I’m not a Donald Trump supporter,
I don’t think he’ll make it to the general election but having been bushwhacked
by the media in the past, I do support fair play in news reporting. I bring
this up because Scott Pelley’s arrogant, aggressive and biased 60 Minutes
interview of Donald Trump last Sunday night backfired and just delivered a couple of hundred
thousand sympathy votes to the Trump campaign. Pelley’s obvious mission,
agenda, was to toss Trump around and it didn’t work. Instead Pelley came across
as angry and hyper. He accused Trump of using “A hurricane of words” while
using a hurricane of words to talk over him and people are angry about it. What Pelley didn’t bank on is the fact that
many more Americans dislike and don’t trust the media than don’t like and don’t
trust Trump.
DON’T WORRY-BE HAPPY
The Science of Resilience
By Renee Richardson
BAXTER - The power for a more
positive, healthier and longer life in a complex world may have a profoundly
simple center - and it has brain science to back it up.
Stress plays a part in personal
lives and on the job. It's there in workers feeling burned out, potentially
affecting their emotional and even physical well-being.
Those were some of the topics
addressed during the recent Science of Resilience presentation by Bryan Sexton,
an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and director of the Duke
Patient Safety Center at Duke University Health System in North Carolina.
Sexton began looking at the issues of employee burnout and the power of
resilience in his role at the patient safety center.
The results of scientific studies
point to a path for greater happiness and longevity, as well as ways to handle
the stresses of life at home and on the job through resilience. Sexton provided
a full room gathered recently at Arrowwood Lodge at Brainerd Lakes in Baxter
with tools to strengthen their resilience. The event was sponsored by Crow Wing
Energized and Essentia Health St. Joseph's Foundation.
Sexton said studies show it's not
the amount of money people spend on themselves that makes a dent in their
happiness, but there is a shift when they focus on others.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because other people matter. For your resilience - other people
matter."
Random acts of kindness have been
shown to elevate the mood of the person for seven hours, Sexton said. One of
the numerous subjects Sexton touched upon was cultivating gratitude, which he
said was a lot like harnessing solar power.
To tap that power, positivity and
the benefits of resiliency, Sexton suggested keeping a journal for 21 days and
counting blessings instead of burdens. At the end of each night, he said
writing down three good things from the day - even if it was just a list of
incomplete sentences - was scientifically proven to elevate happiness, decrease
depression, improve sleep and increase marital satisfaction.
Sexton also pointed to work on
expressing gratitude to another person by taking five minutes to write them a
letter. In the study, people who wrote the letter to someone either living or
dead who impacted their lives in a positive way, were significantly happier and
less depressed even five to six weeks later. Picking up the phone to read the
letter to the individual, increased happiness even more.
Emotions are powerful, Sexton
said, noting one such letter sent to a teacher for instance can be enough to
turn around their own impression of whether their career has been successful.
Doing this once a month has the power to make a difference in lives, Sexton
said, noting it's typically easy to find eight people in one's life that
deserve a letter of gratitude.
Little behaviors make a
long-lasting impact on well-being, Sexton said.
"It's resonates with me the
idea of being grateful and practicing gratitude in everyday life," Jackie
Thurlow said. She is going to school and studying to be a health education
specialist. Her mother, Mimi Thurlow, is a licensed practical nurse.
For Mimi Thurlow, the random acts
of kindness are beneficial. She's practiced it herself, even paying for another
shopper's groceries.
"It just makes me feel good
inside to be able to do that," she said. "People have been so good to
me."
Now Mimi Thurlow said she's able
to pass that on and be grateful for what she has.
An upbeat Andrea Fercho said the
session provided an "amazing tool to improve the positivity of people.
"I really want more people
to be exposed to this - to hear the science behind it."
More information on the Science
of Resilience will be in next week's Monday Motivator.
Evidence-based self-care tips to
reduce stress
• Create a 30-40 minute island of
inaccessibility each day. (Carve out some time for yourself).
• Single task whenever possible.
• Nap before predictable periods
of sleep deprivation.
• Learn new information in the
two hours before sleep onset. That means cramming for a test may be better
served the night before and then sleeping rather than getting up early or
pulling an all-nighter.
• Choose to sleep either less
than three hours or more than five hours when sleep deprivation is unavoidable.
• Avoid chronic snooze button
use.
• Create a sleep routine (dark
room, no reading or TV watching in bed).
• Get at least five to seven
minutes of natural sunlight daily. (Benefits include vitamin D). For circadian
rhythms (or the body's 24-hour clock) sunrise and sunset are best.
• Exercise in the morning to
boost energy, decrease stress hormones and improve sleep quality. • Avoid
caffeine within four to six hours before going to sleep.
• Remember caffeine is a drug,
not a food, and should be used as such.
You
Can Catch Happiness But Not Depression, University of Warwick Study
Happiness Spreads But Depression
Doesn’t
Having friends who suffer from
depression doesn’t affect the mental health of others, according to research
led by the University of Warwick.
The academics found that having
friends can help teenagers recover from depression or even avoid becoming
depressed in the first instance.
The findings are the result of a
study of the way teenagers in a group of US high schools influenced each
others’ mood. The academics used a mathematical model to establish if
depression spreads from friend to friend.
Professor Frances Griffiths, head
of social science and systems in health at Warwick Medical School, University
of Warwick, said: “Depression is a major public health concern worldwide. But
the good news is we’ve found that a healthy mood amongst friends is linked with
a significantly reduced risk of developing and increased chance of recovering
from depression.
“Our results offer implications
for improving adolescent mood. In particular they suggest the hypothesis that
encouraging friendship networks between adolescents could reduce both the
incidence and prevalence of depression among teenagers.”
The study has been published in
the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B entitled Spreading of healthy
mood in adolescent social networks.
Using data from The National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health they looked at more than 2,000
adolescents in a network of US high school students. They examined how their
mood influenced each other by modelling the spread of moods using similar
methods to those used to track the spread of infectious diseases.
Individuals were classified as
either having depressive symptoms (low mood) or not being depressed (healthy
mood) according to the score cut-off associated with a clinical diagnosis of
depression.
The team found that while
depression does not ‘spread’, having enough friends with a healthy mood can
halve the probability of developing, or double the probability of recovering
from, depression over a six to 12 month period.
The mathematical model used
suggests that adolescents who have five or more mentally healthy friends have
half the probability of becoming depressed compared to adolescents with no
healthy friends. And teenagers who have 10 healthy friends have double the
probability of recovering from depressive symptoms compared to adolescents with
just three healthy friends.
University of Warwick mathematics
researcher Edward Hill is lead author of the research paper. He said: “In the
context of depression, this is a very large effect size. Changing risk by a
factor of two is unusual.
“Our results suggest that
promotion of any friendship between adolescents can reduce depression since
having depressed friends does not put them at risk, but having healthy friends
is both protective and curative.”
Social factors such as living
alone or having experienced abuse in childhood are already linked to
depression. Also social support, such as having someone to talk to has been
cited as important for recovery from depression.
However this study looks at the
effect of being friends with people on the likelihood of developing depression
or recovering from it.
Another author of the paper, Dr
Thomas House senior lecturer in applied mathematics from the University of
Manchester said: “It could be that having a stronger social network is an
effective way to treat depression. More work needs to be done but it may be
that we could significantly reduce the burden of depression through cheap,
low-risk social interventions.
“As a society, if we enable
friendships to develop among adolescents (for example providing youth clubs)
each adolescent is more likely to have enough friends with healthy mood to have
a protective effect. This would reduce the prevalence of depression.”
Other research into adolescent
mental health by Warwick Medical School will be explored in an upcoming play
called Cracked which is being performed by Santé Theatre Warwick
I'LL BE SIGNING BOOKS AT THE DEEP RIVER CONN. LIBRARY FROM 2-4 ON SATURDAY OCTOBER 3 and LATER THAT EVENING I'LL BE SPEAKING AT MT. ST. JOHNS, PLEASE DROP BY IF YOU CAN
THE WORLD I GREW UP IN IS DISAPPEARING, BUT I SUPPOSE THAT'S PROGRESS ISN'T IT?
The Daily News Layoffs and
Digital Shift May Signal the Tabloid Era’s End
By ALAN FEUER
When it was over and the feature
page was gone, dozens of reporters had been fired and the morning assignment
editor was shown the door only minutes after handing out the morning’s first
assignments, The Daily News — or what was left of it — was in a state of shock.
For weeks the staff had known
that layoffs might be coming, and when they did come, on Sept. 16, it was with
the swiftness of a Soviet-era purge. Newsroom veterans were summoned into an
office and told about a digitally driven corporate restructuring.
Those outside the building were
told their fates by phone — some while on vacation. One reporter was so left in
the dark that when she got to work that day, there was already an intern in her
seat.
“It was not the normal thing with
a few cuts here and there,” said one employee who was fired and who, like many,
spoke on the condition of anonymity because his severance package had not yet
been delivered. “This was a total repositioning of the product.”
From The New York Herald to The
New York Tribune (to say nothing of The New York Herald Tribune), newspapers
have been dying in New York for nearly as long as they have been born. But to
some journalists who have watched their share of these deaths, this month’s
disembowelment of The Daily News seemed like something new.
At the very least the job cuts
meant that the recent attrition at newspapers across the country had finally
arrived in force in the nation’s media capital. But it also suggested something
deeper — about the city and the industry. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner of
The News, known for its crusades against municipal misconduct, was dismissing
ace reporters while bolstering his global online platform. William D. Holiber,
the chief executive, had also created a satellite operation, in New Jersey,
with a mission in part to aggregate content from across the web and repackage
it for The News’s own site.
While both men promised that The
Daily News would not give up its city-centric mandate, the shift toward a
digital edition, which would read the same in Brooklyn and Bahrain, was the end
of something. The News, after all, is the ultimate local paper, and the
real-life model for Clark Kent’s Daily Planet. If focusing on the Internet was
not the end of the tabloid itself, then perhaps it was the end of the city’s
tabloid era.
“The Daily News has always been a
New York paper for New York people,” said Michael Daly, a former News
columnist, who naturally now works at The Daily Beast, an online publication.
“It’s been part of the city’s life in a way no other paper has been — or at
least it was till now.”
Since its founding in 1919, The
News has occupied an inimitable niche, speaking to and for the city’s working
class and offering a schizophrenic mix of titillating crime reportage and
hard-hitting coverage of public issues. Unlike The New York Post, which has
veered from left to right, the politics of The Daily News are flexibly
centrist. And rather than portraying New York through the partisan divide
between liberals and conservatives, The News has played up the more mythic rift
between the city’s fiends and heroes.
For almost a century this
big-hearted, quasi-cartoon style was a recipe for success, and at one time, The
News was the country’s largest mass-market newspaper.
More recently, it has struggled
at a time in which virtually all print publications have seen their
circulations and advertising profits plummet and their once lucrative
classified pages all but abandoned for online options like Craigslist.
From its former height of nearly
one million copies a day, The News now has a daily circulation of slightly more
than 300,000, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, about 130,000 copies
of which are single-copy newsstand sales. Only five years ago, The News was
selling about 346,000 newsstand copies daily on a total circulation of 525,000.
Given that the paper is said to
lose between $20 million and $30 million a year (The Post, by comparison, has
annual estimated losses of almost $100 million), Mr. Zuckerman put the paper up
for sale in February, but after flirting with several suitors he withdrew it
from the market last month.
Though he and Mr. Holiber have
searched for outside income, opening their printing plant to 80 publications
and starting a company that does web design and social-media marketing, they
said they were compelled to invest heavily in The News’s digital presence.
“We’re focusing The News more and
more on its online activities,” Mr. Zuckerman said in an interview last week,
“because that’s where the audience is going. It’s a younger audience and that’s
what advertisers want. If people don’t want horses and buggies anymore and they
want to ride in automobiles, then you better damn well get into the auto
business.”
It is hardly news that newspapers
everywhere are grappling with the challenges of the Internet, but the ways in
which The Daily News has approached this wrestling match have left some members
of its staff worried that the paper has betrayed its mission in exchange for
digital clicks. It was not just the bloodletting in the feature, sports and
business pages, which, people noted, were some of the paper’s most beloved
sections; several employees said that The News’s top executives, in their
scramble for solutions, had made the paper more down-market and sensational — a
tepid imitation of the Post.
“The mantra in the building is
web, web, web,” said one reporter who lost his job this month. “But they
haven’t figured out how to monetize the web yet. And so it just gets trashier
and trashier in an effort to juice the numbers.”
Mr. Zuckerman insisted that The
News would continue to cover the city with the same deep sourcing and doorstep
reporting it has always used, not least because New York, he said, is a subject
that intrigues the world. But in the wake of the layoffs, in tearful and
occasionally drunken conversations, his troops expressed concern that the
culture of the paper had irreparably changed.
“When I first got to The News, it
was about all reporting and writing, but now it’s about self-promotion,” said
one former veteran reporter. “I can’t remember the last time someone on the
staff sent a note saying, ‘Hey, good piece.’ What they say now is, ‘Hey, we
broke the March record for page views!’ ”
While one can scarcely ascribe
this trend to The News, that it has infiltrated an institution that by
tradition was built on gin and shoe leather raises the question of just how
many of the young web surfers at Mr. Holiber’s aggregation shop would recognize
the names Pete Hamill or Jimmy Breslin (hint: check Google). “That’s all over
and done with,” Mr. Hamill said the other day when asked about the city’s
tabloid epoch. “I looked at The News’s website today and you know what the lead
was? O.J. Simpson. The pope’s in town. John Boehner just quit. And they lead
with O. J.? These jerks piss me off.”
That, in case you missed it, was
tabloid culture: caustic anger in the service of civic ideals. It could be said
that The Daily News is, or was, the last vestige of that culture in New York.
The New York Times has its own empyrean style and several years ago ended its
stand-alone New York section, moving local coverage into the A section, with
the paper’s national and foreign reports. As for The Post, it is hard to know
what the paper cares about aside from sex, gossip and the shifting whims of its
owner, Rupert Murdoch.
But for many years, The Daily
News, available to actual New Yorkers, in their neighborhoods, offered up a
seven-day feast of sweet and savory stories: meaty police reporting, salty
columns on City Hall, fat analyses of the Mets’ starting pitchers and, for
dessert, a smattering of cheesecake shots of models and celebrities.
“All that corny stuff about The
News — how it’s the voice of the working people, the heart of New York — it’s
all basically true,” Mr. Daly, the former columnist, said. “Every day it would
prove that the common man and common woman weren’t so common. That actually,
commonness is found more often among the rich and that distinction was found
more often among the people who would buy The Daily News.”
“If you’ve got $1.25,” he finally
said, “it’s still a helluva paper.”
GOOD WORDS
TO HAVE………………..
Dint: 1.
Force, power. 2. A dent. verb tr. To make a dent or to drive in with force.
From Old English dynt (blow).
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE
PHOTOS FROM FILM
A dazed, hooded Marine clutches a can of food during his outfit’s retreat from the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War”, by David Douglas Duncan, December 1950
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.
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/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
That's me on the left, I don't know the horses name
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
A Russian Poet Is Celebrated in
Scotland, a Land He Never Saw
By STEPHEN CASTLE.
EARLSTON, Scotland — Poetry has
been a part of life in Earlston since the days of Thomas the Rhymer, a
13th-century bard who, according to legend, could foresee bloody battles, royal
deaths and even the union of Scotland’s and England’s thrones.
But not even Thomas could have
predicted that this small village, in a lush Scottish valley, would one day lay
claim to one of Russia’s greatest poets: Mikhail Lermontov.
On Saturday, a bronze bust of
Lermontov, whose verse is considered by many Russians as second only to
Aleksandr Pushkin’s, will be unveiled on the tidy village green. There will be
Russian and Scottish dancing, poetry readings and Russian guests — including at
least one descendant of Lermontov, whose modern-day family has created and
officially registered its own tartan.
Lermontov, who died in a duel in
1841 at age 26, never got to see Scotland. But he was a descendant of a
Scottish soldier of fortune, George Learmonth, who settled in Russia in the
early 17th century and adapted his name to Lermontov.
Though the earlier genealogy is
murky, Learmonth is believed to have been a descendant of Thomas de Ercildoune
— around whom the legend of Thomas the Rhymer is based — who lived in what is
now Earlston in the 13th century.
Lermontov cherished the Scottish
connection and was influenced at least indirectly by the folklore surrounding
Thomas the Rhymer, who was said to have attained his prophetic powers after
spending seven years under the spell of a faerie queen.
Scotland is mentioned in at least
two of Lermontov’s poems. In “Yearning,” a raven flies over the land of his
Scottish forebears:
Westwards, ever westwards would I
fly,
Where flourish the lands of my
forbears,
Where in an empty castle, on mist
clad mountains,
Lermontov also admired Sir Walter
Scott, who was inspired by the legends surrounding Thomas the Rhymer.
That poetic connection made
Earlston a logical place to commemorate Lermontov’s Scottish link. John
Paton-Day, the chairman of Earlston’s community council, said its population of
less than 2,000 has welcomed the initiative.
“I have heard no voices against
it at all,” he said. “People have taken it to their hearts.”
Next to the ruins of the reputed
home of Thomas the Rhymer, John McKee, the owner of the Rhymers Tower
Restaurant, said that the bust had stirred interest in the village. One of the
goals of the event is to draw more tourism.
“There have been a few Russian
customers in here,” he said. “They have obviously heard about the place, read
about it and made their way here.”
Lermontov’s link to Thomas the
Rhymer remained obscure here until 2011. One day, Gwen Hardie, who leads a
group in Earlston that promotes awareness of Thomas the Rhymer and who helped
organize the installation of the bust, answered her door to two visitors from
Russia, one of whom was researching a book on Lermontov.
The next year, Ms. Hardie had
another Russian visitor, Maria Koroleva, who is a descendant of Lermontov
through her maternal line.
So intrigued was Ms. Koroleva by
Lermontov’s Scottish connection that she learned Scottish Gaelic (spoken by
about 58,000 people, about 1 percent of Scotland’s population), changed her
first name to a Gaelic variant, MÃ iri Ã’g, and now teaches the language at
Moscow State University.
“We believe that Lermontov
inherited the gift of poetry and philosophy from Thomas the Rhymer,” Ms.
Koroleva said by telephone from Moscow. “In Russia we believe that you cannot
be a poet by yourself, just through hard work — that you cannot just decide
that you are a poet, you must be gifted.”
However, building a Lermontov
memorial did not prove straightforward. The first prototype had to be abandoned
because it would have been 15 feet tall — suitable, perhaps, for a broad Moscow
boulevard, but not for Earlston’s village green.
Then plans for a more modest bust
failed when Russian funding fell through, Ms. Koroleva said.
“I even went to church and prayed for the
money,” she said. “I said to Lermontov, ‘You wanted to go to Scotland, so help
me!’ ”
Soon someone did. A sculptor,
Stepan Mokrousov-Guglielmi, offered to work without payment, and Ms. Koroleva
raised around 400,000 rubles (about $6,000) for the bronze.
Even then, a technical error in
the planning application caused the full unveiling to be postponed until now, a
year after the 200th anniversary of Lermontov’s birth. Nevertheless, the
project has already bound Scots and Russians together.
It is as if “one of our sons has
come home,” Ms. Hardie said.
Ms. Hardie says she too is
descended from the Learmonths, giving her, “in a roundabout way,” a place in
the extended families of Thomas the Rhymer and Mikhail Lermontov.
A poet and novelist who runs a
bed-and-breakfast here, Ms. Hardie has written an interpretation of Lermontov’s
“Yearning” from English translations.
Ms. Koroleva considers Ms. Hardie
part of her extended family, and someone who helped achieve something Lermontov
never had time to do in his short, turbulent life.
“He really wanted to come to the
land of his ancestors,” Ms. Koroleva said. “If we bring him in the form of a
monument, it would be a consolation. We will have fulfilled his dream.”
Love
is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you
are left holding only yourself. Leo
Buscaglia
No
matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on
having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really
accomplished?
Lee Iacocca
The
good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Bertrand Russell
May
we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love! Henry David Thoreau
WHY DOESN'T THE WORLD HELP THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE?
Ban on foreign aid agencies by
Ukraine's rebels
UN gives warning that the lives
of millions of people may be at risk.
The leaders of the separatist
Luhansk People's Republic have expelled most foreign humanitarian organisations
from eastern Ukraine.
At least 10 agencies are
affected, including the UN and Doctors Without Borders.
The reason for their expulsion is
not clear.
But rebels have long been
suspicious of foreign aid agencies, some of which they have accused of being
spies.
Pro-Russia separatists occupied
Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine after rebels began battling
government forces in April last year.
The decision to ban aid agencies
will make it especially difficult for people because of the upcoming harsh
winter weather.
And the UN is warning of a
looming humanitarian crisis.
Photographs I’ve taken
Berkley Springs West Virginia
Chicago
Las Vegas
Annapolis Md.
Coronado Island
Upper Northwest Washington DC
Coronado Island
St. Louis Mo.
Old Town Alexandria Va.
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS.....................
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
John Doherty
REFORMING OUR POLICE BECAUSE THEY HAVE BECOME A LEADING NATIONAL SOCIAL PROBLEM
Bill seeks to make police records
at private colleges public
Campus police at MIT investigated
after students and faculty were evacuated for a reported chemical spill in
October 2014.
By Shawn Musgrave
BOSTON GLOBE
CORRESPONDENT
On a recent Sunday, MIT students
began receiving text alerts about an “active shooter.” Updates from MIT and
Cambridge police quickly corrected that, saying a shooting had left a young
woman wounded, but it was a few blocks from campus.
Both police forces investigated,
but only the Cambridge Police Department’s report on the incident was a matter
of public record.
Campus police can carry weapons,
make arrests, and use force, just as any city or town officer can. Yet courts
have ruled that campus police at private colleges and universities are exempt
from the full sweep of the Massachusetts public records law, which requires
government agencies to release most documents upon request, including police
reports.
Legislation pending on Beacon Hill
would change that.
State Representative Kevin
Honan’s bill would revise the public records statute to expressly cover law
enforcement records of all campus police. Honan, a Brighton Democrat, sees the
measure as a matter of consumer choice as much as public interest.
“It’s important for parents and
students, when choosing a college, to have accurate crime statistics at their
disposal,” Honan said.
Transparency advocates say that
because campus police have authority over students and nonstudents alike, their
reports should be public. That is already the case at the University of
Massachusetts Boston and other public institutions.
“Just because these officers have
the name of a college on their cruiser doesn’t mean they should be allowed to
operate in secrecy,” said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New
England First Amendment Coalition.
Universities contend that there
is no public safety argument for bringing private university police under the
public records statute, because certain records such as daily crime logs are
already open to the public. Logs contain basic information, including the date,
time, and location of an incident and the names of anyone arrested, while full
reports have a more detailed narrative.
The Association of Independent Colleges
and Universities in Massachusetts, whose members include the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and nearly 60 other institutions
of higher learning, testified against the bill in May. Robert McCarron, the
association’s senior vice president, said the proposal may have a “chilling
effect” on students’ willingness to go to campus police with information, thus
undermining safety.
“Will a fellow student or
professor share any concerns about another student’s erratic behavior if the
information provided to campus police could appear in the school newspaper the
following week?” McCarron asked.
The proposal to extend the public
records law to campus police sits before a joint committee. It is unclear
whether it will be taken up this year.
Six states — Connecticut,
Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia — have opened all campus
police reports to the public, either by court order or by legislation,
according to the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C.
Campus police in Massachusetts
are empowered as “special state police officers,” a category that includes
police employed by hospitals and railroads. As of June, 1,500 special state
police officers were at work across Massachusetts, the vast majority at
colleges and universities.
Twenty-one private colleges in
Greater Boston have campus police forces. Harvard has 77 sworn officers,
followed by Boston University with 67 (plus an additional 29 officers for its
medical campus), and MIT with 59 officers. Wheelock College, which has fewer
than 1,000 undergraduates, employs a single sworn officer.
In July 2013, Massachusetts’ top
court ruled that campus police jurisdiction encompasses areas where students,
faculty, and campus visitors “might be exposed to danger.”
No event illustrated the extent
of campus law enforcement responsibility more dramatically than the Boston
Marathon bombings and ensuing manhunt in 2013. After the slaying of MIT Officer
Sean Collier, police from MIT, Harvard, and BU were among the hundreds of law
enforcement officers who “self-deployed.”
In June, after the shooting of a
knife-wielding suspect by State Police near its campus, BU police rejected a
request for reports filed by its responding officers. Detective Lieutenant
Peter DiDomenica responded that the BU Police Department would release the
report only under subpoena.
Massachusetts case law supports
this interpretation. In a suit brought by the Harvard Crimson, the university’s
student newspaper, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled in January 2006 that
the public records statute does not cover university police at private schools.
Massachusetts defines a public
record as any document produced by a state or local government employee. A
plain reading of the statute, the court reasoned, excludes police employed by
nongovernmental bodies.
Federal and state law mandate
certain disclosures by campus police, even at private universities. Under the
federal Clery Act, educational institutions receiving federal financial
assistance must publish an annual statistical report on campus crime, as well
as a daily crime log open to the public. (Massachusetts law likewise requires
all police departments to maintain a public log.)
All 21 Greater Boston colleges
with police publish their annual Clery reports online, a review of those
reports shows. But only Harvard and MIT post crime logs to their public safety
websites, while police at Simmons College and Wheelock maintain handwritten
logs. Ten institutions refused to send copies of their daily logs by e-mail,
and a handful more did so only after numerous inquiries.
Some colleges allow people to
view blotters only in person.
“The institute does not send out
— electronically or otherwise — copies of its log sheets,” said Wentworth
Institute of Technology spokesman Dennis Nealon.
College police departments that
refused to send copies of daily crime logs include Berklee College of Music,
Boston College, Boston University, Curry College, Emmanuel College,
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Simmons, Tufts University,
Wentworth, and Wheelock.
Tufts provided photocopies of its
logs during an onsite review at the Medford campus. All other colleges allowed
photographs to be taken of their logs, but refused to provide printouts or
other copies. This included BU police, who allow the public to access their
electronic crime database via a computer kiosk in the lobby.
BU’s police department did not
respond to inquiries about why its crime logs can be viewed in digital format
onsite but are not provided by e-mail.
Still, campus police departments
said that transparency remains a core goal.
“We in campus policing strive to
be transparent in our dealings with our campus communities not only because of
the obligations imposed under Title IX and the Clery Act, but also because this
is the most effective way to accomplish our campus public safety mission,” said
Suffolk University’s police chief, Chip Coletta, whose department provided its
logs upon request by e-mail.
Sworn officers at Greater Boston
colleges
Twenty-one private colleges in
Greater Boston employ special state police officers. The numbers, by college,
as of June:
Boston University
96
Harvard University
77
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
59
Boston College
55
Northeastern University
54
Tufts University
46
Suffolk University
31
Lasell College
27
Babson College
23
Mount Ida College
22
Brandeis University
21
Emerson College
20
Wentworth Institute of Technology
15
Wellesley College
14
Curry College
13
Simmons College
13
Emmanuel College
11
MCPHS University
10
Fisher College
9
Berklee College of Music
7
Wheelock College
1
SOURCE: Massachusetts State
Police
PATRICK GARVIN/GLOBE STAFF
This investigation was done for
the Globe in collaboration with MuckRock, a Boston company that specializes in obtaining
government documents through records requests. Shawn Musgrave can be reached at
shawn@muckrock.com.
THE ART OF PULP
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
The Grain of Sound
By Robert Morgan
A banjo maker in the mountains,
when looking out for wood to carve
an instrument, will walk among
the trees and knock on trunks. He'll hit
the bark and listen for a note.
A hickory makes the brightest sound;
the poplar has a mellow ease.
But only straightest grain will keep
the purity of tone, the sought-
for depth that makes the licks sparkle.
A banjo has a shining shiver.
Its twangs will glitter like the light
on splashing water, even though
its face is just a drum of hide
of cow, or cat, or even skunk.
The hide will magnify the note,
the sad of honest pain, the chill
blood-song, lament, confession, haunt,
as tree will sing again from root
and vein and sap and twig in wind
and cat will moan as hand plucks nerve,
picks bone and skin and gut and pricks
the heart as blood will answer blood
and love begins to knock along the grain.
Robert Morgan (born 1944) is a
poet, short story writer, and novelist. He studied at North Carolina State
University as an engineering and mathematics major, transferred to the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an English major, graduating in
1965, and completed an MFA degree at the University of North Carolina
Greensboro in 1968. He has taught at Cornell University since 1971.
A Conversation with Love &
Money Playwright A.R. Gurney
BY GERARD RAYMOND
It's several hours before show
time and playwright A.R. Gurney sits happily among the groups of people milling
about the foyer of the Pershing Square Signature Center, home to the Signature
Theatre Company, which is presenting his latest work, Love & Money. The
octogenarian, a native of Buffalo, New York, has been writing plays for nearly
half a century, mostly wry comedies about his own white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
upbringing. Gurney is famous for his acute observation of a privileged and
disappearing class—characters with impeccable breeding and private-school
educations, who sip martinis at cocktail hour and give perfect dinner parties,
regardless of the disruptions that shake the world around them. Love &
Money, about a wealthy widow who's decided to give away most of her money and
possessions before she dies because she feels she has “committed the crime of
having too much money,” is playing at the off-Broadway venue through October 4.
I sat down with Gurney to discuss his latest work, how his plays have been
labeled, and the risk that often comes with putting so much of himself, and his
family, on the stage.
You've said that you didn't
expect to be writing a new play, but here you are with Love & Money. How
did that come about?
It arose from coming here to the
Signature Theatre. They were doing two revivals of mine and said, “How about
writing a new play?” I had just finished a play for the Flea Theater and I
didn't feel like writing, but the atmosphere here is just wonderful. Just look
around: The audience tends to create itself before you go in. You see yourself
as a theatergoer among many theatergoers, which is different from, say,
Broadway, where they like to make you stand in line and then rush you to your
seat.
So, here I am at 84 years old and
I felt like I was going through an experience I had when I was about 24. I had
the first reading of the play and it just didn't seem to work at all, but I saw
what I might be able to do with it. I had this off-stage character and the
director, Mark Lamos, suggested I bring her around at the end, so I did. By the
time the play was through, I had five or six more turns for that character. It
was that kind of experience: returning to it, rewriting it, testing it. You
know, when I went to the Yale School of Drama, we were constantly told plays
aren't written, but rewritten. We did a lot of tuning and cutting on this play,
and it was a great pleasure. And I'm proud of what came out.
Did you know what the play was
going to be about when you started?
I didn't. I've written plays
where I had to do research and grasp a new subject. Some have worked and some
haven't, but I didn't think I'd have the time, so I turned to the culture that
I grew up in. And I turned to—and exaggerated and amplified—an experience my
wife and I are going through now, namely de-acquisitioning things, moving to a
smaller place and handing out a lot of furniture to our children. It's about
simplifying our lives so when we die they aren't going to be loaded with stuff
to do.
But in the end, what was exciting
was that the actors were very good and they were very responsive to what I was
doing. For instance, the character who originally had six lines is Agnes
[played by Pamela Dunlap], the Irish maid. In the process of rewriting, I
realized the maid should be very important, because the culture I am writing
about couldn't live without someone in the kitchen. This is a terrific maid, as
she's been very well taken care of financially, and she's great pals with
Cornelia Cunningham [played by Maureen Anderman], the matriarch of the house.
She's a major guest at the dinner party at the end.
Do you mind that you're
invariably described as the WASP playwright?
I used to. The standard cliché
was “WASP chronicler.” which sounded as if I was just copying things down. But
I recognize that you're bound to be categorized. John Cheever was called a WASP
chronicler and Faulkner was called a Southern writer.
Did your family and relatives
object to your putting their lives on stage?
Yes! A lot of people did. My play
Family Furniture, which we did at the Flea Theater in 2013, is fairly close to
home. It's about an affair that my mother had. The children of the man, even
though he was a different character in the play, and I masked the name, they
knew it immediately and were furious with me for even bringing up what was
supposed to be a total secret. We're talking about three generations ago! My
father, of course, didn't like it at all when I wrote plays, because he thought
I was poking fun at my family, which I was.
It does seem, however, that even
while you criticize the culture you also care about the characters and uphold
their better values.
I'm glad to hear you say that.
And don't you think that's true about Cornelia? I hope the audience likes her.
She's kind of batty at times, but her heart's in the right place. I think this
play, and I couldn't believe I was doing this, is the radically dramatic and
critical of my own culture. But at the end, the culture reasserts itself, I
hope, in a better way. They all end up a dinner party and there's nothing like
a good dinner party to bring people together.
Love & Money introduces a
young African American into this closed world. Would you say that in recent
decades that you've become more and more interested in how outsiders affect the
WASP families in your plays?
I think so. It would be hard for
me to describe to you how hermetic and unchallenged this culture was, that I
grew up in, partly because Buffalo itself was kind of sealed off from the rest
of the world at that time. My mother and father were both born in Buffalo and
so were all my grandparents. So we were very tight families. They didn't always
mix, but they were all there. It was only when I was in the Navy that I began
to realize that there were other things in the world, and realized some of the
silly limitations in my own culture. So when I came back, I couldn't help but
want to write about it.
I don't think I had ever written
an African-American role before. I kept saying to Gabriel Brown, who plays the
part of Walker in the play, “Is this racist? Does this offend you in any way?”
I also talked to his mother and aunt who were there. Of course, some of the
things that I thought were racist turned out not to be, and vice versa.
In the play this young man is
offered a pathway to the theater as a way out of his circumstances…
I think it's salvation for a lot
of young people where it wasn't before. There were no interns in the theaters
when I was growing up. Look around at the number of young people that are now
interns in the theater—and not simply because they like opera and plays. They
see the internship as leading in a number different ways: toward television,
for example, toward writing.
When you started working with the
younger people in the profession, at the Flea Theater about a decade ago, did
it seem like a new phase in your career?
It did. Swoosie Kurtz called and
said she was doing this play called The Guysin a place called the Flea and that
it was a terrific play about 9/11. So I went over and saw it, and I met Jim Simpson,
who was the artistic director at the time. And he said, “If you ever wanted to
do a play, we'll do it here.” So, one thing led to another and I worked with
Jim on seven or eight plays. Some of them were pretty scatterbrained and…
And very political.
Yes. At that time it was George
W. Bush. He was so much of the culture that I came from. I just could not abide
with that guy being the president and doing what he was doing—which made some
of my plays rather simple-minded and polemic. But some of them worked out.
There was one called Mrs. Farnsworthwith John Lithgow and Sigourney Weaver,
which I think was quite good. And I also liked working with limited
finances—dancing with chains, as they say. And also hearing what the young
people had to say.
Your play Sylvia is about to be
revived on Broadway, but when you wrote it just over 20 years ago you said you
found it difficult to get it produced. Can you tell us little about how that
play came about?
Yes, it's very popular now, but
at the time they said, “You can't ask a female actress to play a dog!” I've
always had a dog, and I was always the one in the family who was responsible
for the dog. So I've always written about dogs. In this particular case I was
working, writing something out in the country, while my wife was working in
town. She came over for the weekend and there was this dog. She was furious.
She said, “You didn't tell me about this. Either you or that dog has got to
go.” And, so, the pain, agony, and love that I had for this dog merged into the
play.
What's next? Will you continue
writing?
The two plays of mine that were
revived here at Signature, What I Did Last Summer and The Wayside Motor Inn,
were very well received this time. They were slaughtered by the critics when
they first came out. So not only did I feel somewhat redeemed by that, there's
this new one, Love & Money, which emerged through rewrites, which I
personally think came out rather nicely. I have two new ones, which go together
and I want to do at the Flea, but I certainly don't want to overload the
circuits. I'm not Sophocles. He wrote his last play, I think, when he was 90.
It takes a lot out of me. I get all wound-up and I just need to relax a little.
So maybe if I'm still alive, as my father used to say, maybe you'll see them at
the end of next year.
THE ART OF WAR...............................
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
"The trail of tears"
James Earle Fraser
BLOGLAPEDIA’S
BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
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for the blog of it
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THE ARTS
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Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
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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)
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Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
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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)
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Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
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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
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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
