Author: Jackson

Surviving Disney

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Because you can drag your kids to only so many science museums and historical sites before they just want to plummet down a water slide, our family recently spent a week at Walt Disney World. My folks took me there twice as a child, yet I enjoy it so much more as a parent. There’s lots to do because — and this is something its detractors never seem to understand — Disney World is a giant playground. As an obsessive-compulsive, I also admire the verisimilitude of, say, a centuries-old facade fashioned from concrete and fiberglass; and logistically, WDW is much, much less taxing than taking children to a city like New York or Philadelphia or Boston. Enjoyable as those places are, I feel the tension easing from my shoulders more so in Orlando.

Nevertheless, Walt Disney World presents one dire peril that must be endured.

The food.

WDW is well-known for serving atrocious slop, particularly at the Magic Kingdom. Disney has responded by including more unfried foods (like wraps) to the menus of the counter-service eateries. And, perhaps to bump up the average, they’ve also added more fine-dining experiences to the parks, but these are useless unless you make reservations at least six or even twelve months ahead of time. Le Cellier may be terrific but I wouldn’t know — like a lot of people, I’ve never passed through its doors.

Having suffered on previous sojourns, this trip I blazed a bold strategy for eating, which, like Arne Saknussemm, I now share with anyone intrepid enough to follow us.

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Hack Review: Abandoned Villages and Stuff

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Imagine my excitement at discovering a book titled Abandoned Villages and Ghost Towns of New England at my local bookstore. Finally! I thought: a solid regional history of the places I stumble upon during my wanderings, terrestrial and nautical.

Then imagine my disappointment upon bringing it home to discover it full of prose such as this:

As we traverse overgrown trails that were once well worn with life, it becomes clear these forsaken hamlets had similar ends even though no two settlements were completely alike. Their history and people are often all but forgotten in the shuffle of time and evolution. This could be one reason why many of them are haunted.

Ah, fiddlesticks. What I had believed to be a historical touring guide is instead a collection of Weird NJ hokum, 200 pages of Halloween-store plastic and polyester in lieu of actual archival work. Worse still, the mistake was my own fault: if I had only glanced at the bibliography before lining up at the register, I would have seen most of the sources are either other fiction collections by D’Agostino or spooky storybooks similar to his.

There are lots of photos and a few maps, and Abandoned Villages is best when D’Agostino steps out of the picture completely, like when he quotes at length newspaper articles about the flooding of Flagstaff, Maine. But D’Agostino gives the impression he didn’t do much original research himself, and whatever factual evidence he presents is immediately ruined with personal asides about curses and fluctuations in his EMF meters.

Abandoned Villages is the literary equivalent of a ghost-hunting television show: 10 percent history diluted by 90 percent green night-vision. If you’re interested in any of the towns listed in the table of contents, my advice is to contact the historical society or government agency D’Agostino posts at the end of each chapter and proceed on your own from there.

Live Fast, Love Hard, Own an Island

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I have an article busting the myths surrounding Vincent Island, a deserted acre of rock and sand less than half a mile off Connecticut’s shoreline, in today’s Stamford Advocate.

I’m especially proud of this piece because there are so many garbled stories about the island (its Wikipedia entry, for example); even a current co-owner, a nice old lady, insists on believing her well-worn yarns instead of documented evidence to the contrary. I did a fair amount of archival research on the island and uncovered stuff not even the Stamford Historical Society knew about.

The island is best known for its overgrown ruins of a large cottage, which was built by an owner named Paul Smart:

In 1945 the island was bought by Paul Hurlburt Smart, a lawyer and world-class sailor who lived in Darien.

Smart’s 1979 obituary is a laundry list of accolades. Born in Nova Scotia, he was a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law and Oxford; was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart in World War I; belonged to several yachting clubs and was first commodore of the Noroton Yacht Club; was chairman of the Olympic Yachting Committee, captained and managed the 1972 Olympic Yachting team; and himself won gold sailing in the 1948 Olympics.

Also, Smart enjoyed group sex.

From page 22 of a December 2, 1943 New York Times news story (not online):

Paul H. Smart, a lawyer who is well known in the midtown district as a night club frequenter, was sentenced yesterday in Special Sessions to a nine-month penitentiary term on his guilty plea two weeks ago with two other men and two women to indecently exposing themselves in an East Forty-seventh Street apartment that the police raided on the night of Sept. 29.

The other men, one of whom owned the apartment, received six-month workhouse sentences. The women, both 22 years old, each received three-month workhouse terms. The fact that Smart was given a much harsher sentence in comparison suggests prosecutors perceived him as the ringleader.

To be fair, the article never says what exactly the group was doing; they could have been having an orgy, yes, but they could have been nudists playing charades too. The article ends with this:

The sentences were pronounced after Assistant District Attorney Lawrence J. McKenna had described the five as “moral lepers who should be dealt with severely as a deterrent to others of their kind.” He added that the five were members of a “degenerate clique.”

Some degenerate. Five years later Smart the decorated war vet and island landlord won gold at the Olympics — at the age of 56. As with the Michael Phelps brouhaha last year, authorities then and now seem shocked that folks who work hard, play hard. I’m sure moral finger-waggers everywhere champ at the bit to someday raid an Olympic Village and disrupt the fabled hook-up parties rumored to take place within.

Or is that just another urban legend I must investigate?

Judge Denies Requests for Dismissal in Guizan Lawsuit

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The judge presiding over the civil case against six Connecticut towns, their police chiefs, and a number of officers involved in a botched 2008 no-knock raid has refused to dismiss the majority of counts filed by the plantiffs, homeowner Ronald Terebesi, Jr. and Susana Guizan, the mother of the man killed by police. The towns and police had requested the complaints be dismissed by reason of qualified immunity and on other grounds, but Judge Janet Bond Arterton ruled that such immunity is only available if the police are actually, you know, competent:

The Supreme Court explained in Harris that the need to train police in constitutional limitations on use of deadly force is “so obvious” that failure to do so constitutes deliberate indifference. Harris, 489 U.S. at 390 n.10. Inasmuch as the SWERT team is armed with lethal weapons and tasked with launching raids on homes, the law requiring proper training on the circumstances and method of their use given the potentially grave results to targeted persons is clearly established, and [Monroe Police Chief] Salvatore’s alleged failure to exercise professional judgment precludes qualified immunity for the failure–to–train claims at this stage. [p. 13]

How did the police fail to exercise professional judgment in the raid? From pages 4-5 of the ruling:

Cirillo, Ruscoe, Jones, Kirby, Candee, and Solomon developed the “Operation Plan” for the SWERT assault on Terebesi’s home to execute the warrant. It involved 21 armored, helmeted police officers in military attire, armed with semiautomatic and automatic weapons, sniper rifles, and explosives. When members of the SWERT team objected to the planned forcible entry into Terebesi’s home, and proposed alternatives such as calling the home and demanding that the occupants come out or sending uniformed officers to knock on the door, Ruscoe, Jones, Kirby, Candee, and Solomon overruled those objections and rejected their alternatives. Although SWERT standard operating procedures require negotiating before executing a tactical option, SWERT engaged in no negotiation, and the Operation Plan as developed did not include any negotiation.

Mark Cirillo is a sergeant in Darien. William Ruscoe, Kenneth Jones, and Ronald Kirby are officers in Trumbull. James Candee is the police captain in Easton, the town where the raid took place, and John Solomon is Easton’s chief of police. For the full list of defendants, see here.

In summary, the tactical team ignored its own protocols. A friend of mine who is a J.D., has trained in tactical police methods, and works as a detective in law enforcement (but not for any of the six towns involved), told me the internal dissension described by the judge is significant. He interpreted this as desk jockeys overruling trained officers to pursue a personal grudge against Terebesi.

The judgment is noteworthy for being the first unbiased official document describing the events of that day. From page 6:

During all of this activity, Guizan and Terebesi, who were unarmed, made no attempts to resist or flee. A DefTech 25 explosive detonated in front of Sweeney, who then fired his handgun six times within three seconds, mortally wounding Guizan. Weir fired his M–4 assault rifle once. Torreso continued to search Terebesi’s home, deploying at least eight more DefTech 25 explosives and starting a fire in the basement.

The police detonated eight flash bangs after Terebesi and Guizan were subdued, then set stuff on fire. You won’t find details like that in the report by State’s Attorney Jon Benedict, the ventriloquist’s dummy mouthing the version spoken by the police chiefs.

This is also the first time a government official has admitted a flash bang exploded in front of Sweeney, potentially provoking him to fire wildly into Guizan.

For the full back story, see my piece in the Fairfield County Weekly. The judge’s ruling can be downloaded here.

Getting Your 18th Century On

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Living in coastal New England is to be surrounded every moment by the architectural and geographic echoes of the colonial era. This year, the family and I took it further by tripping back to the 18th century with several historical vacations. What follows are some tips if you’re planning your own getaway.

Colonial Williamsburg is the Jerusalem for pilgrims of Revolutionary history. The foundation prints weekly calendars, available in the hotel lobbies, chock full of events and presentations. Whatever you do, don’t miss the Public Audience with a Founding Father, which usually occurs at 10 AM Tuesday through Thursday behind the Governor’s Palace. The depth and context provided by the actors (portraying Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry) is amazing.

The website says reservations are required at all of the taverns, though we had no problem being seated at 11 AM at any of the three serving lunch. The food at all of them is fine, though I was partial to Shields Tavern. We found it impossible to get into Christiana Campbell’s without a reservation; you may want to book well ahead of time (like, several weeks ahead of time). I also strongly recommend the Blue Talon just beyond the colonial area. I had the curried goat special washed down with burnt-sugar ice cream and a glass of Calvados.

We stayed at the Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel just north of the historic area, and strolling under the bowers and past the frog pond on your way to 1775 is a pleasant way to begin the morning. There is a serious drawback: the only bar on the premises is a rinky-dink restaurant that’s closed more than it’s open, which nearly gave me a case of the DTs. If you too drink like a Founding Father, you may want stay closer to the taverns or Merchant’s Square.

What’s fantastic about Strawbery Banke is that it isn’t frozen in one period. Rather it shows the Portsmouth, New Hampshire neighborhood of Puddle Dock throughout its lifetime, from 17th-century settlement to 20th-century slum. The Shapley-Drisco House is a duplex with one side depicting a 1790s general store and the other a 1950s family home, complete with flickering television set and ash trays aplenty. Another building is furnished as a World War II-era grocery, ration lists posted on the wall. Kids should check out ye olde toys and games in the Jones House.

There’s only one restaurant on the premises plus a summertime ice cream shop, but being in the heart of Portsmouth means you don’t have to go far for great food. For breakfast, run — do not walk — to The Friendly Toast on Congress Street and order the pumpkin pancakes with Raisinets. For lunch I recommend RiRa Irish Pub in Market Square. History buffs may also want to visit the home of Declaration signatory William Whipple on Market Street.

And because our family just can’t get enough tricornes and sedition, we stopped at Old Sturbridge Village on our way home from Portsmouth. Whereas Colonial Williamsburg excels at recreating the climate of the Revolution, OSV complements it by exhibiting what folks did when they weren’t loitering in the colonial capitals debating taxes and insurrection. The working sawmill — slowly but persistently cutting a tree into planks with every turn of the water wheel — fascinates me. There’s also a cidery, a print shop, a shoe shop, and more.

When I was a kid, my family made a point of eating at the nearby Publick House whenever we passed through, a tradition that continues with my own peeps. The Oliver Wight Tavern, located at the entrance to OSV, is very good as well. The massive gift and bookstore adjacent to the restaurant always sucks us in for at least half an hour.

As the Marquis de Lafayette might have said, Bon voyage et bon chance.