HAPPY THANKSGIVING
We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds — the strength to overcome them and the lessons that we are meant to receive through them. Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and wise. Caroline Myss
My older sister (who is 4'8) trying to block me out of the photo
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
John
William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in
writing from Lindenwood University.
He is
the author of No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care and
Short Stories from a Small Town. He is also the author of numerous non-fiction
on the history of organized crime including the ground break biography of
bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and
"Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in Chicago."
His
non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The New Criminologist,
American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of Chicago's Celtic
Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short story fiction
work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of
2008.
His
play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public performance at the Actors Chapel
in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New
York project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First
Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact
John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
HERE'S MY LATEST BOOKS.....
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.
http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Small-William-Tuohy/dp/1517270456/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444164878&sr=1-1&keywords=short+stories+from+a+small+town
The Valley
Lives
By Marion Marchetto, author of The
Bridgewater Chronicles on October 15, 2015
Short
Stores from a Small Town is set in The Valley (known to outsiders as The Lower
Naugatuck Valley) in Connecticut. While the short stories are contemporary they
provide insight into the timeless qualities of an Industrial Era community and
the values and morals of the people who live there. Some are first or second
generation Americans, some are transplants, yet each takes on the mantle of
Valleyite and wears it proudly. It isn't easy for an author to take the reader
on a journey down memory lane and involve the reader in the life stories of a
group of seemingly unrelated characters. I say seemingly because by book's end
the reader will realize that he/she has done more than meet a group of loosely
related characters.
We meet
all of the characters during a one-day time period as each of them finds their
way to the Valley Diner on a rainy autumn day. From our first meeting with
Angel, the educationally challenged man who opens and closes the diner, to our
farewell for the day to the young waitress whose smile hides her despair we
meet a cross section of the Valley population. Rich, poor, ambitious, and not
so ambitious, each life proves that there is more to it beneath the surface.
And the one thing that binds these lives together is The Valley itself. Not so
much a place (or a memory) but an almost palpable living thing that becomes a
part of its inhabitants.
Let
me be the first the congratulate author John William Tuohy on a job well done.
He has evoked the heart of The Valley and in doing so brought to life the
fabric that Valleyites wear as a mantle of pride. While set in a specific
region of the country, the stories that unfold within the pages of this slim
volume are similar to those that live in many a small town from coast to coast.
An award winning full length play.
"Cyberdate.Com is the story of six
ordinary people in search of romance, friendship and love and find it in very
extraordinary ways. Based on the real life experiences of the authors
misadventures with on line dating, Cyber date is a bittersweet story that will
make you laugh, cry and want to fall in love again." Ellis McKay
Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public at the Actors Chapel in
Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New York
project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First
Amendment Award for best new play. The play was also given a full reading at
The Frederick Playhouse in Maryland in March of 2007.
In
1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered
Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next
ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state
schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep
River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the
same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny
compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to
overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
By
Dr. Wm. Anthony Connolly
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.
AMAZON REVIEWS
By
jackieh on October 13, 2015
After reading about John's deeply
personal and painful past, I just wanted to hug the child within him......and
hug all the children who were thrown into the state's foster system....it is an
amazing read.......
By
Jane Pogoda on October 9, 2015
I truly enjoyed reading his
memoir. I also grew up in Ansonia and had no idea conditions such as these
existed. The saving grace is knowing the author made it out and survived the
system. Just knowing he was able to have a family of his own made me happy. I
attended the same grammar school and was happy that his experience there was
not negative. I had a wonderful experience in that school. I wish that I could
have been there for him when he was at the school since we were there at
probably at the same time.
By
Sue on September 27, 2015
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
By
David A. Wright on September 7, 2015
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.
By
Robert G Manley on September 7, 2015
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.
By
LNA on July 9, 2015
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.
By
Barbara Pietruszka on June 29, 2015
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
By
Joanne B. on June 28, 2015
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.
By
Paul Day on June 15, 2015
Great reading. Life in foster
care told from a very rare point of view.
By
Jackie Malkes on June 5, 2015
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.
By
Eileen on June 4, 2015
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.
By
karen pojakene on June 1, 2015
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.
By
Michelle Black on
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.
By
Kimberly on May 24, 2015
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!
By
Geoffrey A. Childs on May 20, 2015
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.
Editorial
Reviews
From
Publishers Weekly
JFK's
pardons and the mob; Prohibition, Chicago's crime cadres and the staged
kidnapping of "`Jake the Barber'" Factor, "the black sheep
brother of the cosmetics king, Max Factor"; lifetime sentences, attempted
jail busts and the perseverance of "a rumpled private detective and an
eccentric lawyer" John W. Tuohy showcases all these and more sensational
and shady happenings in When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange
Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping that Never Happened. The
author started investigating Touhy's 1959 murder by Capone's gang in 1975 for
an undergrad assignment. He traces the frame-job whereby Touhy was accused of
the kidnapping, his decades in jail, his memoirs, his retrial and release and,
finally, his murder, 28 days after regaining his freedom. Sixteen pages of
photos.
From
Library Journal
Roger
Touhy, one of the "terrible Touhys" and leader of a bootlegging
racket that challenged Capone's mob in Prohibition Chicago, had a lot to answer
for, but the crime that put him behind bars was, ironically, one he didn't
commit: the alleged kidnapping of Jake Factor, half-brother of Max Factor and
international swindler. Author Tuohy (apparently no relation), a former staff
investigator for the National Center for the Study of Organized Crime, briefly
traces the history of the Touhys and the Capone mob, then describes Factor's
plan to have himself kidnapped, putting Touhy behind bars and keeping himself
from being deported. This miscarriage of justice lasted 17 years and ended in
Touhy's parole and murder by the Capone mob 28 days later. Factor was never
deported. The author spent 26 years researching this story, and he can't bear
to waste a word of it. Though slim, the book still seems padded, with
irrelevant detail muddying the main story. Touhy is a hard man to feel sorry
for, but the author does his best. Sure to be popular in the Chicago area and
with the many fans of mob history, this is suitable for larger public libraries
and regional collections. Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH
BOOK
REVIEW
John
William Tuohy, one of the most prolific crime writers in America, has penned a
tragic, but fascinating story of Roger Touhy and John Factor. It's a tale born
out of poverty and violence, a story of ambition gone wrong and deception on an
enormous, almost unfathomable, scale. However, this is also a story of triumph
of determination to survive, of a lifelong struggle for dignity and redemption
of the spirit.
The
story starts with John "Jake the Barber" Factor. The product of the
turn of the century European ethnic slums of Chicago's west side, Jake's
brother, Max Factor, would go on to create an international cosmetic empire.
In
1926, Factor, grubstaked in a partnership with the great New York criminal
genius, Arnold Rothstien, and Chicago's Al Capone, John Factor set up a stock
scam in England that fleeced thousands of investors, including members of the
royal family, out of $8 million dollars, an incredible sum of money in 1926.
After
the scam fell apart, Factor fled to France, where he formed another syndicate
of con artists, who broke the bank at Monte Carlo by rigging the tables.
Eventually,
Factor fled to the safety of Capone's Chicago but the highest powers in the
Empire demanded his arrest. However, Factor fought extradition all the way to
the United States Supreme Court, but he had a weak case and deportation was
inevitable. Just 24 hours before the court was to decide his fate, Factor paid
to have himself kidnapped and his case was postponed. He reappeared in Chicago
several days later, and, at the syndicates' urging, accused gangster Roger
Touhy of the kidnapping.
Roger
"The Terrible" Touhy was the youngest son of an honest Chicago cop.
Although born in the Valley, a teeming Irish slum, the family moved to rural
Des Plains, Illinois while Roger was still a boy. Touhy's five older brothers
stayed behind in the valley and soon flew under the leadership of
"Terrible Tommy" O'Connor. By 1933, three of them would be shot dead
in various disputes with the mob and one, Tommy, would lose the use of his legs
by syndicate machine guns. Secure in the still rural suburbs of Cook County,
Roger Touhy graduated as class valedictorian of his Catholic school.
Afterwards, he briefly worked as an organizer for the Telegraph and
Telecommunications Workers Union after being blacklisted by Western Union for
his minor pro-labor activities.
Touhy
entered the Navy in the first world war and served two years, teaching Morse
code to Officers at Harvard University.
After
the war, he rode the rails out west where he earned a living as a railroad
telegraph operator and eventually made a small but respectable fortune as an
oil well speculator.
Returning
to Chicago in 1924, Touhy married his childhood sweetheart, regrouped with his
brothers and formed a partnership with a corrupt ward heeler named Matt Kolb,
and, in 1925, he started a suburban bootlegging and slot machine operation in
northwestern Cook County. Left out of the endless beer wars that plagued the
gangs inside Chicago, Touhy's operation flourished. By 1926, his slot machine
operations alone grossed over $1,000,000.00 a year, at a time when a gallon of
gas cost eight cents.
They
were unusual gangsters. When the Klu Klux Klan, then at the height of its
power, threatened the life of a priest who had befriended the gang, Tommy
Touhy, Roger's older brother, the real "Terrible Touhy," broke into
the Klan's national headquarters, stole its membership roles, and, despite an
offer of $25,000 to return them, delivered the list to the priest who published
the names in several Catholic newspapers the following day.
Once,
Touhy unthinkingly released several thousand gallons of putrid sour mash in to
the Des Plains River one day before the city was to reenact its discovery by
canoe-riding Jesuits a hundred years before. After a dressing down by the towns
people Touhy spent $10,000.00 on perfume and doused the river with it, saving
the day.
They
were inventive too. When the Chicago police levied a 50% protection tax on
Touhy's beer, Touhy bought a fleet of Esso gasoline delivery trucks, kept the
Esso logo on the vehicles, and delivered his booze to his speakeasies that way.
In
1930, when Capone invaded the labor rackets, the union bosses, mostly Irish and
completely corrupt, turned to the Touhy organization for protection. The
intermittent gun battles between the Touhys and the Capone mob over control of
beer routes which had been fought on the empty, back roads of rural Cook
County, was now brought into the city where street battles extracted an awesome
toll on both sides. The Chicago Tribune estimated the casualties to be one hundred
dead in less then 12 months.
By
the winter of 1933, remarkably, Touhy was winning the war in large part because
joining him in the struggle against the mob was Chicago's very corrupt, newly
elected mayor Anthony "Ten percent Tony" Cermak, who was as much a
gangster as he was an elected official.
Cermak
threw the entire weight of his office and the whole Chicago police force behind
Touhy's forces. Eventually, two of Cermak's police bodyguards arrested Frank
Nitti, the syndicate's boss, and, for a price, shot him six times. Nitti lived.
As a result, two months later Nitti's gunmen caught up with Cermak at a
political rally in Florida.
Using
previously overlooked Secret Service reports, this book proves, for the first
time, that the mob stalked Cermak and used a hardened felon to kill him. The
true story behind the mob's 1933 murder of Anton Cermak, will changes histories
understanding of organized crimes forever. The fascinating thing about this
killing is its eerie similarity to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas thirty
years later, made even more macabre by the fact that several of the names
associated with the Cermak killing were later aligned with the Kennedy killing.
For
many decades, it was whispered that the mob had executed Cermak for his role in
the Touhy-syndicate war of 1931-33, but there was never proof. The official
story is that a loner named Giuseppe Zangara, an out-of-work, Sicilian born
drifter with communist leanings, traveled to Florida in the winter of 1933 and
fired several shots at President Franklin Roosevelt. He missed the President,
but killed Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak instead. However, using long lost
documents, Tuohy is able to prove that Zangara was a convicted felon with long
ties to mob Mafia and that he very much intended to murder Anton Cermak.
With
Cermak dead, Touhy was on his own against the mob. At the same time, the United
States Postal Service was closing in on his gang for pulling off the largest
mail heists in US history at that time. The cash was used to fund Touhy's war
with the Capones.Then in June of 1933, John Factor en he reappeared, Factor
accused Roger Touhy of kidnapping him. After two sensational trials, Touhy was
convicted of kidnapping John Factor and sentenced to 99 years in prison and
Factor, after a series of complicated legal maneuvers, and using the mob's
influence, was allowed to remain in the United States as a witness for the
prosecution, however, he was still a wanted felon in England.
By
1942 Roger Touhy had been in prison for nine years, his once vast fortune was
gone. Roger's family was gone as well. At his request, his wife Clara had moved
to Florida with their two sons in 1934. However, with the help of Touhy's
remaining sister, the family retained a rumpled private detective, actually a
down-and-out, a very shady and disbarred mob lawyer named Morrie Green.
Disheveled
of not, Green was a highly competent investigator and was able to piece
together and prove the conspiracy that landed Touhy in jail. However, no court
would hear the case, and by the fall of 1942, Touhy had exhausted every legal
avenue open to him.Desperate, Touhy hatched a daring daylight breakout over the
thirty foot walls of Stateville prison.The sensational escape ended three
months later in a dramatic and bloody shootout between the convicts and the
FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover.
Less
then three months after Touhy was captured, Fox Studios hired producer Brian
Foy to churn out a mob financed docudrama film on the escape entitled,
"Roger Touhy, The Last Gangster." The executive producer on the film
was Johnny Roselli, the hood who later introduced Judy Campbell to Frank
Sinatra. Touhy sued Fox and eventually won his case and the film was withdrawn
from circulation. In 1962, Columbia pictures and John Houston tried to produce
a remake of the film, but were scared off the project.
While
Touhy was on the run from prison, John Factor was convicted for m ail fraud and
was sentenced and served ten years at hard labor. Factor's take from the scam
was $10,000,000.00 in cash.
Released
in 1949, Factor took control of the Stardust Hotel Casino in 1955, then the
largest operation on the Vegas strip. The casino's true owners, of course, were
Chicago mob bosses Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Murray Humpreys and Sam Giancana.
From 1955 to 1963, the length of Factor's tenure at the casino, the US Justice
Department estimated that the Chicago outfit skimmed between forty-eight to 200
million dollars from the Stardust alone.
In
1956, while Factor and the outfit were growing rich off the Stardust, Roger
Touhy hired a quirky, high strung, but highly effective lawyer named Robert B.
Johnstone to take his case. A brilliant legal tactician, who worked incessantly
on Touhy's freedom, Robert Johnstone managed to get Touhy's case heard before
federal judge John P. Barnes, a refined magistrate filled with his own
eccentricities. After two years of hearings, Barnes released a 1,500-page
decision on Touhy's case, finding that Touhy was railroaded to prison in a conspiracy
between the mob and the state attorney's office and that John Factor had
kidnapped himself as a means to avoid extradition to England.
Released
from prison in 1959, Touhy wrote his life story "The Stolen Years"
with legendary Chicago crime reporter, Ray Brennan. It was Brennan, as a young
cub reporter, who broke the story of John Dillenger's sensational escape from
Crown Point prison, supposedly with a bar of soap whittled to look like a
pistol. It was also Brennan who brought about the end of Roger Touhy's mortal
enemy, "Tubbo" Gilbert, the mob owned chief investigator for the Cook
County state attorney's office, and who designed the frame-up that placed Touhy
behind bars.
Factor
entered a suit against Roger Touhy, his book publishers and Ray Brennan,
claiming it damaged his reputation as a "leading citizen of Nevada and a
philanthropist."
The
teamsters, Factor's partners in the Stardust Casino, refused to ship the book
and Chicago's bookstore owners were warned by Tony Accardo, in person, not to
carry the book.
Touhy
and Johnstone fought back by drawing up the papers to enter a $300,000,000
lawsuit against John Factor, mob leaders Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo and Murray
Humpreys as well as former Cook County state attorney Thomas Courtney and Tubbo
Gilbert, his chief investigator, for wrongful imprisonment.
The
mob couldn't allow the suit to reach court, and considering Touhy's
determination, Ray Brennan's nose for a good story and Bob Johnstone's legal
talents, there was no doubt the case would make it to court. If the case went
to court, John Factor, the outfit's figurehead at the lucrative Stardust
Casino, could easily be tied in to illegal teamster loans. At the same time,
the McClellan committee was looking into the ties between the teamsters, Las
Vegas and organized crime and the raid at the mob conclave in New York state
had awakened the FBI and brought them into the fight. So, Touhy's lawsuit was,
in effect, his death sentence.
Twenty-five
days after his release from twenty-five years in prison, Roger Touhy was gunned
down on a frigid December night on his sister's front door.
Two
years after Touhy's murder, in 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered
his Justice Department to look into the highly suspect dealings of the Stardust
Casino. Factor was still the owner on record, but had sold his interest in the
casino portion of the hotel for a mere 7 million dollars. Then, in December of
that year, the INS, working with the FBI on Bobby Kennedy's orders, informed Jake
Factor that he was to be deported from the United States before the end of the
month. Factor would be returned to England where he was still a wanted felon as
a result of his 1928 stock scam. Just 48 hours before the deportation, Factor,
John Kennedy's largest single personal political contributor, was granted a
full and complete Presidential pardon which allowed him to stay in the United
States.
The
story hints that Factor was more then probably an informant for the Internal
Revenue Service, it also investigates the murky world of Presidential pardons,
the last imperial power of the Executive branch. It's a sordid tale of abuse of
privilege, the mob's best friend and perhaps it is time the American people
reconsider the entire notion.
The
mob wasn't finished with Factor. Right after his pardon, Factor was involved in
a vague, questionable financial plot to try and bail teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa
out of his seemingly endless financial problems in Florida real estate. He was
also involved with a questionable stock transaction with mobster Murray
Humpreys. Factor spent the remaining twenty years of his life as a benefactor
to California's Black ghettos. He tried, truly, to make amends for all of the
suffering he had caused in his life. He spent millions of dollars building
churches, gyms, parks and low cost housing in the poverty stricken ghettos.
When he died, three United States Senators, the Mayor of Los Angles and several
hundred poor Black waited in the rain to pay their last respects at Jake the
Barber's funeral.
Interesting
Information on A Little Known Case
By Bill Emblom
Author John Tuohy, who has a
similar spelling of the last name to his subject Roger, but apparently no
relation, has provided us with an interesting story of northwest Chicago beer
baron Roger Touhy who was in competition with Al Capone during Capone's heyday.
Touhy appeared to be winning the battle since Mayor Anton Cermak was deporting
a number of Capone's cronies. However, the mob hit, according to the author, on
Mayor Cermak in Miami, Florida, by Giuseppe Zangara following a speech by
President-elect Roosevelt, put an end to the harrassment of Capone's cronies.
The author details the staged "kidnapping" of Jake "the
Barber" Factor who did this to avoid being deported to England and facing
a prison sentence there for stock swindling, with Touhy having his rights
violated and sent to prison for 25 years for the kidnapping that never
happened. Factor and other Chicago mobsters were making a lot of money with the
Stardust Casino in Las Vegas when they got word that Touhy was to be parolled
and planned to write his life story. The mob, not wanting this, decided Touhy
had to be eliminated. Touhy was murdered by hit men in 1959, 28 days after
gaining his freedom. Jake Factor had also spent time in prison in the United
States for a whiskey swindle involving 300 victims in 12 states. Two days
before Factor was to be deported to England to face prison for the stock
swindle President Kennedy granted Factor a full Presidential Pardon after Factor's
contribution to the Bay of Pigs fund. President Kennedy, the author notes,
issued 472 pardons (about half questionable) more than any president before or
since.
There are a number of books on
Capone and the Chicago mob. This book takes a look at an overlooked beer baron
from that time period, Roger Touhy. It is a very worthwhile read and one that
will hold your interest.
GREAT
BOOK FROM CHICAGO AND ERA WAS MY DAD'S,TRUE TO STORY
Very good book. Hard to put down
Bymistakesweremadeon
Eight long years locked up for a
kidnapping that was in fact a hoax, in autumn 1942, Roger Touhy & his gang
of cons busted out of Stateville, the infamous "roundhouse" prison,
southwest of Chicago Illinois. On the lam 2 months he was, when J Edgar &
his agents sniffed him out in a run down 6-flat tenement on the city's far
north lakefront. "Terrible Roger" had celebrated Christmas morning on
the outside - just like all square Johns & Janes - but by New Year's Eve,
was back in the bighouse.
Touhy's arrest hideout holds special
interest to me because I grew up less than a mile away from it. Though I never
knew so til 1975 when his bio was included in hard-boiled crime chronicler Jay
Robert Nash's, Badmen & Bloodletters, a phone book sized encyclopedia of
crooks & killers. Touhy's hard scrabble charisma stood out among 200 years'
worth of sociopathic Americana Nash had alphabetized, and gotten a pulphouse
publisher to print up for him.
I read Nash's outlaw dictionary
as a teen, and found Touhy's Prohibition era David vs Goliath battles with
ultimate gangster kingpin, Al Capone quite alluring, in an anti-hero sorta way.
Years later I learned Touhy had written a memoir, and reading his The Stolen
Years only reinforced my image of an underdog speakeasy beer baron - slash
suburban family man - outwitting the stone cold killer who masterminded the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
Like most autobiographies tho,
Touhy's book painted him the good guy. Just an everyday gent caught up in
events, and he sold his story well. Had I been a saloonkeeper back then I could
picture myself buying his sales pitch - and liking the guy too. I sure bought
into his tale, which in hindsight criminal scribe Nash had too, because both
writers portray Touhy - though admittedly a crook - as never "really"
hurting anybody. Only doing what any down-to-earth bootlegger running a million
dollar/year criminal enterprise would have.
What Capone's Mob Murdered Roger
Touhy author John Tuohy does tho is, provide a more objective version of
events, balancing out Touhy's white wash ... 'er ... make that subjectively ...
remembered telling of his life & times. Author Tuohy's account of gangster
Touhy's account forced me - grown up now - to re-account for my own original
take on the story.
As a kid back then, Touhy seemed
almost a Robin Hood- ish hood - if you'll pardon a very lame pun. Forty years
on tho re-considering the evidence, I think a persuasive - if not iron-clad
convincing - case can be made for his conviction in the kidnapping of swindler
scumbag Jake the Barber Factor. At least as far as conspiracy to do so goes,
anyways. (Please excuse the crude redundancy there but Factor's stench truly
was that of the dog s*** one steps in on those unfortunate occasions one does.)
Touhy's memoir painted himself as
almost an innocent bystander at his own life's events. But he was a very smart
& savvy guy - no dummy by a long shot. And I kinda do believe now, to not
have known his own henchmen were in on Factor's ploy to stave off deportation
and imprisonment, Touhy would have had to be as naive a Prohibition crime boss
- and make no mistake he was one - as I was as a teenage kid reading Nash's
thug-opedia,
On the other hand, the guy was
the father of two sons and it's repulsive to consider he would have taken part
in loathsomeness the crime of kidnapping was - even if the abducted victim was
an adult and as repulsively loathsome as widows & orphans conman, Jake
Factor.
This book's target audience is
crime buffs no doubt, but it's an interesting read just the same; and includes
anecdotes and insights I had not known of before. Unfortunately too, one that
knocks a hero of mine down a peg or two - or more like ten.
Circa 1960, President Kennedy
pardoned Jake the Barber, a fact that reading of almost made me puke. Then
again JFK and the Chicago Mob did make for some strange bedfellowery every now
& again. I'll always admire WWII US Navy commander Kennedy's astonishing
(word chosen carefully) bravery following his PT boat's sinking, but him
signing that document - effectively wiping Factor's s*** stain clean - as
payback for campaign contributions Factor made to him, was REALLY nauseating to
read.
Come to think of it tho, the
terms "criminal douchedog" & "any political candidate"
are pretty much interchangeable.
Anyways tho ... rest in peace
Rog, & I raise a toast - of virtual bootleg ale - in your honor:
"Turns out you weren't the hard-luck mug I'd thought you were, but what
the hell, at least you had style." And guts to meet your inevitable end
with more grace than a gangster should.
Post Note: Author Tuohy's
re-examination of the evidence in the Roger Touhy case does include some heroes
- guys & women - who attempted to find the truth of what did happen.
Reading about people like that IS rewarding. They showed true courage - and
decency - in a world reeking of corruption & deceit. So, here's to the
lawyer who took on a lost cause; the private detective who dug up buried facts;
and most of all, Touhy's wife & sister who stood by his side all those
years.
Crime
don't pay, kids
Very good organized crime book. A
rather obscure gangster story which makes it fresh to read. I do not like these
minimum word requirements for a review. (There, I have met my minimum)
Chicago
Gangster History At It's Best
ByJ. CROSBYon
As a 4th generation Chicagoan, I
just loved this book. Growing up in the 1950's and 60's I heard the name
"Terrible Touhy's" mentioned many times. Roger was thought of as a
great man, and seems to have been held in high esteem among the old timer
Chicagoans.
That said, I thought this book to
be nothing but interesting and well written. (It inspired me to find a copy of
Roger's "Stolen Years" bio.) I do recommend this book to other folks
interested in prohibition/depression era Chicago crime research. It is a must
have for your library of Gangsters literature from that era. Chock full of
information and the reader is transported back in time.
I'd like to know just what is
"The Valley" area today in Chicago. I still live in the Windy City
and would like to see if anything remains from the early days of the 20th
century.
A good writer and a good book! I
will buy some more of Mr. Tuohy's work.
Great
story, great read
ByBookreaderon
A complex tale of gangsters,
political kickback, mob wars and corrupt politicians told with wit and humor at
a good pace. Highly recommend this book.
One
of the best books I've read in a long time....
If you're into mafioso, read
this! I loved it. Bought a copy for my brother to read for his
birthday--good stuff.
BY COLIN BURROW
The traditional view of
Shakespeare is that he was a natural genius who had no need of art or reading.
That tradition grew from origins which should make us suspect it. Shakespeare’s
contemporary Ben Jonson famously declared that Shakespeare had ‘small Latin and
less Greek’. (Although what he actually wrote, ‘Though thou hadst small Latin
and less Greek’, could be interpreted as a counterfactual statement—‘even if it
were the case that you had’—rather than a simple statement of truth.) John
Milton called Shakespeare ‘fancy’s child’, who would ‘warble his native
woodnotes wild’. Both of these writers wanted to be thought of as classically
learned, and both of them were effectively inventing Shakespeare as their own
opposite. Neither gives simply reliable testimony about the historical
Shakespeare.
Shakespeare read widely in the
vernacular. Almost all of the big, fashionable books which were printed during
his working career—John Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays, Thomas
North’s translation of Plutarch, and Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles—are major
sources for his plays. But he was also extremely well read by present-day
standards in classical literature. We can be pretty sure he attended Stratford
grammar school, where Latin literature was the main subject of study. At school
and after he read a great deal of Ovid—who informs both the gruesomeness of
Titus Andronicus (1593-4), the playfulness of Venus and Adonis (1593), and the
seriousness of the later plays Cymbeline (1609-10) and The Tempest (1611-12).
There is good evidence that he read and learned from Latin handbooks of
rhetorical theory. His works also display knowledge of several tragedies by
Seneca, and at least the first half of Virgil’s Aeneid. If you compared his
knowledge of Latin literature with that of a recent classics graduate today,
the chances are that Shakespeare would win the contest.
Why then was Shakespeare not
regarded as a learned writer by his contemporaries? There are two main reasons.
The first is that he did not have a university degree. Other writers from the
Elizabethan period who did have degrees—or who, like Jonson, wanted to appear
as though they did—often made a great show of their learning: they might quote
in Latin, or make their readers know that they were using recent editions of
classical texts. They also had a significant cultural investment in
representing provincial grammar school boys as unlearned. So Shakespeare has
been traditionally regarded as unlearned for one simple reason: cultural
snobbery.
The second main reason why the
extent of Shakespeare’s classical reading was not fully appreciated until the
twentieth century is that he chose to display the learning that he had in very
distinctive ways. Before around 1600 he could sometimes allude to classical
texts onstage in a deliberately clumsy or archaic style. So in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream the play of Pyramus and Thisbe is a retelling of a story from
Ovid’s Metamorphoses. But instead of artfully displaying his knowledge of that
classical text Shakespeare has a group of rustics enact it in a deliberately
topsy-turvy low style. In Hamlet the player recites a speech about the death of
Priam and the grief of Hecuba, which is based on Book 2 of Virgil’s Aeneid.
This is composed in an almost excessively ‘high’ style, with antiquated diction
and heavy alliteration. In those two works Shakespeare seems to be exaggerating
the distance between his own dramas and the classical past, and to be
underplaying his intimacy with the classics.
But Shakespeare’s classical
learning also went unappreciated for so long for a further reason. He tended to
learn from what he read rather than simply echoing it. This means that the
traditional method of identifying ‘sources’ and ‘borrowings’ by looking for
precise verbal parallels is a very unreliable means of determining which texts
mattered to Shakespeare. Classical comedy, for instance, clearly influenced how
Shakespeare constructed plots and how he thought about the human imagination,
even if there are not many direct allusions to specific lines by Plautus and
Terence in his plays. The early work The Comedy of Errors (1592-3) does draw
very directly on a play about twins and confusion called the Menaechmi by
Plautus. It doubles up Plautus’s sets of twins in order to multiply the comic
confusions, but it also complicates Plautus in other ways. The Menaechmi was
principally concerned with material losses and confusions, but Shakespeare made
from it a play in which people become confused about who they are and what they
know. A few years later in Twelfth Night (1599-1600) questions about the
psychology of love and identity become such pronounced elements in the play
that the material confusions of Plautus seem to have been left far
behind—although at least one of Shakespeare’s early audience, John Manningham
of the Inner Temple, did record in his diary that the play was ‘much like the
comedy of errors, or Menaechmi in Plautus’.
In his later tragedies and
comedies of love Shakespeare continued to address a series of questions which
had been provoked by his reading of Plautus: ‘who am I?’, ‘what do I know?’,
‘am I part of an illusion?’. Those questions are explored in Troilus and
Cressida (1601-2), and take on a tragic dimension with the delusions of Othello
(1604-5). They are central to his depiction, throughout his career, of human
beings as subject to illusion, imagination, and desire. And those questions
Shakespeare was first prompted to ask by his reading in classical comedy.
There is, though, a curious
irony here. It was Shakespeare’s ability to see beneath his source material,
extract principles from it, and transform those principles that made him a great
writer. But his ability to conceal and transform his reading had a secondary
consequence: it made generations of readers fail to appreciate quite how
learned Shakespeare actually was.
Colin Burrow is the author of
Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (OUP, 2013) and the editor of The Complete
Sonnets and Poems (OUP, 2002).
All
major religious traditions carry basically the same message that is love,
compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our
daily lives. Dalai Lama
There
is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They
speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of
overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. Washington
Irving
Love
begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home. Mother Teresa
Love
recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to
arrive at its destination full of hope. Maya Angelou
The
most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.Theodore
Hesburgh
I
love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your
church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. Khalil
Gibran
If
you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love. Maya Angelou
You
can't blame gravity for falling in love. Albert Einstein
It's Not All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the books contents
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what
From the Author
I spent my childhood, from age seven through seventeen, in foster care. Over the course of those ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and concerned people told me, "It's okay to be foster kid."
In saying that, those very good people meant to encourage me, and I appreciated their kindness then, and all these many decades later, I still appreciate their good intentions. But as I was tossed around the foster care system, it began to dawn on me that they were wrong. It was not all right to be a foster kid.
During my time in the system, I was bounced every eighteen months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a boy's school and to a group home before I left on my own accord at age seventeen.
In the course of my stay in foster care, I was severely beaten in two homes by my "care givers" and separated from my four siblings who were also in care, sometimes only blocks away from where I was living.
I left the system rather than to wait to age out, although the effects of leaving the system without any family, means, or safety net of any kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived in poverty for the first part of my life, dropped out of high school, and had continuous problems with the law.
Today, almost nothing about foster care has changed. Exactly what happened to me is happening to some other child, somewhere in America, right now. The system, corrupt, bloated, and inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.
Something has gone wrong in a system that was originally a compassionate social policy built to improve lives but is now a definitive cause in ruining lives. Due to gross negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what the foster care system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care has become our epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have lived through it.
Yet there is a suspicion among some Americans that foster care costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and is at odds with a satisfying life. Others see foster care as a part of the welfare system, as legal plunder of the public treasuries.
None of that is true; in fact, all that sort of thinking does is to blame the victims. There is not a single child in the system who wants to be there or asked to be there. Foster kids are in foster care because they had nowhere else to go. It's that simple. And believe me, if those kids could get out of the system and be reunited with their parents and lead normal, healthy lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of legal plunder of the public treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are doing the plundering.
We need to end this needless suffering. We need to end it because it is morally and ethically wrong and because the generations to come will not judge us on the might of our armed forces or our technological advancements or on our fabulous wealth.
Rather, they will judge us, I am certain, on our compassion for those who are friendless, on our decency to those who have nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to make our nation and our world a better place. And if we cannot accomplish those things in the short time allotted to us, then let them say of us "at least they tried."
You can change the tragedy of foster care and here's how to do it. We have created this book so that almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to the world. You have the power to improve the lives of those in our society who are least able to defend themselves. All you need is the will to do it.
If the American people, as good, decent and generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster care, in their name and with their money, they would stop it. But, generally speaking, although the public has a vague notion that foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete picture. They are not aware of the human, economic and social cost that the mismanagement of the foster care system puts on our nation.
By tweeting the facts laid out in this work, you can help to change all of that. You can make a difference. You can change things for the better.
We can always change the future for a foster kid; to make it better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up (or tweet out) because it's your country. Don't depend on the "The other guy" to speak up for these kids, because you are the other guy.
We cannot build a future for foster children, but we can build foster children for the future and the time to start that change is today.
WHY I’M BOYCOTTING CENTRAL PARK
AND WHY YOU SHOULD AVOID IT TOO
So my wife and I are regular visitors to New
York City, one of the finest places on earth, truly it is. And we were enjoying
ourselves tremendously until we walked into Central Park. The second we reached
the edge of the sidewalk outside the park we were assaulted hyper-aggressive hawkers
and pamphleteers who followed us into the park
One clown, from Russia I suspect,
tried to sell me a map of the park for ten dollars, the same map they were
giving away free in a Kiosk ten feet away.
I told him to give me ten dollars
or I would beat him up.
He was outraged, at first, that I
was robbing him.
“You’re going to rob me right
here on a public street?”
“Yeah, why not” I said “You were
going to rob me”
He gave me three dollars and I
left him alone.
We were dogged every inch of our
way by foul mouth drive by pedicabs….. A Pedicab is, basically, a rickshaw and
by all reports they are filthy and unhealthy to sit in……asking us if we wanted to
pay $3.00 A MINUTE to ride through the most walkable park in the world. When we
said no, and we said no over twenty five times in one hour, we were called “Cheap
ass white mother fuckers” and other things.
They blocked our path and the
path of other pedestrian who made the mistake of entering the park. At an exit on to the street, about fifty
pedicabs created an obstacle course that forces park goers through a gamut of
leering, foul mouth hoodlums. As we
walked through the narrow line of Pedicabs, just in front of a family with four
small children, the topic of conversation between the Pedicabs concerning “Bang’s
the ass off that fat ass white bitch”
They drive between couples and
families interrupting peaceful conversations offering tours yet said one New
Yorker public official “They don’t know the first thing about the park or its
history. Some of them don’t even know its Central Park and very few of them
speak English”
Nice huh? They are, as the New
York Times as pegged them, an urban pest but they are more than that they are
racist terrorist to tourist.
They’re obnoxious, dangerous,
overpriced and threatening and the city is flooded with complaints from tourist
but yet according to The Post, as of May 2015, the police haven’t issued a
single ticket against a Pedicab driver.
New York City Police Commissioner
Bill Bratton said says he can’t put more police pressure on the Pedicabs because
of the odd mix of laws that protect the Pedicab drivers and not the tourist or
visitors to the park.
“It’s New York,” Bratton said. “A
good example of that is these characters in those pedicabs. I took a good look
at that because they drive me crazy. You could have not designed a more
complex, more unworkable set of laws and rules and regulations than this city
has managed to create around that issue.
“I spent three hours with the
city’s top attorney on this stuff and I came out of it totally confused. So how
would you expect a cop in the field that doesn’t have the hours to sit there
and ask questions to go out and enforce this Byzantine system of laws that we
have?”
The stories of these scum bags
over charging tourist are legendary, with the favorite being the “add on fee”
charged at the end of the ride because the driver wasn’t happy with the price
he charged to get his victim into cab in the first place.
They have the stench of a hustler
all over them, the same smell that most people outside of New York wrongfully
assume is the natural odor of the city overall.
They are not regulated, and let’s
face it, their third world hustlers who scuff at regulations would anyway so
don’t regulate them; ban them out of existence.
There are actually Pedicab
defenders, of sorts, who bemoan what they assume are the horrid working
conditions for the thugs driving the Pedicabs. What they fail to understand
that is poor working conditions does not allow these punks peddling the bikes to
terrorize the tourist who are peddling a couple of hundred million dollars a
year into the city’s economy.
Pedicabs are New York’s New
Windshield creeps of the new millennium. I’m told these creatures aren’t around
town in the winter but we’re not fazed by that. We’re still going to boycott
the park until the park authority and the city does something about these
leaches.
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..
Ruly \ROO-lee\ obedient, orderly. Ruly and unruly are of the same 15th-century
vintage, but the former never caught on the wayunruly did. The more common
unruly is also the older of the pair: ruly was formed by a process called
"back-formation" fromunruly. Ultimately, both words come from reuly,
a Middle English word meaning "disciplined." Reuly in turn comes from
Middle English reule, a predecessor of rule.
Entrapreneur (in-truh-pruh-NUHR, -NOOR, -NYOOR) An employee who works as an entrepreneur within an established company, having the freedom to take risks and act independently. A blend of intra- (within) + entrepreneur, from French entreprendre (to undertake), from Latin inter- (between) + prendere (to take). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ghend-/ghed- (to seize or to take), which also gave us pry, prey, spree, reprise, surprise, osprey, prison, impregnable, impresa,pernancy, and prise.
Nebula \NEB-yuh-luh\ any of numerous clouds of gas or dust in interstellar space 2: any of the very large groups of stars and associated matter that are found throughout the universe; especially: a galaxy other than the Milky Way galaxy — not used technically The word traces back to the Latin word (spelled the same way as our modern term) for "mist" or "cloud." In its earliest English uses in the 1600s, nebula referred to a cloudy speck or film on the eye that caused vision problems. It was first applied to great interstellar clouds of gas and dust in the early 1700s. The adjective nebulous comes from the same Latin root as nebula, but the first uses of nebulous in the astronomical sense don't appear in English until the late 1700s, well after the discovery of interstellar nebulae.
The Observation and Appreciation of Architecture
The
future is round: why modern architecture turned doughnut-shaped
From GCHQ to the Apple campus,
huge disc-like buildings are popping up around the world. As artist Simon Denny
warns, they betray a world with no corners in which to hide
Steven Rose
“Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want
to step out of it,” Buckminster Fuller once said. Unfortunately, the public
thought the same when the architect tried to flog them his circular houses. But
if we’re not living in circles in the 21st-century, we’re increasingly finding
ourselves working in them. The circle is emerging as a key modern form for
office buildings and a way of organising people. Stepping out of them may no
longer even be an option.
Three sculptures in a new show at
the Serpentine Gallery bring this looping train of thought to mind. They’re not
really sculptures, more architectural models of the headquarters of three
institutions: the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham,
funky online retailer Zappos in Las Vegas, and Apple’s new campus, currently
under construction in California. Each model has been tipped on its side, to
accentuate the fact they are all circular.
This is more than just a
coincidence. The models are by Simon Denny, a New Zealand artist who tackles
the culture, impact and jargon of new technology. Previously, he’s made works
that honour the tech maverick Kim Dotcom and mock the garish graphics of the
National Security Agency’s (NSA) internal communications, as revealed by the
Snowden leaks.
Now, Denny is scrutinising how
similar hacking culture is to “contemporary radical management practices”.
Chief among them is “holacracy”, or rather, Holacracy® – a public idea that’s
also a privately owned concept, which is about right for this strange new
world.
For those not up on their radical
management slang, Holacracy is a “complete system for self-organisation” that
replaces traditional hierarchies with a supposedly more efficient system of
autonomous teams of employees called “circles”. “More like a city and less like
a top-down bureaucratic organisation,” is how Zappos chief Tony Hsieh put it
earlier this year. (Though he’s still the boss, so it’s not entirely
un-hierarchical.)
Zappos, now owned by Amazon, is
the biggest company so far to adopt Holacracy. It abolished all job titles and
managers in late 2014, just as it moved into its new HQ, formerly Las Vegas
City Hall. Zappos is the epitome of the trendy tech startup made good. Its
motto is “deliver WOW through service”. It talks of its workforce in terms of
“community” and “family”. And its circular campus is like a management diagram
writ large.
Over at Apple, it’s a similar
story. Their new campus, designed by Norman Foster and due to finish next year,
is an elevated, four-storey, minimalist ring, utterly of a piece with Apple’s
sleek products. Apple has not explicitly adopted Holacracy, but its
innovation-seeking methodology has much in common with it. “The concept of the
building is collaboration and fluidity,” an Apple exec told local planners. “We
wanted this to be a walkable building – that’s why we eventually settled on a
circle.”
Against all expectations, GCHQ is
alsoflirting with Holacracy. It even won a business award last year for
“creating the right environment for innovation and collaboration” (even if the
creators themselves could not be identified). Former hackers as well as
government suits roam the curved corridors of “the Doughnut”, as GCHQ’s base is
known. This is not unusual, shows Denny. Big organisations are increasingly
adopting the techniques of hackers, such as “hackathons”, where employees are encouraged
to be playful, creative, even subversive. “Today, commercial organisations and
hacking groups deploy a mixture of top-down and bottom-up techniques: a tension
designed to enable directed, effective activity and also maintain the messiness
necessary for the next thing to emerge,” he says.
Top-down and grassroots, private
and public, secrecy and transparency, democratic freedom and Orwellian control
– Denny’s work warns us that the boundaries are no longer visible.
All of this might sound eerily
familiar to readers of Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel The Circle. The story takes
place at a fictional boundary-pushing West Coast social media outfit – a walled
garden of cutting-edge tech, employee benefits and great parties. But those
high principles of “transparency” and “openness” start to get sinister, to the
point where workers are endorsing Animal Farm-style slogans such as “privacy is
theft” and “secrets are lies”. Eggers never really describes the architecture
of The Circle, only hinting at “brushed steel and glass” and a vast, rambling
campus where “the smallest detail had been carefully considered”.
Architecture has always reflected
its creators’ power structures, though for most of western history it’s taken a
more classical form. See Giuseppe Terragni’s rigorously ordered 1930s Casa Del
Fascio, commissioned by Mussolini as the National Fascist Party headquarters –
a perfect half-cube. Or Terry Farrell’s monolithic MI6 building in London (the
one James Bond’s enemies seem to love blowing up). But Dutch architect Rem
Koolhaas was one of the first to apply this new circular logic – to the HQ of
CCTV, the Chinese state broadcaster. Rather than a skyscraper, he folded the
building back in on itself to create a gigantic loop, in the name of
operational efficiency.
That’s not to say that all
circular buildings represent some emergent 21st-century order. It is
interesting, though, that past precedents have usually been buildings designed
for spectatorship: sports stadiums or, more resonantly, panopticon prisons, where
inmates’ cells are arranged in a ring so they’re visible to guards in a central
observation tower. Take away that tower and you have the Apple campus.
“Art does not reproduce the
visible; rather, it makes visible,” Paul Klee once said. For many artists today,
surveillance has become central to that mission. As well as Denny you could
include those who are turning surveillance infrastructure against itself, such
as Jill Magid, who co-opted Liverpool’s citywide CCTV network for her art, and
James Coupe, whose video installation Swarm used surveillance algorithms to
“profile” gallery visitors, then composite them into demographically similar
groups. Or Mishka Henner, who creates aerial images of sites like US military
bases using Google Earth.
But perhaps the leader in this
field is Trevor Paglen, best known for his ultra-long-range pictures of
“secret” US military sites (as featured in Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden
documentary Citizenfour). Paglen has also shot spy satellites in the night sky,
projected absurd NSA and GCHQ codenames on public buildings, and photographed
idyllic locations, including a deserted Long Island beach, that conceal major
internet and surveillance infrastructure. “I try to learn how to change my own
vision,” he says, “so that when I walk around every day, I can see the fact
that this is happening – because these are often abstract things – then try to
show people how to see them.”
Paglen also made a short film on
a surveillance flight around GCHQ’s “Doughnut”, which played before Citizenfour
in cinemas last year. Its name – what else? – is Circles.
THE ART OF PULP
With
chapter and verse, writer-in-residence helps students find their poetic voice
Janene Holzberg
For The Baltimore Sun
A photo of an unidentified
musician enthusiastically playing the drums — his head thrown back and eyes
squeezed shut — was all the inspiration Garrett Krakat needed.
Laura Shovan, an Ellicott City
poet and teacher, was visiting River Hill High School last week as the 24th
writer-in-residence for the Howard County Poetry & Literature Society and
had handed out one-of-a-kind portrait postcards to two English classes.
Displaying a sample postcard
depicting a jowly man with a frighteningly intense gaze, Shovan first urged
each of the 10th- and 12-grade students to explore senses other than sight to
concoct a fictional back story as the basis for a poem.
"Is this man a
professor?" she asked, to get imaginations whirring. "Can you hear
him grinding his teeth? Is he a smoker, and can you smell his tobacco?"
After listening to Shovan's
sample scenarios, Krakat went to work and soon came to the front of the media
center to read aloud his first-person verse about the performer on his
postcard.
"The song is caught in the
clouds of smoke. No one hears the notes but only my mind and soul," he
recited, swiftly conjuring up the image — and aroma — of a cigarette
smoke-filled nightclub filled with unappreciative, distracted guests.
"Way to represent,"
English teacher Diane Curry said to the 10th-grader.
Shovan, who has taught for the
Maryland State Arts Council since 2002 and has a novel-in-verse scheduled for
April publication, said later she was impressed by the insight and talent
demonstrated by River Hill students during her hourlong workshop.
"It's hard to ask people to
write on the spot like that, yet doing that gets them out of the feeling of
needing to wait for inspiration," she said, noting that most students are
hesitant to try their hand at poetry, much less share it with others.
"It's responding to the right-now and seeing what that means."
Using vintage postcards as
prompts is proving to be a hit, but Shovan said she has also used paint chips
and sound clips as points of entry into writing.
"It's important to look at
writing like any other skill and to put the focus on practice instead of
polish," she said of writing regularly to improve technique and build
confidence. "It's about creating a new habit that stretches you."
HoCoPoLitSo, as the 41-year-old
nonprofit is known, has been arranging writer-in-residence visits since 1980,
with the aim of exposing students to professional writers of all kinds. Writers
also visit Howard Community College and the Homewood Center, site of the
county's alternative-learning high school.
Participating authors have run
the gamut from fiction writers and poets to journalists and memoir writers,
said Susan Thornton Hobby, a HoCoPoLitSo consultant.
"What all of these writers
have in common is a love of words, and the capability to spark and fan the
flame of conversation about literature in English classes and poetry
clubs," she said.
All but three of the county's 13
high schools have set dates for Shovan to visit, and those three are expected
to come on board soon, said Nancy Czarnecki, coordinator of secondary language
arts for the public school system.
"I've been on the receiving
end of writer-in-residence visits, and I've seen firsthand the authors'
enthusiasm and passion for what they do," said the former English teacher,
who most recently taught at Marriotts Ridge High School.
Visiting poets "teach the
kids to play with language and show them that writing doesn't have to be so
serious and heavy-handed," she said. "I've seen kids who weren't at
all interested in poetry get really excited about it, and that's an amazing
thing."
After applause subsided for the
poems shared by Krakat and senior Brianna Mentle, English teacher Kristin
Mitchell announced she would award extra credit to her 12th-grade students who
finish writing their postcard poems and turn them in — and that grabbed students'
attention.
"To many of them, poetry
seems so esoteric, but Laura's poetry is very accessible," Mitchell said
later. "This workshop presents a time when students are not worrying about
learning for learning's sake, and they can just enjoy the experience."
Shovan said after the workshop
that she hopes to start a public reading series in Howard County during her
one-year residency with HoCoPoLitSo, something hinted at in her introduction to
the students by the nonprofit's high school liaison, Kathleen Hurwitz.
"It's important to write and
share poetry together," Hurwitz, a retired English teacher, told the
students. "When you share together, you value the thoughts and ideas of
your peers, and you value your own voice."
Shovan said Howard County is the
only jurisdiction among Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Baltimore and
Montgomery counties that doesn't have a regular reading series — which she
defined as an informal open-microphone night where everyone who signs in gets
to read.
"We really need [a series]
because right now there's a big hole here," said Shovan, who hopes to get
a series underway by March after locating a venue and applying for grant money.
She said she plans to dedicate some nights to student-authors.
"The first couple times
reading aloud can really be anxiety-inducing," she said, even in the
casual setting she envisions. "But when you go back and do it month after
month, that all begins to change."
As Shovan's River Hill visit drew
to a close, sophomore Lena Jackson said her main take-away was that
"poetry isn't just expression; it's painting a picture. The depth of the
writing can even make you taste and hear beyond what it makes you feel."
Asha Kunchakarra, also a
10th-grader, said she believes the observation techniques Shovan taught them
were not only interesting ways to approach writing, but "will help me out
later in life."
Shovan said the intent of the
writing workshops is to prove to students that others want to hear what they
have to say, and that's powerful knowledge to have as they prepare to face new
academic and life challenges.
"We're all afraid of
exposing our true selves by writing a poem," Shovan said. "But
something special happens when you take the parameters off."
Long-lost Faulkner play published for the
first time
By Hillel Italie
NEW YORK — “’Twixt Cup and Lip,”
written soon after World War I and being published for the first time, is a
one-act comedy in which a modern, free-thinking woman finds herself courted by
two men and changes her mind at the last moment.
Compared to other plays from the
1920s, “’Twixt Cup and Lip” was not uncommon with its matter-of-fact references
to sex and drinking and the characters’ unending cigarettes. Even now,
audiences might laugh at such lines as “Marriage is stylish again you know” and
“I thought all men papered their room with actresses and fat girls in bathing
suits.”
But the name of the playwright is
the real attraction: William Faulkner.
Written when the future Nobel
laureate was in his early 20s, “’Twixt Cup and Lip” was discovered in the University
of Virginia archives by The Strand Magazine managing editor Andrew Gulli, who
over the past few years has also tracked down long-lost and obscure works by F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and many others. The play appears
in the Strand’s holiday issue, which went on sale Friday.
“Faulkner wrote this at a time of
great change in society especially for women,” Gulli told The Associated Press
recently.
“This work is unique in that it
showed a side of Faulkner that was comical yet that at the same time explored
the nascent theme of the independent jazz era female which F. Scott Fitzgerald
and Dorothy Parker carried on further.”
Faulkner, who died in 1962, is an
acknowledged giant of American fiction, but in his early years was more likely
to write plays and poetry. Christopher Rieger, director of the Center for
Faulkner Studies at Southeast Missouri State University, believes “’Twixt Cup
and Lip” was written in the early 1920s, when Faulkner was part of a theater
group at the University of Mississippi.
The play’s title is lifted from
an old English expression “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip,”
meaning a seemingly settled event can still unravel. But readers will find
nothing suggesting the tragic vision and anguish about the Southern past that
made “Absalom, Absalom,” ‘’The Sound and the Fury” and other Faulkner novels
some of the most influential and haunting works of the 20th century. “He’s
showing a knack for comedy and a knack for dialogue, too,” says Rieger, noting
that years later Faulkner worked on Hollywood screenplays. “You’re not seeing
the trademarks from his more famous works, although the techniques he’s
perfecting here would serve him well.”
Around the time he wrote “’Twixt
Cup and Lip,” Faulkner also worked on the one-act “The Marionettes,” a romance
based on Faulkner and his high school girlfriend (and future wife) Estelle
Oldham. Rieger says “’Twixt Cup and Lip” also may be drawn from Faulkner’s
relationship with Oldham.
“Not long before he worked on
those plays, Estelle had caved to her parents’ pressure and married another
man,” Rieger said. “Faulkner may have had some resentment that she didn’t stand
up for them and used the play as a kind of wish fulfillment — imagining her as
more independent.”
GREAT WRITING
Through the deep silence of the
deserted avenue, the carts made their way towards Paris, the rhythmic jolting
of the wheels echoing against the fronts of the sleeping houses on both sides
of the road, behind the dim shapes of elms. A cart full of cabbages and another
full of peas had joined up at the Pont de Neuilly with the eight carts carrying
carrots and turnips from Nanterre; the horses plodded along of their own
accord, their heads down as they moved forward at a steady but lazy pace, which
the upward slope reduced still further. The wagoners, lying flat on their
stomachs on beds of vegetables, were dozing with the reins in their hands and
their greatcoats, in thin black and grey stripes, over their backs. Every now
and then a gas lamp, looming out of the darkness, would illuminate the nails of
a boot, the blue sleeve of a smock, or the peak of a cap, in the midst of this
huge mass of vegetables—bunches of red carrots, bunches of white turnips, and
the rich greenery of peas and cabbages. All along the road, and the neighbouring
roads, in front and behind, the distant rumbling of carts signalled similar
convoys travelling through the night, lulling the dark city with the sound of
food on the move.
Madame François’s horse
Balthazar, a very fat animal, led the procession. He plodded on, half asleep,
flicking his ears, until, reaching the Rue de Longchamp, he gave a start and
came to a sudden halt. The horses behind bumped into the carts in front, and
the procession stopped amid a clanking of metal and the cursing of wagoners
shaken from their sleep. Madame François, sitting with her back against a plank
that kept her vegetables in place, looked round, but could see nothing in the
dim light shed by a small square lantern on her left, which illuminated little
more than one of Balthazar’s gleaming flanks. From The Belly of Paris (Chapter 1 p. 3) by Émile Zola.
MISH MOSH..........................................
Mish Mash:
noun \ˈmish-ˌmash, -ˌmäsh\ A : hodgepodge, jumble
“The
painting was just a mishmash of colors and abstract shapes as far as we could
tell”. Origin Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse
masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps
reduplication of mishn to mix. First Known Use: 15th century
Illustrated grocery list Michelangelo would create for his illiterate servants.
This is what a pug looked like before selective breeding, quite the difference.
Prison in El Salvador
Mercury
DON'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD?
I DO
Glasgow (by Giulia Bellato)
Gold Finials, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Gruyeres, Switzerland
TODAY'S ALLEGED MOB GUY
Benedetto
"Benny" Aloi (October 6, 1935 – April 7, 2011) was a New
York City mobster who became consigliere of the Colombo crime family. Aloi was
a main figure in the famous "Windows Case".Benedetto along with his
brother Vincenzo joined their father Sebastian "Buster" Aloi in the
Profaci crime family. On November 19, 1974, Benedetto Aloi was indicted in
Brooklyn along with 156 other mobsters on perjury charges. He was accused of
lying to a grand jury that what investigating police collusion with an illegal
gambling ring. On June 28, 1984, Aloi was indicted on loansharking charges.
Prosecutors alleged that he was involved with Resource Capital Group a company
in Lake Success, New York, that lent over $1 million in a year and a half at
interest rates of 2 percent or more per week. In May 1990, Aloi was indicted in
the famous "Windows Case" along with other members of four of the New
York crime families. In the Windows case, the crime families used their control
over local construction unions and companies to fix the bid prices offered to
the New York
Housing Authority for thermal pane windows in its housing
projects.
On May 18, 1991, Aloi was convicted of one count of extortion and a
related conspiracy count in the Windows case. Under normal sentencing guidelines,
Aloi might have received a three- to five-year sentence. However, due to his
criminal record, his high rank in the Colombo family, and the high profile of
the case, the judge gave Aloi 16 years and eight months in prison. On March 17,
2009, Aloi was released from a halfway house in the Greater New York area. He
died on April 7, 2011.
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
The Pupil
Donald
Justice
Picture me,the shy pupil at the
door,
One small, tight fist clutching
the dread Czerny.
Back then time was still harmony,
not money,
And I could spend a whole week
practicing for
That moment on the threshold.
Then to take courage,
And enter, and pass among
mysterious scents,
And sit quite straight, and with
a frail confidence
Assault the keyboard with a
childish flourish!
Only to lose my place, or forget
the key,
And almost doubt the very
metronome
(Outside, the traffic, the
laborers going home),
And still to bear on across
Chopin or Brahms,
Stupid and wild with love equally
for the storms
Of C# minor and the calms of C.
Donald Justice (August 12, 1925 –
August 6, 2004) was a poet and teacher of writing. In summing up Justice's
career David Orr wrote, "In most ways, Justice was no different from any
number of solid, quiet older writers devoted to traditional short poems. But he
was different in one important sense: sometimes his poems weren't just good;
they were great. They were great in the way that Elizabeth Bishop's poems were
great, or Thom Gunn's or Philip Larkin's. They were great in the way that tells
us what poetry used to be, and is, and will be."
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE
PHOTOS FROM FILM
Elliott Erwitt
Versailles, 1970,
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS.....................
THE ART OF
WAR...............................
ALBUM ART
DON’T WORRY-BE HAPPY....AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR YOU...................
MUSIC FOR THE SOUL
Charlie Parker, Harry Babasin, Chet Baker and Helen Carr at The Tiffany Club, LA, May 1952 by William Claxton
DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
“Bone Broth” by Eugenia Loli
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
Petticoat Lane Market - Peter Brown
Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905), La Reine Bianca - 1877
AND NOW, A BEATLES BREAK
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A really small company
run by writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The Day
Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND CIVILIZATIONS
The Works
of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS
BOOKS
The
Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children
A Halloween play for young children. By consent of the author,
this play may be performed, at no charge, by educational institutions,
neighborhood organizations and other not-for-profit-organizations.
A fun story with a moral
“I believe that Denny O'Day is an American treasure and this
little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens to be very small, by
pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the pumpkin patch on
Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance to prove that just
because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here is the point that I
found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size doesn't matter when it
comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I think children need to
hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is a ongoing lesson isn't
it?”
Paperback: 42 pages
http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children
BOOKS ABOUT FILM
On the
Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film
Paperback: 416 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/
BOOKS ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL
Scotish
Ghost Stories
Paperback 186 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell
HUMOR BOOKS
The Book
of funny odd and interesting things people say
Paperback: 278 pages
http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people
The Wee
Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook
Perfect
Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises
http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social
BOOKS ABOUT THE 1960s
You Don’t
Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969
Paperback 122 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969
Baby
Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/
Baby
Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s
IRISH- AMERICANA
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/
The Wee
Book of Irish Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/
The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/
The Wee book of Irish Blessings...
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/
The Wee
Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words
http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/
Everything
you need to know about St. Patrick
Paperback 26 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick
A Reading
Book in Ancient Irish History
Paperback 147pages
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History
The Book
of Things Irish
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/
Poets and
Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish
Paperback 158 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/
The
History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated
Paperback 356 pages
http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/
BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/
Wicked
Good New England Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The Twenty-Fifth
Regiment Connecticut Volunteers
Paperback 64 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion
The Life
of James Mars
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut
Stories
of Colonial Connecticut
Paperback 116 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford
What they
Say in Old New England
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/
BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME
Chicago
Organized Crime
Chicago-Mob-Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook
The Mob
Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook
An
Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/
The Mob
Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre
The Life
and World of Al Capone in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone
AL
CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930
edition.Over 200 new photographs
Paperback: 340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs
Whacked.
One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit
Paperback: 172 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/
Las
Vegas Organized Crime
The Mob
in Vegas
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook
Bugsy
& His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/
Testimony
by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files
Series)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook
Rattling
the Cup on Chicago Crime.
Paperback 264 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged
The Life
and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor
The Mob,
Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago
Paperback 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago
When
Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos
Organized
Crime in Hollywood
The Mob in Hollywood
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/
The Bioff
Scandal
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios
Organized
Crime in New York
Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/
Mob
Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/
The New
York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins
The New
York Mob: The Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/
Organized
Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate
http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook
Shooting
the mob: Dutch Schultz
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)
http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City
Paperback 382 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York
THE RUSSIAN MOBS
The
Russian Mafia in America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/
The
Threat of Russian Organzied Crime
Paperback 192 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook
Organized
Crime/General
Best of
Mob Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/
Best of
Mob Stories Part 2
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/
Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook
Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
More Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs
http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook
Shooting
the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/
The
Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/
The
Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill each other"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/
The Mob
across America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/
The US
Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987
http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/
The Mob
Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The Book
of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.
Paperback: 436 pages
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/
The Mob
and the Kennedy Assassination
Paperback 414 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters
BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST
The Last
Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Paperback 152 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself
BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Chicago:
A photographic essay.
Paperback: 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas
STAGE PLAYS
Boomers
on a train: A ten minute play
Paperback 22 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook
Four
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy
Four More
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/
High and
Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve
Cyberdate.
An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/
The
Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of
Gangster Dutch Schultz.
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/
Fishbowling
on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with
Dutch Schultz
Print Length: 57 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/
American
Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook
She
Stoops to Conquer
http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/
The Seven
Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play
Print Length: 14 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/
BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA
OUT OF
CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/
McLean
Virginia. A short informal history
http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/
THE QUOTABLE SERIES
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
The
Quotable John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/
The
Quotable Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/
The
Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/
The
Quotable Henry David Thoreau
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Robert F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook
The words
of Walt Whitman: An American Poet
Paperback: 162 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Popes
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti
The
Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran
Paperback 52 pages
Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet, and writer was born on January
6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in what was then part of Ottoman
Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In 1895, the family immigrated
to the United States when Kahlil was a young man and settled in South Boston.
Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a member of the avant-garde
community and became especially close to Boston artist, photographer, and
publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and supported Gibran’s creative
projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and watercolor, Kahlil attended art
school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style. He
held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's
studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who
ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship and love affair
that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell influenced every aspect of
Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his editor when he began to write
and ushered his first book into publication in 1918, The Madman, a slim volume
of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry
and prose. Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48
from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/
The
Quotable Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
The
Quotable Machiavelli
Paperback 36 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-L-Thayer
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 230 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotabe Oscar Wilde
Paperback 24 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons-words/
The
Quotable Helen Keller
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby
The Art
of War: Sun Tzu
Paperback 60 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Shakespeare
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Shakespeare-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Gorucho Marx
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander
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/
