FROM LLR 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
"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?" FROM AMAZON REVIEWS
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM
From prolific geographer and traveler, John Thomson
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS.....................
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
Ooly Pop a Cow
(For Bess and Molly)
By David Huddle
My brother Charles
brought home the news
the kids were saying
take a flying leap
and eat me raw
and be bop a lula.
Forty miles he rode
the bus there and back.
The dog and I met him
at the door, panting
for hoke poke, hoke
de waddy waddy hoke poke.
In Cu Chi, Vietnam,
I heard tapes somebody's
sister sent of wild thing,
I think I love you
and hey now, what's that
sound, everybody look what's ...
Now it's my daughters
bringing home no-duh,
rock out, whatever,
like I totally
paused, and like
I'm like ...
I'm like Mother, her hands
in biscuit dough,
her ears turning red
from ain't nothing butta,
blue monday, and
tutti frutti, aw rooty!
David Ross Huddle (born July 11,
1942) is a writer and professor. His most recent book is Blacksnake at the
Family Reunion (Louisiana State University Press, 2012). His poems, essays, and
short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Magazine, The
New York Times Magazine, Story, The Autumn House Anthology of Poetry, and The
Best American Short Stories.
His work has also been included
in anthologies of writing about the Vietnam War. He is the recipient of two
National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and currently teaches creative
fiction, poetry, and autobiography at the University of Vermont and at the
Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Huddle was born in Ivanhoe,
Wythe County, Virginia, and he is sometimes considered an Appalachian writer.
He served as an enlisted man in
the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1967, in Germany as a paratrooper and then in
Vietnam as a military intelligence specialist.
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
Robert Indiana-From-a-to-z-
Robert Indiana, born Robert Clark (born September 13, 1928), is an artist associated with the pop art movement. His "LOVE" print, first created for the Museum of Modern Art's Christmas card in 1965, was the basis for the widely distributed 1973 United States Postal Service "LOVE" stamp. His media include paper (silk screen) and Cor-ten steel sculpture.
DON'T YOU JUST YOU LOVE POP ART?
THE ART OF WAR...............................
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.
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.
Excerpt from my book "No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care.
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/
READERS REVIEWS
Great Book!
Hi - just finished your novel
" No time to say goodbye" - what a powerful read!!! - I bought it for
my 90 year old mom who is an avid reader and lived in the valley all her
life-she loved it also along with my sister- we are all born and raised in the
valley- i.e. Derby and Ansonia
I enjoyed this book
I enjoyed this book. I grew
up in Ansonia CT and went to the Assumption School. Also reconized all the
places he was talking about and some of the families.
This is a wonderfully written book
This is a wonderfully written
book. It is heart wrenchingly sad at times and the next minute hilariously
funny. I attribute that to the intelligence and wit of the author who combines
the humor and pathos of his Irish catholic background and horrendous
"foster kid" experience. He captures each character perfectly and the
reader can easily visualize the individuals the author has to deal with on
daily basis. Having lived part of my life in the parochial school system and
having lived as a child in the same neighborhood as the author, I was vividly
brought back to my childhood .Most importantly, it shows the strength of the
soul and how just a little compassion can be so important to a lost child.
Compelling page turner that is also a true story!
John Tuohy writes with
compelling honesty, and warmth. I grew up in Ansonia, CT myself, so it makes it
even more real. He brings me immediately back there with his narrative, while
he wounds my soul, as I realize I had no idea of the suffering of some of the
children around me. His story is a must read, of courage and great spirit in
the face of impoverishment, sorrow, and adult neglect. I could go on and on,
but just get the book. If you're like me, you'll soon be reading it out loud to
any person in the room who will listen. Many can suffer and overcome as they go
through it, but few can find the words that take us through the story. John is
a gifted writer to be able to do that.
Why I loved this book.
I am from Connecticut so I
was very familiar with many locations described in the book especially Ansonia
where I lived. I totally enjoyed the book and would like to know more about the
author. I recommend the book to everyone
Get ready to ride the emotional rollercoaster of a child
that is forced to grow up before your eyes.
What an emotional
rollercoaster. I laughed. I cried. Once you start reading it's hard to stop. I
was torn between wanting to gulp it up and read over and over each quote that
started the chapter. I couldn't help but feel part of the Tuohy clan. I wanted
to scream in their defense. It's truly hard to believe the challenges that
foster children face. I can only pray that this story may touch even one person
facing this life. It's an inspiring read. That will linger long after you
finish it. This is a wonderfully written memoir that immediately pulls you in
to the lives of the Tuohy family.
Bruised, beaten, still beating
This incredible memoir, No
Time to Say Goodbye, tells of entertaining angels, dancing with devils, and of
the abandoned children many viewed simply as raining manna from some lesser
god.
The young and unfortunate
lives of the Tuohy bruins—sometimes Irish, sometimes Jewish, often Catholic,
rambunctious, but all imbued with Lion’s hearts—told here with brutal honesty
leavened with humor and laudable introspective forgiveness. The memoir will
have you falling to your knees thanking that benevolent Irish cop in the sky,
your lucky stars, or hugging the oxygen out of your own kids the fate foisted
upon Johnny and his siblings does not and did not befall your own brood. John
William Tuohy, a nationally-recognized authority on organized crime and Irish
levity, is your trusted guide through the weeds the decades of neglect ensnared
he and his brothers and sisters, all suffering for the impersonal and often
mercenary taint of the foster care system. Theirs, and Tuohy’s, story is not at
all figures of speech as this review might suggest, but all too real and all
too sad, and maddening. I wanted to scream. I wanted to get into a time
machine, go back and adopt every last one of them. I was angry. I was
captivated. The requisite damning verities of foster care are all here,
regretfully, but what sets this story above others is its beating heart, even a
bruised and broken one, still willing to forgive and understand, and continue
to aid its walking wounded. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Great reading. Life in foster care told from a very rare
point of view.
This book is definitely a
must for social workers working with children specifically. This is an excellent
memoir which identifies the trails of foster children in the 1960s in the
United States. The memoir captures stories of joy as well as nail biting
terror, as the family is at times torn apart but finds each other later and
finds solace in the experiences of one another. The stories capture the love
siblings have for one another as well as the protection they have for one
another in even the worst of circumstances. On the flip side, one of the most
touching stories to me was when a Nun at the school helped him to read-- truly
an example of how a positive person really helped to shape the author in times
when circumstances at home were challenging and treacherous. I found the book
to be a page turner and at times show how even in the hardest of circumstances
there was a need to live and survive and make the best of any moment. The
memoir is eye-opening and helped to shed light and make me feel proud of the
volunteer work I take part in with disadvantaged children.
Riveting....Must read....memory lane on
steroids....Catholic school banter, blue color towns...Lawrence Welk on Sundays
night's.
From ' No time to say Goodbye
'and authors John W. Touhys Gangster novels, his style never waivers...humorous
to sadness to candidly realistic situations all his writings leaves the reader
in awe......longing for more.
This book is a must-read for anyone who administers to
...
this book is a must-read for
anyone who administers to the foster care program in any state. this is not a
"fell through the cracks" life story, but rather a memoir of a life
guided by strength and faith and a hard determination to survive. it is
heartening to know that the "sewer" that life can become to steal our
personal peace can be fought and our peace can be restored, scarred, but
restored.
Honest, heartening, and inspirational memoir.
A captivating, shocking, and
deeply moving memoir, No Time to Say Goodbye is a true page turner. John shares
the story of his childhood, from the struggles of living in poverty to being in
the foster care system and simply trying to survive. You will be cheering for
him all the way, as he never loses his will to thrive even in the darkest and
bleakest of circumstances. This memoir is a very truthful and unapologetic
glimpse into the way in which some of our most vulnerable citizens have been
treated in the past and are still being treated today. It is truly eye-opening,
and hopefully will inspire many people to take action in protection of
vulnerable children.
Heartwrenchingly Honest
I found myself in tears while
reading this book. John William Tuohy writes quite movingly about the world he
grew up in; a world in which I had hoped did not exist within the foster care
system. This book is at times funny, raw, compelling, heartbreaking and
disturbing. I found myself rooting for John as he tries to escape from an
incredibly difficult life. You will too!
Very Readible
I found this book to be a
compelling story of life in the Ct foster care system. at times disturbing and
at others inspirational ,The author goes into great detail in this gritty
memoir of His early life being abandoned into the states system and his
subsequent escape from it. Every once in a while a book or even an article in a
newspaper comes along that bears witness to an injustice or even something
that's just plain wrong. This chronicle of the foster care system is such a
book and should be required reading for any aspiring social workers.
QUOTES FROM "NO TIME TO SAY GOODBYE"
“I am here because I worked too hard and too
long not to be here. But although I told the university that I would walk
across the stage to take my diploma, I won’t. At age fifty-seven, I’m too
damned old, and I’d look ridiculous in this crowd. From where I’m standing in
the back of the hall, I can see that I am at least two decades older than most
of the parents of these kids in their black caps and gowns.
So I’ll graduate with this class,
but I won’t walk across the stage and collect my diploma with them; I’ll have
the school send it to my house. I only want to hear my name called. I’ll
imagine what the rest would have been like. When you’ve had a life like mine,
you learn to do that, to imagine the good things.
The ceremony is about to begin.
It’s a warm June day and a hallway of glass doors leading to the parking lot
are open, the dignitaries march onto the stage, a janitor slams the doors shut,
one after the other.
That banging sound.
It’s Christmas Day 1961 and three
Waterbury cops are throwing their bulk against our sorely overmatched front
door. They are wearing their long woolen blue coats and white gloves and they
swear at the cold.
They’ve finally come for us, in
the dead of night, to take us away, just as our mother said they would.”
********************
“Otherwise, there were no long
goodbyes or emotional scenes. That isn’t part of foster care. You just leave
and you just die a little bit. Just a little bit because a little bit more of
you understands that this is the way it’s going to be. And you grow hard around
the edges, just a little bit. Not in some big way, but just a little bit
because you have to, because if you don’t it only hurts worse the next time and
a little bit more of you will die. And you don’t want that because you know
that if enough little bits of you die enough times, a part of you leaves. Do
you know what I mean? You’re still there, but a part of you leaves until you
stand on the sidelines of life, simply watching, like a ghost that everyone can
see and no one is bothered by. You become the saddest thing there is: a child
of God who has given .”
********************
“As I said, you die a little bit
in foster care, but I spose we all die a little bit in our daily lives, no
matter what path God has chosen for us. But there is always a balance to that
sadness; there’s always a balance. You only have to look for it. And if you
look for it, you’ll see it. I saw it in a well-meaning nun who wanted to share the
joy of her life’s work with us. I saw it in an old man in a garden who shared
the beauty of the soil and the joy he took in art, and I saw it in the simple
decency and kindness of an underpaid nurse’s aide. Yeah. Great things rain on us. The magnificence of life’s
affirmations are all around us, every day, everywhere. They usually go
unnoticed because they seldom arrive with the drama and heartbreak of those
hundreds of negative things that drain our souls. But yeah, it’s there, the
good stuff, the stuff worth living for. You only have to look for it and when
you see it, carry it around right there at the of your heart so it’s always
there when you need it. And you’ll need it a lot, because life is hard.”
********************
“As sad as I so often was, and I
was often overwhelmed with sadness, I never admitted it, and I don’t recall
ever having said aloud that I was sad. I tried not to think about it, about all
the sad things, because I had this feeling that if I started to think about it,
that was all I would ever think of again. I often had a nightmare of
falling into a deep dark well that I
could never climb out of. But then there was the other part of me that honestly
believed I wasn’t sad at all, and I had little compassion for those who dwelled
in sadness. Strange how that works. You would think that it would be the other
way around.”
********************
“In late October of 1962, it was our turn to
go. Miss Hanrahan appeared in her state Ford Rambler, which, by that point,
seemed more like a hearse than a nice lady’s car. Our belongings were packed in
a brown bags. The ladies in the kitchen, familiar with our love of food, made
us twelve fried-fish sandwiches each large enough to feed eight grown men and
wrapped them in tinfoil for the ride ahead of us. Miss Louisa, drenched with
tears, walked us to the car and before she let go of my hand she said, “When
you a big, grown man, you come back and see Miss Louisa, you hear?”
“But,” I said, “you won’t know
who I am. I’ll be big.”
“No, child,” she said as she gave
me her last hug, “you always know forever the peoples you love. They with you
forever. They don’t never leave you.”
She was right, of course. Those
we love never leave us because we carry them with us in our hearts and a piece
of us is within them. They change with us and they grow old with us and with
time, they are a part of us, and thank God for that.”
********************
“One day at the library I found a stack of
record albums. I was hoping I’d find ta Beatles album, but it was all classical
music so I reached for the first name I knew, Beethoven. I checked it out his
Sixth Symphony and walked home. I didn’t own a record player and I don’t know
why I took it out. I had Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony but nothing to play it on.”
********************
“The next day, when I came home from the
library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found my
mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm.
“Ma,” I asked. “Where did you get
the money for the record player?”
“I had it saved,” she lied.
My father lived well, had a large
house and an expensive imported car, wanted for little, and gave nothing. My
mother lived on welfare in a slum and sold her blood to the Red Cross to get me
a record player.
“Education is everything,
Johnny,” she said, as she headed for the refrigerator to get me food. “You get
smart like regular people and you don’t have to live like this no more.”
She and I were not hugging types,
but I put my hand on her shoulder as she washed the dishes with her back to me
and she said, in best Brooklynese, “So go and enjoy, already.” My father always
said I was my mother’s son and I was proud of that. On her good days, she was a
good and noble thing to be a part of.
That evening, I plugged in the
red record player and placed it by the window. My mother and I took the kitchen
chairs out to the porch and listened to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony from
beginning to end, as we watched the oil-stained waters of the Mad River roll
by. It was a good night, another good night, one of many that have blessed my
life.”
********************
“The next day I was driven to New
York City to take the physical. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever
seen. Several hundred young men, maybe even a thousand, in their skivvies,
walking around an enormous room, all of us lost, dazed, and confused.
Some of these guys had dodged the
draft and were there under the watchful eyes of dozens of federal marshals
lined against one of the walls. After
eight hours of being poked, prodded, stuck, and poked again, I was given a
large red envelope. I had been rejected. I had the respiratory problems of an
old man, high blood pressure, partial loss of hearing, very bad teeth, very
flat, very wide feet and I tested positive for tuberculosis.
“Frankly,” the doctor said, “I
don’t know how the hell you’re even standing ,” and that was when the sergeant
told me that if they bottled everything that was wrong with me “we could take
over the world without a shot.”
********************
“I had decided that I wanted to
earn my living as a writer and the only place in Waterbury where they paid you
for writing was at the local newspaper. My opportunity came when the paper had
an opening for a night janitor. Opportunities are easy to miss, because they
don’t always show in their best clothes.
Sometimes opportunities look like beggars in rags. After an eight-hour shift in
the shop tossing thirty-pound crates I hustled
to the newspaper building and cleaned toilets, with a vague plan that it
would somehow lead to a reporter’s .”
********************
“One Friday afternoon at the
close of the working day the idiot bosses in their fucking ties and suit coats
came and handed out pink slips to every
other person on the floor. I got one. They were firing us. Then they turned
and, without a word, went back to their offices. Corporate pricks.”
********************
“There is a sense of danger in
leaving what you know, even if what you know isn’t much. These mill towns with
their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared
that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it.
The other reason I didn’t want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of
person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn’t one of
the people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It
wasn’t clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my
poverty behind me. I wasn’t happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn’t
worry about it. It didn’t define me. We’re always in the making. God always has
us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a
new purpose.”
********************
“I was tired of fighting the
windstorm I was tossed into, and instead I would let go and ride with the winds
of change. How bad could it be, compared to the life I knew? I was living life
as if it were a rehearsal for the real thing. Another beginning might be rough
at first, but any place worth getting to is going to have some problems. I
wanted the good life, the life well lived, and you can’t buy that or marry into
it. It’s there to be found, and it can be taken by those who want it and have
the resolve to make it happen for themselves.”
********************
“Imagine being beaten every day for something you didn’t do and
yet, when it’s over, you keep on smiling. That’s what every day of Donald’s
life was like. His death was a small death. No one mourned his passing; they
merely agreed it was for the best that he be forgotten as quickly as possible,
since his was a life misspent.”
********************
“Then there are all of those
children, the ones who aren’t resilient. The ones who slowly, quietly die. I
think the difference is that the kids who bounce back learn to bear a little
bit more than they thought they could, and they soon understand that the secret
to surviving foster care is to accept finite disappointments while never losing
infinite hope. I think that was how Donald survived as long as he did, by never
losing his faith in the wish that tomorrow would be better. But as time went
by, day after day, the tomorrows never got better; they got worse, and he
simply gave . In the way he saw the world, pain was inevitable, but no one ever
explained to him that suffering was optional.”
********************
“In foster care it’s easier to
measure what you’ve lost over what you have gained, because it there aren’t
many gains in that life and you are a prisoner to someone else’s plans for your
life.”
********************
“I developed an interest in major
league baseball and the 1960s were, as far as I’m concerned (with a nod to the
Babe Ruth era of the 1920s), the Golden Age of Baseball. Like most people in
the valley, I was a diehard Yankees fan and, in a pinch, a Mets fan. They were
New York teams, and most New Englanders rooted for the Boston Red Sox, but our
end of Connecticut was geographically and culturally closer to New York than
Boston, and that’s where our loyalties went.
And what was not to love? The
Yankees ruled the earth in those days. The great Roger Maris set one Major
League record after another and even he was almost always one hit shy of Mickey
Mantle, God on High of the Green Diamond.”
********************
“For the first time in my life, I
was eating well and from plates—glass plates, no less, not out of the frying
pan because somebody lost all the plates in the last move. Now when we ate, we
sat at a fine round oak table in sturdy chairs that matched. No one rushed
through the meal or argued over who got the biggest portion, and we ate three
times a day.”
********************
“The single greatest influence in our lives
was the church. The Catholic Church in the 1960s differs from what it is today,
especially in the Naugatuck Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly
conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have
been the last generation of American Catholic children who completely and
unquestioningly accepted the sernatural as real. Miracles happened. Virgin
birth and transubstantiation made perfect sense. Mere humans did in fact,
become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian angels walked beside us and our
patron saints really did put in a good word for us every now and then.”
********************
“Henry read it and said, “A story
has to have three things. They are a beginning, a middle and an end. They don’t
have to be in that order. You can start a story at the end or end it in the
middle. There are no rules on that except where you, the author, decide to put
all three parts. Your story has a beginning and an end. But it’s good. Go put
in a middle and bring it back to me.”
I went away encouraged, rewrote
the story and returned it to him two days later. Again he looked it over and
said, “It’s a good story but it lacks a bullet-between-the-eyes opening. Your
stories should always have a knock-’em-dead opening.” Then, looking with
exaggerated suspicion around the crime-prone denizens of the room with an
exaggerated suspicion, he said loudly, “I don’t mean that literally.”
********************
“A few days after I began my
short story, I returned to his desk and handed him my dates. He pushed his
wire-rimmed reading glasses way on his
nose and focused on the two pages. “Okay, you got a beginning; you got yourself
a middle and an end. You got a wing-dinger opening line. But you don’t have an
establishing paragraph. Do you know what that is?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer.
“It’s kinda like an outdated road
map for the reader,” he said. “It gives the reader a general idea of where
you’re taking him, but doesn’t tell him exactly how you intend to get there,
which is all he needs to know.”
********************
“I don’t know’,” he said. “Those
three words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent
voyage.” And with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks,
covering scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and
third-person narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that
like most literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He
assumed that if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she
had no merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that
was mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some
merits as a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it
was that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of
things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of
standards. It was bout quality in the author’s craftsmanship.”
********************
“The foundries were vast, dark castles built
for efficiency, not comfort. Even in the mild New England summers, when the
warm air combined with the stagnant heat from the machines or open flames in
the huge melting rooms where the iron was cast, the effects were overwhelming.
The heat came in unrelenting waves and sucked the soul from your body. In the
winter, the enormous factories were impossible to heat and frigid New England
air reigned sreme in the long halls.
The work was difficult, noisy,
mind-numbing, sometimes dangerous and highly regulated. Bathroom and lunch
breaks were scheduled to the second.
There was no place to make a private phone call. Company guards, dressed in
drab uniforms straight out of a James Cagney prison film [those films were in
black and white, notoriously tough, weren’t there to guard company property.
They were there to keep an eye on us.
No one entered or the left the
building without punching in or out on a clock, because the doors were locked
and opened electronically from the main office.”
********************
“So he sings,” he continued as if Denny had
said nothing. “His solo mio, that with her in his life he is rich because she
is so beautiful that she makes the sun more beautiful, you understand?” And at
that he dropped the hoe, closed his eyes and spread out his arms wide and with
the fading sun shining on his handsome face he sang:
Che bella cosa è na jurnata 'e
sole
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na
festa
Che bella cosa e' na jurnata 'e
sole
Ma n'atu sole,
cchiù bello, oi ne'
'O sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
'O sole, 'o sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
sta 'nfronte a te!
It looked like fun. We dropped
our tools and joined him, belting out something that sounded remarkably like
Napolitano. We sang as loud as we could, holding on to each note as long as we
could before we ran out of breath, and then we sang again, occasionally
dropping to one knee, holding our hands over our hearts with exaggerated looks
of deep pain. Although we made the words , we sang with the deepest passion,
with the best that we had, with all of our hearts, and that made us artists,
great artists, for in that song, we had made all that art is: the creation of
something from nothing, fashioned with all of the soul, born from joy.
And as that beautiful summer sun
set over Waterbury, the Brass City, the City of Churches, our voices floated
above the wonderful aromas of the garden, across the red sky and joined the
spirits in eternity.”
********************
“It didn’t last long. Not many
good things in a foster kid’s life last long. One day, Maura was gone. Her few
things were packed in paper bags and a tearful Miss Louisa carried her out to
Miss Hanrahan’s black state-owned Ford sedan with the state emblem on the door,
and she was gone. The state had found a foster home that would take a little
girl but couldn’t take the rest of us. There were no long goodbyes. She was
just gone. I remember having an enormous sense of helplessness when they took
her. Maura didn’t know where she were going or long she would be there. She was
just gone”
********************
“After another second had passed
I added, “But you’re pretty, pretty,” and as soon as I said it I thought,
“Pretty, pretty? John, you’re an idiot.” But she squeezed my hand and when I
looked at her I saw her entire lovely face was aglow with a wonderful smile, the
kind of smile you get when you have won something.
“Why do you rub your fingers
together all the time?” she asked me, and I felt the breath leave my body and
gasped for air. She had seen me do my crazy finger thing, my affliction. I
clenched my teeth while I searched for a long, exaggerated lie to tell her
about why I did what I did. I didn’t want to be the crazy kid with tics, I
wanted to be James Bond 007, so slick ice avoided me.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I bite my
nails, see?” and she showed me the backs of her hands. Her finger nails were
painted a color I later learned was puce.
“My Dad, he blinks all the time,
he doesn’t know why either,” she continued. She looked her feet and said, “I shouldn’t have asked
you that. I’m really nervous and I say stid things when I’m nervous. I’m a girl
and this is my first date, and for girls this really is a very big deal.”
I understood completely. I was so
nervous I couldn’t feel my toes, so I started moving them and to
make sure they were still there.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I
don’t know why I do that with my fingers; it’s a thing I do.”
“Well, you’re really cute when
you do it,” she said.
“I know,” I said, and I don’t
know why I said it, but I did.”
********************
“So began my love affair with
books. Years later, as a college student, I remember having a choice between a
few slices of pizza that would have held me over for a day or a copy of On the
Road. I bought the book. I would have forgotten what the pizza tasted like, but
I still remember Kerouac.
The world was mine for the
reading. I traveled with my books. I was there on a tramp steamer in the North
Atlantic with the Hardy Boys, piecing together an unsolvable crime. I rode into
the Valley of Death with the six hundred and I stood at the graves of Uncas and
Cora and listened to the mournful song of the Lenni Linape. Although I braved a
frozen death at Valley Forge and felt the spin of a hundred bullets at Shiloh,
I was never afraid. I was there as much as you are where you are, right this
second. I smelled the gunsmoke and tasted the frost. And it was good to be
there. No one could harm me there. No one could punch me, slap me, call me
stid, or pretend I wasn’t in the room. The other kids raced through books so
they could get the completion stamp on their library card. I didn’t care about
that stid completion stamp. I didn’t want to race through books. I wanted books
to walk slowly through me, stop, and touch my brain and my memory. If a book
couldn’t do that, it probably wasn’t a very good book. Besides, it isn’t how
much you read, it’s what you read.
What I learned from books, from
young Ben Franklin’s anger at his brother to Anne Frank’s longing for the way
her life used to be, was that I wasn’t alone in my pain. All that caused me
such anguish affected others, too, and that connected me to them and that
connected me to my books. I loved everything about books. I loved that odd
sensation of turning the final page, realizing the story had ended, and feeling
that I was saying a last goodbye to a new friend.”
********************
“I had developed a very
complicated and little-understood disorder called misophonia, which means
“hatred of sound.” Certain sounds act as triggers that turn me from a Teddy
bear into an agitated grizzly bear. People with misophonia are annoyed,
sometimes to the point of rage, by ordinary sounds such as people eating,
breathing, sniffing, or coughing, certain consonants, or repetitive sounds.
Those triggers, and there are dozens of them, set off anxiety and avoidant
behaviors.
What is a mild irritation for
most people -- the person who keeps sniffling, a buzzing fly in a closed
room—those are major irritants to people with misophonia because we have
virtually no ability to ignore those sounds, and life can be a near constant
bombardment of noises that bother us. I figured out that the best way to cope
was to avoid the triggers. So I turned off the television at certain sounds and
avoided loud people. All of these things gave me a reputation as a high-strung,
moody and difficult child. I knew my overreactions weren’t normal. My playmates
knew it”
********************
“Sometimes in the midst of our
darkest moments it’s easy to forget that it’s
to us to turn on the light, but that’s what I did. I switched on the
light, the light of cognizance.”
********************
“I don’t know what I would have done if they
had hugged me. I probably would have frozen in place, become stiff. It took
most of my life to overcome my distaste for physical contact and not to stiffen
when I was touched, or flinch, twitch, fidget, and eventually figure out how to
move away. I learned to accept being hugged by my children when they were
infants. Their joy at seeing me enter a room was real and filled with true love
and affection and it showed in their embraces. Like a convert, when I learned
the joy and comfort of being hugged by and hugging those I loved, I became a
regular practitioner.”
********************
“Most people don’t understand how
mighty the power of touch is, how mighty a kind word can be, how important a
listening ear is, or how giving an honest compliment can move the child who has
not known those things, only watched them from afar. As insignificant as they
can be, they have the power to change a life.”
********************
“They were no better than common thieves. They
stole our childhood. But even with that, I was heartbroken that I would not
know the Wozniaks anymore, the only people who came close to being parents to
me. I would be conscious of their absence for the rest of my life. I needed
them. You know, if you think about it, we all need each other. But even with
all of the evidence against the Wozniaks, I had conflicted emotions about them,
then and now. They were the closest I had to a real family and real parents.
But now I was bankrt of any
feelings at all towards them at all.
I felt then, and feel now, a
great sense of loss. I felt as if I were burying them. when I never really had
them to lose in the first place. Disillusioned is probably a better word. In
fact the very definition of disillusionment is a sense of loss for something
you never had. When you are disillusioned and disappointed enough times, you
shoping. That’s what happens to many foster kids. We become loners, not because
we enjoy the solitude, but because we let people into our lives and they
disappoint us. So we close and travel
alone. Even in a crowd, we’re alone.
Because I survived, I was one of
the lucky ones. Why is it so hard to articulate love, yet so easy to express
disappointment?”
********************
“My first and lasting impression
of the Connecticut River Valley is its serene beauty, especially in the autumn
months. Deep River was a near picture-perfect New England village. When I
arrived there, the town was a typical working-class place, nothing like the
trendy per-income enclave it became. The town center had a cluster of shops, a
movie theater open only on weekends, several white-steepled churches (none of
them Catholic), the town hall, and a Victorian library. It was small, even by
Ansonia standards.”
********************
“While I may not have been a bastion of good
mental health, many of these boys were on their way to becoming crazier than
they already were. Most couldn’t relate to other people socially at all,
because they only dealt inappropriately with other people or didn’t respond to
overtures of friendship or even engage in basic conversations.
Some became too familiar with you
too fast, following their new, latest friend everywhere, including the showers,
insisting on giving you items that were dear to them and sharing everything
else. They also had the awful habit of touching other people, putting their
hands on you as a sign of affection or friendship, and for people like myself,
with my affliction and disdain for being touched unless I wanted to be touched,
these guys were a nightmare. It was often difficult to get word in edgewise
with these kids, and when I did, they interrted me—not in some obnoxious way,
but because they wanted to be included in every single aspect of everything you
did.
The other ones, the stone-cold
silent ones, reacted with deep suspicion toward even the slightest attempt to
befriend them or the smallest show of kindness. If you touched some of these
children, even accidentally, they would warn you to back away. They didn’t care
what others thought of them or anything else, and almost all their talk
concerned punching and hurting and maiming.
I noticed that most of these
kids, the ones who were truly damaged, were eventually filtered out of St.
John’s to who knows where. Institutions have a way of protecting themselves
from future problems.”
********************
“Jesus,” I prayed silently,
“please fix it so that my turn to read won’t come around.”
And then the nun called my name,
but before I stood I thought, “I’ll bet you think this is funny, huh, Jesus?”
I stood and stared at the
sentence assigned to me and believed that, through some miracle, I would
suddenly be able to read it and not be humiliated. I stood there and stared at
it until the children started giggling and snickering and Sister told me to
sit.”
********************
“My affliction decided to join us, forcing me
to push my toes on the floor as though I were trying to eject myself from the
chair. I prayed she didn’t notice what the affliction was making me do. I half
expected to be eaten alive or murdered and buried out back in the school yard.
“I’m not afraid of you, ya know,”
I said, although I was terrified of her. The words hurt her, but that wasn’t my
intent. She turned her face and looked out the window into North Cliff Street.
She knew what her face and twisted body looked like, and she probably knew what
the kids said about her. It was probably an open wound for her and I had just
tossed salt into it.
I was instantly ashamed of what I
done and tried to correct myself. I didn’t mean to be hurtful, because I knew
what it was like to be ridiculed for something that was beyond one’s control, such
as my affliction, and how it made me afraid to touch the chalk because the feel
of chalk to people like me is overwhelming. If I had to write on the
blackboard, I held the chalk with the cuff of my shirt and the class laughed.
“You look good in a nun’s suit,”
I said. It was a stid thing to say, but I meant well by it. She looked at the black robe as if she were seeing it
for the first time.”
********************
“Jews were a frequent topic of
conversation with all of the Wozniaks, which was surprising, since none of them
had any contact at all with anything even remotely Jewish.
While watching television, Walter
would point out who was and who was not Jewish and Helen’s frequent comment
when watching the television news was, “And won’t the Jews be happy about
that!” To bargain with a merchant for a lower price was to “Jew him ,” and that
sort of thing.
Walter’s mother and father were
far worse. They despised the Jews and blamed them for everything from the start
of World War I to the Kennedy assassination to the rising price of beef.
I didn’t pay much heed to any of
this. It wasn’t my problem, and if I were to think through all the ethnic,
racial and religious barbs the Wozniaks threw out in the course of a week, I’d
think about nothing else.
After being told about a part of
my mother’s heritage, the Wozniaks began their verbal and cultural assault
against us. As odd as it sounds, they might not always have intended to be
mean.”
********************
“Explaining the Jews in a
Catholic school when you’re Irish is like having to explain your country’s
foreign policy while on a vacation in France. You don’t know what you’re
talking about and no matter what you say, they’re not going to like it anyway.”
********************
“You could read the story of his entire life
on his face in one glance.”
********************
“As interesting as that was, it didn’t inspire
me. What did was that here was a Jew who was tough with his fists, a Jew who
fought back. The only Jews I had ever heard of surrendered or were beaten by
the Romans, the Egyptians, or the Nazis. You name it, it seemed like everyone
on earth at some point had taken their turn slapping the Jews around. But not
Benny Leonard. I figured you’d have to kill Benny Leonard before he surrendered.”
********************
“One afternoon Walter brought
Izzy to the house for lunch and, pointing to me, he said to Izzy, “He’s one of
your tribe.”
Dobkins lifted his head to look
at me and after a few seconds said, “I don’t see it.”
“The mother’s a Jew,” Walter
answered, as if he were describing the breeding of a mongrel dog.
“Then you are a Jew,” Izzy said,
and sort of blessed me with his salami sandwich.”
********************
“Sometimes a man must stand for
what is right and sometimes you must simply walk away and suffer the babblings
of weak-minded fools or try to change their minds. It’s like teachin’ a pig to
sing. It is a waste of your time and it annoys the pig.”
********************
“Father, I can’t take this,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a priest,
Father.”
“And my money’s no good because
of it? What are you? A member of the Masonic Lodge?”
“Naw, Father,” I said. “I just
feel guilty taking money from you.”
“Well, you’re Irish and Jewish.
You have to feel guilty over somethin’, don’t ya? Take the money and be happy
ye have it.”
― John William Tuohy, No time to
say goodbye: memoirs of a life n foster care
********************
“I caddied—more accurately, I drove the golf
cart—for Father O’Leary and his friends throughout most of the summer of that
year. I was a good caddie because I saw nothing when they passed the bottle of
whiskey and turned a deaf ear to yet another colorful reinvention of the words
“motherless son of a bitch from hell” when the golf ball betrayed them.”
********************
“Weeks turned into months and a
year passed, but I didn’t miss my parents. I missed the memory of them. I
assumed that part of my life was over. I didn’t understand that I was required
to have an attachment to them, to these people I barely knew. Rather, it was my
understanding that I was sposed to switch my attachment to my foster parents.
So I acted on that notion and no one corrected me, so I assumed that what I was
doing was good and healthy.”
********************
“I felt empty a lot and I
sometimes had a sense—and I know this sounds strange—that I really had no
existence as my own person, that I could disappear and no one would notice or
remember that I had ever existed. It is a terrifying thing to live with. I kept
myself busy to avoid that feeling, because somehow being busy made me feel less
empty.”
********************
“Denny thought our parents needed
a combination of material goods and temperamental changes before he could
return home.
“If Dad buys Ma a car, then
she’ll love him, and they’ll get back together and she won’t be all crazy
anymore,” he said. For years he held out the possibility that those things
would happen and all would change. “If we had more things, like stoves and
cars,” he told me at night in our bedroom, “and Ma wasn’t like she is, we could
go home.”
********************
“Because we were raised in a bigoted and
hate-filled home, we simply assumed that calling someone a “cheap Jew” or
saying someone “Jewed him ” were perfectly acceptable ways to communicate. Or
at least we did until the day came when I called one of the cousins, a
Neanderthal DeRosa boy, “a little Jew,” and he told me he wasn’t the Jew, that
I was the Jew, and he even got Helen and Nana to confirm it for him.
It came as a shock to me to find
out we were a part of this obviously terrible tribe of skinflint,
trouble-making, double-dealing, shrewdly smart desert people. When Denny found
out, he was crestfallen because he had assumed that being Jewish meant,
according to what his former foster family the Skodiens had taught him, a life
behind a desk crunching numbers. “And I hate math,” he said, shaking his head.
So here we were, accused Jews
living in a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Not a good situation. Walter’s father was
the worst. Learning about our few drops of Jewish blood seemed to ignite a
special, long-held hatred in him. He became vile over nothing, finding any
excuse to deride the Jews in front of us until Helen made him stop. We didn’t
know what to make of it, except to write it off as another case of Wozniak-inspired
insanity, but as young as we were, we could tell that at some point in his life
he had crossed swords with a Jew someplace and came out on the losing end and
we were going to pay for it. But because we really didn’t feel ourselves to be
Jews, it didn’t sink in that he intended to hurt us with his crazy tirades. As
I said, it’s hard to insult somebody when they don’t understand the insult, and
it’s equally hard to insult them when they out and out refuse to be insulted.
Word got around quickly.”
********************
“I hit him for every single thing
that was wrong in my life and kicked him in a fierce fury of madness as he
sobbed and covered his face and screamed. I hit him because Walter hit me and I
hit him because I hated my life and I hit him because I just wanted to go home
and I hit him because I didn’t know where home was.”
********************
“I also told him about the dramatic, vivid
verbal picture of God that the nuns drew for us—an enormous, slightly dangerous
and very touchy guy with white hair and a long white beard.
“It’s all the talk of feeble
minds,” he whispered to me in confidence. “Those nuns know as much about prayer
as they do about sex. Listen to me, now. God is everywhere and alive in
everything, while them nuns figured God is as good as dead, a recluse in a
permanently bad mood. Well, I refuse to believe that to my God, my maker and
creator, my life is little more than a dice game.” He stopped and turned and
looked at me and said, “Never believe that a life full of sin puts you on a
direct route to hell. Even if you only know a little bit about God, you learn
pretty quick that he’s big on U-turns, dead stops and starting over again.”
As each day passes and my
memories of Father O’Leary and Sister Emmarentia fade, and I can no longer
recall their faces or the sounds of their voices as clearly as I could a decade
ago, what remains, clear and uncluttered, are the lessons I took from them.”
********************
“Eventually, many years later, I came to see
him the way everyone else saw him—a nice guy who, despite all the damage he did
to us, wasn’t a bad man, not inherently bad, anyway. He just wasn’t very
bright, and was in over his head on almost every level of life. He was capable
of only so much and not a drop more, and because he seemed so harmless and
lost, people not only liked him, they protected him.
My mother, despite her poverty,
left the opposite impression. She left no doubt that she was psychologically
tough and mentally sharp, and because of that the Wozniaks disliked her.
And that was another difference
between my mother and father. My father was a whiner, a complainer, a
perpetually unhappy man unable to comprehend the simple fact that sometimes life
is unfair. My mother never complained, and yet her poverty-stricken life was
miserable. She never carried on about the early death of her raging alcoholic
mother, or the father who raped her, or of a diet dictated by the restrictions
of food stamps.”
********************
SAMPLE CHAPTER
I used to be Irish Catholic.
I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I’m an American—you
grow. George Carlin
The single greatest influence in our lives was the church. The Catholic
Church in the 1960s differs from what it is today, especially in the Naugatuck
Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have been the last generation of American
Catholic children who completely and unquestioningly accepted the supernatural
as real. Miracles happened. Virgin birth and transubstantiation made perfect
sense. Mere humans did in fact, become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian
angels walked beside us and our patron saints really did put in a good word for
us every now and then.
Church was at the center of our lives.
Being a Roman Catholic back then was no small chore. In fact, it was a
lot of work. The Mass was in Latin, conducted with the priest’s back to the
flock. (We were a flock. Protestant were the more democratically named
“congregation.”)
Aside from Sunday Mass there were also eleven Holy Days of Obligation
that we had to attend, and then there were the all-important sacraments of
First Confession, First Communion, and Confirmation, all ornate and dramatic
affairs that happened within a few years of each other.
We dressed properly in a suit coat and tie for Sunday mass. Fridays were
meatless as a means of penance. At school, there was prayer in the morning
before classes began, prayer before lunch, prayer after lunch and prayer before
we went home. There was also a half-hour of religion class every day. And there
was fasting. In those days, Catholics fasted eight hours before receiving
communion.
Then there was confession on Saturday, mandatory because Sunday Mass was
also mandatory and so was taking Holy Communion, which could not be accepted
without first going to confession. We
had to go to confession twice in a week: once on Fridays, since the nuns were
convinced none of us would go on our own over the weekend, and then once again
on Saturday afternoons when Helen made us go.
When I made my first confession at age seven, we were taught that there
were two types of sin: mortal sins, which were serious sins, and venial sins,
which were lesser sins, lying and
disobedience. The nuns said that we would have to narrow our selection to
venial sins since we were far too young to have any mortal sins against our
soul.
One of little girls in the group raised her hand and asked, “What’s
adultery?”
“Nothing to worry yourself over, dear,” the
nun answered, “It’s for adults, and it is a most grievous offense against God.”
I liked the sound of that, “most grievous offense against God.” Sounded
serious.
Confession was a big deal and involved a lot of formality—kneeling in
darkness, foreign languages, and solemnity—and I didn’t waste all that
somberness with unworthy sins, so when the priest slid open the little wooden
door that separated us in the dark I began my prayer.
“Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet me omnium
meorum peccatorum—” In full, the words meant “O my God, I am heartily sorry for
having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I fear the loss of
heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God,
Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help
of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.”
Then the sins were confessed. I told the priest I had committed
adultery.
“Adultery, huh?” the priest said.
“Yes, Father,” I answered as solemnly as I could. “Adultery.”
“So, how’d that work out for you?” he asked.
“Ah,” I answered, “you know.”
“No,” he said, “actually I don’t. So how many times did you do this,
this adultery?”
“Like, I think, three times, Father.”
“I see,” he said. “And during those times,
were you alone or with others?”
“No, Father, I was alone.”
“And do you think you’ll be committing this sin again in the near
future?”
“Naw, Father,” I answered. “I’m pretty much
over it.”
As the years went and I became more confessional-savvy, I learned that
the dumber the sin, the lighter the penance, the prayer for forgiveness that
one was required to say up at the altar after the confession had ended.
So in the name of efficiency, I developed a pre-packaged list of dumb
sins, like “I disobeyed my mother,” or “I fought with my brother,” or “I failed
to say my nightly prayer.”
Through trial and error, I learned that every now and then I would have
to toss a more serious sin into the mix or the priests might get testy and tax
me with a big penance. So I tossed in the fail-safe sex sin, “I had evil
thoughts about _____” and would fill in the name of the girl who struck me at
the moment. I rotated the sins and the priests, and, overall, the system worked.
One Saturday, Denny and his gang of desperadoes showed up for confession
and slid into the pew with me and waited for our turn at the confessional.
Denny turned to me and said, “Johnny, you got any good sins?”
Feeling magnanimous, I shared my formula for a hassle-free confession,
and in closing said, “And then you say ‘I had evil thoughts about Mary
Puravich,’ or whatever,’” using the name of a pretty girl from my class.
Denny shared my sin system with his friends, who were always in a hurry
to cut their way to the front of the line, have their confessions heard, and
leave without saying their penance. I went in to the confessional and said my
piece, ending with, “and I had evil thoughts about Mary Puravich.”
“You know,” said the priest, “I gotta meet this Mary Puravich. She must
be some kind of knockout, because the last four guys in here said the same
thing about her.”
For all purposes, school was an extension of church, and unlike the way
we lived in Waterbury, school was no longer optional. We were to be at Our Lady
of the Assumption Catholic School, in uniform, Monday through Friday from eight
a.m. until three p.m. No excuses.
Because I lacked almost any formal education at that point, I couldn’t
read or write, so it was decided that I should start school from the
beginning—first grade—making me roughly two years older than my classmates.
Assumption was already over fifty years old. Walter and his sisters had
been schooled there in the 1930s and the building , basically unchanged, had nothing
sleek or new. It had sixteen classrooms for two hundred and fifty students, no
gymnasium or cafeteria, highly polished wooden floors, and enormously large
windows that each had to be opened and closed with a long pole with a hook on
the end of it.
Our teachers were members of the Sisters of Mercy, an order formed in
Ireland in 1831 to aid the poor, arriving in America in 1843 to minister to the
famished Irish flocking to the states. Several of the nuns who had taught
Walter were still living at the convent and filling in as substitute teachers,
and one or two of them were still teaching full-time.
Classes began with the ringing of an enormous brass handbell by a nun
who was strong enough to pick it up and move it around. Boys and girls played
apart from each other on different sides of the school yard. The boys were clad
in white shirts and green ties with the letter A sewn into the middle of them,
black slacks, black socks, and black lace-up shoes. Loafers and pointed-toe
shoes, then all the rage because of the Beatles, were forbidden. The girls were
required to wear black Mary Janes, white or green knee socks, and a green dress
uniform with an under slip, and a white, button-down shirt. They were also
issued green beanies to wear in church, although I can’t recall that any of the
girls ever wore one.
Just beneath the schoolyard was Farrell’s Foundry. At different times of
the day, the mill released its afterburn from the enormous smokestacks that
dotted the skyline. Tens of thousands of black specks shot into the air, making
it look like a black-snow blizzard had hit our little town. The specks rained
down on our white shirts, ruining them forever with ink-black spots of burned
iron.
Every school day started with a prayer,
followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and then religion class. Sometimes one of
the priests stopped by during religion class and opened the floor to
discussions, wrongly assuming the questions would be deep and theological. What
he got was, “Father, all right, look, if the Russians fired an atomic bomb at
us and Jesus flies out of heaven and swallows it and it explodes in his
stomach—will he be dead?”
The best one came from Peggy Sullivan, who asked, “If Jesus shaves off
his beard, will he lose all his magical powers?” and then, pausing to catch her
breath, “and if so, how screwed are we?”
One kid in the class, Patsy Sheehan, resented having to learn certain
things about our religion the difference between venial sins and mortal sins,
the Act of Contrition and so on. When the priest told us we that we had to
choose a middle name for our confirmation, Patsy complained, “I got enough on
my plate already.”
The priest insisted she pick a new middle name. Patsy asked, “What’s
Jesus’s middle name?”
“He’s Jesus. He doesn’t have one,” the priest
answered.
“So, what’s he, special?” Patsy asked.
Then there was Martin O’Toole, a wonderful, magnificent liar. He lied in
such awesome, Herculean fashion that his tales were artful, Homeric. Our nun
once asked, “Mr. O’Toole, why have you not turned in your homework?”
Martin waited until he had everyone’s attention and then stood slowly
and dramatically from his desk, put his hands on his tiny waist and said,
“Sister, last night I was in my back yard playing when I picked up a rock from
the ground.” He then recounted the scene of him picking up what must have been
a boulder the size of Rhode Island, “and as soon as I picked it up, oil!
Bubbling crude came bursting out of the ground, millions of gallons of it! I
was soaked in oil.” He paused and looked around the room and added, in hushed
tones, “It took me hours to put that rock back on that oil and save this entire
city.”
He returned to his seat and said, “And that’s why I didn’t time to do my
homework, Sister.”
The nun’s jaw had dropped, and the silence of the moment was broken only
when Micky Sullivan, a dense and gullible child, asked, “What kind of oil was
it, Martin?”
“Esso,” he replied. “It was Esso oil.”
Many years later, Johnny became mayor of a small town in the Valley. An
investigation of the town’s finances showed fifty thousand dollars missing from
the treasury and all the evidence pointed to Martin. When asked to produce the
town’s books, Martin said, that “The books are gone. Mice ate them.” He served
two years in federal prison.
Then there was Ilene Flynn, a little red-haired, freckled-faced,
fair-skinned girl who was more pious than the Pope. I knew a lot about her
because the nuns thought we looked alike and paired me with her for all
religious functions.
At our First Holy Communion, Ilene was so nervous her mouth went dry.
Unable to swallow the host and forbidden to touch it—only a priest could do
that—she ran around in circles crying hysterically, “Jesus is stuck in my
mouth! Jesus is stuck in my mouth!” while the nuns flocked around her shouting
instructions about swallowing, “Go like this, Ilene, go like this!” and then
they did a swallowing demonstration that made them look a lot like penguins
eating long fish.
Ilene’s Friday afternoon confessions were epic. She confessed to
everything, I mean absolutely everything, and she actually said all of her
penance, unlike the rest of us who negotiated a lighter-sentence deal with God
before we got to the rail. My policy on penance was one for five. If I were
given thirty Hail Marys as penance, in the deal God and I worked out, I said
six.
Once, Ilene came out of the confessional in tears, wailing loud enough
to wake the dead.
“What is it, Ilene?” Sister asked. “What happened?”
“Father O’Leary told me I’m going to hell on a lying rap,” she wailed,
“and I don’t know what a rap is!”
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
John
William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in
writing from Lindenwood University. He is the author of numerous non-fiction on
the history of organized crime including the ground break biography of
bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and
"Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in Chicago."
His
non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The New Criminologist,
American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of Chicago's Celtic
Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short story fiction
work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of
2008.
His
play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public performance at the Actors Chapel
in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New
York project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First
Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact
John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
THE ART OF PULP
300 quotes from Emerson
To
view more Emerson quotes or read a life background on Emerson please visit the
books blog spot. We update the blog bi-monthly
emersonsaidit.blogspot.com
Wealth
is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not
in industry much less in saving but in a better order in timeliness in being at
the right spot.
Raphael
paints wisdom; Handel sings it Phidias carves it Shakespeare writes it Wren
builds it Columbus sails it Luther preaches it Washington arms it Watt
mechanizes it.
Wisdom
is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man but men capable of wisdom
who being put into certain company or other favorable conditions become wise
for a short time as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
Let
us be poised and wise and our own today.
Life
is a festival only to the wise.
There
is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of
wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.
There
is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy
and not pain around us.
Beware
what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.
Wit
makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions. No dignity no learning no
force of character can make any stand against good wit.
A
man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
Slavery
it is that makes slavery; freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men
were slaves of kings.
Men
love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
It
makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it
or no.
Words
are alive; cut them and they bleed.
See
only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.
We
must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or
profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the
custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?
Work
and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course planting
corn or writing epics so Only it be honest work done to thine own approbation
it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.
The
mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a
speech; he takes a low business-tone avoids all brag is nobody dresses plainly
promises not at all performs much speaks in monosyllables hugs his fact. He
calls his employment by its lowest name and so takes from evil tongues their
sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news yet he allows
himself to be surprised into thought and the unlocking of his learning and
philosophy.
On
worry
Little
minds have little worries big minds have no time for worries.
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..
Sculpture this and Sculpture that
The Art Critic
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..
Spontaneous
\spahn-TAY-nee-us\ 1: done, said, or produced freely and naturally 2: arising
from a momentary impulse. Spontaneous derives, via the Late Latin spontaneus,
from the Latin sponte, meaning "of one's free will, voluntarily," and
first appeared in English in the mid-17th century.
MY BOOKS ON SALE NOW AT AMAZON.COM AND ALL BARNES AND NOBLE STORES
Excerpt from my book "When Capone’s Mob Murdered Touhy.”
Roger and his sister in 1959
Roger and his prison warden
Roger in 1933
John Factor who kidnapped himself and blamed it on Touhy
Touhy's right hand man, Basil Banghart
FBI Agent Melvin Purvis who worked on the Touhy kidnapping place
The basement where Touhy's killer hid out
Touhy being returned to prison in 1954
Zangara, the killer hired by the Outfit to kill Mayor Cermak
Mayor Anton Cermak
One of Touhy's sons, Roger jr.
Roger dead
The Touhy Brothers
The Touhy gangs top union hood "Chicken" McFadden
Touhy (far left) and his boys n their way to prison
Tuohy's nephew, Judge Alesia
Tubbo Gilbert, the worlds richest cop
Ray Brennan, co-author of Touhy's book
Alvin Karpis, the hood who actually kidnapped William Hamm
Stateville prison
HERE IS AN EXCEPT FROM MY BOOK "THE BOOK OF AMERICAN-JEWISH GANGSTERS"
(Max Zellner is a pen name, it was my grandfather's born name. During World War 1 he changed it to the less German sounding Paul Selner)
Blitzstein
Herbert: Las Vegas Gangster. AKA
Fat Herbie. Born November 2, 1934.
Died January 6, 1997. On July 13, 1967, a bookie named Arthur “Boodie” Cowan
(Born 1921) was shot dead for withholding a street tax to Tony Spilotro. Cowan,
of 7307 Crawford Avenue 7334 North Ridge
Avenue Chicago
After a series of arrests for bookmaking,
Blitzstein moved out to Las Vegas
Fat Herbie
Over the years, after Tony Spilotro moved
out to Vegas, he was seldom seen without the massive Blitzstein by his
side. At this point, Blitzstein was
making his living primarily as a burglar as were most of Spilotro’s so-called Las Vegas
Released from prison in 1991, he returned
to Vegas...Spilotro was long since dead...and almost immediately faced a
hearing to have his name entered into the Vegas Black Book (Which is actually
green) which restricted him from entering the casinos as “A person of unsavory
reputation”
Undaunted, Blitzstein opened a loan
sharking business and ran a series of simple auto insurance schemes which
turned a healthy profit. No longer protected by Spilotro or the Chicago Outfit,
young Wiseguys from the LA and Buffalo
On January 6, 1997, the gangsters simply
grew tired of taking payments from Blitzstein and decided to take over all of
his operation. Mafia contract killer entered Blitzstein’s home and fired three
bullets into him, killing him.
Photographs I’ve taken
Mood, New York
McLean Va.
McLean Va.
McLean Va.
McLean Va.
McLean Va.
McLean Va.
Fredicksburg Va
Georgetown Washington DC
Georgetown Washington DC
Georgetown Washington DC
Georgetown Washington DC
Georgetown Washington DC
Georgetown Washington DC
Central Florida
Washington DC
Washington DC
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Northwest Washington DC
Chicago
Chicago
Chicago
Frederick Maryland
Middlebury Ct.
Someplace in far eastern Maryland
Central Park, New York
Eastern Connecticut
Prince George County, Maryland
Old Town Alexandria Va.
Roosevelt Island, Washington DC
Dublin Ireland
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Berkley Springs West Virginia
Paw Paw Tunnel, West Virginia
The C and O Canal, Maryland
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Ocean City Maryland
Ocean City Maryland
Orange County, Virginia
Shepherdstown West Virginia
Smithsonian, Washington DC
Fredericksburg Va
Fredericksburg Va
Fredericksburg Va
Fredericksburg Va
Fredericksburg Va
Smithsonian Washington DC
Westerly Rhode Island
N Street, Washington DC
N Street, Washington DC
Westerly Rhode Island
Westerly Rhode Island
Fredericksburg Va
Fredericksburg Va
Cusco Peru
Fredericksburg Va
Fredericksburg Va
Shepherdstown West Virginia
George Mason University, Fairfax Va
Ocean City Maryland
Chicago, The Palmer House
Fredericksburg Va
Berkley Springs West Virginia
Berkley Springs West Virginia
Tired of capitalism?
There could be a better way.
By Matt Bruenig
Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the
news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking
about universal basic income. Need a primer? Catch up here.
Matt Bruenig is researcher of poverty and welfare
systems at the think tankDemos.
Capitalism is a coercive economic system that
creates persistent patterns of economic deprivation.
Governments have typically dealt with capitalism’s
more misery-inducing tendencies by creating institutions of labor protection —
such as the right to organize unions — and by building out modern welfare
states. Although these policy programs have been fairly successful, especially
in the countries that have pushed them the furthest, they have not fully
eliminated coercion and deprivation. To secure freedom and prosperity for all,
it may ultimately be necessary to supplement the welfare state with a universal
basic income — a program that would provide all citizens with a basic level of
financial support, regardless of whether they’re employed.
By now, it is well established that capitalism is
fundamentally built upon threats of force. As libertarian philosophers Robert
Nozick and Matt Zwolinski have explained, the only way to turn unowned natural
resources (such as land, minerals and other goods) into privately owned
property is by violently preventing all others from using them. This one-sided
exclusion destroys freedom of movement and cuts many people off from the things
that they need to survive.
When the physical resources necessary for
production are privately held in the hands of very few, as in the United
States, the majority of the population is forced to submit itself to
well-financed employers in order to live. The precarious position of most
workers in this position — desperate for employment but aware that they could
lose their jobs at any time — is coercive on its face and susceptible to
exploitation and abuse.
Labor protection in the form of safety laws,
collective bargaining and prohibitions against harassment and discrimination
have helped cut down on many of the worst employer abuses. But no amount of
labor regulation can ever undo the fact that workers are confronted daily with
the choice between obeying a supervisor or losing all their income. The only
way to break the coercion at the core of the employment relationship is to give
people the genuine ability to say no to their employers. And the only way to
make that feasible is to guarantee that working-age adults, at least, have some
way to support themselves whether they work or not.
Even as capitalism makes some workers’ lives
miserable, those who can’t work are in even worse shape. Even after counting
some or all public welfare benefits, the U.S. poverty rate in 2013 was anywhere
from 15 percent to 18 percent. Most of this poverty is endured by vulnerable
populations that markets discard as useless. According to my own calculations
of the 2014 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, more than 80 percent of the
officially poor are either children, elderly, disabled, students, caretakers or
the involuntarily unemployed. Because they cannot work or they have a
diminished ability to work, these groups often receive little to no direct
income from the market and suffer a high risk of poverty as a result.
The United States’ relatively small welfare state
kept 39 million people out of poverty in 2013, cut the overall poverty rate by
38 percent since 1967 and radically reduced the poverty rate of the elderly by
as much as 72 percent since 1960. Globally, the countries with the highest
levels of welfare spending — Denmark,
Finland, Norway and Sweden — are also those that have the lowest levels of
economic hardship. But even in these countries, poverty is not zero percent and
small numbers of people still register an occasional inability to acquire basic
needs such as food and housing. Supplementing the existing welfare state with a
basic income would, if successful, ensure that nobody falls completely through
the cracks of the social welfare system and thereby finds himself or herself
destitute.
True freedom requires freedom from destitution and
freedom from the demands of the employer. Capitalism ensures neither, but a
universal basic income, if successful, could provide both.
DON’T WORRY-BE HAPPY
Want
'sustained happiness'? Get religion, study suggests
By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
The Washington Post
A new study suggests that joining
a religious group could do more for someone's "sustained happiness"
than other forms of social participation, such as volunteering, playing sports
or taking a class.
A study in the American Journal
of Epidemiology by researchers at the London School of Economics and Erasmus University
Medical Center in the Netherlands found that the secret to sustained happiness
lies in participation in religion.
"The church appears to play
a very important social role in keeping depression at bay and also as a coping
mechanism during periods of illness in later life," Mauricio Avendano, an
epidemiologist at LSE and an author of the study, said in a statement. "It
is not clear to us how much this is about religion per se, or whether it may be
about the sense of belonging and not being socially isolated."
Researchers looked at four areas:
1) volunteering or working with a charity; 2) taking educational courses; 3)
participating in religious organizations; 4) participating in a political or
community organization. Of the four, participating in a religious organization
was the only social activity associated with sustained happiness, researchers
found.
The study analyzed 9,000
Europeans who were older than 50. The report that studied older Europeans also
found that joining political or community organizations lost their benefits
over time. In fact, the short-term benefits from those social connections often
lead to depressive symptoms later on, researchers say.
Although healthier people are
more likely to volunteer, the researchers found no evidence that volunteering
actually leads to better mental health. Benefits could be outweighed by other
negative impacts of volunteering, such as stress, Avendano said.
The researchers noted that it is
unclear whether the benefits of participating in a religious organization are
connected to being in the religious community, or to the faith itself.
REFORMING OUR POLICE BECAUSE THEY HAVE BECOME A LEADING NATIONAL SOCIAL PROBLEM
Well, I had my unscheduled but absolutely guaranteed run-in with our local police this morning here in Fairfax County Virginia.
We were at Dulles airport about to pull to the curb at the second departure door when a Fairfax County policeman, Thompson, who was parked in the middle lane, swung open his door missing us by inches. We stopped and looked at him and then parked.
He walked over to some hapless Asian guy and yelled at him about something….I have three degrees in English, I know the definition of yelling….went it was over the Asian guy was so taken aback he turned and tripped over his own luggage.
Then the cop, who is a very large man, turned on us. He came over to Mary, literally put his face in hers and pointed to the speed posting sign (15 Mph) and said “What does that say? Read it, can you read it?”
There is no way in Holy Hell that we came close to exceeding the speed limit but Mary doesn’t deal well with obnoxious.
BUT I DO. I USED TO GET PAID TO BE OBNOXIOUS.
I made a point of turning on my camera and asked him why he was so angry and why was he being so aggressive. He didn’t have an answer. Should he really be so intimidating? Again, he didn’t answer and then walked away. I followed him and told him my name and suggested that since he was carrying a loaded weapon and seemed highly agitated over such a small thing that maybe he should call his boss and ask to go home. He had nothing to say again. I showed him my phone and asked if he wanted me to call for him. No answer. I figure he doesn’t deal well with obnoxious.
Here’s a lesson, especially for you young people, confront a bully and they’ll always back down because they’re counting on the hope that you’ll back down and when you don’t they panic.
I go out of my way to be a nice guy, I don’t like confrontation and I understand police work is difficult because people are so, so, so very crazy and unstable….I get that. I get that over time, day in and day out, it builds up inside but I can’t conciliate the many policemen I know and call friends with this clown. The guys I know are decent, soft spoken, good fathers and husbands, and each of them has a magnificent sense of humor….and then there’s this guy and therein the lies the difference between a police officer and a thug
FBI
resists calls to reform voluntary reporting system for police killings
Director James Comey said FBI
‘plans to collect more data about shootings’ while retaining controversial
self-reporting method for police departments
Jon Swaine and Oliver Laughland
in New York
The FBI will continue to resist
pressure from legislators and activists for the creation of a fully
comprehensive count of all killings by American police officers, the bureau’s
director signalled on Monday.
Writing as the FBI released its
annual crime statistics, James Comey said an existing voluntary system, under
which police departments around the country choose whether or not to submit
data on homicides by their officers, will carry on.
Comey said the FBI would try to
collect more information – but gave no specific details about how this would be
done.
He said of the current
information collected: “As helpful as this information is, however, we need
more law enforcement agencies to submit their justifiable homicide data so that
we can better understand what is happening across the country.”
The FBI counted 444 “justifiable
homicides” by law enforcement officers in 2014, according to statistics
released on Monday. That total represented a 5.7% decrease from the 471 counted
the year before.
Yet both the accuracy of the
figures and any trends emerging from them have been called into question due to
the voluntary reporting system.
The Guardian is counting all
deaths caused by police and law enforcement in 2015, and collecting extensive
details on each incident and those killed. As of Monday a total of 871 deaths
this year had been recorded by the project, The Counted.
A spokesman for the FBI did not
respond to a request for information on how many of the roughly 18,000 law
enforcement agencies in the US had submitted data in 2014 or in previous years.
Criticism of the FBI’s system has
sharpened since protests erupted last year following the fatal shooting of an
unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri. Mandatory reporting of all
homicides by law enforcement was among a series of recommendations proposed
earlier this year by Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
Senators Barbara Boxer of
California and Cory Booker of New Jersey have proposed legislation that would
mandate law enforcement agencies to report comprehensive data on the use of
deadly force by their officers. Their bill is currently sitting in committee
stage, and is presumed to stand little chance of becoming law under the
Republican-controlled Congress. Similar legislation has been put forward by
Democrats in the House of Representatives.
Boxer told the Guardian on Monday
that the FBI was correct to acknowledge the “serious gaps” in its own records,
adding that reliable data was pivotal to “understand the scope of this horrific
problem and save lives on all sides”.
Democratic congressman Steve
Cohen, who reintroduced a bill for national deadly force statistics in January,
said the data did not “tell us all we need to know about the use of deadly
force by police”.
Cohen has gone on to introduce
further proposed legislation to encourage a mandatory independent investigation
of officer involved deaths.
Laurie Robinson, co-chair of
Obama’s taskforce, described FBI data published on Monday as flawed and
unreliable, adding that any potential changes to police practice in the US
after nationwide scrutiny accompanied unrest in Ferguson would not have
filtered through by the end of 2014.
“I think one has to be very cautious and not
read that much into of any of it at this stage,” Robinson said.
“There is a lag in the reporting
of the data. The public and professional consciousness on these issues really
has occurred in 2015, even though Ferguson occurred in 2014. So I’m not sure
that one would expect there would be a dramatic change in behaviour in law
enforcement in the last couple of months in 2014.”
Comey said in his statement that
the FBI “plan to collect more data about shootings (fatal and nonfatal) between
law enforcement and civilians, and to increase reporting overall”. Asked to
elaborate, a spokeswoman said: “There’s nothing else we have for you.”
The director said this extra
information would be used to create a publication separate to the annual crime
statistics that would “outline facts about what happened, who was involved, the
nature of injuries or deaths, and the circumstances behind these incidents”.
Robinson said that while Comey’s
comments were a welcome rhetorical nod towards better reporting, the FBI director
has no power to implement a mandatory reporting program himself.
“What he called for here is
exactly right,” Robinson said. “But we’re still at the mercy of having embraced
this very, very decentralised state and local law enforcement system. I’m not criticising
it; it’s just what we have.”
All of U.S.
can follow N.J.'s drug court and bail model
It costs New
Jersey $25,000 less to provide drug rehabilitation treatment than to place the
nonviolent drug offender in
By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist
By Donna
Simon
Every year,
650,000 inmates are released from American prisons. Within three years, roughly
two-thirds of them will end up behind bars again. The failures of our country's
correctional system overburdens government, overworks our police and law
enforcement officers, and places too many lives within our communities at risk.
Nearly half
of these inmates are nonviolent drug offenders who deserve a better chance at
rebuilding their lives and becoming more productive members of society. Too
often they are sent to prison without any help or rehabilitation. They come out
of prison with the same addiction and repeat the cycle of crime.
By addressing
these issues we can improve the lives of those suffering from addiction and
help them become more productive members of society, and we can also improve
the well-being of our towns. Addiction can and often does affect those we love.
It is time
that the lessons we learned here in New Jersey are carried across the country,
and become the new federal model. It costs New Jersey $25,000 less to provide
drug rehabilitation treatment than to place the nonviolent drug offender in
prison.
In 2013, Gov.
Chris Christie expanded the state's drug courts to provide mandatory treatment
to first time, nonviolent drug offenders. Instead of prison sentences, drug
courts demand treatment programs designed to break the cycle of addiction by
addressing the underlying cause of repeated criminal behavior. Every dollar
spent on treatment leads to a $7.47 reduction in crime-related spending and
lost productivity, according to a study conducted for the Office of National
Drug Control Policy.
This simple
measure not only reduced the state's long-term cost, but saved the lives of
countless individuals. The New Jersey Drug Court program has seen positive
results with successful participants who improved their education, obtained
useful job skills, maintained employment and supported their families.
In 2014, Gov.
Christie led the charge by signing bipartisan legislation to reform New
Jersey's bail system. These reforms allow people charged with the most serious
violent crimes to be held without bail, keeping dangerous people off the
streets.
In addition,
the reforms addressed the unfair practice of imprisoning people who commit
minor, nonviolent offenses and sit in our jails because they cannot afford even
low amounts of bail. By granting release under nonmonetary conditions, such as
required addiction treatment services, the bail reforms reduced the cycle of
non-violent crimes in local communities and enhanced public safety throughout
the state.
Gov.
Christie's expansion of programs designed to combat recidivism, through
treatment of drug and alcohol addiction and job training to assist offenders
transition back into society, are reforms that can be modeled across the
country.
The
importance of justice does not begin and end with jail or a quick fix of simply
incarcerating those that violate the law, but must continue with substantive
measures to address recidivism and the root causes of addiction which leads to
crime. It is imperative that we approach this issue, not only on an economical
basis, but also giving individuals every chance to succeed in getting healthy
and ending the cycle of addiction and crime.
Donna Simon
is a Republican representing the 16th Legislative District in the New Jersey
Assembly.
UN human
rights envoy: Rebels' move to block aid in eastern Ukraine is 'great mistake'
Sept. 29,
2015
By JAMEY
KEATEN, Associated Press
GENEVA (AP) —
Efforts by Russia-backed separatist rebels to block "desperately
needed" humanitarian aid from reaching people in conflict-ridden eastern
Ukraine could amount to crimes against humanity, a top U.N. human rights
official said Tuesday.
Ivan
Simonovic, the assistant U.N. secretary-general for human rights, criticized as
a "great mistake" the move by rebels who control the eastern city of
Luhansk to kick out U.N. and humanitarian aid agencies — except for the
international Red Cross, which has been allowed to continue operations.
"Unfortunately,
I do think that currently the military warfare has been transformed into some
sort of humanitarian war," Simonovic told reporters in Geneva after
visiting rebel-held eastern Ukraine last week. He added "that obstructing
provision of desperately needed humanitarian relief in some circumstances may
amount not only to violation of law, but also to crimes against humanity."
Russia-backed
separatists have been fighting government troops in eastern Ukraine since April
2014, and at least 8,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Polio cases
have turned up in the region, and Simonovic said 90,000 UNICEF polio vaccines
are no longer likely to reach children there. Some children don't have access
to basic medicines, he said, pointing to a shortage of antiretroviral medicines
needed by about 8,000 people in the Donetsk area. UNICEF says Ukraine has had
one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the world.
Overall,
Simonovic said he was encouraged that a so-called beginning of school season
cease-fire since Sept. 1 appeared to be holding, and sees a "window of
opportunity" between the two sides.
In Germany,
Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, blamed the separatists
for "a further worsening" of the humanitarian situation in the
conflict region as winter approaches. He said Germany is urging Russia to use
"its not-inconsiderable influence on the separatists" to ensure
access for humanitarian organizations as foreseen in a peace-deal struck in
Minsk, Belarus, whose terms haven't been applied fully.
Merkel will
meet the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and France in Paris on Friday to discuss
the conflict in Ukraine, and Simonovic said he hoped that that so-called
Normandy group meeting would make progress toward easing the humanitarian
situation.
The
moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.”Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to
reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual
choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a
person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of
life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of
themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of
selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they
cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of
performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible
in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being
desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand
naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their
standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects
their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to
experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our
highest values - and can be nothing else. Ayn Rand
“I’ve
been fighting to be who I am all my life. What’s the point of being who I am,
if I can’t have the person who was worth all the fighting for?” Stephanie Lennox, I Don't Remember You
“I wondered what happened when you offered
yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the
gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the
same.” Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
“I'm about to make a wild, extreme and severe
relationship rule: the word busy is a load of crap and is most often used by
assholes. The word "busy" is the relationship Weapon of Mass
Destruction. It seems like a good excuse, but in fact in every silo you
uncover, all you're going to find is a man who didn't care enough to call.
Remember men are never to busy to get what they want.” Greg Behrendt
“Finding someone you love and who loves you
back is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. But finding a true soul mate is an even
better feeling. A soul mate is someone who understands you like no other, loves
you like no other, will be there for you forever, no matter what. They say that
nothing lasts forever, but I am a firm believer in the fact that for some, love
lives on even after we're gone.” ― Cecelia Ahern, P.S. I Love You
Sometimes
the heart sees what is invisible to the eye. H.
Jackson Brown, Jr.
Love
is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Aristotle
Love
is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty,
often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older,
our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable. Bruce
Lee
I
have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
Immature
love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you
because I love you. Erich
Fromm
Where
there is love there is life. Mahatma
Gandhi
Affection
is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is
in our lives. C.
S. Lewis
We're
born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship
can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone. Orson
Welles
A
loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. Thomas
Carlyle
I
have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more
hurt, only more love. Mother
Teresa
For
it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you
kissed, but my soul. Judy
Garland
Let
us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. Mother
Teresa
A
kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become
superfluous.
Ingrid
Bergman
If
you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I
never have to live without you. A.
A. Milne
A
man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose
company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose
company he may feel tenderly drowsy. George
Jean Nathan
Love
does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love
is a war; love is a growing up. James
A. Baldwin
Gravitation
is not responsible for people falling in love. Albert
Einstein
Love
begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that
action. Mother
Teresa
A
flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love. Max
Muller
Pope
pleas for commutation of death sentences
Patricia Zapor Catholic News
Service
Less than a week after Pope Francis
told a joint meeting of Congress that he backs U.S. efforts to abolish the
death penalty, his U.S. nuncio sent letters to authorities in two states
appealing on his behalf to commute death sentences.
On Sept. 29, Archbishop Carlo
Maria Vigano unsuccessfully appealed on the pope's behalf to Georgia officials
to commute the death sentence of Kelly Gissendaner, who was executed shortly
after midnight the next day.
Within hours of receiving the
letter on the pope's behalf, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles
rejected Gissendaner's request for clemency and her execution proceeded.
Meanwhile, speaking for Pope
Francis, the nuncio weighed in the next day on another highly publicized
execution scheduled in Oklahoma for Sept. 30, that of Richard Glossip, whose
challenge to the state's lethal injection protocol was rejected by the Supreme
Court in June.
In the newest letter to Oklahoma
Gov. Mary Fallin, Archbishop Vigano cited both Pope Francis and St. John Paul
II as well as Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley.
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"Together with Pope Francis,
I believe that a commutation of Mr. Glossip's sentence would give clearer
witness to the value and dignity of every person's life and would contribute to
a society more cognizant of the mercy that God has bestowed upon us all,"
wrote Archbishop Vigano.
In the earlier letter to
Georgia's parole board, he quoted the words of Pope Francis to Congress on
Sept. 24, noting that the pontiff had, since the beginning of his ministry,
advocated for the global abolition of the death penalty. "I am convinced
that this way is the best, since every life is sacred, every human person is
endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the
rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes," Pope Francis said.
In both letters, Archbishop
Vigano said that he did not wish to minimize the gravity of the crimes for
which Gissendaner and Glossip were convicted and that he sympathized with the
victims. "I nonetheless implore you … to commute the sentence to one that
would better express both justice and mercy," he wrote in the Georgia
letter.
"Please be assured of my
prayers as you consider this request by Pope Francis for what I believe would
be a just act of clemency," Archbishop Vigano wrote.
Gissendaner was convicted in the
1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. Prosecutors said she conspired
with Gregory Owen, her boyfriend, who stabbed the husband to death. Owen
testified against Gissendaner in a plea deal that left him with a sentence of
life in prison without chance for parole. Her application for clemency notes
that she has been a model prisoner and that the person who actually carried out
the crime received a lighter sentence than she did.
Atlanta Archbishop Wilton D.
Gregory, in a Sept. 29 news conference, read the nuncio's letter and referred
to his own request sent a week earlier to the parole board. In that letter, he
told the board that as "one of the shepherds of the Catholic Church in
Georgia, I seek to contribute to a civilization that promotes human dignity by
striking a balance between the demands of justice and the need for charity.
Commuting the death sentence of Kelly Gissendaner to one of life without parole
is compatible with that goal."
The pleas on behalf of Pope
Francis just after he left the United States are reminiscent of a similar plea
made by St. John Paul II in 1999. While visiting Missouri, the pope made a
specific plea to then-Gov. Mel Carnahan to spare the life of Darrell Mease.
Mease, convicted of a triple murder, was scheduled to be executed a few days
later. In announcing the commutation, Carnahan said he would spare Mease
because the pope had asked him to do so.
Glossip's case challenging
Oklahoma's drug protocol for executions went to the Supreme Court. In June a
strongly divided court ruled the state's protocol was constitutional. In
dissenting, Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioned whether
the death penalty itself should be declared unconstitutional.
Like Gissendaner, Glossip was
convicted in a murder which another person admitted to committing. Justin Sneed
confessed to killing Bobby Van Treese in 1997, but testified against Glossip in
return for a lighter sentence, life imprisonment without parole.
GEORGIA EXECUTES KELLY
GISSENDANER, RENEWING QUESTIONS ABOUT DEATH PENALTY
Last night, Georgia executed
Kelly Gissendaner for the murder of her husband, while the man who committed
the murder will be eligible for parole in eight years. Her execution was the
first time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 that Georgia has
executed someone who did not personally kill the victim.
Ms. Gissendaner was almost
executed earlier this year. The execution was stopped at the last minute
because the lethal injection drugs appeared cloudy.
After a new execution date was
set, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles agreed to reconsider her
application for clemency. Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman
Fletcher and former State Corrections Deputy Director Vanessa O’Donnell asked
the Board to grant clemency, joined by Pope Francis, who just last
weekchallenged our nation's leaders to end capital punishment, and dozens of
witnesses to Ms. Gissendaner's mentoring, counseling, and religious commitment.
In a letter to the Board, Justice
Fletcher wrote that Ms. Gissendaner's death sentence is disproportionate to her
role in the murder. "The State of Georgia has not executed a person who
did not commit the actual killing since the death penalty was reinstated in
1976," he wrote. "There is a reason for this. Kelly Gissendaner
should not be the first." He went on to say he had been wrong to join with
other justices in ruling that her sentence was proportionate.
O'Donnell, who was the warden
from 2001 to 2004 at the state prison in which Ms. Gissendaner was
incarcerated, urged the Board to grant clemency because of her
"exceptional prison adjustment, her role in the crime as compared with her
co-defendant who is serving a life sentence, her remorse, and the pleas of the
Gissendaner children." She said that Ms. Gissendaner had "reached out
to other inmates at their lowest ebb of despair and helped them to recognize
their worth and to see a path out of prison" and, if spared, "can
provide hope to the most desperate female offender in a manner no one else
could possibly understand."
Writing to the Board on behalf of
Pope Francis, Archbishop Carlo Vigano implored it "to commute the sentence
to one that would better express both justice and mercy." Soon after, the
board announced it would not grant clemency.
Ms. Gissendaner's daughter,
Kayla, earlier told the board, "My father’s death was extremely painful
for many people, but I’ve recently concluded that in many ways I was the person
who was most impacted by his murder. The impact of losing my mother would be
devastating. I can’t fathom losing another parent.”
People present for the execution
said that Ms. Gissendaner prayed and sang "Amazing Grace" until she
was given a lethal injection.
The execution of a woman who
received a harsher penalty than the man who committed the murder exemplifies the
arbitrariness of the death penalty in this country, and reinforces Pope
Francis's recent call for abolition. It also raises critical questions about
how capital punishment can be reconciled with the American commitment to
fairness, justice, and mercy
Excerpt from my book “On the Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film”
DON'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD? I DO
Italy
Abruzzo, Italy
Corricella, Procida Island, Italy
Calle Spello, Umbria, Italy
Capri, Italy
BLOGLAPEDIA’S
BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art
for the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of
Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The
Kennedy’s in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The
Prohibition in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A really small company
run by writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The Day
Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND CIVILIZATIONS
The Works
of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS
BOOKS
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
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
