Sheep may safely graze

Reality is in short supply these days, and nowhere is that more true than in Newport, a town that makes it’s living by celebrating - and selling - its own history. Or versions of it. From Queen Anne Square (a fiction from top to bottom) to the beautiful but unfortunately reproduction 4500 square foot “colonial” McMansions to the quaintly cobblestoned “wharf” areas (a Timberland store is in keeping with the historical record of the wharves? I think not), the lies are so deftly intertwined with the truths that it sometimes seems like I live in some kind of Truman Show of the collective mind. What’s real? What isn’t? Even us townies can’t always tell.

Take for example Queen Anne Square, that bucolic & totally quintessential New England town green. There’s the perfect whitewashed steepled church…there’s the grassy commons…there’s the ring of centuries old houses and shops surrounding it. Can’t you just see the flock of sheep crossing it, bells sonorously a-twinkle? It’s all so perfect. So post-cardish. So exactly what you’d expect to find. And so totally fake.

Historically, Newport never had a commons or a town green – in fact, that was pretty much the whole point of the place. Towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony had town greens featuring a church at one end because they were theocracies in which every facet of life was dictated by or organized around the Congregational Church. In contrast, Newport – and the rest of Rhode Island – was founded by renegades & exiles from that Puritan society, dissenters who opposed those autocratic beliefs with their very lives, who hacked their way down here through an Indian-filled wilderness all the way from Boston in order to institute their very radical, very utopian, “lively experiment”. Their goal was to found a community that was NOT organized around a single church, but in which worshippers of ALL faiths were welcome. Puritans. Jews. Quakers. Baptists. It’s the one single moment in this state’s history of which we can all feel unreservedly proud. No single church would be allowed to dominate in Rhode Island. The point of Newport was that there wasn’t a town green.

Except of course now there is. Queen Anne’s Square appeared about 40 years ago under the aegis of an urban redevelopment plan. The area in front of Trinity Church was bulldozed of dozens of old buildings, buildings consisting of exactly the kind of real “historical reality” that we’re all so sanctimonious about these days, and in its place, voila! An insta-green was created. And as if that weren’t enough to confuse everybody, this Disneyesque stage set was ringed with authentic 18th century buildings, a reinforcing of the false by means of exploiting the true, and then the whole illusion was cemented into place – rather brilliantly, actually - by branding the result of these efforts “Queen Anne’s Square”, a name of which effectively conjures up misty, vaguely Shakesperean images, of simple English folk wearing big white ruffs, wimples, leather helmets, big-buckled shoes. Sheep on the green.

But let’s not get too down on the enterprise. The entire construction reveals a lot more about the values of the 20th century than it does about the 18th. So I say, let’s keep it around. We’ve actually managed to create an artifact of ourselves for future generations, if they can only manage to sort through all the conflicting messages and layers of meaning - and if we can only manage to resist the temptation to tweak the truth just a little more.

Home Sweet Home

The life of a realtor is a busy one. My calendar is filled up with showings, client appointments, meeting appraisers, inspectors, the fire department, pick up a radon test. Office duty. A buyer’s parents are in town, can we show them the house? Can you meet me so I can measure for my furniture? My client would appreciate it if I could meet the furnace maintenance guy. Can I find a landscaper who can come do some work right away? Lots of things you would never even think of.


But every once in awhile, I look at my calendar, and there is a blank day. Open and all mine. This is so very rare. Even though people think the real estate market is quiet right now, it is exactly the opposite for most of us. Every deal takes more time, and people are understandably more anxious, so there are more steps involved to get to the final closing.


Today was one of those open days for me! I could work in the garden, finally, and get it cleaned up and ready for winter. My family is away – some at a lake house in Maine with friends, some in California. My friends have gone off on a weekend junket. I was pleased to have the luxury of an open day, all to myself.


Don’t get me wrong – I am so very grateful for being busy and having opportunities to work and make a living. But we all need some down time and today was going to be my day at home.

Then the phone calls start to come – a buyer who was coming in on Sunday wants to come today. Of course, I said ‘Yes.’ I must! It is my responsibility and I do want to sell this house. Then another – my out of state seller wants to know if I can meet her sister and give her the house keys so she can do some painting. ‘Sure thing’! Then I am blessed to get another offer on another property – go to the office, pick it up, meet with my seller.

All in all, I consider myself very lucky to be so busy, I must say. Thank you very much.

So when my day is finally done, I will come back to my sweet home and maybe read a book after finally getting some time in the garden. And then it will be time to make some snacks for my friends so we can watch the game together.


I sincerely hope that my clients and customers will all find much happiness in their homes, too. That’s what it’s all about!

The Enchanted Guest House

When I was a precocious little girl growing up, in rural Connecticut, we had a guest house in our back yard called, “The Mimi House”. It was lovingly named after my paternal grandmother Mary. On summer days I would dash out of my house, wide eyed with my curly hair streaming wildly behind me, equipped with a highly overactive imagination and head straight for that spot. Not even a woodpecker, which was always enthusiastically pecking away at the bent weathered electrical pole, right outside of the guest house, could daunt me. There was nothing about this small resilient structure that did not utterly fascinate me, from the old crank out windows, to the open out window over the head of the bed which fastened to the exterior eaves and, last but not least, the built in bureau with all of its hidden treasures. Upon entering I would drink in the slightly woody, musty and fabric aroma while looking around to see which adventure I could conjure up that day. I would seat myself at the diminutive antique desk pretending to make earth shaking decisions while being hailed as an influential world leader, as I gazed out the window overlooking the fields and orchard.

At the head of the bed there was a shelf with a menagerie of exquisite little china animals which were all lined up perfectly by their respective types in different sizes, from large to small. Who had staged them? I never discovered who that person was, and no one else seemed to remember either. Those charming animals came to life for me and I was endlessly fascinated by them. I would rearrange them, always being very careful to restore the creatures, to their original positions. There were horses, bears, dogs, cats and pigs. That is when I developed my life long penchant for pigs.

Some days, my friend, Kathy, and I would excitedly and respectfully pull open the bureau's bin. We were in awe of the wealth of elegant evening gowns which my beautiful sweet mother had worn many years earlier on her transatlantic ocean liner crossing to Europe. At that time it was in vogue to wear a different gown to dinner each evening. My friend and I would sashay up and down the Bocci Court, which was adjacent to the guest house, wearing our daily choice of gowns which were awkwardly trailing behind us on the grass. Believing that we were actually on the promenade deck of the ship and in the formal dining room, we felt the thrills which my Mom must have experienced. What a tremendous joy and delight it was for both of us. That was when children at play still subsisted on imagination.

One hot sultry summer’s evening my older sister, Bonnie, brought her new tape recorder out to the, “Mimi House”. It was the size of a small suitcase! For the first time in my young life, sitting in this cherished haven, I heard my actual voice. Wow, how totally shocking to discover that the voice which I heard inside of me was not the one that everyone else heard, what a revelation!

As the story goes, when the guest house’s namesake, Mary, was sleeping in the guest house one evening, years before I was born, my maternal great grandfather Julius paid her a late night visit. He sat at the end of the bed and regaled her with family tales, which she very happily related the next morning to shocked relatives. He had actually passed away five years previously!

The treasured thoughts of that little guest house have remained with me, enriching me as a person with all of those happy memories. It is the imagination and enjoyment of these little things in life which shape us into the human beings who we are today.

I will always be eternally grateful for my chance to experience the enchanted guest house!

The grammar of money

That $700 billion dollar bailout… the first question everyone wants to know is, “will it work?” Actually, that’s probably really only the second or third question. For just about all of us, the number #1 question is, “what should I do with MY money?” At least that’s the question that’s been on my mind these days. To all of you who’ve been asking the same thing, I have only one suggestion to make: Spend it. And hurry. What are you waiting for?

I went out and bought a ruby ring last week. Heck, why not? My 401K lost $6000 in a single day last week – what am I hanging on to the money for? Six thousand dollars. I could have gone to Europe, gotten a face lift, put a flat screen TV in every room of my house, bought Manolos & Jimmy Choos & Louis Vuitton handbags. I could have gotten a dozen Botox treatments. I could have put down the money on a BMW, like all the rest of you realtors are driving, and scrapped the whole dinged-up Toyota Echo aesthetic. But no. I had to “save” it. I had to “invest” it. I thought I could make my money “work” for me. The mistake was mine. I believed that money could act like a verb. It can’t. Money is a noun, and nouns are what it does best. Real estate. Jewels. Cars. Vacations. Treat it like a concept & it’ll act like a concept, shifting ephemerally with every breeze. Treat it like the material object that it is, and it’ll reward you with other material objects. Concrete things. Solid, tangible pieces of actual reality. It’s simple, really.

So go out and buy that big house. Test drive that brand-new car. Speak to me, Harry Winston. Because I’ve learned my lesson, and learned it the good old-fashioned hard way. You CAN’T take it with you. And what a relief, at long last to finally be able to stop trying.

Pass the chocolate

While we all wait for Congress to pass a bill,
I say pass the chocolate.
Trying economic times?
Try dark chocolate. It may help.
Organic or not.
And while you are enjoying your dark chocolate snack remember...... there are wonderful, healthy benefits....enjoy, be happy!


Got high blood pressure ? Try a truffle. Worried about your heart ? Buy a bon-bon.

Studies in two prestigious scientific journals say dark chocolate -- but not white chocolate or milk chocolate -- is good for you.

* The smell of chocolate may increase theta brain waves, resulting in relaxation.
* Chocolate contains phenyl ethylamine, a mild mood elevator.
* Cocoa may keep high blood pressure down, your blood flowing and your heart healthy.
* The cocoa butter in chocolate contains oleic acid, a mono-unsaturated fat which may raise good cholesterol.
* Chocolate is one of the snack foods that is least likely to contribute to tooth decay, since it contains phosphate and other minerals
* Drinking a cup of hot chocolate before meals may actually diminish appetite.
* The flavanoids in chocolate may help keep blood vessels elastic.
* Chocolate increases antioxidant levels in the blood.
* The carbohydrates in chocolate raise serotonin levels in the brain, resulting in a sense of well-being.

Do we really need an excuse ?