I
have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'll be signing books and speaking at the Deep River Ct. Public Library on Oct 3 (Saturday) from 2-4, please drop by and say hello
I'll be signing books and speaking at Mt. St. John's in Deep River Ct. on October 3, please try to attend if you can, its for a great cause
If
there is any period one would desire to be born in is it not the age of
Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being
compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when
the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of
the new era? Emerson
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
The Changed Man
by Robert Phillips
If you were to hear me imitating Pavarotti
in the shower every morning, you'd know
how much you have changed my life.
If you were to see me stride across the park,
waving to strangers, then you would know
I am a changed man—like Scrooge
awakened from his bad dreams feeling feather-
light, angel-happy, laughing the father
of a long line of bright laughs—
"It is still not too late to change my life!"
It is changed. Me, who felt short-changed.
Because of you I no longer hate my body.
Because of you I buy new clothes.
Because of you I'm a warrior of joy.
Because of you and me. Drop by
this Saturday morning and discover me
fiercely pulling weeds gladly, dedicated
as a born-again gardener.
Drop by on Sunday—I'll Turtlewax
your sky-blue sports car, no sweat. I'll greet
enemies with a handshake, forgive debtors
with a papal largesse. It's all because
of you. Because of you and me,
I've become one changed man.
We
are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years
and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The
things taught in schools and colleges are not an education but the means of
education. Emerson
Buster Keaton rides his first Segway, ca. 1920s
HERE'S SOME OF MY BOOKS, THEY'RE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AND ALL BARNES AND NOBLE STORES
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
In
1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered
Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next
ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state
schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep
River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the
same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny
compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to
overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
Excerpt from my book "No Time to Say Goodbye:
Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care.
I wasn’t a
bad kid. I was just a teenager, which is bad enough, I suppose, with the added
portion of being damaged goods. I was—still am—capable of being a whiner and a
complainer and not for any good reason, but simply to whine, which I guess gets
me attention. It’s a part of my affliction, I suspect, from bouncing around in
foster care.
I was also
a painter, and good God, how I hated the painting business. I smelled like
paint thinner, everything I owned was speckled with primer, and my hands were
raw from the turpentine and oil base.
Not only did we put in twenty-four hours on the weekend, but at least
once a week my father phoned the school.
“Yeah,” he
said when the phone was answered, “My son John won’t be in today. This is his
father.”
Then there
would be a long pause and he would add, “Yes, he has a last name.”
After
another long pause he would add “Tuohy,” and then say, “Yeah, he’s got a
doctor’s appointment,” and put me to work for the day. It was all about money.
They weren’t paying me, so their margins were bigger.
I was
relieved to get out of school. I was sinking there, anyway. Almost two years in
Saint John’s remedial program hadn’t prepared me for a normal high school.
Academically, I was light years behind the other kids, and overwhelmed by the
class sizes, the sprawling hallways, and the general quick pace of things. I
couldn’t seem to make friends, because everyone seemed to have known each other
since kindergarten. That’s what happens
when you move so often. But I was never lonely; you can’t be lonely if you like
the person you're alone with.
However, I
was lost. My father didn’t love me, but that doesn’t mean he hated me. Hate
isn’t the opposite of love. The opposite of love is apathy. At home, unless I
was working, I was looked upon as costly overhead. But it wasn’t really a home.
It was the cleanest place I have ever lived, because Mary was obsessed with
cleanliness. The parlor was, essentially, a museum. We dared not go in there.
In the large dining room had a rich mahogany table, but we never ate there. We
ate at the kitchen table. In fact, everything was centered on the kitchen, but
the house had no aroma to it. Mary kept it flawlessly clean and sterile,
because Mary didn’t cook and God knows my father couldn’t. Mary’s first husband
had been an Army chef, so Mary had never learned to cook, and overall she had
little interest in food. So we ate out a lot, and that got old very quickly.
Every day
was the same. After a late dinner, my father retired to his workroom in the
garage and tinkered with his tools on one make-work project or another while
Mary did the day’s invoices. They seldom watched television and never went out
to a film. They didn’t travel, although they could easily have afforded it, and
my father was fascinated by California, or at least by his concept of what he
thought California was, although he had never been there. He talked about it a
lot, about how moderate the temperatures were and how the ocean was always just
around the corner.
If we went
anywhere at all, it was to Mary’s daughters’ house in West Warwick where they
lived side by side in a duplex Mary had bought for them. In fact, although I
was never paid for the work I did, Mary’s sons-in-law were on the books as
employees, paid for not doing any work at all.
Mary and
her daughters constantly asked me to consider moving back to Connecticut to
live with my mother, regardless of what I told them about the poverty she lived
in. They didn’t care about that. It wasn’t their problem. Their problem was my
attitude. They thought my opinions and judgments of my father were too harsh.
They couldn’t understand why I could not see what a concerned and loving parent
he really was.
Well,
maybe I couldn’t see that, but I could see that this man knew that people don’t
usually base their judgments of others by their actions, but by their
proclaimed intentions. Before I had arrived, my father had built a solid
reputation by talking about what he intended to do with his children, and it
was all good and just and kind, because that was what people wanted to hear. He
was blessed with the Celt’s ability to beguile with words and phrases. In fact,
he had mastered the art. He talked soulfully about his concern for our problems
and how deeply it weighed on him so that even I believed the illusion that he
was dedicated to saving us from the system.
The truth
was he knew nothing about the effects his actions had had on our lives. He
didn’t really care, either. His apathy towards us and the plight we faced was
padding for his peaceful life, and his heartfelt words were an excellent
substitute for real concern, care, love, and the efforts required to create all
those.
He was not completely self-absorbed. No one is
ever completely one thing. I think he reacted to us as he did because he
couldn’t comprehend what was happening to us and his role in it. It was too
complicated and overwhelming for him to take in.
Whatever
it was, I saw his apathy and confusion towards me as hostility. I resented
being regulated to the realm of living oblivion. I resented his constant
apologizing to Mary on my behalf. The bottom line was, I embarrassed him, and
that was the difference between my mother and father. My mother never stopped
feeling ashamed for what she had done to us. My father never stopped being
ashamed of us.
Thought
about Denny and me sitting on the front wall of the house in Ansonia, waiting
for him because he had phoned the day before and said he was coming to see us.
And I recalled how he had never arrived and never called to explain himself. It
made me angry and fueled resentment against him, a resentment I could barely
hide sometimes.
Still, he
was my father, and there were parts of me that loved him, adored him and
idolized him, or least the memory of what I thought he once was. There still
are. He had gone from a man I barely knew to my almost constant companion. We
spent hours together, painting walls in empty houses and apartments or driving
from one job to another so we talked a lot. Actually, he talked a lot, and I
listened.
He loved
fishing. I went fishing once, got a fishhook in my eye and never fished again.
He was mechanically inclined and could fix almost anything. I was good at
breaking things and then buying a newer version. His politics were right of
center and mine were extremely left of center, enough so that he often
introduced me as “My son, Fidel Castro.”
There were
some things he wouldn’t say much about,
his own father. He despised his father.
“You tink
I’m bad?” he might suddenly say to me without any prompting or reason. He was
incapable of pronouncing the word “think.” “Well you shoulda seen my old man,”
he would say. “Rotten mean son of a bitch.”
What made it unusual was that my father rarely
swore, so when he did the curse words had a sharp edge.
That was
all he would say. I didn’t follow it up because I sensed he didn’t want me to.
There were other subjects he couldn’t say enough about, like the war. Although
he had been a combat infantryman in Europe, in all of his war stories he almost
never mentioned the death and destruction he had seen. To my surprise he seemed
to have a grudging respect for the German soldiers he had fought and killed.
However, he did tell me one story, many times, about a Nazi he had shot, and
that story showed me that beneath his docile exterior, my father was could be a
mean son of a bitch himself, with little regard for life.
It went
like this: “One time this bastard had us tied down with gunfire for hours. An
old guy, he was up in some rocks on a hill. We hit him with everything we had
and then, finally, the tank shows up, fires off a few rounds, he comes down.”
He raised
his arms in the air in surrender and yelled, “He’s yellin’ ‘Nicht schiessen! Nicht schiessen!’ It means
‘Don’t shoot!’ Anyway, we was just kids and surprised because he was so old.
This guy was past sixty, way past that. So we get it out of him why he kept
shooting when we had him surrounded, and he pointed back up to the hill and
said, “Hitler-Jugend”—Hitler Youth.”
His lips
tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Real bastards, those Hitler Youth,” he said,
rearranging the word “youth” into Waterbury-ese “youse.” “They would post one
of the Hitler Youth with the regular soldiers, and if anyone tried to surrender
or run away, the bastards would kill them.”
He paused
to spit tobacco bits from his lips left by his non-filtered Camel cigarettes,
the preference of his generation, and said “Imagine, kill your own kind. Then,
no matter how many times he had told the story, and he told it a lot, he shook his
head in disbelief. And almost as if on cue, he left, or at least a part of him
left. Staring out past me he was seeing all the way back to the forests of
Alsace-Lorraine and that tree-lined hill as it looked twenty-five years before. He whispered, “We took care of those no-good
bastards.”
Then he
gave me a side glance that was slightly menacing and nodded at me knowingly. He
wasn’t himself at that point. The otherwise gentle and good-natured man who was
too shy to look people in the eye was gone, replaced by a spirit distantly
dangerous.
“So we go
up there,” he continued, still looking out into the fog, “to where they were
shooting from and there’s this Hitler Youth kid with a pistol in his hand laid
out on the ground. He caught one just below the throat and he was like—like,
you know, gurgling for air. He looks up at me and goes, ‘Gott steh mir bei!’—‘God help me!’”
“Did you
help him?”
“Yeah, I
helped him. I put him out of his misery. That was a help.” He laughed at his
weak joke.
“You
killed him?”
“He was
dead anyway.” “Why? Why not just let it
go?” I asked, but he didn’t hear. He was now standing in the frozen winter air
in Europe, a light but steady snow falling. “He was the best lookin’ kid I ever
saw in my life,” he whispered to no one. “His hair was blond, but, like,
white-colored, and he had skin like a girl’s skin.”
He shook
his head, turned up the corner of his mouth and whispered, “He was really
beautiful.”
I was
discomfited by his use of the words “He was really beautiful,” because they
sounded just as if he had said a delectable piece of sirloin or fish had gone
bad.
“Why did
you kill him?” I asked, and he answered by lifting his rifle to his shoulder
and yelling “Bang!” and then chuckled and added, “You know when you take the
top off of one of those nuts that the squirrels eat?”
“Acorns?”
“Yeah, you
know when you flip off that little, like, French-guy-hat thing on top?”
“Yeah.”
He turned
and looked into my eyes and said, “That’s what it’s like when you blow somebody’s
head off. It flies off just like one of those little French hats on the acorn,”
and then he chuckled.
“Why did
you kill him?” I asked again. I didn’t see the point.
“Why not?”
But the
war did affect him. In those days, “war shows”—television programs s about
World War II—were common and he critiqued them for inaccuracies. Later, when
the program was over, I noticed him pacing nervously, and it was guaranteed
that later that night he would have a nightmare that would wake us all up.
Around this
time I discovered beer. At least twice a week, the guys on the painting crew
took me out drinking with them in the dives up in Providence. Most of those
places are gone now, victims of urban renewal, but in their day they were the
worst places imaginable, filled with hookers, drunks, hard-core drug addicts
and a variety of other interesting sorts.
The guys
would get me drunk—my age was never an issue—and then drive me home and deposit
me on the front steps of the house. By then it was usually around three o’clock
in the morning and Mary had purposely locked the door. I had never been given a
key, so I curled up in the back of the paint truck, still in my paint clothes,
and waited until morning. I’d already be in the truck when my father came out
to go to work, and until he caught on he assumed that I, eager to get to work,
had simply been first to get into the truck.
Because I
worked constantly, I had no friends and no social life beyond my father and
Mary. But I had made one good friend at high school, a fun-loving,
quick-thinking, intelligent kid named Kevin Johnston, as disenchanted with high
school as I was. He w didn’t think his way through life; he improvised his way
through life, and, most of the time, anyway, it worked for him.
We became
best friends in the spirit of that old saying: “When you’re in jail, a good
friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next
to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun’.”
We met up
in the morning, attended a class or two to have our presence noted, and then
skipped out and spent the day on the shore.
One day we got our hands on a case of Narragansett beer and, three
sheets to the wind, I eventually staggered home. I fell into the kitchen and
stumbled to my room, intending to go to bed. Mary had no intention of letting
that happen. She followed me into the room and poked her long bejeweled finger
into my face, over and over again.
“You’re
drunk!” she screamed. “Drunk!”
I pushed
her finger away and she slapped me. I shoved her out of the room and slammed
the door and she screamed bloody murder, and my father came running.
Who knows
what happened next? There is no rage on this earth like love turned to hatred.
Punches were thrown. He fell and busted a rib; I had a black eye. Mary phoned
the police.
I was
lucky I wasn’t arrested. The cops took me to Kevin’s house and the Johnstons
took me in without question. And that was the last I heard from my father for a
while. No phone calls. No dropping by to patch things up.
The
Johnstons were a kind and eccentric family headed, unquestionably, by Olive, a
charismatic, heavy-set, divorced Irishwoman. Olive owned a small house on the
same street where they lived and let Kevin and me live there. I spent weeks
roaming through the junk stores for usable furniture, plates, pots, and pans,
and before long we had a fully furnished house. I paid the rent, the utility
bills, and the taxes and I signed each check with enormous pride.
Kevin and
I landed jobs at a jewelry factory located across the street from our house. It
was the first, real-life, honest-to-God job I had ever had. It paid little, but
it was a job and it was mine. I was assigned to the production shop. I stood in
front of a pot of boiling liquid metal and made inexpensive rings. With my
first paycheck I bought an enormous, very used 1964 Buick sedan. I taught
myself to drive and got a driver’s license.
On
weekends I washed dishes late into the night at a local restaurant where Kevin
worked as a short-order cook, and during the slow times he showed me the basics
of short-order cooking. I was fascinated by the speed and accuracy of the work
that went on behind the grill, and with time I became damned good at it. I
could serve up a full meal with my right hand while cooking two other dinners
with my left. I loved it. I had finally found something I was good at.
“They got
a college over in New York State,” the weekend grill man told me, “called
culinary arts school or something like that; that’s what this is,” he said, and
pointed to the steak he was cooking. “Culinary.”
I was
fascinated by the thought of it.
“What do
you mean? You go to college to learn to cook?”
“Yeah,” he
said. “But you learn everything and let me tell you something, some of those
cooks they make big, big money.”
I decided
to become a chef, and took up the business of studying food and its
preparation. I’d land jobs in a series of kitchens, each one better than the
last, finish high school with a GED and eventually attended the culinary school
in New York. It was a wide-ranging, big-strokes plan, but it was a plan. For
the first time in my life, I knew where I was going and how I would get
there.
I had a
job, money in my pocket, and a car: a pile of junk, but a car. I had a place to
live and a life plan. I was taking care of myself, placing myself out of harm’s
way. I had done in six months what the entire state of Connecticut couldn’t do
for me in nine years. To top it off, Rhode Island, in the summer months anyway,
is a fantastic place to live. The shoreline and the beach culture can’t be
beat. Inside the foster care system, I couldn’t win. Outside the system, I
couldn’t lose.
One
summer’s evening in late August of 1971, I returned home from work and Olive
said, “John,”—she never called me Johnny as everyone else did—“your father
called and wants you to drop by his house.”
“Really?”
I said, pleased. “Did he say what he wants?”
“No,”
Olive said. “But watch yourself with him.”
I drove
the mile and a half to his house, where, parked in the driveway, I saw a
Connecticut state black sedan with the logo emblazoned on the side doors. The
sight sickened me. In my father’s house the social worker sat alone at the
kitchen table, dressed in the mandatory and once-impressive suit coat and tie, waiting
for me. Mary and my father stood on either side of him.
“Your
father called us, John,” he said. “We know what happened. You should have been
arrested for assault.”
Mary gave
me a tense smile. She was enjoying this. My affliction set in, and as much as I
tried to fight it off, I had to push my fingertips together.
“We found
a place for you back in Connecticut,” the social worker said. “A group home in
Hartford. Let’s go.”
“I won’t
go,” I said.
“Then I’ll
have the state troopers handcuff you and drive you to Hartford.”
“It’s up
to you.” I considered punching him and
walking out, but that could lead to troubles for the Johnstons, who had been
nothing but good to me.
“You are a
ward of the state, John, and a minor. Anyone who offers you harbor is in
violation of the law,” he said. “You don’t have any choice on this. So just get
in the car and let’s go.”
My father
left the room.
“You’re
just going to let this happen?” I called out after him, but he didn’t answer.
I went.
There was no time to say goodbye to Kevin or Olive, pack my belongings, or
resign from my job.
Usually,
every exit is an entrance to someplace new. In foster care, every exit only
leads back to the same place. It may have a different name and location, but
it’s the same place. Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose one. My
father never spoke to me again. I don’t blame him, really. I had humiliated
him.
This is a book of short stories taken from the things I saw and heard in my childhood in the factory town of Ansonia in southwestern Connecticut. Most of these stories, or as true as I recall them because I witnessed these events many years ago through the eyes of child and are retold to you now with the pen and hindsight of an older man. The only exception is the story Beat Time which is based on the disappearance of Beat poet Lew Welch. Decades before I knew who Welch was, I was told that he had made his from California to New Haven, Connecticut, where was an alcoholic living in a mission. The notion fascinated me and I filed it away but never forgot it.
The collected stories are loosely modeled around Joyce’s novel, Dubliners (I also borrowed from the novels character and place names. Ivy Day, my character in “Local Orphan is Hero” is also the name of chapter in Dubliners, etc.) and like Joyce I wanted to write about my people, the people I knew as a child, the working class in small town America and I wanted to give a complete view of them as well. As a result the stories are about the divorced, Gays, black people, the working poor, the middle class, the lost and the found, the contented and the discontented.
Conversely many of the stories in this book are about starting life over again as a result of suicide (The Hanging Party, Small Town Tragedy, Beat Time) or from a near death experience (Anna Bell Lee and the Charge of the Light Brigade, A Brief Summer)
and natural occurring death. (The Best Laid Plans, The Winter Years, Balanced and Serene)
With the exception of Jesus Loves Shaqunda, in each story there is a rebirth from the death. (Shaqunda is reported as having died of pneumonia in The Winter Years)
Sal, the desperate and depressed divorcee in Things Change, changes his life in Lunch Hour when asks the waitress for a date and she accepts. (Which we learn in Closing Time, the last story in the book) In The Arranged Time, Thisby is given the option of change and whether she takes it or, we don’t know. The death of Greta’s husband in A Matter of Time has led her to the diner and into the waiting arms of the outgoing and loveable Gabe.
Although
the book is based on three sets of time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the
diner is opened in the early morning and closed at night, time stands still
inside the Diner. The hour on the big clock on the wall never changes time and
much like my memories of that place, everything remains the same.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. He is the author of numerous non-fiction on the history of organized crime including the ground break biography of bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and "Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in Chicago."
His non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The New Criminologist, American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of Chicago's Celtic Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short story fiction work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of 2008.
His play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public performance at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
I wrote this bill of rights for foster children several years ago. There many other versions written by other people and almost all of them are worth trying. It's your county. What's happening in foster care in America is being carried out with your money and in your name. You have a right to do something about it.
THE NATIONAL FOSTER CHILDREN’S
BILL OF RIGHTS
As a child, a ward of the
government and as an American citizen, you are protected by the people of the
United States of America, by our laws, by our courts and by our government.
You should be aware that you have
specific rights while you are in foster care. Those rights are as follows:
-You have the right to be treated
with dignity and respect and to live in dignity and self-respect.
- No one has the right to harm
you, to strike you or to commit physical violence upon you. If anyone harms
you, strikes you or commits physical violence upon you, you have a right to
discuss this abuse with your caseworker, your foster care provider, teachers or
police officers. You cannot and will not be punished or harmed further for
discussing the abuse with these people.
-You have the right to live in a
foster home that is safe, comfortable and healthy.
-You have a right to practice
your religion, no matter what that religion might be. You also have a right not
to be forced to practice any religion.
-You have the right to attend all
court hearings that concern you.
-You have the right to be
represented in court by an Attorney. The government will pay the attorney to
represent you.
-You have a right to meet with
your caseworker at least once a month.
-The information you share with
your casework about your placement is confidential. That is, your caseworker is
forbidden by law to discuss your conversations beyond people with a need to
know.
-You have a right to visit your
family. That right cannot not be taken from you and it is illegal to threaten
you with taking that right from you.
-You have the right to be placed
with a relative as an alternative to foster home care.
-You have a right to live with
your siblings, meaning your brothers and sisters.
-You have the right to live in a
foster home as opposed to a group home.
-You have a right to participate
in any plan for your benefit and future.
-You have the right to be
provided with adequate and nourishing food, shelter and clothing.
-You have a right to your own
belongings. You have a right to keep any money you have earned or been given.
-You cannot be forced to take
medication that has not been prescribed by a doctor and that has the prior
approval of your caseworker.
-You have the right to receive
confidential phone calls and to have your mail come to you unopened.
-At the proper age, you have the
right to participate in an Independent Living Skills Program.
-You have the right to file a
complaint about the type of care you are receiving from your caregivers or your
caseworker.
-You have the right to prompt
medical treatment.
-You have the right to speak to a
counselor or therapist if you feel the need.
-You cannot be taken out of
foster care without a hearing before the proper authorities.
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
Interior of Moulin de la Galette - Ramon Casas i Carbo
Interior with a mother reading aloud to her daughter. Carl Vilhelm Holsøe (Danish, 1863-1935). Oil on canvas.
Isaac Soyer, Rebecca, 1940
Ivan Lubennikov - Spring, 1986
AND NOW A WORD FROM THE IRISHMAN, OSCAR WILDE..............
Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' Erich Fromm
THE ART OF WAR...............................
Traditional
Irish Broiled Dinner
Ingredients
needed for this dish
1 (3 1/2 lb) fresh beef brisket
2 (12 oz)
bottles Lager beer
2 c water (or
enough to just cover)
2 bay leaves
10 black peppercorns
1/2 c chopped parsley
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
or olive oil
3 cloves
garlic, peeled and sliced
2 c chopped and
rinsed leeks (white parts only)
1 med yellow onion, peeled and sliced
3/4 lb large
carrots cut into large pieces
3/4 lb small
red potatoes
1 lb turnips, peeled and quartered
2 lbs green
cabbage cut in sixths (secure with toothpicks)
Salt and
freshly ground black pepper to taste
Cooking
Instructions
Place an 8 to 10 quart Dutch oven on the burner and
add the beef, beer, water, bay leaves, peppercorns, parsley, and salt Heat a
frying pan and sauté the garlic, leeks, and yellow onion for a few minutes then
add to the Dutch oven
Cover and simmer gently for 3 1/2 hours or until the
meat is very tender (This will normally take about 1 hour per pound of brisket)
In the last 25 minutes of cooking, add the carrots and
red potatoes
In the last 15 minutes of cooking, add the turnips,
cabbage, salt, and pepper If the vegetables are not done to your liking, cook
them longer but do not overcook Remove the toothpicks from the cabbage before
serving.
“The
day will come when the cow will have use for her tail” Irish proverb
Act of kindness: Why this
McDonald's worker abruptly closed his register
The account of a McDonald's
worker's Sept. 16 act of kindness has gone viral. Her original post to Facebook
has been shared more than 300,000 times since.
By Cathaleen Chen
When an elderly disabled man
asked a fast-food worker named Kenny to help him eat his food at the height of
rush hour in downtown Chicago, Kenny didn’t hesitate to oblige.
To the surprise and admiration of
a fellow patron, Kenny closed his register, put on some gloves, headed over to
the wheelchaired man’s table, and began to cut his food for him.
The act was captured by a patron,
who then posted a picture and heraccount of the story on Facebook last week.
Since then, the post has garnered more than 300,000 shares.
Recommended: Year-round giving: 8
family volunteering opportunities
Today I made a quick stop at
McDonald's after work. As I waited in line to order, an elderly handicapped
gentleman wheeled himself over to the cashier in front of me,” Destiny Carreno
writes in the viral post. “The man politely tried to ask the cashier something
and it took him a few tries before either of us could understand he was saying
‘Help me please.’”
“To be honest, I thought the
cashier wasn't going to help, especially during rush hour in downtown Chicago,
but to my shock, he shut down his register and disappeared from view,” Ms.
Carreno continues.
When she finally saw that Kenny
had left the kitchen to help the man eat, Carreno said she was moved to tears.
“At that point, the tears started
to gather in my eyes. My heart was so appreciative for what he did. I couldn't
contain my emotions in the crowded restaurant,” she goes on.
NBC 5 Chicago reports that Rod
Lubeznik, the owner of the McDonald’s, said in a statement that the company is
very proud of the employee, who they identified as Kenny.
"It's a true testament to
who Kenny is, and as a reminder to us all that one seemingly small act of
kindness can touch the hearts of so many," Lubeznik said.
Where there is love there is life. Mahatma Gandhi
Coronado Beach
Annapolis Md
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Coronado Beach
Northern Maine
Westerly RI
National Zoo, Washington DC
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Happiness and
Its Many Health Benefits Are Not Exclusive
By Eric
Nelson on August 17, 2015 10:10 AM
“Recently, a critical mass of research has provided what might be the
most basic and irrefutable argument in favor of happiness,” declares Kira
Newman in her article on Cal Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center website.
“Happiness and good health go hand-in-hand. Indeed, scientific studies have
been finding that happiness can make our hearts healthier, our immune systems
stronger, and our lives longer.”
This is great news. But maybe not so great for those who aren’t very good
at being happy.
“I have bipolar disorder, and I often wonder how the emotional symptoms
that result affect my overall happiness and health,” writes “Tyla” in the
article’s comment section. “Do I get the short end of the stick because I
suffer from a disease that makes you prone to unhappiness from depression and
anxiety?”
If, as is widely believed, happiness is a largely chemical-based
phenomenon, then yes, it might be fair to assume that those whose bodies have
trouble generating such chemicals could be left with “the short end of the stick.”
This, in and of itself, is a pretty depressing thought.
If, on the other hand, there were some other source they might turn to
for happiness – a safer, more reliable, less chemical- or even completely
non-chemical-based source – then no, no one should be left out. Now we’re
talkin’.
Try as we might, though, we just can’t seem to shake the notion, or dodge
the penalties, of what most everyone assumes to be a matter-based existence.
Even so, it’s an assumption that deserves to be challenged.
“Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love,” affirms Mary Baker
Eddy, a religious and medical reformer whose many years of trial and
tribulation provided plenty of incentive to seek out the source – and resulting
health benefits – of happiness. “It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist
alone, but requires all mankind to share it.”
More than a mere statement of faith, Eddy’s conviction that happiness
originates in something outside of matter was a profound declaration of truth
wrought out of her own life experience – a truth that, as it became better
understood, had the effect of improving, not just her own health, but the
health of those she encouraged to consider this same Spirit-based point of
view.
Of course, there are times when adopting such an outlook is a lot easier
said than done, particularly when we find ourselves fixating on the happiness
of others – what social commentators often refer to as the “fear of missing
out” or FoMO. It’s in just these situations, however, when simply being open to
the fact that happiness, as a wholly spiritual expression, “requires all
mankind to share it” can be especially helpful in breaking through whatever
mental logjam would seem to be getting in the way of our own sense of
contentment.
Even more important than the revelation that “happiness and good health
go hand-in-hand” is the understanding that happiness is not exclusive. No one
is left out. And ultimately, no one can be or should be deprived of its many
benefits, not the least of which is better health.
Eric Nelson writes each week on the link between consciousness and health
from his perspective as a practitioner of Christian Science. He also serves as
the media and legislative spokesperson for Christian Science in Northern
California. Read similar columns at norcalcs.org and follow him on Twitter
@norcalcs.
We
can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as
God gives them to us. Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe
DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
Enough
Is Enough: The Time Has Come to Address Sky-High Drug Prices
By
Topher Spiro, Maura Calsyn, Thomas Huelskoetter
In any given month, about half of
all Americans—and 90 percent of seniors—take a prescription drug. These
medications help millions of patients fight illnesses and recover from
injuries; they also shorten the duration of common illnesses, alleviate pain, and
treat life-threatening illnesses. Simply put, prescription drugs save lives and
can prevent costlier, more invasive treatments.
Yet not all drugs offer the same
value, and too often, patients and insurers pay exorbitant prices for their
medications, even for products that are no more effective than cheaper options.
In 2014, more than half a million Americans took at least $50,000 worth of
prescription drugs each. Americans pay out of pocket for a much greater share
of prescription drug costs than hospital costs. Not surprisingly, almost
three-quarters of the public thinks that drug costs are too high. And while
drug prices keep going up, a significant percentage of new prescription drugs
are designed to treat the same conditions and offer little clinical advantage
over existing drugs.
Spending on prescription drugs is
now growing at a faster rate than spending on any other health care item or
service. Furthermore, drug prices are rising at a rapid enough rate that they
are affecting the overall rate of health care cost growth. For example,
Medicare’s costs per beneficiary increased by 2.3 percent during 2014, after
two years of no growth, due in large part to the almost 11 percent increase in
drug costs for the program.
There are numerous reasons why
patients and health care payers pay such exorbitant prices for prescription
drugs. Unlike other nations, the United States does not directly regulate the
prices that drug companies can charge for their products. In addition, patent
protection and market exclusivity shield drug manufacturers from normal market
competition, giving manufacturers significantly greater bargaining power than
insurers. Without any competition or additional regulation of prices, the price
is simply what the manufacturer sets for its monopoly product.
All consumers end up paying more
for health care because of these high prices. Patients in need of expensive
medications often will pay thousands of dollars per month. But it is not just
patients who need these products who help pay these costs. Rising drug costs
also increase premiums and cost sharing for all consumers. These costs also
will continue to squeeze federal and state budgets as Medicare, Medicaid, and
other health care programs pay for these treatments. At the same time, drug company
profits continue to increase at a faster pace than any other sector of the
health care industry.
This growing crisis is not
sustainable. In a previous report, the Center for American Progress recommended
several policies that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO,
estimates would reduce federal spending on drugs by more than $140 billion over
10 years. The focus of this report is a package of new, additional ideas that
will:
Lower drug costs across the board
Ensure that relative drug prices
reflect the benefits to patients
Address drug costs paid for by
both public programs and private insurance
The table on the following page
summarizes the proposed package.
Together, these reforms will
broaden the impact of research, lower costs for prescription drugs throughout
the system, and offer greater financial protection for those Americans whose
lives and health depend on prescription medications.
Topher Spiro is the Vice
President for Health Policy at the Center for American Progress. Maura Calsyn
is the Director of Health Policy at the Center. Thomas Huelskoetter is the
Research Assistant for Health Policy at the Center.
To speak with our experts on this
topic, please contact:
Print: Liz Bartolomeo (poverty,
health care)
202.481.8151 or lbartolomeo@americanprogress.org
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media: Jennifer Molina
202.796.9706 or
jmolina@americanprogress.org
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202.483.2675 or
rrosen@americanprogress.org
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202.478.5328 or
ckiene@americanprogress.org
The
opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Elie Wiesel
THE ART OF PULP
GOOD WORDS
TO HAVE………………..
Antonomasia: (an-toh-noh-MAY-zhuh) 1. The use of an epithet or title for a
proper name, for example, the Bard for Shakespeare. 2. The use of the name of a
person known for a particular quality to describe others, such as calling
someone brainy as Einstein. Also known as eponym. From Latin, from Greek
antonomazein (to name differently), from anti- (instead of) + onoma (name)
WE NEED PAID FAMILY LEAVE FOR AMERICANS
New
Yorkers need paid family leave
Part-time, hourly and contract
workers deserve the benefit, too.
By David Bolotsky
Netflix made major waves last
month by offering employees up to a year of paid parental leave. Microsoft and
Adobe quickly announced similar expansions. This came on the heels of generous
policies by tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
As a business owner, I know
generous benefits are a smart move. They allow companies to stay competitive by
attracting and retaining the best and brightest. A more loyal, productive
workforce leads to a better bottom line. That's why we're proud to offer paid leave
at UncommonGoods.
But these expansions, while
positive, apply only to a fraction of workers. Part-time, hourly and contract
workers at Netflix and many other big tech companies do not receive paid leave.
Many small businesses here in New York and around the country cannot offer
extensive paid family leave, but their employees are equally in need.
All New Yorkers should have paid
leave available to them for the major life moments we all go through—the
arrival of a new child or the serious illness of a loved one—whether or not
their employer can afford it. That's why a proposed employee-funded system is
gaining support across the state.
The Paid Family Leave Insurance
Act would provide a modest 12 weeks of paid leave, funded by small employee
payroll deductions that start at just 45 cents and are phased in over four
years to a permanent level of 88 cents a week. This would create an insurance
fund from which workers could draw a significant portion of their pay while on
leave.
We already have the infrastructure
in place to do this, without any new administrative requirements. Like the paid
family leave in New Jersey, Rhode Island and California, this system would also
piggyback on New York's Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) program, which
employees have used for off-the-job disability since 1950 and for pregnancy
since 1978.
The paid-leave bill would also
modernize the TDI program—the critical support system for new mothers
physically recovering from childbirth—which is currently frozen at the 1989
rate of $170 per week. This would mean a small cost shared between employees
and employers—one that would not be burdensome for businesses and is woefully
overdue.
In fact, we know that statewide
paid-family-leave programs do not hurt businesses. California was the first
state to implement it, in 2004. Five years later, the majority of businesses
reported that it had a positive or no effect on profitability, productivity,
employee turnover and morale.
Paid leave should not just be a
company perk for the lucky few: New York's families and its economy are
stronger when no one has to fear that the birth of a child or serious illness
of a parent could mean financial ruin.
New York is the home of
innovation. Let's extend that legacy to paid family leave that works for
everyone.
David Bolotsky is the founder and
CEO of Brooklyn-based UncommonGoods, an online and catalog retailer.
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
Statue of Empress Elizabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph, at the Achilleion (Achilles) Palace, built in 1890-91 as her retreat from the Hapsburg court
IF INDUSTRY WON’T ACT RESPONSIBLE, THEN IMPOSE A
SUGAR TAX
What
Coca-Cola Is Doing with Its Money Right Now Is Actually Kind of Genius
Coke finally made its charitable
donations public—so we asked renowned nutritionist and soda industry expert
Marion Nestle to explain its giving strategy.
—By Kiera Butler
Coca-Cola has had a bad summer.
Last month, the New York Times revealed that the soda giant funded scientific
research suggesting that people who want to lose weight and improve their
health should focus on exercise instead of cutting out high-calorie items—like
soda—from their diets.
Consumers were outraged, so in
the wake of the investigation, Coca-Cola CEO Muthar Kent vowed in a piece in
the Wall Street Journal's opinion section to publish a complete list of people
and organizations that the company has funded. Earlier this week, Coca-Cola did
just that.
The list—which includes a
breakdown of the $118.6 million in donations that the company has doled out
over the last five years—is sprawling. To make sense of it, I spoke toMarion
Nestle, a professor in New York University's Department of Nutrition, Food
Studies, and Public Health. Nestle's new book,Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda
(and Winning), uncovers how soda companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo became
some of the most powerful corporations in the United States. Their success,
Nestle argues in the book, comes in no small part from their strategic
alliances with a diverse range of communities—from minority groups to doctors
to physical fitness organizations.
Sure enough, those very groups
are well represented in Coca-Cola's list. Here's a quick guide to the main
kinds of organizations that Nestle noticed—and the strategy behind Coke's
decision to give to them:
Professors and university
research centers, including the University of South Carolina's South Carolina
Research Foundation (more than $1 million), the University of Alabama
Birmingham Educational Foundation (more than $1 million), and the University of
Colorado ($1.25 million): "This is a big part of what Coke does, funding
university research centers to incentivize them to do work that makes soda look
not quite so bad," says Nestle. "I was particularly interested in the
list of health professionals and scientific experts. The soda industry is very
interested in these people, who tell people in hospitals what to drink."
Minority group organizations,
including 100 Black Men of America Inc. ($350,000), the NAACP ($550,000), and
the National Association of Hispanic Nurses ($671,000): "The soda industry
deliberately markets to African American and Hispanic communities," says
Nestle. "They're sending the message, 'You're part of mainstream America.
You're like this sports figure.'" Interestingly, Coca-Cola has a troubled
history with the African American community. In her book, Nestle chronicles
how, from the time of the civil rights movement through the early 1980s, Coca-Cola
faced criticism for hiring few black employees in its Atlanta headquarters. The
company has spent decades repairing its relationship with black Americans.
Sports and fitness groups,
including the National Foundation for Governors' Council on Physical Fitness
($4 million), and the National Recreation and Park Association ($2 million):
"That's part of this concerted effort to make people think that if they're
physically active, they don't have to think about what they're drinking,"
says Nestle.
Youth organizations, including
Boys & Girls Clubs (more than $6 million), the American Academy of
Pediatrics (nearly $3 million) and Girl Scouts of the USA ($1 million): Nestle
explains that soda companies have pledged not to advertise to children under
the age of 12 on TV—and they have largely kept their promise. But "there
are lots of other ways in which they can market to children," she says—and
donating to charitable groups that support kids is one of them. That strategy
"gets these children's organizations not to make drinking less soda a
priority. And if they're using sodas around their place, it keeps the brand
visible. It buys silence." Nestle sites the example of when, in 2013, the
soda industry trade group American Beverage Association spent millions to defeat
a proposed soda tax in Philadelphia—and, at the same time, gave a $10 million
grant to the city's children's hospital.
Medical professionals groups,
including the American Academy of Family Physicians (more than $3.5 million),
the American College of Cardiology ($3.1 million), the American Dietetic
Association (more than $1 million), the American College of Sports Medicine
($865,000), and the Preventative Cardiovascular Nurses Association ($383,500):
"The soda companies have a very big presence at medical professional
meetings," says Nestle. "They sponsor specific sessions, as well as
the meetings in general. They choose the lecturers, or they appoint people to
choose the lecturers. You can bet that these people are not going to be saying
very much about the need to drink less soda, even though the evidence suggests
that's the best advice."
Disaster relief funds, including
Mercy Corps ($150,000), and the Global Disaster Response Fund ($150,000):
"This one is a no brainer, because these groups bring bottled water
in," says Nestle. (Coca-Cola owns leading bottled water brand Dasani.)
Food banks, including Atlanta
Community Food Bank, Inc. ($570,000) and the San Antonio Food Bank ($300,000):
Nestle explains that one metric by which food pantries are often evaluated is
the overall weight of the food they provide. "Sodas are very heavy, so
food banks love sodas," she says.
Parks, including the National
Park Foundation (more than $2 million) and Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory
Alliance ($3 million): Some public park groups—including the National Park
Foundation—are trying to cut down on plastic litter by banning the sale of
bottled water on park premises. "So it makes sense that Coke is supporting
parks to keep bottled water in," says Nestle.
Really tiny organizations,
including many local chapters of the YMCA, the Boys & Girls Club, and
Police Athletic Leagues: Coca-Cola's list includes some donations in the
millions, but most of the contributions that the company has made are
smaller—$50,000 or less. "It doesn't take very much to form a good
impression," says Nestle. "I bet the Portland After-School Tennis
& Education at St. Johns Racquet Center was very happy with their $25,000.
You can bet that small groups that get any donation at all are not going to be
really motivated to get Coke out of their offices."
Should
the Amount of Basic Income Vary With Cost of Living Differences?
By Scott Santens
The question of an unequal UBI
A common first question in
response to the idea of unconditionally guaranteeing a monthly cash stipend to
everyone sufficient to meet their basic needs is in regards to a potential need
for differing amounts of basic income. Let’s examine this question from two
perspectives: that of the individual and that of the location.
First Perspective: The Individual
It’s a lot more expensive to live
in New York City and San Francisco than it is to live in Detroit or somewhere
out in small town rural America. With this in mind, the logic goes that perhaps
we need to make sure and vary the amount of universal basic income, so as to
make sure that wherever anyone is currently living, they can stay there. If
someone needs $2,000 to live unemployed and alone in a 1-bedroom apartment in
NYC or SF, then that’s what their basic income should be, so goes the argument.
This may sound fair enough on its
face, until we look at basic income as a guarantee of a minimum amount of
opportunity.
Right now people are guaranteed
zero opportunity. However, if you happen to live in New York City, you are
fortunate enough to have a much greater amount of opportunity than if you lived
in rural America. In NYC, there are jobs, public transportation, people,
services, commerce, and everything else the Big Apple provides. This is also
why it costs so much more to live there versus rural America. It’s an
opportunity premium originating from the added value created by a dense
population of people and wealth.
In Small Town USA, population:
500, there are few jobs, few people, few services, little commerce, and no
public transportation. It costs a lot less to live there than in NYC because
there is far less opportunity and far less wealth. It’s an opportunity deficit.
A universal basic income however,
provides increased opportunity to all in the form of additional cash. It’s an
opportunity bonus.
Everyone can use their UBI on
anything they want. They can spend $500 on rent and $500 on food, or $333 on
rent, $333 on food, and $334 on starting a business. They can live with
relatives for $0 and use $1,000 per month on the pursuit of their passion,
whatever it is. Someone could move to a big city to become an actor, or move to
a small town to take life a bit easier.
Whatever someone decides, that
$1,000 per month will always be there, deposited in their bank account without
fail every four weeks (or $500 every two weeks). As cash, it will always be
able to be exchanged for something else of infinite variety, especially now
where anything can be purchased online and delivered anywhere. There are no
limits on how the money can be used. Creativity would have full free reign.
With this now in mind, let’s look
again at NYC versus Small Town USA, with a hypothetical location opportunity
ratio of 3:1.
NYC: $1,500/mo effective location opportunity
plus $1,000/mo UBI opportunity bonus minus $2,000/mo rent and food = $500 total
opportunity
Small Town USA: $500/mo effective location
opportunity plus $1,000/mo UBI opportunity bonus minus $1,000/mo rent and food =
$500 total opportunity
With an identical UBI of $1,000
per month for each person, they both end up netting the same amount of total
opportunity because one has more location opportunity and the other has more
opportunity in the form of cash after covering basic expenses.They also both
have new choices.
Choose Your Own Adventure
If the person in NYC wants more
opportunity, they can choose to spend less on rent and food by sharing expenses
with other people. It may cost $2,000 per month to live alone, but it could
only cost $500 per month to live with three roommates. Or location opportunity
could be sacrificed by moving somewhere cheaper in order to spend less on food
and rent elsewhere anywhere in the country. Living anywhere is possible for the
first time because with basic income, income is decoupled from jobs, and
whereas jobs don’t exist everywhere, people can.
Meanwhile, the person in Small
Town USA could make the same choices, but from the other side of the coin. They
can save even more money by sharing expenses, or move somewhere more expensive
and exchange cash opportunity for location opportunity. Maybe they’ve always
wanted to try to be an actor in NYC and now they can, whereas before UBI, they
were unable to leave rural America.
We all have a right to live
anywhere in the country, but no one has a right to live specifically in NYC,
and to do so living alone and with no job in the heart of the city. People have
a right to live, and if they choose to live in NYC, they also get a ton of
unique opportunities right along with that choice. And that additional
opportunity compared to others living elsewhere should bear some kind of
additional cost. It should be a tradeoff.
If someone wants increased cash
opportunity without changing their location opportunity, all they need do is
cut their spending and/or share expenses with others to a greater degree than
those receiving the same UBI elsewhere. If they’d rather keep more of their
basic income instead of keeping their higher location opportunity, they can move
anywhere else cheaper where there’s less location opportunity.
Basic income unlocks these kinds
of choices that would not exist otherwise, but it’s one or the other and the
decision concerning what kind of opportunity is more important is up to the individual.
And these decisions will also have important impacts on the cost of living
itself.
Second Perspective: The Location
There is another issue to
consider here, which is if UBI is scaled by location, that location can get as
expensive as it wants,like tulips. Where is the incentive for a city to keep
its costs of living down, if it knows the federal government will guarantee any
price to cover basic needs?
The point of a universal amount,
is to say“this is the average minimum amount of money in this country required
to cover basic needs.” For those in lower cost of living areas, they can stay
where they are and be even better off financially, or move to a more expensive
location. For those in higher cost of living areas, they can earn income on top
of their basic income, move to a cheaper location, or the cities or states
themselves can make living there more affordable through lowering costs or
increasing incomes.
What do I mean by increasing
incomes? There is nothing stopping states and metro areas from creating
resident dividends like in Alaska to increase the total incomes of those who
live there. Vast oil deposits are also entirely unnecessary to accomplish this.
Yes, even resource-poor states can do it.A study in Vermont showed just how
effective this could be:
$1.2 billion of additional
revenue would be available in Vermont each year if common assets were rented
out instead of given away. That’s enough for a $1,972 dividend for every
Vermonter… Our highest estimate of common asset value of Vermont is $6.45
billion. If all of that revenue were devoted to a dividend, it could be as
large as $10,348.
So in Vermont, it would be
possible for everyone to have a basic income at the federal level of $12,000
and at the state level of as much as $10,000 for a total of $22,000. In Alaska,
their total income outside the labor market would actually be more like $14,000
with the added income from their existing dividend. California could do the
same thing, and provide an additional $200 per month or more to its residents
through something like a carbon tax or a land value tax. Any state or even city
can do this, if they so choose.
Basic income gives people the
basic freedom to move. This introduces downward pressure on prices, as cities
suddenly find themselves competing for residents. If those charging rent charge
too much, people are free to move where people are charging less. There will be
more movement between small towns and cities nationwide. This creates the
incentive to not raise rents.
There’s even an incentive to
lower rents within cities through the introduction of smart new businesses
looking to capture the new low-end housing market created by everyone having
basic income.
If we guarantee rent at any
level, there is no incentive to move to a cheaper location. We’d be removing
competition between cities and encouraging those setting rent prices to raise
them.
If the cost of housing is
guaranteed at any level, then that level will rise.
This same effect has been seen in
Australia, where increasing child care has resulted in increasing child care
prices. And we see this in the US college education system, where education is
guaranteed at any price through loans, so prices just keep on being raised.
Giving more money for more
expensive cities would say to those places, “Go right on ahead and raise
prices. We will pay it, no matter what.” And why would they not want that? More
federal money per person in the state of California would be good for
California. And then what of those in Mississippi? They aren’t worth as much?
They are less valuable as US citizens because it’s cheaper to live there?
Adjusting a basic income instead
of making it fully universal is not a good idea if we want to lower costs of
living in high cost of living areas. Let everyone and everything be treated
equally where all can adjust to the universal level, instead of perpetually
adjusting the level around locations. The former would introduce competition
between cities, where the costs of living would go down in expensive areas and
up in cheaper areas. The latter would encourage rising costs of living in
already expensive areas, which is something I believe we would want to avoid.
Existence Unchained
Basically, one of the most
powerful effects of a truly universal basic income is the decoupling of income
from jobs. People are at present effectively chained to cities. They’re fenced
in. They have little choice but to live near all the jobs.
Once people no longer are forced
to live near metro areas in order to obtain the income required to live, the
demand to live near densely-populated cities will likely fall while the demand
to live in Small Town USA will rise. Together this will reduce the extreme
price disparity between these options such that if the national average cost of
living anywhere is $1,000, the extremes could go for example from $200-$2,000
to $500-$1,500. It goes up at the bottom and down at the top. But this only
happens if we don’t vary the value of the UBI and instead make sure every
citizen is treated equally regardless of location.
Implementation
Granted, there will be people who
want to move to cheaper areas, but may find it financially difficult to do so,
even with their basic income, and so we should consider this. How will we
handle this particular circumstance?
Well, I don’t see the problem in
covering moving expenses, either through a loan or grant as part of the
introduction of UBI. We already do this to a degree.
Other agencies, such as the
Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, the
U.S. Treasury and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also provide housing
and moving grants to low-income individuals who are facing financial hardship.
Or we could possibly avoid such
added administration costs by just giving a one-time additional amount that
people can either use to move or treat as a stimulus bonus. Or we could
potentially avoid all of this by just introducing UBI slowly, giving people time
to adjust as it goes.
These kinds of details are
implementation details, but that’s all they are. They’re certainly no obstacle
to the idea of basic income itself. We just need to keep these kinds of details
in mind to best design the eventual policies we end up enacting.
When it comes to the detail of
setting the amount of a national basic income, whatever amount is decided upon
needs to be the same amount for all citizens, regardless of location, not only
for all the economic reasons above, but because in the eyes of government, all
citizens should be treated equally.
Basic income is basic economic
rights, and when it comes to rights, they should be equal.
THE MOB UNDER SURVEILLANCE
John Gotti (right, arm out) with his Gambinos
DannyCatilici
Thomas Huck Carbonaro, Frankie Fabiano, and Joey D'Angelo
Wedding photo of left to right, Dino Calabro, Joseph Competiello, Dino Saracino and Thomas Gioeli at the wedding of Competiello's sister.
Tommy Horsehead Scafidi and John Stanfa.
Sal Avellino(Bottom right) and Sal Tom Mix Santoro (Top Right) FBI
Chicago Boss Sam Giancana and girlfriend Phyllis Mcguire (on the stairs) leaving the plane apart from one another to convince the world they don't know each other.(Chicago PD)
Sammy Gravano on his boat, c.1989.(Justice Intel)
Sebastian John LaRocca in front of the Allegheny Car Wash he owned, located at 100 Sandusky Ave, Pittsburgh
Nicky Scarfo (Philly), Sciandra (Bufalino), & Todaro (Buffalo)
Excerpt from my book “On the
Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film”
CHAPTER
10
THE CAST
AND CREW
Waterfront
works because of its extras. The viewer
is left with little doubt that these people have lived through the harrowing
experiences of the Waterfront. The
extras, like most of the professional actors Kazan uses in the film, are not
the typical handsome, sun drenched faces of 1950w Hollywood productions. His extras are gritty, defeated and course. Nor do they behave like extras in other films
of the day. They are the types of people
one would expect to encounter when wandering into a blue-collar working
atmosphere of Hoboken or Red Hook.
Waterfront’s
strong, richly developed secondary characters help to create a wonderful
film. Pops Doyle is a loving doting
father who raised a heroic and fearless
son and a compassionate, loyal daughter.
He is a hard workingman, a good provider who has one arm longer than
other from tossing bails to provide for his family.
Charley
Malloy, with two years of college gives him an intellectual edge over Terry and
the rest of the Johnny Friendly gang. He
has a nickname, an all telling one at that, Charlie the gent His taste in
clothing is expensive and more refined then Johnny Friendly’s. We know that he has the will power to claw
his way up from poverty and beneath his tough-guy exterior is a deeply
passionate man.
Mack, the otherwise mean spirited gang boss
from the docks shows a human side by hiring a lazy brother in law because he is
evidently afraid of his wife “Who will kill me” and he protects his brother law
from JR, Johnny Friendly’s merciless loan shark.
Profound inner conflicts confront each
central character’s conscience creating a motivating background for each. Edie cannot choose between honoring the
memory of her murdered brother and loving the man who betrayed him. Terry Malloy believes that he can remain
simultaneously loyal to his brother, Johnny Friendly and himself. The film does not dash to the truth it gropes
for the truth and rises from a slow awakening to find it.
While most of the cast was recruited from the
Actors Studio, Hoboken police officers would play Hoboken police officers. Kazan insisted that real Longshoremen be hired
as extras to play actor dock workers. It
did not always work out. The
longshoremen had been promised four hours of work, paid in cash the following
day. In the first week of shooting, the
cash did not arrive. Two enormous
dockworkers took Kazan's assistant director behind a building and promised to
toss him off a pier if they were not paid, when, at that exact moment, Spiegel
and his paymaster arrived in his limo.
They had stopped for coffee and were late.
To
play the role of Father Corridan, Kazan chose Karl Malden. The two had first worked together in 1946 in
a play Truck line Café that started the career of another relatively unknown
actor, Marlon Brando. Sinatra had originally
been in mind for the role of the Priest, but he turned it down and it is
doubtful that at a $900,000 asking price for the role, that he would have
gotten it anyway. By that time, Malden
had over 18 films to his credit including the much-heralded A Streetcar Named
Desire (1951) again with newcomer, Marlon Brando. The role won him the Oscar for Best
Supporting Actor in that film.
Of
the role, Malden said, “Father Corridan was a great orator and a remarkable
man. No other person I’ve portrayed in
my film career has had such a profound impact on me as a human being. I can’t express how much I admired Father
Corridan. He was just like Hoboken—cold
and tough on the edges, but filled with integrity and a helluva lot of
dignity.” 41
Malden
was the son of a Serbian father and a Czech mother, neither of whom spoke
English, (he never heard a word of English until he got to first grade.) he was
born Malden George Sekulovich on March 12 1912 in Gary, Indiana. (The stage name Karl Malden came from
dropping the "l" in his first name and using it as his last
name. For Karl, he borrowed his
grandfather’s name) After graduating from high school, he spent three years
working with his father in the dismal Gary steel mills, saving up enough money
to go to acting school in nearby Chicago.
Four years later, he moved to New York to find acting work and
eventually landed a series of bit parts on Broadway, which led to bigger
parts. In the 1930s, he moved into radio
parts where he befriended actor Richard Widmark. In 1947, Widmark helped Malden land a role in
Widmark's movie debut, Kiss of Death
(Oddly enough, the favorite film of
gangster Joey Gallo, the man who would gun down dock boss Albert Anastasia’s. Gallo modeled his insane and bloody career on
Widmark's character.)
"We
brought Karl to meet Father John" Schulberg said, "He sat around and
drank with the priest. In the movie,
Karl walks like him, talks like him" 42
The Priest liked him so much he gave Malden his black hat and overcoat,
which the actor wore throughout the production.
“We were the same size, so I bought his coat and hat from him to wear in
the film,” Malden said. “The wind off
the river was ferocious. I was freezing,
but somehow I felt a little warmer in his coat and hat.” 43
Malden
used the real Father Corridan’s chain-smoking in his characterization; the more
the priest becomes involved in the docks, the more he smokes, the more he
smokes, and the more resolved he is to change the waterfront.
For
the role of Edie Doyle, Kazan chose the unknown Eva Marie Saint after deciding
that the script’s romantic angle but one that would tie into the story in a
realistic way. The draft was rewritten
to introduce Edie, the innocent sister to the murdered hero Eddie Doyle.
“Eva
Marie Saint" said Schulberg "we found in the Player's Directory, it
was her first picture.” 44 Saint had
studied acting at Bowling Green University, afterwards finding quick work in
radio and TV drama's which was restricted to a May 29, 1950 CBS television
drama "The Man Who Had
Influence" starring Robert Sterling.
Kazan had actor Elizabeth Montgomery in mind
for the part and although her screen test was flawless, she had, as Kazan wrote
“an air of genteel Connecticut finishing school about her”
Another
name tossed around for the role was Grace Kelly, who withdrew herself from
consideration since she had consented to take the lead female role in Rear
Window. Despite her wealthy background,
Kelly was only a generation from the rough-hewn Irish dockworkers and would
have given the role an interesting dash.
“We
had more trouble casting that part” Schulberg said, “We went through the whole
screen actors guild book, kept turning pages, getting nowhere. Eva Marie Saint was working in a play on
Broadway with Lillian Gish, and had one small scene (The Play was The Trip to
Bountiful at the Henry Miller Theater 1953-1954) Gadge said, “You go” I went
and I was very impressed by her. She had
never been in a movie before” 45
Even
with its sterling screenplay, the film would not have had the same impact
without the strong acting skills and screen presence of
Rod
Steiger and Lee J. Cobb (with Cobb in particular deserving more credit than he
is often given.)
Kazan chose Cobb for the role of waterfront
gangster Johnny Friendly. It is a remarkable performance as the strangely
likable yet brutal mob boss. The performance
is even more remarkable considering Cobb’s state of his mental health at the
time of the filming, The pressure of new film, working with Kazan and
Schulberg, both identified as informants for the HUAC, his wife’s failing
health and mental condition (She had suffered a nervous breakdown) and Cobb’s
precarious financial situation strained him during the entire filming. Eight months after the release of Waterfront,
he suffered a massive heart attack that almost killed him. Frank Sinatra moved in pulled the actor from
despair. The two had worked together in
the 1949 release, Miracle of the Bells.
Sinatra, who felt that Cobb should have won the Academy Award for his
role in Waterfront, paid for all of actors medical bills not covered by his
insurance and then moved him into a rest room to recuperate for six weeks,
again paying all of the bills from his own pocket.
Rod
Steiger starred as Charley Malloy, Brando's characters brother, the beefy,
round-faced Method actor whose trademark is a coiled-spring intensity was
already known through his work in the early days of live television, especially
in Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" and the anthology series as "Philco
Television Playhouse" (1948-56).
However, Kazan had wanted the role to go to Laurence Tierney but the
Celtic looking Tierney was under contract to another film.
It
was a difficult role. Schulberg in his
writing and Kazan in his filming never present the Malloy brothers as more then
what they are,
thugs. Despite his nobility at the films end, Charley
Malloy is a repulsive character just as Terry Malloy is pathetic figure as
the ex-boxer of promise reduced to as
mascot status to the hoods because of his low mental capacity. The brilliance of both Brando and Steiger’s
performance is that they molded their characters, through body language and
facial expressions, into sympathetic characters.
Added to the stress of the role, Steiger’s
Charlie Malloy is forced to deal with a wide variety of emotions but again,
truth is the primary motivator behind his actions. Steiger plays the role with a gauntlet of
emotions, showing his growing anxiety of Terry’s relationship with Edie with
narrowed eyes, or nervously slapping his gloves in hand during the taxicab
scene.
For
Brando’s part, Kazan gave him complete freedom in his role as Terry
Malloy. Brando took the opportunity to
become Terry Malloy to the point that the viewer is not watching Brando embody
Terry Malloy the viewer is watching Terry Malloy in the flesh. The impression left is so real that the viewer
could easily believe that Kazan’s camera has simply shown up at a time in
Malloy’s life when he is confused and troubled.
It
is also impressive to watch Brando’s body movements. He makes them as important as his lines by
pushing Malloy’s personality quirks into the limelight. Terry walks like the prizefighter he is, head
forward, chin down, and the attention to his scarred eyebrow. Before Brando’s Terry Malloy appeared, few
actors considered incorporating body language or building characters quirk into
their roles. It was not the performance
that viewers in 1954 expected to see, but it is the performance that modern
viewer have come to expect, the result being that the performance that once
defined the cutting edge, loses some of its energy. Brando’s performance, his visionary flair,
have been replicated so many times over the decades that it’s has,
unfortunately, lost its freshness, due, oddly enough, to the dominance of
method acting in films that Brando and Kazan helped to introduce.
The Bootlegger
When
Roger Touhy returned to the Valley he invested most of his small fortune into a
used car dealership not far from the tiny house in the Valley where he was
born.
"My automobile business," Touhy
said, "was bringing me in from $50,000 to $60,000 a year. But the big
money was in alcoholic beverages. Everybody in the racket was getting rich. How
could the bootleggers miss, with a short ounce of gagging moonshine selling for
$1.25, or an eight-ounce glass of nauseating beer going for 75 cents?"
The Touhy brothers, Johnny, Eddie, Tommy and
Joe had already gotten involved in the booming bootleg business via Terrible
Tommy O'Connor. They worked mostly as hired enforcers, but they occasionally
hijacked a syndicate beer truck. It was almost natural that Roger join them and
eventually he entered the bootlegging business. They entered the business
through the back door, leasing a small fleet of trucks with drivers, from
syndicate boss Johnny Torrio's enormous bootlegging operation. Using the money
they earned from those leases, Roger and his brothers bought a franchise from
Torrio for the beer delivery routes to rural northwestern Cook County, the area
where Roger grew up.
The beer delivery business could be
lucrative as long as expenses were kept to a minimum, so the notoriously
tight-fisted brothers opted not to pay for police protection. As a result,
Chicago and Cook County police, probably working in a 50/50 split with Johnny
Torrio, or at the least working under his orders, made a practice of stopping
and impounding the brothers' trucks, probably kicking back half the fines
collected to Torrio.
When the expenses started to mount it
occurred to Tommy Touhy that the police would never suspect a commercial
vehicle of delivering booze. They decided to test the theory. The boys bought
two used Esso Gasoline trucks-Esso being the forerunner to Exxon-and they made
several successful shipments that way. It was a practice they continued to use
even though most of the drivers the Touhys employed were off-duty cops.
Virtually every truck the Touhys owned was disguised as a meat delivery truck.
After that, their trucks were never stopped and the brothers shipped all their
beer in commercial vehicles, either marked as gasoline, meat or coal delivery
trucks.
Ambitious and flush with cash from the beer
routes, the brothers entered a bootlegging partnership with two north side
Chicago hoods, Willie Heeney and Rocco DeGrazio, both of whom were amateur
narcotics dealers who would eventually reach top spots in the syndicate under
Frank Nitti and Tony Accardo. The Touhys and their new partners pumped out
rot-gut beer from a rented garage and made enough money to open a short-lived
nightclub a few doors down from their brewery. Using their profits from the
brewery and speakeasy, Roger and Tommy opened a string of handbooks, and then
used the cash from that to buy Heeney and DeGrazio out of the business.
Now the prosperous owner of a beer delivery
service, a small brewery, several handbooks and a car dealership, Roger asked
Clara Morgan for her hand in marriage. She accepted and the couple married in a
simple church ceremony in Chicago on April 22, 1922.
For the next three years, the brothers
worked to develop their various enterprises, building up their suburban beer
routes and expanding into labor extortion and gambling, but like most other
Irish hoods, resisting the easy money of prostitution. Then, in late 1925, as
Johnny Torrio was just beginning to expand his criminal empire, the brothers
leaped out of the small time by entering a partnership with Matt Kolb, a
five-foot three-inch, 280 pound former ward politician, syndicate bagman and
pay-off expert, who ran a $3,000,000 rot-gut whisky and needle beer brewery not
far from Roger's car dealership.
Earlier in the year A1 Capone, who was then
still Johnny Torrio's chief of staff, told Kolb that he was out of business
unless he paid 50 percent of his gross to Rocco DeGrazio, Roger's former
business partner and Capone's new business agent on the north side. Although
Kolb acted as bagman for Johnny Torrio, he despised Capone. Rather than work
for him, Kolb called Roger and Tommy Touhy and by mid-year their partnership
was in place. It was a simple arrangement: Kolb was the money man, Roger was
business manager and Tommy was the muscle.
It was Kolb who encouraged Touhy to move his
operation out to the suburbs, largely because his brothers were already operating
in the area and because Kolb understood that peace would never reign in Chicago
as long as prohibition was in force. But Kolb also held considerable clout with
the new County Sheriff, Charles Graydon, who had owned an ice packing business
several years before. The brothers knew Kolb was right: peace would never reign
in Chicago's underworld with so many different-and violent-street gangs vying
for a limited amount of business. But that wasn't the case out in the rural
northern portion of the county. In fact, when the brothers first started
peddling the syndicate's beer they were stunned at the amount of business, both
existing and potential, that was out there. Better yet, there was barely any
competition for the market and there were scores of people willing to operate
speakeasies if Kolb, who was worth a million in cash, put up the money to open
them.
By 1926, the Touhy brothers and Matt Kolb
were operational in suburban Des Plains, a small but prosperous community where
they started a cooper shop, brewery and wort plant. They expanded that to ten
fermenting plants, working round the clock, each plant being a small brewery in
itself with its own refrigeration system and ice-making machine with a bottling
plant. The investment paid off. By the end of the year, the partners were
selling 1,000 barrels of beer a week at $55 a barrel with a production cost of
$4.50 a barrel.
They sold their beer to 200 roadhouses
outside of Chicago, mostly in far western Cook and Will County, north to the
Wisconsin Lake region. Richer than ever, they hired more muscle men and with
Tommy Touhy leading the assault, the brothers punched, shot and sold their way
into a considerable portion of the upper northwest region of the city,
"Our business"
Roger said, "was scattered over a lot of
mileage. A barrel here and a barrel there. Nobody realized that Matt and I were
grossing about $1,000,000 a year from beer alone....I didn't become a giant in
the racket, but you might say I was one of the biggest midgets who ever scoffed
at the Volstead law."
Since making wort-the main ingredient for
beer as well as bread-was legal, Roger and Kolb claimed their entire operation
was a bakery since "I was producing enough wort for all the bread baked in
a dozen states. It was a big enterprise and I paid fifteen cents tax on every
gallon I made."
To counter Chicago's off-beer season-the
winter months-they set up a slot machine business, placing 225 machines in gas
stations, dance halls and chicken dinner stands. 'The only way to make money
faster" he said, "is to have a license to counterfeit bills."
They kept the local politicians happy, aside
from bribing them outright, by doling out 18,000 free bottles of beer every
week through one of Kolb's underlings, Joe Goebel of Morton Grove. The County
President, Anton Cermak not only took the beer which he resold or gave away to
the party faithful, but had Touhy print his name and picture on the front
label.
To keep the cost of police protection low,
always a priority with the Touhys, they hired off-duty Cook County highway
patrolmen. "Our local law," Roger wrote, "was mostly Cook County
Highway Patrol. I figured out a way to keep the roads open for us, with top
priority for our beer trucks. Whenever we had a job open as a truck driver or
what not, I hired a cop right away from the highway patrol to fill it...we paid
no man less than $100 a week, which was more than triple what the patrol guys
got for longer hours."
In as far as the Touhy gang went, at least
before 1927, there really wasn't any gang, not in the traditional sense.
Rather, the entire operation was run more along the lines of any other
prospering subur- ban-based business. Jim Wagner, Touhy's bookkeeper, told the
FBI that the Touhy gang had an average of twenty to twenty-five members before
the war with Capone, that the gang had no official headquarters only an after
work hangout, an old gas station "in back of Mrs. Kolze's white house in
Shiller Park."
Another hangout was Wilson's Ford dealership
in Des Plains run by Henry Ture Wilson, who, according to the FBI, not only
sold most of the Touhy gang discounted Fords, but also dealt in stolen cars.
Wilson's stockroom manager, Otto Rexes, ran a handbook for Roger out of the
place as well. Roger also purchased most of his beer delivery trucks here under
his garage's name, the Davis Cartage Company. On most Saturday nights gang
members could be found at the Dietz Stables, a dance hall in Ivanhoe in Lake
County.
After the war with Capone started, the gang
leaped in size to about fifty men who worked for Touhy on a regular basis,
according to Jim Wagner, one of the first men to work with Touhy when he moved
out to Des Plains.
George Wilke, who was also known as George
Fogarty, had been one of Touhy's minor partners in the beer business for three
years but left it, 'because living in the country gave me enough sinus troubles
to have to move to Florida."
Walter Murray, forty-two, was a truck driver
and laborer in the organization. Murray wore false upper teeth, yet all of the
lower teeth were missing except for the two front ones. Like most of the men
who worked for Touhy, Murray was from the Valley and had a wife and four
children and no criminal record.
Jimmy Clarence Wagner, forty, worked as
Touhy's bookkeeper, although he and his brother John ran a small painting
business out of Elmwood Park. Married in 1918 and with a ten-year-old son,
James Jr., the family lived in Chicago until 1926 before finally moving out to
Des Plains. Wagner had enlisted in the army during the first war and served as
a sergeant in the artillery corps. After his discharge from the service he
worked for Edison Kees as a flooring salesman until 1920 when he became
involved with the city employees' annuity fund as a clerk for three years. He
then went to work for his brother-in-law Leonard Thompson who knew Matt Kolb.
Kolb introduced him to Touhy, who in 1930 hired him as a truck driver at $50.00
a week. Soon he was promoted to collector. He never used "muscle,"
never carried a gun and always had friendly dealings with his customers.
Willie Ford was a collector who lived in Des
Plains for four years, leaving in 1929 and then returning after the shooting
war with the DeGrazios had started. His brother, Jerry Ford, was a truck driver
living on 4th Street in Des Plains. Willie Ford later became Touhy's chief
enforcer and strong-arm man. Ford's roommate was Arthur Reese, a gang regular
and enforcer. Other enforcers included Jim Ryan who was, at least on paper, the
foreman in charge of the drivers and lived on Grand Avenue in River Forrest.
His brother, Clifford Ryan, lived across the street from the Des Plains
elementary school. Working under Ryan were enforcers John (Shaner) Crawford and
Joseph (Sonny) Kerwin. John
"Red" Ryan, one of Paddy the Bear's sons, had worked for the Shelton
gang for a while and was a member of the gang along with Martin O'Leary and Old
Harv Baily who were associated with the Touhy gang on a regular basis. Roy
Marshalk said Wagner "was not a collector or a driver. He always rode with
Touhy everywhere." Like everyone else, Ford was reluctant to discuss the
dangerous Marshalk who was actually, after Tommy Touhy, the gang's chief of
staff and high executioner.
Most of the bodyguards were former Cook
County Highway patrolmen like Buck Henrichsen who also worked as a laborer and
was known as a "muscle man." Henrichsen brought in his younger
brother called "Buck Jr." and a second highway patrolman, Mike
Miller, who acted as Tommy Touhy's personal bodyguard. Other bodyguards
included August John La Mar and Louis Finko, two very dangerous men, as well as
Roger's childhood friend Willie Sharkey and for a brief period, Gus Schafer who
in 1930 was new to the area.
In 1933, Touhy's bodyguard Willie Sharkey
said, 'We always carried guns on beer runs to protect ourselves and friends
from the syndicate, after 1930 we seldom left the north side and the vicinity
of Des Plains and very seldom went into Chicago or else we would have been
placed on the spot. But we left town right after any of the newspapers pinned
us with a crime. Tommy (Touhy) took care of that."
Although they may not have had a
headquarters, the Touhy gang did have their own priest, Father Joseph Weber,
who Roger had met back in 1923 when Weber was an Indiana State Prison chaplain
while Tommy Touhy was serving time for his role in an Indianapolis department
store burglary. Roger and his brother Eddie asked Weber to use his influence to
get a parole hearing for Tommy. Weber agreed, and by the end of the year Tommy
was paroled and the Touhys were indebted to a priest who ran one of the poorest
parishes in Indianapolis. Later, after the brothers were established in the
bootlegging business, they donated 10 percent of their business profits to
Weber's parish. '1 was," said Roger, "God's bagman."
The brothers benefitted the priest in other
ways. Weber had always been politically active in Indianapolis and argued
vehemently for the city's growing black population. Weber claimed that the Klu
Klux Klan, which had its regional headquarters in Indianapolis, included some
of the city's and state's leading families and politicians. As a result, Weber
said, the black citizens of Indianapolis were denied even the most basic of
city services.
One day as a passing part of a conversation,
Weber mentioned to Tommy Touhy that if he had the Klan's secret membership
files, he could confirm his suspicions and break their power. A few days later,
on April 1, 1923, a moonlit Easter Sunday, a burglar broke into the Klan's
headquarters and stole the organization's state membership list, some 12,208
names, which included some of the most powerful and well respected people in
the Midwest. The next day, parts of the list were published in the Catholic
newspaper Tolerance under the headlines "Who's Who in Indianapolis."
"The Klan offered me $25,000 for the
records, which I turned down," Roger wrote.
Weber didn't always stay above the fray
himself. John Sambo was a small time beer hall operator who managed Sambo's
Place, a Capone saloon next to the Big Oaks Golf Course on the extreme
northwest edge of Chicago. The problem was that the place bordered on Roger
Touhy's territory. Tommy Touhy paid Sambo a visit and he changed to Touhy's
brand.
Sambo reported to the FBI that one sunny
afternoon, Roger Touhy and several of his men, including Father Weber, entered
the saloon at mid-day and drank until the sun went down. That night a young
Negro boy came into the bar room to shine shoes and the drunken Touhys pulled
out their weapons and fired shots at the boy's feet to make him dance.
Several months later, Sambo fell out of
favor with the Touhys when he stopped selling their beer and switched to
Capone's brand. An FBI report on Sambo states, "[On] one occasion Roger
Touhy, George Wilke and Leroy Marshalk came into his place of business and took
him down to the basement, stating that they had information that he was selling
other beer. Sambo stated at that time that he believed that Touhy would have
killed him, but that Marshalk, whom Sambo had known for some time, stopped
him."
To the newspapers, the public, the police
and the politicians, Roger's Des Plains operation looked exactly the way he and
Kolb wanted it to look; like a hick, two-bit operation that grossed a few
hundred thousand dollars a year. "And Touhy, " Ray Brennan said,
"was careful to foster that illusion. He lived well, but not lavishly in
Des Plaines as it was a quiet town where he was considered a leading citizen.
He was a contributor to charities and a member of fraternal organizations and
golf clubs. Touhy and Kolb had a million-dollar-a-year business going plus a
neat income from slot machines and a few road houses but they were wary enough
not to brag about it. They were smart enough to pay income taxes on it."
Roger, who was now the father of two boys,
made his final move to the suburbs in the spring of 1926 and purchased a large,
comfortable home, just north of the center of Des Plains. His neighbors
considered the bootlegger and his family respectable, hardworking people. "Nice,"
recalled one neighbor. "Not what you would think for a bootlegger. They
were quiet people...refined."
'There was no stigma to selling beer."
Touhy wrote. "I bought a place that some of the newspapers later called a
'mansion' or a 'gang fortress.' It was a six-room bungalow and later I put a
sixty-foot swimming pool in the back. The only gang I ever had around there was
a guard with a shotgun after the Capone mob tried to kidnap my kids....I lived
quietly with my family during those big money years. I put a workshop, office
and bar in my basement. There was a playhouse for the kids in my backyard. My
wife got along well with our neighbors."
Even when Tommy and Roger were being hounded
by the police during the John Factor kidnapping, their neighbors supported
them. Des Plains historian Mark Henkes wrote, "Touhy gave his money freely
to people and families in a pinch. He left baskets of food on the doorsteps of
homes with a $20 bill attached to the basket handle. The recipients sometimes
never knew where the food came from. He paid medical bills for some families.
He made good money selling beer and he gave some of it away." Even though
Roger did his best to fit in, there were occasional setbacks like the incident
when the Chicago Tribune and other groups were planning a historical pageant
for Des Plains in which citizens would dress as early settlers and travel down
the Des Plains river in wooden canoes. Meanwhile, Touhy wanted to get rid of
some mash, the fermentation of beer, by pumping it into the river. He hired a
crew to dig a trench and lay a sewer line from his plant to the river.
He poured hundreds, perhaps thousands of
gallons of the mash into the river. The problem was that Des Plains was going
through a dry season and the river was low and barely moving. The stench from
the mash was unbearable. Father Patrick O'Connor, head of St. Mary's Training
School in Des Plains and a member of the parade committee, got a whiff of the
foul smell in the river and immediately knew what happened. O'Connor knew Roger
and called him about the problem he had created. 'What in the hell were you
thinking, Rog? Half of Chicago will be here in a day and you turn the river
into a flood of bootleg booze! Do something before the pageant starts."
Roger apologized and hired more than twenty
boys from Maine High School in Des Plains to dump thousands of gallons of
perfume into the river, "and the pageant was a sweet-smelling
success."
So, while the public, the press and the
police may have been fooled by Roger's small time image, A1 Capone knew exactly
how much money Touhy and Kolb were earning out on the dusty back roads of Cook
County. He wanted a piece of it, a large piece of it. As he always did, Capone
first tried to talk his way into a partnership explaining the benefits of
working within his operation. They met a total of six times that year, in
Florida, during the winter months on fishing trips, and Capone offered to let
Roger use his yacht.
Touhy said, "He offered to let me use
his yacht or stay in his big house, surrounded by a wall about as thick as
Statesville's (prison) on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay between Miami and Miami
Beach. I didn't accept. "
Roger wrote that he had two business deals
with Capone in 1927 because Capone had trouble getting beer for his joints.
Capone called Touhy and asked him to sell him 500 barrels and since Touhy had a
surplus he agreed and told Capone to send 500 empties to the cooperage. He
would send 500 barrels back for the price of $37.50 per barrel, a discount
because of the large order.
Capone called back and asked for another 300
barrels. Touhy agreed and told Capone when he expected to be paid. The day
before the money was due, Capone called and said that 50 of the barrels were
leakers and that he wouldn't pay.
'I'll pay you for seven hundred and fifty,
ok?" 'You owe me for eight hundred and I expect to be paid for eight
hundred."
"Well the boys told me there were some
leakers, but I'll check on it."
Capone paid the $30,000 in cash and called a
week later and asked for more. Touhy refused, saying his regular customers were
taking all of his output. Knowing that it may have been Capone testing his
ability to draw him in or to see what he could produce by taking him to be his
biggest customer, 'What was the use of needling him by saying I didn't do
business with weasels."
In late 1927, Capone told Willie Heeney,
Roger's former business partner, to go out to Des Plains to see Roger and
encourage him to come around to Capone's way of thinking. By now, Heeney was
working full time in the outfit's enormous prostitution racket where he would
stay until the depression set in and he switched over to labor racketeering and
narcotics. He soon became his own best customer and became hooked on heroin.
Roger agreed to meet Heeney at the Arch, one
of his road houses in Schiller Park, managed by his brother Eddie. Arriving
with Heeney at the meeting was Frankie Rio, Capone's favorite bodyguard and
enforcer whose presence was no doubt meant to impress Touhy. Heeney was the
spokesman, telling them that Capone wanted to open the county for brothels,
taxi dance halls and punch board rackets. He was willing to split the proceeds
evenly with Kolb and Touhy to which Rio added, "A1 says this is virgin
territory for whorehouses."
Roger told Henney that he didn't want or
need Capone as a partner, and that although the locals might tolerate
speakeasies and gambling dens, whorehouses and taxi dance halls were something
else. However, there was at least one brothel in operation in Des Plains at 304
Center Street, apartment 38, above Matt Kolb's brother's laundry store/handbook
operation. There were at least three women working on the property and photos
of the nude women were later taken from Willie Sharkey when he was arrested in
Wisconsin. The FBI later noted that "there were many noisy parties in this
apartment and numerous men visited them." A neighbor noted that "six
men at a time would enter or leave the apartment together. The next group would
enter the apartment only after the first group had left."
FBI agents later tracked down two of the
women and described them in their reports as "nice looking women" and
"very attractive women. "
Among those identified as regulars to the
apartment were "Chicken" McFadden, Basil Banghart and George Wilke.
Willie Sharkey, Touhy's enforcer, rented an apartment in the building under the
name T.J. Burns and used the Park Ridge Chief of Police as his reference.
Next, Capone sent Jimmy Fawcett and Murray
"the Camel" Humpreys out to Des Plains to talk to Roger. The probable
reason for sending Fawcett and Humpreys to see Touhy was, in all likelihood, to
try one last time to get him to fall into line before the real shooting
started. Sending Fawcett, an old hand Capone gunman, was a smart move. Touhy
had known Fawcett for years, the two of them living along the edges of Chicago
unionism for several years. Humpreys may have been new to Touhy. The Camel,
Touhy said, did all the talking. Humpreys got things off to a bad start. He
said Touhy was "putting [his] nose where it don't belong and that means
trouble."
'Mr. Capone" the Camel hissed, 'is upset
at the Touhys and that isn't good." Capone wanted Touhy to stop offering
protection to the Teamster Union bosses.
Afterward Roger went to Cicero with him and
Fawcett and talked over the problems with Frank Nitti. There are several
versions of what happened next, but the end result of each version is the same.
When the Camel was done with his threats,
Touhy put a pistol into his mouth and told him never to show his face in Des
Plains again. Humpreys offered to buy back his life with his new car but Touhy
let them go. After the pair had left, Fawcett returned and offered "to
kill Humpreys on the way back into Chicago and for an extra few grand, Rog,
I'll knock off that son of a bitch Nitti too."
Years later, Touhy told the story, or at
least a cleaned up version of it, in his memoir. When the book hit the streets,
an infuriated and humiliated Murray Humpreys denied that it ever happened.
Capone tried a different tactic; he would
push Touhy to see how far he could get before a shooting war broke out.
Starting in the early summer of 1927, he tried to work his way into Touhy's
territory by opening several whorehouses just inside Des Plains. That same day,
Roger and Tommy Touhy, backed by several truckloads of their men and a squad of
Cook County police, raided the bordellos, broke them up and chased the women
back to Chicago. All the while, Capone kept sending his beer salesmen into
Touhy's territory where they achieved a fair amount of success by drastically
undercutting Touhy's prices, but the ever shrewd Kolb recognized Capone's ploy
and refused to be prodded into a price war that they couldn't win. Instead, the
Touhys responded by sending a simple message to any saloon keeper who sold
Capone's beer inside their territory. If the bar owner sold Capone's brew, they
would wreck the place. If he continued, they would burn his place to the
ground. That was the way Joe Touhy, Roger's older brother, died, in June of
1929. Eyewitnesses said that Joe and his crew were breaking up a speakeasy that
the Capones had opened in Schiller Park. When a waiter reached for something
under the bar, Joe Touhy's own man, a hood named Paul Pagen, fired off a
warning burst from his machine gun, accidentally killing Touhy.
Johnny Touhy, the third eldest brother,
didn't call it an accident. He killed Pagen in revenge for Joe's murder and was
sentenced to prison for ten years to life. However he was released in four
years, his brothers having purchased his freedom with bribes. "And that's
what money," wrote the Chicago Tribune of John's release, "well spent
in Chicago will do. "
A few months after his parole was granted,
Johnny was arrested again for attempted murder of a Capone goon. He was sent
back to StatevillePrison where he died of consumption in a barren hospital room.
The remaining brothers, Roger, Tommy and
Eddie, declared war on Capone after Joe was killed and Johnny was jailed. From
1928 until 1930, the dusty back roads of northern Cook County ran red with
gangster blood from an otherwise quiet gang war that went largely unnoticed
until 1931, when all hell broke loose.
BLOGLAPEDIA’S
BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art
for the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of
Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The
Kennedy’s in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The
Prohibition in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A really small company
run by writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The Day
Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND CIVILIZATIONS
The Works
of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS
BOOKS
The
Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children
A Halloween play for young children. By consent of the author,
this play may be performed, at no charge, by educational institutions,
neighborhood organizations and other not-for-profit-organizations.
A fun story with a moral
“I believe that Denny O'Day is an American treasure and this
little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens to be very small, by
pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the pumpkin patch on
Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance to prove that just
because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here is the point that I
found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size doesn't matter when it
comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I think children need to
hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is a ongoing lesson isn't
it?”
Paperback: 42 pages
http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children
BOOKS
ON FOSTER CARE
It's Not
All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the books
contents
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what
From the Author
I spent my childhood, from age seven through seventeen, in
foster care. Over the course of those
ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and concerned people told me, "It's
okay to be foster kid."
In saying that, those very good people meant to encourage me,
and I appreciated their kindness then, and all these many decades later, I
still appreciate their good intentions. But as I was tossed around the foster
care system, it began to dawn on me that they were wrong. It was not all right to be a foster kid.
During my time in the system, I was bounced every eighteen
months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a boy's school and to a group
home before I left on my own accord at age seventeen.
In the course of my stay in foster care, I was severely beaten
in two homes by my "care givers" and separated from my four siblings
who were also in care, sometimes only blocks away from where I was living.
I left the system rather than to wait to age out, although the
effects of leaving the system without any family, means, or safety net of any
kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived in poverty for the first part
of my life, dropped out of high school, and had continuous problems with the
law.
Today, almost nothing
about foster care has changed. Exactly
what happened to me is happening to some other child, somewhere in America,
right now. The system, corrupt, bloated,
and inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.
Something has gone wrong in a system that was originally a
compassionate social policy built to improve lives but is now a definitive
cause in ruining lives. Due to gross
negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what the foster care
system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care has become our
epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have lived through
it.
Yet there is a suspicion among some Americans that foster care
costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and is at odds with a satisfying
life. Others see foster care as a part
of the welfare system, as legal plunder of the public treasuries.
None of that is true;
in fact, all that sort of thinking does is to blame the victims. There is not a single child in the system who
wants to be there or asked to be there.
Foster kids are in foster care because they had nowhere else to go. It's that simple. And believe me, if those kids could get out
of the system and be reunited with their parents and lead normal, healthy
lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of legal plunder of the public
treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are doing the plundering.
We need to end this
needless suffering. We need to end it
because it is morally and ethically wrong and because the generations to come
will not judge us on the might of our armed forces or our technological
advancements or on our fabulous wealth.
Rather, they will judge
us, I am certain, on our compassion for those who are friendless, on our
decency to those who have nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to
make our nation and our world a better place.
And if we cannot accomplish those things in the short time allotted to
us, then let them say of us "at least they tried."
You can change the tragedy of foster care and here's how to do
it. We have created this book so that
almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to the world. You have the power to improve the lives of
those in our society who are least able to defend themselves. All you need is the will to do it.
If the American people,
as good, decent and generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster
care, in their name and with their money, they would stop it. But, generally speaking, although the public
has a vague notion that foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete
picture. They are not aware of the human, economic and social cost that the
mismanagement of the foster care system puts on our nation.
By tweeting the facts laid out in this work, you can help to
change all of that. You can make a
difference. You can change things for
the better.
We can always change the future for a foster kid; to make it
better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up (or tweet out) because it's your
country. Don't depend on the "The
other guy" to speak up for these kids, because you are the other guy.
We cannot build a future for foster children, but we can build
foster children for the future and the time to start that change is today.
No time to
say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster
Paperbook 440 Books
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir
BOOKS ABOUT FILM
On the
Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film
Paperback: 416 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/
BOOKS ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL
Scotish
Ghost Stories
Paperback 186 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell
HUMOR BOOKS
The Book
of funny odd and interesting things people say
Paperback: 278 pages
http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people
The Wee
Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook
Perfect
Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises
http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social
BOOKS ABOUT THE 1960s
You Don’t
Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969
Paperback 122 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969
Baby
Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/
Baby
Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s
IRISH- AMERICANA
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/
The Wee
Book of Irish Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/
The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/
The Wee book of Irish Blessings...
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/
The Wee
Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words
http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/
Everything
you need to know about St. Patrick
Paperback 26 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick
A Reading
Book in Ancient Irish History
Paperback 147pages
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History
The Book
of Things Irish
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/
Poets and
Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish
Paperback 158 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/
The
History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated
Paperback 356 pages
http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/
BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/
Wicked
Good New England Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The
Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers
Paperback 64 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion
The Life
of James Mars
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut
Stories
of Colonial Connecticut
Paperback 116 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford
What they
Say in Old New England
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/
BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME
Chicago
Organized Crime
Chicago-Mob-Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook
The Mob
Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook
An
Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/
The Mob
Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre
The Life
and World of Al Capone in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone
AL
CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930
edition.Over 200 new photographs
Paperback: 340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs
Whacked.
One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit
Paperback: 172 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/
Las
Vegas Organized Crime
The Mob
in Vegas
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook
Bugsy
& His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/
Testimony
by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files
Series)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook
Rattling
the Cup on Chicago Crime.
Paperback 264 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged
The Life
and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor
The Mob,
Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago
Paperback 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago
When
Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos
Organized
Crime in Hollywood
The Mob in Hollywood
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/
The Bioff
Scandal
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios
Organized
Crime in New York
Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/
Mob
Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/
The New
York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins
The New
York Mob: The Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/
Organized
Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate
http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook
Shooting
the mob: Dutch Schultz
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)
http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City
Paperback 382 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York
THE RUSSIAN MOBS
The
Russian Mafia in America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/
The
Threat of Russian Organzied Crime
Paperback 192 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook
Organized
Crime/General
Best of
Mob Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/
Best of
Mob Stories Part 2
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/
Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook
Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
More Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs
http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook
Shooting
the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/
The
Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/
The
Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill each other"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/
The Mob
across America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/
The US
Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987
http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/
The Mob
Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The Book
of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.
Paperback: 436 pages
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/
The Mob
and the Kennedy Assassination
Paperback 414 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters
BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST
The Last
Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Paperback 152 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself
BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Chicago:
A photographic essay.
Paperback: 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas
STAGE PLAYS
Boomers
on a train: A ten minute play
Paperback 22 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook
Four
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy
Four More
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/
High and
Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve
Cyberdate.
An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/
The
Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of
Gangster Dutch Schultz.
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/
Fishbowling
on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with
Dutch Schultz
Print Length: 57 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/
American
Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook
She
Stoops to Conquer
http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/
The Seven
Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play
Print Length: 14 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/
BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA
OUT OF
CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/
McLean
Virginia. A short informal history
http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/
THE QUOTABLE SERIES
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
The
Quotable John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/
The
Quotable Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/
The
Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/
The
Quotable Henry David Thoreau
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Robert F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook
The words
of Walt Whitman: An American Poet
Paperback: 162 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Popes
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti
The
Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran
Paperback 52 pages
Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet, and writer was born on January
6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in what was then part of Ottoman
Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In 1895, the family immigrated
to the United States when Kahlil was a young man and settled in South Boston.
Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a member of the avant-garde
community and became especially close to Boston artist, photographer, and
publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and supported Gibran’s creative
projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and watercolor, Kahlil attended art
school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style. He
held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's
studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who
ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship and love affair
that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell influenced every aspect of
Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his editor when he began to write
and ushered his first book into publication in 1918, The Madman, a slim volume
of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry
and prose. Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48
from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/
The
Quotable Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
The
Quotable Machiavelli
Paperback 36 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-L-Thayer
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 230 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotabe Oscar Wilde
Paperback 24 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons-words/
The
Quotable Helen Keller
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby
The Art
of War: Sun Tzu
Paperback 60 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Shakespeare
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Shakespeare-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Gorucho Marx
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander