An elderly Donegal man is stopped by the
Gardai around 2am and is asked where he is going at this time of night.
The man replies, "I'm on my way to a
lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has
on the human body, as well as smoking and staying out late."
The Garda officer then asks, "Really?
Who is giving that lecture at this time of night?"
The old man replies, "That would be my
wife."
FLASH FICTION
I guess I should explain the following short story. (especially
in light of the view that my wife dislikes it so much) It’s intended to be a
flash fiction piece, which, as you know are difficult to write. What motivated
me was that I recently read a short biography of the comedian Red Skeleton and was
impressed to learn that he wrote one short story a week for decades along with
his amazing output of art work. So I’ve decide to write much more than I do and
this is a start, okay a creepy start but still…..
Twisted
Christmas
It had snowed heavily that
Christmas Eve creating a wonderful silence outside the house. Inside the house
the log fire in the parlor mantle was burning out but had made the large house
crispy warm and cozy.
He heard the sleigh land
gracefully on the roof and then there was the sound of Santa’s trumping through
the house, up the stairs and into his parent’s room and then everything was
silent again.
After a while he could hear
Santa’s boots again, landing heavily on the plush hallway carpet and the little
boy covered his mouth and laughed with joy. His eyes widened when his bedroom
door opened and was flooded with delight when Santa entered
Santa looked at the boy and
winked, looked back towards his parents room and said with a big wide grin
“You’ve got your Christmas wish”
“Oh thank you Santa, thank you so
very, very much” the boy replied.
Then Santa reached in to his bag
and took out a blood splattered axe and smiled benevolently.
“Your parents had a Christmas
wish too”
My November Guest
by Robert Frost
MY Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
Nikolai Dubovskoy - Evening in November. 1900. Gouache.
“November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.
With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.
The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.”
― Clyde Watson
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863
on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
Four score and seven years
ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new
nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a
great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We
are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave
their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we
cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .we cannot hallow this
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . .and that government of the
people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . .shall not perish from this
earth.
November Weather Lore
A warm November is the sign of a bad Winter.
Onion skins very thin,
Mild Winter coming in;
Onion skins thick and tough,
Coming Winter cold and rough.
Flowers bloomin' in late Autumn,
A sure sign of a bad Winter comin'.
As high as the weeds grow,
So will the bank of snow.
Thunder in the Fall foretells a cold Winter.
If there’s ice in November to bear a duck
There’ll be nothing after but sludge and muck.
On All Hallow's Day cut a chip from the beech tree;
If it be dry the winter will prove warm.
“LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately
over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable
November weather.
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly
retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a
Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up
Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle,
with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into
mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
Dogs, undistinguishable
in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot
passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of
ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of
thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day
broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of
mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at
compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river,
where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls
defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great
(and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog
creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and
hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges
and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners,
wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the
afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly
pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck.
Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of
fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in
the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in
divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be
seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours
before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling
look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and
the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that
leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a
leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s
Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his
High Court of Chancery.”― Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Shakespeare in modern English; To be or not
be?
Shakespearean actor Sir Ian McKellen said recently that reading
Shakespeare is a waste of time, and people should instead celebrate Shakespeare
by watching his plays in the theatre and that forcing people to read the works
of the great bard served only to reinforce the notion that his plays were there
to be studied, rather than enjoyed.
Good point and good thinking Mr. McKellen.
Further, he said that perhaps we should be commissioning
playwrights to “translate” all of Shakespeare’s plays into modern English. And
why not? We modernize Shakespeare’s setting and costumes, so not his
words? It’s not as if anyone is advocating getting rid of the original
text. Nor do we have to modernize every word of the play. I want to hear
Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy in the traditional rendering.
AUTUMNAL
Pale amber sunlight falls across
The reddening October trees,
That hardly sway before a breeze
As soft as summer: summer's loss
Seems little, dear! on days like these.
Let misty autumn be our part!
The twilight of the year is sweet:
Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
Eludes a little time's deceit.
Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream.
Beyond the pearled horizons lie
Winter and night: awaiting these
We garner this poor hour of ease,
Until love turn from us and die
Beneath the drear November trees.”
― Ernest Dowson
NASA
Released Photos of Pluto's Tiniest Moon
Kerberos is Pluto’s most recently
found tiniest moon shown here in photos taken three months ago by the New
Horizons spacecraft. The moon appears to have two lobes where the larger one is
estimated to be 5 miles (8 km) in size, while the smaller one around 3 miles (5
km). Just like the other moons (Charon, Nyx, Hydra and Styx, Kerberos) in
Pluto's satellite system that appeared to be shiny or reflective, Kerberos is
also enclosed with a water icy surface. Although Kerberos is a two-lobed
satellite, its name came from the guardian of the underworld, the three-headed
dog Cerberus.
WRITERS ON THE RIVIERA: THE
FITZGERALDS AND THE CÔTE D'AZUR
by Lanie Goodman
“When your eyes first fall upon the
Mediterranean you know at once why it was here that man first stood erect and
stretched out his arms toward the sun. It is a blue sea; or rather it is too
blue for that hackneyed phrase which has described every muddy pool from pole
to pole. It is the fairy blue of Maxfield Parrish’s pictures; blue like blue
books, blue oil, blue eyes, and in the shadow of the mountains a green belt of
land runs along the coast for a hundred miles and makes a playground for the
world.”
When F Scott Fitzgerald sailed across the
Atlantic to France in 1924, accompanied by his wife Zelda and daughter Scottie,
the idea was to escape to a place where they could ‘live on practically nothing
a year’. The reason was glaringly simple: four years after the publication of
his best-selling novel, This Side of Paradise(1920), which catapulted the
writer to literary stardom and rendered him the hero of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald
found himself left with capital of just $7,000. No longer able to keep up with
New York’s frenetic social life and the excessive partying that was keeping him
from completing his third novel, The Great Gatsby, he made a decision.
Fitzgerald and Zelda took temporary leave of their sumptuous home in Great
Neck, Long Island, and their final destination would not be Paris, rather the
“hot, sweet south of France”.
“We were going to the Old World
to find a new rhythm to our lives,” Fitzgerald wrote, in How to Live on
Practically Nothing a Year, his article about the adventure for The Saturday
Evening Post. “With a true conviction that we had left our old selves behind
forever.”
Back then, life was still
relatively cheap on the French Riviera, particularly during the summer, since,
as Fitzgerald quipped, it was “something like going to Palm Beach for July”.
Come April, the visiting aristocracy closed their villas and wouldn’t return
until winter, fleeing the high temperatures, mosquitoes and insalubrious sea
breezes.
In May, the Fitzgeralds took the
train from Paris to the sleepy town of Hyères, knowing that Edith Wharton owned
a house there. Finding it dreary and overrun with condescending British
pensioners, their disappointment turned to joy when an agent showed them the
Villa Marie, a charming property on a pine-shaded hillside in Saint-Raphaël,
which Fitzgerald described as "a little red town built close to the sea,
with gay red-roofed houses and an air of repressed carnival about it”.
“I don’t see why everybody
doesn’t come over here,” Fitzgerald rhapsodised, tongue-in-cheek, in How to
Live on Practically Nothing a Year. “I am now writing from a little inn in
France where I just had a meal fit for a king, washed down with Champagne, for
the absurd sum of sixty-one cents. It costs about one-tenth as much to live
over here. From where I sit I can see the smoky peaks of the Alps rising behind
a town that was old before Alexander the Great was born…”
From June to October, Scott shut
himself away in the Villa Marie, working on The Great Gatsby, while Zelda had a
passionate but short-lived affair with a young French aviator, Edouard Jozan,
whom she met on the beach.
“Saint-Raphaël marks the first
real ‘crack’ in their marriage,” says Riviera-based Fitzgerald biographer,
Jean-Luc Guillet. “Scott was haunted by Zelda’s betrayal, and his fear of
losing his wife to someone else turns up both in The Great Gatsby and in Tender
is the Night.”
At a dramatic moment in the
former, Jay Gatsby tells Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan, “Your wife does not
love you. She’s never loved you. She loves me”.
Blame it on those long idle
afternoons and the balmy climate. In Zelda’s semi-autobiographic novel, Save me
the Waltz (1932), emotions run high because the Riviera “is a seductive place”
where “the blare of the beaten blue and those white palaces shimmering under
the heat accentuates things”.
*********
For a much-needed distraction,
the Fitzgeralds would take a jaunt in their little blue Renault, down the
coastal road to the Cap d’Antibes – past the still spectacular red rocks of the
Esterel and the Gulf of Napoule’s turquoise shallows – to visit their close
friends, Sara and Gerald Murphy.
Best known as Fitgerald’s initial
models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night(1934), the Murphys’
charisma is summed up in the novel’s opening chapters, which are set on the
Plage de la Garoupe, on the Cap d’Antibes’ eastern side. Talking about the
Divers and the Riviera, alcoholic American musician Abe North tells the
recently arrived film starlet Rosemary Hoyt that “they have to like it. They
invented it”.
Gerald Murphy, a wealthy heir to
the Mark Cross luxury leather goods company, had moved to Paris with his family
in order to study painting. His trendsetting qualities also extended to his modern
creative sensibilities, as he produced avant-garde canvases and décor that can
clearly be seen as a precursor to Pop Art. Accompanied by his elegant wife,
Murphy discovered the enchantment of the Cap d’Antibes in the summer of 1922,
when their friend Cole Porter invited them to stay in his rented villa, the
Château de la Garoupe.
Deciding that they wanted to
settle amid the Cap’s sleepy fishing villages, the Murphys returned the
following year and convinced the owner of the seaside Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc –
the model for the Hôtel des Étrangers in Tender is the Night – to keep it open
for them during the summer.
While their new home, Villa
America, was under construction, the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc became the Murphys’
headquarters and a place to invite their friends. Today, the Hôtel du
Cap-Eden-Roc, it’s one of Europe’s glitziest places to stay. Their charmed
circle included the likes of neighbours the Count and Countess de Beaumont, who
lived at the splendid Villa Eilenroc; Picasso and his mother, Senora Ruiz, and
ballerina wife, Olga; the silent movie icon Rudolf Valentino; and Gertrude
Stein.
*********
With their marriage under strain,
Antibes was a welcome escape for the Fitzgeralds, whose notorious,
alcohol-fuelled antics were on a par with the misbehaviour of rock stars at
their most dissolute. On a mutual dare, they once disrupted the Murphys’ party
at the Hôtel du Cap by diving off 35-foot-high rocks into the pitch-black
Mediterranean.
On another night, Zelda stripped
off her black lace panties and tossed them to her hosts, encouraging an
impromptu skinny-dip in the pool with other inebriated guests. On a more
sobering occasion, Zelda downed a large quantity of sleeping pills and then had
to be walked around the hotel’s grounds until morning.
Although the Fitzgeralds returned
to New York in the autumn, the enticing gaiety of the Riviera brought them back
in the summer of 1926. In the wake of Gatsby’s success, Scott rented the Villa
Saint-Louis in Juan-les-Pins, bragging to his friends in New York that he’d
found a house on the shore with a private beach, conveniently situated near the
casino. It was there that Fitzgerald began working on Tender is the Night,
which would take him seven years to finish.
In 1929, the Art Deco villa was
transformed into the small, family-run Hôtel Belles-Rives. Its period
furnishings, frescoes and fumoir have all been meticulously preserved by the
current owner, Marianne Chauvin-Estène.
At the Villa America, the
Murphys’ modernist, 14-room home – replete with a black-tiled living room, a
sun deck on its flat roof and a exotic garden – the Fitzgeralds mingled with
the most prominent figures of the European arts scene: Cocteau, Léger, Man Ray,
Stravinsky, Diaghilev and many more. The literary names who were regular guests
included Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley (later, also Pauline Pfeiffer,
his second spouse), John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Archibald MacLeish and
Robert Benchley.
“The air smelled of eucalyptus,
tomatoes and heliotrope,” recalled Dos Passos, describing the languid summer
evenings on Villa America’s terrace. Gerald Murphy, smartly dressed in spats or
white ‘bucks’ and a striped sailor jersey, made elaborate cocktails for his
guests, as Dos Passos put it, “like a priest preparing mass”, inventing
concoctions “with the juice of a few flowers”.
At one of these famous soirées,
which was later immortalized in Tender is the Night, Scott Fitzgerald behaved
even worse than usual – he insulted guests, then picked up a sorbet-sodden fig
and threw it at the bare shoulders of his hosts’ friend, the Princesse de Poix.
Once, Fitzgerald started to smash Sara Murphy’s handblown wineglasses so he was
escorted to the door and the couple banished him from the Villa American for
weeks.
Monte Carlo was a perfect
destination for the “excitement eaters”, as Zelda referred to herself and
Scott. They’d take the winding Grande Corniche “through the twilight with the
whole French Riviera twinkling below” and spend the evening gambling at the
Casino. If Scott had forgotten his passport, he’d pretend to faint in front of
the gaming room’s guard, hoping that they’d still let him in.
Another glamorous hotspot was the
art-filled restaurant La Colombe d’Or in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, which was already
a celebrity haunt. One evening, while dining on the terrace, Scott spotted
Isadora Duncan at the next table and went to pay his respects. Afterwards,
Zelda was jealous and, in retaliation, threw herself down a flight of stone
steps.
*********
When it came to dining, the
Fitzgeralds avoided elaborate French cuisine and despised l’ail– “the only
garlic that can be put over us must be administered in sleep”. Even in the most
exclusive restaurants, Scott would wave away the waiter and order a club
sandwich in his heavily-accented French.
During the couple’s last summer
on the Côte d’Azur, in 1929, the US Stock Market had crashed and the mood
shifted drastically. The Fitzgeralds holed up at a modest villa in Cannes,
avoiding the Hôtel du Cap which, to Scott, had become a celebrity circus where
silk pyjama-clad patrons used the pool “only for a short hangover dip”.
Somerset Maugham would also satirize the hotel’s raging social scene in his
short story, The Three Fat Women of Antibes.
Zelda, already showing signs of
mental strain, was still determined to become a ballerina. Staying at the Hôtel
Beau Rivage on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, they went “to the cheap
ballets of the Casino on the jetée” while desperately trying to save money.
By the time that Tender is the
Night was published, in 1934, the Murphys and the Fitzgeralds had long since
returned to America, and both families endured a series of tragic events. The
Murphys lost both of their young sons, Patrick and Baoth, to illness, while
Zelda was in and out of sanatoriums, grappling with severe mental breakdowns.
What remained of those years, as
evoked by Fitzgerald, was the glow of a golden era on the Riviera, when a
handful of American expats invented an enduring lifestyle of sunbathing,
swimming and partying on the Côte d’Azur.
Gerald Murphy later wrote to
Fitzgerald, “I know now that what you said in Tender Is the Night is true. Only
the invented part of our life – the unreal part – has had any scheme, any
beauty”.
American arts and travel author
Lanie Goodman has been based in the South of France since 1988. She’s written
for the likes of Condé Nast Traveler, the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.
From France Today magazine
CHASING THE SUN: WRITERS ON THE RIVIERA
by Lanie Goodman
March 28, 2015
“I’ve just been for a walk on my
small boulevard and looking down below at the houses all bright in the sun and
housewives washing their linen in great tubs of glittering water and flinging
it over the orange trees to dry. Perhaps all human activity is beautiful in the
sunlight.” -Katherine Mansfield, in a letter to her husband, John Middleton
Murray
“I was only happy once; that was at Hyères.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“Take her away, into the sun, the
doctor said.” The opening line of Sun, a short tale by British novelist and
poet DH Lawrence, which was published in 1925’s The Princess and Other Stories,
sums up one of that eminent author’s most cherished themes. You could call it
the Mediterranean myth of renewal – the promise of simple restorative
pleasures: a gentle climate, a dazzling blue sea and villa life surrounded by a
lemon-scented garden.
Although Lawrence and his wife,
Frieda, travelled extensively throughout Italy, the writer spent his final
years on the tranquil, palm-fringed Côte d’Azur, in search of a new Eden. Like
many of the celebrated expatriate writers who took refuge on the Riviera
between 1915 and the 1930s, to Lawrence the area must have provided an idyllic
escape from chilly northern skies, urban rhythms and wartime strife.
Yet, it was not entirely by
coincidence that one group of Anglo-Saxon writers – Lawrence, Virginia Woolf,
Katherine Mansfield, Aldous Huxley and Cyril Connolly – ended up as near
neighbours in a string of small coastal towns, including Menton, Hyères,
Sanary-sur-mer, Bandol, La Ciotat and Cassis. They’d all started as a group of
friends in England, and already shared an interwoven history of love, quarrels
and estrangement, which continued to develop as the years went by.
However, for ailing writers such
as Robert Louis Stevenson, Katherine Mansfield and Lawrence, the Riviera
promised more than sheer inspiration and a change of lifestyle. As early as the
1860s, the area’s mild winters attracted a steady stream of wealthy
consumptives from northern Europe. The word was out: British doctor, James
Henry Bennet published Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean in
1861, claiming that Menton – snugly protected by wind and several degrees
warmer – was indeed the perfect sanatorium city. Following Dr Bennet’s
suggestion, in 1863 Robert Louis Stevenson first travelled to Nice and Menton
with his family, as a frail 12-year-old with a recurrent cough.
Stevenson’s biographers have
speculated that those happy memories may have prompted the Scottish writer –
who was responsible for the likes of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange
Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – to return to the Côte d’Azur 20 years later,
with his Californian wife, Fanny Osbourne. Hoping to improve his deteriorating
pulmonary consumptive condition, Stevenson initially rented a château in
Marseille, which turned out to be a sordid disaster. When Fanny found a dead
body dumped on their doorstep, the couple packed up and decamped to Hyères, 85
kilometres down the coast. At the time, like Menton, this sleepy, palm-lined
city was slowly becoming a hotspot for British aristos seeking ‘winter cures’,
and later it was frequented by the likes of Queen Victoria.
The couple soon found their dream
house and rented a tiny pseudo-Swiss chalet, La Solitude, perched on a cliff
with a sweeping vista of the shimmering sea and the ÃŽles d’Or. The house, which
still stands today, on the present Rue Victor-Basch, was a kind of
architectural folly, inspired by Chinese pagodas and Turkish mosques, which was
first exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, then shipped to Hyères and
rebuilt. Stevenson spent 16 blissful and productive months at La Solitude,
mostly in the large, sun-dappledjardin, where he wrote A Child’s Garden of
Verses.
“This spot, our garden, and our
view, are sub-celestial,” wrote Stevenson. “I live in a most sweet corner of
the universe, sea and fine hills before me, and a rich variegated plain: and at
my back, a craggy hill, loaded with vast feudal ruins.”
The couple’s idyll ended when
Fanny learned of an outbreak of cholera near Toulon and Stevenson fell gravely
ill while visiting friends in Nice. They were forced to go back to England for
medical treatment and later moved to Samoa, where Stevenson died, aged just 44.
*********
When New Zealand-born writer
Katherine Mansfield fled London and first journeyed to the south of France in
1915, it was partly to escape her grief. She’d just lost her dearly loved
brother, Leslie Beauchamp, who was killed fighting on the Western Front in
France. Her fragile health – a thwarted pregnancy, gonorrhoea and rheumatic
fever – only added to Mansfield’s intense desire to settle in a warm climate,
one with a landscape that reminded her of childhood years in Wellington.
Mansfield passed through Cassis –
where Virginia Woolf often stayed a decade later, to visit her sister Vanessa
and husband, Clive Belle – but decided to head to Bandol, a tiny port village,
where she installed herself at the seafront Hôtel Beau Rivage, in a room on the
top floor, second from the right, overlooking the sea. Mansfield’s haven still
stands and currently operates as the Résidence Hôtelière Beau Rivage, offering
weekly rental of three-star studio apartments.
By January 2, 1916, Mansfield had
rented the tiny romantic Villa Pauline, boasting clifftop views and “an almond
tree that tapped at the window of the salle à manger”. She stayed until April
1916, taking long walks by the port and writing what’s considered to be some of
her best work, including Prelude. During this period, her lover, the literary
magazine editor John Middleton Murray, often came down to visit. Mansfield’s
chaotic love life would be too complex to summarise here, but she eventually
wedded Middletown Murray in 1918, once the divorce with George Bowden, her
estranged husband from a loveless marriage, had been finalised. Later on,
Mansfield noted in her journals that those carefree months in Bandol had been
the happiest moments of her life.
Once back in England, in 1917,
Mansfield became ill with pleurisy and
dreamed about returning to sunny Bandol. When she recovered, her doctor advised
a trip south, but the writer was unprepared for the hardships of the journey
and the grim wartime changes that had altered the mood of her beloved
Mediterranean town. Alone and in poor health, Mansfield immediately attempted
to return to England but was held up in Paris, which was under heavy
bombardment.
Disillusioned, Mansfield
eventually made her way back to London, and in 1920, when her pleurisy had
deteriorated into tuberculosis, decided to return to France with her
care-taking companion, Ida Baker – this time to Menton. She moved into a small
two-storey villa, the Isola Bella, which is set atop a hill in the
neighbourhood of Garavan, just next to the Italian border, and is known for its
exceptional gardens.
It was “the first real home of my
own I’ve ever loved”, she enthused, in a letter to Middleton Murray, who
visited sporadically. The sea and garden, filled with mimosa and tangerine
trees, was the inspiration for her best novellas (Miss Brill, The Daughters of
the Late Colonel), but this feverishly productive time ended abruptly when her
health took a turn for the worse. She left for Switzerland and then went to
Avon, to the Gurdjieff Institute for the Harmonious Development of the Mind, a
monastery near Fontainebleau, where she
died on January 9, 1923 at the age of 34. Just before her death, she had
written in her journal: “I simply pine for the S. of France.”
Today, Isola Bella, visible from
the platform of the Gare de Menton-Garavan, is owned by the city of Menton. In
collaboration with the Katherine Mansfield Society, the villa is used as a New
Zealand writer’s guest residence.
********
The story of DH Lawrence’s
wanderings in the south of France began five years after the death of Katherine
Mansfield, a close friend – in a way, he was retracing her steps. In October
1928, the writer and his friend, Richard Aldington, rented an old stone
fortress on the nearly deserted island of Port Cros, across from Hyères. At the
time, Lawrence’s wife, Frieda, was having an affair with an Italian officer,
Angelo Ravagli, which would have important consequences in the tragicomic saga
that took place after the author’s death.
Finding that the Riviera’s
climate suited him, Lawrence returned to Bandol the following winter, checking
into the Hôtel Beau Rivage, where Mansfield had stayed earlier. Still in search
of a publisher for his controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, he and
Frieda decided to rent the villa Beau Soleil. Emaciated and exhausted,
Lawrence, who was in denial about his long-neglected tuberculosis, soon
realised that the damp sea breezes had only made his condition worse. He longed
to return to Taos, New Mexico but was too weak – instead his doctor dispatched
him to a higher altitude, to the wooded hills of Vence, in the Alpes-Maritimes
département.
After a brief stay in a local
sanatorium named Ad Astra, Lawrence demanded to be released but, sadly, died
several days later at their newly-leased home, the Villa Rochermond near Vence,
on March 2, 1930. Frieda and Lawrence’s close friends, Maria and Aldous Huxley,
were present at his deathbed.
Lawrence was first buried in
carré 7 of the old Vence cemetery, but his remains were exhumed and cremated
five years later, a ceremony which was witnessed by a small group of friends.
When Frieda – who was consoled by a series of lovers, including Middleton
Murray – decided to transport Lawrence’s ashes with the intention of building a
shrine in Taos, what happened next still isn’t exactly clear.
Various versions of the story of
Lawrence’s ashes exist: one was that Frieda’s lover, Angelo Ravagli, who was in
charge of transporting the urn, distractedly left it on a train and, instead,
filled another receptacle with chips of burnt wood. Another version claims that
Ravagli feared immigration hassles and, one night, drunkenly confessed that
he’d dumped the original contents of the urn into the sea between Marseille and
Villefranche, while sailing on a ship en route to New York.
Meanwhile, the Huxleys, appalled
at the idea that Frieda might charge tourists money to visit the shrine,
planned to steal the ashes and cast them to the desert winds. Frieda, who
learned of their intentions, made it known that she would put the ashes in the
concrete mixer immediately upon their arrival in Taos. It is still a mystery
where the ashes may have actually been scattered, but the Taos shrine – since
renamed a ‘memorial’ – still stands on the Lawrence Ranch, a site that’s only
recently been reopened to the public.
After Lawrence’s funeral, the Huxleys
went to Bandol and stayed, as their friends had done, at the Hôtel Beau Rivage.
However, it wasn’t long before they bought a house in Sanary-sur-Mer, a tiny
fishing port down the coast near Toulon, named the Villa Huley.
“Here, all is exquisitely lovely.
Sun, roses, fruit, warmth. We bathe and bask,” Huxley wrote to his
sister-in-law. The couple settled there for the next seven years. Living simply
but well – Maria zipped around in a red Bugatti – Huxley wrote the visionary
Brave New World and Eyeless in Gaza at the Villa Huley.
The ascent of fascism and
anti-Semitism during the 1930s gave rise to a new era of expatriate writers
and, strangely enough, the tiny, tranquil enclave of Sanary-sur-Mer suddenly
became a refuge for a host of intellectuals, who ranged from Cyril Connolly,
the British critic and novelist, to German author Thomas Mann and his son.
As Aldous Huxley’s friend and
biographer, the novelist Sybille Bedford, recounted during a 1993 interview
with the Paris Review, there were “so many people of wildly different ways of
life there at the same time”, all with varied languages, incomes and tastes,
that “Sooner or later everybody met, this was the point: Sanary was no city –
one newspaper kiosk, one post office, one paint-shop, two chemists, three
cafés.”
*********
Needless to say, the Riviera’s
expatriate literary scene of the 1920s and 1930s didn’t begin and end in the
Var département. Further east, down the coast, in the then-poky fishing village
of Antibes, a group of American writers were forming a tight clique and
inviting their New York friends to come and experience their own hedonistic
version of ‘the good life’ –
From France Today magazine
An award winning full length play.
"Cyberdate.Com is the story of six
ordinary people in search of romance, friendship and love and find it in very
extraordinary ways. Based on the real life experiences of the authors
misadventures with on line dating, Cyber date is a bittersweet story that will
make you laugh, cry and want to fall in love again." Ellis McKay
Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public 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. The play was also given a full reading at
The Frederick Playhouse in Maryland in March of 2007.
HERE'S MY LATEST BOOK.....
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.
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.
http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Small-William-Tuohy/dp/1517270456/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444164878&sr=1-1&keywords=short+stories+from+a+small+town
The Valley Lives
By
Marion Marchetto, author of The Bridgewater Chronicles on October 15, 2015
Short
Stores from a Small Town is set in The Valley (known to outsiders as The Lower
Naugatuck Valley) in Connecticut. While the short stories are contemporary they
provide insight into the timeless qualities of an Industrial Era community and
the values and morals of the people who live there. Some are first or second
generation Americans, some are transplants, yet each takes on the mantle of
Valleyite and wears it proudly. It isn't easy for an author to take the reader
on a journey down memory lane and involve the reader in the life stories of a
group of seemingly unrelated characters. I say seemingly because by book's end
the reader will realize that he/she has done more than meet a group of loosely
related characters.
We
meet all of the characters during a one-day time period as each of them finds
their way to the Valley Diner on a rainy autumn day. From our first meeting with
Angel, the educationally challenged man who opens and closes the diner, to our
farewell for the day to the young waitress whose smile hides her despair we
meet a cross section of the Valley population. Rich, poor, ambitious, and not
so ambitious, each life proves that there is more to it beneath the surface.
And the one thing that binds these lives together is The Valley itself. Not so
much a place (or a memory) but an almost palpable living thing that becomes a
part of its inhabitants.
Let
me be the first the congratulate author John William Tuohy on a job well done.
He has evoked the heart of The Valley and in doing so brought to life the
fabric that Valleyites wear as a mantle of pride. While set in a specific
region of the country, the stories that unfold within the pages of this slim
volume are similar to those that live in many a small town from coast to coast.
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/
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
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 No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care and
Short Stories from a Small Town. He is also 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
THE
BEAT POETS
Beat poetry evolved during the 1940s in both
New York City and on the west coast, although San Francisco became the heart of
the movement in the early 1950s. The end of World War II left poets like Allen
Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso questioning
mainstream politics and culture.
Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 –
August 17, 1965) was a poet often identified with the San Francisco
Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of
Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.
Spicer was born in Los Angeles,
where he later graduated from Fairfax High School in 1942, and attended the
University of Redlands from 1943-45. He spent most of his writing-life in San
Francisco and spent the years 1945 to 1950 and 1952 to 1955 at the University
of California, Berkeley, where he began writing, doing work as a
research-linguist, and publishing some poetry (though he disdained publishing).
During this time he searched out
fellow poets, but it was through his alliance with Robert Duncan and Robin
Blaser that Spicer forged a new kind of poetry, and together they referred to
their common work as the Berkeley Renaissance. The three, who were all gay,
also educated younger poets in their circle about their "queer
genealogy", Rimbaud, Lorca, and other gay writers.
In 1954, he co-founded the Six
Gallery in San Francisco, which soon became famous as the scene of the October
1955 Six Gallery reading that launched the West Coast Beat movement. In 1955,
Spicer moved to New York and then to Boston, where he worked for a time in the
Rare Book Room of Boston Public Library. Blaser was also in Boston at this
time, and the pair made contact with a number of local poets, including John
Wieners, Stephen Jonas, and Joe Dunn.
Spicer returned to San Francisco
in 1956 and started working on After Lorca. This book represented a major
change in direction for two reasons. Firstly, he came to the conclusion that
stand-alone poems (which Spicer referred to as his one-night stands) were
unsatisfactory and that henceforth he would compose serial poems. In fact, he
wrote to Blaser that 'all my stuff from the past (except the Elegies and
Troilus) looks foul to me.' Secondly, in writing After Lorca, he began to
practice what he called "poetry as dictation".
His interest in the work of
Federico GarcÃa Lorca, especially as it involved the cante jondo ideal, also
brought him near the poetics of the deep image group. The Troilus referred to
was Spicer's then unpublished play of that name. The play finally appeared in
print in 2004, edited by Aaron Kunin, in issue 3 of No - A Journal of the Arts.
In 1957, Spicer ran a workshop
called Poetry as Magic at San Francisco State College, which was attended by
Duncan, Helen Adam, James Broughton, Joe Dunn, Jack Gilbert, and George
Stanley. He also participated in, and sometimes hosted, Blabbermouth Night at a
literary bar called The Place. This was a kind of contest of improvised poetry
and encouraged Spicer's view of poetry as being dictated to the poet.
Spicer's view of the role of
language in the process of writing poetry was probably the result of his
knowledge of modern pre-Chomskyan linguistics and his experience as a
research-linguist at Berkeley. In the legendary Vancouver lectures he
elucidated his ideas on "transmissions" (dictations) from the
Outside, using the comparison of the poet as crystal-set or radio receiving
transmissions from outer space, or Martian transmissions.[citation needed]
Although seemingly far-fetched, his view of language as "furniture",
through which the transmissions negotiate their way, is grounded in the
structuralist linguistics of Zellig Harris and Charles Hockett.
(In fact, the poems of his final
book, Language, refer to linguistic concepts such as morphemes and graphemes).
As such, Spicer is acknowledged as a precursor and early inspiration for the
Language poets. However, many working poets today list Spicer in their
succession of precedent figures
Spicer died as a result of his
alcoholism.
“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”
BY JACK SPICER
Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.
TODAY'S ALLEGED MOB GUY
Michael
Zaffarano (? 1921 – February 14, 1980), also known as
"Mickey" or "Mickey Z", was a capo in the Bonanno crime
family who worked in the pornography industry.
Zaffarano handled porn theatres
and national porn film distribution for the Bonanno family. He owned several
pornographic movie theatres in Times Square in Manhattan and around the
country. Zaffarano's office was in Times Square on the upper floor of The
Pussycat Theatre located at 1600 broadway and 49th street. The Pussycat showed
some of the biggest XXX movies of the 1970's such as Deep Throat. Zaffarano was
a portly, heavyset, tall and handsome man with a brooding face. He had dark
brown, piercing eyes, a broken nose, and a scar on his forehead.
Bonanno crime family boss Natale
Evola in 1972 chose Zaffarano to initiate New York organized crime arbitration
efforts with Paolo Violi in Montreal, Canada. Zaffarano had a long history of
dealing with disputes and internal mob hostilities. Zaffarano survived the
turbulent 1960s. His brother-in-law was Joseph Asaro, a made man in the Bonanno
family and a second-generation mobster. Zaffarano's father had worked for
Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone while Capone was still living in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
Zaffarano eventually got caught up in the FBI investigation into illegal
hardcore pornography in New York City. He was a mentor to gambino crime family
caporegime Robert DiBernardo who ran the gambino pornography rackets and was
closely associated with Gambino family capo Ettore Zappi in Florida.
On August 2nd, 1975 Zaffarano
allegedly traveled to Los Angeles to murder Jacob Molinas. He was convicted of
bribing New York basketball players and Molinas had told authorities that he
was working for the Bonanno crime family so his death was ordered to prevent
him testifying.
On February 14, 1980, Zaffarano
died of a heart attack while evading FBI agents trying to arrest him. Anthony
Mirra later became capo of his crew.
AND NOW, A BEATLES BREAK
You
have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings. Elizabeth
Gilbert
Wild Writers Literary Festival
features day of workshops
Waterloo Region Record
By Martin de Groot
Wild Writers is a project of The
New Quarterly, Waterloo's "magazine of Canadian fiction, poetry, and
conversation, primarily about the writer's craft." As host of what has now
become "Waterloo Region's premier literary event," The New Quarterly
has demonstrated, once again, an extraordinary capacity for balancing
outstanding achievement on the national stage with maintaining a vital local
presence.
The opening gala of the 2015 Wild
Writers Literary Festival takes place Friday evening at the CIGI Campus
Auditorium (Centre for International Governance Innovation, 67 Erb St. W.).
The headline feature is CBC-KW's
Craig Norris in conversation with two major stars in the Canadian literary
firmament, Nino Ricci and Don Gillmor, who happen to be friends and poker
buddies.
The opening night program also
includes the winners of The New Quarterly's fiction, non-fiction and poetry
contests, plus Lynn Thomson, winner of the 2015 Edna Staebler Award presented
by Wilfrid Laurier University.
Admission to the gala is $10, or
free with the purchase of a print subscription to the magazine or one of the
featured authors' new novels — Gillmor's "Long Change" or Ricci's
"Sleep." It is at Words Worth Books in Waterloo.
The heart of the festival is an
all-day program of workshops on Saturday, Nov. 7.
There are three streams: a series
of six writer's craft classes on offer for $20 per session, plus conversations
and panel discussions that are free and open to everyone. Topics covered
include the spiritual memoirs, the prose poem, the art of the thriller and a
panel on "race, immigration and belonging."
The location is part of the
attraction. If you're not familiar with the facilities of the Balsillie School
of International Affairs, which is also part of CIGI campus, this is a great
opportunity to spend time in this latest addition to Waterloo's amazing
concentration of award-winning architecture.
After the workshops, the festival
unwinds with a "Saturday Night Speakeasy" at the Jazz Room in
Waterloo ($15) and culminates with a Sunday morning "literary brunch"
at Kitchener's The Boathouse ($35).
A platinum festival pass offers
unlimited access to all events for $135.
As the name of the festival
indicates, the tone is playful and unpretentious: "Here's to the wild ones
— the unbridled lovers of the written word, embarking on a journey of discovery
and experimentation ... Here's to the fearless readers and writers who open up
new worlds ..."
The aim is to be as welcoming and
inclusive as possible. As is the case with so many types of artistic endeavour,
there are stereotypes that have to be overcome. As The New Quarterly editor
Pamela Mulloy put it when I spoke with her this week, "people have an
impression of how it might be, and then self -exclude."
So the organizers of the Wild
Writers Literary Festival and its antecedents "do something different, to
forget the academics and hear from the writers themselves."
It's a formula now has a proven
record of success — some of the events are already close to being sold out. The
recommendation is to book ahead. Tickets are available online and at Words
Worth Books.
Martin de Groot writes about
local arts and culture each Saturday. You can reach him by email
atmdg131@gmail.com
It’s
no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then. Lewis
Carroll
BOOK
REVIEW
The
Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 3: 1926–1929
BY NICK MAFI
There isn't much that hasn't been
said about Ernest Miller Hemingway. He was, after all, a literary titan of the
20th century, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature; a man who, through
his short stories and novels, captured the imagination of the world by pinning
his vulnerable, damaged characters in extraordinary situations and exotic
locales. As The New York Times boasted in 1950, Hemingway was "the
greatest writer since Shakespeare."
With the recent publication of,
The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 3: 1926–1929 (Cambridge University
Press, $45), the question begs to be asked, what more does any reader need to
know about the boy from Oak Park, Illinois? The answer, quite frankly, is a
hell of a lot.
The years of this volume, 1926
through 1929, should apeal to any aspiring writer or ardent reader. Indeed,
the book of letters commences with Hemingway on the cusp of international
stardom, as his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), is about to be
released. Between those three tumultuous and prolific years, Hemingway's
letters provide a startlingly candid voice on the divorce from his first wife,
Hadley; his remarriage to Vogue writer, Pauline Pfeiffer; the birth of his
second son; the writer's relocation to Key West and newfound fondness for big
game fishing; completing his second book, Men Without Women (1927), and third
novel, the now-iconic, A Farewell to Arms (1929). There's also the suicide of
Hemingway's father, a tragic event the writer kept close to heart as expressed
in a letter to his then-mother in law: "I was awfully fond of my
father—and still feel very badly about it all and not able to get it out of my
mind and my book into my mind."
At its core, the volume of 345
selected letters—70 percent of them previously unpublished—reveal a writer at
times envious of others, unsure of his place in the world, fearful of the
future, nostalgic of the past, eager for gossip, hungry for attention, but
always earnest in his drive to be the best writer there ever was.
Hemingway's novels have come to
be understood as the apogee in economical prose, works meant to be adored by
high-minded reviewers as well as high school novices. In stark contrast to his
tight, highly edited, carefully crafted published works, Hemingway's personal
letters display little of his rigorous rewriting approach, reading more in the
style of contemporary, and fellow literary juggernaut, William Faulkner, in a
stream-of-thought technique the southerner made famous.
We see a man who would seemingly
grab at anything (receipts, hotel stationary, or even the back of a discarded
draft page from an original version of A Farewell to Arms, as he did in a 1929
letter to artist Henry Strater) to write any one of these now-famous
recipients: Ezra Pound, Maxwell Perkins, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos,
Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, among others.
Smaller tidbits of interest for
the loyal Hemingway enthusiasts are sprinkled throughout the volume.
"Write me all the dirt," Hemingway prodded F. Scott Fitzgerald in a
1927 letter, yearning for gossip. In a 1928 letter to his father containing an
apology for his long silence from writing the family: "I am sorry not to
have written more and oftener [sic], but it is almost impossible to write a
letter when you are writing as hard as I am on this book."
In another letter that year to
longtime friend Waldo Peirce: "My god it is hard for anybody to write. I
never start a damn thing without knowing 200 times I can't write—never will be
able to write a line—can't go on—can't get started—stuff is rotten—can't say
what I mean—know there is a whole fine complete thing and all I get of it is
the bacon rinds."
As fascinating as it is to read
Hemingway's letters and see the pains he took in publishing such drum-tight
prose, it's the fodder the writer extracted from his letters and used in his
later fiction that makes The Letters so crucial for aspiring writers. While
writing the first draft of A Farewell to Arms, his second wife, Pauline gave
birth by Caesarean section to son Patrick. The surgery and subsequent birth of
the boy nearly took Pauline's life.
In a July 1928 letter to his
parents, Hemingway wrote of the episode, "He is very big strong and
healthy. He is too big, in fact, as he nearly killed his mother." In the
final pages of A Farewell to Arms, shortly after Catherine Barkley gives birth
by way of Caesarean, and soon before her death, a nurse asks Frederic Henry
(who nearly all but in name was a spinning image of Hemingway during World War
I) if he is proud of his newborn son. Frederic's response comes straight from
the letters: "'No,' I said. 'He nearly killed his mother.'"
Though Hemingway never wanted his
letters to be published, he knew the inevitable would happen. Hemingway once
told his son, Patrick, "It doesn't really matter what you write to me, but
it's very important what I write to you."
The fact remains that Hemingway
was among, if not the most influential writer of the 20th century. As a result,
readers are rightfully curious as to where and to what end his inspirations
were drawn from. As his son, Patrick, commented on the role of his father's
collected letters being published, "When we read a really fine work of
fiction, I think we're always interested in the author. We think, how did this
man gain the insights and the knowledge to write so well?"
Reading Hemingway's letters is to
go back in time by stepping into the fascinating world of a revolutionary
wordsmith; a voyage through decades to the very moments when literature was
taking a sudden bend in the road; a shift that was being steered by the father
of modern literature. Indeed, the value of these letters cannot be overstated.
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
From the Smithsonian
DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
“The Way I See You” by Eugenia Loli
DON’T WORRY-BE HAPPY
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
Animals
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners
the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days
HERE'S AN ANIMAL (I guess you would have figured that out on your own)
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
I’m sure anybody in this room
looking at these paintings would come up with their own little story. That’s
one of the wonderful things about Vermeer. He allows all of us to engage in our
own personal way. Curator Arthur Wheelock on Dutch Master
Johannes Vermeer.
It
has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and
generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants
of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed,
acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of
success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of
the second. John Steinbeck
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE
PHOTOS FROM FILM
St. Louis 1965
Your
first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; you’re next, to long
intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide you; you
need no other guide. Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj
When
a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to
love her. Oscar Wilde
Yesterday
we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to
truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. Khalil Gibran
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS.....................
THE ART OF PULP
I
love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as
solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
Photographs I’ve taken
THE ART OF WAR...............................
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. Albert Schweitzer
MUSIC FOR THE SOUL
Gerry Mulligan
MISH MOSH..........................................
Mish Mash:
noun \ˈmish-ˌmash, -ˌmäsh\ A : hodgepodge, jumble
“The
painting was just a mishmash of colors and abstract shapes as far as we could
tell”. Origin Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse
masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps
reduplication of mishn to mix. First Known Use: 15th century
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..
Delectation \dee-lek-TAY-shun\ Delight, enjoyment. Delectation (which is from the Latin word for "delight") suggests a reaction to pleasurable experience consciously sought or provided. More than all the others, it connotes mere amusement or diversion.
What Love is…..
“I
am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and
it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, 'How many good things have
you done in your life?' rather he will ask, 'How much love did you put into
what you did?” Mother
Teresa
The
essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and
the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate
exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other. Mark Hopkins
Just
as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe
forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so
the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into
God. Soren Kierkegaard
Only
the broken-hearted know the truth about love. Mason Cooley
Love
is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack. Rainer Maria
Rilke
The
extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to
embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.
So,
fall asleep love, loved by me... for I know love, I am loved by thee.
Robert
Browning
Love
has reasons which reason cannot understand. Blaise Pascal
Corfe Castle, Dorset, UK
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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/