Current Events

A New Homeless Shelter in … Belgravia

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Lauri Love and friends took over a famous property in London this week to help the homeless

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The sources behind Andrey Goncharenko’s wealth are not publicly known. Like many other members of the current generation of Russian oligarchs, both Goncharenko and his wealth appeared suddenly in the media. Two things are known about him: he is able to afford expensive pieces of London real estate, and he is shadowy enough to merit one (only one) mention in the Panama Papers.

Between 2011 and 2014, Goncharenko purchased four homes in London for a combined £250 million. One of them, located at 102 Eaton Place in Belgravia, he purchased in 2014 for £15 million. It is a Grade II-listed Heritage property and housed the Instituto Cervantes of London until Mr. Goncharenko purchased it.

Mr. Goncharenko does not live in the building and it is reported that he has not yet visited it. He has not spent the night in it. Lauri Love and a group of activists took over the building this week and some of them started sleeping there Wednesday night. The group intends to open the mansion as a homeless shelter.
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A Memory of Mary Tyler Moore

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The television star (this is one of those occasions in which “icon” can not be overused) Mary Tyler Moore died earlier today at the age of 80. I have one brief, personal memory of an encounter with her. I wish my family had saved the answering machine tape …

In our current era of Twitter and Facebook and the many other social media outlets, virtual celebrity encounters can be had quite easily. (Among my Facebook friends are the accounts of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. Mr. Brooks plays several games each night on the service.) These encounters were more rare once upon a time, the 1990s, say.

In the 1980s, Mary Tyler Moore and her husband, Dr. Robert Levine, lived in Millbrook, New York, in Dutchess County. This is the county in which I was born and raised.
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When Will We Know?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Many of those who live in countries ruled by dictatorships―fascist, communist, inherited monarchy―are unaffected by the fact of the dictatorship. They are those who are members―by birth or achievement―of groups the government favors. The government gets to decide who it favors, and if one is a member of a favored group, life may feel like it is free, as long as one ignores that one’s neighbors are not free or, worse, are vanishing.

If one is a member of a preferred population, life under fascism will carry on and look much like a normal life. After all, many people in Nazi Germany fell in love and out of love and bought groceries and learned how to drive. They wrote poetry and crammed for exams and got hired and fired. Many people in Nazi Germany, though, they did not.
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