Good by, Foodmart?
I am sorry to see that Food Mart in Cos Cob is soon to be replaced by a CVS. Many folks enjoyed walking to their grocery store; now they can’t. The two Food Marts, this one in Cos Cob, the other in Old Greenwich, have no doubt been hammered by the opening of those two behemoths on the Stamford border, which I’ll admit to patronizing. Still, it’s been nice to have a grocery store in Old Greenwich. I hope, but without much expectation, that the Old Greenwich store will survive. I know it’s progress, but still…


Good Books
What to do with those gift certificates from Just Books (Old Greenwich) or Amazon (somewhere in the US): I’m usually not a fan of what I’d call “women’s’ books” which I define as something Oprah would rave about on TV. But I just finished “The Hearts of Horses” by Molly Gloss, and found it a real winner. It tells the tale of a young woman, cast adrift from her home, who sets out to tame horses in Oregon in the early years of World War I. Unaccustomed to family or friendship, she gradually discovers both, all while working a circuit of farms in a tiny rural community. I know next to nothing about horses or Oregon in 1919 (and not much about girls, for that matter) but this quiet book seems completely reliable on such details. I really enjoyed it – it reminded my “Plainsong”, and some of Frank Mosher’s work so if you like them, try this (I bought a copy for Nancy but by the time this article sees print, she’ll know that).

Then there’s “Dizzy City” by Nicholas Griffin, also set in the beginning of the last century. A young English con man, conscripted into the trenches of Belgium, survives grievous wounds and deserts. He stows away to New York and quickly resumes his previous line of work, only this time, he encounters cons within cons and lots of triple-twists. Great detail of New York life in that period, plenty of plot surprises and good writing. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And you can never go wrong with “Red Sky at Morning”, by the late Richard Bradford. I’m not sure that he ever wrote another book but if you’re going to go down with just one story to your credit, this is the one. I suppose it’s a “coming of age” tale, recounting the maturation of a young man from Alabama sent to refuge in New Mexico during World War II, but it’s so much more than that. I first read it at 14 and loved it but reread it when my own kids were approaching that age and it was even better than I remembered. My kids loved it and I think you will, too.

Oh yeah, real estate!
Not much going on at this time of year. Peter Joyce of Prudential CT has supplied me with some statistics confirming this and I’ll address them soon but basically we’re wrapping up some November contracts and otherwise attending to holiday matters. I’m out and about with a couple of buyers but I don’t expect much to happen until the new year. So what will we talk about next week? Well, there are always Peter’s statistics.

The Enery bill
So Congress has passed gas and out came the new energy bill. No more SUVs, billions of dollars spent on ethanol, which will drive the cost of food sky-high and, in a little-known quirk, banning conventional light bulbs. I know, from previous columns, that many of my readers love the new-fangled fluorescent bulbs but they interfere with my AM radio reception, take a long time to brighten and cost a fortune. If they were all that good, don’t you think the marketplace would have seen that they replaced conventional bulbs? My problem with politicians is that they remind me of the yokels in high school who ran the student government. I would never have trusted them with my wallet or my life and now here they are, ensconced in Washington, with an iron-fist on my earnings and dictating my life. What an unpleasant prospect.