You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for
something, sometime in your life. Winston
Churchill
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
*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***
The
Puzzle is in its 6th Year, and we’re looking for 10-minute Plays and One-Acts!
If
you would like to submit a 10-minute play or One-Act play (limit one play per
playwright),
***
Artist
as Activist Fellows: APPLY NOW U.S.–based artists and art collectives with a
demonstrated commitment to applying their creative work toward a social or
political action may receive up to $100,000 over two years, along with a suite
of value-added support. Fellows are selected through an open call for
proposals. FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS THIS FELLOWSHIP WILL FOCUS ON RACIAL JUSTICE
THROUGH THE LENS OF MASS INCARCERATION.
***
The
Long Island Theatre Collective (LITC) is accepting submissions for its second
annual New Plays Festival, to be performed April 22-23, 2016 in Lindenhurst,
NY.
Selected
playwrights will work closely with our collective of directors and actors to
develop their piece and share it with our incredible audience.
We
will be accepting short, one act scripts conveying the theme “The Second Time
Around”. Plays with smaller casts and minimal technical elements will be of
particular interest. We will not accept plays that have been previously
produced or published.
***
FOR MORE INFORMATION on these and other opportunities see the web site athttp://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
***
LIBRETTO ***
The
book (also called the libretto) is the least appreciated and yet most
dramatically important element of a musical. It is the narrative structure that
keeps the score from being nothing more than a disjointed medley of songs.
For
many years, the main point of most shows was to showcase a score and/or a major
star. As a result, the books of most Broadway musicals were a series of scenes,
jokes and sight gags designed to get from song to song. As long as the script
provided excuses for Al Jolson to sing a few hits or Marilyn Miller to do a
dance routine, theatergoers were satisfied. By the 1940s, audiences were ready
for something more, and shows like Pal Joey, Lady In the Dark and Oklahoma!
made it imperative that the book and score interweave to tell a cohesive story.
Now for a performer to stop the show, the action had to build up to a key
moment of song and/or dance. This made for a much more satisfying kind of
theatrical entertainment.
More…
***
THE
PERFECT (?) MUSICAL LIBRETTO FORMAT
The
primary issue, of course, is that a stage musical contains [at least] two types
of “dialogue”: spoken and sung. The typesetting must make it immediately clear
which is which.
In
the format which currently lays best claim to being the de facto standard, sung
lyrics are centred and capitalized. Putting aside the well-known fact that text
set in all uppercase is more difficult to read than text set in sentence case,
in the 21st Century we have the added drawback that all-caps is the
typographical equivalent of shouting. (Come to think of it, that might explain
some things about certain musical theatre performers…)
Consider,
for example, Page 6 of the libretto of Lucky Stiff (Book & Lyrics by Lynn
Ahrens, Music by Stephen Flaherty, published by Music Theatre International).
There are at least five different types of information on the page, doing five
different things — song title, character name, spoken dialogue, sung lyrics,
and stage directions — but the page is a typographical (and hence
comprehension) nightmare.
More…
***
New
York Public Library Musical of the Month
Each
month, a libretto of an important early American musical in a variety of
electronic formats, plus associated photographs, vocal scores, and the
occasional audio file.
Musical
of the Month: Golden Dawn
by
Doug Reside, Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator for the Billy Rose Theatre
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B.
Cullman Center, Billy Rose Theatre Division
September
4, 2015
Considered
today, Golden Dawn is obviously problematic on multiple levels, and the lack of
any revivals of the show is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the study of
non-canonical works like Golden Dawn remains crucial to understanding the
history of musicals.
More…
***
An
Open Book: Explaining What Musical Librettists Do
Veteran
musical book writers Marsha Norman, Harvey Fierstein and Douglas Carter Beane
spill the beans on the profession that gets "all of the blame and none of
the praise."
Quick:
Who wrote Godspell? Porgy and Bess? Mamma Mia!?
If
your answers are "Stephen Schwartz," "the Gershwins" and
"those guys from ABBA with the extra letters in their names," you're
two-thirds correct. Because in addition to the composer and the lyricist,
there's the misunderstood middle child of musical theatre, the
clunkily-monikered "book writer" or "librettist."
The
job description itself is bound to confuse, particularly in the case of
Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Marsha Norman, who adapted the novels The
Secret Garden and The Color Purple into musicals. "Whenever I say I wrote
the book," Norman says, "they think that I'm claiming I'm Frances
Hodgson Burnett or Alice Walker. So I say I wrote the musical book."
Tony
Award–winning playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein tried (and discarded) the
titles "librettist" and "author" when he wrote the musicals
La Cage aux Folles, A Catered Affair and Disney's upcoming Newsies.
"Nobody really knows what the book is," he says. "If the show's
a hit, the composer gets the credit; if the show's a flop, it's the book's
fault."
More...
***
HELLO
DOLLY! Libretto Online
***
Writing
Wicked with Stephen Schwartz & Winnie Holzman
Composer/lyricist
Stephen Schwartz and librettist Winnie Holzman discuss their collaborative
journey down the yellow brick road; from stumbling upon Gregory Maguire’s
imaginative novel, Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
to developing this incredibly complex story into a mega Broadway musical hit.
More…
***
Worst
Opera Librettos
I’ve
never shot fish in a barrel (has anyone?), but this list could be as close as I
get. Librettos and librettists are regularly raked over the coals, and there
are plenty of classical music aficionados who find opera, with a few important
exceptions, embarrassing. Even a true Italian opera-lover like me, able to
swallow the improbabilities of La sonnambula without batting an eye, may flinch
as the huge wet-blanket ending of Don Carlos approaches: The not-really-dead
Emperor Charles V conducts his wayward grandson into a monastery cloister. To
do what? — watch old episodes of Glee on TiVo?
Still,
we all know that Don Carlos doesn’t have a bad libretto, just a good one with
some major flaws. The same is true of many great operas. A larger problem is
generic: Many folks (Italian opera-lovers aside) have problems with romantic
melodrama, that staple form of Italian opera.
More...
***
THE
TEN (OPEN) SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL LIBRETTI
from
THE MUSICAL THEATRE WRITER'S SURVIVAL GUIDE
by
David Spencer
A
famous showbiz axiom about what entertainments will or won't become popular,
coined by the brilliant screenwriter-novelist William Goldman (in his excellent
and famous book, Adventures in the Screen Trade), is: NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.
While one can apply the axiom almost infallibly to most media, THIS IS FAR, FAR
LESS TRUE FOR MUSICALS!
The
craft is so specific, and audiences are primed for such a particular kind of
theatrical communication, that one can actually handicap, with astonishing
accuracy, what will and won't take hold commercially -- and sufficiently
talented writers who hew to certain time-tested principles have an
astonishingly excellent chance at creating shows loaded with optimum potential
for commercial success. And, I hasten to add, to create them thus with no
sacrifice to artistry, standards, adventurousness, integrity -- and higher (or
lower) goals. In fact, where musicals are concerned, one might argue that
PERHAPS NOBODY KNOWS EVERYTHING ... BUT WE NONETHELESS KNOW A HELLUVA LOT. It's
a question of understanding where to find the information -- and how to
perceive it.
More…
--
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DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
Bridget Riley
The best thing about dreams is
that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don’t
know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment
you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really
happened Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
THE ART OF WAR............
James Walker of PiL goes from
rocker to artist with Battle of Britain
The former Public Image Ltd. drummer
has produced a Battle of Britain poster, available in all WHSmith stores this
Christmas.
The original drummer of Public
Image Ltd has gone from rocker to artist, producing a poster inspired by the
Battle of Britain.
In the run up to the 75th anniversary
of the event this year, James Walker began to collect images of the Second
World War air battle between the Royal Air Force and German Air Force.
With his final selection of 180
images, James working for around a month to put together a collage entitled -
Britain Shall Not Burn.
The name of the piece is taken
from a wartime propaganda poster which was used during the Second World War to
warn the British public about the dangers of incendiary bombs.
James' poster version of the
artwork Britain Shall Not Burn is now available in a large poster; 91 cm x 61
cm, glossy paper for £3.99 at WHSmith.
James' art work is often inspired
by history and education and he like to highlight events by making his work
visually emotive.
The best people possess a
feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the
truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them
vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. Ernest Hemingway
HERE'S MY LATEST BOOKS.....
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....
Other books by John William Tuohy
How Twitching Frog Legs Helped Inspire
'Frankenstein'
Galvanism sought to reanimate the
dead—and in doing so provided the impetus for one of literature's most famously
frightful books_q85_crop.jpg
By Erin Blakemore
SMITHSONIAN.COM
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been scaring readers
since 1818. But what inspired the book’s overconfident doctor, who believes he
can coax life from death? As Sharon Ruston explains for Public Domain Review,
part of Shelley's gothic vision began with a pair of twitching frog legs.
Ruston writes that Shelley
was inspired by the concept of galvanism—the idea that scientists could use
electricity to stimulate or restart life. Named after Luigi Galvani, an Italian
doctor, the concept came about after Galvani was able to make a frog’s legs
twitch when he hooked the animal up to an electric charge.
Electricity was a new and
barely understood force when Galvani performed his experiments on dissected
animals during the late 18th century, so it makes sense that people thought it
might just be able to make creatures come alive after death. Ruston notes that
Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, went so far as to shock dissected human
corpses in pursuit of this hypothesis.
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 Observation and Appreciation of Architecture
Temple of the Inscriptions in the Maya ruins of Palenque in eastern Mexico. Photo by Kenneth Garrett. (National Geographic)
The Temple of the Inscriptions
"House of the Nine Sharpened
Spears" is the largest Mesoamerican stepped pyramid structure at the
pre-Columbian Maya civilization site of Palenque, located in the modern-day
state of Chiapas, Mexico. The structure was specifically built as the funerary
monument for K'inich Janaab' Pakal, ajaw or ruler of Palenque in the 7th century
whose reign over the polity lasted almost 70 years. Construction of this
monument commenced in the last decade of his life, and was completed by his son
and successor K'inich Kan B'alam II.
Within Palenque, the Temple of the
Inscriptions is located in an area known as the Temple of the Inscriptions’
Court and stands at a right angle to the Southeast of the Palace. The Temple of
the Inscriptions has been significant in the study of the ancient Maya, owing
to the extraordinary sample of hieroglyphic text found on the Inscription
Tablets, the impressive sculptural panels on the piers of the building, and the
finds inside the tomb of Pakal.
The structure consists of a
"temple" structure that sits atop an eight-stepped pyramid (for a
total of nine levels). The five entrances in the front of the building are
surrounded by piers bearing both carved images and the hieroglyphic texts in
Maya script for which the temple was named. Inside the temple, a stairway leads
to the crypt containing the sarcophagus of Pakal.
The Temple of Inscriptions was finished a
short time after 683. The construction was initiated by Pakal himself, although
his son, K'inich Kan B'alam II completed the structure and its final decoration.
Despite the fact that Palenque, and the
Temple of Inscriptions itself, had been visited and studied for more than two
hundred years, the tomb of Pakal was not discovered until 1952. Alberto Ruz
Lhuillier, a Mexican archaeologist, removed a stone slab from the floor of the
temple, revealing a stairway filled with rubble. Two years later, when the
stairway was cleared, it was discovered that it led into Pakal’s tomb.
The temple has six piers, or
vertical panels. These are labeled A through F, each with texts, artistic
representations, or both executed in reliefs made from plaster stucco. Piers A
and F have only hieroglyphic text on them. Piers B through E have images of
people holding an infant-like figure, which has a snake as one leg.
Stairs of housing block, Hadar HaCarmel, Haifa
Inside Chicago’s Amazing First Architecture Biennial
by STEPHEN HEYMAN
In Chicago, even those typically immune to the charms of architecture can easily get lost in what Nelson Algren once described as a “peculiar wilderness” forged out of “steel and blood-red neon.” As much as Chicago is famous for buildings that already exist—towering Art Deco skyscrapers, dozens of Frank Lloyd Wright homes—the city has a long history of thinking about those that should exist, beginning with Daniel Burnham’s 1909 “Plan of Chicago,” which laid out a bold, progressive vision for the city in magnificent, large-scale illustrations that you can still see in the basement of the Art Institute. That same tendency to think, if not dream, about the role that architecture can play in the life of a city is on full view in Chicago’s first architecture Biennial, supposedly the largest collection of contemporary international architecture in North America, which runs through January 3.
Pitched as an odd-year counterpart to the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Chicago event seems both more preoccupied with local issues and more socially conscious than Venice. Most of the exhibits are concentrated in the Beaux Arts rooms of the Chicago Cultural Center, an oddly lavish setting—loaded with gilt, marble, mosaic, and Tiffany glass—for so much problem-oriented architecture. There is a very timely exhibition by Jeanne Gang on improving police and community relations that imagines police stations doubling as civic centers and offering things like free Wi-Fi, mental health counseling, daycare, even basketball courts.
While not starchitect-free, only a few big names are on the bill. Tatiana Bilbao contributed an installation, a kind of bare-bones $8,000 wooden house meant to address Mexico’s acute affordable housing shortage of 9 million homes. Bjarke Ingels, the dreamy, in-demand Dane, has offered a prototype of the steam ring generator his firm crowdfunded for a power plant (and ski resort?) in Copenhagen that will puff out a magical cloud ring for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted by the plant.
In another room, Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has arrayed a collection of wooden pedestals containing what looks like found objects—a loofa, a squished soda bottle, blocks of staples. The placement of tiny human figurines alongside these pleasing piles of junk turns them into little architectural curios, complete with thought-provoking commentaries like: “When things gather, there is faint order, there is the beginning of architecture.”
Lesser-known architects contributed some of the coolest exhibits, including one about the (potentially vertical) future of campgrounds and another, by Tomás Saraceno, about spinning actual spider webs into architectural expressions. Many critics have commented on the jumbled, grab-bag nature of the event, but its organizers say creating this feeling was kind of the point. “We didn’t want to constrain the work with a theme,” cocurator Sarah Herda told The Guardian. “We went out into the world and asked architects to tell us what they think matters.”
The section of Michigan Avenue facing Millennium Park, the epicenter of the Biennial, seems like a natural focal point, since this area is already home to splashy architecture, including Frank Gehry’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion as well as structurally minded sculptures by Anish Kapoor and Jaume Plensa. I’m told it was once a chore to find a decent meal or cocktail around here, until the arrival of the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, which has become a clubby dining and drinking destination, as well as a great base for traveling architecture buffs. The project, completed just this spring, transformed a venerable men’s club, built in the 1890s, into a swank hotel. The restoration of the gorgeous, sprawling Venetian Gothic lobby is as impressive as any of the Biennial’s exhibits: It took nearly three years to pull off and code all the millwork and restore the giant manly fireplaces into honey traps for wintertime whiskey drinkers like me.
Right across from the CAA hotel is the Art Institute of Chicago, which has also caught the architecture bug: Its big fall exhibition, running through January 3, is a mid-career retrospective of the work of the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye. Included in the exhibit is a model of his ziggurat design for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is currently under construction on the National Mall. (Not included is any of the speculation that Adjaye may soon be chosen to design the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago.)
Of all the exciting architectural activity here, the season’s most impressive contribution wasn’t dreamed up by an architect at all. Opening as part of the Biennial, Theaster Gates’s Stony Island Arts Bank in an underserved area of the South Side of Chicago is just the latest example ofGates’s inspired urban interventions. In 2013, he bought a crumbling Prohibition-era bank building for $1 from the city and oversaw its exquisite $4.5 million renovation (directed by the local architecture firm FitzGerald Associates). To help finance the project, he parodied his own artistic celebrity, selling signed marble blocks from the old building as $5,000 “art bonds” during Art Basel.
Inside are special collections, each of which has its own remarkable story. A jaw-dropping central library space holds the magazine and books of John H. Johnson, who founded Jet and Ebony magazines. Elsewhere are timeworn cabinets and cubbies containing 60,000 glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute; the huge record collection of the DJ and house music progenitor Frankie Knuckles; even a collection of “negrobilia,” or racist memorabilia, that the banker Edward Williams and his wife Ana bought in great quantity in order to take out of circulation. All this cultural “currency,” open to the public, capitalizes on Gates’s idea that this space is still a bank—just one that values and protects something besides money. As Gates recently said, “The city is starting to realize that there might be other ways of imagining upside beside return on investment and financial gain.”
Remember that He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted. C. S. Lewis
GOOD WORDS
TO HAVE…………
DON’T WORRY-BE HAPPY
MUSIC FOR THE SOUL
The Quotable Kahlil Gibran
with Artwork from 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/
ROGER TOUHY,
THE LAST 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.
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
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
Augustus Saint-Gaudens the puritan
The Puritan is a bronze statue
by sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States,
which later became so popular that it was reproduced for over 20 other cities,
museums, universities, and private collectors around the world. Augustus
Saint-Gaudens was one of the most influential and successful artists of the
late 19th century.
In 1881, Chester W. Chapin, a
railroad tycoon and congressman from Springfield, Massachusetts, commissioned]
the renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create a bronze likeness of his
ancestor, Deacon Samuel Chapin (1595–1675), one of the early settlers of the
City of Springfield. By 1881, Springfield had become one of America's most
innovative industrial and manufacturing centers, and was one of the wealthiest
cities in the United States.
The sculpture, cast at the
Bureau Brothers Foundry in Philadelphia, was unveiled on November 24, 1887 in
Stearns Square, between Bridge Street and Worthington Street - a collaboration
between the artistic "dream team" of Stanford White (of the renowned
architecture firm McKim, Mead, and White) and Saint-Gaudens - and featured
numerous sculptural and landscape architectural details to enhance the
sculpture. In 1899 the statue was moved to Merrick Park, on the corner of
Chestnut and State Streets, one of Springfield's most important intersections (now
part of the Quadrangle cultural center). It has remained there ever since.
This impressive sculpture of
the The Deacon can be found next to the palatial Springfield City Library. The
base is inscribed: "1595 Anno Domini 1675 Deacon Samuel Chapin One of The
Founders of Springfield"
The statue was so popular with
the public that Saint-Gaudens decided to produce smaller scale versions of this
work under the title "The Puritan". He correctly surmised that this
would be an excellent source of addition income. Today more than 25 slightly
altered copies of this work can be found in museums, art galleries,
universities, and private collections around the world. For example, a copy of
The Puritan remains on display in gallery 767 of New York City's Metropolitan Museum
of Art.
The New England Society of
Pennsylvanians asked Gaudens to make a replica of The Puritan for the city of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For the later commission Gaudens made some changes
in the figure's dress and adjusted the facial characteristics to represent a
New England type: "For the head in the original statue, I used as a model
the head of Mr. Chapin himself, assuming that there would be some family
resemblance with the Deacon, who was his direct ancestor. But Mr. Chapin's face
is round and Gaelic in character, so in the Philadelphia work, I changed the
features completely, giving them the long, New England type, besides altering
the folds of the cloak in many respects, the legs, the left hand, and the
Bible." The Pilgrim was originally placed on the South Plaza of City Hall
but was relocated to its present site in Fairmount Park in 1920.
Some people stand and move as if
they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail
to treat them with respect, not realizing that they have signaled that it is
not necessary to treat them with respect. Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of
Self-Esteem
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
"The Constant North,"
J. F. Hendry
Encompass me, my lover,
With your eyes' wide calm.
Though noonday shadows are assembling doom,
The sun remains when I remember them;
And death, if it should come,
Must fall like quiet snow from such clear skies.
Minutes we snatched from the unkind winds
Are grown into daffodils by the sea's
Edge, mocking its green miseries;
Yet I seek you hourly still, over
A new Atlantis loneliness, blind
As a restless needle held by the constant north we always have
in mind.
James Findlay Hendry (September 12, 1912 – December 17, 1986)
was a Scottish poet known also as an editor and writer. He was born in Glasgow,
and read Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow. During World War II he
served in the Royal Artillery and the Intelligence Corps. After the war he
worked as a translator for international organisations, including the UN and
the ILO. He later took a chair at Laurentian University. He died in Toronto. He
edited with Henry Treece the poetry anthology The New Apocalypse (1939) which
gave its name to the New Apocalyptics poetic group. The long poem Marimarusa
was published in 1978.
Of the nature of poetry itself,
Orlando only gathered that it was harder to sell than prose, and though the lines
were shorter took longer in the writing. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
STRIVE
MIGHTILY, BUT EAT AND DRINK AS FRIENDS
Archaeologists
find Shakespeare's kitchen
Even the Bard had to eat. Two
hundred and fifty years after William Shakespeare's country house was
demolished, researchers have unearthed the remains of a hearth and cold storage
pit, as well as plates, cups, and cookware in New House, the
Stratford-upon-Avon residence where Shakespeare lived for 19 years.
While the excavations by
Staffordshire University's Centre of Archaeology are ongoing — the
archaeologists hope to open to the site next summer for the 400th anniversary
of the playwright's death — the kitchen marks one of the most thrilling
discoveries yet, The Telegraph reports. New House's cooking areas, brew house,
pantry, and cold storage pit indicate "a working home as well as a house
of high social status," according to Dr. Paul Edmondson.
"At New Place we can catch
glimpses of Shakespeare the playwright and country-town gentleman. His main
task was to write and a house as impressive as New Place would have played an
important part in the rhythm of his working life," Edmondson said.
Some experts hope to prove that
the Bard wrote many of his plays at New Place, rather than in London.
Shakespeare bought the Stratford home in 1597; he died there in 1616. Jeva
Lange
WHITMAN
This is what you shall do; Love
the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that
asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to
others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence
toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man
or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young
and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every
season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school
or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very
flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your
eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
The heart was made to be broken.
At least, according to Oscar Wilde. I wonder how often his heart broke, who
broke it and how they may have written a classic about how Wilde was just
another Irish dandy, how he preferred the Hairy Houdini but married a Queen’s
Counsel. How’s should have been titled Receives His Ass. But perhaps I’m an
idealist.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and
clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. ,
Let your soul stand cool and
composed before a million universes. ,
Be not ashamed women…You are the
gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
Failing to fetch me at first,
keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting
for you.
I tramp a perpetual journey.
Do I contradict myself? Very
well, then, I contradict myself; I am large — I contain multitudes.
Resist much, obey little
PREFACE TO "LEAVES OF
GRASS"
1855
WALT WHITMAN
America does not repel the
past, or what the past has produced under its forms, or amid other
politics, or the idea of castes, or the old religions--accepts the lesson
with calmness--is not impatient because the slough still sticks to
opinions and manners in literature, while the
life which served its
requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms--perceives that
the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the
house--perceives that it waits a little while in the door--that it was
fittest for its days--that its action has
descended to the stalwart and
well-shaped heir who approaches--and that he shall be fittest for his
days.
The Americans of all nations at
any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The
United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history
of the earth hitherto, the largest and most stirring appear tame and
orderly to their ampler
largeness and stir. Here at
last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast
doings of the day and night. Here is action untied from strings,
necessarily blind to particulars and details, magnificently moving in
masses. Here is the hospitality which
for ever indicates heroes. Here
the performance, disdaining the trivial, unapproach'd in the tremendous
audacity of its crowds and groupings, and the push of its perspective,
spreads with crampless and flowing breadth, and showers its prolific and
splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the
summer and winter, and need never be
bankrupt while corn grows from
the ground, or the orchards drop apples, or the bays contain fish, or men
beget children upon women.
Other states indicate
themselves in their deputies--but the genius of the United States is not
best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or
authors, or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or
inventors--but always most in the common people, south, north, west, east,
in all its States, through all its mighty amplitude. The largeness of the
nation, however, were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and
generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets
and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms, nor capital, nor
learning, may suffice for the
ideal of man--nor suffice the
poet. No reminiscences may suffice either.
A live nation can always cut a
deep mark, and can have the best authority the cheapest--namely, from its
own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states,
and of present action and grandeur, and of the subjects of poets. (As if
it were necessary to trot
back generation after
generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the
demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make
their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by
discovery, and what has transpired in North and South America, were less
than the small theater of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the
middle ages!) The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse
of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the
magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight
and realization of
full-sized men, or one
full-sized man unconquerable and simple.
The American poets are to
inclose old and new, for America is the race of races. The expression of
the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, and
not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much
more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted, and their eras and
characters be illustrated, and
that finish the verse. Not so
the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and has
vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or
legislation, the great poet never stagnates. Obedience does not master
him, he masters it. High up out of reach he
stands, turning a concentrated
light--he turns the pivot with his finger--he baffles the swiftest runners
as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying
toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by steady
faith. Faith is the
antiseptic of the soul--it
pervades the common people and preserves them--they never give up
believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable
freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person, that humbles and
mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a
certainty how one not a great artist may be
just as sacred and perfect as
the greatest artist.
The power to destroy or remould
is freely used by the greatest poet, but seldom the power of attack. What
is past is past. If he does not expose superior models, and prove himself
by every step he takes, he is not what is wanted. The presence of the
great poet conquers--not parleying, or struggling, or any prepared
attempts. Now he has passed that way, see
after him! There is not left
any vestige of despair, or misanthropy, or cunning, or exclusiveness, or
the ignominy of a nativity or color, or delusion of hell or the necessity
of hell--and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or
weakness or sin. The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality.
If he breathes into anything that
was before thought small, it
dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer--he is
individual--he is complete in himself--the others are as good as he, only
he sees it, and they do not. He is not one of the chorus--he does not stop
for any regulation--he is the
president of regulation. What
the eyesight does to the rest, he does to the rest. Who knows the curious
mystery of the eyesight? The other senses corroborate themselves, but this
is removed from any proof but its own, and foreruns the identities of the
spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of
man, and all the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning.
What is marvelous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague--after
you have once just open'd the space of a peach-pit, and given audience to
far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things enter with electric
swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion orjostling or jam?
The land and sea, the animals,
fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains
and rivers, are not small themes--but folks expect of the poet to indicate
more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real
objects--they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their
souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough--probably as well as
he. The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators
of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the
manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light
and the open air, all is an old
varied sign of the unfailing
perception of beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in out-door people.
They can never be assisted by poets to perceive--some may, but they never
can. The poetic quality is not marshal'd in rhyme or uniformity, or
abstract addresses to things, nor
in melancholy complaints or
good precepts, but is the life of these and much else, and is in the soul.
The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant
rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its own roots in the
ground out of sight. The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the
free growth of metrical laws,
and bud from them as unerringly
and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as
the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and melons and pears, and shed the
perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems
or music or orations or recitations, are not independent but dependent.
All beauty comes from
beautiful blood and a beautiful
brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman, it is
enough--the fact will prevail through the universe; but the gaggery and
gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his
ornaments or fluency is
lost. This is what you shall
do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to
everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income
and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience
and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or
unknown, or to any man or number of
men--go freely with powerful
uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of
families--re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any
book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh
shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its
words, but in the silent lines of its lips and
face, and between the lashes of
your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The poet shall not
spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is already
plow'd and manured; others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go
directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything
he touches--and shall master all
attachment.
The known universe has one
complete lover, and that is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal
passion, and is indifferent which chance happens, and which possible
contingency of fortune or misfortune, and persuades daily and hourly his
delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning
progress to contact and amorous joy.
Other proportions of the
reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected
from heaven or from the highest, he is rapport with in the sight of the
daybreak, or the scenes of the winter woods, or the presence of children
playing, or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love above
all love has leisure and expanse--he leaves
room ahead of himself. He is no
irresolute or suspicious lover--he is sure--he scorns intervals. His
experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can
jar him--suffering and darkness cannot--death and fear cannot. To him
complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the
earth--he saw them buried. The sea
is not surer of the shore, or
the shore of the sea, than he is of the fruition of his love, and of all
perfection and beauty.
The fruition of beauty is no
chance of miss or hit--it is as inevitable as life--it is exact and plumb
as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the
hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice proceeds another
voice, eternally curious of
the harmony of things with man.
These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods--that it is
profuse and impartial--that there is not a minute of the light or dark,
nor an acre of the earth and sea, without it--nor any direction of the
sky, nor any trade or employment, nor any turn of events. This is the
reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and
balance. One part does not need to be thrust above another. The best
singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ. The
pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and
sound.
Without effort, and without
exposing in the least how it is done, the greatest poet brings the spirit
of any or all events and passions and scenes and persons, some more and
some less, to bear on your individual character as you hear or read. To do
this well is to compete with the
laws that pursue and follow
Time. What is the purpose must surely be there, and the clew of it must be
there--and the faintest indication is the indication of the best, and then
becomes the clearest indication. Past and present and future are not
disjoin'd but join'd. The greatest
poet forms the consistence of
what is to be, from what has been and is. He drags the dead out of their
coffins and stands them again on their feet. He says to the past, Rise and
walk before me that I may realize you. He learns the lesson--he places
himself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet does not only
dazzle his rays over character
and scenes and passions--he
finally ascends, and finishes all--he exhibits the pinnacles that no man
can tell what they are for, or what is beyond--he glows a moment on the
extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or
frown; by that flash of the
moment of parting the one that
sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. The
greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals--he knows
the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never
acknowledging any lessons or deductions but its own. But it has sympathy
as measureless as its pride, and the
one balances the other, and
neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other.
The inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain. The greatest poet has lain
close betwixt both, and they are vital in his style and thoughts.
The art of art, the glory of
expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Nothing is better than simplicity--nothing can make up for excess, or for
the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce
intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations, are powers
neither common nor very uncommon. But to
speak in literature with the
perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the
unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the
roadside, is the flawless triumph of art. If you have look'd on him who
has achiev'd it you have look'd on one of the masters of the artists of
all nations and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray
gull over the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the
tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun
journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward, with
any more satisfaction than
you shall contemplate him. The
great poet has less a mark'd style, and is more the channel of thoughts
and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of
himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have
in my writing any elegance, or
effect, or originality, to hang
in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang
in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely
what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will
have purposes as health or heat
or snow has, and be as
regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
and look in the mirror with me.
The old red blood and stainless
gentility of great poets will be proved by their unconstraint. A heroic
person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or
authority that suits him not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of
first-class writers, savans, musicians,
inventors and artists, nothing
is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the need
of poems, philosophy, politics, mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of
art, an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is
greatest for ever and ever
who contributes the greatest
original practical example. The cleanest expression is that which finds no
sphere worthy of itself, and makes one.
The messages of great poems to
each man and woman are, Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
understand us. We are no better than you, what we inclose you inclose,
what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you suppose there could be only one
Supreme? We affirm there can be unnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not
countervail another any more
than one eyesight countervails
another--and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness of
their supremacy within them. What do you think is the grandeur of storms
and dismemberments, and the deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest
fury of the elements, and the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature,
and the throes of human
desires, and dignity and hate
and love? It is that something in the soul which says, Rage on, whirl on,
I tread master here and everywhere--Master of the spasms of the sky and of
the shatter of the sea, Master of nature and passion and death, and of all
terror and all pain.
The American bards shall be
mark'd for generosity and affection, and for encouraging competitors. They
shall be Kosmos, without monopoly or secrecy, glad to pass anything to
anyone--hungry for equals night and day. They shall not be careful of
riches and privilege--they shall be riches and privilege--they shall
perceive who the most affluent man is.
The most affluent man is he
that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger
wealth of himself. The American bard shall delineate no class of persons,
nor one or two out of the strata of interests, nor love most nor truth
most, nor the soul most, nor the body most--and not be for the Eastern
States more than the Western, or the Northern States more than the
Southern.
Exact science and its practical
movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement
and support. The outset and remembrance are there--there the arms that
lifted him first, and braced him best--there he returns after all his
goings and comings. The sailor and traveler--the anatomist, chemist,
astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician,
historian, and lexicographer, are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of
poets, and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect
poem. No matter
what rises or is utter'd, they
sent the seed of the conception of it--of them and by them stand the
visible proofs of souls. If there shall be love and content between the
father and the son, and if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the
greatness of the father, there shall be
love between the poet and the
man of demonstrable science. In the beauty of poems are henceforth the
tuft and final applause of science.
Great is the faith of the flush
of knowledge, and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and
things. Cleaving and circling here swells the soul of the poet, yet is
president of itself always. The depths are fathomless, and therefore calm.
The innocence and nakedness are
resumed--they are neither
modest nor immodest. The whole theory of the supernatural, and all that
was twined with it or educed out of it, departs as a dream. What has ever
happen'd--what happens, and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws
inclose all. They are sufficient for any case and for all cases--none to
be hurried or retarded--any special
miracle of affairs or persons
inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion and every spear
of grass, and the frames and spirits of men and women and all that
concerns them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and
each distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the reality
of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more
divine than men and women.
Men and women, and the earth
and all upon it, are to be taken as they are, and the investigation of
their past and present and future shall be unintermitted, and shall be
done with perfect candor. Upon this basis philosophy speculates, ever
looking towards the poet, ever regarding the eternal tendencies of all
toward happiness, never inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to
the soul. For the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only
point of sane philosophy. Whatever comprehends less than that--whatever is
less than the laws of light and of astronomical motion--or less than the
laws that follow the thief, the liar, the glutton and the drunkard,
through this life and doubtless afterward--or less than vast stretches of
time, or the slow formation of density, or the patient upheaving of
strata--is of no account. Whatever would put God in a poem or system of
philosophy as contending against some being or influence, is also of no
account. Sanity and ensemble characterize the great master--spoilt in one
principle, all is spoilt. The great master has nothing to do with
miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the mass--he sees the
hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape comes common ground. To
be under the
general law is great, for that
is to correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably great,
and that all are unspeakably great--that nothing, for instance, is greater
than to conceive children, and bring them up well--that to be is just as
great as to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great
masters the idea of political liberty is indispensable. Liberty takes the
adherence of heroes wherever man and woman exist--but never takes any
adherence or welcome from the rest more than from poets. They are the
voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages are worthy the grand
idea--to them it is confided, and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence
of it, and nothing can warp or degrade it.
As the attributes of the poets
of the kosmos concenter in the real body, and in the pleasure of things,
they possess the superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance.
As they emit themselves, facts are shower'd over with light--the daylight
is lit with more volatile light--the deep between the setting and rising sun
goes deeper many fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or
process exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its--the carpenter's
trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'd clean-shap'd
New York clipper at sea under
steam or full sail gleams with unmatch'd beauty--the American circles and
large harmonies of government gleam with theirs--and the commonest
definite intentions and actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos
advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and
stratagems to first principles.
They are of use--they dissolve
poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit. You large proprietor,
they say, shall not realize or perceive more than anyone else. The owner
of the library is not he who holds a legal title to it, having bought and
paid for it. Anyone and everyone is owner of the library, (indeed he or
she alone is owner,) who can read the same through all the varieties of
tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease, and make
supple and powerful and rich and large.
These American States, strong
and healthy and accomplish'd, shall receive no pleasure from violations of
natural models, and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings or
carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books or
newspapers, or in the patterns of woven stuffs, or anything to beautify
rooms or furniture or costumes, or
to put upon cornices or
monuments, or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before
the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes, or which
creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and
revolt. Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made
ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work nothing outre can be allow'd--but those
ornaments can be allow'd that conform to the perfect facts of the open
air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly
from it, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works are
most beautiful without ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human
physiology.
Clean and vigorous children are
jetted and conceiv'd only in those communities where the models of natural
forms are public every day. Great genius and the people of these States
must never be demean'd to romances. As soon as histories are properly
told, no more need of romances.
The great poets are to be known
by the absence in them of tricks, and by the justification of perfect
personal candor. All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness wins the
inner and outer world, and that there is no single exception, and that
never since our earth gather'd itself
in a mass have deceit or
subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the
faintest tinge of a shade--and that through the enveloping wealth and rank
of a state, or the whole republic of states, a sneak or sly person shall
be discover'd and despised--and that the soul has never once been fool'd and
never can be fool'd--and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only
a fœtid puff--and there never grew up in any of the continents of the
globe, nor upon any planet or satellite, nor in that condition which
precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in
any stretch of abeyance or action of vitality, nor in any process of
formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.
Extreme caution or prudence,
the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for
women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and
causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature, and the
propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs, are called up of
the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his
birth out of his mother's womb, and from her birth out of her mother's.
Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been thought that the prudent
citizen was the citizen who applied himself to solid gains, and did well
for himself and for his family, and completed a lawful life without debt
or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the
economies of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to
think he gives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of
the gate. The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of
it, or the ripeness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum
laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clap-boards around and shingles
overhead on a lot of American soil own'd, and the easy dollars that supply
the year's plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the
abandonment of such a great being as a man is, to the toss and pallor of
years of money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and
all their stifling deceits and underhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlors,
or shameless stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of the bloom
and odor of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and
of the sea, and of the true
taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with in youth or middle
age, and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life
without elevation or naïveté, (even if you have achiev'd a secure 10,000 a
year, or election to Congress or the Governorship,) and the ghastly chatter of
a death without serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon modern
civilization and forethought, blotching the surface and system which
civilization undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense
features it spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reach'd
kisses of the soul.
Ever the right explanation
remains to be made about prudence. The prudence of the mere wealth and
respectability of the most esteem'd life appears too faint for the eye to
observe at all, when little and large alike drop quietly aside at the
thought of the prudence suitable for immortality. What is the wisdom that fills
the thinness of a year, or seventy or eighty years--to the wisdom spaced
out by ages, and coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements
and rich presents, and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can
look, in every direction, running gayly toward you? Only the soul is of itself—all
else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is of
consequence. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be anything
else than the profoundest reason, whether it brings argument to hand or
no. No specification is necessary--to add or subtract or divide is in
vain. Little or big, learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black, legal or
illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the
last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous
and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in the
unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope of it
forever. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving and
glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own case or
any case, has no particular sabbath or judgment day, divides not the
living from the dead, or the righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied
with the present, matches every thought or act by its correlative, and knows
no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement.
The direct trial of him who
would be the greatest poet is to-day. If he does not flood himself with
the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides--if he be not himself the age
transfigur'd, and if to him is not open'd the eternity which gives
similitude to all periods and locations and processes, and animate and
inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its
inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shapes of to-day,
and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the
passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the
representation of this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty
beautiful children of the wave--let him merge in the general run, and wait
his development.
Still the final test of poems,
or any character or work, remains. The prescient poet projects himself
centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of
time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the
same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory
now? Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing
detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved
long and long after he is buried? Does the young man think often of him?
and the young woman think often of him? and do the middle-aged and the old
think of him?
A great poem is for ages and
ages in common, and for all degrees and complexions, and all departments
and sects, and for a woman as much as a man, and a man as much as a woman.
A great poem is no finish to a man or woman, but rather a beginning. Has
anyone fancied he could sit at last under some due authority, and rest
satisfied with explanations, and realize, and be content and full? To no such
terminus does the greatest poet bring--he brings neither cessation nor
shelter'd fatness and ease. The touch of him, like Nature, tells in
action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions
previously unattain'd--thenceforward is no rest--they see the space and
ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. Now there
shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos--the elder encourages the
younger and shows him how--they two shall launch off fearlessly together
till the new world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabash'd on the
lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and
shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more
priests. Their work is done. A new order shall arise, and they shall be
the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. They shall find
their inspiration in real objects to-day, symptoms of the past and future.
They shall not deign to defend immortality or God, or the perfection of
things, or liberty, or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They
shall arise in America, and be responded to from the remainder of the
earth.
The English language befriends
the grand American expression--it is brawny enough, and limber and full
enough. On the tough stock of a race who through all change of
circumstance was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the
animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer
and subtler and more elegant tongues.
It is the powerful language of
resistance--it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the
proud and melancholy races, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue
to express growth, faith, self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality,
friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium
that shall wellnigh express the inexpressible.
No great literature nor any
like style of behavior or oratory, or social intercourse or household
arrangements, or public institutions, or the treatment by bosses of
employ'd people, nor executive detail, or detail of the army and navy, nor
spirit of legislation or courts, or police or tuition or architecture, or
songs or amusements, can long elude the
jealous and passionate instinct
of American standards. Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of
the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every freeman's and
freewoman's heart, after that which passes by, or this built to remain. Is
it uniform with my country? Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions?
Is it for the ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well
united, proud, beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it
something grown fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea for use to
me to-day here? I know that what answers for me, an American, in Texas,
Ohio, Canada, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a
part of my materials. Does this answer? Is it for the nursing of the young
of the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples of
the breasts of the Mother of Many Children?
America prepares with composure
and good-will for the visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect
that is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist, the
ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite, are not
unappreciated--they fall in their place and do their work. The soul of the
nation also does its work. It rejects none, it permits all. Only toward the
like of itself will it advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a
nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of
the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way
to meet that of its poets
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.
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE
PHOTOS FROM FILM
North Ave and Wood St, 1964, Chicago
1968 Vietnam
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Whenever you find yourself on
the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain
(WFLA)
– In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s Theory of
General Relativity, NASA released a photo of a group of galaxies that look like
the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The
light of those galaxies is being stretched, according to NASA. The effect is
called “gravitational lensing,” a phenomenon predicted by the Theory of General
Relativity. According
to NASA, the galaxies making the cat’s eyes are actually slamming into one
another in a giant galactic collision.
The truth is not always
beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth. Lao Tzu
Baby Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of
the Sixties
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
There are more intense books that go into
supposed motivation and recording techniques and equipment, but this is a lovely
work that illuminates the songs and the stories behind them without being
overbearing in doing so. I really enjoyed it - bought several copies to give as
gifts. Well done!
THE QUOTABLE EMERSON
Quotes from Amazon
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!
EMERSON said it
It
is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude
to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Solitude
is impractical and yet society is fatal.
We
walk alone in the world.
We
never touch but at points.
Conversation
enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.
Sorrow
makes us children again.
The
Only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Sorrow
makes us all children again destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest
knows nothing.
The
one thing in the world of value is the active soul.
The
soul's emphasis is always right.
All
the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Condense
some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
Speech
is power: speech is to persuade to convert to compel. It is to bring another
out of his bad sense into your good sense.
The
foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.
Our
spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with your best deliberation
and heed come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring
you.
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 without 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.
Although the world is full of
suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. Helen Keller
Cygnus:
Bubble and Crescent
These clouds of gas and dust drift
through rich star fields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the
high flying constellation Cygnus. Caught within the telescopic field of view
are the Soap Bubble (lower left) and the Crescent Nebula (upper right). Both
were formed at a final phase in the life of a star. Also known as NGC 6888, the
Crescent was shaped as its bright, central massive Wolf-Rayet star, WR 136,
shed its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind. Burning through fuel at a
prodigious rate, WR 136 is near the end of a short life that should finish in a
spectacular supernova explosion. recently discovered Soap Bubble Nebula is
likely a planetary nebula, the final shroud of a lower mass, long-lived,
sun-like star destined to become a slowly cooling white dwarf. While both are
some 5,000 light-years or so distant, the larger Crescent Nebula is around 25
light-years across.
DON'T YOU WANT
TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD?
I DO
Westerdok District, Amsterdam
Holiday village near Arkhangelsk, Russia
AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR YOU...................
THE ART OF PULP
BLOGLAPEDIA’S BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art
for the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of
Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The
Kennedy’s in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The
Prohibition in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A really small company
run by writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The Day
Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND CIVILIZATIONS
The Works
of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS
BOOKS
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
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 Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
The
Quotable Machiavelli
Paperback 36 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-L-Thayer
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 230 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotabe Oscar Wilde
Paperback 24 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons-words/
The
Quotable Helen Keller
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby
The Art
of War: Sun Tzu
Paperback 60 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Shakespeare
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Shakespeare-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Gorucho Marx
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander
