Hope

Thoughts I’ve jotted down as the year ends.

You have make peace with the past, otherwise that little bugger will never, ever, leave you alone. Never. All it will do is rip into all of your pristine perfect tomorrows and ruin them for you.

Whatever it is that’s haunting you, bothering or making you doubt yourself, give it time. Time, I assure you heals everything.

Smile and laugh. It’s that simple. It’s about happiness and you, and you alone, are responsible for your own happiness.

Don’t over think it and if you can’t come up with the answer, don’t worry about it, its okay not to have every answer all of the time. 

Whatever others think of you is none of your affair. They’re going to hold the same opinions about you whether you care what they think or not, so move along and do something productive.  

Bad companionship takes from your soul and returns nothing. If you can’t find the right companion to travel through this life with, then its better to be alone rather than share the journey with someone who will hinder your progress, your happiness and your peace of mind. 

Make a decision. It may be the right one or the wrong one, you never know, but make one. Life will fit itself around what you have decided to do. Life shifts and possibilities arrive.

Don’t hide from difficulties because you think they will disturb your peace of mind. Rather greet them with peace of mind and bend all difficulties to fit your happiness.

Find peace in prayer and meditation and in turn they will open the door to God, love, light, music and poetry. Don’t avoid prayer and meditation because of the negative connotation given to it by those who seem to practice it. Those who make it look like and effort, who make it look serious and gloomy. Those people have lost the joy, the playfulness and the celebration that there is prayer and meditation. Enjoy prayer and the meditative life, be fun, be happy and let it show in your face and in your words and in your life.

Be kind no matter what. Remember that when you make a decision to live a life of kindness that most people will automatically suspect you of being and of having ulterior motives. That’s okay, let them think whatever they wish because we will know each other by our acts, not our words.

DON’T WORRY-BE HAPPY

       My sister Florence (Seated) dropped by for the Holidays. That's Mary and I in the back.

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

Sculpture this and Sculpture that

Street sculpture on the edge of Patterson Park, Baltimore. The high ground at the northwest corner of Patterson Park, called Hampstead Hill, was the key defensive position for U.S. forces against British ground forces in the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812. On September 13, 1814, the day after the Battle of North Point, some 4,300 British troops advanced toward Baltimore, forcing U.S. troops to retreat to the defensive line in what is now Patterson Park. When the British began probing actions, the American line was defended by 100 cannon and more than 10,000 troops. The American defenses were far stronger than anticipated, and U.S. defenders at Fort McHenry successfully stopped British naval forces from advancing close enough to lend artillery support, and British attempts to flank the defense were countered. Thus, before dawn on September 14, 1814, British commander Colonel Arthur Brooke decided the land campaign was a lost cause, and ordered the retreat back to the ships, and the United States was thus victorious in the Battle of Baltimore.

Elaine Moran, wife of my long time friend Happy Moran 

Enjoyed a wonderful day trip to the town of Gettysburg Pa.with the Moran's

HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................

Down in the Valley

by Anonymous

Down in the valley,

Valley so low,

Hang your head over,

Hear the train blow.

Hear the train blow, love,

Hear the train blow,

Hang your head over,

Hear the train blow.

If you don't love me,

Love whom you please,

But throw your arms round me,

Give my heart ease.

Step right up to me,

Before it's too late.

Throw your arms round me,

Feel my heart break.

I'll write you a letter,

Only three lines:

"Answer my question,

Will you be mine?'

Go build me a castle,

Forty feet high,

So I can see you,

As you pass by.

Roses of sunshine,

Violets of dew,

Angels of heaven

Know I love you.

Bird in a cage, love,

Bird in a cage,

Dying for freedom,

But forever a slave.

Write me a letter,

Write it out plain,

And send it me care of

The Barbourville Jail.

Barbourville Jail, love,

Barbourville Jail,

And send it me care of

The Barbourville Jail.

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.

By Sandra Mendyk

Just read "Short Stories from a Small Town," and couldn't put it down! Like Mr. Tuohy's other books I read, they keep your interest, especially if you're from a small town and can relate to the lives of the people he writes about. I recommend this book for anyone interested in human interest stories. His characters all have a central place where the stories take place--a diner--and come from different walks of life and wrestle with different problems of everyday life. Enjoyable and thoughtful.

I loved how the author wrote about "his people"

By kathee

A touching thoughtful book. I loved how the author wrote about "his people", the people he knew as a child from his town. It is based on sets of time in the local diner, breakfast , lunch and dinner, but time stands still ... Highly recommend !

WONDERFUL book, I loved it!

By John M. Cribbins

What wonderful stories...I just loved this book.... It is great how it is written following, breakfast, lunch, dinner, at a diner. Great characters.... I just loved it....

CYBERDATE

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.                                                                                          

THE BEAT POETS

Beat poetry evolved during the 1940s in both New York City and on the west coast, although San Francisco became the heart of the movement in the early 1950s. The end of World War II left poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso questioning mainstream politics and culture. A Brief Guide to the Beat Poets | Academy of American Poets https://www.poets.org/poetsorg

Art by Beat Poet Charles Bukowski (Who did not consider himself a Beat)

The art and joy of cinematography

Genius in the making: Orson Welles in Ireland

Paul Whitington

This has been the centenary year of Orson Welles' birth, and during 2015 there've been retrospectives, re-releases of his most celebrated films, documentaries, new biographies and endless reassessments of his life and work. But before the year ends I thought it would be nice to explore the great man's relationship with Ireland.

Because although Welles made his name in New York and Hollywood, and later plied his trade around the great cities of Europe, he made his professional acting debut in Dublin, and throughout his life retained a strong connection to this island. He even made a short film here, and one of his Irish theatrical friends popped up in several of his later movies.

It's often been noted that the lonely childhood of Charles Foster Kane echoes that of his creator. Born in Wisconsin in 1915, Orson Welles had lost his doting mother by the age of nine, and his father was dead by the time he was 15. Thereafter he fell under the guardianship of Maurice Bernstein, a Jewish doctor from Chicago who was given the onerous task of trying to control the teenage Orson's conduct and spending.

When Orson left high school at 16 in the summer of 1931, his guardian faced a dilemma. Bernstein wanted to send him to Harvard or some other Ivy League institution that might knock the edges off him and turn him into a substantial citizen, but the wildly precocious Welles had other plans, and was anxious to launch his career as an actor.

An uneasy compromise was reached, and the 16-year-old was sent off to Europe for the summer to complete his cultural education. He left New York aboard the SS Baltic in August of 1931, bound or so he thought on a grand tour of old Europe - but in fact he would spend almost all his time in Ireland.

He disembarked in Galway after four days at sea, and set off on a "painting tour" of the west coast. He hired a cart and a donkey named Sheeog and proceeded in stately fashion through the wilds of Connemara, painting landscapes by day that he described as "hideous abortions" in letters to home, and sleeping out under the stars by a turf fire at night.

He was hugely impressed by our western landscape, and even found time to visit the Aran Islands. Young Orson spent some time on Inisheer, where he was fondly remembered for his enthusiastic dancing, but an account he gave late in his life appears to contradict the popular view of chaste, Catholic, early 20th-century Ireland.

During a series of taped interviews with his friend Henry Jaglom, which were published in book form a couple of years back, Welles claimed that rural Ireland at that time was teeming with "poor virgin ladies waiting to get married" and that when he went to the Aran Islands he was pursued by them so vigorously that he "could hardly draw a breath".

"Those great marvellous girls in their white petticoats, they'd grab me - off the petticoats would go. And with all the husbands out in their skin-covered canoes." One should note at this point that Orson Welles, a peerless after-dinner speaker and storyteller, was prone to embellishments and wild exaggerations in the service of his yarns. And if his account of life on Inisheer sounds suspiciously like refried John Millington Synge, that may not be a coincidence.

Whatever about all that, by the start of October he abandoned his western travels and headed east for Dublin City. On his second night in the capital he attended a performance of the Earl of Longford's play The Melians at the Gate Theatre. Among the cast he spotted a young actor he'd met in the west, and this was pretext enough for Welles to present himself backstage after the performance.

The tall, broad, plumply handsome Orson caught the eye of Hilton Edwards, the Gate's legendary co-founder. Edwards had been looking for an actor charismatic enough to play the key role of Duke Karl Alexander in a forthcoming production of a play called Jew Suss, and now he thought he'd found him.

Welles, who always looked and sounded much older than his years, claimed he was 18 and already an established player in New York. Edwards would later say he didn't believe a word, but nevertheless he hired him on the spot, and young Orson began his first professional rehearsal.

Not everyone at the Gate Theatre was over the moon about Orson's arrival on the scene, most particularly Hilton Edwards' professional and romantic partner, Micheal MacLiammoir. A very interesting character in his own right, MacLiammoir had been born Alfred Willmore in Kensal Green, London, and fell in love with Irish culture when he visited the country in the 1920s.

Though having no connection with Ireland whatsoever, he studied the Irish language until he could write and speak it fluently, changed his name to MacLiammoir and began claiming Cork heritage. A rich southern lift invaded his plummy accent, and his apparent Irish credentials were a great help when he and the very English Hilton Edwards set up the Gate Theatre in 1928. He and Edwards became perhaps Dublin's first openly gay couple, their sexuality quietly acknowledged by the city's residents, who referred to them, affectionately for the most part, as 'the boys'.

Fiercely jealous both of Hilton's attention and of actors who might upstage him, McLiammoir saw the young and dashing Orson as a rival on several fronts. About his lover he need not have worried - Welles was and would always remain enthusiastically heterosexual. But MacLiammoir's other worst fear was confirmed when Welles received a thunderous standing ovation for his performance in Jew Suss on the play's opening night - October 13, 1931.

Welles himself was probably the only one in the house who knew this was his professional début, and the response of the Dublin crowd would stay with him for the rest of his life. "It was thunderous and totally unexpected," he told his biographer Barbara Leaming many years later. "I got more acclaim for that than for anything I've done since!"

In the wings, MacLiammoir fumed, and thereafter, as Welles himself put it, "whenever I was anywhere near the Gate it was one long plot to cut me down".

He appeared in a number of other Gate productions over the next few months, including Hamlet, but his roles from then on were relatively minor, and he would often find bits of scenery mysteriously interposing themselves between him and the audience. He left Ireland again for New York in 1932, but he held fond memories of the Gate in his heart and, remarkably, no ill feeling towards MacLiammoir.

More than anyone he understood the raging insecurities of the performing artist, and when he made a movie version of Othello in the early 1950s it was Micheal MacLiammoir whom he asked to be his Iago. And around that time he returned to Ireland and made a short film with Edwards and MacLiammoir called Return to Glennascaul (1951).

It was filmed in the Phoenix Park and narrated by Welles, who played an American who's driving through the Irish countryside when he picks up a hitch-hiker who tells him a disturbing ghost story. This atmospheric little film was shown for many years in Dublin cinemas before the main feature, and can be found on a DVD release of Welles' Othello.

MacLiammoir also starred in a 1954 TV production Welles did of King Lear, and Orson always credited Hilton Edwards for inspiring him towards the kind of bold and overtly theatrical productions of Shakespeare's plays that would ultimately get him noticed. He owed the Gate - and Ireland - a great deal, and never forgot it.

He returned numerous times, and in 1960 brought his Shakespeare mash-up stage production Chimes at Midnight to The Gaiety Theatre. That show would eventually become Welles' last great film. In later life he would often speak fondly of Ireland, but was less keen on Irish-Americans, whom he referred to as "a new and terrible race".

"Look, I love Ireland," he told Henry Jaglom just a year before his death, "I love Irish literature, I love everything they do, you know. But the Irish-Americans have invented an imitation Ireland which is unspeakable. The wearin' o' the green. Oh my God! To vomit!" Harsh words, but one gets the point.

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

Isidor and Ida Straus, who refused to be separated as the “Titanic” sunk,

TODAY'S ALLEGED MOB GUY

Jerry Angiulo 

Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo (March 20, 1919 – August 29, 2009) was a New England mob boss who rose through the Mafia under Raymond L. S. Patriarca. He was convicted of racketeering in 1986 and was in jail until being released in 2007. One of the Angiulo Brothers, Angiulo was "probably the last very significant Mafia boss in Boston’s history".

DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?

HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!

Kissed Mouth, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM

Francis Wu Portrait of an Old Woman

WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS.....................

KIDS STUFF

At least they tried...............

Our dog Bart tried to bull his way into the Thanksgiving meal again this year by posing as an Eastern European war refugee. It didn't work.

Why God made the day after Thanksgiving. How to make a day after Thanksgiving sandwich.

Get three pieces of Wonder Bread, and it has to be Wonder Bread. You’ll ruin the sandwich if you use healthy glutton free bread or better made bread.

Put Hellmann’s Mayonnaise on one side of two of the slices. Be very careful not to ruin your happiness by using pretend mayonnaise made of anything but eggs that’s supposed to be good for you. There is no happiness in that.

Toss on as much white meat turkey as you can before everybody eats and you’re stuck with dark meat. Put a lot of salt on it. 

Spread cranberry sauce from a can on top of the turkey meat but be sure and tell your wife how much you liked the other cranberry sauce she made for the main meal but don’t use that because it will ruin the sandwich and your happiness.

Take the third piece of bread and drown it in gravy from yesterday’s meal.  Put that on top of the good kind of cranberry sauce.

Spread stuffing on top of the middle piece of bread.

Put the last piece of bread on top of the stuffing and squish tightly.

Eat the hell out of the sandwich. 

Church Stops Clergy from Digging up 'Shakespeare Skull'

CLERGYMEN WANTED CONJECTURE SETTLED ONCE AND FOR ALL

By Neal Colgrass

 Like to size up the cranium that once held the brain behind Macbeth, Hamlet, and roughly 1,500 words we still use today? Well, it's bad news for you—and anyone who believes William Shakespeare's skull is lying under a small village chapel in England, the Birmingham Mailreports. Seems a clergyman at St. Leonard's Church in Beoley, Redditch, asked to have the skull there removed for a quick DNA test and saw his request denied. "The curiosity as to the skull at Beoley has no factual base whatsoever to justify exhumation, removal, or investigation," says church lawyer Charles Mynors, who issued the denial in a nearly 7,000-word report. "The whole enterprise is entirely speculative." Shakespeare scholars are on his side, but local folklore and two mysterious articles tell a different tale.

Dated 1879 and 1884, the anonymous articles claim that a doctor dug up Shakespeare's skull to win a reward offered by an art historian in 1769, the Telegraph reports. But after the doctor couldn't get his money, the skull was buried in a vault under St. Leonard's Church. With the Rev. Paul Irving's request for a DNA test now denied, area clergymen are licking their wounds: "There is this skull sitting there on its own and we would love to know who it is," says a reverend who oversees the Beoley church. "The problem for us now is that the failure to conduct a detailed investigation will result in a higher level of uninformed speculation." As it happens, Shakespeare's tombstone epitaph at Stratford-upon-Avon includes a warning against grave-robbers: "Bleste be the man that spares thes stones," it reads in part. "And curst be he that moves my bones." (Researchers have credited Shakespeare with a new play.)

 The Observation and Appreciation of Architecture                                                               

                          A property in down town Gettysburg Pa.

It's time to rethink the entire role and language of architecture

As director of the 2016 Venice Biennale, Alejandro Aravena is on a mission to harness the knowledge of other disciplines, embrace the insights of untrained citizens, and take architecture to new frontiers

Alejandro Aravena

As architects, we are living at a time of shifting paradigms. In the past, the scale of our designs grew large, but how many people were we really engaging with? Today, we understand better the sheer complexity of the issues at play when we design and plan buildings, neighbourhoods and even entire cities – and this demands a new, more open approach.

It’s why I’m so interested in how architects and urban planners engage with other fields – economics, security, the environment and so on. Our challenge must be to go beyond architecture and speak the languages of these other disciplines, before translating our discussions into formal design proposals. One of the biggest problems is bad information – well, architects have a responsibility to engage in broad conversations that ensure we are properly informed about all the parameters of a given project. Our ultimate focus is still on form, but what informs this has expanded dramatically.

I believe the next step must be to create “open systems”: physical conditions in cities that allow all forces at play to have an input. We are entering a new game – one which I hope to shed more light on through next year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice.

The battle for a better built environment is a collective effort that requires everybody’s force and knowledge. As curator of Reporting From The Front, I want to reverse the idea that the Biennale only deals with issues that are of interest to other architects. We have begun by identifying problems that every citizen can not only understand but actually has a say in: immigration, water, land capacity, waste and so on. And we’ve seen an immediate, positive response from people who don’t normally get involved with architecture – across both the developed and developing worlds.

 Alejandro Aravena discusses his entry for the 2012 Biennale

To improve the quality of the built environment (and thus people’s quality of life), battles need to be won and frontiers need to be expanded. More and more people in the world are searching for a decent place to live, yet the conditions to achieve this are becoming tougher by the hour. Any attempt to go beyond business as usual encounters huge resistance in the inertia of reality. Any effort to tackle relevant issues has to overcome the increasing complexity of the world.

Unlike military wars where nobody wins and there is a prevailing sense of defeat, however, on the frontlines of the built environment there is a sense of vitality, because architecture is about looking at reality in a proposal key. We should never forget that design can be a very powerful tool in mobilising people to act. Iconic architecture captures people’s desires, and we certainly won’t improve our cities by dumbing everything down to the same level. But we must pay attention to the circumstances – the shocking or the dramatic is not always the right response.

We want to learn from architectures that, despite (or perhaps because of) a scarcity of means, intensify what is available instead of complaining about what is missing. We want to understand what design tools are needed to subvert the forces that privilege individual gain over collective benefit; to highlight cases that resist reductionism and oversimplification, and do not give up on architecture’s mission to penetrate the mystery of the human condition. We will present numerous examples where organised communities and empowered citizens, sometimes without any formal design training, have been able to improve their own built environment.

There are new actors in this story – not least those property developers who use buildings to chase huge profits. But we are interested in how architecture can introduce a broader notion of gain: design as added value instead of an extra cost; architecture as a shortcut towards equality. We want to see cases where architecture did, is, and will make a difference in winning those battles and expanding those frontiers. Design ideas that, by balancing intelligence and intuition, are able to escape the status quo.

Major changes in cities happen over a timescale much longer than that of the typical political administration, and citizens are the core authors who can guarantee these changes. We hope that Reporting From The Front will be not just the chronicle of a passive witness, but a testimony of people who “walk the talk” – showing what it is like to improve their quality of life while working in the margins, under tough circumstances, facing pressing challenges.

We seek to balance hope with rigour: the battle for a better built environment is neither a tantrum nor a romantic crusade. It is nothing more – but also nothing less – than the disciplined construction of the spaces in which life takes place.

Alejandro Aravena is director of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, and executive director of Elemental. Urban Age is a worldwide investigation into the future of cities, organised by LSE Cities and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. Its 10-year anniversary debates are held in conjunction with Guardian Cities

AND NOW A FEW WORDS FROM F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

To these two life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness, but pity; not disillusion, but only pain. There was already enough moonlight when they shook hands for each to see the gathered kindness in the other’s eyes. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Lees of Happiness

THE ART OF PULP

THE ART OF WAR...............................

A crowd helps a man who got his leg stuck

MUSIC FOR THE SOUL

Lester Young

Never Say Die: The Remarkable Life of Harland Sanders, Optimist.

Colonel Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 – December 16, 1980) was a American businessman, best known for founding fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (now known as KFC) and later acting as the company's goodwill ambassador and symbol. His name and image are still symbols of the company.

Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 in a four-room house located 3 miles (5 km) east of Henryville, Indiana. He was the oldest of three children born to Wilbur David and Margaret Ann (née Dunlevy) Sanders. The family attended the Advent Christian Church. The family were of mostly Irish and English ancestry.

His father was a mild and affectionate man who worked his 80-acre farm, until he broke his leg after a fall. He then worked as a butcher in Henryville for two years. One summer afternoon in 1895, he came home with a fever and died later that day. Sanders' mother obtained work in a tomato cannery; and the young Harland was required to look after and cook for his siblings.

By the age of seven he was reportedly skilled with bread and vegetables, and improving with meat; the children foraged for food while their mother was away for days at a time for work. When he was 10 Harland began to work as a farmhand for local farmers Charlie Norris and Henry Monk.

 

Sanders' mother remarried in 1902, and the family moved to Greenwood, Indiana. Sanders had a tumultuous relationship with his stepfather. In 1903 he dropped out of seventh grade (later stating that "algebra's what drove me off"), and went to live and work on a nearby farm. He then took a job painting horse carriages in Indianapolis. When he was 14 he moved to southern Indiana to work as a farmhand for Sam Wilson for two years.

In 1906, with his mother's approval, he left the area to live with his uncle in New Albany, Indiana. His uncle worked for the streetcar company, and secured Sanders a job as a conductor.

Sanders falsified his date of birth and enlisted in the United States Army in October 1906, completing his service commitment as a teamster in Cuba. He was honorably discharged in February 1907 and moved to Sheffield, Alabama, where an uncle lived. There, he met his brother Clarence who had also moved there in order to escape their stepfather. The uncle worked for the Southern Railway, and secured Sanders a job there as a blacksmith's helper in the workshops. After two months, Sanders moved to Jasper, Alabama where he got a job cleaning out the ash pans of trains from the Northern Alabama Railroad (a division of the Southern Railway) when they had finished their run. Sanders progressed to become a fireman (steam engine stoker) at the age of 16 or 17.

In 1909, Sanders found laboring work with the Norfolk and Western Railway. While working on the railroad, he met Josephine King of Jasper, Alabama, and they were married shortly afterwards. They would go on to have a son, Harland, Jr., who died in 1932 from infected tonsils, and two daughters, Margaret Sanders and Mildred Sanders Ruggles.

He then found work as a fireman on the Illinois Central Railroad, and he and his family moved to Jackson, Tennessee. By night, Sanders studied law by correspondence through the La Salle Extension University. Sanders lost his job at Illinois after brawling with a colleague.

While Sanders moved to work for the Rock Island Railroad, Josephine and the children went to live with her parents. After a while, Sanders began to practice law in Little Rock for three years, and he earned enough fees for his family to move with him. His legal career ended after a courtroom brawl with his own client.

After that, Sanders moved back with his mother in Henryville, and went to work as a laborer on the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1916, the family moved to Jeffersonville, where Sanders got a job selling life insurance for the Prudential Life Insurance Company. Sanders was eventually fired for insubordination. He moved to Louisville and got a sales job with Mutual Benefit Life of New Jersey.

In 1920, Sanders established a ferry boat company, which operated a boat on the Ohio River between Jeffersonville and Louisville. He canvassed for funding, becoming a minority shareholder himself, and was appointed secretary of the company. The ferry was an instant success.

 In around 1922 he took a job as secretary at the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, Indiana. He admitted to not being very good at the job, and resigned after less than a year. Sanders cashed in his ferry boat company shares for $22,000 and used the money to establish a company manufacturing acetylene lamps. The venture failed after Delco introduced an electric lamp that they sold on credit.

Sanders moved to Winchester, Kentucky, to work as a salesman for the Michelin Tire Company. He lost his job in 1924 when Michelin closed their New Jersey manufacturing plant.

In 1924, by chance, he met the general manager of Standard Oil of Kentucky, who asked him to run a service station in Nicholasville. In 1930, the station closed as a result of the Great Depression.

In 1930, the Shell Oil Company offered Sanders a service station in North Corbin, Kentucky rent free, in return for paying them a percentage of sales. Sanders began to serve chicken dishes and other meals such as country ham and steaks. Initially he served the customers in his adjacent living quarters before opening a restaurant. It was during this period that Sanders was involved in a shootout with a Matt Stewart, a local competitor, over the repainting of a sign directing traffic to his station. Stewart killed a Shell official who was with Sanders and was convicted of murder, eliminating Sanders' competition.

Sanders was commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 by Kentucky governor Ruby Laffoon. His local popularity grew, and, in 1939, food critic Duncan Hines visited Sanders's restaurant and included it in Adventures in Good Eating, his guide to restaurants throughout the US. The entry read:

Corbin, KY.   Sanders Court and Café

41 — Jct. with 25, 25 E. ½ Mi. N. of Corbin. Open all year except Xmas.

A very good place to stop en route to Cumberland Falls and the Great Smokies. Continuous 24-hour service. Sizzling steaks, fried chicken, country ham, hot biscuits. L. 50¢ to $1; D., 60¢ to $1

In July 1939, Sanders acquired a motel in Asheville, North Carolina. His North Corbin restaurant and motel was destroyed in a fire in November 1939, and Sanders had it rebuilt as a motel with a 140-seat restaurant.

By July 1940, Sanders had finalized his "Secret Recipe" for frying chicken in a pressure fryer that cooked the chicken faster than pan frying. As the United States entered World War II in December 1941, gas was rationed, and as the tourists dried up, Sanders was forced to close his Asheville motel. He went to work as a supervisor in Seattle until the latter part of 1942. He later ran cafeterias for the government at an ordnance works in Tennessee, followed by a job as assistant cafeteria manager in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

He left his mistress, Claudia Ledington-Price, as manager of the North Corbin restaurant and motel. In 1942, he sold the Asheville business. In 1947, he and Josephine divorced and Sanders married Claudia in 1949, as he had long desired. Sanders was "re-commissioned" as a Kentucky Colonel in 1950 by his friend, Governor Lawrence Wetherby.

 

In 1952, Sanders franchised "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for the first time, to Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, the operator of one of that city's largest restaurants. In the first year of selling the product, restaurant sales more than tripled, with 75% of the increase coming from sales of fried chicken.

For Harman, the addition of fried chicken was a way of differentiating his restaurant from competitors; in Utah, a product hailing from Kentucky was unique and evoked imagery of Southern hospitality.

Don Anderson, a sign painter hired by Harman, coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken. After Harman's success, several other restaurant owners franchised the concept and paid Sanders $0.04 per chicken.

Sanders believed that his North Corbin restaurant would remain successful indefinitely, but at age 65 sold it after the new Interstate 75 reduced customer traffic. Left only with his savings and $105 a month from Social Security, Sanders decided to begin to franchise his chicken concept in earnest, and traveled the US looking for suitable restaurants. After closing the North Corbin site, Sanders and Claudia opened a new restaurant and company headquarters in Shelbyville in 1959. Often sleeping in the back of his car, Sanders visited restaurants, offered to cook his chicken, and if workers liked it negotiated franchise rights.

Although such visits required much time, eventually potential franchisees began visiting Sanders instead. He ran the company while Claudia mixed and shipped the spices to restaurants.

The franchise approach became highly successful; KFC was one of the first fast food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets in Canada and later in England, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s. The company's rapid expansion to more than 600 locations became overwhelming for the aging Sanders. In 1964, he sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation for $2 million to a partnership of Kentucky businessmen headed by John Y. Brown, Jr. (a then-29-year-old lawyer and future governor of Kentucky) and Jack C. Massey (a venture capitalist and entrepreneur), and he became a salaried brand ambassador. The initial deal did not include the Canadian operations (which Sanders retained) or the franchising rights in England, Florida, Utah, and Montana (which Sanders had already sold to others).

In 1965, Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario to oversee his Canadian franchises and continued to collect franchise and appearance fees both in Canada and in the U.S. Sanders bought and lived in a bungalow at 1337 Melton Drive in the Lakeview area of Mississauga from 1965 to 1980. In September 1970 he and his wife were baptized in the Jordan River. He also befriended Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.

Sanders remained the company's symbol after selling it, traveling 200,000 miles a year on the company's behalf and filming many TV commercials and appearances. He retained much influence over executives and franchisees, who respected his culinary expertise and feared what The New Yorker described as "the force and variety of his swearing" when a restaurant or the company varied from what executives described as "the Colonel's chicken".

One change the company made was to the gravy, which Sanders had bragged was so good that "it'll make you throw away the durn chicken and just eat the gravy" but which the company simplified to reduce time and cost. As late as 1979 Sanders made surprise visits to KFC restaurants, and if the food disappointed him denounced it to the franchisee as "God-damned slop" or pushed it onto the floor

In 1973, Sanders sued Heublein Inc.—the then parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken—over the alleged misuse of his image in promoting products he had not helped develop. In 1975, Heublein Inc. unsuccessfully sued Sanders for libel after he publicly described their gravy as "wallpaper paste" to which "sludge" was added.

Sanders and his wife reopened their Shelbyville restaurant as "Claudia Sanders, The Colonel's Lady" and served KFC-style chicken there as part of a full-service dinner menu, and talked about expanding the restaurant into a chain. He was sued by the company for it.

After reaching a settlement with Heublein, he sold the Colonel's Lady restaurant, and it has continued to operate since then (currently as the "Claudia Sanders Dinner House"). It serves his "original recipe" fried chicken as part of its (non-fast-food) dinner menu, and it is the only non-KFC restaurant that serves an authorized version of the fried chicken recipe.

After being recommissioned as a Kentucky colonel in 1950 by Governor Lawrence Wetherby, Sanders began to dress the part, growing a goatee and wearing a black frock coat (later switching to a white suit), a string tie, and referring to himself as "Colonel." His associates went along with the title change, "jokingly at first and then in earnest," according to biographer Josh Ozersky.

He never wore anything else in public during the last 20 years of his life, using a heavy wool suit in the winter and a light cotton suit in the summer. He bleached his mustache and goatee to match his white hair.

Sanders later used his stock holdings to create the Colonel Harland Sanders Trust and Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization, which used the proceeds to aid charities and fund scholarships. His trusts continue to donate money to groups like the Trillium Health Care Centre; a wing of their building specializes in women's and children's care and has been named after him. The Sidney, British Columbia based foundation granted over $1,000,000 in 2007, according to its 2007 tax return

Sanders was diagnosed with acute leukemia in June 1980. He died in Louisville, Kentucky of pneumonia on December 16, 1980 at the age of 90. Sanders had remained active until the month before his death, appearing in his white suit to crowds. His body lay in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort after a funeral service at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Chapel, which was attended by more than 1,000 people. Sanders was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.

By the time of his death, there were an estimated 6,000 KFC outlets in 48 countries worldwide, with $2 billion of sales annually.

China court upholds conviction against journalist but cuts two years off sentence

By Sui-Lee Wee

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court upheld a conviction on Thursday against a journalist accused of leaking an internal Communist Party document to a foreign website but reduced her jail sentence by two years in a case criticized by the West and rights groups.

Gao Yu, 71, was detained in May 2013 over accusations she had leaked a party document that warned senior members against "seven mistaken ideologies", including the "universal values" of human rights, according to Gao's lawyer, Shang Baojun.

Rights activists say her case is part of a broad government effort to suppress journalists, lawyers and activists critical of the party.

Gao was sentenced to seven years in jail in April after being convicted on a charge of providing state secrets to foreign contacts.

On Thursday, the Beijing high court reduced her sentence to five years but upheld her conviction.

Shang said the court had decided to reduce Gao's sentence after she "gave a true account of the facts of the crime during the second trial and pleaded guilty".

Shang said he would continue to seek Gao's release on medical parole, which authorities have already rejected three times.

"She has very serious high blood pressure and heart problems," Shang said. "Taking into account the fact that she's already 71, from this perspective, we are not satisfied (with the sentence reduction)."

State news agency Xinhua said later that because of her health, the court had decided Gao could "temporarily serve the sentence outside of prison". The report did not elaborate.

Court officials did not respond to phone calls or a faxed query seeking comment. China's Foreign Ministry said that Gao's case had been handled in accordance with the law.

Dozens of police officers sealed off roads leading to the court and stopped journalists from approaching.

Germany denounced the court's decision.

"The rejection of the journalist's application, who is over 70 years old and suffers from medical problems, is incomprehensible and fills me with dismay," Germany's Commissioner for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, Christoph Strässer, said in a statement.

At a daily news briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei called on other countries to "respect China's judicial sovereignty".

British-based rights group Amnesty International said Gao's health had deteriorated since her detention.

Gao was accused of giving the internal party document to Ho Pin, head of Mirror Books. Ho has told Reuters Gao did not pass him the document.

Gao, a freelance journalist well known for her articles critical of government leaders, has said she is innocent.

Her trial was held behind closed doors and diplomats and reporters were blocked from attending.

The case marked the third time Gao has been jailed on charges stemming from her activism and for leaking state secrets.

(Additional reporting by Natalie Thomas and Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani)

IT'S ALL GREEK MYTHOLOGY TO ME

Ruins of Ancient Greek City Found on Mount Pindos

By Toni Aravadinos -

 Archaeologists were stunned to find the ruins of an unknown ancient city which dates back to the 4th century BC, at an altitude of 1,200 meters on the Greek mountain of Pindos. It is believed to be the highest archaeological excavation in Greece.

Some fragments of inscriptions which were found near the area of Kastri include the Greek letters “ΙΕΡ…” (ιερό/iero=sacred place) and have led archaeologists to believe that this might have been a very important place for the ancient Macedonians, filled with temples and places of worship. The exact name of this city is yet unknown.

“Even though the findings are many and are very important, we still are unable to find the name of this city and of the God it worshipped. However, the rest of the evidence, including its geographical location and the findings, even the heyday of its acropolis towards the end of the 4th century BC, prove the importance of this city’s historical frame in the ancient Macedonian kingdom” noted the head of this excavation Mrs Stella Drougou.

The systematic excavation in Kastri brought to light large portions of the fortified acropolis of this ancient city and as all evidence proves it had a religious character. Even though the remains of the acropolis are highly damaged, the coins, the ceramics and the vast variety of metallic equipment reveal a well organized economy which obviously leads to a well organized life. The excavation findings and the parts of architecture as well as the coins, date the city towards the end of the 4th century BC to the beginning of the 3rd, but the destruction of the acropolis (which is thought to have been very violent) is dated somewhere in the 2nd century BC. The large amount of copper arrows and fire traces prove that there was most likely some sort of warfare.

“All this data shows that our next excavation target should be at the east mountain slopes of Pindos with the certainty that in the future there can be a very interesting archaeological place in that area”  concluded Mrs Drogou.

- See more at: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/11/25/ruins-of-ancient-greek-city-found-on-mount-pindos/#sthash.7gD10LuA.dpuf

The Pindus (also Pindos or Pindhos) mountain range is located in northern Greece and southern Albania. Because it runs along the border of Thessaly and Epirus, the Pindus range is often called the "spine of Greece". The mountain range stretches from near the Greek-Albanian borders in Northern Epirus, entering the Epirus region and Macedonia region in northern Greece down to the north of the Peloponnese. Geologically it constitutes an extension of the Dinaric Alps, which dominate the western region of the Balkan Peninsula. This vast complex of mountains, peaks, plateaus, valleys and gorges traverses the Greek mainland from the Northwest to the Southeast.

GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..

Impertinent (im-PURT-nuhnt) 1. Presumptuous or rude. 2. Irrelevant. From in- (not) + pertinere (to pertain), from per- (through) + tenere (to hold). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ten- (to stretch), which also gave us tense, tenet, tendon, tent, tenor, tender, pretend, extend, tenure, tetanus, hypotenuse, tenuous, tenable, extenuate, distend, detente, countenance, and abstentious

ROGER TOUHY, GANGSTER

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.

GUNS AND GLAMOUR

Capone. Torrio. Ricca. Giancana and Accardo. The giant legends of organized crime that led the largest, wealthiest, most powerful, and near completely documented organized crime syndicate in the world. At the height of its power, the Chicago mobs influence extended from Lake Shore Drive to the beaches of Havana, the neon lights of Vegas and the heroin drenched back alleys of Hanoi. The years 1900 through 1959 are largely considered the Golden Age for the Chicago mob. The end came with the accession of Sam “Momo” Giancana to the criminal throne that Big Jim Colosimo had founded. Flashy, arrogant and dangerous, Giancana’s rise to the leadership of the Chicago Mob was paralleled by the federal government’s assault on organized crime. By 1980, the Chicago mob has lost control of the organized labor on a national basis and given up Las Vegas Las Vegas. Virtually every significant Mafia Boss in the country was in jail or under indictment and Sam Giancana was shot dead by his own men. The so-called Golden Age of Chicago Mob had ended. Between 1900 and 1959, fifty-nine years, only seven Bosses led the Chicago Mob. Between 1963 and 2000, thirty-seven years, there were more than nine Bosses in rapid succession. All except one of them…the indomitable Tony Accardo…died in jail or under federal and state indictment. While the Chicago Mob still wields considerable criminal, financial, and political influence, it is a mere shadow of what it once was. With increased pressure from far reaching RICO laws, the constant surveillance of a well-informed and effective federal organized crime task force and increased competition from equally ruthless and ambitious new ethnic mobs, there is little chance it will ever reemerge as the awesome power it once was.

READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS

I heard a lot about Chicago mafia and I think it very interesting theme and I read few books but those books were so hard to read (!): small font, a lot of slangs, hard spelling words! But John Tuohy's book not like that!!! It's easy to read(and I'm not saying it written poor or anything), what I mean is for the person who doesn't know much about the mafia world this book is really helps to understand all the details, I would say to see the whole picture!!! This book is really interesting and helpful!

It also has a lot of photographs which makes the book even better!

I wish there would be more writers like John Tuohy who makes the books more interesting and cognitive!

Mr. Tuohy, has out done himself with this prized piece of literary work! Since I'm a Chicagoan, born and raised for 40 years, some of them on the very same streets where some of the Outfit's associates and higher-ups lived, and after the first few pages I'm hooked. His writing style to me is very easy to digest, and his photos are spectacular, either due to it's rarity or the person being photo, alot of these Outfit bosses/hitman didn't like to be photographed, and believe me, they made sure that you knew it. To take the Chicago Outfit and write about the ups and downs the Organization went through during this 100 year time frame is an amazing feat. You get some real good stories, written with out an agenda, just to get the information out to the public. A brilliant topic which was handled with care and dignity by Mr.Tuohy, as I'm finding out is the case in ALL OF HIS BOOKS, be they organized crime or based on something else. Get if a try, you'll end up buying more than the one book, betcha you can't read just one!!!

An interesting book about the history of the Chicago mob. It highlights the legends of the Chicago mob in the 1900s. Any fan of the Chicago mob should add this to their collection.

The Mob and the Kennedy Assassination: Jack Ruby. Testimony by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files) Kindle Edition

From the Inside Flap

The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace. The Committee investigated until 1978 and issued its final report, and ruled that Kennedy was very likely assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. However, the Committee noted that it believed that the conspiracy did not include the governments of the Soviet Union or Cuba.

 The Committee also stated it did not believe the conspiracy was organized by any organized crime group, nor any anti-Castro group, but that it could not rule out individual members of any of those groups acting together.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations suffered from being conducted mostly in secret, and then issued a public report with much of its evidence sealed for 50 years under Congressional rules.

In 1992, Congress passed legislation to collect and open up all the evidence relating to Kennedy's death, and created the Assassination Records Review Board to further that goal.

General conclusions

In particular, the various investigations performed by the U.S. government were faulted for insufficient consideration of the possibility of a conspiracy in each case. The Committee in its report also made recommendations for legislative and administrative improvements, including making some assassinations Federal crimes.

The Chief Counsel of the Committee later changed his views that the CIA was being cooperative and forthcoming with the investigation when he learned that the CIA's special liaison to the Committee researchers, George Joannides, was actually involved with some of the organizations that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved with in the months leading up to the assassination, including an anti-Castro group, the DRE, which was linked to the CIA, where the liaison, Joannides, worked in 1963.

 Chief Counsel Blakey later stated that Joannides, instead, should have been interviewed by the Committee, rather than serving as a gatekeeper to the CIA's evidence and files regarding the assassination. He further disregarded and suspected all the CIA's statements and representations to the Committee, accusing it of obstruction of justice.

Conclusions regarding the Kennedy assassination

The HSCA concluded in its 1979 report that:

 1.Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy. The second and third shots he fired struck the President. The third shot Oswald fired successfully killed the President.

 2.Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that at least two gunmen fired at the President. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations.

 3.The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved.

The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved.

 The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

4. Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfilment of their duties. President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination was conducted. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive.

 

The Committee further concluded that it was probable that:

 Four shots were fired. The third shot came from a second assassin located on the grassy knoll, but missed. They concluded that it missed due to the lack of physical evidence of an actual bullet, of course this investigation took place almost sixteen years after the crime.

 The HSCA agreed with the single bullet theory, but concluded that it occurred at a time point during the assassination that differed from any of the several time points the Warren Commission theorized it occurred.

The Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, and the Warren Commission were all criticized for not revealing to the Warren Commission information available in 1964, and the Secret Service was deemed deficient in their protection of the President.

The HSCA made several accusations of deficiency against the FBI and CIA.

The accusations encompassed organizational failures, miscommunication, and a desire to keep certain parts of their operations secret. Furthermore, the Warren Commission expected these agencies to be forthcoming with any information that would aid their investigation. But the FBI and CIA only saw it as their duty to respond to specific requests for information from the commission. However, the HSCA found the FBI and CIA were deficient in performing even that limited role.

In 2003, Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the Committee, issued a statement on the Central Intelligence Agency:

...I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence] Agency and its relationship to Oswald.... We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation. The Agency unilaterally deprived the commission of a chance to obtain the full truth, which will now never be known. Significantly, the Warren Commission's conclusion that the agencies of the government co-operated with it is, in retrospect, not the truth. We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency. Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp.

The Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings. Abridged.

READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS

Senator Kefauver is a great person! The committee did a amazingly great job investigating organized crime in different cities, the same as the author did putting it all together in one book!!It was really interesting to read this record! I felt like I was there in a court room! Seriously, very impressive!

It's great that we have such a great historical document in print! Senator Kefauver and the committee investigate Organized Crime all over the country: Miami, NY, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Kansas city, etc. This record 
has many interviews with mafia leaders. Rare and great photographs! It's one of the best criminal books I ever read! I would highly recommend it to anyone!

The Connecticut Irish

READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS

This book is not a history of the Irish in Connecticut so much as it is a history of people of Irish decent of the great State of Connecticut, but in that, it does a very good job reporting the facts and being wholly inclusive. It has presents dome very wonderful photographs and fives a brief but disturbing picture of the Anti-Irish movement in the New England states.

READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS

"Shooting the Mob: Organized Crime in photos, Crime Boss Tony Accardo" was a welcomed addition to my book collection. For one thing, not much is written about ,"the Big Tuna", Tony Accardo; the Chicago Outfit's "man of many talents", let alone any photos. This book gives the reader a chance to gain some knowledge on the amazing Outfit boss/consigliere, that might not otherwise be available.

For me, it was a must for my collection; not to give too much away, but there are photos and personal information about the life and times of Anthony "JB" Accardo; from his days hanging around the "Circus Cafe" with "Tough" Tony Capezio, John "Screwey" Moore and "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, to catching "the Big Guy's",attention, "Snorky" who then had him sitting in the lobby of his hotels with a Thompson Sub-Machine Gun on guard duty!

Things just kept getting better for the capable "Joe Batters"!!

Mob Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others: The court testimony of FBI New York Undercover Agent Joe Pistone

READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS

What I loved about this book is that even though its mostly testimony before government investigative inquires, you can sense the hood attitudes and their arrogance. This is the real mob talking about everyday life as a gangster. Good stuff

This is the story of gangland told in the federal testimony of the hoodlum who decided to talk about life in the underworld. Although some Chicago gangsters are included in the text and photos (Lots of photos here) the concentration is on the New York mob.

EMERSON

I purchased this book for my daughter who loves Emerson. The quotes are organized in categories and are easy to find and read. The book includes the most memorable quotes of Emerson and my daughter loves it.

This is really enjoyable to read and I like how it is done and you can look up all sorts of things. I have shared some of Emerson's quotes from this book on my website right from this book, giving him credit.

Made me hungry for more!!

It's a keeper!

DON'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD?

 I DO

Gudvangen, Norway

AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR YOU................... 

BLOGLAPEDIA’S BLOGS

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When Washington Was Irish

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The New England Mafia

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And I Love Clams

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In Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener

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Good chowda

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NOSTALGIA

God, How I hated the 70s

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Child of the Sixties Forever

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Beatles Fan Forever

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Year One, 1955

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Robert Kennedy in His Own Words

http://rfkinhisownwords.blogspot.com/

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

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The Mob in Hollywood

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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

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The Salerno Report

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Guns and Glamour

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The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

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Mob Testimony

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Recipes we would Die For

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The Prohibition in Pictures

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The Mob in Pictures

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The Mob in Vegas

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The Irish American Gangster

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Roger Touhy Gangster

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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)

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The US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)

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The Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)

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Joe Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)

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Mobsters in the News

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Shooting the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)

http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/

The Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)

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Mobsters in Black and White

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Mafia Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas

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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

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SNOBBERY

The Rarifieid Tribe

http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/

Perfect Behavior

http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/

TRAVEL

The Upscale Traveler

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TRIVIA

The Mish Mosh Blog

http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/

WASHINGTON DC

DC Behind the Monuments

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Washington Oddities

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When Washington Was Irish

http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/

FROM LLR BOOKS. COM

Litchfield Literary Books. A really small company run by writers.

AMERICAN HISTORY

The Day Nixon Met Elvis

Paperback 46 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/

Theodore Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918

Paperback 194 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/

THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND CIVILIZATIONS

The Works of Horace

Paperback 174 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/

The Quotable Greeks

Paperback 234 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby

The Quotable Epictetus

Paperback 142 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings

Quo Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero

Paperback 420 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero

CHILDRENS BOOKS

The Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children

A Halloween play for young children. By consent of the author, this play may be performed, at no charge, by educational institutions, neighborhood organizations and other not-for-profit-organizations.

A fun story with a moral

“I believe that Denny O'Day is an American treasure and this little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens to be very small, by pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the pumpkin patch on Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance to prove that just because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here is the point that I found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size doesn't matter when it comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I think children need to hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is a ongoing lesson isn't it?”

Paperback: 42 pages

http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children

It's Not All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the books contents

Paperback 94 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what

From the Author

I spent my childhood, from age seven through seventeen, in foster care.  Over the course of those ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and concerned people told me, "It's okay to be foster kid."

In saying that, those very good people meant to encourage me, and I appreciated their kindness then, and all these many decades later, I still appreciate their good intentions. But as I was tossed around the foster care system, it began to dawn on me that they were wrong.  It was not all right to be a foster kid.

During my time in the system, I was bounced every eighteen months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a boy's school and to a group home before I left on my own accord at age seventeen.

In the course of my stay in foster care, I was severely beaten in two homes by my "care givers" and separated from my four siblings who were also in care, sometimes only blocks away from where I was living.

I left the system rather than to wait to age out, although the effects of leaving the system without any family, means, or safety net of any kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived in poverty for the first part of my life, dropped out of high school, and had continuous problems with the law.

 Today, almost nothing about foster care has changed.  Exactly what happened to me is happening to some other child, somewhere in America, right now.  The system, corrupt, bloated, and inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.

Something has gone wrong in a system that was originally a compassionate social policy built to improve lives but is now a definitive cause in ruining lives.  Due to gross negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what the foster care system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care has become our epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have lived through it.

Yet there is a suspicion among some Americans that foster care costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and is at odds with a satisfying life.  Others see foster care as a part of the welfare system, as legal plunder of the public treasuries.

 None of that is true; in fact, all that sort of thinking does is to blame the victims.  There is not a single child in the system who wants to be there or asked to be there.  Foster kids are in foster care because they had nowhere else to go.  It's that simple.  And believe me, if those kids could get out of the system and be reunited with their parents and lead normal, healthy lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of legal plunder of the public treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are doing the plundering.

 We need to end this needless suffering.  We need to end it because it is morally and ethically wrong and because the generations to come will not judge us on the might of our armed forces or our technological advancements or on our fabulous wealth.

 Rather, they will judge us, I am certain, on our compassion for those who are friendless, on our decency to those who have nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to make our nation and our world a better place.  And if we cannot accomplish those things in the short time allotted to us, then let them say of us "at least they tried."

You can change the tragedy of foster care and here's how to do it.  We have created this book so that almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to the world.  You have the power to improve the lives of those in our society who are least able to defend themselves.  All you need is the will to do it.

 If the American people, as good, decent and generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster care, in their name and with their money, they would stop it.  But, generally speaking, although the public has a vague notion that foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete picture. They are not aware of the human, economic and social cost that the mismanagement of the foster care system puts on our nation.

By tweeting the facts laid out in this work, you can help to change all of that.  You can make a difference.  You can change things for the better.

We can always change the future for a foster kid; to make it better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up (or tweet out) because it's your country.  Don't depend on the "The other guy" to speak up for these kids, because you are the other guy.

We cannot build a future for foster children, but we can build foster children for the future and the time to start that change is today.

No time to say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster 

Paperbook 440 Books

http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir

  

BOOKS ABOUT FILM

On the Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film

Paperback: 416 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/

BOOKS ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL

Scotish Ghost Stories

Paperback 186 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell

HUMOR BOOKS

The Book of funny odd and interesting things people say

Paperback: 278 pages

http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people

The Wee Book of Irish Jokes

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook

Perfect Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises

http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social

BOOKS ABOUT THE 1960s

You Don’t Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969

Paperback 122 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969

Baby Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties

Paperback

http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/

Baby Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s

IRISH- AMERICANA

The Connecticut Irish

Paper back 140 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly

 The Wee Book of Irish Jokes

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/

The Wee Book of Irish Recipes 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/

 

 The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters

  http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/

 The Wee book of Irish Blessings... 

http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/

The Wee Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words

http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/

Everything you need to know about St. Patrick

Paperback 26 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick

A Reading Book in Ancient Irish History

Paperback 147pages

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History

The Book of Things Irish

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/

Poets and Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish

Paperback 158 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/

The History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated

Paperback 356 pages

http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/

BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND

The New England Mafia

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/

Wicked Good New England Recipes

http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/

The Connecticut Irish

Paper back 140 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly

The Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers

Paperback 64 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion

The Life of James Mars

Paperback 54 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut

Stories of Colonial Connecticut

Paperback 116 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford

What they Say in Old New England

Paperback 194 pages

http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/

BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME

Chicago Organized Crime

Chicago-Mob-Bosses

http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook

The Mob Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook

An Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000

http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/

Mob Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/

The Mob Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/

Shooting the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/

Shooting the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre

The Life and World of Al Capone in Photos

http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone

AL CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930 edition.Over 200 new photographs

Paperback: 340 pages

http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs

Whacked. One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit

Paperback: 172 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/

Las Vegas Organized Crime

The Mob in Vegas

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook

Bugsy & His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill

http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/

Testimony by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files Series)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook

Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime.

Paperback 264 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged

The Life and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.

Paperback 94 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor

The Mob, Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago

Paperback 200 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago

When Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos

Paperback 234 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos

Organized Crime in Hollywood

The Mob in Hollywood

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/

The Bioff Scandal

Paperback 54 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios

Organized Crime in New York

Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia

http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/

Mob Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/

The New York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins

The New York Mob: The Bosses

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/

Organized Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate

http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook

Shooting the mob: Dutch Schultz

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz

Gangland Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)

http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/

Early Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City

Paperback 382 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York

THE RUSSIAN MOBS

The Russian Mafia in America

http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/

The Threat of Russian Organzied Crime

Paperback 192 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook

Organized Crime/General

Best of Mob Stories

http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/

Best of Mob Stories Part 2

http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/

Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters

http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook

Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos

http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos

More Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs

http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos

The New England Mafia

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook

Shooting the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/

The Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/

The Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill each other"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/

The Mob across America

http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/

The US Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987

http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/

Early Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated

http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/

The Mob Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/

Gangster Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated

Paperback: 128 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/

The Book of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.

Paperback: 436 pages

http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/

The Mob and the Kennedy Assassination

Paperback 414 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters

BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST

The Last Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself

Paperback 152 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself

BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY

Chicago: A photographic essay.

 Paperback: 200 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas

STAGE PLAYS

Boomers on a train: A ten minute play

Paperback 22 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook

Four Short Plays

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy

Four More Short Plays

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/

High and Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve

Cyberdate. An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/

The Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of Gangster Dutch Schultz.

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/

Fishbowling on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with Dutch Schultz

Print Length: 57 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/

American Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook

She Stoops to Conquer

http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/

The Seven Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play

Print Length: 14 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/

BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA

OUT OF CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police

http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/

McLean Virginia. A short informal history

http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/

THE QUOTABLE SERIES

The Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300 quotes

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes

The Quotable John F. Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/

The Quotable Oscar Wilde

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/

The Quotable Machiavelli

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/

The Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/

The Quotable Henry David Thoreau

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook

The Quotable Robert F. Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/

The Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook

The words of Walt Whitman: An American Poet

Paperback: 162 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet

Gangster Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated

Paperback: 128 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/

The Quotable Popes

Paperback 66 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti

The Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran

Paperback 52 pages

Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet, and writer was born on January 6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in what was then part of Ottoman Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In 1895, the family immigrated to the United States when Kahlil was a young man and settled in South Boston. Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a member of the avant-garde community and became especially close to Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and supported Gibran’s creative projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and watercolor, Kahlil attended art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style. He held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship and love affair that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell influenced every aspect of Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his editor when he began to write and ushered his first book into publication in 1918, The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48 from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/

The Quotable Dorothy Parker

Paperback 86 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Dorothy-Parker-Proxy-Algan/

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