 1929 Marcel Dupré performed some variations on Adeste Fideles, which were later laboriously transcribed by an American, Rollin Smith. Making use of both the stately trompette en chamade as well as the quiet carillon, John brought these variations to life much as the original listeners must have heard them almost 80 years ago. They were stunning, including the fugue in particular.

There followed a scherzo-like piece by the Belgian composer Joseph Jongen, whose works for organ John has performed in their entirety. This one, "Papillons noirs", was originally composed for the piano, and arranged by John for the organ. It was a humorous palate-cleanser before the return to the grand improvisational tradition of the French organists.

The final two pieces were the Lento and Final movements from the "Symphonie en improvision" by Pierre Cochereau, then the organist at Notre-Dame in Paris. This 1963 performance was transcribed by John himself, and it is hard to know which to admire more: his skill as a transcriber, or as a performer. Safe to say, he excels at both.

Your scribe has always thought of Cochereau as a pale shadow of some his of great forebears, such as Vierne or Widor. But on this particular December afternoon, he seems to have been channeling the spirit of Dupré, and thus John took the time and trouble to make this music available to the world at large. Indeed, it sounds very much as though Dupré himself might have been playing, although, in the end, the music came off as being "Dupré-like" rather than the genuine article. Still and all, it was a rousing finish to a memorable recital.

As always, kudos are due to Jamie Hitel and Simon Thomas Jacobs of Christ Church--who, oddly enough, have both served as organists at one of John's own former posts, Waltham Abbey in Essex. Small world! Also, props to Neil and Joanne Bouknight, who not only set up the video apparatus so we could all watch John's artistry onscreen, but also hosted the wine and cheese reception afterwards. Your scribe has said it before, and will no doubt say it again: we here in Greenwich are extraordinarily fortunate to have such world-class performances right here on our own doorstep on such a regular basis. In the concert world, New York and London may be tied for first place, but Greenwich is running a close second. Thanks, one and all!

An Ordinary Evening in Greenwich

2010-09-11T05:29:00.004-04:00

There's always something to do in this Town, it seems. On the evening of Friday, September 10, here is what your scribe found as a sampling:

First came the opening reception for the new art show at the Bendheim Gallery. Initially there were more artists than viewers on hand, but that quickly changed as the evening wore on. Very few of the crowd seemed to be locals; your scribe recognized only a handful of people. The usual mediocre wine was on offer, along with minimalist catering by Plum, which seems to have fallen away from the high standards maintained by Jeff and Cai Pandolfino, who recently sold the business to new owners. Fortunately, an old friend of your scribe's, a local realtor, showed up to rescue the evening from total boredom.

Then the friend took us up the street, where TD Bank was having an open house. Here we were upgraded from peanuts to cashews, and from sporadic passing waiters to a stationary platterful of tasty roast beef sandwiches. As we left, one of the waitresses mentioned that other stores on the Avenue were also staying open late.

The next stop was Saks, where a raucous band was holding forth. The decibel level was ear-splitting, but the rather good wine and designer chocolates were a nice way to top off the evening. Once again, there were few recognizable locals to be seen, although there was a memorable cameo appearance by Tina Pray, on the prowl and looking very cougar-y in a microskirt and leather boots showing off to advantage her still-fabulous mid-forties legs and thighs. Her second husband was nowhere to be seen.

Tina, as you may recall, was recently arrested for switching paintings in her late mother's dining room, selling the more valuable one in New York, and then trying to persuade her father-in-law to file an insurance claim on it. When confronted by the cops she claimed to have no memory of the incident, and the charges were eventually dropped when the prosecutors decided they would have difficulty proving mens rea in light of Tina's continuing wide-eyed protestations of amnesia. Someone once described Tina as looking like a Christmas tree angel, and so she does, albeit a somewhat fallen one. Her deposition given in the divorce proceedings from her first husband was rumored to be the hottest legal document ever filed in the Stamford courthouse, and her father is said to have stopped speaking to her as a result. What is it they say about judging a book by its cover?

And so the evening drew to its close. It seems that there is always entertainment to be found in this Town of ours, if one merely goes out in search of it. Even an ordinary evening in Greenwich can offer glimpses of the extraordinary, if one but keeps one's eyes open. The economy may still be tanking, and financial distress may be the order of the day elsewhere in the world, but it's still party time in Greenwich, even on the eve of September 11.

R.I.P. Greenwich Exxon

2010-08-10T16:35:00.009-04:00

The former home of Greenwich Exxon--later known as Greenwich Gulf, and then as Greenwich "no-name"--ceased to exist today. Two bulldozers and a wrecking crew reduced it to rubble in a matter of hours. The service station--with a huge emphasis on the "service"--that had kept our cars fueled and running for decades is no more.

Owner Chris Canavan put in obscene hours nurturing and growing the business. He treated every customer as a friend, and it would be no exaggeration to talk of "the Greenwich Exxon family". Even his own daughters, Katie and Emily, could often be found behind the counters in recent years, as they, too, began to take pride of ownership in the business.

Chris fought like a tiger (the Exxon tiger) to retain control of the business and property he had managed for decades. But corporate sleaze won out, as it seems to do more and more these days. Eventually all channels of appeal ran out. Greenwich lost one of its oldest, and best, family-owned businesses.

And for what? Wait for it, dear reader. Another out-of-state bank branch. And not just any out-of-state bank: a Chase bank. There is a Chase bank a stone's throw to the west, next to Cosi. And another one two stones' throws east, next to Waterworks. And another three stones' throws away at the top of Greenwich Avenue. And yet another one four or five stones' throws away across from St. Mary's. And of course another still about eight stones' throws away just south of the Post Office.

Chase banks in the Town of Greenwich are like weeds. And, like weeds, they usurp the healthy, productive plants that used to grow in their place. Cos Cob is next on their hit list. And one doubts that they will stop there.

"It's just not fair. How can some people live with themselves?"

Thus Katie Canavan on her FaceBook page. No, Katie, it's not fair. I even went down to Town Hall two weeks ago to try to place a stay on the demolition. It turns out the new owners had lied on their demolition permit application, saying that the building had been constructed in 1970. I asked the Building Department to research this, and they found that the building had actually been constructed in 1948. But in order for a stay to be placed on the demolition, it would have had to have been built in 1940 or earlier. I missed out by 8 years. (But I did find out that the new owners had falsified their permit application.)

Your scribe has a humble suggestion: that we, the citizens of the Town of Greenwich, hereby resolve to boycott this new and totally unnecessary Chase bank branch. And ditto the one coming soon to Cos Cob, replacing the family restaurant Bella Nona. Maybe this way Chase CEO Jamie Dimon will get the message: don't mess with our local businesses here in Greenwich. You'll be sorry if you do.

But in the meantime, it's we, the citizens of Greenwich, who are the sorry ones. Chris, Katie, and Emily: thank you for all you have done for us as individuals, and for Greenwich as a community. We will continue to patronize you in your new locations. But we will not be quick to forgive J. P. Morgan Chase Bank for its ruthless robber-baron behavior so typical of J. P. Morgan himself. To quote Katie Canavan, one wonders how Jamie Dimon and his venal minions can live with themselves?

Well, karma will catch up with Chase and Dimon eventually, when there is a Chase bank on every street corner here in Greenwich, and people begin to pull their money out in order to support one of our local banks instead. Did these misguided greedy capitalists think they could buy the entire Town of Greenwich? Hah! Do we have news for them.

Your scribe cheerfully predicts that the new Chase branch at 111 West Putnam Avenue will have bad karma from its opening day onward. Sure, they will try to draw in new business with $100 bonuses, but any right-thinking citizen of this Town will give it a wide berth. And sooner or later it will be closed down--or perhaps the whole bank will simply implode from over-expansion--and it, too, will become a pile of rubble, just as Greenwich Exxon has become today. R.I.P., Greenwich Exxon. And thanks for the good memories.

Who Will Be Next?

2010-08-04T03:01:00.003-04:00

The following letter was written by community volunteer Winona Mullis, and pretty much says it all about the mess over at the Senior Center:

Who Will Be Next?

The question many seniors at the Greenwich Senior Center are asking these days is “Who will be next?” First there was Keenan, a kind and gentle person, a tireless worker, pleasant to be with, always considerate of others, and highly esteemed by the seniors. Keenan left the Center one day and never returned to work. When inquiries were made to the staff, I was told that no one knew why he had left. Next was Barbara, who had worked at the Center for 25 years and was another devoted worker who spent her days with the seniors. Whether it was leading them in exercise, teaching a French class, monitoring a spelling bee or historical quiz, or just talking with a senior, Barbara’s presence was comforting and assuring.

This time, however, Barbara was given a 30 days’ notice.

For weeks, rumors abounded that staff had to be cut because of money issues and Barbara’s position would be terminated; however, she was given an option of applying for an upgraded position that had been reclassified from two part-time employees to one full-time employee, but she was not fully qualified. The position was then given to another part-time employee who had worked at the Center for several years.

For months, rumors circulated that Marva, the center’s chef would be leaving. Last November, a Commission on Aging member was approached about this rumor, but he positively denied that there was any basis for it. Marva was not going to be fired. At the May G.R.E.A.T.S.’ open meeting, the administrator, when questioned about Marva’s employment, stated that Marva was the only certified person in the kitchen; the other two employees were only assistants and not certified to manage the kitchen, and Marva was definitely needed and would not be leaving.

Because the Center had recently brought in the Morrison people to work with the kitchen staff, the question about Marva’s employment was brought before the group again at the June 8 G.R.E.A.T.S.’ open meeting. Again, the administrator assured us that Marva was still in charge of the kitchen and would not be leaving.

It was with great surprise that just ten days later, Marva was fired, we were then told that one of the other kitchen employees was now certified and would be in charge of the kitchen.

Seniors at the Center adapt well to change and they have done this in the past by silently accepting whatever decisions are made; however, this time, we will not go “silently into that good night.” Of what use is the G.R.E.A.T.S.’ Board if the officers and members cannot have some part in major decisions or at least be told the truth when major decisions are made.

I am appalled that we have people in charge who sit and make rules and changes from their desks and rarely are involved with the seniors in their daily activities. Allowing one or two people to make decisions that affect the seniors is undemocratic and hurtful to all, and it is time for changes to be made at the Senior Center. Will they be done openly and truthfully or will they be done stealthily and capriciously?

If I were any employee at the Center, I would definitely be asking. “Will I be next?”

Winona Mullis

Member G.R.E.A.T.S’ Board

Functional Illiteracy in the Non-Tax Collector's Office

2010-07-27T10:56:00.002-04:00

We all know that despite all the evasions, prevarications, finger-pointings, and denials from the non-Tax Collector of our fair Town, most tax bills have now been received by the residents of Greenwich--more than three weeks late. Initially, the non-TC claimed that non-receipt of a bill was no reason not to stick to the August 2 deadline for payment. Shows what he knows.

The Connecticut General Statutes provide that local taxes are due and payable "not later than thirty days following the date on which rate bills for such tax are mailed...." Which means that the clusterfreak in the tax collector's office could potentially have opened the Town up to lawsuits from each and every taxpayer who did not get the full thirty-day grace period.

So now the deadline for tax payments has been pushed back three weeks, to August 23. The non-tax collector is quoted in the Local Rag as saying, "I certainly understand that people could be under the gun due to the lateness that they received it."

What kind of non-English gibberish is this? Using "due" as an adverb instead of as an adjective; the nonsensical construction, "the lateness that they received it..."--this man should not only be locked up in the stocks in front of Town Hall (if we still had them), but should be gagged as well. Let's hope The New York Times doesn't pick up on our local misfortunes and broadcast his verbal and bureaucratic ineptitude to the world at large. Greenwich already has a sorry enough reputation as a haven for knaves and thieves, from the depredations of Boss Tweed to the frauds of Marvin Frankel to the shenanigans of Walter Noel and his Fairfield-Greenwich feeder funds that helped to keep Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme afloat.

No, dear reader, we really don't need any more bad press for our Town. And we certainly don't need to be tagged as functional illiterates as well.

"Unacceptable"

2010-07-20T11:13:00.003-04:00

Thus quoth Board of Estimate and Taxation Chairman Steve Walko, speaking of the recent clusterfreak at the non-Tax Collector's office. One wonders what he means by that: will heads roll? Will appropriate chastisement be forthcoming? Will the stocks be brought back at long last?

This is an appropriate and overdue time to revisit the suggestion that has been made before, namely, to disband the office of the Tax Collector in the Town of Greenwich. Here's what a commenter on Chris Fountain's fabulous blog, "For What It's Worth", recently noted:

"The Town Website contains a downloadable file of assessments, with owner’s names and mailing addresses.

"So why does it take a $100K /yr. elected official, a staff of 6, and a software company on contract for the mailing, to print and mail the bills?

"Couldn’t a Pitney-Bowes machine and a staff of one do this for 23,000 properties in about a week?

Sounds like a great idea! You can follow the action on Chris's blog at:

http://christopherfountain.com/

Meanwhile, you might want to call or email your elected representatives on the RTM, the BET, and the Board of Selectmen, and let them know whether you want them to continue to waste precious Town resources on an AWOL non-tax collector and a dysfunctional department (in which the morale is rumored to be abysmally low), or, alternatively, to automate the whole process and bring it into the 21st century.

After all, it's your tax dollars not at work that are being wasted on this boondoggle. You have the right to ask for change. That's what representative town government is all about.

A simple charter change amendment would do it. With luck, the non-tax collector would be out on the street–I mean, the golf course–by October. Who’s with me on this one?

Lies, Damned Lies...and More Lies

2010-07-18T15:02:00.004-04:00

Such, dear reader, is the story of the missing tax bills in Town. Our AWOL tax collector, whose only duty is to send out tax bills and collect the amounts due, was quoted in the Local Rag last week as promising that personal property tax bills would be received by midweek, and the rest of the tax bills by the end of the week. Guess what, gentle reader? Not a single tax bill has yet been received by a single taxpayer in the Town of Greenwich.

Did our tax collector lie? Or was he merely telling us some form of golfing joke in which exaggeration and irony are the chief elements? Did he have his fingers crossed behind his back when he spoke to the Local Rag?

You be the judge. Unfortunately, we can't fire him, since we were the dupes who elected him. But come the next election, no doubt we will all remember the old adage: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Maybe RTM Member, an occasional commenter on these pages, will have some advice about the possibility of a recall petition. Surely non-feasance is grounds for an attempt to oust an elected official?

Meanwhile, there's always the stocks, as suggested by your scribe in an earlier post. Our ancestors knew how to handle situations like this. What a pity that no one in Town Hall seems to have a clue about what to do these days. Including our non-tax collector.

The Local Rag Gets an F in History--and an F- in Reporting

2010-07-14T15:56:00.003-04:00

Leave it to the Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time, to garble not only the quotes in its latest online story, but the historical facts as well.

The Consul General of France in New York, Phillippe Lalliot, spoke at Town Hall this morning and mentioned that France and the US fought together both in the Americal Revolution and during the two World Wars. Your scribe was there, and heard him say this very clearly. But the idiot reporter from Yellowwich Time, Jay Polansky, managed to write:

"Lalliot noted that Americans and the French have fought together in the French and Indian War and both World Wars."

Umm...the reason it's called the French and Indian War is that we were fighting against the French and the Indians in those days.

The real lesson to be learned here has nothing to do with American history, but with the Local Rag's wretched history of misquoting anyone and everyone who has the misfortune to give them the time of day. Be warned, dear reader: if you are approached by a so-called "reporter" from Yellowwich Time, just say "No comment," and be sure to spell it out for him or her. N-O C-O-M-M-E-N-T. Even then, they'll probably get it wrong.

Tax Bills Coming This Week...Maybe

2010-07-14T06:23:00.002-04:00

Such a pity we no longer have the stocks in front of Town Hall, as our ancestors once did. Our so-called Tax Collector would undoubtedly have been forced to spend a day in them for every day the tax bills are late--call it two weeks or so. Passers-by would have pelted him with rotten eggs and moldering vegetables. After this salutary lesson, our appropriately-chastised non-Tax Collector would undoubtedly have done a better job in the future.

Bring back the stocks!

Tax Collector Asleep at the Switch?

2010-07-09T18:15:00.003-04:00

By statute, Greenwich tax bills were to have been mailed no later than June 30th. As of today, July 9, no one in Town has received one.

Without proper statutory notice, are the tax assessments legally valid? Prior bills note that failure to receive a bill does not exempt one from taxes due and late penalties. But what about failure to MAIL the bills?

Where's our First Selectman when we need him? Don't the tax bucks stop at his desk, so to speak?

UPDATE:

The following statement now appears on the Town's web site:

2010 Tax Information - Tax Collector
The paper bills for the 2009 year Grand List, which routinely would be mailed the last week of June 2010, have been delayed at the printer. The information is contained on this website accessed by the link on the left side of this page which reads "VIEW AND PAY TAXES". You do not have to pay online as there is a convenience fee involved but you can access and print all of your bills there.

Talk about putting the burden on the taxpayer! Not only are we being told to pony up, but that if we want a copy of our bill it is our responsibility to print it out.

Delayed at the printer?! They've had six months to get these bills out since the last ones were sent on January 1st. Give me a break!

Prescott S. Bush, Jr. (1922-2010)

2010-06-30T15:33:00.008-04:00

Greenwich said goodbye today to Prescott S. Bush, Jr., the last of a long family line to live most if not all of his life here in Town. "Pres", as he was universally known, died a week ago on June 23, and the fact that it took seven days to gather the Bush clan shows just how far-flung they have become over the last several decades. But come they did, from Texas and C0lorado and Massachusetts and just about every point in between.

His brother George, our 41st President, was the cause of all the police and Secret Service protection, and was accompanied by his wife, Barbara. His sister, Nan, whom your scribe had last seen as a neighbor in Concord, MA over half a century ago, came down from Boston. The front five rows of the church pews had to be reserved for the large number of children and grandchildren and cousins and uncles and aunts. Very few of them still live in the Greenwich area, Diddle McAllister being one of the few exceptions.

The service was lovely, with a full choir performing beautifully. Jamie Bush, Pres's son, allowed as how former organist Claude Means would have fainted dead away at the thought of him speaking in church, and took time to praise the singing of the John Goss descant that "takes us halfway to heaven." His sister Kelsey told us that "Pres's vocation was loving people," and of his love of Gilbert & Sullivan and of golf. And, of course, of his wife, Beth, whom he always described as the best thing that ever happened to him. He dropped out of Yale to follow her to South America, and undoubtedly felt that he got much the better of the bargain.

The reception afterwards was at the Round Hill Club, and your wily scribe, putting to good use his knowledge of the highways and byways of Greenwich, made a graceful arabesque which put him right behind the police convoy at the corner of North Maple and Lake. Thus he had his own little escort all the way up Round Hill to the club. This gave him a few minutes to chat with President Bush before the rest of the crowd arrived, reminiscing about the days when he was Bush's finance co-chairman for the State of Connecticut - along with Walt Rafferty, Bush's brother-in-law - which got Barbara reminiscing about her sister Martha.

And what was that in your scribe's hand? Why, a pair of Inauguration covers from 1980 and 1988, each with a portrait of George Bush as Vice President and then as President. They were hand-cancelled on Inauguration Day right here in Greenwich, CT, back in the days when we still had a post office worthy of the name. (These days the post office building is up for sale, and the skeleton staff still on duty may - or more likely, may not - get around to giving you your mail during the course of the week in which it comes in.)

Bush immediately reached for a pen, and in seconds the two covers bore Presidential autographs. From his surprise and delight at seeing them, it seemed evident that he had not come across any like them before. So now there are two nice pieces of local history memorabilia where earlier there had been none.

Beth Bush held court on the terrace overlooking the golf course that Pres loved so much, and everyone had a story to tell about something he had done to help them or a family member, e.g., getting a son into the Naval Academy or a daughter into West Point. Sadly, his passing brings to an end the Bush family era here in Greenwich, and the hedgies that have inundated the Town in recent years don't even come up to his knees in stature, however many millions or billions they may have.

The Christ Church choir - which Pres loved - said it all with their lovely rendition of John Rutter's version of the Aaronic bessing:

"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you, and give you peace."

RIP, Prescott Sheldon Bush, Jr.

Dirty Work at the Senior Center, Part 3

2010-06-23T10:37:00.007-04:00

The following letter was sent to the Chairman of the Commission on Aging on June 18, with cc's to the other Commission members:

Dear Lori,

I was shocked to hear that Marva Savariau was let go as the chef at the Senior Center. Especially when the article in the Greenwich Times [sic] dated May 18, 2010 quoted Laurette Helmrich saying "that the new plan was always to keep Savariau on".

Since Laurette Helmrich became the Director, there have been 5 employees who were either let go or walked out because they were unhappy with the atmosphere working under Laurette. Don't you find this unusual? There are also several individuals who volunteered their time and talent to provide the seniors wonderful programs for years, and they too were insulted and not welcomed back.

Maybe the Commission Members need to take a good look at the atmosphere the director has created while running the Senior Center and the manner is which she treated her past employees. It seems a tragedy to have what was once a warm and caring place turn into what it is today. I've seen it, I've heard it from members and I myself feel uncomfortable in Laurette's presence knowing what she has done in the years she has had the director's position. Is the Commission unaware of this sad situation?

/s/Nancy Gillon

Since this letter has been sent to a Town board regarding problems under their direct purview, it is now a public document. Your scribe therefore hastens to publicize it, and only wishes he had had the eloquence to write it himself.

Ms. Gillon makes a number of good points, including the fact that Laurette's reign of terror is not a new phenomenon, but goes back several years. Laurette, or as she is better known among the insiders at the Senior Center, "Miss Piggy", has indeed truncated many programs on art, language, literature, and history that were once provided by both the paid staff and the volunteers mentioned by Ms. Gillon. Did Miss Piggy find these people and programs somehow threatening to her overlordship? Who knows? But the fact remains that they are all now part of the Senior Center's past, not its present.

Meanwhile, poor Marva continues to be persecuted by Sam Deibler (popularly known around the Senior Center as "Doofus"), being told she has no right to be in a public building (where she happens to hold a second part-time job). When Doofus loudly tries to tell Marva that she is still a Town employee subject to his supervision, she wisely ignores him, knowing that he and Miss Piggy summarily fired her and took away her keys back on June 11. Even a garden-variety doofus would know that Marva is no longer his employee, but this particular world-class Doofus seems to have well more than the usual quota of rocks between his ears.

And so, dear reader, matters at the Senior Center lurch ever lower and lower, while Doofus strolls self-importantly up and down Greenwich Avenue and Miss Piggy hides timorously in her office. (She is so traumatized by the pressures of her job that she used to ask Marva to pray for her. Presumably that's not happening these days.) In a time of budget austerity, one wonders why these two highly-paid but hardly working employees should remain on the Town payroll while much more productive people like Marva are terminated. And what of the Commission on Aging that ostensibly oversees this mess? Have they even bothered to respond to Ms. Gillon's thoughtful letter?

Probably not. The Greenwich tradition is to circle the wagons around the wrong-doers, and publicly flagellate the truth-sayers. Doofus and Miss Piggy will no doubt be given some kind of civic award for their "brilliant leadership", and St. Marva will be dragged through the mud based on the trumped-up charges the two of them have brought against her. It was ever thus in the Town of Greenwich, and things are unlikely to change for the better anytime soon.

Meanwhile, of course, the biggest losers of all are the seniors themselves. To quote Ms. Gillon, it is tragic to have "what was once a warm and caring place" being trashed by two venal administrators and an outside for-profit food service. The price of the food will rise 33% next week, the quality has already plummeted, and of course we as taxpayers are footing the $77,000 budget appropriation for the wonderful new system given to us by Doofus and Miss Piggy. My, my...one wonders if the Town of Greenwich itself isn't the real doofus in all of this.

We should all follow Ms. Gillon's good example and send letters to the Commission on Aging (names and addresses below in the post for June 11). If that doesn't work, maybe we should organize picket lines at the Senior Center and at Town Hall. Once the national media start to catch a whiff of the scandal, maybe we'll be treated to the likes of the Rev. Al Sharpton coming to Town to help us clean up our act. Just what we need--not! So let's hope the Commission members and the Board of Selectmen go into a huddle, give Miss Piggy and Doofus their unmerited awards for "meritorious" service, and then show them the door. And hope that Marva may be willing to come back and put things to rights again.

Dirty Work at the Senior Center, Continued

2010-06-16T08:52:00.005-04:00

One of the best meals long-time chef Marva Savariau used to make at the Senior Center was her roast turkey luncheon. She was scheduled to serve it again this past Monday, but, as we all now know, she was rudely and summarily fired the Friday before. What actually happened at Monday lunch is an interesting object lesson in how quickly and how far things have suddenly spiraled downhill at the Senior Center.

Instead of the real bird fresh out of the oven, fit for a Thanksgiving table and carved in front of your eyes—"Would you like a drumstick? White meat? Dark meat? Some of each?"—it was a tasteless commercial deli loaf fed into a slicer. A few thin slices, topped with smarmy white gravy out of a can instead of the rich brown giblet gravy Marva used to prepare—that was what you got. And the desserts, instead of being the usual homemade pies and cakes and bread puddings, were either a tiny serving of jello with a little Redi-Whip on top, or six pieces of uninspired canned fruit. It was a mockery of what Marva had planned for Monday’s lunch, and she would have died of shame before she would ever have served such unspeakable slop to her beloved seniors.

But that is the way of the future, dear reader. Pay more, get less, and shut up. The way things are going in this Town, the seniors are lucky to get anything at all. And next year…who knows? If the commercial food service isn’t making enough profit on their chintzy meals, they may just bail, and leave the seniors foodless. Why should Morrison Senior "Living" care? They will have milked their ill-gotten contract for all it was worth, and then moved on to do the same thing to some other unsuspecting town up the line. It’s the American way, after all. Get what you can before the truth catches up to you, and then set up shop somewhere else. It’s just like the Duke and the King in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. There’s always a bunch of greater fools two towns over.

Meanwhile, dear reader, we here in Greenwich are at present the greater fools. We took an operation that wasn’t broke, and was actually working very well, and we “fixed” it. Your tax dollars at work, dear citizen. We screwed ourselves, not to mention a faithful long-time Town employee, are enriching a greedy outside corporation, and will eventually be left holding the bag. Gee. We should be really proud of ourselves. Isn’t Greenwich great?

Dirty Work at the Senior Center

2010-06-11T12:47:00.020-04:00

There are days when your scribe is ashamed to be a citizen of the Town of Greenwich. Today is one of them.

For this morning Marva, one of the Town's most dedicated and hard-working employees, who for many years has prepared and served many tens of thousands of tasty home-cooked meals to the folks at the Senior Center, was summarily fired. Laurette Helmrich and Sam Deibler marched into the kitchen together and demanded her keys. She was told to put her personal effects into a cardboard box, and to leave the building and not come back.

As a Town building, the Senior/Arts Center is open to anyone and everyone during its regular hours. Marva, who also happens to hold a part-time job in the building with a private non-governmental agency, has as much right to be in the building as anyone else. Laurette and Sam's high-handed behavior is a textbook example of a lawsuit in the making.

As for Marva, she is in shock. She has worked for the Town for decades, and is only a year or so away from being eligible for her pension. Do you think something may be rotten in the Town of Greenwich, dear reader?

Marva is one of the most competent and dedicated workers this Town has ever seen. The seniors adore her. If the Senior Center were still under the purview of the Parks & Rec Department, this would never have happened.

But things changed. The Commission on Aging took it over. Laurette, who came to the Senior Center from Nathaniel Witherell, has been agitating for several years to bring in the same commercial for-profit food service company used by the nursing home, and to get rid of the independent Town of Greenwich employee Marva and her smoothly-running operation. Recently, food service executive types in fancy suits have been prowling around the Senior Center, sniffing out and scenting a new source of revenue in the offing. And sure enough: it was recently announced that they will be taking over Marva's operation on July 1.

The price of the new portion-controlled assembly-line meals will jump 33%. The quality will almost assuredly go down--how can you improve on Marva's home cooking? But Laurette and Sam will no doubt have earned the gratitude of the food service honchos for their help in landing this profitable new contract, and if the seniors get the short end of the stick, well, they're not exactly the most vocal or powerful constituency in Greenwich, are they?

It's too bad that Charles Dickens is no longer around to roast the Town of Greenwich for this despicable and rotten behavior towards Marva, not to mention the many people for whom her cooking has long been their main meal of the day. But he's not, and his type of righteous indignation is not considered fashionable in this Town these days. Probably most people in Greenwich will simply shrug their shoulders and say, so what?

But if there are any people out there who happen to believe that what happened to Marva this morning is shameful and wrong, here are the names of your neighbors who are in charge of this fiasco:

COMMISSION ON AGING MEMBERS
TERM EXPIRES Appointed

’11 Lori Jackson (Chairman) 2005 698-0158 (H)
46 Keofferam Rd.
jaxon@optonline.net
Old Greenwich, CT 06870

’11 Catherine M. Brennan (Vice-Chairman) 2005 869-6222(H)
1 Meadow Drive 536-9576© Cos Cob, CT 06807 869-0080(O)
869-0082(Fax-office)
cbrennan@cbrennanlaw.co

’10 Kristen N. Browne (Sec) 2007 203-661-0693 (H)
4 Grange St. 203-863-3206 (W)
Greenwich, CT 06830 Kristeng@greenhosp.org

’12 James B. Dougherty 2009 203-661-4865(H)
747 North Street 203-869-3085(W)
Greenwich, CT 06831 Jdough1928@aol.com

’10 Karen LaMonica 2004 661-0216 (H)
34 Benenson Drive 914-997-7912 ext. 750(W)
Cos Cob, CT 06807 203-536-7062 ©
914-997-0024 (F)
Ktlamonica@msn.com

’12 John "Jack" Morris 2009 203-637-2143 (H)
49 Lockwood Ave. 203-253-0567 ©
Old Greenwich, CT 06870-1718 morrislj@optonline.net

‘11 Howard "Chip" Serrell 2007 661-2498 (H)
12 River Lane 769-2542 (W)
Cos Cob, CT 06807 howard.serrell@wachovia.com

Staff: Samuel E. Deibler 862-6710 (O) 867-6711(Direct)
1 Mill Pond Court 862-6701 (Fax-office)
Cos Cob, CT 06807 661-9343 (H)
sdeibler@greenwichct.org

Chicky Krois 862-6710 (O)
862-6701 (Fax-office)
ckrois@greenwichct.org

Oh, and you might consider calling or emailing the Board of Selectmen as well. Peter Tesei, Dave Theis, and Drew Marzullo can all be reached at http://www.greenwichct.org/ --just click on "Board of Selectmen" at the right margin on the home page.

In a perfect world, Marva would be re-hired, and Laurette and Sam would be the ones told to put their personal belongings into a box and get out. And the greedy for-profit food service people would be told to get out and stay out. But Greenwich, Connecticut is far from a perfect world, and today it has become markedly less so.

Shame on the Town of Greenwich!

Laetatus Sum...

2010-06-04T12:00:00.029-04:00

...in his quae dicta sunt mihi, "In domum Domini ibimus." These glorious opening words of Psalm 121 reverberated from the rafters in Christ Church on Friday night, as the massed choirs joined in a rousing rendition of Hubert Parry's splendiferous state anthem. Composed for the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, the anthem earned Parry a baronetcy, and has been sung at royal coronations and archiepiscopal enthronements and other festival occasions ever since.

One such festive occasion was the recent marriage of Geoffrey Silver and Elizabeth Robinson, which was in fact the last time your scribe heard this piece performed at Christ Church. Elizabeth used it as her processional, and it worked so well that your scribe has shamelessly borrowed the idea in one of his novels, putting the suggestion into the mouth of James Kennerley (who played Elizabeth down the aisle). The other brilliant Robinson-Silver idea was to have two weddings, one on each side of the Atlantic, so as to accomodate their respective sets of Anglo-American friends. This brainstorm, too, has been shamelessly copped by your scribe in the Clark-King Chronicles. Thanks, Geoffrey and Elizabeth!

Friday's festal occasion was the Installation of the Rev. Dr. James B. Lemler as the ninth Rector of Christ Church, which by not-very-much happenstance also marked the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the new church on June 4, 1910. Almost every seat in the church was filled, by reserved ticket, and the newly-installed air conditioning warded off the sticky summery heat as well as that generated by the packed conditions. The stained glass windows were ablaze with the evening sun, and the church, thanks to the recent renovation programs, has never looked better in its hundred-year life. Just to be alive and inside its four walls was a soul-enriching experience.

The service began with a mini-recital by Simon Thomas Jacobs, the talented Associate Director of Music, who graduated with honors from Clare College, Cambridge just under a year ago, and has quickly become a most welcome addition to the Christ Church staff. Bach's bouncy Prelude and Fugue in G Major was followed by the meditative chorale prelude, Schmuecke Dich. The virtuoso Piece d'Orgue, better known here as the Fantasia in G Major, ranges from brilliant arpeggios to dense five-part harmony and back again. Simon's performance of all these lovely works was impeccable. He finished up with Elgar's "Nimrod" from the Enigma Variations, thus setting the keynote (as it were) for the Edwardian feast to follow.

Sidney Nicholson's great hymn Crucifer ("Lift High the Cross") was the processional, an old Christ Church favorite, but rarely if ever has it been so splendidly sung and performed as on this night. The rafters rang as the assembled choirs and clergy made their way through the aisles of the church and up to the chancel. The procession included the guest of honor and preacher, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; the Bishop of Connecticut, Ian Douglas; the Rector-elect, Jim Lemler; the clergy and choirs of Christ Church; and various other local clergy including Heather Parkinson-Wright, head of the Greenwich Chaplaincy Services; Rabbi Mitch Hurvitz of Temple Sholom; Bill Evertsberg of the First Presbyterian Church of Greenwich; Robert Alves of St. Barnabas; and so on and so forth. All in all, it was quite a sight.

Then came the Parry anthem. The trompette en chamade blazoned forth the opening notes from the rear of the church, answered by the full chancel organ in the front. From where your scribe was sitting in Row M, the result was perfect stereophonic sound. He used the old chorister's trick of cupping his hand to his ear, which not only magnifies the volume but brings out the overtones as well. What a treat!

The sermon by Dr. Tutu was a mixture of humor and social ecumenism. He told us how one of his students had sent him a photo of a billboard outside a church which read, "Do you have trouble sleeping? Let the church help. We have sermons...." He likened God's love for each and every one of His creatures to that of a mother for a perhaps not-quite-totally-photogenic baby, who might say to her infant, "You're not the prettiest thing in the world, are you?" But let someone else come up and say, "That has got to be the ugliest baby I've ever seen," and that person will be lucky to escape her wrath with his life. In a voice that modulated from thunder to mezzo-forte to piano to a whisper to mouthed silence, Dr. Tutu repeated the word "All", over and over again, to drive home his point that God loves everyone. "Gay, lesbian, so-called straight..."--his sly humor and understatement had us laughing about topics that ordinarily might make us uncomfortable. For such a small physical being (to call him five feet tall might be generous), Dr. Tutu had an extraordinarily commanding presence.

The Induction followed, with Bishop Douglas presiding. He put on his mitre to read the Letter of Institution which formally confirmed the call of Jim Lemler as the new Rector of Christ Church. The Gregorian chant of the Litany for Mission gave way to the presentation of "symbols and instruments of ministry and leadership," which included a "vessel of water" from the Bishop and a stole and chasuble from Wardens Tim Carpenter and Nancy Maulsby. Other gifts included a Book of Common Prayer and a Hymnal (the latter being the full-fledged musical edition, your scribe was glad to see), and a plant from the "religious community" of the Town presented by Mitch and Heather. Wendy Claire Berrie, Director of Children's Ministry, presented him with a children's Bible to remind him of his ministry to parishioners of all ages at Christ Church. The church staff presented Jim with a church bell, which he promptly proceeded to ring exuberantly.

Jim then knelt to repeat the ancient "Non sum dignus": "I am not worthy to have You come under my roof; yet You have called Your servant to stand in Your house, and to serve at Your altar...." He rose, and the Bishop formally presented him to us by saying, "I present to you James, as servant and leader." The rubric mentioning that "applause is appropriate" was a mild understatement.

Continuing the Edwardian motif, the choir sang Elgar's "The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me," the text from Isaiah chosen by our Lord as the basis for His first sermon (which almost got Him killed). Afterwards, Dr. Tutu told your scribe that he was warmly appreciative of the subtle "soloing out" and judicious use of 8ve and Sub-8ve couplers he noticed during Elgar's anthem. "Young Simon is a genius," he was heard to say. "And Philip Moore's bongo drums--spot on!"

Well, having brought up Philip Moore, no need to wait further to praise his numerous brilliant contributions to this festival liturgy. Philip is organist emeritus at York Minster, and comes over to Christ Church several times a year as Artist in Residence. As the service of Holy Communion continued, the choir sang his gorgeous arrangements of "I want to walk as a child of the light" and "Hyfrydol". The final hymn was "Siyahamba", in an arrangement completed by Philip just three weeks ago. Between the bongo drums and the trompette en chamade, the very stones in the walls of the church were pulsating with joy. Dr. Tutu himself boogied his way down the aisle as the choir and clergy recessed.

And who, dear reader, was the person who made this joyful celebration into a reality? Well, many people worked long and hard on it, of course, but none worked longer or harder than Director of Music Jamie Hitel. His impeccable musicianship has infected every one of the young people who sing under him, and the choirs of Christ Church have never sounded better than they did on Friday night. He has strengthened the program enormously with his ties to the world of English church music, viz. Philip Moore and Simon Thomas Jacobs, among others. He has brought us the Sunday afternoon chamber music series, and in fact this same group, along with others, will perform a festival centennial concert this very Sunday. He has continued the Friday evening organ concerts begun by his predecessors, Geoffrey Silver and James Kennerley. But most of all, he gives of his best to ensure that each and every service at Christ Church is as close to perfection as it can be, and by his inspiring leadership he brings out the best in the young singers under his charge. Bravo, Jamie!

Then we retired to the Parish Hall, where we toasted Rector Jim with champagne provided by Bacardi USA and parishioner Michael Rieck. But your scribe didn't need any bubbly to get high; he was already high on the musical and spiritual beauty of the service just concluded. One wonders what the parishioners of 100 years ago would have thought of this service had they been able to be in attendance; no doubt they would have been very proud of their successors as stewards of Christ Church, and proud, too, of their own role in building this beautiful church for our use and enjoyment today. The ancient words still ring true: "Surely God is in this place...."

Discretion is the Better Part of (Non-) Valor

2010-05-27T13:12:00.002-04:00

Word comes today that Dick Blumenthal has canceled his Memorial Day appearances in Greenwich, including being the featured speaker at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club's annual commemoration. This is, your scribe believes, a wise move on his part.

Dick has been a steady attendee at this event over the years, as well as at the parade in Old Greenwich. He has lent an aura of gravitas to these occasions, being, as he is, our State's top law enforcement official. As recently as last November 11, Veterans' Day, he spoke movingly at the ceremony in front of the war memorial at the post office.

But at that event, as at so many others, Dick dressed himself in borrowed feathers, speaking eloquently if misleadingly of the taunts he and others had to bear as a result of being Vietnam vets. As we now all know, Dick was nothing of the sort, being at best a Vietnam-era Marine Reserves vet.

One is reminded of the hapless Falstaff playing possum on the battlefield of Shrewsbury, having proclaimed that "the better part of valour is discretion," and then rising from the dead to stand victoriously over the body of Henry Percy, whom he has the effrontery to claim that he "fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock." Falstaff's lies are so egregious that we laugh, as Shakespeare uses him yet again for comic relief against the high drama of a realm torn by civil war.

Dick Blumenthal's "misstatements", however, are no laughing matter. He is no comic, bumbling stock figure of a Vice left over from a medieval morality play, but a highly-trained lawyer supposedly dedicated to the facts and the truth. He did not need to exaggerate his military service during the Vietnam period, but the fact remains that for whatever reason he did. And so his credibility is in shreds, just like that of fat, old, pathetic Jack Falstaff.

If one were to continue the drama metaphor another step or two, one might be tempted to say that it was hubris that has brought Dick Blumenthal to grief. He thought he could lie, over and over and over again, and that no one would ever notice. And thus in the end, it seems, we are indeed left with a morality play on our hands. "Trouthe will oute": the words are as old as the English language. And still as true as ever.

The Times of London on Dick Blumenthal: Lies, Damned Lies, and "Misspeaking"

2010-05-23T08:49:00.005-04:00

It used to be that there were three types of lies: "lies, damned lies, and statistics." But that is so 20th-century, it now appears.

Today's Times of London has an interesting article about events right here in our own little cabbage patch of Greenwich, Connecticut. It's titled, "Don't Lie -- Try Misspeaking Instead":

Don’t lie – try misspeaking instead | Dominic Lawson - Times Online

"Almost brings the roof down but doesn't quite..."

2010-05-02T04:57:00.047-04:00

Your scribe has been wondering how to follow up on his post about Isabelle Demers, and so far somehow nothing has seemed to fit the bill—until last night, that is. David Flood, Organist and Master of the Choristers at Canterbury Cathedral, is one of those gifted and tireless performers who will never give merely one recital when two will do just as nicely.

Well, it was in fact only a single recital he gave in the Cathedral on the evening of May 1, but as usual there was enough music and musical brilliance to comprise two normal recitals. In fact, David did everything himself, from unlocking the south door to let us all in (was that the same wrought iron key your scribe had used in years past?) to introducing himself (the Archdeacon of Maidstone having decided not to put in an appearance on David’s behalf) to playing one of the best recitals Canterbury—and indeed the rest of the musical world—has yet heard.

The first selection was the Allegro Maestoso from Elgar’s Sonata in G. Like the consummate artist he is, David used the opportunity to showcase different stops that are rarely heard in the day-to-day use of the organ. Likewise, his rendition of Jehan Alain’s Le jardin suspendu was an aural palette of sounds incorporating typical Alain idioms with long sustained notes from which the delicately contrapuntal musical garden hung.

One of the most exciting pieces in organ literature is Alexandre Guilmant's March on a theme of Handel, that theme being, of course, the "Lift Up Your Heads, O Ye Gates" chorus from The Messiah. Rich in French Romantic tonalities and harmonies, the march devolves into a massive fugue reminiscent of Bach on steroids. Hands and feet flying, David sailed through it flawlessly, sending chills up and down the spines of his listeners. The dimly-lit cathedral seemed like a stone forest, and the combined beauty of the music and the setting created a sense of sheer magic.

Franck’s Prelude, Fugue, and Variation were straightforward, although David diplomatically reminded us of the “joining movement" that leads into the fugue, saying that if we counted four movements we weren’t wrong, but delicately telling us to wait until the end of the work to applaud. Canterbury’s organ will never sound like a Cavaillé-Coll, but Franck himself would no doubt have approved of David’s masterful playing.

Next followed Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, nicknamed “The Wedge” because of the fugue subject that continually widens until the organist’s fingers and feet, initially close together, wind up an octave apart. Just as Bach did, David basically set his registration and played, with none of the gimmickry that modern organists sometimes employ. The result was a pure and homogeneous performance.

Most organists would have ended their recital at that point. David, catching a second wind, kept on going. Alan Rideout’s Three Resurrection Dances were dedicated to David’s predecessor, Allan Wicks, who died just under three months ago, on February 4 of this year. Based on three paintings by Graham Sutherland, these whimsical pieces refuse to be serious about the subject of death. Well, the entire recital was a gloss on that text. Great music lives on, and as a result, the memories of those who compose it and perform it do also.

Flor Peeter’s Lied to the Flowers was a pastiche of soft, crisp lines again showcasing some of the lightest, most rarely heard pipes on the organ. A series of unresolved dissonances makes the listener positively hungry for the sweet harmonies that bring the piece to its lovely close.

The Finale from Widor’s Symphonie VI “almost brings the roof down, but doesn’t quite,” to quote David. ’Nough said. All in all, a fabulous recital. And what does all of this have to do with Greenwich, gentle reader? Well, David has promised to try to fit us in on the choir’s next trip to the US. Then everyone in our Town will have a chance to hear the superb musicianship which he has made a hallmark of Canterbury. Meantime, he sends his greetings to Philip Moore and Jamie Hitel of Christ Church, and his assistant organist John Robinson says hello to both Jamie and James Kennerley. It's a small world we live in these days.

O Canada! Isabelle Demers Takes Greenwich by Storm

2010-03-13T07:45:00.004-05:00

There seems to be some kind of magnet in the soil of Greenwich that attracts the world's finest musicians to our fair Town. Witness the case of Isabelle Demers, the young dynamo who can tame the King of Instruments better than just about anyone else. And she proved it to us yet again on Friday night in her virtuoso recital at Christ Church.

Isabelle is not new to our Town. We had the privilege of having her serve as Organ Scholar during the glory days when Geoffrey Silver and James Kennerley were taking the Christ Church music program to new heights, which happily enabled us to land Jamie Hitel as their successor. Under Jamie the program continues to grow and flourish, not least because of his encouragement of his predecessors to continue to share their talents with us. Within the past week the rafters at Christ Church have echoed to the strains of James accompanying the Greenwich Choral Society's concert, "Music from a French Cathedral", as well as Isabelle's phenomenal playing. And soon the choir of Litchfield Cathedral will be coming to pay a visit, the latest in a long string of top-notch English choral groups that Jamie has an innate gift for attracting to these shores. Oh, and let's not forget the fabulous Sunday afternoon chamber music series he has founded, which regularly brings first-chair talent and gorgeous Stradivarian strains (really!) to our Town.

Isabelle began with Bach's monumental E-Flat Major Prelude and Fugue, between which she sandwiched her own original transcription of Cantata BWV 118, a funeral motet originally written for a wind band and four-part chorus. Her registration at the outset of the Prelude was medium full, instead of the organo pleno that many organists employ. The reason was not far to seek: she wanted to emphasize the clarity of the work rather than simply the sonority. Her deft fingering and pedaling made this interpretation a connoisseur's delight.

Though unfamiliar with the English choral and organ tradition when she first arrived at Christ Church (her own background is French-Canadian), she demonstrated that she is a quick learner in her performance of Herbert Howells' Psalm Prelude #1. The listener could easily imagine being in an English cathedral, perhaps with Howells himself at the console.

The piece de resistance, "Etude Heroique", was composed by her fellow Canadienne, Rachel Laurin. Breathtaking sonorities and feats of fingerwork and pedalwork characterize this piece, and Isabelle's bravura performance left us all in awe of her talent. By the way, she played this entire recital, as she always does, by heart. Millions of notes, hundreds of registration changes, four manuals, two separate organs (chancel and balcony), and a pedalboard, all united and fused into a coherent whole by Isabelle's awesome musicianship. In a word, wow!

Frank Bridge's well-known Adagio in E Major was, pardon the pun, a peaceful bridge to Isabelle's final masterwork, the rarely-heard Reger Fantasy on "Wachet Auf". As she noted in her excellent program notes, Reger seems to offset the dark and growling machinations of evil with the calm and serene chorale melody. Beginning almost as a whisper, the chorale grows in strength and intensity, until at the end it subsumes all else in a final burst of Regerian late-romantic pyrotechnics. Just the physical energy alone this piece requires is probably close to that of a marathon, but Isabelle carried it all off with her usual sprezzatura, barely seeming to break a sweat in the process. Her only concession to the grueling demands of her brilliant performance was an occasional sip of water between pieces.

As always, the action at the console was projected by video onto a large screen atop the chancel steps, courtesy of Neil and Joanne Bouknight. And again, as always, there was a wine and cheese and salmon reception afterwards, this time hosted by Meredith Baxter and Lisa Tebbe (dill provided courtesy of a last-minute shopping run by Emma). Mieke Knight provided candles and flowers, and her husband Jim was the sommelier, as usual. Present at the recital and reception were director of music Jamie Hitel, associate director of music Simon Thomas Jacobs, and former acting director of music, Geoffrey Silver. Geoffrey will be producing a CD of Isabelle's playing in the near future.

On another note (sorry, bad pun), your scribe was intrigued to learn that Greenwich Gossip has had "hits" recently from some 27 countries. They include: the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Mexico, Russia, Italy, Mongolia (!), Barbados, Honduras, South Africa, Spain, Denmark, India, Ireland, Ukraine, Japan, Malta, Hong Kong, Finland, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, and St. Vincent/the Grenadines. Who knew?

And so, dear reader, it seems that a substantial portion of the world takes an interest in what happens here in Greenwich. Whether it be the shameful failure of the Town to provide adequate instructional and performance facilities for our high school students (see: "Greenwich Settles for a Third-Rate High School") or the dazzling musicianship of Isabelle Demers (brava!), people out there are interested in what happens here. Just thought you'd like to know.

Greenwich Settles for a Third-Rate High School

2010-02-06T09:40:00.010-05:00

The "new" Greenwich High School, built during the late 60s, was obsolete even before it opened in 1970. Over the years the Town has tried to play catch-up, with mixed success. Now the Town is apparently throwing in the towel, and not even bothering to try to give our students the facilities that they deserve and that State law mandates. Shame on the Town of Greenwich!

In particular, the High School's auditorium is a disgrace. It can only hold a fraction of the student population, thereby violating State law and necessitating multiple Commencement ceremonies during inclement weather. The acoustics are, well, problematic, to say the least. Watching Patrick Taylor climb a makeshift scaffold to conduct the "Hallelujah Chorus" is enough to give your scribe a heart attack, not only out of fear for his safety, but also because of the amount of damages for which the Town would be liable if an accident were to occur. For years the GHS students have been performing in sub-standard conditions that should have been condemned before they ever received a certificate of occupancy. For years the Town has negligently failed to do anything to correct the situation. Shame, shame on the Town of Greenwich!

And now, just as the projected new auditorium project is finally beginning to take shape, it has been consigned to the dustheap in favor of a firehouse project that isn't even on the drawing boards, which was originally presented as a $23 million "renovation", and which is now bruited to be totally new construction at who knows what cost? The wrangling over this project may well go on for years. And meanwhile, Greenwich High School falls ever further and further behind the other school districts in the State of Connecticut. Shame, shame, shame on the Town of Greenwich!

Be it noted that the Town of Greenwich has a solid triple-A credit rating. The cost of borrowing money at the present time is a mere fraction of one percent. The $27 million cost of the new auditorium would come out to perhaps $250,000/300,000 a year, including amortization of the loan. That is peanuts for a Town like this. And we would look like financial heroes when inflation starts to take off, as it assuredly will, sooner if not later. If the Town drags its feet on this project for another year, or two, or three, the borrowing costs will have risen exponentially, and this historic opportunity to build it at a virtually zero-percent interest cost will be gone forever.

But no. The Town is shelving this vital project. "Go to Hell," seems to be the message being sent to the Greenwich High School community. "We don't care about you, or about doing the right thing. Come back some other time, and maybe we'll take another look. Or maybe not, if your project costs rise in the interim, along with interest rates. In which case, fuggedaboutit."

Shame, shame, shame, shame on the Town of Greenwich.

UPDATE:

StamfordFrank said...

Great post.

There is no better time than now to pour money into our high school.

As one of the main selling points of our town (the school system), it is silly to let it remain as archaic as it is now.

Bill Clark said...

Thanks for the comment, Frank.

You are absolutely right. It is penny wise and pound foolish not to make Greenwich High the best school we can make it--our real estate will benefit, which will help the tax base. Oh, and there's also the small matter of the students benefiting as well....

Curtis Beats Caldwell 99-99

2010-01-28T12:22:00.006-05:00

Just as Harvard "beat" Yale in the famous 29-29 come-from-behind-with-only-42-seconds-remaining-on-the-clock accrual of 16 points to tie The Game, and thus the Ivy League championship, so underdog Paul Curtis "beat" odds-on favorite Joan Caldwell by accruing an amazing 99 votes in his quest to become Moderator Pro Tempore at the January 18th RTM meeting. Equally amazing, Joan herself pulled 99 votes as well.

At the time, this little bit of "Ripley's Believe It or Not" Greenwich history was known to only four people: the three officals from the Town Clerk's office who tallied the votes, and the Moderator of the RTM, Tom Byrne. Tom, himself a duly-elected RTM delegate, then did something he had done, by his own account, only three times before in his 14-year tenure as Moderator: he voted.

But--and it's a big but--he didn't tell this to the body. He merely announced the vote total as Paul Curtis 99, Joan Caldwell 100.

There was an audible reaction throughout the auditorium. No one, including Paul Curtis, had expected the vote to be so close. No doubt many members had second thoughts about the way they'd cast their ballots. But the vote was the vote, or so we all believed at the time.

When it later came out that the Moderator had intervened to break the tie, quite a furor began to erupt. Traditionally, Tom Byrne, like his predecessors, had merely voted "present" so as not to affect the outcome of the RTM's voting procedures. But now he had broken with tradition, in order to do exactly that.

Does Tom have the right to vote? Well, as an elected member of the RTM, he presumably does. Does he have the right to vote in a manner different from the rest of us, which is to say not with his district, like everyone else, but only after all the other votes have been cast, and the district cards have been signed and certified by the district chairmen? That, dear reader, is the question.

Tom himself now acknowledges that if he could do things over, he would have been more open with the RTM about what he had done. Presumably, he would have said something like, "We have a tie vote of 99 for Mr. Curtis and 99 for Ms. Caldwell. As an elected member of this body, I have the right to vote on this issue. I therefore cast my vote for my colleague of fourteen years' standing, Ms. Caldwell."

There would have probably been some catcalls and boos, and no doubt even some applause at this point. But at least the voting process would have been transparent and open. Which it was not.

One of our local rags, the Greenwich (Dumb as a) Post, has written an editorial today calling for a do-over. While it is not your scribe's favorite journalistic outlet, perhaps it has a point. Right now there is a bad taste in many people's mouths. Let's have a second vote, as perhaps we should have done on the 18th, to break the tie. The thirty members absent on the 18th would thus have a chance to have their say. And Tom Byrne should certainly be allowed to vote as well, perhaps asking Town Clerk Carmella Budkins to act as Moderator Pro Tem while he joins his district for the voting process.

This is, it would seem, the best and fairest way to clear the air. Even Popes and Presiding Bishops of the Episcopal Church are not usually elected on the first ballot. Surely we can manage to take a few minutes at the next RTM meeting to take a second vote that will lay to rest this controversy.

Unless, of course, the March vote turns out to be 115-115. Well, if it does, your scribe will offer a motion on the floor that the two candidates share the office, perhaps alternating on a month-by-month basis. This would allow Mr. Curtis to gain some familiarity with the job, while allowing Ms. Caldwell a chance to share her fourteen years of experience with him. Everyone would be a winner, not least the Town of Greenwich.

UPDATE 1/30/10:

Check out the "comments" section for more on the above post.

In Which Your Scribe Gets a Letter from the Secretary of the State

2010-01-14T09:47:00.006-05:00

The Honorable Susan Bysiewicz, Secretary of the State of Connecticut, has taken time out of her busy schedule to write a letter to your scribe felicitating him on his recent reelection to the Greenwich Rrepresentative Town Meeting. "Congratulations," she says, "on your recent election victory! Thank you for your willingness to serve Greenwich and your fellow citizens as an elected official."

How sweet of her to take the time to do this! And what a beautiful letter it is: individually addressed to him, and typed (well, word-processed) on heavy cream paper embossed with a colorful blue and gold seal at the top. Wow! This letter, sent via first class mail, probably cost quite a bit to produce, including Susan's time to pen her thoughtful words, a battery of secretaries' time to see it through the word-processing department and affix the lifelike autopen signature, and a bevy of mail room clerks to run it through the postage meters and get it to the post office.

Your scribe feels very flattered to be the object of all this high-level attention. But wait...if he got this letter, so, too, no doubt, did the rest of the members of the Greenwich RTM as well. Not to mention the winners of every other municipal election in the State of Connecticut. Let's see: there are 169 different municipalities in the State, and presumably these letters all had to be personalized not only with the recipients' names and addresses, but with the names of their local communities as well. Quite an ambitious project, wouldn't you say, dear reader?

So what's up with this letter? Well, the State deficit, for one thing. These costly missives probably represent an expenditure of some tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money for what your scribe would tend to categorize as an unnecessary expense. Surely Ms. B. could have sent us all an email instead?

Oh, wait. The penny drops. Ms. B. seems to be running for a higher office. Is it Governor? Attorney General? Whatever, the raison d'etre of this lovely communication now becomes clear: it is, it would appear, a thinly-disguised campaign piece, designed to bring the designing Ms. B. to our attention as a person of obvious good taste and great concern for our communities, including "the young people in our state, a group that continues to participate [in voting] at very low rates." What compassion! What vision! How statesmanlike! Just the kind of person we need in State government (now that we know who she is).

Ms. B. concludes, "Once again, congratulations and thank you for your service to the citizens of [insert town here] Greenwich. I look forward to working with you." Your scribe is awed and humbled.

And somewhat annoyed as well. Does Ms. B. think he is a nincompoop? Does she think he really believes that Ms. B. "looks forward to working with him" personally? And that he is impressed by her colorful letterhead?

Well, let it be said that he is none of the above. The fact that the letter is dated December 21 of last year, and arrived on January 13 of this year, bespeaks the fact that Ms. B. and her staff are not the most efficient of State workers. Does she really expect to garner votes by this type of mechanism?

Well, whatever her expectations, she is pursuing them at our expense, and of that of our State budget. Your scribe takes umbrage at this, and would like to suggest that State Reps Livvy Floren and Fred Camillo look into this use of taxpayer funds for a fairly obvious personal agenda. Are you out there, Livvy? Are you reading this, Fred? Please consider this post your official request to have you and your fellow lawmakers scrutinize this rather suspicious mass mailing. Thank you!

UPDATE:

Your scribe chanced to see former State Rep Janet Lockton on Greenwich Avenue this morning, and told her about Ms. B's letter. Janet was astounded. "Has she ever done this before?" she asked. "Never," replied your scribe. "Then it's clearly a campaign piece, created and sent out at taxpayer expense, and a violation of the State's ethics rules," Janet proclaimed.

Hmm...one begins to wonder if it's more than a mere ethics violation. Is it also illegal? Just askin', is all....

"Wha' Happened?"

2009-12-18T14:22:00.003-05:00

For some reason, the local papers are suddenly rushing to fill up their otherwise empty (but still empty-headed) pages with stories about Lin-Lin Lavery, who ran one of the worst election campaigns this Town has ever seen (read "dirtiest"), shot herself in the foot (or perhaps both feet), and lost her supposedly "safe" seat on the Board of Selectmen. The latest paper to waste ink on Lin-Lin is the Greenwich Citizen, which in today's issue asks the question that heads this post.

Well, if you read the first sentence of this post, you already know what happened. Lin-Lin simply dug her own grave by her abrasiveness, her mendacity, and her total disregard for fact or truth. She took credit for herself where none was due, and broadsided the Town with vicious attacks on her opponent that contained not a shred of truth. "Wha' happened?" Lin-Lin let her true nature come to the fore, and that's all it took.

Over the course of the years, Lin-Lin has made many enemies for herself by her arrogant, self-aggrandizing behavior. Your scribe has talked with many women in this Town who have seen her in her various roles, and to a man - er, woman - they had nothing good to say about her. And lots of bad. "Wha' happened?" Lin-Lin simply sank her own ship.

But she had help, of course. Dave Robotson robotically parroted all her lies, pretending blithely that they were all Gospel truth, twisted and deformed by the evil Republicans in Town. No doubt he also blithely advised her that she was doing a great job, and to keep it up. So she did. "Wha' happened?" Lin-Lin's crew not only failed to do damage control, but also made the damage worse by compounding her lies. That's no way to save a sinking ship.

And yes, there was the small matter of her rude interruption of your scribe as he was doing his Times crossword puzzle that day back in July. Or her running after him on Calf Island loudly proclaiming that she had so been properly introduced to him, "at Christ Church," to hear her tell it. Your scribe is unable to find Lin-Lin's name in the church's directory, and he has no recollection of ever seeing her darken its doorstep.

There were plenty of witnesses to that incident on the island, but the irksome Robotson had the effrontery to call your scribe a liar at last Monday's RTM meeting, claiming it had never happened. Well, that pretty much encapsulates "Wha' happened": Lin-Lin simply couldn't tell the truth if her life depended on it. And her political life did depend on it, and she continued to lie, and thus she crashed and burned.

Oh, yes, there's one other piece to the answer to the question of "Wha' happened": the blogosphere happened. When she decided to make it her mission in life to annoy and harrass your scribe, he held up the mirror to Lin-Lin for all to see. In the several weeks before the election, it seemed just about everyone in Town was reading this blog, and reacting to it with glee and hearty approbation. Person after person came up to your scribe the night of the election to say how much they loved reading the blog, and how it had clearly made a significant difference in the election results. The implication was that without his posts, Lin-Lin might have managed to hold on to her seat on the Board of Selectman.

Ah, the power of the blogosphere! It allows one to put the truth out there for all to see, and to heap scorn on those who go about spreading lies. It apparently helped to knock Lin-Lin right out of the box. But don't look to see that part of the answer to the question "Wha' happened?" printed in the Greenwich Citizen, or Yellowwich Time. They seem to think that they are still the media of record in the 21st century, and that they can continue to print whatever they wish and get away with it. Well, there was a time when that may have been true, but as the kids around Greenwich are wont to say, "That is so last-century."

And thank Heaven for that!

Lin-Lin: the Walking Undead?

2009-12-15T11:48:00.003-05:00

Just when you thought it was safe to walk the streets of Greenwich again, dear reader, the Not-So-Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time, is scaring us all to death with an above-the-fold story about Lin-Lin purportedly coming back to life. Fortunately, like most of the sensationalism, muck-raking, and outright fiction which has become the staple of the NSLR, this story is one that needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It's important above all to keep in mind the old adage: consider the source.

Well, the primary source is, of course, the already discredited and shopworn NSLR. In a desperate attempt to fill their ever-shrinking pages, they will publish anything and everything to avoid putting out blank pages. Perhaps they'll even soon try the same trick used by the Greenwich (Dumb-as-a) Post, which will occasionally publish the same page twice to attempt to cover up their lack of fresh material.

But there are secondary sources to consider as well, such as the irksome Dave Robotson, who robotically spews the Democratic party line regardless of such minor inconveniences as truth or falsehood. In this, he shows himself to be Lin-Lin's right-hand man, capable of the very same form of mindless twaddle as she, to wit: "Whatever organization she gets involved in will be very lucky," he opines, blithely ignoring all the organizations that have been cursed with her high-handed arrogance in the past, and are hugely relieved to be rid of her.

Since Robotson is head of the Democratic Town Committee, one would have thought that he, too, might have been glad to be rid of her after her appallingly poor showing in the polls last month. Having run a loudly mendacious campaign, full of personal attacks and smears made up of whole cloth, she was roundly rejected by the voters of Greenwich, coming in a distant fourth out of four and losing her supposedly "safe" seat on the Board of Selectmen. But no: Lin-Lin is now apparently the Sarah Palin of the Democratic party, and the die-hard faithful are clinging to her skirts like the brainless lapdogs they are.

The mercurial Ed Krumeich is also quoted in this hard-hitting puff piece which attempts to refurbish Lin-Lin's badly-tarnished reputation: "As someone who has lost contested elections in the past, it's very hard to regroup afterwards," it says. The "it", of course, being Ed Krumeich, as that is apparently how he chooses to refer to him...er, itself.

But the worst sins of puffery are committed by the NSLR itself, which describes Lin-Lin as a "rising star" (even though she's just been knocked out of orbit), who "burst on the scene two years ago" (and burst right back off again last month) to become "a driving force" (who has just engineered the worst election train wreck this Town has seen in years) but who now has "no regrets" and "doesn't believe the public's perception of her has changed" (can you spell d-e-l-u-s-i-o-n-a-l, dear reader?). Such partial and slanted reporting is altogether typical of the NSLR, which long ago abandoned any pretense of printing anything remotely resembling the truth.

And so, according to Yellowwich Time, we have our very own pet zombie rising again to walk the streets of our fair Town. Luckily, most of us don't believe these gruesome fairy tales, especially the fairy tales published in the Not-So-Local Rag. In fact, as most of us know, if it's printed in the NSLR, it's almost certainly not true. And thus it is only logical to conclude that Lin-Lin, far from being the walking undead, is most probably as dead as a doornail.

Kinda Makes You Wonder...

2009-12-10T09:21:00.004-05:00

Our President has been given the Nobel Prize for Peace. Your scribe is not the only one to wonder why, especially given that he now wants to throw more troops into the quagmire known as Afghanistan. He seems totally oblivious to the fact that the British tried and failed to subdue the country in the 19th century, as did the then-mighty USSR in the 20th. What makes him think that he will fare any differently?

With all due respect to the office he holds, the man seems to live on some plantet of his own. He has managed to offend deeply the country of Norway by claiming to be too busy to meet with the committee that awarded him his prize, or any of the other groups, including schoolchildren, who traditionally spend time with the Laureate, and he even snubbed the King of Norway's luncheon invitation. Talk about a diplomatic tin ear!

Of course, this President has been doing this kind of thing almost from the day he took office (and even on that day, if memory seves, he made a hash of taking his oath of office, and had to be re-sworn later behind the scenes). One of his very first acts was to fire every single appointed ambassador, regardless of the situation in the countries involved. Charles Glazier, our fellow Greenwich townsman, was told, as he put it, "don't let the door hit you in the rear." Thus El Salvador, one of our few allies in our military misadventures around the globe, has been without an ambassador for nearly a year. In exasperation, they have recalled their own ambassador. Is this President trying to win friends and influence people to support the United States of America? He could hardly be doing a worse job if his intent were the direct opposite.

And of course, he has also offended our closest ally, Great Britain, by snubbing their Prime Minister when he came to Washington, and by returning the bust of Winston Churchill that had been in the Oval Office for years back to the Brits. As we all know, there are closets in which we can store Great-Aunt Gertrude's self-portrait in between her occasional visits, but the last thing we would ever do is to offend that good lady by telling her to take her painting back. Doesn't this President have even the remotest sense of social grace?

Apparently not. If your scribe were on the Nobel Committee, he would immediately move to rescind the unearned and undeserved honor from this ungrateful and ungracious militant who is bankrupting our country both financially and spiritually by his actions. And if your scribe were the King of Norway, he would have this socially inept bumbler declared persona non grata and have him deported forthwith, being sure only to reclaim the medal at the border and to stop payment on the prize money check.

And people wonder why we have increasingly fewer friends around the globe....

Update 12/11/09:

"US-Japan Rift Grows As Obama Snubs Prime Minister Hatoyama In Copenhagen," reads a headline in today's Japan Times. What in the sweet name of sanity is going on? Is our President trying single-handedly to destroy our country's reputation overseas? Well, whether he's actively attempting to do it, or passively bumbling all over the world, he's digging us into the deepest diplomatic hole the USA has ever been in.

The Greenwich Board of Non-Ethics

2009-12-07T11:58:00.005-05:00

Probably relatively few people in Town have had much occasion to deal with the so-call Board of Ethics, but back in the day when the nutty ex-wife (NEW for short) was doing everything in her power to disrupt his life, your scribe once turned to this organization in a predictably futile effort to seek help. Unbeknownst to everyone in Greenwich at the time, the Board was itself violating every code of proper FOI ethics, including failure to calendar meetings, to keep minutes, or indeed to keep records of just about any kind. And then, of course, there was the perennial problem of the local Roman Catholic clergy to deal with....

"The PP of the LRCC? Whatever can you mean, dear scribe?" Ah, dear reader, where to begin? The financial swindling of St. Michael the Archangel on North Street by Michael Moynihan? The sexual predations of Charlie Stubbs at St. Mary's on Greenwich Avenue, or Al McGoldrick at St. Paul's in Glenville? The cover-ups and transfers of abusive priests by William Genuario of St. Catherine's in Riverside? Perhaps these wolves in clerical clothing may suffice as a starting point.

Not that the Roman Catholic clergy have any kind of lock on misbehavior in Town. Two priests have been dismissed for cause at Christ Church in recent years, not to mention the unfortunate discovery of child pornography on choirmaster Robert Tate's computer, the aftermath of which got the church's then attorney, the notorious Phil Russell, branded as a felon. When Rebecca Spencer's illicit affair on church property with the son of her superior, Mert Rymph, at the Second Congregational Church became public knowledge, the members quickly gave her a standing ovation and arranged for her to find another job out of state. And then there were the serial adulteries at the local hot-sheets motel carried on by Dick Stearns, then Senior Pastor at the First Presbyterian Church. Dick also used a trust fund left to the church as his personal cash kitty. So no, sad to say, the Catholics do not have any denominational exclusivity on clerical misbehavior.

But back to the Board of Non-Ethics, our subject of the day. When the NEW abused her position as a Town of Greenwich employee by creating fake library "fines" to block your scribe's borrowing privileges, this appeared to violate a section of the Town's Code of Ethics that proscribed using one's Town employment to the detriment of others. And so your scribe called on Board member Bill Genuario at the rectory of St. Catherine's in hopes of finding redress.

Glib and smooth, Genuario pretended to listen. But something else was obviously going on behind his eyes, which were a little too shifty for your scribe's taste. No surprise, then, when it devolved that this grievance was deemed to be "outside the Board of Ethic's purview", or words to that effect.

Your scribe should have known better than to waste his time. The Diocese of Bridgeport documents recently unsealed by court order show that Genuario was part and parcel of the ongoing cover-up process of moving abusive priests from parish to parish rather than disclipining and defrocking them according to canon law.

Ah, canon law. Yes, indeed. Guess, dear reader, who is presently in charge of the diocese's Tribunal, its highest court of canon law, which is always ready to annul any marriage upon payment of a suitably serious sum, or to twist and turn "facts" so as to lay the blame for sexual abuse on the victims? Well, you probably don't have to guess. It is Bill Genuario, who admitted in a deposition writing a letter transferring a priest at Sacred Heart University who had performed oral sex on a male student and then bitten his penis, causing the student to seek medical aid. "A recurrence of hepatitus was to be feigned should anyone ask," said Genuario's letter - which, it turns out, he typed himself.

So why should he care a fig for a trumped-up library card fine? He dealt with real issues, serious issues, in a real and serious way. No wonder his eyes were so shifty.

And no wonder at the total lack of ethics on the Board of Ethics in those waning days of the 20th century. Are things any better today? Well, reportedly the paperwork is now more complete than it used to be. But can the citizens of Greenwich really sleep safely in their beds at night, knowing that this fearless bastion of high moral standards is keeping vigilant watch over the goings-on in our fair Town? Only in your dreams, dear reader...only in your dreams.

The Not-So-Local Rag and Its Far-Out Math

2009-12-05T09:57:00.002-05:00

Only in Greenwich, dear reader, can that laughingstock of an excuse for a newspaper known as Yellowwich Time, aka the Not-so-local Rag, try to add two plus two and come up with 150. And nobody says boo.

Well, except for your scribe, of course. This pitiful rag, staffed by illiterates and now, apparently, innumerates as well, has been sliding downhill faster and faster, losing money hand over fist, and perpetrating its pitiful pap on the poor public it seems to assume is its captive audience.

Friday's howler is the "Daily Poll", a silly attempt to engage readers through posing some inane question in hopes of hyping traffic to the NSLR's web site. The question: "Has Tiger Woods' image been permanently tarnished?" The answer: "Yes": 65%; "No": 85%. Your scribe's "undecided" vote was apparently not counted.

How can a newspaper have so little pride in the factual accuracy of what it publishes? The answer, apparently, is very simple: in this case, the few peons who still work there just don't have any pride left. They push their pencils, and tap their keyboards, and could care less whether what they write has any semblance of accuracy. They are living from paycheck to paycheck, hoping to avoid the fate that has befallen 90% of the quondam staff, and which, inevitably, awaits them as well. Only at that point will they look back and realize how foolish they were to sell themselves for a few paltry dollars to an organization which they would be well-advised to omit from their future resumes.

Meanwhile, the only person who may have gotten a boost from these preposterous poll results would be Tiger Woods himself. Except that he undoubtedly has more important things on his plate than reading hack journalism from the likes of Yellowwich Time. Fortunately for him, he's not stuck with the NSLR as his source for local "news". Unfortunately for us, we are.

Litter Boxes on Greenwich Avenue

2009-11-22T13:33:00.002-05:00

And no, they're not for kitties, although many people used to use their erstwhile contents to line kitty boxes and birdcages. Your scribe refers, of course, to the Not-So-Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time.

There was a time when these boxes used to contain stacks of freshly-printed scandal and tale-mongering, back in the days when some people actually took the NSL Rag seriously. Nowadays, no one does, and so the boxes sit empty, or with week-old papers inside. Apparently the latest price hike to a full buck for half a paper (compared to days of yore) has killed the newspaper box business.

And yet they remain, battered and dented and scratched eyesores uglifying the Avenue. At this point, one might well think they are in violation of some local ordinance or other, such as loitering or littering. They certainly do not add to the aesthetic appeal of the Town of Greenwich.

How much longer will we have to put up with these unsightly relics of a past age, when people actually used to read the NSL Rag? First Selectman Tesei, can you have the Highway Department haul them away to the dump? Or perhaps Mary Hull can get Greenwich Green and Clean to get rid of them as part of their beautification program. But someone should do something, and soon, to get these litter boxes off the Avenue.

Opening Day at Steve's

2009-11-21T12:16:00.002-05:00

Another day, another store opening on Greenwich Avenue. How long has it been since there have been two such in two days? Probably not for many long years, if ever.

Steve's Place, aka the Apple Store in the old cinema building across from Richards, was a mega-hit with the crowds. Over a thousand people were lined up all the way over to McArdle's on Arch Street. It was like Homecoming at Greenwich High School: squads of young Apple employees burst in and out of the store at periodic intervals to whip up enthusiasm from the waiting crowd. Finally it was count-down time. As the customers surged in, each was handed a boxed tee shirt, and passed down a double line of applauding employees, all cheering as loudly as though each newcomer had just scored a touchdown. It was quite a happening place.

As your scribe sat near one of the many demo iMacs, near the tables filled with iPhones, and around the corner from the kids' tables loaded with computers loaded with games, he was once more accosted by the young reporter from the Not-So-Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time. "Hi," she said brightly. "We met at Ralph Lauren's yesterday." Apparently your scribe's comment to her then had not fazed her in the slightest.

"Your article on the opening had a pretty glaring error," he pointed out to her. "On page one you call the building 'completely renovated', and on page six you call it 'built from the ground up'. You can't have it both ways." She smiled on, as unfazed as ever.

"What's your name?" she asked your scribe. "I'm nobody," he replied. She asked again, and got the same answer. "Are you one of those bloggers?" she asked next, but didn't wait for a reply. "What do you think this new store means for Greenwich Avenue?" she asked. "No comment," your scribe responded. "No comment?" she asked again. "No comment," came the reply again.

Finally, realizing that your scribe was not about to give her an in-depth interview, she smiled again and move off to look for a more talkative subject. She was replaced in short order by Lance, the person in charge of the store's personal shopping service.

This nifty feature is accessed by going online and making an appointment. You then come to the store, where you get a full hour of Lance's undivided attention, as he demonstrates in depth the machines you would like to understand better. Nervous about the iPhone and all its hundreds of programs and features? Lance will make it an old friend by the time he's done with you.

The minimalist decor could hardly contrast more sharply with Ralph's place. The focus is on the merchandise, pure and simple.

Your scribe did stop in briefly at Ralph's as he headed back up the Avenue, where he was offered a mimosa and a large cookie featuring a polo player in full gallop. Definitely not your ordinary morning on Greenwich Avenue.

Opening Day at Ralph's

2009-11-20T14:06:00.004-05:00

The Laurentine Palace opened its doors a few minutes late this morning, after an impromptu ribbon-cutting ceremony that held the small crowd of half a dozen people waiting at the front door past the promised 10:00 AM opening time. Having been waiting at the front of the line since the night before (well, actually since about 9:54 AM), your scribe was the first customer to enter the store. Right behind him was a man with a mission: his wife had sent him to buy a gorgeous full-length green velvet dress in the first room to the right of the entrance.

Your scribe wandered around, upstairs and downstairs and in the various chambers devoted to milady and milord. The Indian Cove Lodge rooms were perhaps the most noteworthy: rich and red and masculine and comfortable and suitably decorated for the Christmas season. The unopened bottles of Maker's Mark bourbon and 12-year-old whisky on the coffee table seemed to invite one to sit down and enjoy a preprandial drink.

Back downstairs, the man with a mission was on the phone with an obviously upset wife. The dress he had told the salesgirl he wanted to buy had been "pre-sold" by a staff member to a friend. Your scribe was outraged. "This man asked to buy this dress less than ten seconds after the doors opened. You have an obligation to sell it to him."

The salesgirl cringed. Upper management wrung its hands. They offered to tailor a similar dress in a larger size to fit his wife. But she wanted that dress, and that dress only. Matters were at an impasse.

Your scribe walked out, and went down to the Post Office. As he came back a few minutes later, the salesgirl rushed up to him to let him know the man had been allowed to buy the dress. The person to whom the dress had been "pre-sold" had relinquished her claim. "Thank you for standing up for your friend," she said. "It helped to settle the matter the right way."

Well, your scribe had never set eyes on the man before, but he was mindful of the old Latin adage: Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. So he took her words to mean that he had successfully stood up for his greater friend, the truth. All's well that ends well, he told her.

Meanwhile, the poor female mannekin was nude except for a leather jacket that had formerly been draped over her and the dress. It made for a startling image, and gave a whole different flavor to the Ralph Lauren brand. At the salesgirl's suggestion, he joined his "friend" in the men's department while they re-dressed the mannequin in a different gown.

Said friend turned out to be a New York City fireman, young and tall and Irish and handsome. His wife, it appeared, is a stunning redhead who is a perfect size four - the dress she and her husband had held out for. She will be the cynosure of every eye at every party to which she wears that dress.

Before long, your scribe and his new friend Tommy were offered cut crystal tumblers with a generous measure of 12-year-old scotch. It was a little early in the morning, but clearly this was management's way of apologizing for the snafu. It would have been ungracious to refuse.

As he left the store half an hour or so later, a diminutive dark-haired young lady accosted your scribe, saying she was a reporter for the Not-So-Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time. "I'm so sorry for you," he replied; "What a terrible fate." The look of stunned surprise on her face was priceless. But eventually, no doubt, she will come to realize the truth of his words.

And so, dear reader, endeth this tale of opening day at the new Ralph Lauren store. It turns out, by the way, that the Renaissance palace was designed by the local firm of Halper, Owen, which was nice to hear. Your scribe is a great believer in supporting locally-owned enterprises.

And should you come by the new store tomorrow or on Sunday, rumor has it that champagne and hors d'oeuvres will be on offer. Perchance your scribe will find an opportunity to pay a return visit - after, of course, he attends the opening of the new Apple Computer store down the street. All of a sudden, Greenwich Avenue seems to be starting to come back to life, just in time for the holidays.

Ralph Lauren Visits Greenwich

2009-11-19T11:52:00.002-05:00

All the smartly-dressed salespeople in their monogrammed blazers are walking to and fro between the new Ralph Lauren store and Starbucks, abuzz with the news that the Great One (that's the GO with the initials RL) is coming to Greenwich this afternoon for a final look-see at the new Renaissance palazzo that sports his name in letters of gold above the front entrance. One would almost think it's 2007 again.

The doors will open tomorrow morning, but, alas, no goody bags will be on offer, according to what your scribe has been told. "We spent it all on the window displays," a staffer confided to him. Well, not to mention the building itself, which is anything but understated in its architecture. It recalls the self-aggrandizing palaces that the Medici family used to build at the height of the Renaissance, just to flaunt their wealth in front of the local citizenry. And now we, the lucky citizens of Greenwich, can ooh and aah at this latest addition to our local landscape.

Not that it really fits in, of course. It clashes with the Art Deco of the former Bob Force's Town House restaurant, later Greenstreet, later Gaia, now something else again. It clashes with the Beaux Arts style of the old Town Hall, now the Senior/Arts center. It clashes with the more modest early-20th century buildings that make up the bulk of the rest of the block. It even clashes with the Rhinelander Mansion, but, fortunately for New York City, it's 30 miles away from there, so the clash is not as immediately apparent.

Will this faux-Renaissance edifice bring about a Renaissance on Greenwich Avenue? 'Twill be interesting to see. Further down the street, the new Apple store will open the following day in more modest premises, but your scribe's guess is that it will attract much more attention (and foot traffic) than Ralph's place. And it will probably offer better value for money, as well. Should be an interesting weekend on Greenwich Avenue.

Ca$h for Gold - Update

2009-11-18T12:35:00.006-05:00

Today's Not-So-Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time, sports a full-page ad for those wonderful folks from Ca$h for Gold. Now, as a potential vendor, you need to ask yourself this: isn't that a fairly expensive form of advertisement? And isn't the Hyatt Regency a fairly expensive venue from which to run a business? Where does the money for all of this overhead come from?

The answer is simple: right out of your pocket. Do the math, and don't be a sucker. Caveat vendor!

Update to the update:

Mike said...
I would strongly suggest checking out the Silver and Gold Exchange before selling gold or silver to ANYONE. I did a great deal of research, online and offline, and learned a lot about this business. I checked pawn shops, jewelers, "gold parties", hotel "buying events as well as the online buyers, including the "as seen on tv" guys. I found that the Silver and Gold Exchange paid more than anyone else I could find. I liked the fact that they post the prices they pay per gram (beware of the places that quote in pennyweight/DWT) on a live price chart at http://SilverAndGoldExchange.com I also checked out their Better Business Bureau report and found they have never had a single complaint as opposed to HUNDREDS of complaints some other companies have! I can recommend them 100%
November 19, 2009 8:13 AM

Ca$h for Gold, or Checks for Suckers?

2009-11-17T15:00:00.003-05:00

Most people around Town have probably seen those annoying little stickers on the front page of the Not-So-Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time - you know, the ones that usually take the pixels right off that picture you had been curious to see. Not infrequently they advertise an outfit called "Ca$h for Gold", which has been setting up shop on a weekly basis at the Hyatt Regency for the better part of two years now.

With the recent run-up in the price of gold, your scribe thought he would take that old watch he had bought at a tag sale some years ago for $5, and which Terry Betteridge had said at the time was probably worth $10-15 as scrap. Imagine your scribe's delight when the man at Ca$h for Gold told him it was worth "about $60". But that was only a come-on, of course.

The man was a born haggler. $60 quickly turned into $50. "I'd be losing $10 if I paid you $60," he told your scribe, who replied, "Well, then, pay me $55 so you'll only be losing $5." The man thought that was pretty funny, so he agreed. But the "Ca$h for Gold" people do not pay cash. They write checks instead, and demand ID which is then noted on a form. Your transaction is about as anonymous as the police blotter of the Not-So-Local Rag.

Then your scribe brought out a British sovereign - you know, the gold coin that James Bond carried in his belt and American aviators carried in their emergency kits during World War II. The man stated that it contained a quarter of an ounce of gold, which is approximately correct, and added that collectible gold coins command a premium over scrap gold because they are suitable for purchase in an IRA or the like. He divided the spot price of gold by four, and came up with an offer of $277. Your scribe accepted.

But when he went back the next day with a similar coin, the man had changed his tune. He called some mysterious "partner" who instructed him to offer $231. Since the price of gold had jumped nearly $30 an ounce in the past 24 hours, your scribe had been expecting an offer of $285 or so. Any legitimate coin dealer would have offered something within a few dollars of that price, because of the coin's marketability. $231?! That was highway robbery!

The man showed him a group of similar coins he had bought from someone else earlier in the day at a paltry $225 (the spot price had been lower then). Your scribe was appalled. Some unsuspecting person had taken an offer that was hundreds of dollars less than the true value of the coins.

Feeling sullied by having shaken this man's hand at the outset of the visit, your scribe quickly left and washed his hands in the nearest men's room. What a rip-off this operation had now revealed itself to be! And so, your scribe's advice to anyone who might be considering paying a visit to these folks is very simple: Don't. Go to a reputable jeweler or coin dealer instead.

As usual, the Romans have a phrase to fit the situation: Caveat vendor. Don't let this shady operation make a sucker out of you. And be sure to warn your friends, as well.

Habitat for Humanity

2009-11-14T12:28:00.003-05:00

Not infrequently young people are brought into Town and dumped on Greenwich Avenue with a box of candy bars or the like, and told to solicit "donations" for some non-existent "cause". Usually the police run them in for hawking without a permit, and once in a while the responsible adults are also apprehended and charged. It's one of those quality-of-life issues that the cops on the Avenue are able to monitor, and another reason not to replace them with insentient, unobservant, less efficient, and certainly less handsome traffic signals.

Thus when two young people approached your scribe on the Avenue this morning, waved what appeared to be a milk carton at him, and requested a donation for an unspecified cause, his antennae went up. He noted their description, and kept on moving. Unfortunately, he had left his Dick Tracy crimefighters wrist phone back in his car, so he was unable to call in this possible violation of a Town of Greenwich ordinance.

Well, actually, it turned out to be fortunate that his wrist was bare. As he approached the Havemeyer Building, he saw a group of Greenwich High students at a table, all dressed with the same white tee shirt and blue jeans that the earlier pair had been wearing. And across the front of the tee shirts were printed the words, "Habitat for Humanity".

Oops. Mortified at his mistake, your scribe quickly made a donation, and told the kids to keep up the good work. One of the great programs at the high school is the one in community service, and this was clearly an example of our local students volunteering to help a good cause. Now that's the kind of soliciting on the Avenue we could use more of, he thought to himself as he proceeded on his chastened way.

And so, dear reader, if you come to Greenwich Avenue on this relatively mild and rain-free Saturday afternoon, please be quick to make a donation to Habitat for Humanity. Your money will go further there than at Saks or Baccarat, and you will be making a difference for the better in the lives of others. Can you imagine what would happen if you donated the money you may have been planning to spend on some overpriced bauble at some out-of-town chain store to these students instead? You would quickly become a local hero. And you'd probably experience a much greater sense of satisfaction as well.

The Greenwich (Dumb-as-a-) Post Strikes Again

2009-11-12T16:09:00.010-05:00

Greenwich is ill-served by its no-longer-local newspapers, as we all know, but really! Is it such a difficult thing to get the facts straight in a simple story based on public records?

Apparently so. Ace investigative reporter Ken-Ken Borksuck (he of the sneezes that sound like obscenities) manages to get just about every salient fact wrong in his attempted exposition of the alleged art fraud scam on Doverton Drive.

Long known for his slovenly reporting - not to mention appearance - the unlovely Ken-Ken tells us in his very first sentence, "A backcountry resident has been arrested...." He then goes on to give an incorrect address which is within a stone's throw of the Boston Post Road in Cos Cob. Even the correct address is only two stones' tosses away. This is "backcountry" Greenwich?! Ken-Ken clearly needs a geography lesson, for starters.

He also gets the name of the Doverton Drive resident wrong. He carefully edits and alters the Greenwich Police Department documents to avoid identifying the accused by the name that is referenced in the warrant itself. Her mother is identified only as Mr. Ford's "late wife", which is as true as only a half-truth can be. Her father is not mentioned at all, even though everyone in Town knows who he is.

Sloppy? Yes. Inaccurate? You bet. Deliberately misleading? Of course. Such journalistic swill is typical of the Greenwich (Dumb-as-a-) Post and its crack investigative reporter Ken-Ken Borksuck. It's hard to understand why any advertisers would want to be associated with such a rag. Well, sooner or later, perhaps they won't. Hasten the day.

Tsk, Tsk, Tina

2009-11-07T10:35:00.008-05:00

Today's headlines in the not-so-local rag contain yet another juicy story about Tina Pray, the current undisputed poster girl for the Town of Greenwich wild child. Well, at 46 she's not that much of a child anymore, despite her colorist's valiant efforts, but her behavior is still pretty jejune.

Tina has long been known for her, shall we say, unorthodox deportment. When she tired of her first husband, local attorney Eric Grayson, she went off to a singles party. Jof Amiot, himself single at the time, warned her not to go in, but she blew right past him. There she met Pierre Gagne, whom she invited back to her house on Round Hill Road to join her in the marital bed. When Eric arrived home later that evening, it was immediately clear that Tina had come up with a novel way of announcing that their marriage was over.

One hears that her deposition at the subsequent divorce proceedings was smoking-hot. Her father basically disowned her, which did not stop her, they say, from trying to sell the Round Hill Road house out from under him. Apparently Tina has a serious streak of larceny deep inside her.

And now it has come to the surface again, as she has been arrested for trying to scam an insurance company for a "lost" painting that she is alleged to have surreptitiously removed from her mother's house and then sold at Sotheby's. When her stepfather, Dick Ford, called the police this past May at Tina's insistence to report the painting as "missing" (Dick has a life interest in the house, originally owned by Tina's mother), he told the police that Tina was "a shady character who had stolen from the home in the past, squandered money, and is always in need of more." No love lost there, apparently.

With such a sterling character reference from her stepfather, a multiple-arrest record of her own, and the well-known estrangement from her father, always a generous supporter of police and other charities in Town, Tina was soon called in for questioning. She lied like a trooper, of course, saying she had not seen the painting in question since 2005. When confronted with evidence that she had sold it at auction in 2007, Tina said she was utterly "baffled" and claimed to have "no recollection of that," offering to swear to her innocence on a Bible. Since, of course, Bibles are somewhat scarce in the local cop shop, she did not get an opportunity to do this, thus perhaps avoiding, or at least postponing, an eventual reckoning with St. Peter.

When your scribe first knew Tina back in her younger days, when she and her mother were running Amfit, he and she always hit it off well together. She was fun to be around, easy on the eyes, and seemed to be a reasonably squared-away young lady. But things never "clicked" between us. Looking back, your scribe is unsure whether to be sad or glad of that fact. Perhaps, let's say, a little of both. Sad, because both our lives might have moved in different directions from the ones they took instead, and perhaps Tina would not be in such a pickle right now. Glad, because if these are her true colors shining through in today's headlines, it would not have been a happy relationship.

Tina, here's a word of advice from an erstwhile friend: Use your Bible for something else other than as a false prop to your obvious lack of innocence. Own up to the truth, apologize for what you have done, and turn over a new leaf. Read the story of the Prodigal Son, and think how your father must feel about his prodigal daughter. The lesson of Luke's parable is that it's never too late to make a change, and perhaps the best time of all to do so is when you have hit bottom.

"I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy [daughter]....'"

You know what happened next in the story, Tina. Perhaps it might happen in your own story, as well.

The (Not-So-) Local Media Are Losing Their Credibility...

2009-11-04T12:54:00.005-05:00

Though your scribe refers to the ever-shrinking (except in price) Yellowwich Time as the Local Rag, the fact is that it has now become the Not-So-Local Rag. It's published way up the line in Bridgeport or someplace, and the staff has been cut by something like 90%, if not more, and it really is a misnomer to connect it with the community of Greenwich any longer.

Case in point: their editorial endorsement in the late Town election was in favor of the late Lin-Lin Lavery, who ran so poorly that she finished fourth out of four and lost her seat on the Board of Selectmen (the sigh of relief that went up from Town Hall was audible a quarter of a mile away). Now, if the voters in Town so roundly repudiated the N-S-LR's choice, what does that tell you about their acumen in assessing community issues and thinking? That's right: it tells you that they're totally out of touch with the townspeople, and have no business whatsoever pretending to speak for them.

As readers of this column know, your scribe cordially despises the N-S-LR, and has been glad to watch from the sidelines as karma has caught up with Joe Pisani, Mike Sweeney, Bruce Hunter, and the rest of the rascals who once pretended to provide accurate and impartial news to the Greenwich community. May their fates be an object lesson to perverters of the truth everywhere, and their names be forever written out of the Book of Life.

Thus your scribe was somewhat surprised to find himself quoted in the Rag's election coverage. For well over a decade it has been written in stone that nothing Bill Clark says is ever to find its way into print in their pages. But...suppose he were the one watching closely just as the final district results were entered into the Excel page being projected onto the wall, and the first to do the math (which wasn't hard) and the first to shout, "She's off the Board!!" Meaning, of course, that Lin-Lin had lost her place on the Board of Selectman. Well, it seems the Rag couldn't resist quoting your scribe, even though they got it wrong (they forgot to capitalize "Board"). But wait. This was a direct violation of editorial policy. How could this happen?

Simple, dear reader. Your scribe was referred to merely as "a bystander", even though almost everyone in the room knew full well who he was. His blog has been setting new "hit" records on a daily basis since his campaign coverage began, and many people came up last night to tell him how greatly they enjoyed reading his coverage of Lin-Lin and her escapades.

Well, this cheap trick is about par for the course for Yellowwich Time. One even begins to wonder, in fact, if the editorial board decided to endorse Lin-Lin precisely because of your scribe's scathing coverage of her. It's not outside the realm of possibility, and in fact may be the only remotely logical reason to explain their otherwise pin-headed endorsement.

Likewise, the Greenwich (Dumb-as-a-) Post chose to endorse Lin-Lin as well. This pathetic excuse for a "local weekly" (which is not, of course, local at all, being also published somewhere up the line as part of an agglomeration of once-independent weeklies) has been reeling from pillar to, er, post in recent years. To make their ad pages appear fuller than they really are, they simply print a page or two a second time to bulk out the issue. One can only assume that they, too, are in pretty dire financial straits.

Once again, your scribe is tempted to wonder whether their endorsement of Lin-Lin had anything to do with his blog and its anti-Lin-Lin stance. Do you think, dear reader, that the increasing hit count is going to your scribe's head and warping his better judgment? Well, consider the following:

A few minutes ago your scribe was strolling over to Town Hall, and as he prepared to cross the street there was a loud nasal explosion that sounded for all the world like "Ach-*sshole". The source was the unlovely and porcine Ken-Ken Borksuck, crack investigative reporter for the aforesaid Greenwich (Dumb-as-a-) Post, who was loitering on the street corner like a bump on a log. As there were no cars coming, your scribe proceeded to cross the street, the better to get away from this apparent case of swine flu (or was it swine potty-mouth?). Behind him, he heard Ken-Ken's dulcet tones shouting after him, "Hey, Bill, jaywalking's a serious crime."

So is loitering with intent, thought your scribe to himself, as he continued imperturbably on his way. But once again he began to wonder to himself if Ken-Ken's overt hostility (and he has been doing these things on a regular basis ever since your scribe began to blog) was related in any way to the paper's endorsement of Lin-Lin. If your scribe had somehow been on an anti-Peter Tesei rampage, would the Dumb-as-a-Post have endorsed Peter instead?

Well, dear reader, we shall probably never know the full truth of these matters, and indeed, it hardly matters. The point is that the news coverage in this Town is slanted and inaccurate at best, and downright malicious at worst. And, as the recent political campaign has shown us, it's only getting worse.

Lin-Lin the Loser

2009-11-04T09:18:00.010-05:00

Well, of course she's always been a loser in your scribe's book, ever since the day she so rudely interrupted him on Greenwich Avenue as he was doing the Thursday New York Times crossword. As everyone knows, crosswords from that day on demand somewhat more concentration than, say, the Monday version, so your scribe was somewhat affronted by Lin-Lin's obtruding herself into his life that way - and without even a proper introduction. The rest of that day's story can be found at:

http://greenwich-gossip.blogspot.com/2009/07/lin-lin-lavery.html

And now, as everyone in Town already knows, she has suffered a well-merited and ignominious defeat at the hands of the voters of Greenwich. Just think, dear reader: if she hadn't bothered to campaign at all, she would probably have come in second or third. But no, she had to open her big mouth, and as a result she has finished a distant fourth.

This means, thank Heaven, that we are finally rid of Lin-Lin in Town politics. Her running mate, Drew Marzullo, garnered more votes than she did, and thus will represent the Democratic Party on the Board of Selectmen. Lin-Lin has been put out to pasture, for good, one hopes. Even the Democrats in this Town have more sense than ever to let her run for public office again.

One curious bit of news that came your scribe's way last night was that Lin-Lin had no fewer than three speeches prepared: one if she won, one if she lost, and a third in which she would announce her intent to challenge the election results. Truly, dear reader, this woman is delusional. In fact, her concession speech said, in part, "As I stand here tonight and look at all of you, I am a winner." Yeah, right, Lin-Lin.

Magnanimous as always, Lin-Lin went on to exhort her supporters as to how they should treat Peter Tesei in the next two years: "Give him Hell!" Wow! Talk about a gracious loser! Is this what they teach in the Junior League?

Perhaps the best comment on last night's results heard by your scribe came from Lt. James Heavey of the Greenwich Police Department. Jim, as many people know, is a Scoutmaster extraordinaire who has devoted his extracurricular time to promoting and supporting the Boy Scouts here in Town. His comment: "I guess character still counts for something here in Greenwich." Right on, Jim.

In other late-breaking election news, dark horse Carmella Budkins swept to victory in the Town Clerk's race. With her win, along with those of Peter Tesei and David Theis and Drew Marzullo, Greenwich is in good hands for the next two years.

Yesterday the Full Moon, Today the Election...

2009-11-03T16:53:00.003-05:00

Whatever the source of the craziness in the air, your scribe hastens to report a rare public sighting of Lee Whitnum, erstwhile contender for the US House of Representative seat presently held by Jim Himes. Like Lin-Lin, Lee-Lee was constantly yammering about more "debates", which both Jim and Peter have been wise enough to avoid.

Lee-Lee has her party clothes on. Do you think, dear reader, that she will be attending Lin-Lin's "victory" party tonight? Talk about the skeleton at the feast!

Local Rag Endorses Loser Lin-Lin, Hikes Price

2009-11-03T15:03:00.002-05:00

The indescribably pathetic Yellowwich Time, AKA the Local Rag (LR for short) is a never-ceasing source of wonderment. First, it endorsed Lin-Lin the Loud-mouthed Libeler as its candidate for First Selectman, and then it promptly raised its daily newsstand price from 75 cents to one dollar.

Just a few months ago, you could have bought a copy of the LR for a mere 50 cents. Two price hikes in one year? Wow! Bird-cage lining is getting pretty expensive these days.

Can you spot the signs of increasing desperation at the no-longer local Local Rag, dear reader? From utter abdication of editorial integrity to frantic firings to ludicrous price hikes, they are everywhere to be seen. Thank God the Hearst Corporation will soon be putting this sick puppy out of its misery.

More Lies From Lin-Lin

2009-11-01T14:01:00.003-05:00

When, oh when, will this endless stream of pathetic prevarications that keep arriving in your scribe's mailbox come to an end? The other day Lin-Lin seemed to suggest that her factual misstatements of the past were a "dead horse" and that we should "move on." But more dead horses have just come in the mail, and clearly Lin-Lin herself is unable to move on.

Let's look at some of the choice gems in Lin-Lin's latest, which features a series of "while you were out" telephone message slips. "Peter, this is at least the 4th time I have called to see if you are willing to debate me...I can only assume that you don't want to he held accountable for your actions and positions...." This, dear reader, is as clear-cut an example of a non-sequitur as you are likely to see in print. Peter knows from experience that Lin-Lin does not want to debate, but to engage in another mud-slinging contest. He has no interest in doing that again. And it has nothing to do with his willingness to be held accountable for his actions and positions.

Another "memo" asks, "As a member of the BET for 20 years, why didn't you prepare Greenwich for this fiscal crisis? It seems taxes have skyrocketed and Greenwich is still on [sic] a [sic] $8 million budget hole." So Lin-Lin is blaming Peter Tesei for the Wall Street meltdown? She thinks he should have seen this coming twenty years ago? What inanity is this?!

Nor have taxes "skyrocketed" - they have grown at the same modest 3-4% rate as historically set by the BET. And what is this nonsense about Greenwich being "on" an $8 million hole? Lin-Lin claims to have been an English teacher; it seems this part of her so-called resume is as suspect as some of the other false claims she has made.

And, of course, Lin-Lin trots out the "dead horse" yet again: "Please do not hire a personal friend [sic] with no experience [sic] to be our Dockmaster [sic]. Also, please remember that both Republicans and Democrats think that buying your pal [sic] a brand new boat [sic] with taxpayer dollars is unnecessary."

Those two sentences alone, addressed directly to Peter Tesei, are full of so many lies that Peter himself now has a prima facie case against Lin-Lin for libel.

Personally, Peter, your scribe suggests that you go for it. The procedure is simple: send Lin-Lin and her committee (including Brook Urban, who seems to be shilling for Lin-Lin by allowing her address to be used as the source of these scurrilous mailings) a letter (by certified mail or in-hand service by an indifferent person) demanding an immediate retraction. If none is forthcoming, file the complaint, to wit: "On or about October 30, 2009, in the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut, the defendant Lin Lavery mailed or caused to be mailed throughout the Town of Greenwich a brochure which clearly and repeatedly defamed the plaintiff, Peter Tesei...."

Peter, this is not a joke. Ask any lawyer (well, maybe not the mercurial Ed Krumeich) whether a case would lie against Lin-Lin for her lies and defamation. Dollars to doughnuts, they would confirm what your scribe has said, and you would win. Big. As in driving Lin-Lin right out of this Town forever, disgraced and perhaps even tarred and feathered, as she so richly deserves to be.

Lin-Lin's Mendacity: A Dead Horse?

2009-10-31T13:38:00.002-04:00

Well, apparently Lin-Lin thinks it is. Your scribe wonders if anyone else thinks so.

Lin-Lin Goes Off the Deep End

2009-10-30T09:08:00.005-04:00

Another day, another bundle of gaffes from Lin-Lin. How can this woman keep shooting herself in the foot so often and not keel over?

Today's story concerns a Town-wide mailing from Lin-Lin that accuses her opponent of "cronyism" - the very word your scribe used recently in regard to Lin-Lin herself. Once again, dear reader, we see her habitual projection at work.

And once again, it has come back to bite her in the bum. For it turns out that the subject of her accusation, the Town's new harbor master, had never met Peter Tesei until he was nominated for the post. "I wouldn't know Peter from a hole in the wall," says the harbor master. To which Peter adds, "I did not know him before he applied for this position."

But this, of course, makes no difference to Lin-Lin. "Peter has many friends, and [the harbor master] is very affable, and I thought they were friends," Lin-Lin whines. Someone on her campaign committee ought to tell her that her thinking something does not necessarily make it so. Quite the contrary, in fact, from what your scribe has been oberving recently.

But Lin-Lin refuses to back down. "My claims stand," she said petulantly, and went off to consult her hair stylist about her "do" for her swearing-in ceremony.

It gets worse, dear reader. Lin-Lin's mailing went on to say that "Peter Tesei hired a friend [sic] to be our dockmaster [sic], while we pay his salary." Oops. Dockmaster and harbor master are two different jobs. "A typo," Lin-Lin huffs. "So what if I can't spell. And who cares about the difference between a dock and a harbor? They're all down there by the water somewhere. Besides, I have more important things on my mind, like choosing my wardrobe for my coronation as First Selectman. Or is that Selectwoman? Hmmm...maybe I should learn to spell, after all...."

And who is the "we" who pay the harbor master's salary? Lin-Lin seems to suggest that we, the citizens of Greenwich, are paying the princely sum of $750 for the harbor master's annual stipend. Whoops! The harbor master's position is appointed by the Governor of Connecticut, not Peter Tesei, and his paltry $62.50 monthly salary is paid by the State. This is cronyism?!

OK, what else? Oh, yes, the "new boat for the dockmaster [sic]" that was purchased with "taxpayer money", according to Lin-Lin. But, it turns out, the Town already owned the boat. Oops. True, the Town spent around $2,900 to refurbish and repaint the boat to ready it for its new function. And guess who, dear reader, voted to spend that modest sum? Why, Lin-Lin herself, of course. Oh, my! Cronyism at work? You be the judge.

Peter Tesei sums up the whole brouhaha about Lin-Lin's mendacious mailing this way: "It's not reflective of the truth. To make such statements so irresponsibly...calls into question [her] judgment...behavior like that will get the Town into lawsuits."

Yes, Peter, it will. The harbor master apparently has no plans at the moment to sue Lin-Lin for her reckless, untrue, and slanderous statements, but if he chose to do so, he would have a pretty good case. Fortunately, for the moment Lin-Lin is still a private citizen, and thus only she and her campaign committee would be liable at this point. But what if by some unimaginable twist of a malevolent fate she were actually elected to be First Selectman? Then the Town might be impleaded as a co-defendant, and the taxpayer costs would really begin to take off. Can we afford to have Lin-Lin as First Selectman of the Town of Greenwich, dear reader? Your scribe tends to think not.

Finally, it is obviously high time to address the underlying problem here: Lin-Lin is congentially incapable of telling the truth, it seems. A shrink might conceivably diagnose her as a pathological liar, one who is unable to deal with objective truth as perceived by the rest of the world. And while he was at it, he might add denial to his diagnosis: "Everything I said earlier still holds," says an unrepentant Lin-Lin.

Yeah, right. Perhaps it's all still true in Lin-Lin's own little world, but the rest of us happen to know otherwise. Once again, Lin-Lin has managed to marginalize herself still further. Perhaps she ought to do the decent thing and drop out of the race now, before she embarrasses herself, her supporters, and the Town of Greenwich any more than she already has.

What Planet is Lin-Lin From?

2009-10-29T12:00:00.005-04:00

Every time your scribe thinks Lin-Lin can't make herself appear any more ridiculous than she already has done, she manages to surprise him anew. Harken, dear reader, to her latest absurdity, prominently featured on the front page of today's issue (dated tomorrow, for reasons not easily fathomed) of the local weekly, Greenwich Citizen:

"In just a few days, Greenwich voters will walk alone into their voting booths...."

Yikes! When was the last time Lin-Lin voted in an election here in Greenwich? The voting booths have long since been done away with, and now we fill out paper ballots that are optically scanned at the polling station exit to verify that we have not made any glaring errors, such as voting for both candidates for First Selectman.

Your scribe finds this very troubling, dear reader. Lin-Lin claims she is a viable candidate for First Selectman, but she doesn't even know the proper procedure for voting for herself?! There is something seriously amiss here.

Well, unlike her hasty revisions to her web site after your scribe called her out on the factual misstatements therein, Lin-Lin will not be able to redact retroactively her boo-boo in the Greenwich Citizen. She can't even buy up the entire print run in order to destroy it, since the paper is given out free of charge. But if you happen to see her emptying out the paper boxes along Greenwich Avenue and elsewhere in Town, dear reader, you will know the reason why....

In Which Your Scribe Almosts Loses His Lunch...

2009-10-27T13:26:00.006-04:00

From time to time, dear reader, your scribe graces the Greenwich Senior Center for lunch. Today's offering was a generous serving of roast turkey fresh off the bird, accompanied by stuffing, mashed potatoes, and petits pois, all smothered in giblet gravy. Yum! Plus, of course, a bowl of tasty vegetable soup, a fresh salad with lettuce and sliced red peppers and Russian dressing, and lime Jello with pears and whipped cream for dessert. Price for this delectable feast? All of $3, tax and tip included. The Senior Center is one of the great bargains in Town, and membership is free. All you have to do is to survive for half a century, and presto! you qualify. Nothing too difficult about that.

But the real price of the scribal lunch was far higher, alas. There was what appeared to be a crazy lady in gray wandering around, looking lost and uncertain. No one seemed to be talking to her, despite her basket of gaily-colored handouts and some kind of visual prop she was carrying in her hand.

"There's the crazy lady," your scribe said to his tablemate.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"There's the crazy lady. She lives in a world of her own making, in which she imagines things that never happened, and that have no correlation with what you and I think of as objective reality. Isn't that the clinical definition of crazy?"

"I suppose so," said the tablemate. "Is she the one running for office?"

This was a difficult question for your scribe to answer. "Well, she thinks she is," he replied at last. "But remember, she's living in her own world. It's hard to know what's really going on with her."

A short while later, a young woman came up to the table and began to solicit the tablemate's vote on behalf of Peter Tesei. Before long, your scribe heard her quoting his own blog post of four days previous. Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere, dear reader!

Your scribe finished his meal and bused his tray. As he left the Senior Center, feeling pleasantly full and relatively content, the last sight that met his eyes was Lin-Lin trudging through the rain, clutching her basket and her visual prop, utterly unattended by any of her minions, and looking every bit as gray as the weather. If you wonder why your scribe has been describing Lin-Lin as "increasingly marginalized", dear reader, this snapshot image says it all....

Lin-Lin the Liar?

2009-10-27T10:44:00.011-04:00

A curious thing has come to pass, dear reader. When your scribe blogged about "Lin-Lin the Time Traveler" four days ago, her web site clearly indicated that she was taking credit for "creating" Kids in Crisis. Your scribe found this to be something of an exaggeration, inasmuch as KIC was created some five years before Lin-Lin even came to Greenwich. But it seems that Lin-Lin herself reads your scribe's blog, because suddenly her web site no longer makes that claim.

Do you think, dear reader, that Lin-Lin has suffered a sudden attack of remorse for the way she stretched the truth? Don't count on it. Having been caught with her pants on fire, Lin-Lin has gone on the attack. An email from her opponent points out, quite rightly, that "in business, such a blatant distortion of the facts and falsehood on a resume would lead to termination of employment." But Lin-Lin apparently begs to differ.

"This behavior is shameful," she fulminates. She doesn't mean her own, of course; Lin-Lin knows she is perfect, just as her little circle of sycophants tell her each and every day. No, dear reader, Lin-Lin is indulging in a bit of projection here, and trying to cover up her own shameful behavior by saying that her opponent should be ashamed of calling attention to it. Excuse me? Is Lin-Lin back in kindergarten?

"I want it to stop," she says in her five-year-old tantrum voice. "He has accused me of lying." Well, not exactly. He, like your scribe, has merely pointed out the facts. Lin-Lin is the one calling herself a liar, it appears. Sometimes projection can boomerang right back at you.

In any war, the truth is always the first casualty. In the hostilities between Lin-Lin and her opponent (which she, be it noted, was the first to begin), the truth has suffered mightily up to this point. But truth will out, as Shakespeare pointed out over four hundred years ago. The Big Lie may work for a while, but in the end it crumbles under its own weight. See how it has fared in history at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie

And so Lin-Lin has revised her web site in an apparent effort to bring it somewhat closer to the truth. Or was it done merely to cover her tracks? Given Lin-Lin's track record in the Greenwich community over the years, your scribe is quite certain of the answer.

Greenwich United Way in Disarray?

2009-10-26T14:02:00.009-04:00

Well, they can't even unite well enough to set a fund-raising goal for the coming year. "We'll take whatever anyone wants to give us," seems to be the message. As a former professional fund-raiser who pulled together over $75 million for worthy causes over the years, your scribe finds this about the most pathetic "campaign" he has ever heard of.

Recently a secret source who code-names himself "Deep Greenwich" has been whispering in your scribe's ear as to why this might be so. It seems the local United Way has been focusing on a different campaign these days: that of the increasingly unpopular and marginalized Lin-Lin Lavery. They seem to have forgotten their roots as the former Community Chest, working in support of non-partisan charitable organizations here in our local Town, and to be now injecting themselves hook, line, and sinker into partisan political dogfights like low-income housing and stumping for Lin-Lin.

In the olden days, the IRS would have been quick to investigate such a change in their mission statement, and to pull their 501 (c) (3) certification forthwith. But the Federal government, too, is at sixes and sevens right now, what with Obama playing basketball and golf while Iraq goes up in flames and our well-meant but increasingly ill-advised military adventure in Afghanistan continues to go down the tubes. An historian might query whether any lessons at all have been learned from the British misdaventure there a hundred and fifty years ago, or the Soviet debacle in more recent times; but historians seem to be in short supply these days. "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it," as Winston Churchill once famously said.

Alas, even today there are still British troops in Afghanistan, fighting and dying for a cause no more winnable that that which wiped out the Light Brigade. Someone had blundered then, and others seem to be blundering now. And the Pashtuns still hate the Tajiks and the Turks and the Mongols, all of whom cordially hate them in return. Do we really think we can bring "peace" to such an environment? At the moment, the only people the local tribes hate more than each other are the foreign armies on their soil. Does this mean that we have managed to "unify" Afghanistan? Talk about a hollow victory!

But back to Lin-Lin and her pet board of advisors, i.e., the board of the Dis-united Way. Do you think it is appropriate, dear reader, for a local not-for-profit organization to be meddling in local politics? Would we allow this kind of behavior from the YWCA, or the YMCA, or the Bruce Museum, or the Greenwich Arts Council, or the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, or the Land Trust, or our local churches, or our local libraries, or any of the other organizations that make our Town such an outstanding place? Why, then, should we tolerate it from the Dis-united Way?

Your scribe does not presume to answer the question himself; he merely raises it for others to consider.

Lin-Lin the Time Traveler

2009-10-23T12:00:00.011-04:00

Einstein would be in awe of Lin-Lin's ability to bend the laws of space and time, not to mention the poor battered truth. Harken, dear reader, to the latest feat of the Amazin' Lin-Lin, She Who Would Lead the Town of Greenwich:

"Lin created Kids in Crisis, which has since helped thousands of children at risk of abuse and neglect and their families."

Or so it says prominently on Lin-Lin's web site. There's only one small problem with this, dear reader: Lin-Lin moved to Town in 1983. Kids in Crisis was created in 1978.

Oh, well, Lin-Lin is well-known around Town for playing fast and loose with the truth. Recently, she has been blaming her opponent for the world-wide financial meltdown of the past year or so. And pretty soon, no doubt, she will be telling us that she co-invented the Internet along with Al Gore.

It seems ludicrous, dear reader, that someone as mendacious and unreliable and inexperienced as Lin-Lin should be putting herself forward as a serious political candidate in this day and age. But maybe she figures that the voters of Greenwich are merely a bunch of sheep waiting to be led around by the nose, and that they don't really expect experience or integrity from their elected officials.

Is Lin-Lin right? Have the townsfolk of Greenwich become so uncritical in their thinking that Lin-Lin can spout her nonsense and nobody says boo to her?

In a way, it would be amusing if Lin-Lin somehow managed to get herself elected as First Selectman. Your scribe would give it no more than six months before the first petitions began to circulate to impeach her. And wouldn't that be a fun spectacle? Your scribe is unable to find any provisions of the Town Charter that might cover such an eventuality, but no doubt the Legislative and Rules Committee of the RTM could draft some suitable language for the purpose.

And then the RTM could enact the legislation, which might well include appointing itself as the body to hear and decide upon the charges. Such charges might include malfeasance, nonfeasance, cronyism, or just downright plain old incompetence. And then all work of Town government would stop for the weeks or months that it would take to address and resolve the charges against Lin-Lin.

On second thought, maybe it wouldn't be so amusing after all....

Update:

Since the link sent by "Anonymous Bob" appears not to work in the Comments section of this post, your scribe hereby moves Bob's message and the scribal reply up into the body instead:

2 Comments:

AnonymousBob said...
Hmmm...

Kids in Crisis wasn't actually called "Kids in Crisis" until 1995 though:
http://www.kidsincrisis.org/content/publish/aboutkic.shtml
October 23, 2009 1:38 PM

Bill Clark said...
Thanks for the link, Bob. You're right: the name change came in 1995. So maybe Lin-Lin could take credit for being around when Kids in Crisis took on its present name. But "creating" it? I don't think so....I hear that the folks at Kids in Crisis have made a number of telephone calls to Lin-Lin asking that she remove this specious claim from her web site. I am further told that Lin-Lin has not bothered to return any of them....
October 23, 2009 1:48 PM

Lin-Lin's Loose Lips: the Ghettos of Greenwich

2009-10-13T14:40:00.006-04:00

Ms. Abrasive Personality herself, the ineffable Lin-Lin Lavery, has stirred up more controversy by reportedly referring to two of Greenwich's affordable housing projects, Wilbur Peck and Armstrong Court, as "ghettos". Tone-deaf as she is, Lin-Lin apparently failed to realize that such political rhetoric in this day and age stinks - literally. You know the old joke, dear reader: how do you spell UP backwards? PU. Well, you can't get much stinkier (or PU) than Lin-Lin, it seems.

Of course, she can always try to deny that she actually said it, since the public record of the event at which she made her remark is inexplicably missing that two minute and thirteen second portion of the tape. Well, heck, that's peanuts in comparison with the eighteen and a half minutes that Rose Mary "Stretch" Woods managed to erase in the White House back in 1972; her feat (later shown to be between five and nine separate erasures) far surpasses the one by Paul "I could care less" Curtis in this latest modification of our Town's public records.

Your scribe was somewhat distressed when a long-term friend told him this weekend that he was utterly wrong about Lin-Lin, and that she was the sweetest, kindest, nicest, most wonderful person on earth. She didn't want to hear any evidence to the contrary. Well, perhaps she, too, thinks of our Town's public housing projects as "ghettos", despite her staunch religious convictions. If so, she will continue to stand by Lin-Lin. If not, perhaps she may offer your scribe an apology one of these days. (But he is not holding his breath.)

Meanwhile, there is an increasingly strident effort being made to get people to come to the "Greenwich Has Got Talent" show put on by the increasingly strident Chamber of Commerce (the more empty storefronts on Greenwich Avenue, the more they proclaim themselves as the solution to - rather than the source of - the problem; Josef Goebbels would be proud of how they have have leared to use his "Big Lie" technique, which you can read up on at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie). Well, whether or not "Greenwich Has Got Talent" is truth or falsehood, it is unquestionably a solecism of the first order, totally typical of the garbled level of discourse so ardently espoused by our local Chamber of Commerce over the past decade or so.

It should come as no surprise that Lin-Lin Lavery will be one of the exhibits on display at this "talent show". What is surprising is that Peter Tesei was incautious enough to agree to appear as well. Peter, if you don't already know it, Lin-Lin is sure to direct some more of her snide remarks at you that evening. It might be a good time to come down with the 24-hour flu, don't you think?

Of course, Lin-Lin will go on being as snide and abrasive and stinky as ever, whether Peter shows up or not. Frankly, he might do well to avoid getting down on Lin-Lin's level. Your scribe has mentioned before the old adage about why one should avoid mud-wrestling with a pig: you both get dirty, and the pig loves it.

Well, dear reader, it will probably not be long before Lin-Lin's remarks about the ghettos of Greenwich becomes front-page news in the national media. The missing sound bite will only add fuel to the fire. And this person is pretending to be a serious candidate for First Selectman? Only in Greenwich, dear reader, only in Greenwich....

Junque Mail from Lin-Lin Lavery

2009-09-30T14:45:00.002-04:00

Not content with pestering your scribe, whether on busy Greenwich Avenue or in the relative solitude of Calf Island, Lin-Lin has come up with a new way to try to get his attention: junk mail.

Imagine your scribe's chagrin when he pulled a piece of sheer puffery from his mailbox and read, "Lin-Lin does this...Lin-Lin does that...Lin-Lin is the best! Just ask me! P.S. Send money." Or words to that effect.

Your scribe peered at the address label, hopeful that it might read "Dear Occupant". But no - it had his very own name on it. Well, you've gotta give Lin-Lin credit for trying. If there are new and more annoying ways to torment people waiting to be discovered, Lin-Lin will come up with them.

So now your scribe has to head down to the Post Office, and try to file the postal equivalent of a restraining order against Lin-Lin. Will it work, dear reader? Stay tuned!

Here Today...

2009-09-24T11:36:00.002-04:00

What is going on at Town Hall, dear reader? On second thought, don't answer that. No one seems to know, as usual.

"I was really shocked," said First Selectman Peter Tesei when his new executive assistant quit after one day on the job. "Something went wrong," said Selectman Peter Crumbine, in a masterpiece of understatement. Lin-Lin Lavery could not be reached for comment; she was too busy checking out your scribe's social schedule in an attempt to find someone, anyone, who could finally introduce her to him.

Details are sparse, including the name of the fly-by-night quondam occupant of the slot. In typical Greenwich fashion, it seems that the wagons are being circled to deny his very existence. Indeed, history is apparently being rewritten: "accepted candidate declined," reads a cryptic e-mail from Town Hall. Oh, so he was only a candidate...he didn't actually spend a day on the job...move along, folks, nothing to see here....

One just never knows what to expect next in the Town of Greenwich, dear reader. Expect the unexpected, and you will never be disappointed, it seems.

French Organ Symphonies

2009-09-20T13:16:00.002-04:00

Saturday night saw one of the best organ recitals ever to be heard in Greenwich, and that's saying quite a lot when you factor in the many stunning performances given here in recent years. This time it was Kevin Estes, Minister of Music and Organist at the First Presbyterian Church, at the console, which had been brought forward and angled for perfect viewing. What a treat for ear and eye!

Kevin holds that the rich repertory of the French masters, Widor, Vierne, and Guilmant, ought to be heard as originally intended, that is, as complete works and not as piecemeal "ear candy". Thus he began with Widor's "Symphonie VI" in its entirety. The opening Allegro with its fiery block chords announces the dramatic themes of the Symphony, which are restated in riff after riff of stunning keyboard and pedalboard virtuosity. The Adagio is, by contrast, quiet, pensive, and arioso in character, reprising the same themes but in an entirely new and more introspective way. Widor continues this pattern with the Intermezzo, a scherzo-like series of further variations on the overall themes, making them light and playful. The Cantabile sets off the oboe solo voice against a background of soft flutes, reminiscent of Franck's "Prelude, Fugue, and Variation" in its tonality. Lastly, the grand Finale with its joyfully triumphant dotted rhythms presents us with yet another toe-tapping reworking of the major theme, as well as an exemplar of technical brillance on the part of both composer and performer. Kevin's performance was, in a word, stunning.

What made it all the more so was the impeccable percussion duo of Alan Johnson and Meg Piper, who highlighted the more dramatic passages with tympani and cymbal accompaniment. One could practically feel Widor himself jumping up and down in his grave with excitement at the way they made the music leap from the page right into the listeners' souls.

We needed to regroup emotionally after this exhilarating experience, and Kevin kindly obliged us with Vierne's Andante from Symphonie I. This is the piece that sets the stage, as it were, for his famous Final, a staple of the concert repertory; as Kevin told us, Vierne had a reputation as a kind and generous teacher, and this fluid piece, giving no hint of the fireworks to follow, seems to exemplify those characteristics.

"I lied," Kevin told us by way of introduction to the final selection, Guilmant's "Sonata I". It is not, of course, a "symphony" like the previous works he had played for us. And yet...Guilmant himself arranged it in symphonic form for organ and orchestra, so perhaps it is the title itself that is misleading, and not Kevin.

The Introduction and Allegro provided another opportunity for Alan and Meg to make the music sizzle as though with an electrical charge. The scoring being Guilmant's own, we were treated to the piece in perhaps its purest form, with the sonorous drama of the percussion but without the superfluity of a full orchestra. For Kevin himself made the organ sound so much like an orchestra that to have had an additional assemblage of strings and woodwinds and reeds would have been seriously redundant.

The lyric Pastorale was in A-B-A form, beginning with a quieter fughetta-like theme followed by a quasi-chorale on the vox humana, and then back to the main subject. Our heart rates were given a chance to return to normal.

But not for long. The Final is one of the major glories of French romantic organ music, but is not often heard, unless, of course, you come to the First Presbyterian Church on Easter Sunday. It is a non-stop roller-coaster of cascading sound that grabs you by the ear from the first chord to the last, with a few glimpses of acoustical heaven in between. Once again, Meg and Alan used the composer's own transcriptions to add brilliance and bravura to the music. The notes had barely ended before the first bravos were being shouted, and the audience rose to its feet in a standing ovation.

Kevin's performance - and Alan and Meg's, too, of course - was flawless. He seemed almost nonchalant as he played this gorgeous music, in an awesome demonstration of what the Italians call "sprezzatura" - making the hugely difficult seem as easy as pie, and not even breaking a sweat in the process. Your scribe does not think it too much to place Kevin in the first rank of American organists, for last night he surely earned his place in that pantheon. His consummate musicianship and unparalleled virtuosity are rarely seen at the parish church level, and we in Greenwich are extraordinarily lucky to have him.

Oops! There Goes Another Greenwich Ave Store

2009-08-29T12:27:00.002-04:00

No one is singing "High Hopes" on Greenwich Avenue these days. Just the opposite, in fact. The general mood ranges from lowered expectations to downright despair. Frequently, the thumb-twiddling staff persons outnumber the ever-sparser customers. Not a way for a business to make money, one would think.

Today's Oops! is Petit Patapon, a quondam purveyor of overpriced baby clothes with a European accent, which has suddenly papered over its windows and left Town in the dead of night. Your scribe went up to see if there was a Court Order taped to the door, like that of PP's quondam quondam rival a few storefronts south, Best & Co.; but no, dear reader, this one seems to be a voluntary closing. Well, as "voluntary" as shutting down a losing operation ever is.

Greenwich Avenue is looking more and more like an aging prizefighter, with ever-increasing gaps between the teeth. The local population stopped shopping there years ago, concomitant with the "mallification" of the Avenue, and the parvenues from out of state or up the line seem to be pulling in their horns these days. Huge swaths of empty parking places festoon the street on this Saturday morning, usually one of the busiest shopping times of the week. You could put a fleet of stretch limos from end to end along whole blocks today. That is, if you can find anyone who still has a fleet of stretch limos willing to lend them for the purpose.

If this epidemic of store closings continues, it won't be long until the number of empty storefronts on Greenwich Avenue surpasses those of the still ostensibly operating ones. And if you were somehow able to sneak a peek at the ledgers and separate the stores making money from the ones hemorrhaging it on a daily basis, the picture would be bleak indeed. No wonder the Chamber of Commerce plans to put on a comedy/variety show as a fundraiser this fall. It reminds your scribe of Nero's rumored fiddling while Rome burned. Well, the local C of C has always been good for a laugh or two, and one supposes that they are merely trying to trade on their steadily-diminishing assets as their membership continues to decline precipitously. They've already laid off most of their staff, but somehow the ineffable Mary Ann Morrison continues to wander around Town, busily trying to look busy while doing absolutely nothing of consequence visible to the naked eye.

Eventually, things will turn around. They always do. But for the moment, the momentum is downward, and shows no signs of easing. Stay tuned for news of the next casualty!

Greenwich Post's Novel Idea to Deal with Lack of Advertisers

2009-08-20T14:10:00.003-04:00

Yes, dear reader, that perennial laughingstock of Greenwich journalism, the Greenwich (dumb as a) Post, has come up with a great idea to cover up its shrinking advertising base: simply print the same page twice. In today's (August 20) edition, you will find page 13A is duplicated on facing pages, creating an interesting sense of deja-vu. Your scribe even read the column of the Market Witch twice, only to discover that the inane twaddle of Ms. Clark (no relation, thank Heaven) did not improve upon further acquaintance. Herewith a typical Orwellian fantasy from her pen:

"In order for real estate markets to continue to stabilize and improve...." Huh? The real estate market has stabilized? And is improving? What do you suppose they put in their tea over at the Greenwich (dumb as a) Post? Everything your scribe has read recently suggests that the diametrical opposite is true. But of course there's never a competent real estate blogger around when you need one: Chris Fountain has "gone fishing" and closed down his blog for the nonce. Still, you may want to see what he has to say about the matter when he deigns to return and take up his pen again. You can follow him at:

http://christopherfountain.wordpress.com/

In the meantime, your scribe is kicking himself for having missed the dramatic turn-around in the real estate market, not to mention the fact that he cannot find a pair of 3-D glasses to see if there's a hidden message in the doubly-printed page. Without them, he's getting double vision, not to mention a headache from all the non-sequiturs in the Market Watch column. The headache only gets worse when he starts to wonder which market, in fact, is being watched: the actual one, or a fantasy creation of the Greenwich (dumb as a) Post?

And then, of course, the answer comes: your scribe now recalls that this is the not-so-brilliant paper that actually fired Chris Fountain for daring to write the truth about the coming real estate debacle which continues to threaten to bankrupt the country. Of COURSE they're going to find someone to say the opposite of what Chris said - after all, their advertisers demanded it. The advertisers, that is, who apparently no longer advertise, and thus have forced the paper to print the same page twice rather than simply leave it blank. What was it Hamlet said about the ungodly being hoist by their own petard? Or in this case, perhaps, hoist by their own canards.

Hurry back, Chris! Greenwith hath need of thee.

The New Cop Shop

2009-08-18T13:05:00.002-04:00

Today your scribe toured the new Public Safety Complex, better-known locally as the "Police Palace". It comprises some 50,000 square feet +/-, he was told. Included are two bunk bedrooms (one for the lady officers, one for the gentlemen), a handful of bathrooms, a couple of showers, and, of course, the jaccuzzi in the chief's office.

Oh, yes, and a number of cells, each with its own stainless steel toilet. So actually we could be talking a couple of dozen "bedrooms" and "bathrooms" here, if your definition thereof isn't too high-falutin'.

The health club and locker rooms are patterned after those of some of the local country clubs, if with perhaps a few fewer amenities. The rooftop swimming pool has not yet been installed, having apparently fallen victim to various budgetary cuts along the way. But the view from the roof is quite extensive, ranging all over downtown Greenwich and across to Long Island. The chief's penthouse, also incomplete as of this writing, will have a panoramic 360-degree view, the better to keep an eye on the comings and goings of the citizenry of Greenwich.

Your scribe's question about the architectural style went unanswered. There's a certain classical Roman feel ab0ut the building, noticeable in the windows and the two-story atrium, as well as in the feeling of raw power exuding from the stonework. Albert Speer would probably not have felt out of place here. The "fortress Greenwich" feeling is reinforced by a plethora of bullet-resistant glass and a "sally port" which is somewhat like a medieval portcullis, operating sideways instead of vertically. Overlooking the walled courtyard thus created are the windows of the law offices of Ivey, Barnum and O'Mara, where no doubt the lucky attorneys will be able to have first pick of the potential clients brought in through the sally port.

This is not your parents' cop shop. It is massive, high-tech, and built to withstand power failures, hurricanes, telephone outages, and the onslaughts of angry mobs. If Louis XVI had had this building instead of the Bastille, he would never have lost his head.

At the moment, the sheer institutionalism of the structure leaves your scribe somewhat cold. But maybe that's because it's still largely empty and uninhabited. There will be a public ribbon-cutting ceremony on August 24th at ten a.m. If you are in the area, dear reader, you may want to attend and form your own opinions. It is, of course, the product of your taxpayer dollars at work.

Another Vacant Storefront on Greenwich Avenue...

2009-08-15T10:45:00.003-04:00

Here yesterday, gone today - such is the saga of 16 Greenwich Avenue, which suddenly has "For Rent" signs plastered in its windows. Your scribe couldn't even remember what product had been sold there the day before, and had to ask a neighbor for information. Women's bathing suits, as it turns out - well, no wonder your scribe was not a regular customer.

This particular storefront has had perhaps the highest turnover rate of any on Greenwich Avenue. No one seems to last there for more than just a handful of years. Is it jinxed? One begins to wonder.

Let's see: there used to be a travel agent there for a while. And a sweater shop. And a chocolate shop. Perhaps the most interesting tenant was the Meserve-Coale gallery, which used to offer genuine Renoirs and Utrillos for sale. How often do you get a chance to see real works of art up close, dear reader? Your scribe was sad to see the gallery go....

And what will be next? Will the massage parlor upstairs in the building next door take advantage of the vacancy, and move in? Will some new chain store try to make a go of life on Greenwich Avenue, when so many others are turning tail and leaving? Or will, perhaps, the landlord look for a local tenant, a family-owned business that is here for the long haul, a purveyor of goods or services who believes in the personal touch and will help to start the renaissance of the Avenue?

Let's hope for the best, dear reader. If there is a silver lining to the current economic recession, it is that we have a chance, at last, to reclaim the Avenue for the citizens and merchants of the Town. The outsiders have been and gone, or are going soon; let's put the "Greenwich" back in Greenwich Avenue.

Dog Days on the Avenue

2009-08-10T14:39:00.003-04:00

Today is the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures up in the 90s. If you were driving an 18-wheeler down Greenwich Avenue and wanted to park, you could pull right up next to the curb in more than a dozen locations. Half the Town is away in Nantucket or Maine, and the other half are sitting by the pools at their clubs or riding the Island Beach ferry. No one is shopping.

And particularly not at Georg Jensen, which closed its doors for good on Saturday. Today all the remaining merchandise is being boxed up for return to New York. Good riddance, says your scribe.

Is the era of the chain stores on Greenwich Avenue finally coming to an end? The signs are hopeful. Quite a few have already gone, and the ones that remain can hardly be turning a profit, given their high overhead and low foot traffic. Indeed, it is a wonder that there are not more empty storefronts than the record number we already have. If one could look at the balance sheets behind the storefronts, it might quickly become evident that many of them are hemorrhaging some serious money on a daily basis.

It will be interesting to see what Greenwich Avenue looks like in another three to six months. Will things start to improve, or will they continue to deteriorate? At the moment, the trend is continuing downward. Even the pretty neon lights that used to beautify the Avenue's massage parlor are gone, no doubt as a cost-cutting measure. Times are tough all over.

"STORE CLOSED DUE TO FLOOD"

2009-08-06T17:03:00.004-04:00

So read the handwritten sign in the doorway at Vineyard Vines on Greenwich Avenue this afternoon. Not long after, however, it was replaced by a pair of dark red legal notices proclaiming the premises to be dangerous and unsafe. No whale hats for Whaleheads today.

As the staff milled around outside the store while the fire department investigated the cause of the leak that had dirty brown water dripping from overhead both inside and outside the store, your scribe heard one of them ask another, "Do you think we should call Shep and Ian?" Gee...ya think?

And in fact, Shep did show up later in the proceedings. Reportedly, the quick-acting staff had managed to move most of the merchandise out of harm's way, so your scribe's hopes of buying a slightly waterlogged bathing suit at a deep discount were rudely dashed.

Tom Torelli, who manages the rental properties in the building, was also milling about, perhaps wondering how this might affect relations with the tenants. Probably put something of a damper on them, your scribe suspects.

Eventually, the fire trucks went away, and things quieted down. But for the moment, at least, we have yet another closed storefront on Greenwich Avenue.

"Is My Daughter-in-Law Going to Jail?" Part IV

2009-08-04T15:24:00.004-04:00

Your scribe has already posted thrice on this topic, and you may find these earlier posts at:

http://greenwich-gossip.blogspot.com/search?q=is+my+daughter-in-law

Now comes the news that Jen is newly-engaged to be married. Well, why not? The official mourning period of a year is long since past, and to judge by the reports of their last few minutes together, the couple's marriage would have ended in divorce very soon after their return from their not-so-blissful honeymoon cruise. The only wonder, from your scribe's standpoint, is that she has waited so long before trying again.

So no, George, the answer to your question is that Jen is not going to jail; she's going down the aisle again instead. One hopes she has better luck this time.

The Lights Are Going Off On Greenwich Avenue...

2009-08-03T14:01:00.003-04:00

Well, perhaps not all of them, but those pretty neon lights at the massage parlor above Greenwich Avenue are now history. Yes, dear reader, the Avenue today is a drearier place than it was only last week.

How can this have happened? Is it possible that someone at Town Hall read your scribe's posts and sent out the Tackiness Troopers to pull the plug? Well, it is a matter of verifiable fact that your scribe's first post on the matter broke all previous records for "hits" on Greenwich Gossip - even the "Randy Reverend", Tom Tewell, ran a poor second to the massage parlor's neon lights.

Your scribe was chatting with a friend on the Avenue a few minutes ago; we were bemoaning the current state of Greenwich Avenue. "My son grew up here," she said, "and when he came back recently he said it looked like Dresden after the war." We both agreed that the Avenue has never looked so down-at-heel since time immemorial, since when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.

And now the one splash of color in our Town's increasingly drab and dreary main thoroughfare is gone. Your scribe blames only himself for the loss. He foolishly forgot the power of the blogosphere, and that there are people out there who actually read his deathless prose and take it to heart. Who'd'a thunk it?

Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls...

2009-07-30T13:42:00.004-04:00

...since, as faithful readers of this column already know, it tolls for Greenwich Avenue. Now your scribe understands why the bells at St. Mary's toll so lugubriously at noon every day. They're ringing the death-knell for the Avenue.

The latest empty storefront is that of Georg Jensen. Well, it's not quite empty yet, but give it a couple of weeks or so. Rumor has it that prices are being discounted by about three-fourths, if you don't mind buying an item that cannot be returned or serviced locally. The wise shopper will remember Thomas Jefferson's adage: "Never buy what you don't want just because it is cheap."

Your scribe recalls with fondness the old days when that storefront was The Video Station, where you could rent a movie and buy nibbles from one of the then-numerous family-owned businesses on the Avenue. Then the gentrification of Greenwich Avenue began, chasing away such favorites as Al Franklin's, the Greenwich Drug Store, the Yellowbrick Road, C'est Si Bon, the Cheese Shop, Finch's, and so on and so forth.

And now, dear reader, welcome to the de-gentrification of Greenwich Avenue. Scattered amongst the proliferating empty storefronts you can now find a Psychic with a handsome brass plaque out front telling you everything you may care to know about "Psychic's" [sic]. This particular seer may be able to read the future, but is apparently unable to read the dictionary.

Not far away is the lovely massage parlor, whose blinking neon lights advertise its cut-rate services - only $55 for 60 minutes, can you imagine! That's gotta be cheaper than the tony day spas that have been invading the Avenue in recent years. Once you tear the heart out of a community in the name of greed, you have started down a slippery slope to which there is no end, it seems.

And so, dear reader, the bells at St. Mary's will continue to toll, and Greenwich Avenue will continue its decline into not-so-genteel shabbiness. What a pity! We used to have such a nice downtown here. And then the chain stores started to invade, like kudzu, and pretty soon all the charm and character of the Avenue disappeared. We were left with an open-air mall.

And now the mall is closing, and we are left with...what? A few family-owned businesses that have managed to hold on, an ever-increasing bunch of empty storefronts, and a plethora of empty parking spaces. What a blessing that we didn't build the mammouth parking garages that the Chamber of Commerce was so fervently championing a few years ago. Can you spell "white elephant", dear reader?

No doubt more chain stores will be closing before the end of the summer. Your scribe will continue to perambulate the Avenue and report back. Stay tuned....

UPDATE 7/31/09

Well, it's now official, folks. As though to validate your scribe's post of yesterday, today Georg Jensen sports a large sign on the front door announcing their closing...er, consolidation, as they call it. And yup, take whatever you want at 75% off. Just remember Jefferson's advice....

More Blight Comes to Greenwich Avenue

2009-07-23T14:21:00.003-04:00

Greenwich Avenue is getting uglier by the day, it seems. Today your scribe noticed that 353 Greenwich Avenue, the former home of the popular Bon Ton Fish Market, is all boarded up with a bright red STOP WORK order nailed on the front. Somebody somewhere has goofed, it seems. Empty storefronts - of which there are many downtown - are not very attractive, but boarded-up ones with stern legal notices are downright gross. Once again, your scribe's tongue-in-cheek prediction that Greenwich Avenue may turn into a ghost town seems to be becoming an ever more likely possibility.

What a pity that greedy landlords have forced so many stores out of business over the past year or so! Now, of course, many of them are lowering their once-obscene demands, but the damage has been done. Not even in the Great Depression, one suspects, have there ever been so many empty storefronts on Greenwich Avenue.

And the downward trend seems poised to continue. As your scribe watched in astonishment, the one apparent remaining employee at Baccarat locked the front door at 1:10 PM, smack dab in the middle of the shopping day, and headed down the Avenue on some mission of her own. Now, we all know that no one shops there anymore, if they ever did; but what kind of message does the locked door send to potential browsers? "We don't want your business," the locked door seems to say. "Go away and stay away."

Well, it seems unlikely that Baccarat will be around in this Town for much longer. Your scribe would place a modest bet that the store has been hemorrhaging money for years, so maybe it makes sense just to lock the doors and stop throwing good money after bad.

Further up the street, your scribe was surprised to see Greenwich Avenue's first flashing neon sign advertising a massage parlor. Red, green, blue, and orange neon, to be precise - rather pretty, actually, but perhaps more suited to the Las Vegas Strip than once-tony Greenwich Avenue. And if you are curious, dear reader, about the parlor's rates, they are spelled out in handsome red duct tape: $55 for 60 minutes.

How much seedier will Greenwich Avenue get before the deterioration comes to an end - if, in fact, it ever does? At the moment, the trend is far from hopeful. Stay tuned.

RIP Walter Cronkite 1916-2009

2009-07-20T15:23:00.007-04:00

Your scribe wrote his first novel just over a year ago. The action ranges far and wide, from Greenwich to London and back again. Many topics are discussed, including attempting to make peace with the Muslim world centuries after the disastrous events of the First Crusade and the bloody conquest of Jerusalem in 1099.

A brief recap: the hero meets the heroine, who is a TV news reporter. They fall in love, marry, parent, and embark on a series of adventures together. Five more books ensued in quick succession. Such is the writing life.

Here is an excerpt from the first book, which was written in early July of 2008, just a year before Cronkite’s death:

“Do they have a bathroom on this island?” she asked. This time I was the one to take her hand, and led her over to the lavatories. “Don’t go away,” she said as she went in. As if, I thought to myself.

When she came out she was composed and ready to get down to business. “Castles,” she said—“let’s talk castles.”

“Yours or mine?” I asked, and she smiled again.

“We’ll start with yours, and see if we share any architectural ideas in common.” So I told her about the brick Georgian house set on two acres and filled with bookshelves.

“Nice,” she commented. “How much are we talking for that?”

“About five million, give or take,” I replied. “And I have a pretty good idea in what section of town to find it.”

“Okay,” she said. “What about the other twenty mill?”

“ What was that Thoreau quote again?” I said, although we both remembered it perfectly well. It took her only a second or two.

“Oh,” she said, “a foundation! What a great idea! What will you use it for?”

“Well, first I’ll need to set up an advisory board to help to decide that,” I said with a wink. “Would you like to be the first member?”

She clapped her hands, perfectly willing to play the game. “Of course! Let’s see…the arts, naturally—painting, music, drama, writing—they’re the lifeblood of any civilization.”

“Good,” I said. “How about support for education—scholarships, travel grants, teaching fellowships?”

“Absolutely,” she agreed. “What level of education are we talking about?”

“All levels,” I replied. “Any level where a mind can be opened and expanded by the judicious application of eleemosynary funds.”

She laughed again, and again I thought how much I loved to hear that sound. “Great! So if Mrs. Grundy’s third grade class wants to visit the Bronx Zoo, we can charter a bus and pay their admission fees and off they go.”

“That’s it,” I said, enjoying as before her use of the first person plural. Maybe she thought my offer of a slot on the foundation’s board was in jest, but I knew that it wasn’t, and that I’d made an excellent choice.

“What about the application form?” she asked.

“Just a one-page letter,” I replied. “Tell us in one page what you want to do and why, and how much you think it may cost. We can always ask for detailed budgets and résumés and all that stuff later on, once we approve of the general idea.”

“That’s pretty straightforward,” she said. “Do you think something that simple will really work?”

“Why not?” I replied. “It’s our foundation, and we can run it any way we want to.” Two can play at first person plural usage, but she seemed not even to notice. Maybe she didn’t think I’d been joking, after all.

We spent another half-hour putting the foundations under the foundation, so to speak, and Sarah was beginning to look peckish. “Lunchtime,” I said, and we headed over to the refreshment stand. Food always tastes better at the beach, and with my new best friend-slash-cousin at my side it tasted better still. We each had a cheeseburger, and I showed her how to take a frozen Charleston Chew bar and slap it down sharply on the counter to fracture it into bite-size pieces.

“Yum,” she said through the sticky nougat and chocolate confection. “They taste much better this way.” This is a woman of refinement and discrimination after my own heart, I thought.

“So how will you get from here to there?” she asked, reverting to her reportorial role. I told her about my conversations with Lawyer Lee, and how he was already drawing up the papers for the tax-exempt status. She asked how the mechanics of cashing the ticket would work, and I explained my idea of hiring a limo for the three of us to drive to lottery headquarters.

“What about my cameraman?” she asked.

“He can follow us in the van so that he can broadcast live,” I said.

“Great idea,” she said, and squeezed my hand. “You have this all planned out, don’t you? No wonder it took you so long to call me.”

“Well, there are still lots of details to iron out,” I said. “Can we run a foundation from a residence without running into zoning or neighborhood issues? How big should the board be? What should be our scope—townwide, countywide, statewide? Not nationwide—twenty million is pretty small potatoes in the foundation world.”

“Small board,” she said. “Let’s get people who are professionals in their field—local artists and teachers and musicians. And let’s keep the focus local as well—better to make a big difference in a small pond than to have our benevolence lost in a large lake.”

“I like your thinking,” I said, and she looked at me thoughtfully. Sarah was nobody’s fool.

“You’d already decided that, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, but I needed a second opinion. That’s why I’m glad you’re on the board. My offer was serious, by the way.”

“So was my acceptance,” she said promptly. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Then the conversation drifted back to our personal histories. She had attended Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, followed by Columbia College and School of Journalism. Her parents still lived in Wethersfield. She had a condo in Glenbrook, at the eastern end of Stamford. She loved her job and dealing with people. She loved books and words and ideas. Walter Cronkite was her journalistic hero.

“You’re too young to know about him,” I said.

“ Nonsense,” came her answer. “We studied him in journalism school. Great reporting is timeless.” I had no reply to that. She was obviously right.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Winning-Lottery-William-J-Clark/dp/1436375789/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248117957&sr=8-1

It is doubtful that Walter Cronkite himself ever read these words. Your scribe met him once many years ago, at the Union Club in New York City, and his deep, rich voice thrilled your scribe to the core. It was a moment never to be forgotten, and thus your scribe paid tribute to him in his first novel.

Walter Cronkite was not merely Sarah’s journalistic hero; he was America’s journalistic hero. He could easily have become president, but was too modest to run for office. He was one of the greatest Americans of our time, and indeed, of all time.

Lin-Lin Follow-Up

2009-07-18T13:22:00.003-04:00

Some people just don't get the message. As your scribe was perambulating a wooded path on an island off the coast of Greenwich this morning, he heard noises from in back of him to the effect that "Hey, Bill, we have so been properly introduced, and it happened at Christ Church."

The speaker, of course, was Lin-Lin Lavery, who now seems to be intent on pushing herself onto your scribe whenever their paths happen to cross. Your scribe does not subscribe (as it were) to this sort of childish behavior, and so he merely ignored Lin-Lin's words. Can't the woman take a hint?

As to the veracity of her assertion about a prior introduction, your scribe considers it suspect, particularly in light of her contrary assertion on Thursday that "we haven't formally met yet." This last agrees fully with his own recollection, and he has none whatsoever of a prior face-to-face encounter with Lin-Lin. If such an encounter did in fact occur, he has undoubtedly repressed it; but it is extremely unlikely that it ever did. He and Lin-Lin do not travel in the same circles, never have, and undoubtedly never will.

What will be her next step, one wonders? A signed affidavit from the person who supposedly introduced us? A doctored photograph purporting to show us shaking hands? Your scribe can hardly wait.

Meantime, Lin-Lin continues her habit of injecting herself uninvited into every possible situation that presents itself. When Peter Tesei was asked to unveil a sign this morning, Lin-Lin leaped into the photo op, saying "Oh, we do everything together." The sour grimace on Peter's face said it all. Luckily, his wife Jill was not present, or she might have bopped Lin-Lin then and there.

And so, dear reader, life in the Town of Greenwich goes on its merry way, in spite of the efforts of Lin-Lin to make herself the focal point of everyone's attention. If she should accost you, too, dear reader, simply do as your scribe does and ignore her. Perhaps eventually she'll go away and play in her own sandbox instead of trying to invade yours.

Lin-Lin Lavery

2009-07-17T09:27:00.019-04:00

As your scribe was peacefully doing his New York Time Times crossword puzzle yesterday morning on the stone wall in front of St. Mary's, he was startled to hear a loud female voice saying, “Hi, Bill Clark, what’s happening?” The speaker was Lin-Lin Lavery, the pushy Selectman of the Town of Greenwich who seems actively to enjoy injecting herself into situations where she is uninvited and unwanted. Prior to this unexpected encounter, her demeanor towards your scribe had been one ranging from simply ignoring him to downright avoidance of him. Which was fine by him. So what could account for this abrupt change in her behavior?

Frankly, your scribe had absolutely no interest in finding out. He has heard eoungh comments around Town recently about Lin-Lin’s habitual rudeness, and here she was in the flesh demonstrating the truth of those assertions. Reluctantly, your scribe lowered his newspaper to ponder the situation.

"What's happening?" What kind of inane question is that, anyway? Was she perhaps asking about the local scene (it's Sidewalk Sales Days, duh), the national scene (messy), or perchance the international scene (even messier)? The most obvious answer, of course, would have been to say that she was inconsiderately interrupting your scribe's train of thought, but he is too well-bred to have done so.

”We haven’t formally met,” she said next to your scribe, thus stating the screamingly obvious. So why, then, was she noisily accosting him like this without a proper introduction? Doesn’t the Junior League have rules about that sort of thing? Had she been with your scribe at the Palace a month ago, and behaved thusly with the Queen, she would have been unceremoniously tossed out on her ear.

Lin-Lin had been written up in the Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time, that same morning for having attacked the First Selectman, Peter Tesei, for the fact that some senior citizens in Town have been denied tax relief. Since the decision to cut back the program was made by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, not by the First Selectman, her attack was more than a bit of a non-sequitur. Peter's comment was, ""Sounds like a lot of cheap political rhetoric from a politician." Bingo, Peter.

And thus, given Lin-Lin’s less than savory, not to say deteriorating, reputation around Town, your scribe had absolutely no interest in changing the current status between himself and her. So he simply replied, “I know we haven’t. Let’s leave it that way.”

The look on her face was priceless, dear reader: surprise, astonishment, disbelief, denial, and anger passed over it in quick succession. “Well!” she huffed. And then,“Have a nice day.” Which, as everyone knows, is cop-speak for “F**k you,” usually said after handing out a ticket to an errant motorist. Our non-introduction was complete. She marched away in high dudgeon, and your scribe returned his attentions to his newspaper.

And thus, dear reader, it took your scribe a few minutes longer than usual to complete the Times crossword puzzle yesterday, the theme of which turned out to be, "It adds up." Yup. That made sense. Everything he had heard about Lin-Lin's boorish, arrogant, and self-centered behavior was true. As he now had had occasion to see for himself. It all added up.

Such a pity that her stint at the Junior League does not seem to have taught her any manners. Well, it's too late now. She has made her bed in the Town of Greenwich, and now she must lie in it. And, like the national and international situations, it seems to be getting messier by the day.

Bastille Day in Greenwich

2009-07-14T09:53:00.005-04:00

As has been the case for a number of years now, a small but heavyweight group of Greenwich residents gathered in front of Town Hall to raise the Tricolor and sing "La Marseillaise". The weather was warm and picture-perfect, as was every aspect of the ceremony itself.

The French flag was raised by Henri-Pierre Gerin and his grandson Sofiane, who came all the way from Annecy, France to be with us today. Henri-Pierre is the uncle of Jean-Louis Gerin, who of course is the famous Greenwich restauranteur of eponymous fame. Mme. Chantal Chauvin, Adjunct Consul-General of France in New York, was with us for the fifth and final time. As always, she told us of various events in the long history of Franco-American friendship, and made us feel glad that France is one of our closest friends. Next year, she mentioned, she will be in Marrakesh. Presumably she is moving up the diplomatic food chain, and we wish her well.

Then it was off to Meli-Melo for crepes, coffee, and freshly-squeezed orange juice, as well as viennoiseries from Versailles, donated in honor of the late founder and proprietor Maurice Versailles. Among the many local residents who crowded into this perenially popular Greenwich bistro were First Selectman Peter Tesei, the mercurial Ed Krumeich, singer and songwriter JD Southard, and many members of the Alliance Francaise. Accordion music was provided by Corinne Kuzma http://corinne-kuzma.com/ of the Cirque du Soleil.

Your scribe permits himself only one crepe every two years, as the Greenwich Bastille Day event alternates between Meli-Melo and Restaurant Jean-Louis. This year's was as delicious as ever. Merci, Marc!

The Demise of Greenwich Radio?

2009-07-06T10:21:00.005-04:00

As usual, your scribe tuned his radio to 1490 on the AM dial this Monday morning, expecting to hear at least a semblance of local Greenwich news. Nope. Not today. Nor has the website been updated since Friday.

Have we lost our local radio station? It was never all that great, but at least it provided an alternative to the increasingly hapless - and hopeless - Local Rag, aka Yellowwich Time.

Well, maybe there's no news to report today. Or maybe another once-local business has gone belly-up. Time will tell - but the Local Rag and the local radio station may not. Never very reliable to begin with, it now seems they're falling off the map. Well, in the case of the latter, at least the airwaves.

UPDATE on Tuesday morning:

Well, it seems that the locals were just taking a day off. Perhaps they confused the 6th with the 4th, or perhaps they felt that since the Fourth fell on a Saturday, they would take their holiday on Monday instead. In any case, the usual format was back today, full of the usual mostly irrevelant stories. But even an irrelevant story is better than none. At least it tells us that the Town of Greenwich is still alive and kicking.

The Closing of Greenwich Avenue, Cont'd.

2009-06-30T11:24:00.003-04:00

Word comes today via the Connecticut Post that Best & Co. is in bankrupcy. Local resident Susie Hilfiger bought the brand and opened the store a dozen years ago, and then sold it two years ago to FAO Schwarz (the founder of which used to live in Greenwich, where his mansion and property are now part of the campus of Greenwich Country Day School). Schwarz was bought out by Toys 'R' Us, which has thrown Best & Co. under the bus.

Long story short, yet another gaping hole in the increasingly toothless facade of Greenwich Avenue. Who's next? Stay tuned....

The Closing of Greenwich Avenue

2009-06-26T09:42:00.004-04:00

Greenwich Avenue is closed for business. Well, almost. Three more local merchants have decided to shutter their doors this week, and no doubt more are soon to follow. Will Greenwich Avenue, as your scribe once predicted in jest, become a ghost town in actuality?

The trend suggests that it's a very real possibility. This week we're saying goodbye to The Knitting Niche, Cocoon, and The Red Studio. Guy Flichy is rumored to have moved his antiquities business to Dubai. The old Marks Brothers store, once a mainstay of the Avenue, has been vacant for many months, ever since Wendy Gee pulled up stakes and left. Chilibear has moved to Old Greenwich. J. L. Rocks is closed, although your scribe continued to hear ads on the radio station for them until recently. Gives one a rather spooky feeling, it does.

Even Greenwich Magazine has moved to Westport. There is more vacant space on Greenwich Avenue and environs these days than probably at any time in history. Even during the Depression, the local businesses mostly stayed in business, as people still needed clothes and shoes and groceries and staples. No frou-frou shoppes on Greenwich Avenue in those days.

Will the trend towards more and more vacancies continue? You betcha. Even though landlords are suddenly willing to be more reasonable in terms of rent (one hears whispers of 50% discounts), there are simply no takers. And many, if not most, of the stores along Greenwich Avenue are hemorrhaging money left and right. For them, it's simply a matter of time....

We used to have such a nice Town center. Mike Guerrieri, who cut the young lad George Herbert Walker Bush's hair (and much later, your scribe's, for the princely sum of six dollars), The Yellow Brick Road toy store, the beloved Cheese Shop, the old Greenwich Hardware store with sawdust on the floor, D. W. Rogers, Woolworth's...the list goes on and on. All of them fell victim to the frou-frou shoppe mania of the last few decades. The Chamber of Commerce was complicit in the rising bubble of commercial real estate by encouraging more and more chains to come to Town, driving up rents and forcing the small local businesses to close.

We have sown the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind. The chains are closing, one by one, and slinking away with their tails between their legs. And they are leaving us with, if not exactly a ghost town, a Town that is only a ghost of its former self. Quam mutatus ab illa civitate...

Dateline: London...Report on the Queen

2009-06-09T07:13:00.002-04:00

Your scribe has been somewhat taciturn of late, for the reason that he has been travelling (all spelling in this post will be according to British usage, in order to satisfy the Queen's spell-checkers). The weather in London is cloudy, with intermittent light showers. The traffic is heavy, but the mood of the man and the woman in the street is stiff upper lip with a heavy dose of wry British humour, as exemplified by the bus conductor who announced the Charing Cross stop by saying, "Trains to all points, and watching pigs fly." Since the break-up of British Railways, flying pigs are more usual than reliable train service, it seems.

As for the Queen, she seems to be in fine fettle. Last evening your scribe and his guest represented Greenwich in the Throne Room at St. James's Palace. At the assembly point, your scribe was curious to see that his entry ticket was a different colour from those of his friends around him. What did this portend, he wondered? Would the Greenwich contingent be relegated to the Royal scullery?

Far from it, as it turned out. As your scribe passed through room after room full of stately paintings and furnishings, the ushers kept waving him onward. Surely there was some mistake? But no, "Please pass through, sir, and keep going straight on." Finally there were no more rooms through which to pass. Your scribe had reached the Throne Room.

Only the small velvet rope in front of the throne kept him from veryifying the comfortableness of the royal seat, all in the interests of watching out for Her Majesty's best interests, of course. He was offered a glass of English sparkling wine, which looked and tasted much like vintage French champagne, except better, of course. Hors d'oeuvres were passed by an assiduous staff of waitpersons. The quails' eggs were something new to the scribal palate.

Then the door from the Council Chamber opened, and the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh processed forth to offer a handshake and personal greetings to those in the front row. And since your scribe had been specifically instructed to stand in the front row by the powers in charge, he received the royal handshake. Her Majesty and the Duke then went on to the other rooms, where it is reported that only a very few others were signalled out for the full presentati0n treatment. Otherwise the Queen would have been there until midnight.

And so, dear reader, your scribe is spending the day puttering around London. He presented himself at the American Embassy at Grosvenor Square, but the police at the barricades seemed unimpressed. Likewise the door at 10 Downing Street remained closed to him, as the current Prime Minister is fighting for his political life (and losing). But at least the hospitality at the Palace was warm. All in all, it was worth making the trip.

Hamilton Avenue: The Boondoggle Continues...

2009-05-21T11:22:00.003-04:00

Having heard some glowing reports of the (finally!) finished (supposedly) Hamilton Avenue School, your scribe was much looking forward to the community open house yesterday evening. But what a disappointment awaited him!

Long, soulless corridors. A senseless U-shaped design that meant one has to walk around three sides of a square to get from one arm of the U to the other. Insufficient parking space. Narrow traffic lanes with high concrete curbs that allow of no misjudgment. And a final sharp drop onto St. Roch Avenue that is sure to snag your tailpipe unless you are driving a high-suspension SUV.

And that's just for starters. The media center is probably the smallest of any in Greenwich. And the air in it is stale, hot, and unbreatheable. Do you want your children to learn how to read, too, dear reader? Then make sure not to send them here.

Of course, the media center was like the North Pole compared to the art room. It was stifling. How can children learn anything in such a torrid and stuffy environment?

But the administrative areas are heremtically sealed, so presumably the administrators can do whatever it is they do (or don't do) in comfort. And the long, soulless corridors, that would make a state prison guard proud, are also nice and cool. But turn off into a classroom, and all bets are off.

The "new" Ham Ave is probably the only school in Greenwich, if not all of Connecticut, that does not have a gymnasium, or a cafeteria, or an auditorium. Instead, it has all three functions jammed together into a single space. Whose brainstorm was this? Just the labor costs alone to transform it from one function into another are mind-boggling. And how pleasant to be eating your lunch right after the sweaty morning PE class. What insanity!

Your scribe ran into Leslie Tarkington of the BET who said, breathlessly, "Isn't it wonderful?" Your scribe replied, equally breathlessly, "Wait till you get to the media center and the art room" - having just come from them, of course.

This morning he ran into Dean Goss of the RTM, who said that the Ham Ave Building Committee was "aware" of a "problem" with the ventilation system. Well, hallelujah! Their awareness that there continue to be problems with the boondoggle that ate Greenwich will surely make everything all right. Perhaps they'll even be able to persuade the Board of Health or the Town's Building Inspector, or whatever State of Connecticut oversight bodies may also have jusrisdiction, that their "awareness" means that this years-late, untold millions over budget nightmare of a train wreck is somehow actually on track. But your scribe, for one, doesn't think so.

The only positive aspect of your scribe's self-guided tour (the format for the evening) was the happy faces of the young children, who are glad (at last!) to be out of the wretched modulars in which most of them have spent the bulk of their elementary educational years. Most of them had no idea what a media center or an art room was. Well, unfortunately, perhaps they still don't.

And so, dear reader, if you want to see your tax dollars at work, be sure to visit the architectural marvel that is the "new" Hamilton Avenue School. Be sure to admire the lovely cornerstone, that gives a date of 2008 (apparently it had to be retro-engineered to accomodate the passage of time as the project lurched from pillar to post, but whoever was in charge of the redating process had his bifocals askew). And, of course, be sure to thank your local administrators and building committee members who made this great Wonder of the World possible.

Sidney Freund Comes to Town - Hallelujah!

2009-05-14T10:15:00.003-04:00

At 8 AM this morning the Board of Education held an "emergency" meeting to announce that Dr. Sidney A. Freund will be taking over as Superintendent of Schools on July 1. Actually, he will be meeting with faculty and staff members long before then, as he is clearly eager to begin his new job.

What a refreshing change he is from his two predecessors, neither of whom (despite their earned doctorates) was capable of speaking the English language. Instead of an embarrassment, Greenwich now has a true star leading our educational programs in Town. Sid, as he likes to be known (and reportedly he prefers not to be called "doctor", which right away sets him apart from his two pompously vain predecessors who insisted on the title), comes to us most recently from the Dobbs Ferry school system, where he was Superintendent for over six years. His wife, Lisa, teaches just across King Street at the Rye Brook public school. He lives in Scarsdale, which is an easy commute, and has promised that he will be with us for the long term, unlike his short-lived predecessors. Whee!

Articulate, personable, energetic, and immediately likeable - Sid is everything one could hope for in a Superintendent. Oh, and of course very bright as well, with degrees from Cornell, CCNY, and Teachers' College at Columbia. Imagine that! Our Board of Ed has finally hired a teacher to run our school system. Will wonders never cease?

In all seriousness, your scribe wants to thank Steve Anderson, in particular, who served as head of the search committee. He pointed out that the seach included internal as well as external candidates, and even one or more international candidates. Such a pity Steve was not around to lead the prior search committees as well. Except that then, of course, we might not have been looking again, and thus would have missed out on Sid.

As your scribe said to him this morning, Sid can only take the Greenwich school system upwards from here. Greenwich's ranking has been falling sharply of late, and he is definitely the person to lead us out of the Betty Boop doldrums. (Oops - your scribe had promised himself not to sully this post with the name of Sid's predecessor. Well, perhaps he has half-kept that promise.) In Dobbs Ferry, for example, the percentage of students receiving Regents' Diplomas increased from 49% to 91% under his leadership. Standard & Poors named Dobbs Ferry as one of the "outperforming" school districts in the state, and Newsweek ranked it 49th in the country. He even took over a stalled building project and brought it to successful completion.

Can Sid Freund also walk on water? It remains to be seen. But your scribe confidently predicts that the Town of Greenwich is about to embark on a long and happy love affair with our new Superintendent of Schools. Welcome, Sid! We are lucky to have you with us, and very proud as well. We hope you will be equally proud of us.

Tony Mullen, National Teacher of the Year

2009-05-04T17:52:00.004-04:00

Once in a while, dear reader, something happens that makes us all truly proud to be a resident of the Town of Greenwich. Arch Street teacher and former NYPD homicide detective Tony Mullen has been named the 2009 National Teacher of the Year, and addressed a group of about 100 students, colleagues, politicians, and well-wishers today at Julian Curtiss School, where the inclement weather had forced the proceedings indoors. Fresh from a black-tie gala in Washington and a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House, Tony told us that this was the event of the past week that meant the most to him, because he could share it with his students, fellow teachers, and the Greenwich community.

His low-key humor was captivating. He described the agony of waiting in the Roosevelt Room, with his Secret Service minders constantly counting down the minutes until his Oval Office meeting with the President, as though he weren't already nervous enough without their assistance. Then, just as he was ready for the big moment, they told him he was on hold for another ten minutes, as the President could not be located and was (they assumed) running late.

Actually, the President was right on schedule. He popped unexpectedly out of a side door, put his arm around Tony, and said it was nice to meet him. Leaving the Secret Service minders in their dust, the President himself escorted Tony to the Oval Office, where he acknowledged that this would be his first official Rose Garden ceremony. Not to be outdone, Tony admitted that it was his first, as well.

Tony told us that the teacher-student relationship is the most important aspect of education. Each student has his or her own backstory, and the teacher's job is to work with the students to help them "write a happy ending," to "radically transform their fractured lives." "Origin is not destiny," he reminded the students there, referring to them as "apprentice adults". Finally, as he reminded all of us, "I am the face" that represents all dedicated teachers everywhere, in every town and city across the country, and indeed across the world.

Tony himself will be spending the next year criss-crossing the country, speaking on behalf of the teaching profession. But he will be coming back to Greenwich regularly to keep tabs on his students, before he rejoins them full-time in the classroom the following year. The respect and affection his students have for him was quite evident at the ceremony; one young lady sang "To Sir, With Love" from the 1967 film of the same name. There was hardly a dry eye in the house.

Of course, we had to put up with the inane natterings of the ineffable Betty Sternberg, who seemed to regard Tony as her own personal triumph, since she had, as she reminded us more than once, been the one to pick him from the six local finalists. As usual, her natterings were more about herself than Tony, down to the choice Bettyism that epitomizes just how poorly qualified she is to have been the local Superintendent of Schools (at ruinous cost, both financial and educational) for the past three years. Today's prize blooper (just one of many, to be sure) was this:

"The students attributed him to saving their lives."

This woman is such an embarrassment! Thankfully, she has less than two months remaining in office, before she walks away with over a million dollars in salary and benefits for her multitude of disservices to the Town. Will she also be getting a pension, all the more to further our economic woes? Your scribe shudders at the possibility.

But we can't let an embarrassment like Betty ruin an otherwise wonderful occasion. Frankly, seeing Tony juxtaposed with her, it was clear to everyone in the room that he would have made a much better Superintendent than she has been. And if the Board of Education has any sense at all left in their heads, Tony's name should go on a short list of local candidates who could try to restore some sanity to the school system after the Betty Sternberg train wreck of the past three years.

How say you, gentle reader? Tony Mullen for Superintendent? Oh, sure, he probably doesn't meet the list of qualifications that the "experts" have drawn up. Which, some would say, is probably a positive thing. "He's only a teacher," one can hear the "experts" sniff. He is, however, the BEST high school teacher in America. The President says so, and more importantly, so do his students. Do you think Tony Mullen could whip the Greenwich school system back into the shape it used to be in its glory days? Your scribe, for one, doesn't have any doubt about it.

Let's hear it, folks: Tony Mullen for Superintendent of Schools!