“The more you know yourself, the
more patience you have for what you see in others Erik
Erikson
“I’m not an abstractionist. I’m
not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m
interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and
so on.”Mark Rothko
LLR BOOKS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM
LLR BOOKS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM
“Remember, no effort that we make
to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
Helen Keller
“We are all prisoners but some of us are in
cells with windows and some without.” Kahlil Gibran
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS
EDITORS.....................
Excerpt from my book "No Time to Say Goodbye:
Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
In 1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and
two sisters entered Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split
apart. Over the next ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes,
group homes and state schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven,
West Haven, Deep River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state
returned him to the same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As
tragic as is funny compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey
with this child to overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find
his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington
DC. He holds an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. He is the author of
numerous non-fiction on the history of organized crime including the ground
break biography of bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered
Touhy" and "Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in
Chicago."
His non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The
New Criminologist, American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of
Chicago's Celtic Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short
story fiction work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in
October of 2008.
His play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public
performance at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of
the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the play won
the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
Hell
is empty and all the devils are here.
Visit our Shakespeare Blog
at the address below
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..
Athwart (uh-THWART) adverb,
preposition: From side to side of; across; against. From French a- (on, into,
toward) + thwart, from Old Norse thvert, neuter of thverr (transverse).
Earliest documented use: 1470.
Exculpatory \ek-SKUL-puh-tor-ee\ tending or serving to
clear from alleged fault or guilt. Exculpatory
is the adjectival form of the verb exculpate, meaning "to clear from
guilt." The pair of words cannot be accused of being secretive—their joint
etymology reveals all: they are tied to the Latin verb exculpatus, a word that
combines the prefix ex-, meaning "out of" or "away from,"
with the Latin noun culpa, meaning "blame." The related but
lesser-known terms inculpate and inculpatory are antonyms of exculpate and
exculpatory. Inculpate means "to incriminate" and inculpatory means
"incriminating." A related noun, culpable, means "meriting
condemnation or blame for doing something wrong."
Wherewith: adverb: With which. pronoun:
The thing(s) with which.conjunction: By means of which. From where + with. Earliest
documented use: 1200.
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO
ENJOY................
Morning Person
By
Vassar Miller
God, best at making in the
morning, tossed
stars and planets, singing and
dancing, rolled
Saturn’s rings spinning and
humming, twirled the earth
so hard it coughed and spat the
moon up, brilliant
bubble floating around it for
good, stretched holy
hands till birds in nervous
sparks flew forth from
them and beasts---lizards, big
and little, apes,
lions, elephants, dogs and cats
cavorting,
tumbling over themselves, dizzy
with joy when
God made us in the morning too,
both man
and woman, leaving Adam no time
for
sleep so nimbly was Eve bouncing
out of
his side till as night came
everything and
everybody, growing tired,
declined, sat
down in one long descended
Hallelujah
Vassar Miller (July 19, 1924 –
October 31, 1998) was a writer and poet.
Miller was born in Houston,
Texas, the daughter of real estate investor Jesse G. Miller. She began writing
as a child, composing on a typewriter due to the cerebral palsy which affected
her speech and movement. She attended the University of Houston, receiving her
B.A. and M.A. in English.
In 1956, Miller published her
first volume of poetry, Adam's Footprint. Her poems, most of which dealt with
either her strong religious faith or her experiences as a person with a
disability, were widely praised for their rigorous formality, clarity, and
emotional impact.
In 1961 Miller was nominated for
a Pulitzer Prize for her collection Wage War on Silence. Her poems have been
published in hundreds of periodicals and more than 50 anthologies, including
Spanish translations in Latin American journals.
The lasting power of Ms. Miller’s
poetry and its distinctiveness was aptly described by many, including author
Larry McMurtry. Reflecting on the qualities that make the work of only a few
artists survive, Mr. McMurtry wrote of Vassar Miller and her poetry: “It’s easy
to point out her clarity, her precision, her intelligence, her honesty. But I
want to mention one other quality that I think she has both as a person and as
a poet, and that is her tenacity. It’s not simply brute survival that a poet is
involved with, although sometimes they are; it’s more than that. It’s a
tenacity that has to be at one and the same time, physical, intellectual, and
moral. I believe this tenacity is something that Vassar Miller is richly
endowed with.”
Excerpt from my book "When
Capone’s Mob Murdered Touhy.”
Banghart,
Basil: He was an underworld legend, a man's man, whose prison escapes made him
a celebrity in every major prison from Atlanta to Soladad. He could drive a
train, fly a plane, shoot a machine gun from a speeding car with deadly
accuracy and pull off mail heists that produced a million dollars.
Basil Hugh Banghart was born in Berville
Michigan in 1900 and finished one year of college before he became a
professional car thief, stealing over 100 cars in the Detroit area, still
dubious but unbroken, before he was arrested in 1926 at age twenty-six.
Prison sociologists rated him as "a
professional criminal, recidivist with unfavorable prognosis. A sophisticated
criminal who is astute, well poised, alert, but without social conscience or
scruples. His I.Q 107."
Banghart, dubbed "The Owl"
because of his abnormally large eyes, had been associated with Gerald Chapman
and George Dutch Anderson having met the both of them while he was doing time
in Atlanta Federal pen.
Chapman liked Banghart and took him under
his wing and tutored him in the fine arts of mail robbery and prison escapes.
Chapman had taught The Owl well. Assigned
to a window washing detail, Banghart made his first, but unsuccessful, escape
from Atlanta, by leaping 25 feet from a window he was washing into a marsh area
on the other side of the prison's wall. He made his way to Montana, but was
captured and sent back to Atlanta.
His second escape was with George Chapman
in 1927 but he was arrested in Pittsburgh a year later, in October of 1928,
while trying to steal a car.
Escorted by US Marshals back to prison, Banghart was taken to the
federal building. Left alone in an office for several minutes, Banghart escaped
by calling police and telling them he was an FBI agent who had been assaulted
and overpowered by his prisoner, Basil Banghart, who had escaped after
handcuffing him.
The Owl gave the cops a description of the
Marshal who was escorting him and said, "He's a dangerous, armed felon and
a police imposter."
Police, pistols drawn, flooded into the
building and overpowered the FBI agent as he and Banghart walked through the
building's lobby. The Owl disappeared in the confusion.
He was arrested in Knoxville in February
of 1930. Returned to Atlanta, he escaped again but was arrested in January 1932
in Detroit for armed robbery.
Held in the South Bend Indiana jail, he
escaped by throwing pepper in the guard's face, grabbing his machine gun and
shooting his way to freedom.
Banghart made his way to Chicago and went
to work for Roger Touhy. While Banghart probably played a major role in the
Touhy-Nitti union wars of 1932-33, there is only one incident on record where
police suspected he was involved.
In January of 1933, the Nitti organization
trapped and killed one of Touhy's gunmen, a union extortionist named Jimmy
O'Brien.
Seven days later February 8, 1933, the
Touhy's struck back.
It was 15 degrees below zero and snowing.
There was two feet of snow already on the ground. A dark colored sedan pulled
up in front of the Garage Nightclub where Jimmy O'Brien had been killed.
A tall man, identified as Banghart, and
wearing a dark hat and overcoat, probably Basil Banghart, opened the front door
to the club and said: "This is for Jimmy, you bastards!" and tossed a
bomb into the bar room which blew the place to bits but remarkably didn't kill
any of the occupants.
In August of 1933, Banghart's occasional
partner, Issac Costner, a Tennessee moonshiner working for the Touhy's as an
enforcer, convinced Banghart to meet with an international con man named John
Factor, AKA, Jake the Barber.
Costner told Banghart that the Barber was
wanted in England on a bonco conviction and needed to avoid extradition by
kidnapping himself. Factor had promised Costner $50,000 if he would help make
the kidnapping look real by picking up the ransom money.
Remarkably, Banghart agreed.
On August 17, 1933, Banghart drove to the
forest preserves outside of Chicago where the ransom money was to be dropped.
It was supposed to be an easy deal, a man
in a cab would meet Banghart at the intersection of Wolf and Ogden roads and
hand him a bag filled with 50k, in small unmarked bills.
But, unknown to the Owl, two hundred and
fifty policemen, cadets, Sheriff's deputies and FBI agents, two airplanes,
sixty-two squad cars, ten machine guns and a dozen aerial bombs were waiting
for him.
Banghart and his partner, Ice Wagon
Connor, were late picking up the money. They sped onto the roadway where the
cab was waiting and pulled up to the cab's fender, screeching to a halt just
barely avoiding an accident.
Connors, in a gray summer suit, was on the
passenger's side. He stepped out and walked over to the cab and looked at
Officer McKenna in the back seat. "You got a package, a package for
Smith?" he asked.
The plainclothes policeman inside the cab
nodded. "Yes. It's here."
The cop handed Connors a package that
contained nothing more than scraps of paper and then waved for the others to
move in.
Banghart and Connors saw the set up.
Banghart floored the car while Connors threw himself into the back seat.
Banghart raced the car down the road only
to find it blocked by a dozen squad cars. Throwing the car in reverse, he raced
down to the other end of the road and into another road block.
The Owl threw the car in reverse again and
dodged back and forth between the roadblocks, looking for an opening.
At one point, McKenna and Meyers, the two
cops in the taxi, drove up behind Banghart's car and fired the machine gun at
the gangster, missing every shot. In frustration Meyers pulled the cab up
alongside Banghart's car to give McKenna a better shot. McKenna let a burst go
from the Tommy gun, but missed again.
Banghart drove the car straight at the
roadblock in front of him and the cops, not really sure if he would stop or
not, moved out of his way and Banghart drove straight into the forest preserve
to get out of the view of the airplanes above him.
With the police only yards behind them,
Banghart and Connor leaped out of the car and let it smash into a tree and ran
away on foot and split up and escaped.
With the Factor business behind him, or so
he thought, in the winter of 1935, Banghart joined Roger Touhy and his gang in
planning and executing what was then the largest string of mail robberies in
history.
Banghart's contribution was to steal
$105,000 in federal reserve notes from a truck in Charlotte North Carolina in
broad daylight.
Unfortunately for Banghart, he used a
stolen car for the heist, which brought the FBI into the case. The car was
found outside of a Baltimore hotel a month after the robbery, and the FBI
arrested Banghart shortly afterwards as he left the hotel.
Banghart was returned to Chicago, where,
to his surprise, he was indicted, along with Roger Touhy and four others, for
kidnapping Jake the Barber Factor. The Owl had been set up.
When Banghart was called to the stand
during the Factor kidnap trial, the prosecuting attorney, Wilbert Crowley
asked: "What is your occupation, Mr. Banghart?"
"Thief."
The jury laughed but Crowley was
confused. "What?"
"I'm a thief. I steal...that's how I
make my living."
"What was the last place of your
residence?"
"601 McDonough Boulevard SE, Atlanta
Georgia, but it wasn't permanent."
Later in the day Crowley found out that
601 McDonough was the address for Atlanta Federal prison and called Banghart
back to the witness stand to explain himself.
"Why didn't you tell us,"
Crowley demanded, "that you were in prison?"
"Four walls and iron bars,"
Banghart replied, "do not a prison make."
Flustered, Crowley said, "So you
escaped from prison, isn't that correct?"
Banghart was indignant. "No. The
warden says I escaped from prison."
"And," Crowley asked,
"What do you say?"
"I say," replied Banghart,
"that I left without permission."
"The point is, Mr. Banghart, is that
you are a fugitive, are you not?"
"Yes I am. I am a fugitive."
"From where, sir?"
"Well hell son, from justice."
The jury had a good laugh at the Owl's
testimony but they found him guilty anyway. He was sentenced to 99 years for
his role in the Factor kidnapping, plus 31 years for his part in the mail
robberies.
In 1935, Banghart started off his new
career at Menard State prison by driving a laundry truck through the main
gates.
The escape was short lived, he was
recaptured and sent to the main prison with Roger Touhy at Statesville.
In October of 1942, Banghart escaped
prison again, this time with Roger Touhy and four others, going over
Stateville's enormous 45-foot walls in a daring daylight breakout.
They were recaptured several months later
after one of the escapees, Matlick Nelson, who had been severely beaten by
Banghart for drinking, turned himself into the FBI and told the agents
everything he knew about the escape.
By nightfall, a small army of agents was
slowly and carefully moving in around the gang's apartments.
J. Edgar Hoover arrived on the scene to
personally supervise the raid.
At zero hour, powerful searchlights were
turned onto the windows of Touhy's apartment and then a loudspeaker cracked the
silence of the night. "Roger Touhy and the other escaped convicts! The
building is surrounded. We are about to throw tear gas in the building.
Surrender now and you will not be killed."
Banghart wanted to shoot it out, but Roger
didn't. They debated over what to do for the next ten minutes before Banghart
shouted out the window, "We're coming out."
"Then come out backwards with your
hands high in the air! Banghart you come out first!"
Banghart, wearing only his pants, appeared
at the front door, his back to the agents. Roger, clad in fire-engine-red
pajamas, followed him.
The agents leaped on each of them as they
came out of the building and knocked them to the freezing cold pavement and
handcuffed them.
A dozen agents rushed into the apartment
and found five pistols, three sawn off shotguns, a .30/30 rifle and $13,523 in
cash which they handed over to Tubbo Gilbert, who was still the Chief
Investigator for the States Attorney's Office.
When Gilbert returned the cash to the
prisoners at Stateville prison, he said that he had only been given $800 by the
FBI.
After Touhy and Banghart were handcuffed,
J. Edgar Hoover, surrounded by a dozen agents and a dozen more newspaper
reports, strolled up to Banghart and said "Well, Banghart, you're a
trapped rat."
The Owl burst out into a huge smile,
"You're J. Edgar Hoover, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yes," Hoover beamed, "I
am."
Banghart nodded his head and said,
"You're a lot fatter in person than you are on the radio."
On January 2, 1943, The Owl was returned,
by a massive and heavily armed convoy, to spend his 36th birthday in solitary
confinement in Statesville.
But State authorities had enough of
Banghart and his death defying escapes. He was becoming a convict's legend. He
had to be made an example of.
Several days after his return, the Owl was
dragged from his cell by eighteen federal marshals, chained at his wrists and
ankles and sent by airplane to Alcatraz prison island.
It was a stroke of bad luck for Banghart,
for one thing, although he could fly a plane and drive cars better and faster
than most mere mortals, Banghart had never learned to swim.
The Owl was assigned to the prison kitchen
where he and Alvin Karpis were assigned to the bakery although Banghart was
later promoted to kitchen clerk, the same position Roger Touhy would hold at
Statesville prison.
"The Karpis Kitchen Crew", as it
became known, was the stuff of convict legends. Banghart and Karpis learned to
make wine out of cherry pie juices, spending all of their off time making and
testing different types of wine and getting drunk. "The challenge
was," Karpis wrote, "to avoid becoming an alcoholic."
In 1959, after it had been proven that
John Factor had arranged his own kidnapping, the Owl was transferred from
Alcatraz back to Statesville prison.
Eventually his conviction for kidnapping
was overturned and his 30-year sentence for mail robbery was dropped for time
served. In 1960, the Owl, now a graying man of sixty years, strolled out of
prison for ever.
There is, more or less, a happy ending to
Banghart's story. When he left prison, his girlfriend of thirty years, Mae
Blacock, was waiting for him as was a small but very respectable real estate
fortune left to him by an aunt in 1945.
The Owl lived out the remainder of his
life in relative comfort on a small island in Puget Sound, watching the ships
go by.
Excerpt from my book “On the
Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film”
CHAPTER
9
ON
LOCATION
FALL
1953
By
June of 1953, everything was in place including the site location to film the
picture, Hoboken New Jersey. Kazan’s
request (later a demand) for location shooting did not sit right with
Columbia’s boss Harry Cohn. Cohn thought
it better to make the film on his back lot in California where weather,
pedestrian traffic and local talent would not slow down production. Kazan held out on his demand, like Huston,
Mankiewicz and Zinnemann, believed the atmosphere in Southern California was
detrimental to the films theme. In
addition, Schulberg and Kazan were determined to make “An east coast
movie.” That is, a film that would be
developed and shot entirely on the east coast as opposed to the back lots of
Los Angeles, which is how most films of the 1950s were developed with
transparencies (imposing a film shot of an actual location as a background for
the actors) Waterfront, Kazan decided,
would use the actual locations.
Reluctantly
Cohn agreed to location shooting but with two demands of his own; the film’s
title would be changed from the original "Waterfront,” to “On the
Waterfront” because Columbia’s lawyers had learned that there was already a
television series by that name. In
addition, Cohn wanted the entire shoot completed in 30 days. Sam Spiegel, whose money was on the line, was
completely behind the time rush demands.
With his pushing and prodding the film, shooting was completed in 37
days. During shooting in Hoboken, he
would phone Kazan and Schulberg each night at midnight or even two or three on
the morning, with the same message ‘Go faster, speed up production, get it
done, wrap it, we’re losing money’ 34
Hoboken
was a secondary choice as the location shoot.
Kazan and Schulberg had done all of their research in New York’s West
Side, in the areas of Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea but they passed on the New
York locations due to the high expense, the traffic and the Mafia, which was
clearly upset with the concept of the film.
They looked across the river and saw Hoboken.
They
drove over the bridge to New Jersey and talked with the local Chief of Police,
Arthur Moretta. They told him about
their problems or least their perceived problems with the mob. Moretta, delighted at the idea of his city
in a major motion picture, promised them a safe filming in Hoboken and
appointed his brother to protect the cast and crew.
There
was probably never any real danger from the Mafia to the cast and crew on the
location, but there was a sense on the set that they were doing something
daring not the least of which was denying the mob that still ruled over the
waterfront. There was only one minor
incident during the filming. When the
crew broke for lunch, some thugs, local teenagers who were upset at the way
their town was being portrayed, grabbed
Kazan and started to rough him up, the police managed to pull them off. Overall, that was one of the few negatives
from the locals, aside from adding $30,000 to the budget to cover payoffs to
Hoboken property owners who charging exorbitant rents and fees to the film
crew.
The
production was one of the great events in the city's history. In its long history, the tenement city of
Hoboken, dwarfed by its prestigious neighbor, Manhattan, had but a few claims
to fame. It was the birthplace of Frank
Sinatra, G. Gordon Liddy, five-foot actor Pia Zadora and troubled but extremely
talented, singer Jimmy Roselli. (Considered by many to be the inspiration for
the character of Johnny Fontane in the Godfather films) Hoboken was where Steven Foster, in sober
moment, penned a few of his classic American songs and Willem de Kooning began
his career as an artist (Of sorts, he
was a house painter) The first game of organized baseball was played here, the
ice cream cone was invented there and so was the Locomotive engine.
By the mid-1930's and despite the films
depiction of the city as an Irish enclave, Hoboken's largest ethnic group was
Italian. The city itself was a rough,
grimy seaport town, dangerous in some places, a closed community that did not
welcome outsiders and the Waterfront film crew was no exception. “It was” said a former resident “Ten minutes
from Manhattan, filled with people who never went there” another added “We were
right across the river from Manhattan but we might as well have been in
Detroit, it was that different”
Only
one square mile in size, Hoboken became a living part of the film and no amount
of careful art direction could have resulted in the set Hoboken gave Kazan with
its view of Manhattan, its seedy smoke filled crowded bars, the dank cramped
apartments where the dockworkers lived and the inner cargo holds.
While
Hoboken gave Kazan the setting he needed, drab and worn, his primary concern
was to make an exciting, successful commercial feature film, the fact that it
showed the deplorable working conditions for the long shore workers and allowed
mainstream America and eventually the world to better understand cultural and
class differences is an admirable by product of the production. While the film succeeds somewhat in its
depiction of the dockworker’s life, it is entertainment, a love story. What Kazan needed to do, and what he did do,
and brilliantly, was to create spontaneity and the illusion of reality. (which is why the outdoor shooting in Hoboken
in the freezing cold that showed the actors breath on film pleased him so.)
Although he had been required to hire locals
for the films extra, he probably would have done it anyway since they had “The
look” he needed. Another reason he had
to hire so many locals (In total 500 extras were paid to either be in the film
or on standby) the winter of 1952 happened to be one of New York’s coldest in
years and professional New York actors weren’t interested in a trip out of the
city to work in the freezing winds of Hoboken.
The
weather was wet, bitter cold, overcast and gray and in several scenes, the
metal barrels that the crew used to warm themselves can be seen in several
shots throughout the final edit of the film.
Breath is visible on screen, a detail Kazan loved and spoke of often
because it suggested the brutal lives of the Dockworkers against both corrupt
union officials and the elements. With
so many natural elements, the actors were free to focus entirely on their
characters’ emotions. Making conditions worse was the fact that most of the film
was shot at night which few people who watch the film ever notice, a tribute to
cinematographer Boris Kaufman’s brilliance behind the camera.
For
their part, the actors were not as enthusiastic as Kazan was about the freezing
weather and rarely left the warmth of their rooms at the wildly misnamed
Majestic Grand Hotel. The films
California based actors (Although Eva Marie Saint was born and raised in New
Jersey) used every excuse they could think of to delay the early (5:30 AM)
shooting schedule. Brando was the most
difficult to get out into the frigid morning air. Schulberg recalled, “The temperature was near
zero and the wind chill blowing up the frozen river was often 10 below. Teeth were chattering and the cold crept into
our bones. On the roof one day, Marlon
made a classical remark. ``Ya know, it’s
so fucking cold out here there’s no way you can over act.”
“In that case” cracked the ever Spiegel
“you’re in your element” However, the wind and the cold had a positive effect
on the picture "it made them look like people” Kazan wrote “and not
actors, in fact, like people who lived in Hoboken and suffered the cold because
they had no choice.” 35
Of
course, the weather, as a part of the film, could be a double-edged sword. Hoboken offers one of the best skyline views
of New York in the entire tri-state area and Kazan wanted to shot it from
Hoboken's view... distant, cold and foggy... the opposite of the picture
postcard image of the Big Apple that most American knew. On the first day of shooting, Kazan ordered
his crew, tossed together on a moment’s notice, up to a rooftop to shoot the
New York City skyline as a backdrop opening to the film. However, on the very moment that they were
about to begin filming, a fog rolled in from the ocean and covered their
angle. Kazan had taken the precaution of
setting up crews on other rooftops, from different angles, only to find out
that the crews were down on the street.
"What
the hell are they doing down there?" he screamed at his assistant
director. Spiegel, the answer came, had
refused to rent the two roofs from the owners because they had asked for too
much money. "He chiseled on every
cost and took it out of our hides and legs and patience... Where Sam chiseled was on crew costs and
every insignificant thing he could come up with or cut down" 36
In between, during and after set shots, Kazan
was flooded with calls from Sam Spiegel, demanding that he rush through the
film and cut costs. Kazan was positive
that the majority of the calls were to impress “Whatever teenager was on his
arm this week” (Spiegel was a firm believer in the casting couch)
Spiegel was an endless problem for
everyone. Brando suspected that the
driver Spiegel had provided for him was a spy.
It turned out he was right. Nor
was Brando’s driver the only spy on the set.
Schulberg and Kazan were plagued with calls from Spiegel complaining
about a miner expense they had made only minutes after they had made. He also insisted on cutting line after line
and scene after scene in an effort to hurry production along. While some of the cuts were drastic, others,
Kazan and Schulberg agreed, were good and needed. The problem was, when they would consent to
one small cut, Spiegel would see his opening and push for several more. One of the cuts he demanded was the core of
the film, the sermon in the cargo hold by Father Barry. “You can’t give a sermon” he shouted “in the
movies! It just doesn’t play in the movies and it has to be cut!” 37
Schulberg
fought him on the cuts making the legitimate argument that the scene could not
be cut because so much of the films underlying theme is spiritual.
The ritual of Spiegel’s attempted cuts was
reenacted each morning when Schulberg, Kazan and Spiegel would meet in Kazan’s
hotel room to go over the script changes.
Each morning, Spiegel would start the meeting by asking to see the cuts
and revisions in the script only to be told there were not any. At this point, Spiegel would looked shocked
and hurt and ask why his director and screen writer had reneged on their
promise to him to cut a scene or a line only to have the pair remind him that
they had never agreed to cut anything.
He was, said Kazan “A great actor and a masterful liar” 38
As
to Spiegel’s argument that some of the films dialogue would run to long on
screen, Kazan would counter with the argument that Spiegel was reading the
lines from a page, on screen, the camera would cut to different actors as lines
were spoken to draw their reaction.
Eventually
Spiegel managed to run down the generally easy going and good-natured Schulberg
as well with his constant demands for rewrites on the script. On the first weekend of the project,
Schulberg decided to fly up to Dartmouth College to plan a memorial for a
teacher he had known. A panicked Spiegel
called “Budd, where are you going?”
Schulberg explained to which Spiegel countered
“For how
Long?”
“The
weekend”
“How
are you getting there?”
“By
small airplane” Schulberg told him
“But”
Spiegel asked “What about the script?”
“Don’t
worry” Schulberg said, “I have the script with me”
“But
what of the plane crashes?”
One
night Schulberg's wife awoke at three in the morning to find her husband
shaving.
"What
are you shaving for?" she asked
"I'm
driving to New York,” he answered
"Why?"
"To
kill Sam Spiegel" 39
HERE IS AN
EXCEPT FROM MY BOOK "THE BOOK OF AMERICAN-JEWISH GANGSTERS"
(Max Zellner is a pen name, it
was my grandfather's born name. During World War 1 he changed it to the less
German sounding Paul Selner)
Schultz
Dutch Gangster. Born Arthur Simon Flegenheimer AKA Beer Baron of
the Bronx, AKA Charles Harmon, AKA Dutchman. Born Aug. 6, 1902. Died October 23
1935. Schultz's father, a German immigrant, abandoned the family when Schultz was 14 year old, but
the Dutchman, a nick named he enjoyed, would also deny that his father had left
the family. Instead, he told people that his father had died young of natural
causes.
Schultz grew up in poverty. His mother,
Emma, also a German immigrant and a devout Jew, worked as a building handyman
at an apartment building at Bergen and Webster Avenues, for free rent but no pay forcing Schultz to
leave grammar school and find work as a go-fer for a neighborhood gangster. He
soon graduated to stick up robberies of poker games and then burglary. Arrested
for breaking and entering, Schultz was sent to Blackwell's Island (now known as
Roosevelt Island) reformatory and then transferred to a work farm in upstate
New York because of his belligerent behavior. He escaped from the farm, was
recaptured and sentenced to an additional two months before he was released
back to the streets of Manhattan.
In 1928, Schultz and his lifelong friend
Joey Noe opened a speakeasy and
eventually branched out to bootlegging beer in the Bronx. The problem was that
the Bronx was already under the control of the Rock brothers, John and Joe. A
sporadic shooting war broke out which drove John Rock out of the city
completely. Brother Joe decided to fight it out. Schultz ended the struggle by
kidnapping Joe, hanging from a meat hook and beating him for several days and
then taping his eyes closed with a gang that was infested with the gonorrhea
virus. Rock’s family eventually paid
$35,000 for his release but by then he had gone blind.
From the Bronx, Schultz branched out into
Manhattan and once again stepped into a territory claimed by another
bootlegger, this time the bootlegger was John Nolan, AKA Legs Diamond, a
shrewd, tough Irish hoodlum who had been trained in the underworld arts by
Arnold Rothstein.
As it was in the Bronx, a sporadic shooting war began in Manhattan
between Schultz and Diamond. Arnold Rothstein backed Legs Diamond financial and
took care of the gangster’s political protection. Rothstein wanted to avoid a
street war and demanded that the two sides meet and settle their differences.
They planned to meet on October 15, 1928 at the Chateau Madrid nightclub on
West 54th Street near Sixth Avenue. At the meeting, an agreement was reached in
which Diamond would give up some of his territories for cash from Schultz and
Noe.
When the meeting end, at 7:30 AM, Schultz
and Noe walked out onto the street and were ambushed by Diamonds gunmen.
Although Noe was wearing a bullet-proof vest, one shell caught him in the lower
spine. Schultz managed to fire off several shots and Diamond’s men speed off in
blue Cadillac. When police found the car, Louis Weinberg (no relation to Shultz
gang members Bo and George) was in the back seat, dead. Joey Noe died a month
later from his wounds.
It was rumored that Schultz had ordered
the death of Arnold Rothstein to avenge the death Joey Noe. There is some
evidence to support the theory since George McManus, Rothstein’s alleged
killer, called Schultz’ lawyer immediately after the shooting and Bo Weinberg
picked up McManus an hour later and drove him out of the city and into hiding.
A month later, on October 1929, while Legs
Diamond was staying at the at the Hotel
Monticello, gunmen burst into the room and sprayed it with bullets, hitting
Diamond five times. Remarkably he survived, but left for Europe shortly
afterwards. He later pulled out of New York City completely and reestablished
himself in Albany.
Schultz paid his men a salary, something
that was virtually unheard off in the criminal world, and a part of the salary
refused to allow them to moonlight on their own. In 1930, Vincent Coll AKA The
Mad Mick, revolted, and demanded a percentage of Schultz’s beer and gambling
empire, which, Coll’s mind, he had helped to build. Schultz, a notoriously cheap
man, refused and Coll went to war with him. The bad blood between them may have
started when Coll jumped bail on a bond put up by Schultz. When Schultz
demanded payment, Coll refused, claiming Schultz owed him that amount and more.
On July 28, 1931, in broad daylight, Coll
tried to kidnap Joey Rao, one of Schultz’s men. Coll’s men started shooting and
accidently murdered a five-year boy named Michael Vengali. Several other
children were wounded.
The outcry from the world was deafening
and the New York City police cracked down on gangland harder than they had
ever. Arrested for murder, Coll hired defense lawyer Samuel Leibowitz who
ripped the state’s case apart and in December of 1931, Coll was acquitted.
By then, gangland had enough of Coll. On February
1, 1932, two killers hired by Mob boss Owney Madden, tracked Coll down to an
apartment in the Bronx. But, Coll wasn’t there that day and in the ensuing gun
battle, three of Coll’s men were killed and three were wounded. In February of
1932 Coll was lured into a drug store phone booth and then machine-gunned to
death.
With the end of prohibition, Schultz
spread out to gambling and the Harlem numbers racket. The numbers racket,
essentially a lottery, was a simple formula. The players picked three numbers
hoping to match the last three numbers taken from the odds at the racetrack,
which was posted in the newspapers every morning.
Schultz’s man Otto Berman, AKA "Abbadabba," could calculate, in
seconds, the minimum amount of money Schultz would need to bet at the track at
the last minute in order to alter the odds, thereby ensuring that he always
controlled which numbers won the lottery.
Indicted by U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Dewey
for income tax evasion, Schultz used his influence to have the trail moved to
far upstate New York. There, he doled out cash to virtually any local who asked
for it. He sponsored charity events and contributed to local events. Not
surprisingly, he was acquitted in the summer of 1935.
Aside from bootlegging, Schultz was also
invested in extorting Manhattan restaurant owners and workers and union
extortion. Schultz’s unions were organized under an association he had made up,
the Metropolitan Restaurant & Cafeteria Owners, which was run for him by an
enormous thug named Julius Modgilewsky, aka Julie Martin.
While Schultz was busy with his tax trial,
Martin started skimming from the unions, assuming, like most, that Schultz
would be found guilty and go to jail. Schultz lured Martin to a meeting at
the Harmony Hotel in Cohoes, New York on
March 2, 1935, when Martin admitted taking $20,000, Schultz, in front of a room
full of witnesses and his lawyer, Schultz calming pulled out a revolver and
shot Martin in the mouth. Later, he used a switchblade to cut his hear tout
before dumping his lifeless body on the side of a deserted road.
When the trial ended, New York City
officials flatly told Schultz that he was no longer welcomed in the city and
that he and his gang who be arrested on site, repeatedly, if he didn’t leave on
his own. Schultz moved across the river to Northern New Jersey.
At this point, Schultz appeared before
the newly former national crime syndicate and advocated the assassination of
Thomas Dewey, claiming, correctly it turned out, that if the mobs didn’t take
get rid of Dewey, Dewey would get rid of them. Although waterfront Boss Mafia
Boss agreed with Schultz, the others turned him down. Exactly what happened
next isn’t know but either Schultz accused the other mobsters of setting him up
for Dewey so they could take over his rackets, or he threatened to murder Dewey
on his own, or both. Regardless, his fate was sealed. After Schultz left a vote
was taken and it was agreed Schultz had outlived his time. Lepke Buchalter from
Brooklyn was handed the contract to finish Schultz off.
At 10:15 on October 23, 1935, Schultz was
meeting with Otto Berman, Abe Landau, and
bodyguard his Lulu Rosenkrantz at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New
Jersey owned by Jacob Friedman, co-owner of the Chop House with Louis Rosenthal
The Dutchman had been using a backroom at
the restaurant as his new headquarters since he had been chased out of New
York. Schultz left the group and stepped into the men’s room. A few moments later, Charles ‘The Bug’
Workman and Emanuel ‘Mendy Weiss’ Weiss both part of Lepke Buchalter's Murder, Incorporated gang
in Brooklyn burst into the restaurant.
Workman drew a .38 and emptied it towards
the gangsters, while Weiss fired the shotgun.. Seven shots ripped through
Rosenkrantz, six hot Berman and three struck Landau. The wounds were
everywhere, wrists, elbow, shoulder, face and neck.
Workman rushed into the bathroom and found
Schultz at the urinal. The Dutchman reached for a switchblade but Workman fired
first, two shots. The first missed, the second entered the Dutchman’s chest,
about an inch below the heart. It cut down through his spleen , stomach, colon,
liver, and gall bladder and ripped out through his lower back.
After Schultz crumbled to the floor, he
made his way back out to the main barroom but Weiss was gone. Remarkably,
Rosenkrantz and Landau, had somehow found the strength to pull out their
pistols, fired on Weiss and tried to follow him outside. Weiss leaped into the
waiting getaway car and ordered Seymour "Piggy" Schechter to drive
off. The abandoned Workman was forced to find his own way back to New York.
Schultz picked himself up from the tiled
bathroom floor, put his hat on his head, staggered out of the bathroom and
collapsed in a chair. He called for help and demanded someone phone an
ambulance. At that, Rosenkrantz pulled
himself up from the floor, staggered to the bar, slapped a quarter down on the
bar and told the bartender to give him change for the phone. He managed to find
his way into a phone booth and called police
"Send me an ambulance, I'm
dying," he barked before he collapsed but police already had several calls
about the shooting probably from the nearby bus terminal.
When the police arrived at the Chop House,
they gave Schultz a glass of brandy to sip while he waited for the ambulance to
take him. Landau, although bleeding to death, gave police a fake name and
address. When they did arrive he handed them twenty dollars and asked them to
take care of him quickly. Otto Berman
was alive, but just barely. He died shortly after being taken to the hospital.
Landau died eight hours after being wheeled
into the hospital. Having converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before his death,
a priest, per Schultz's wife's request, performed the Last Rites of the church
on Dutch. (Schultz claimed to be many things in his life including Orthodox
Jew, Episcopalian and Roman Catholic. He did have a true interest in things
religious and often, in times of crisis in his life, turned to various faiths
for direction) The bullet had destroyed
almost all of Schultz’s abdominal organs. He died of peritonitis 22 hours after
being shot. Lulu Rosenkrantz, only 33 years old, died six hours later.
Joe The Greaser Rosenzweig
If there was a Jewish gangster that built Las Vegas it was this man, Moe Dalitz and not a lunatic like Bugsy Siegel
Boris Neyfield, Russian Jewish hood who shot his way into New York City
(some of ) The Purple Gang
Albert Tannenbaum AKA Tic Tock, a paid killer for Murder Inc.
Talking to strangers can boost your
happiness level
By The Early Edition, CBC News
It might be a good idea to talk to
strangers more often, according to Elizabeth Dunn, director of UBC's Happy Lab.
When you think about the people you
talk to each day, friends, family and spouses tend to top the list. But
research suggests that talking to a complete stranger can boost your happiness
level and instill a greater sense of belonging.
This weekend is Vancouver's third
annual Say Hi to a Stranger campaign, which organizes events at locations
designed to encourage strangers to talk to one another.
The campaign aims to make the city a
more welcoming place, and UBC psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn says there
are additional personal benefits to be gained by participating.
The social phenomenon
Dunn's interest in this topic was
sparked by her dating life as a graduate student and the behavioural patterns
of her then boyfriend, Benjamin.
When Benjamin was in a bad mood, he
would act in one of two ways: He would either act cranky and sulky around Dunn,
his long-time girlfriend "because he could get away with it," or if
he bumped into a casual acquaintance or a random stranger, "he would perk
up and act pleasant and cheerful," Dunn said.
Dunn noticed that the latter would
more often than not break him out of his funk.
"Being a social psychologist, I
decided to bring in hundreds of romantic couples to dig deep into this phenomenon
and figure out what was going on."
The experiment
To test her theory, Dunn recruited
hundreds of heterosexual romantic couples who had been dating for at least
three months.
For the experiment, half of the
couples were randomly assigned to interact with their own partner, while the
other half were instructed to interact with the opposite-gender partner of a
different couple.
Before beginning, participants were
asked to predict how much they thought they would enjoy the interaction.
Afterward, they were asked to record how much they actually did enjoy the
interaction.
While individuals accurately
predicted feeling good after interacting with their romantic partners, they
didn't expect to benefit from speaking with people they'd never met before.
"When people interacted with
this random stranger from the other couple, they acted pleasant and cheerful,
just like Benjamin had. This provided a boost to their mood that they failed to
foresee ahead of time."
Dunn's research has found that this
kind of social interaction not only boosts mood levels, but can also increase
the sense of belonging in a community.
The benefits of small talk
There's a great deal of variability
in the degree to which individuals are inclined to chat with strangers, Dunn
said.
While extroverts typically recognize
that it will feel good to chat with other people, introverts also get benefits,
but tend not to recognize that beforehand, Dunn said.
"They think that it will be more
painful than it really is."
Dunn admits these casual interactions
are unlikely to be particularly deep, meaningful or stimulating.
"But it turns out that just
exchanging those random pleasantries with the people around us can actually
uplift our moods in ways that we may overlook."
To hear the full interview with
Elizabeth Dunn, listen to the audio labelled: The benefits of talking to
strangers.
(Chicago)
Capone Al: Born 1899 Died 1947 Gang Leader. Al Capone would become America’s
most famous bootlegger, an odd distinction since Capone was primarily a
procurer, a pimp and, despite his fame, Capone would always be more of a legend
than an influence on organized crime. He was widely regarded in his day, on
both sides of the law, as a crude buffoon who ended his own career through his
desire for fame and notoriety. Capone
owed his celebrity to the local and eventually the national media who were
desperate to find a central point in Chicago’s extremely disorganized and
violent bootlegger business. The press took his garbled words and rearranged
them often times into witty insightful messages and commentary on the day.
In
1922, Capone, who was more or less still a procurer and part-time enforcer, was
making $2,000 a week, more money then he ever dreamed he could make but it was
still a mere fraction compared to the millions that Boss Johnny Torrio was
piling away.
Towards
the end of 1927 he said he “fooled away about ten million on gambling,” he
tipped newsboys $5 for a five newspaper, and $100 for a waiter.
He
once bought a round a drinks in a country club speakeasy in New York for 1000
people. He wore a pinky ring imported from South Africa worth $50,000. In 1929
his car cost $30,000, at Christmas he spent $100,000 on miscellaneous
gifts. Tourist buses stopped in front of
“Capone’s castles,” the otherwise shabby Hawthorne Inn in Cicero and the
Metropole hotel in Chicago. When he
attended a prize fight it made the sports column, the London Daily Mail sent a
reporter to cover “A week in the life of Al Capone” and feature stories of
personal glimpses of the gangster sold for a flat $100.
As
his fame grew so did his ego. Always vain, he explained the horrible scars on
his face and neck (Gotten in a knife fight in a bar room) to heroic actions in
the trenches during World War One while fighting with the “Lost battalion” in
France. (Capone never served in the military)
He distributed diamond inlet belts and gave
away ruby encrusted cigarette lighters.
He would outlast four police chiefs; he was credited with killing
between 20 and 65 men himself and ordered the killing of at least 400 others
and was never charged with one of them. He outlived several dozen
investigations, committees and prosecutors. There was nothing about Capone to
mark him for fame and fortune. He dropped out of sixth grade after punching his
teacher in the old Williamsburg section of New York; he impressed no one and
was known only for being mediocre, a soft-spoken nonentity.
It
was commonly accepted in the Underworld that Torrio was the brains in the
Chicago outfit and Capone was the muscle. However, after Capone over threw
Torrio, he proved to be more than just the gorilla that most gang leaders
pegged him to be and for what he lacked in intelligence and education, his
underlying provided.
Capone’s
criminal empire included the ownership of breweries, distilleries, speakeasies,
warehouses, fleets of boats and trucks, nightclubs, gambling houses, horse and
dog tracks, brothels, labor unions, hundreds of private businesses, he employed
at least 1,000 full-time enforcers, one third of the Chicago police department
and several thousand other employees. His gross income was an estimated
$105,000,000 for the year, at a time when a middle class American family got
by, and very well, on less then $8,000.
That
was in 1927. By 1933, it was all gone and Al Capone was nothing more than a
number in the federal prison system. He died broke and powerless, twelve years
later. In Atlanta prison in 1936, Al Capone told Red Rudensky, a burglar,
“Uncle Sam got me on a bookkeeping rap. Ain’t that the best!”?
“He
would,” Rudensky wrote, “roar with a choke and cough with laughter but not for
long as reality would strangle his humor.”
Then Capone would say, “Rusty, if I could just go for a walk. If I could
just look at buildings again, and smell that Lake Michigan, I’d give a
million.”
Capone
was resented, even hated in prison. Kidnapper and bank robber Alvin Karpis
wrote: “The majority of the population in any prison is made up of losers from
the gutter of society. Most of them aren’t even wanted at their own homes when
they are released. They resent anyone who has had prosperity on the outside.”
Jimmy
Lucus was one of those inmates. Surly and mean, Lucas worked at the Alcatraz
barbershop with Capone and wanted to make a name for himself. One day while
Capone was practicing his banjo Lucas slipped up behind him and shoved a pair
of shears into Capone’s back. Capone grunted deeply in pain, stood up with the
shears still sticking out of his back, turned and picked Lucas up and smashed
him face first into the pillar before he collapsed in pain from the superficial
wound. Karpis wrote: “In Alcatraz, he’s
a fish out of water. He knows nothing of prison life. For example, he is allowed
to subscribe to various magazines, and, like other prisoners, he is permitted
to send magazines to other inmates after he reads them. Ironically, Capone, who
gave orders to eliminate hundreds of lives, is now confined to rubbing out
names on his magazine list when he becomes displeased or annoyed with fellow
cons. It’s kind of sad, I conclude.”
Capone
had contracted syphilis in or about 1927, something he knew but failed to
treat. When prison doctors finally began to treat Capone’s syphilis, it was too
late to correct the damage that was done to his body. With his nervous system
infected by the disease, he was slowly losing his kind. But even before then,
Capone was, said other inmates, losing his mind, talking about “Connected
people in Washington” who would pull
strings to get him released. He said that he had paid $20,000 in bribes
already. It may not have been all babble.
In 1939, the wife of well connected Chicago gangster Gus Winkler, told
the FBI that some of Capone’s friends in the organization were trying to get
him released before Frank Nitti, the boss who followed Capone, ended their
efforts.
Capone
was released to the care of his wife on November 7, 1939, and spent his freedom
on his estate in Palm Island, Florida “reading newspapers,” his brother Ralph
reported, “and walking the grounds to get some sunshine.” He spent his summers at a retreat in
Mercer, Wisconsin, where brother Ralph had retired and opened a bar room.
Otherwise, Capone kept out of the limelight and enjoyed his freedom. He made a
brief appearance in 1941, when his son, Sonny married a Florida society woman.
The
press, perhaps in a moment of nostalgic bliss, wrote one glowing story after
another for Capone in January of 1942, when
Capone
offered his services to the war effort “in any capacity to aid the national
defense.” The government never called
him back but his famous armored car was helping the British war effort in 1942,
being driven around to fairs and carnivals to raise cash for its new owner and
the Queen’s government. In July of 1942
the Treasury Department sued Capone in federal court and demanded payment of
back taxes totaling $250,000 which the government claimed Capone made during
prohibition selling 19,984 bottles of beer between 1921 and 1922. They were probably wrong about the dates
since at that point Capone was still a low level operative in the Torrio
organization. But the government was relentless anyway. Prosecutors were sure
Capone had tucked away at least $25,000,000 of his fortune and they it. But insiders later said that Capone had
perhaps $5,000,000 left and before he died most that was spent or given away to
his son. In the end, the tax people settled for $30,000.
On
January 25, 1947 Capone died in his $8,000,000 heavily mortgaged mansion in
Florida. He had suffered an apoplectic seizure and then contacted pneumonia.
Remarkably, he was only 52 years old. With him at the last moments were his
ever-faithful wife, Mae, his son, his mother and three of his brothers, Ralph,
Matt and John.
He
was buried in Chicago’s Mount Olivet cemetery on a bitter cold day, his coffin
was draped in orchards. Although a dozen of the old time bosses that had known
Capone in his prime were allowed to attend the burial, Chicago ruling boss,
Tony Accardo, forbade a large mob turn out saying “I don’t want this thing
turning into a Goddamn circus” Capone’s
wife and son, with all of their money gone, spent their last days living off of
the good will of Mob boss Paul Ricca.
(Chicago)
Cerone, John Peter AKA Jackie the Lacky. The eighth of eleven children of
Italian immigrant children. He dropped out of grade to work as a runner for the
Capone organization. In 1937, at age 23, he was arrested as a suspect in the murder of a West Side
gangster. A coroner's jury reported it could find no evidence that Cerone was
involved in the killing. At the time Cerone said he was a waiter in a saloon at
Chicago and Hamlin Avenues. By the mid 1940s Cerone had become a chauffeur and
protégé of Anthony Accardo, a Capone-era mobster and then crime syndicate boss.
On face value, Cerone was a smiling,
grandfatherly hood. Once, during a trial when a witness could not point him
out, he jumped to his feet, waved and said, "Here I am, Howie." but
it was a thin veneer that masked a completely ruthless interior. "He was a
little more . . . cordial than other hoodlums but just as bloodthirsty,"
said Jerry Gladden, chief investigator of the Chicago Crime Commission.
By the 1970s, Cerone was rumored to be the
boss of the mob or at least was well on his way to becoming boss before he was
arrested and convicted on interstate gambling charges and sent to prison
for 3 1/2 years. When he was released in
1973, Cerone was
Appointed
Underboss of the Outfit, ruling in a sort of partnership with the ailing and
aging Tony Accardo and Joey Aiuppa.
On September 23, 1985, Cerone was indicted
for skimming millions form the Las Vegas Casino and for hiding his secret
interest in the Stardust casino. On March 25, 1986, Cerone, then 71 years old,
was sentenced to 28 years in prison for
his role in conspiring to steal $2 million from a Las Vegas casino. He was also
ordered to pay fines totaling $80,000, make restitution of $30,710 to Nevada
gaming authorities and pay $32,614 in court costs.
Specifically, Cerone received a 4-year
sentence for conspiring to conceal ownership of the Stardust Casino and
skimming $2 million in profits from its counting room. Each of the other seven
counts brought 3 1/2-year sentences. Those charges dealt with interstate travel
to carry out the conspiracy.
Just before he was sentenced Cerone told
reporters "one year or 40 years makes no difference because it will be my
death sentence."
Joseph Aiuppa, Cerone’s boss, hood Angelo
LaPietra, Joey Lombardo, and Milton Rockmam, a financial backer for the
Cleveland mob were also found guilty and sentenced.
He was released from prison due to poor
health on July 16, 1996. Cerone, a self-proclaimed bookmaker, died July 22, 1996, six days after he was
paroled from prison. He was 82 and had been taking medication for a heart
ailment since 1957. He had spent 10 1/2 years in jail and lived six decades in
the underworld.
(Chicago)
Cruz, Robert Charles: On December 4, 1997, a few days after his cousin, Harry
Aleman, was sentenced for a murder, Robert Charles Cruz disappeared from his
home where he was last seen hanging Christmas lights from the gutters on the
roof of the house. Although his credit cards and bank accounts never were
touched, police suspected that Cruz had purposely vanished for his own reasons.
Cruz had spent 14 years on Death Row in Arizona before his conviction for
hiring three men to kill a Phoenix businessman named Patrick Redmond and his mother-in-law on New
Year's Eve in 1980 was overturned and a new trial ordered. Redman refused to
sell an interest in his Phoenix printing shop to Cruz, who wanted to use it to
launder money from Las Vegas connections. Redmond's 70- year-old mother-in-law
was visiting and died after her throat was cut. Cruz was tried four more times.
He was acquitted in 1995 after the jury decided the state's primary witness, a
participant in the killings, was unreliable.
Ten years later, in 2007, what was left of
Cruz’s body was found wrapped in tarpaulin and carpet, buried 8 1/2 feet
underground in a suburban mob burial ground. In 1988, the police found two
other bodies on the site, Robert Anthony Hatridge, an associate of Outfit
killer-turned informant Gerald Scarpelli and Mark Oliver, a minor organized
crime figure. The site was close to the home of Outfit member Joseph Jerome
Scalise. It appeared Cruz had been shot to death.
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
Ryan Tippery 2015
Gari Melchers, The Communicant, c. 1900
Giovanni Giacometti
Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio (Italian, 1902-1964), Senza titolo, 1959. Ink on paper, 70 x 50 cm.
Glauco Cambon (1875 - 1930) - Il velo azzurro, 1907
Grigorii Choros-Gurkin, Lake of the Spirits of the Mountains, 1909
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM
Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.”
THE BOOK OF FUNNY, ODD AND INTERESTING THINGS THAT PEOPLE SAY
Compiled by
John William Tuohy
Reasons for Leaving the Last Job
Terminated
after saying, "It would be a blessing to be fired."
Responsibility
makes me nervous.
Being
in trouble with the law, I moved quite frequently.
In
my last position, got nowhere as part of a 60-person herd.
I
did not give the company my full effort and received no chance of advancement
in return.
Note:
Please don't misconstrue my 14 jobs as job-hopping. I have never quit a job.
My
last employer insisted that all employees get to work by 8:45 every morning. I
couldn't work under those conditions.
Was
met with a string of broken promises and lies, as well as cockroaches.
I
was working for my mom until she decided to move.
The company made me a scapegoat - just like my
three previous employers.
Maturity
leave.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM LLR BOOKS
What Love is…..
Nobody
has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold. Zelda Fitzgerald
Books At Home Predict Academic Achievement,
Especially For Low-Income Families
By Lisa Rodriguez • May 12, 2015
There’s a simple, inexpensive way parents can promote
academic success in kids. Surround them with books.
Researcher Mariah Evans headed a 20-year, worldwide study
that found “the presence of books in the home” to be the top predictor of
whether a child will attain a high level of education.
More so even, than the education level of their parents.
Those from highly educated and higher-income families however, may not feel the
difference quite as significantly.
“One of the things that is most striking to us about it
is that the book’s effect appears to be even larger and more important for
children from very disadvantaged homes,” Evans told Steve Kraske on Up To Date.
She said the effects can be seen both in academic
performance, and in how much education children complete.
And there are several organizations in Kansas City, who
are taking unconventional routes to get books in disadvantaged families’ homes
— before they ever step foot in a school.
Reach Out & Read partners with 46 clinics across the
Kansas-Missouri state line. Each time a child comes in to these clinics for
their “well-child” check up between the ages of 0-5, they receive a new book
along with prescribed advice from a trusted doctor to parents: read together,
share these books as a family.
By the time a child turns five, if they go to all their
scheduled appointments, they could have 13 new books to call their own. Plus,
any other time they see a doctor, they can select a gently used book from the
waiting room to take home.
“The idea is that in low income families, the medical provider
is a very trusted person in these people's lives, so to receive that advice
from a medical provider is important,” Mark Mattison, executive director of
Read Out & Read told Kraske.
He said another benefit of working through clinics is
that they can start building a library for children before they reach school
age. Evans said that is the time of a kid’s life when books have the greatest
impact.
United Way of Greater Kansas City has partnered with the
Dolly Parton Imagination Library in their Fight for Literacy campaign. Leslie,
who called in to Up To Date, said that volunteers are canvassing some of Kansas
City’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods to sign families up for the program,
which sends a new book to the family each month.
Mattison sees potential for a great partnership between
this initiative and Reach Out & Read.
“In the [doctor's] visit when we’re giving out the free
book and the prescriptive advice on how to share books with kids [we can] tell
them about how they can also sign up for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library
and get a free book every month.”
Through such efforts, these organizations can ensure that
families and children continue to get more bang for their book.
Bail Reform: An Enduring Problem
By James Santel, Senior Writer
RFK Testimony.jpg
Among advocates of criminal
justice reform, fixing our nation's broken bail policies is at the top of the
to-do list. As Nick Pinto documents in his cover story in last Sunday's New
York Times Magazine ("The Bail Trap," 8/17/2015), far too many
innocent Americans find themselvse in jail simply because they cannot post
bail.
This is hardly a new problem; it
preoccupies reformers in 2015 as it preoccupied Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy in the 1960s. As Peter Goldberg, executive director of the Brooklyn
Community Bail Fund, tells Pinto in the Times article, "Robert Kennedy,
when he was attorney general, raised exactly the concerns with bail we’re
talking about now. Fifty years later, we’re still having the
conversation."
Testifying before the Senate
Judiciary Committee in 1964, Attorney General Kennedy said, "Every year in
this country, thousands of persons are kept in jail for weeks and even months
following arrest. They are not yet proven guilty. They may be no more likely to
flee than you or I. But nonetheless, most of them must stay in jail because, to
be blunt, they cannot afford to pay for their freedom."
Robert Kennedy was instrumental
in passing the Criminal Justice Act of 1964 and the Bail Reform Act of 1966,
both of which made significant changes to bail policies in federal proceedings.
But these acts didn't affect state and local jurisdictions, which account for
the bulk of the nation's prison population--and which are today the target of
renewed calls for changes.
Scott Morrison describes paid
parental leave as 'a first-world issue'
Shalailah Medhora
The social services minister,
Scott Morrison, says paid parental leave is “a first-world issue” after the
Human Rights Commission warned the government’s scheme could infringe on human
rights.
In July the commission
recommended the government’s bill proposing changes to paid parental leave not
be passed. In a submission to a Senate inquiry it argued the bill “introduces a
retrogressive measure which is inconsistent with Australia’s international
human rights obligations”.
The changes would remove the
ability of new parents to access both government and employer schemes, an
entitlement opponents have called “double-dipping”.
Morrison told reporters on Monday
the submission showed the commission had its priorities wrong.
“I find it extraordinary that the
Human Rights Commission would consider this a priority matter when those who
would not get a second payment have an average family income of $150,000,” he
said.
“A family income of $150,000 and
the Human Rights Commission is addressing whether people get two payments
instead of one. I think that says a bit about their priorities.”
Pushed on whether he thought it
was a human rights issue, Morrison said said, “It’s certainly a first-world
issue ... and I think that people have more deep concerns about this, and what
we’re doing is ensuring our welfare system is well-targeted and focused on
those most in need.”
The commission’s submission is in
line with the warnings issued by the joint parliamentary committee on human
rights, which reported that changes to paid parental leave might be
discriminatory and limit primary caregivers’ rights to welfare.
“The reduction of access to paid parental
leave engages and limits the right to social security,” the committee said.
“The statement of compatibility [provided by the government regarding the bill]
does not sufficiently justify that limitation for the purposes of international
human rights law.”
The report said most primary
caregivers were women, and the bill therefore disproportionately affected
women, making it discriminatory.
The proposed changes will save
the government almost $1bn by abandoning the current payment of $11,500,
offered to women earning up to $150,000 a year, if they receive that much or
more from their employers.
Labor and the Greens oppose the
measures, setting up the possibility of the bill failing in the Senate. The
government will need the support of six of the eight crossbenchers for the
changes to pass.
Morrison argued that the
government’s changes would bolster women’s workplace participation,
particularly among the lower paid.
“The good thing about paid
parental leave is that the 18 weeks’ paid parental leave has meant that those
who previously didn’t get it, those who were working for small businesses, not
for large companies and large public sector agencies, those who didn’t get it
at all, are now getting it,” he said.
“What we are doing is we are
seeking to have a fairer paid parental leave scheme, one that turns it from a
union deal into a genuine safety net.”
Morrison said he was “in
discussions” with the Senate over the measures, but would not be drawn on
whether he was confident the changes would go through.
“When and if it’s passed is a
matter for the Senate,” he said.
The prime minister, Tony Abbott,
was forced to water down his “signature” paid parental leave scheme late last
year after a backlash from the public and his own party who criticised it for
being overly generous. The old policy would have seen high income earners
receive 26 weeks’ parental leave at full pay, up to $75,000.
The Basic Income Debate:
Political, Philosophical and Economic Issues
by DANIEL RAVENTÓS - JULIE WARK
Support for a universal basic
income (defined here) is growing. In Europe, for example, the City of Utrecht
is about to introduce an experiment that aims “to challenge the notion that
people who receive public money need to be patrolled and punished,” in the
words of a project manager for the Utrecht city council. Nijmegen, Wageningen,
Tilburg and Groningen are awaiting permission from The Hague in order to
conduct similar programmes. In Switzerland, the necessary 100,000 signatures
have been obtained for holding a referendum on whether Swiss citizens should
receive an unconditional basic income of €2,500 per month, independently of
whether they are employed or not. On 16 June, the centre-right government of
Finland, where 79% of the population is in favour of a universal basic income,
made good on its electoral promise and ratified the implementation of an
“experimental basic income”. A recent survey in Catalonia (13 to 17 July) shows
that 72.3% of the population (basically excepting the right-wing and wealthiest
sectors) would support a basic income of €650 per month, and, contrary to a
tiresomely hackneyed claim, 86.2% say they would continue working if the
measure were introduced. More notably, 84.4% of the unemployed say they’d still
want to work.
These are tentative or incomplete
measures but they’re also significant because they mean empowering individuals,
economically – and also politically – in a situation where global power is
largely in the hands of unelected institutions and other obscure organs, as the
recent mauling of Greece has made more than clear. However, growing interest in
basic income doesn’t mean smooth sailing ahead towards implementation.
Long-disproved arguments are still being raised against it and dubious
“alternative” proposals such as “guaranteed work”, “full employment” and
conditional minimum guaranteed income are brandished. With a basic income people
won’t engage in wage labour, women will be confined to the home, immigrants
will “swarm” in (as David Cameron would say), it would take a revolution to
introduce it, and it would kill off the welfare state. Never mind that these
assertions have been soundly rebutted in several different languages, they
still rear their silly heads. There are still other misunderstandings (or
downright lies) that need to be addressed because social and economic
inequalities are increasing so fast, and basic income is an ideal measure for
combating them.
First is the question of
financing. There’s not a lot of detailed material on this key aspect yet but a
recent study carried out in Spain, based on two million income tax declarations
made in 2010 (in the midst of the economic crisis) is eloquent. The study was
based on three criteria: 1) the basic income of €623 per month should be
self-financing and not affect public spending in health, education, etc.; 2)
the distributive impact should be highly progressive so that over 80% of the
population would benefit; and 3) that effective tax rates after the reform
should not be very high. The basic income has to be at or above the poverty
line (€623 in Spain). It would not be subject to personal income tax and would
replace all welfare benefits of a lesser sum than €623, while people receiving
more than this in benefits would still get the full amount.
Financing this basic income for
all adults in Spain – 43.7 million people – is possible with a single tax rate
of 49% which, combined with a tax-exempt basic income, would be highly
progressive. For the poorest decile, this 49% would effectively become -209%
(negative because, in this case, it would be a net transfer). Approximately 80%
of the population would gain and the total amount transferred from rich to
non-rich would be some €35,000 million. This is not to take into account the
problem of tax evasion (calculated at some €80,000 million) in Spain.
Ah yes, they say, but this model
of financing would “adversely affect the middle classes”. Middle classes? In
Spain, a person earning just €3,500 per month is in the top two deciles, while
those earning €4,500 are in the top 5%. These figures come from official tax
declarations! Whether from ignorance or bad faith, many people won’t recognise
that this points to a huge problem of tax fraud, which needs urgent attention,
especially if any tax reform in favour of the non-rich population is to be
undertaken. Data published by the Swiss global financial services company UBS
AG reveals that just 22 Spanish billionaires have a total fortune equalling 5%
of Spanish GDP (or about 60% of the national healthcare budget, for example).
If the real richest members of the population were detected through personal
income tax, basic income financing would be easier, the tax rate lower and
sectors that might lose in the present model would end up gaining. This
stubborn idea that basic income would be an assault on the middle classes
encourages some farcical fence-sitting postures. Hence, the PSOE (Socialist
Party) claims it supports “basic income” (but means guaranteed minimum income),
while others on the more or less postmodern left have entered the premier
league of intellectual contortionism when asserting that basic income and
guaranteed minimum income are “more or less the same”. These misconceptions are
politically damaging because they’ve led progressives to support “more
moderate” proposals.
Unfortunately, the new left-wing
party Podemos is trying to dodge the basic income question. Although its
grassroots members are pushing quite hard for a basic income, Podemos has put
forth a Guaranteed Minimum Income Plan, without apparently doing the sums. Our
calculations show that 50% of the population would be adversely affected
because of changing the present income tax structure without compensating with
a basic income. This is very different from a policy affecting the richest 20%.
It seems that some Podemos leaders, turning a deaf ear to the views of its
grassroots members, are saying that basic income is “too radical”. But, really?
Is guaranteeing the material existence of the whole population too scary when
Spain’s wealth gap is the biggest in Europe and, in global terms, the top 1%
will own more than the 99% by 2016?
What’s really scary is the general
acceptance of a status quo in which most people are getting poorer and poorer,
even while recent studies demonstrate that so-called “trickle-down” economics
actually means an upwards flow of income until it stagnates as hoarded wealth.
This stymies wealth creation in the economy, as the Institute for Policy
Studies concluded after using standard economic multiplier models to show that
every extra dollar paid to low-wage workers adds about $1.21 to the US economy.
If this dollar went to a high-wage worker it would add only 39 cents to GDP. In
other words, if the $26.7 billion paid in bonuses to Wall Street punters in
2013 had gone to poor workers, GDP would have risen by some $32.3 billion.
Money at the bottom is over three
times more effective at driving economic growth than money at the top. It’s
common sense, though the theory has the fancy title of “marginal propensity to
consume”: people with small incomes spend their money quickly and the rich
hoard theirs. With today’s monstrous wealth gap, the velocity of the dollar in
the total money supply is lower than it has ever been. Also logical. Indeed, a
new model produced by Ricardo Reis and Alistair McKay shows that
“tax-and-transfer programs that affect inequality and social insurance can have
a large effect on aggregate volatility”. Even IMF data suggest that increasing
the share of the top 20% by just 1% of total wealth lowers economic growth by
0.08 points. But if the bottom 20% receives the same 1% share, economic growth
increases by 0.38 points. So wouldn’t it be a good idea to introduce a
universal basic income? Scott Santens calculates that, in the United States,
redistribution in the form of a basic income of $1,000 per month for every
adult citizen and $300 for under-eighteens would cost about $1.5 trillion –
about 8.5% of GDP – taking into account the elimination of benefits that are no
longer required once a basic income is operational. The total cost of child
poverty alone is around 5.7% of GDP.
If inequality is killing economic
growth, then neoliberal economics have surely failed. The OECD finds that,
“Rising inequality is estimated to have knocked more than 10 percentage points
off growth in Mexico and New Zealand over the past two decades up to the Great
Recession. In Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, the cumulative
growth rate would have been six to nine percentage points higher had income
disparities not widened….” The key point here is that anti-poverty programmes
can never be enough because the, “impact of inequality on growth stems from the
gap between the bottom 40 percent with the rest of society, not just the
poorest 10 percent”. If the cash transfer programme is to be effective about
half the population must benefit. This sounds very like the universal basic
income proposal that has been presented in Spain. Reducing income concentration
at the top where money makes money to hoard is more than a moral issue or
matter of justice but is economic savvy, as increasing numbers of reputable
economists are now realising, for example (Baron) Robert Skidelsky.
However sound the economic
arguments may be and however long they’ve been around in Spain, partial
solutions keep being touted as “alternatives” to basic income. Guaranteed work
is one, pushed, inter alia, by the left-wing party Izquierda Unida (IU),
although it’s much more expensive (€10 gross per hour would cost the state
€233,422 million) in the long term and less effective than a basic income,
which would come into immediate effect to alleviate the distressing working (or
non-working) and living conditions of the poorest sector. Worse, “guaranteed
work” (which doesn’t take domestic or voluntary work into account) has a
pathetic notion of freedom. It assumes that people must work for a salary, the
inference being that if people have a basic income they’d hang around all day
twiddling their thumbs. Spain has the worst unemployment figures in the OECD
countries (over 15% for 25 out of the last 37 years, while the second-worst
showing, by Ireland, has hit this figure in only nine of these 37 years) and,
moreover, guaranteed work proposals have been devised for economies with
relatively small numbers of unemployed workers. In short, the idea is pure
codswallop, especially when it is demonstrated that a basic income would strengthen
workers’ bargaining positions and stimulate more small businesses.
One outlandish (but no less
widespread for that) criticism of basic income is that it wouldn’t combat the
“sexual division of labour”. Neither would the public health system put an end
to the sexual division of labour! Basic income would tackle quite a few social
problems but not this one. What it can do is give women a lot more autonomy in
many aspects of their lives, which is no small thing. Basic income isn’t a
whole economic policy. It would be part of an economic policy favouring the
non-rich population. Other social problems like the sexual division of labour,
generalised indifference to scientific knowledge, private powers imposing their
Weltanschauung on everyone else, corruption, human trafficking, brutality
towards refugees and immigrants… must also be dealt with, but with specific,
appropriate instruments. It could be argued that a society with less inequality
and more concern for human beings would be more likely to produce such
instruments.
Then we get to some more economic
argy-bargy. Wielding Austrian School arguments, some right-wingers proclaim the
advantages of low tax rates on a broad base. An increased tax rate for a basic
income, they say, would reduce the tax base, the tax collected and the
elasticity of the tax base, adding that not taking this elasticity into account
would annul any conclusion. In fact, the empirical evidence from studies in
Spain shows that increased taxes wouldn’t cause lower elasticity with a negative
effect on economic activity but would give higher elasticity: more tax, more
GDP, and higher tax collection. Higher taxes for the rich allow for more public
spending, which has a positive effect on economic activity, generating more
income and compensating for possible disincentives. It was beyond the scope of
the Spanish basic income study to calculate in detail the positive effects the
basic income might have on economic activity and hence tax collection but,
clearly, the poorer 80% of the population which gains would consume more than
the richer 20%, so a strong welfare state, financed by taxes and with a system
of social benefits, including a basic income, would achieve higher labour force
participation and employment rates and, it follows, greater equality and
general well-being, as well as a much more resilient economy in an unstable
global system.
Basic income isn’t just a measure
against poverty but would be an integral part of an overall economic policy
which would stimulate economic growth and give a guaranteed material existence
and hence effective freedom to all members of society. This effective freedom
of the non-rich bears the seed of subversive political power, which is why the
right presents sops such as the minimum guaranteed income which Hayek
enthusiasts, who believe that taxes are robbery, support as a kind of charity.
But charity is the antithesis of justice. It depends on the freely determined
whims of the better-off giving to the unfree poor who are denied human dignity
precisely because they’re forced to be on the receiving end of charity. Basic
income doesn’t benefit everyone but is concerned to improve the lot of the
non-rich part of the population. Its anti-neoliberal foundations are to be
found in classical republican thought and its insistence that a person can’t be
free if the means of his or her material existence are not guaranteed. One of
the main advantages of a universal basic income is that it would free people
from the tyranny of the job market in which they are mere commodities by
guaranteeing the most basic human right of all, that of material existence. A
basic income upholds not just the right to a dignified life but, in practical
terms, would allow people to expand their lives and defend themselves against
assaults on their freedom and dignity.
Finally, since these basic human
rights are declared as universal, there’s one more basic income myth that
should be knocked on the head, namely that it’s a policy that only rich
countries can contemplate. Experiments in Brazil, Namibia and South Africa,
Mexico, India, Kenya and Malawi show that modest, partial, basic income
projects have impressive economic and social results. In Namibia, for example,
a two-year pilot project (2007–2009) in Otjivero-Omitara, a low-income rural
area, where 930 inhabitants received a monthly payment of 100 Namibian dollars
each (US$12.4), reduced poverty from 76% to 16%; child malnutrition fell from
42% to 10%; school dropout rates plummeted from 40% to almost 0%; average
family debt dropped by 36%; and local police reported that delinquency figures
were 42% lower; and the number of small businesses increased, as did the
purchasing power of the inhabitants, thereby creating a market for new
products.
The main obstacle to basic income
today is political (and psychological if greed is understood as pathological)
because, no, it doesn’t favour the rich but, rather, in moral terms and sound
economics, it calls on them to contribute just a smidgen of their wealth to
safeguard the right of a dignified existence for everyone. But, it’s not just a
matter of getting the rich to pony up. The real snag is that people at the
bottom, instead of helplessly holding out their hands to catch the non-existent
trickle, might start transforming society and the economy according to their
own lights and in defence of their own dignity. It’s unlikely that the 1% of
revoltingly rich people will sit back and let their own extinction happen.
Daniel Raventós is a lecturer in
Economics at the University of Barcelona and author inter alia of Basic Income:
The Material Conditions of Freedom (Pluto Press, 2007). He is on the editorial
board of the international political review Sin Permiso. Julie Wark is an
advisory board member of the international political review Sin Permiso. Her
last book is The Human Rights Manifesto (Zero Books, 2013).
THE ART OF WAR...............................
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A really small company run by
writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The Day Nixon
Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
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Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
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THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND CIVILIZATIONS
The Works
of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
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The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
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Paperback 142 pages
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Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
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CHILDRENS
BOOKS
The
Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children
A Halloween play for young children. By consent of the author,
this play may be performed, at no charge, by educational institutions,
neighborhood organizations and other not-for-profit-organizations.
A fun story with a moral
“I believe that Denny O'Day is an American treasure and this
little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens to be very small, by
pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the pumpkin patch on
Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance to prove that just
because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here is the point that I
found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size doesn't matter when it
comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I think children need to
hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is a ongoing lesson isn't
it?”
Paperback: 42 pages
http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children
BOOKS
ON FOSTER CARE
It's Not
All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the books
contents
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what
From the Author
I spent my childhood, from age seven through seventeen, in
foster care. Over the course of those
ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and concerned people told me, "It's
okay to be foster kid."
In saying that, those very good people meant to encourage me,
and I appreciated their kindness then, and all these many decades later, I
still appreciate their good intentions. But as I was tossed around the foster
care system, it began to dawn on me that they were wrong. It was not all right to be a foster kid.
During my time in the system, I was bounced every eighteen
months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a boy's school and to a group
home before I left on my own accord at age seventeen.
In the course of my stay in foster care, I was severely beaten
in two homes by my "care givers" and separated from my four siblings
who were also in care, sometimes only blocks away from where I was living.
I left the system rather than to wait to age out, although the
effects of leaving the system without any family, means, or safety net of any
kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived in poverty for the first part
of my life, dropped out of high school, and had continuous problems with the
law.
Today, almost nothing
about foster care has changed. Exactly
what happened to me is happening to some other child, somewhere in America,
right now. The system, corrupt, bloated,
and inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.
Something has gone wrong in a system that was originally a
compassionate social policy built to improve lives but is now a definitive
cause in ruining lives. Due to gross
negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what the foster care system
builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care has become our epic
national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have lived through it.
Yet there is a suspicion among some Americans that foster care
costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and is at odds with a satisfying
life. Others see foster care as a part
of the welfare system, as legal plunder of the public treasuries.
None of that is true;
in fact, all that sort of thinking does is to blame the victims. There is not a single child in the system who
wants to be there or asked to be there.
Foster kids are in foster care because they had nowhere else to go. It's that simple. And believe me, if those kids could get out
of the system and be reunited with their parents and lead normal, healthy
lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of legal plunder of the public
treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are doing the plundering.
We need to end this
needless suffering. We need to end it
because it is morally and ethically wrong and because the generations to come
will not judge us on the might of our armed forces or our technological
advancements or on our fabulous wealth.
Rather, they will judge
us, I am certain, on our compassion for those who are friendless, on our
decency to those who have nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to
make our nation and our world a better place.
And if we cannot accomplish those things in the short time allotted to
us, then let them say of us "at least they tried."
You can change the tragedy of foster care and here's how to do
it. We have created this book so that
almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to the world. You have the power to improve the lives of
those in our society who are least able to defend themselves. All you need is the will to do it.
If the American people,
as good, decent and generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster
care, in their name and with their money, they would stop it. But, generally speaking, although the public
has a vague notion that foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete
picture. They are not aware of the human, economic and social cost that the
mismanagement of the foster care system puts on our nation.
By tweeting the facts laid out in this work, you can help to
change all of that. You can make a
difference. You can change things for
the better.
We can always change the future for a foster kid; to make it
better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up (or tweet out) because it's
your country. Don't depend on the
"The other guy" to speak up for these kids, because you are the other
guy.
We cannot build a future for foster children, but we can build
foster children for the future and the time to start that change is today.
No time
to say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster
Paperbook 440 Books
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir
BOOKS ABOUT FILM
On the
Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film
Paperback: 416 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/
BOOKS ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL
Scotish
Ghost Stories
Paperback 186 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell
HUMOR BOOKS
The Book
of funny odd and interesting things people say
Paperback: 278 pages
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The Wee
Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook
Perfect
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http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social
BOOKS ABOUT THE 1960s
You Don’t
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Paperback 122 pages
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Baby
Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
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Baby
Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s
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IRISH- AMERICANA
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
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The Wee Book of Irish Jokes
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The Wee
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The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters
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The Wee book of Irish Blessings...
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The Wee
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Everything
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Paperback 26 pages
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A Reading
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Paperback 147pages
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The Book
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http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/
Poets and
Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish
Paperback 158 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/
The
History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated
Paperback 356 pages
http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/
BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/
Wicked
Good New England Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The
Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers
Paperback 64 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion
The Life
of James Mars
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut
Stories
of Colonial Connecticut
Paperback 116 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford
What they
Say in Old New England
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/
BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME
Chicago
Organized Crime
Chicago-Mob-Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook
The Mob
Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook
An
Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/
The Mob
Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre
The Life
and World of Al Capone in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone
AL
CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930
edition.Over 200 new photographs
Paperback: 340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs
Whacked.
One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit
Paperback: 172 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/
Las
Vegas Organized Crime
The Mob
in Vegas
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook
Bugsy
& His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/
Testimony
by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files
Series)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook
Rattling
the Cup on Chicago Crime.
Paperback 264 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged
The Life
and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor
The Mob,
Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago
Paperback 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago
When
Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos
Organized
Crime in Hollywood
The Mob in Hollywood
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/
The Bioff
Scandal
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios
Organized
Crime in New York
Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/
Mob
Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/
The New
York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins
The New
York Mob: The Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/
Organized
Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate
http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook
Shooting
the mob: Dutch Schultz
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)
http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City
Paperback 382 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York
THE RUSSIAN MOBS
The Russian
Mafia in America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/
The
Threat of Russian Organzied Crime
Paperback 192 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook
Organized
Crime/General
Best of
Mob Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/
Best of
Mob Stories Part 2
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/
Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook
Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
More Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs
http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook
Shooting
the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/
The
Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/
The
Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill each other"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/
The Mob
across America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/
The US
Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987
http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/
The Mob
Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The Book
of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.
Paperback: 436 pages
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/
The Mob
and the Kennedy Assassination
Paperback 414 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters
BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST
The Last
Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Paperback 152 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself
BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Chicago:
A photographic essay.
Paperback: 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas
STAGE PLAYS
Boomers
on a train: A ten minute play
Paperback 22 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook
Four
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy
Four More
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/
High and
Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve
Cyberdate.
An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/
The
Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of
Gangster Dutch Schultz.
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/
Fishbowling
on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with
Dutch Schultz
Print Length: 57 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/
American
Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook
She
Stoops to Conquer
http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/
The Seven
Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play
Print Length: 14 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/
BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA
OUT OF
CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/
McLean
Virginia. A short informal history
http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/
THE QUOTABLE SERIES
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
The
Quotable John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/
The
Quotable Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/
The
Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/
The
Quotable Henry David Thoreau
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Robert F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook
The words
of Walt Whitman: An American Poet
Paperback: 162 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Popes
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti
The
Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran
Paperback 52 pages
Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet, and writer was born on January
6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in what was then part of Ottoman
Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In 1895, the family immigrated
to the United States when Kahlil was a young man and settled in South Boston.
Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a member of the avant-garde
community and became especially close to Boston artist, photographer, and publisher
Fred Holland Day who encouraged and supported Gibran’s creative projects. An
accomplished artist in drawing and watercolor, Kahlil attended art school in
Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style. He held his
first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio. It was
at this exhibition, that Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who ten years his
senior. The two formed an important friendship and love affair that lasted the
rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell influenced every aspect of Gibran’s
personal life and career. She became his editor when he began to write and
ushered his first book into publication in 1918, The Madman, a slim volume of
aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and
prose. Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48 from
cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/
The
Quotable Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
The
Quotable Machiavelli
Paperback 36 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-L-Thayer
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 230 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotabe Oscar Wilde
Paperback 24 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons-words/
The
Quotable Helen Keller
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby
The Art
of War: Sun Tzu
Paperback 60 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Shakespeare
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Shakespeare-Richard-W-Willoughby
The Quotable
Gorucho Marx
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander
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/