"We're all a little weird, and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." — Dr. Seuss
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Me and my wife Mary
John
William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in
writing from Lindenwood University.
He
is the author of No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care and
Short Stories from a Small Town. He is also the author of numerous non-fiction
on the history of organized crime including the ground break biography of
bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and
"Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in Chicago."
His
non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The New Criminologist,
American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of Chicago's Celtic
Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short story fiction
work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of
2008.
His
play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public performance at the Actors Chapel
in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New
York project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First
Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact
John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
HERE'S MY LATEST
BOOKS.....
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."- Mark Twain
You don't learn to hold your
own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting
well-hammered yourself."- George
Bernard Shaw
Optimism is the faith that
leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."- Helen Keller
"There are no secrets to
success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from
failure."- Colin Powell
In
1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered
Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next
ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state
schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep
River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the
same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny
compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to
overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
“I am here because I worked too
hard and too long not to be here. But although I told the university that I
would walk across the stage to take my diploma, I won’t. At age fifty-seven,
I’m too damned old, and I’d look ridiculous in this crowd. From where I’m
standing in the back of the hall, I can see that I am at least two decades
older than most of the parents of these kids in their black caps and gowns.
So I’ll graduate with this class, but I
won’t walk across the stage and collect my diploma with them; I’ll have the
school send it to my house. I only want to hear my name called. I’ll imagine
what the rest would have been like. When you’ve had a life like mine, you learn
to do that, to imagine the good things.
The ceremony is about to begin. It’s a
warm June day and a hallway of glass doors leading to the parking lot are open,
the dignitaries march onto the stage, a janitor slams the doors shut, one after
the other.
That banging sound.
It’s Christmas Day 1961 and three
Waterbury cops are throwing their bulk against our sorely overmatched front
door. They are wearing their long woolen blue coats and white gloves and they
swear at the cold.
They’ve finally come for us, in the
dead of night, to take us away, just as our mother said they would.”
********************
“Otherwise, there were no long goodbyes
or emotional scenes. That isn’t part of foster care. You just leave and you
just die a little bit. Just a little bit because a little bit more of you
understands that this is the way it’s going to be. And you grow hard around the
edges, just a little bit. Not in some big way, but just a little bit because
you have to, because if you don’t it only hurts worse the next time and a
little bit more of you will die. And you don’t want that because you know that
if enough little bits of you die enough times, a part of you leaves. Do you
know what I mean? You’re still there, but a part of you leaves until you stand
on the sidelines of life, simply watching, like a ghost that everyone can see
and no one is bothered by. You become the saddest thing there is: a child of
God who has given .”
********************
“As I said, you die a little bit in
foster care, but I spose we all die a little bit in our daily lives, no matter
what path God has chosen for us. But there is always a balance to that sadness;
there’s always a balance. You only have to look for it. And if you look for it,
you’ll see it. I saw it in a well-meaning nun who wanted to share the joy of
her life’s work with us. I saw it in an old man in a garden who shared the
beauty of the soil and the joy he took in art, and I saw it in the simple
decency and kindness of an underpaid nurse’s aide. Yeah. Great things
rain on us. The magnificence of life’s affirmations are all around us,
every day, everywhere. They usually go unnoticed because they seldom arrive
with the drama and heartbreak of those hundreds of negative things that drain
our souls. But yeah, it’s there, the good stuff, the stuff worth living for.
You only have to look for it and when you see it, carry it around right there
at the of your heart so it’s always there when you need it. And you’ll need it
a lot, because life is hard.”
********************
“As sad as I so often was, and I was
often overwhelmed with sadness, I never admitted it, and I don’t recall ever
having said aloud that I was sad. I tried not to think about it, about all the
sad things, because I had this feeling that if I started to think about it,
that was all I would ever think of again. I often had a nightmare of
falling into a deep dark well that I could never climb out of. But then
there was the other part of me that honestly believed I wasn’t sad at all, and
I had little compassion for those who dwelled in sadness. Strange how that
works. You would think that it would be the other way around.”
********************
“In late October of 1962, it was
our turn to go. Miss Hanrahan appeared in her state Ford Rambler, which, by
that point, seemed more like a hearse than a nice lady’s car. Our belongings
were packed in a brown bags. The ladies in the kitchen, familiar with our love
of food, made us twelve fried-fish sandwiches each large enough to feed eight
grown men and wrapped them in tinfoil for the ride ahead of us. Miss Louisa,
drenched with tears, walked us to the car and before she let go of my hand she
said, “When you a big, grown man, you come back and see Miss Louisa, you hear?”
“But,” I said, “you won’t know who I
am. I’ll be big.”
“No, child,” she said as she gave me
her last hug, “you always know forever the peoples you love. They with you
forever. They don’t never leave you.”
She was right, of course. Those we love
never leave us because we carry them with us in our hearts and a piece of us is
within them. They change with us and they grow old with us and with time, they
are a part of us, and thank God for that.”
********************
“One day at the library I found a
stack of record albums. I was hoping I’d find ta Beatles album, but it was all
classical music so I reached for the first name I knew, Beethoven. I checked it
out his Sixth Symphony and walked home. I didn’t own a record player and I
don’t know why I took it out. I had Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony but nothing to
play it on.”
********************
“The next day, when I came home
from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found
my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm.
“Ma,” I asked. “Where did you get the
money for the record player?”
“I had it saved,” she lied.
My father lived well, had a large house
and an expensive imported car, wanted for little, and gave nothing. My mother
lived on welfare in a slum and sold her blood to the Red Cross to get me a
record player.
“Education is everything, Johnny,” she
said, as she headed for the refrigerator to get me food. “You get smart like
regular people and you don’t have to live like this no more.”
She and I were not hugging types, but I
put my hand on her shoulder as she washed the dishes with her back to me and
she said, in best Brooklynese, “So go and enjoy, already.” My father always
said I was my mother’s son and I was proud of that. On her good days, she was a
good and noble thing to be a part of.
That evening, I plugged in the red
record player and placed it by the window. My mother and I took the kitchen
chairs out to the porch and listened to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony from beginning
to end, as we watched the oil-stained waters of the Mad River roll by. It was a
good night, another good night, one of many that have blessed my life.”
********************
“The next day I was driven to New York
City to take the physical. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen.
Several hundred young men, maybe even a thousand, in their skivvies, walking
around an enormous room, all of us lost, dazed, and confused.
Some of these guys had dodged the draft
and were there under the watchful eyes of dozens of federal marshals
lined against one of the walls. After eight hours of being poked,
prodded, stuck, and poked again, I was given a large red envelope. I had been
rejected. I had the respiratory problems of an old man, high blood pressure, partial
loss of hearing, very bad teeth, very flat, very wide feet and I tested
positive for tuberculosis.
“Frankly,” the doctor said, “I don’t
know how the hell you’re even standing ,” and that was when the sergeant told
me that if they bottled everything that was wrong with me “we could take over
the world without a shot.”
********************
“I had decided that I wanted to earn my
living as a writer and the only place in Waterbury where they paid you for
writing was at the local newspaper. My opportunity came when the paper had an
opening for a night janitor. Opportunities are easy to miss, because they don’t
always show in their best clothes. Sometimes opportunities look like
beggars in rags. After an eight-hour shift in the shop tossing thirty-pound crates
I hustled to the newspaper building and cleaned toilets, with a vague
plan that it would somehow lead to a reporter’s .”
********************
“One Friday afternoon at the close of
the working day the idiot bosses in their fucking ties and suit coats
came and handed out pink slips to every other person on the floor. I got
one. They were firing us. Then they turned and, without a word, went back to
their offices. Corporate pricks.”
********************
“There is a sense of danger in leaving
what you know, even if what you know isn’t much. These mill towns with their
narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if
I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The
other reason I didn’t want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person
who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn’t one of the
people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It wasn’t
clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty
behind me. I wasn’t happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn’t worry
about it. It didn’t define me. We’re always in the making. God always has us on
his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a new
purpose.”
********************
“I was tired of fighting the windstorm
I was tossed into, and instead I would let go and ride with the winds of
change. How bad could it be, compared to the life I knew? I was living life as
if it were a rehearsal for the real thing. Another beginning might be rough at
first, but any place worth getting to is going to have some problems. I wanted
the good life, the life well lived, and you can’t buy that or marry into it.
It’s there to be found, and it can be taken by those who want it and have the
resolve to make it happen for themselves.”
********************
“Imagine being beaten every day
for something you didn’t do and yet, when it’s over, you keep on smiling.
That’s what every day of Donald’s life was like. His death was a small death.
No one mourned his passing; they merely agreed it was for the best that he be
forgotten as quickly as possible, since his was a life misspent.”
********************
“Then there are all of those children,
the ones who aren’t resilient. The ones who slowly, quietly die. I think the
difference is that the kids who bounce back learn to bear a little bit more
than they thought they could, and they soon understand that the secret to
surviving foster care is to accept finite disappointments while never losing
infinite hope. I think that was how Donald survived as long as he did, by never
losing his faith in the wish that tomorrow would be better. But as time went
by, day after day, the tomorrows never got better; they got worse, and he
simply gave . In the way he saw the world, pain was inevitable, but no one ever
explained to him that suffering was optional.”
********************
“In foster care it’s easier to measure
what you’ve lost over what you have gained, because it there aren’t many gains
in that life and you are a prisoner to someone else’s plans for your life.”
********************
“I developed an interest in major
league baseball and the 1960s were, as far as I’m concerned (with a nod to the
Babe Ruth era of the 1920s), the Golden Age of Baseball. Like most people in
the valley, I was a diehard Yankees fan and, in a pinch, a Mets fan. They were
New York teams, and most New Englanders rooted for the Boston Red Sox, but our
end of Connecticut was geographically and culturally closer to New York than
Boston, and that’s where our loyalties went.
And what was not to love? The Yankees
ruled the earth in those days. The great Roger Maris set one Major League
record after another and even he was almost always one hit shy of Mickey
Mantle, God on High of the Green Diamond.”
********************
“For the first time in my life, I was
eating well and from plates—glass plates, no less, not out of the frying pan
because somebody lost all the plates in the last move. Now when we ate, we sat
at a fine round oak table in sturdy chairs that matched. No one rushed through
the meal or argued over who got the biggest portion, and we ate three times a
day.”
********************
“The single greatest influence in
our lives was the church. The Catholic Church in the 1960s differs from what it
is today, especially in the Naugatuck Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly
conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have been the
last generation of American Catholic children who completely and
unquestioningly accepted the sernatural as real. Miracles happened. Virgin
birth and transubstantiation made perfect sense. Mere humans did in fact,
become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian angels walked beside us and our
patron saints really did put in a good word for us every now and then.”
********************
“Henry read it and said, “A story has
to have three things. They are a beginning, a middle and an end. They don’t
have to be in that order. You can start a story at the end or end it in the
middle. There are no rules on that except where you, the author, decide to put
all three parts. Your story has a beginning and an end. But it’s good. Go put
in a middle and bring it back to me.”
I went away encouraged, rewrote the
story and returned it to him two days later. Again he looked it over and said,
“It’s a good story but it lacks a bullet-between-the-eyes opening. Your stories
should always have a knock-’em-dead opening.” Then, looking with exaggerated
suspicion around the crime-prone denizens of the room with an exaggerated
suspicion, he said loudly, “I don’t mean that literally.”
********************
“A few days after I began my short
story, I returned to his desk and handed him my dates. He pushed his
wire-rimmed reading glasses way on his nose and focused on the two pages.
“Okay, you got a beginning; you got yourself a middle and an end. You got a
wing-dinger opening line. But you don’t have an establishing paragraph. Do you
know what that is?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer.
“It’s kinda like an outdated road map
for the reader,” he said. “It gives the reader a general idea of where you’re
taking him, but doesn’t tell him exactly how you intend to get there, which is
all he needs to know.”
********************
“I don’t know’,” he said. “Those three
words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage.” And
with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering
scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person
narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most
literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that
if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no
merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was
mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as
a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it was
that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of
things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of
standards. It was bout quality in the author’s craftsmanship.”
********************
“The foundries were vast, dark
castles built for efficiency, not comfort. Even in the mild New England
summers, when the warm air combined with the stagnant heat from the machines or
open flames in the huge melting rooms where the iron was cast, the effects were
overwhelming. The heat came in unrelenting waves and sucked the soul from your
body. In the winter, the enormous factories were impossible to heat and frigid
New England air reigned sreme in the long halls.
The work was difficult, noisy,
mind-numbing, sometimes dangerous and highly regulated. Bathroom and lunch
breaks were scheduled to the second. There was no place to make a private
phone call. Company guards, dressed in drab uniforms straight out of a James
Cagney prison film [those films were in black and white, notoriously tough,
weren’t there to guard company property. They were there to keep an eye on us.
No one entered or the left the building
without punching in or out on a clock, because the doors were locked and opened
electronically from the main office.”
********************
“So he sings,” he continued as if
Denny had said nothing. “His solo mio, that with her in his life he is rich
because she is so beautiful that she makes the sun more beautiful, you
understand?” And at that he dropped the hoe, closed his eyes and spread out his
arms wide and with the fading sun shining on his handsome face he sang:
Che bella cosa è na jurnata 'e sole
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa
Che bella cosa e' na jurnata 'e sole
Ma n'atu sole,
cchiù bello, oi ne'
'O sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
'O sole, 'o sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
sta 'nfronte a te!
It looked like fun. We dropped our
tools and joined him, belting out something that sounded remarkably like
Napolitano. We sang as loud as we could, holding on to each note as long as we
could before we ran out of breath, and then we sang again, occasionally
dropping to one knee, holding our hands over our hearts with exaggerated looks
of deep pain. Although we made the words , we sang with the deepest passion,
with the best that we had, with all of our hearts, and that made us artists,
great artists, for in that song, we had made all that art is: the creation of
something from nothing, fashioned with all of the soul, born from joy.
And as that beautiful summer sun set
over Waterbury, the Brass City, the City of Churches, our voices floated above
the wonderful aromas of the garden, across the red sky and joined the spirits
in eternity.”
********************
“It didn’t last long. Not many good
things in a foster kid’s life last long. One day, Maura was gone. Her few
things were packed in paper bags and a tearful Miss Louisa carried her out to
Miss Hanrahan’s black state-owned Ford sedan with the state emblem on the door,
and she was gone. The state had found a foster home that would take a little
girl but couldn’t take the rest of us. There were no long goodbyes. She was
just gone. I remember having an enormous sense of helplessness when they took
her. Maura didn’t know where she were going or long she would be there. She was
just gone”
********************
“After another second had passed I
added, “But you’re pretty, pretty,” and as soon as I said it I thought,
“Pretty, pretty? John, you’re an idiot.” But she squeezed my hand and when I
looked at her I saw her entire lovely face was aglow with a wonderful smile,
the kind of smile you get when you have won something.
“Why do you rub your fingers together
all the time?” she asked me, and I felt the breath leave my body and gasped for
air. She had seen me do my crazy finger thing, my affliction. I clenched my
teeth while I searched for a long, exaggerated lie to tell her about why I did
what I did. I didn’t want to be the crazy kid with tics, I wanted to be James
Bond 007, so slick ice avoided me.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I bite my
nails, see?” and she showed me the backs of her hands. Her finger nails were
painted a color I later learned was puce.
“My Dad, he blinks all the time, he
doesn’t know why either,” she continued. She looked her feet and said, “I
shouldn’t have asked you that. I’m really nervous and I say stid things when
I’m nervous. I’m a girl and this is my first date, and for girls this really is
a very big deal.”
I understood completely. I was so
nervous I couldn’t feel my toes, so I started moving them and to
make sure they were still there.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I don’t know
why I do that with my fingers; it’s a thing I do.”
“Well, you’re really cute when you do
it,” she said.
“I know,” I said, and I don’t know why
I said it, but I did.”
********************
“So began my love affair with books.
Years later, as a college student, I remember having a choice between a few
slices of pizza that would have held me over for a day or a copy of On the
Road. I bought the book. I would have forgotten what the pizza tasted like, but
I still remember Kerouac.
The world was mine for the reading. I
traveled with my books. I was there on a tramp steamer in the North Atlantic
with the Hardy Boys, piecing together an unsolvable crime. I rode into the
Valley of Death with the six hundred and I stood at the graves of Uncas and
Cora and listened to the mournful song of the Lenni Linape. Although I braved a
frozen death at Valley Forge and felt the spin of a hundred bullets at Shiloh,
I was never afraid. I was there as much as you are where you are, right this
second. I smelled the gunsmoke and tasted the frost. And it was good to be
there. No one could harm me there. No one could punch me, slap me, call me
stid, or pretend I wasn’t in the room. The other kids raced through books so
they could get the completion stamp on their library card. I didn’t care about
that stid completion stamp. I didn’t want to race through books. I wanted books
to walk slowly through me, stop, and touch my brain and my memory. If a book
couldn’t do that, it probably wasn’t a very good book. Besides, it isn’t how
much you read, it’s what you read.
What I learned from books, from young
Ben Franklin’s anger at his brother to Anne Frank’s longing for the way her
life used to be, was that I wasn’t alone in my pain. All that caused me such
anguish affected others, too, and that connected me to them and that connected
me to my books. I loved everything about books. I loved that odd sensation of
turning the final page, realizing the story had ended, and feeling that I was
saying a last goodbye to a new friend.”
********************
“I had developed a very complicated and
little-understood disorder called misophonia, which means “hatred of sound.”
Certain sounds act as triggers that turn me from a Teddy bear into an agitated
grizzly bear. People with misophonia are annoyed, sometimes to the point of
rage, by ordinary sounds such as people eating, breathing, sniffing, or
coughing, certain consonants, or repetitive sounds. Those triggers, and there
are dozens of them, set off anxiety and avoidant behaviors.
What is a mild irritation for most
people -- the person who keeps sniffling, a buzzing fly in a closed room—those
are major irritants to people with misophonia because we have virtually no
ability to ignore those sounds, and life can be a near constant bombardment of
noises that bother us. I figured out that the best way to cope was to avoid the
triggers. So I turned off the television at certain sounds and avoided loud
people. All of these things gave me a reputation as a high-strung, moody and
difficult child. I knew my overreactions weren’t normal. My playmates knew it”
********************
“Sometimes in the midst of our darkest
moments it’s easy to forget that it’s to us to turn on the light, but
that’s what I did. I switched on the light, the light of cognizance.”
********************
“I don’t know what I would have
done if they had hugged me. I probably would have frozen in place, become
stiff. It took most of my life to overcome my distaste for physical contact and
not to stiffen when I was touched, or flinch, twitch, fidget, and eventually
figure out how to move away. I learned to accept being hugged by my children
when they were infants. Their joy at seeing me enter a room was real and filled
with true love and affection and it showed in their embraces. Like a convert,
when I learned the joy and comfort of being hugged by and hugging those I
loved, I became a regular practitioner.”
********************
“Most people don’t understand how
mighty the power of touch is, how mighty a kind word can be, how important a
listening ear is, or how giving an honest compliment can move the child who has
not known those things, only watched them from afar. As insignificant as they
can be, they have the power to change a life.”
********************
“They were no better than common
thieves. They stole our childhood. But even with that, I was heartbroken that I
would not know the Wozniaks anymore, the only people who came close to being
parents to me. I would be conscious of their absence for the rest of my life. I
needed them. You know, if you think about it, we all need each other. But even
with all of the evidence against the Wozniaks, I had conflicted emotions about
them, then and now. They were the closest I had to a real family and real
parents.
But now I was bankrt of any feelings at
all towards them at all.
I felt then, and feel now, a great
sense of loss. I felt as if I were burying them. when I never really had them
to lose in the first place. Disillusioned is probably a better word. In fact
the very definition of disillusionment is a sense of loss for something you
never had. When you are disillusioned and disappointed enough times, you
shoping. That’s what happens to many foster kids. We become loners, not because
we enjoy the solitude, but because we let people into our lives and they
disappoint us. So we close and travel alone. Even in a crowd, we’re
alone.
Because I survived, I was one of the
lucky ones. Why is it so hard to articulate love, yet so easy to express
disappointment?”
********************
“My first and lasting impression of the
Connecticut River Valley is its serene beauty, especially in the autumn months.
Deep River was a near picture-perfect New England village. When I arrived
there, the town was a typical working-class place, nothing like the trendy
per-income enclave it became. The town center had a cluster of shops, a movie
theater open only on weekends, several white-steepled churches (none of them
Catholic), the town hall, and a Victorian library. It was small, even by Ansonia
standards.”
********************
“While I may not have been a
bastion of good mental health, many of these boys were on their way to becoming
crazier than they already were. Most couldn’t relate to other people socially
at all, because they only dealt inappropriately with other people or didn’t
respond to overtures of friendship or even engage in basic conversations.
Some became too familiar with you too
fast, following their new, latest friend everywhere, including the showers,
insisting on giving you items that were dear to them and sharing everything
else. They also had the awful habit of touching other people, putting their
hands on you as a sign of affection or friendship, and for people like myself,
with my affliction and disdain for being touched unless I wanted to be touched,
these guys were a nightmare. It was often difficult to get word in edgewise
with these kids, and when I did, they interrted me—not in some obnoxious way,
but because they wanted to be included in every single aspect of everything you
did.
The other ones, the stone-cold silent
ones, reacted with deep suspicion toward even the slightest attempt to befriend
them or the smallest show of kindness. If you touched some of these children,
even accidentally, they would warn you to back away. They didn’t care what
others thought of them or anything else, and almost all their talk concerned
punching and hurting and maiming.
I noticed that most of these kids, the
ones who were truly damaged, were eventually filtered out of St. John’s to who
knows where. Institutions have a way of protecting themselves from future
problems.”
********************
“Jesus,” I prayed silently, “please fix
it so that my turn to read won’t come around.”
And then the nun called my name, but
before I stood I thought, “I’ll bet you think this is funny, huh, Jesus?”
I stood and stared at the sentence
assigned to me and believed that, through some miracle, I would suddenly be
able to read it and not be humiliated. I stood there and stared at it until the
children started giggling and snickering and Sister told me to sit.”
********************
“My affliction decided to join
us, forcing me to push my toes on the floor as though I were trying to eject
myself from the chair. I prayed she didn’t notice what the affliction was
making me do. I half expected to be eaten alive or murdered and buried out back
in the school yard.
“I’m not afraid of you, ya know,” I
said, although I was terrified of her. The words hurt her, but that wasn’t my
intent. She turned her face and looked out the window into North Cliff Street.
She knew what her face and twisted body looked like, and she probably knew what
the kids said about her. It was probably an open wound for her and I had just
tossed salt into it.
I was instantly ashamed of what I done
and tried to correct myself. I didn’t mean to be hurtful, because I knew what
it was like to be ridiculed for something that was beyond one’s control, such
as my affliction, and how it made me afraid to touch the chalk because the feel
of chalk to people like me is overwhelming. If I had to write on the
blackboard, I held the chalk with the cuff of my shirt and the class laughed.
“You look good in a nun’s suit,” I
said. It was a stid thing to say, but I meant well by it. She looked at
the black robe as if she were seeing it for the first time.”
********************
“Jews were a frequent topic of
conversation with all of the Wozniaks, which was surprising, since none of them
had any contact at all with anything even remotely Jewish.
While watching television, Walter would
point out who was and who was not Jewish and Helen’s frequent comment when
watching the television news was, “And won’t the Jews be happy about that!” To
bargain with a merchant for a lower price was to “Jew him ,” and that sort of thing.
Walter’s mother and father were far
worse. They despised the Jews and blamed them for everything from the start of
World War I to the Kennedy assassination to the rising price of beef.
I didn’t pay much heed to any of this.
It wasn’t my problem, and if I were to think through all the ethnic, racial and
religious barbs the Wozniaks threw out in the course of a week, I’d think about
nothing else.
After being told about a part of my
mother’s heritage, the Wozniaks began their verbal and cultural assault against
us. As odd as it sounds, they might not always have intended to be mean.”
********************
“Explaining the Jews in a Catholic
school when you’re Irish is like having to explain your country’s foreign
policy while on a vacation in France. You don’t know what you’re talking about
and no matter what you say, they’re not going to like it anyway.”
********************
“You could read the story of his
entire life on his face in one glance.”
********************
“As interesting as that was, it
didn’t inspire me. What did was that here was a Jew who was tough with his
fists, a Jew who fought back. The only Jews I had ever heard of surrendered or
were beaten by the Romans, the Egyptians, or the Nazis. You name it, it seemed
like everyone on earth at some point had taken their turn slapping the Jews
around. But not Benny Leonard. I figured you’d have to kill Benny Leonard
before he surrendered.”
********************
“One afternoon Walter brought Izzy to
the house for lunch and, pointing to me, he said to Izzy, “He’s one of your
tribe.”
Dobkins lifted his head to look at me
and after a few seconds said, “I don’t see it.”
“The mother’s a Jew,” Walter answered,
as if he were describing the breeding of a mongrel dog.
“Then you are a Jew,” Izzy said, and
sort of blessed me with his salami sandwich.”
********************
“Sometimes a man must stand for what is
right and sometimes you must simply walk away and suffer the babblings of
weak-minded fools or try to change their minds. It’s like teachin’ a pig to
sing. It is a waste of your time and it annoys the pig.”
********************
“Father, I can’t take this,” I
said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a priest, Father.”
“And my money’s no good because of it?
What are you? A member of the Masonic Lodge?”
“Naw, Father,” I said. “I just feel
guilty taking money from you.”
“Well, you’re Irish and Jewish. You
have to feel guilty over somethin’, don’t ya? Take the money and be happy ye
have it.”
― John William Tuohy, No time to say
goodbye: memoirs of a life n foster care
********************
“I caddied—more accurately, I
drove the golf cart—for Father O’Leary and his friends throughout most of the
summer of that year. I was a good caddie because I saw nothing when they passed
the bottle of whiskey and turned a deaf ear to yet another colorful reinvention
of the words “motherless son of a bitch from hell” when the golf ball betrayed
them.”
********************
“Weeks turned into months and a year
passed, but I didn’t miss my parents. I missed the memory of them. I assumed
that part of my life was over. I didn’t understand that I was required to have
an attachment to them, to these people I barely knew. Rather, it was my
understanding that I was sposed to switch my attachment to my foster parents.
So I acted on that notion and no one corrected me, so I assumed that what I was
doing was good and healthy.”
********************
“I felt empty a lot and I sometimes had
a sense—and I know this sounds strange—that I really had no existence as my own
person, that I could disappear and no one would notice or remember that I had
ever existed. It is a terrifying thing to live with. I kept myself busy to
avoid that feeling, because somehow being busy made me feel less empty.”
********************
“Denny thought our parents needed a
combination of material goods and temperamental changes before he could return
home.
“If Dad buys Ma a car, then she’ll love
him, and they’ll get back together and she won’t be all crazy anymore,” he
said. For years he held out the possibility that those things would happen and
all would change. “If we had more things, like stoves and cars,” he told me at
night in our bedroom, “and Ma wasn’t like she is, we could go home.”
********************
“Because we were raised in a
bigoted and hate-filled home, we simply assumed that calling someone a “cheap
Jew” or saying someone “Jewed him ” were perfectly acceptable ways to
communicate. Or at least we did until the day came when I called one of the
cousins, a Neanderthal DeRosa boy, “a little Jew,” and he told me he wasn’t the
Jew, that I was the Jew, and he even got Helen and Nana to confirm it for him.
It came as a shock to me to find out we
were a part of this obviously terrible tribe of skinflint, trouble-making,
double-dealing, shrewdly smart desert people. When Denny found out, he was
crestfallen because he had assumed that being Jewish meant, according to what
his former foster family the Skodiens had taught him, a life behind a desk
crunching numbers. “And I hate math,” he said, shaking his head.
So here we were, accused Jews living in
a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Not a good situation. Walter’s father was the worst.
Learning about our few drops of Jewish blood seemed to ignite a special,
long-held hatred in him. He became vile over nothing, finding any excuse to
deride the Jews in front of us until Helen made him stop. We didn’t know what
to make of it, except to write it off as another case of Wozniak-inspired
insanity, but as young as we were, we could tell that at some point in his life
he had crossed swords with a Jew someplace and came out on the losing end and
we were going to pay for it. But because we really didn’t feel ourselves to be
Jews, it didn’t sink in that he intended to hurt us with his crazy tirades. As
I said, it’s hard to insult somebody when they don’t understand the insult, and
it’s equally hard to insult them when they out and out refuse to be insulted.
Word got around quickly.”
********************
“I hit him for every single thing that
was wrong in my life and kicked him in a fierce fury of madness as he sobbed
and covered his face and screamed. I hit him because Walter hit me and I hit
him because I hated my life and I hit him because I just wanted to go home and
I hit him because I didn’t know where home was.”
********************
“I also told him about the
dramatic, vivid verbal picture of God that the nuns drew for us—an enormous,
slightly dangerous and very touchy guy with white hair and a long white beard.
“It’s all the talk of feeble minds,” he
whispered to me in confidence. “Those nuns know as much about prayer as they do
about sex. Listen to me, now. God is everywhere and alive in everything, while
them nuns figured God is as good as dead, a recluse in a permanently bad mood.
Well, I refuse to believe that to my God, my maker and creator, my life is
little more than a dice game.” He stopped and turned and looked at me and said,
“Never believe that a life full of sin puts you on a direct route to hell. Even
if you only know a little bit about God, you learn pretty quick that he’s big
on U-turns, dead stops and starting over again.”
As each day passes and my memories of
Father O’Leary and Sister Emmarentia fade, and I can no longer recall their
faces or the sounds of their voices as clearly as I could a decade ago, what
remains, clear and uncluttered, are the lessons I took from them.”
********************
“Eventually, many years later, I
came to see him the way everyone else saw him—a nice guy who, despite all the
damage he did to us, wasn’t a bad man, not inherently bad, anyway. He just
wasn’t very bright, and was in over his head on almost every level of life. He
was capable of only so much and not a drop more, and because he seemed so
harmless and lost, people not only liked him, they protected him.
My mother, despite her poverty, left
the opposite impression. She left no doubt that she was psychologically tough
and mentally sharp, and because of that the Wozniaks disliked her.
And that was another difference between
my mother and father. My father was a whiner, a complainer, a perpetually
unhappy man unable to comprehend the simple fact that sometimes life is unfair.
My mother never complained, and yet her poverty-stricken life was miserable.
She never carried on about the early death of her raging alcoholic mother, or
the father who raped her, or of a diet dictated by the restrictions of food
stamps.”
********************
SAMPLE
CHAPTER
Chapter
One
To read the first 12 chapters of this book,
visit it's BlogSpot @
amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
Do you
think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and
heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much
heart! ― Charlotte Brontë,
Jane Eyre
I am here because I worked too hard and too long not to be here. But
although I told the university that I would walk across the stage to take my
diploma, I won't. At age fifty-seven, I'm too damned old, and I'd look
ridiculous in this crowd. From where I'm standing in the back of the hall, I
can see that I am at least two decades older than most of the parents of these
kids in their black caps and gowns.
So I'll graduate with this class, but I won't walk across the stage and
collect my diploma with them; I'll have the school send it to my house. I only
want to hear my name called. I'll imagine what the rest would have been like.
When you've had a life like mine, you learn to do that, to imagine the good
things.
The ceremony is about to begin. It's a warm June day and a hallway of
glass doors leading to the parking lot are open, the dignitaries march onto the
stage, a janitor slams the doors shut, one after the other.
That banging sound.
It's Christmas Day 1961 and three Waterbury cops are throwing their bulk
against our sorely overmatched front door. They are wearing their long woolen
blue coats and white gloves and they swear at the cold.
They've finally come for us, in the dead of night, to take us away, just
as our mother said they would.
"They'll come and get you kids," she screamed at us, "and
put youse all in an orphanage where you'll get the beatin's youse deserve, and
there won't be no food either."
That's why we're terrified, that's why we don't open the door and that's
how I remember that night. I was six years old then, one month away from my
seventh birthday. My older brother, the perpetually-worried, white-haired
Paulie, was ten. He is my half-brother, actually, although I have never thought
of him that way. He was simply my brother. My youngest brother, Denny, was six;
Maura, the baby, was four; and Bridget, our auburn-haired leader, my half
-sister, was twelve.
We didn't know where our mother was. The welfare check, and thank God
for it, had arrived, so maybe she was at a gin mill downtown spending it all,
as she had done a few times before.
Maybe she'd met yet another guy, another
barfly, who wouldn't be able to remember our names because his beer-soaked
brain can't remember anything. We are thankful that he'll disappear after the
money runs out or the social worker lady comes around and tells him he has to
leave because the welfare won't pay for him as well as for us. It snowed that
day and after the snow had finished falling, the temperature dropped and the
winds started.
"Maybe she went to Brooklyn," Paulie said, as we walked
through the snow to the Salvation Army offices one that afternoon before the
cops came for us.
"She didn't go back to New York," Bridget snapped. "She
probably just--"
"She always says she gonna leave and go back home to
Brooklyn," I interrupted.
"Yeah," Denny chirped, mostly because he was determined to be
taken as our equal in all things, including this conversation.
We walked along in silence for a second, kicking the freshly fallen snow
from our paths, and then Paulie added what we were all thinking: "Maybe
they put her back in Saint Mary's."
No one answered him. Instead, we fell into our own thoughts, recalling
how, several times in the past, when too much of life came at our mother at
once, she broke down and lay in bed for weeks in a dark room, not speaking and
barely eating. It was a frightening and disturbing thing to watch.
"It don't matter," Bridget snapped again, more out of
exhaustion than anything else. She was always cranky. The weight of taking care
of us, and of being old well before her time, strained her. "It don't
matter," she mumbled.
It didn't matter that night either, that awful night, when the cops were
at the door and she wasn't there. We hadn't seen our mother for two days, and
after that night, we wouldn't see her for another two years.
When we returned home that day, the sun had gone down and it was dark
inside the house because we hadn't paid the light bill. We never paid the
bills, so the lights were almost always off and there was no heat because we
didn't pay that bill either. And now we needed the heat. We needed the heat
more than we needed the lights.
The cold winter winds pushed up
at us from the Atlantic Ocean and down on us from frigid Canada and battered
our part of northwestern Connecticut, shoving freezing drifts of snow against
the paper-thin walls of our ramshackle house and covering our windows in a
thick veneer of silver-colored ice.
The house was built around 1910 by the factories to house immigrant
workers mostly brought in from southern Italy. These mill houses weren't built
to last. They had no basements; only four windows, all in the front; and
paper-thin walls. Most of the construction was done with plywood and tarpaper.
The interiors were long and narrow and dark.
Bridget turned the gas oven on to keep us warm.
"Youse go get the big mattress and bring it in here by the stove,"
she commanded us. Denny, Paulie, and I went to the bed that was in the cramped
living room and wrestled the stained and dark mattress, with some effort, into
the kitchen. Bridget covered Maura in as many shirts as she could find, in a
vain effort to stop the chills that racked her tiny and frail body and caused
her to shake.
We took great pains to position the hulking mattress in exactly the
right spot by the stove and then slid, fully dressed, under a pile of dirty
sheets, coats, and drapes that was our blanket. We squeezed close to fend off
the cold, the baby in the middle and the older kids at the ends.
"Move over, ya yutz, ya," Paulie would say to Denny and me
because half of his butt was hanging out onto the cold linoleum floor. We could
toss insults in Yiddish. We learned them from our mother, whose father was a
Jew and who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York.
I assumed that those words we learned were standard American English, in
wide and constant use across our great land. It wasn't until I was in my
mid-twenties and moved from the Naugatuck Valley and Connecticut that I came to
understand that most Americans would never utter a sentence like, "You and
your fakakta plans".
We also spoke with the Waterbury aversion to the sound of the letter
"T," replacing it with the letter "D," meaning that
"them, there, those, and these" were pronounced "dem, dere,
dose, and dese." We were also practitioners of "youse," the
northern working-class equivalent to "you-all," as in "Are youse
leaving or are youse staying?"
"Move in, ya yutz, ya," Paulie said again with a laugh, but we
didn't move because the only place to move was to push Bridget off the
mattress, which we were not about to do because Bridget packed a wallop that
could probably put a grown man down. Then Paulie pushed us, and at the other
end of the mattress, Bridget pushed back with a laugh, and an exaggerated,
rear-ends pushing war for control of the mattress broke out.
From the Inside Flap
By
Dr. Wm. Anthony Connolly
This incredible memoir, No Time
to Say Goodbye, tells of entertaining angels, dancing with devils, and of the
abandoned children many viewed simply as raining manna from some lesser god.
The young and unfortunate lives
of the Tuohy bruins—sometimes Irish, sometimes Jewish, often Catholic,
rambunctious, but all imbued with Lion’s hearts—told here with brutal honesty
leavened with humor and laudable introspective forgiveness. The memoir will
have you falling to your knees thanking that benevolent Irish cop in the sky,
your lucky stars, or hugging the oxygen out of your own kids the fate foisted
upon Johnny and his siblings does not and did not befall your own brood. John
William Tuohy, a nationally-recognized authority on organized crime and Irish
levity, is your trusted guide through the weeds the decades of neglect ensnared
he and his brothers and sisters, all suffering for the impersonal and often
mercenary taint of the foster care system. Theirs, and Tuohy’s, story is not at
all figures of speech as this review might suggest, but all too real and all
too sad, and maddening. I wanted to scream. I wanted to get into a time
machine, go back and adopt every last one of them. I was angry. I was captivated.
The requisite damning verities of foster care are all here, regretfully, but
what sets this story above others is its beating heart, even a bruised and
broken one, still willing to forgive and understand, and continue to aid its
walking wounded. I cannot recommend this book enough.
AMAZON REVIEWS
By
jackieh on October 13, 2015
After reading about John's deeply
personal and painful past, I just wanted to hug the child within him......and
hug all the children who were thrown into the state's foster system....it is an
amazing read.......
By
Jane Pogoda on October 9, 2015
I truly enjoyed reading his
memoir. I also grew up in Ansonia and had no idea conditions such as these
existed. The saving grace is knowing the author made it out and survived the
system. Just knowing he was able to have a family of his own made me happy. I
attended the same grammar school and was happy that his experience there was
not negative. I had a wonderful experience in that school. I wish that I could
have been there for him when he was at the school since we were there at
probably at the same time.
By
Sue on September 27, 2015
Hi - just finished your novel
"No time to say goodbye" - what a powerful read!!! - I bought it for
my 90 year old mom who is an avid reader and lived in the valley all her
life-she loved it also along with my sister- we are all born and raised in the
valley- i.e. Derby and Ansonia
By
David A. Wright on September 7, 2015
I enjoyed this book. I grew up in
Ansonia CT and went to the Assumption School. Also reconized all the places he
was talking about and some of the families.
By
Robert G Manley on September 7, 2015
This is a wonderfully written
book. It is heart wrenchingly sad at times and the next minute hilariously
funny. I attribute that to the intelligence and wit of the author who combines
the humor and pathos of his Irish catholic background and horrendous
"foster kid" experience. He captures each character perfectly and the
reader can easily visualize the individuals the author has to deal with on
daily basis. Having lived part of my life in the parochial school system and
having lived as a child in the same neighborhood as the author, I was vividly
brought back to my childhood .Most importantly, it shows the strength of the
soul and how just a little compassion can be so important to a lost child.
By
LNA on July 9, 2015
John Tuohy writes with compelling
honesty, and warmth. I grew up in Ansonia, CT myself, so it makes it even more
real. He brings me immediately back there with his narrative, while he wounds
my soul, as I realize I had no idea of the suffering of some of the children
around me. His story is a must read, of courage and great spirit in the face of
impoverishment, sorrow, and adult neglect. I could go on and on, but just get
the book. If you're like me, you'll soon be reading it out loud to any person
in the room who will listen. Many can suffer and overcome as they go through
it, but few can find the words that take us through the story. John is a gifted
writer to be able to do that.
By
Barbara Pietruszka on June 29, 2015
I am from Connecticut so I was
very familiar with many locations described in the book especially Ansonia
where I lived. I totally enjoyed the book and would like to know more about the
author. I recommend the book to everyone
By
Joanne B. on June 28, 2015
What an emotional rollercoaster.
I laughed. I cried. Once you start reading it's hard to stop. I was torn
between wanting to gulp it up and read over and over each quote that started
the chapter. I couldn't help but feel part of the Tuohy clan. I wanted to
scream in their defense. It's truly hard to believe the challenges that foster
children face. I can only pray that this story may touch even one person facing
this life. It's an inspiring read. That will linger long after you finish it.
This is a wonderfully written memoir that immediately pulls you in to the lives
of the Tuohy family.
By
Paul Day on June 15, 2015
Great reading. Life in foster
care told from a very rare point of view.
By
Jackie Malkes on June 5, 2015
This book is definitely a must
for social workers working with children specifically. This is an excellent
memoir which identifies the trails of foster children in the 1960s in the
United States. The memoir captures stories of joy as well as nail biting
terror, as the family is at times torn apart but finds each other later and
finds solace in the experiences of one another. The stories capture the love
siblings have for one another as well as the protection they have for one
another in even the worst of circumstances. On the flip side, one of the most
touching stories to me was when a Nun at the school helped him to read-- truly
an example of how a positive person really helped to shape the author in times
when circumstances at home were challenging and treacherous. I found the book
to be a page turner and at times show how even in the hardest of circumstances
there was a need to live and survive and make the best of any moment. The
memoir is eye-opening and helped to shed light and make me feel proud of the
volunteer work I take part in with disadvantaged children. Riveting....Must
read....memory lane on steroids....Catholic school banter, blue color
towns...Lawrence Welk on Sundays night's.
By
Eileen on June 4, 2015
From ' No time to say Goodbye
'and authors John W. Touhys Gangster novels, his style never waivers...humorous
to sadness to candidly realistic situations all his writings leaves the reader
in awe......longing for more.
By
karen pojakene on June 1, 2015
This book is a must-read for
anyone who administers to the foster care program in any state. This is not a
"fell through the cracks" life story, but rather a memoir of a life
guided by strength and faith and a hard determination to survive. it is
heartening to know that the "sewer" that life can become to steal our
personal peace can be fought and our peace can be restored, scarred, but
restored.
By
Michelle Black on
A captivating, shocking, and
deeply moving memoir, No Time to Say Goodbye is a true page turner. John shares
the story of his childhood, from the struggles of living in poverty to being in
the foster care system and simply trying to survive. You will be cheering for
him all the way, as he never loses his will to thrive even in the darkest and
bleakest of circumstances. This memoir is a very truthful and unapologetic
glimpse into the way in which some of our most vulnerable citizens have been
treated in the past and are still being treated today. It is truly eye-opening,
and hopefully will inspire many people to take action in protection of
vulnerable children.
By
Kimberly on May 24, 2015
I found myself in tears while
reading this book. John William Tuohy writes quite movingly about the world he
grew up in; a world in which I had hoped did not exist within the foster care
system. This book is at times funny, raw, compelling, heartbreaking and
disturbing. I found myself rooting for John as he tries to escape from an
incredibly difficult life. You will too!
By
Geoffrey A. Childs on May 20, 2015
I found this book to be a
compelling story of life in the Ct foster care system. at times disturbing and
at others inspirational ,The author goes into great detail in this gritty
memoir of His early life being abandoned into the states system and his
subsequent escape from it. Every once in a while a book or even an article in a
newspaper comes along that bears witness to an injustice or even something
that's just plain wrong. This chronicle of the foster care system is such a
book and should be required reading for any aspiring social workers.
This
is a book of short stories taken from the things I saw and heard in my
childhood in the factory town of Ansonia in southwestern Connecticut.
Most
of these stories, or as true as I recall them because I witnessed these events
many years ago through the eyes of child and are retold to you now with the pen
and hindsight of an older man. The only exception is the story Beat
Time which is based on the disappearance of Beat poet Lew Welch.
Decades before I knew who Welch was, I was told that he had made his from
California to New Haven, Connecticut, where was an alcoholic living in a
mission. The notion fascinated me and I filed it away but never forgot
it.
The
collected stories are loosely modeled around Joyce’s novel, Dubliners (I
also borrowed from the novels character and place names. Ivy Day, my character
in “Local Orphan is Hero” is also the name of chapter in Dubliners,
etc.) and like Joyce I wanted to write about my people, the people I knew as a
child, the working class in small town America and I wanted to give a complete
view of them as well. As a result the stories are about the divorced, Gays,
black people, the working poor, the middle class, the lost and the found, the
contented and the discontented.
Conversely
many of the stories in this book are about starting life over again as a result
of suicide (The Hanging Party, Small Town Tragedy, Beat Time) or from a
near death experience (Anna Bell Lee and the Charge of the Light Brigade, A
Brief Summer) and natural occurring death. (The Best Laid Plans, The
Winter Years, Balanced and Serene)
With
the exception of Jesus Loves Shaqunda, in each story there is a
rebirth from the death. (Shaqunda is reported as having died of pneumonia
in The Winter Years)
Sal,
the desperate and depressed divorcee in Things Change, changes his
life in Lunch Hour when asks the waitress for a date and she
accepts. (Which we learn in Closing Time, the last story in the book) In The
Arranged Time, Thisby is given the option of change and whether she takes
it or, we don’t know. The death of Greta’s husband in A Matter of Time has
led her to the diner and into the waiting arms of the outgoing and loveable
Gabe.
Although
the book is based on three sets of time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the
diner is opened in the early morning and closed at night, time stands still
inside the Diner. The hour on the big clock on the wall never changes time and
much like my memories of that place, everything remains the same.
http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Small-William-Tuohy/dp/1517270456/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444164878&sr=1-1&keywords=short+stories+from+a+small+town
REVIEWS
FOR "SHORT STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN"
The Valley Lives
By
Marion Marchetto, author of The Bridgewater Chronicles on October 15, 2015
Short
Stores from a Small Town is set in The Valley (known to outsiders as The Lower
Naugatuck Valley) in Connecticut. While the short stories are contemporary they
provide insight into the timeless qualities of an Industrial Era community and
the values and morals of the people who live there. Some are first or second
generation Americans, some are transplants, yet each takes on the mantle of
Valleyite and wears it proudly. It isn't easy for an author to take the reader
on a journey down memory lane and involve the reader in the life stories of a
group of seemingly unrelated characters. I say seemingly because by book's end
the reader will realize that he/she has done more than meet a group of loosely
related characters.
We
meet all of the characters during a one-day time period as each of them finds
their way to the Valley Diner on a rainy autumn day. From our first meeting
with Angel, the educationally challenged man who opens and closes the diner, to
our farewell for the day to the young waitress whose smile hides her despair we
meet a cross section of the Valley population. Rich, poor, ambitious, and not
so ambitious, each life proves that there is more to it beneath the surface.
And the one thing that binds these lives together is The Valley itself. Not so
much a place (or a memory) but an almost palpable living thing that becomes a
part of its inhabitants.
Let
me be the first the congratulate author John William Tuohy on a job well done.
He has evoked the heart of The Valley and in doing so brought to life the
fabric that Valleyites wear as a mantle of pride. While set in a specific
region of the country, the stories that unfold within the pages of this slim
volume are similar to those that live in many a small town from coast to coast.
By
Sandra Mendyk
Just
read "Short Stories from a Small Town," and couldn't put it down!
Like Mr. Tuohy's other books I read, they keep your interest, especially if
you're from a small town and can relate to the lives of the people he writes
about. I recommend this book for anyone interested in human interest stories.
His characters all have a central place where the stories take place--a
diner--and come from different walks of life and wrestle with different
problems of everyday life. Enjoyable and thoughtful.
I
loved how the author wrote about "his people"
By
kathee
A
touching thoughtful book. I loved how the author wrote about "his
people", the people he knew as a child from his town. It is based on sets
of time in the local diner, breakfast , lunch and dinner, but time stands still
... Highly recommend !
WONDERFUL
book, I loved it!
By
John M. Cribbins
What
wonderful stories...I just loved this book.... It is great how it is written
following, breakfast, lunch, dinner, at a diner. Great characters.... I just
loved it....
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
Hay for Horses
Gary
Snyder
He
had driven half the night
From
far down San Joaquin
Through
Mariposa, up the
Dangerous
Mountain roads,
And
pulled in at eight a.m.
With
his big truckload of hay
behind
the barn.
With
winch and ropes and hooks
We
stacked the bales up clean
To
splintery redwood rafters
High
in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling
through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch
of haydust in the
sweaty
shirt and shoes.
At
lunchtime under Black oak
Out
in the hot corral,
---The
old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers
crackling in the weeds---
"I'm
sixty-eight" he said,
"I
first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I
thought, that day I started,
I
sure would hate to do this all my life.
And
dammit, that's just what
I've
gone and done."
Love is the law of life.
~Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
MUSIC FOR THE SOUL...............................
The quotable Emerson.........................
What terrible questions we are
learning to ask! The former men believed in magic by which temples cities and
men were swallowed up and all trace of them gone. We are coming On the secret
of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs
which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.
Do what we can summer will have
its flies.
The sea washing the equator and
the poles offers its perilous aid and the power and empire that follow it...
Beware of me it says but if you can hold me I am the key to all the lands.
No One has a prosperity so high
and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.
Nothing is secure but life
transition the energizing spirit.
Whatever games are played with us
we must play no games with ourselves.
It is very easy in the world to
live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered.
But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect
sweetness the independence of solitude.
It is easy to live for others
everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.
NYCPlaywrights May 28, 2016
*** SUBMISSIONS FOR THESPIS
THEATER FESTIVAL’S 9th SEASON ***
Plays and musicals accepted!
Prizes:
Best Play: $3,500
Best Director, Actress, Actor
& Singer: $500 (each)
Best Musical Score: $300
Most Original Play, Best Set
Designer, Best Stage Manager: $200 (each)
Thespis Theater Festival is
like no other. We offer a 14-week long festival that allows each production to
breathe: that includes a 5-hour tech and 3 performances at prime theater-going
hours.
We also invite the members of
each cast and crew to see all shows in the festival for free, giving you time
to learn from and get inspired by each others' work.
In terms of staging, we
offer:
* 55 Professional lights plus
6 LED colored lights
* 50 props, including real
furniture pieces, that your production can use for free. So no more
double-parking in Manhattan to swap your props in and out of the theater.
90% of our past productions have made
excellent sets with our props
* Two projector screens; one
21x 14 screen upstage and one 14x14 screen stage left
The 99-seat theater is roomy
and intimate at the same time, with 2 stage exits and 6 audience spots for
wheelchairs.
The stage itself is 29 x 22'.
If you choose to bring in
props and costumes, you can store everything backstage for the duration of your
run.
We also offer a large
dressing room with lighted mirrors and a sink, as well as a clean bathroom 6
feet away from the dressing room area.
As mentioned above, 5 hours
of tech time are given to all productions and all performances are offered
during prime performance hours.
Thespis is proud to offer a
professional and nurturing space in which to run off- off- Broadway shows in
NY.
We make your run as easy as
possible so that you can enjoy the art of it!
For more info and to submit
your work, please
visit Thespisnytheaterfestival.com
*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES
***
Northern Kentucky University
| School of the Arts is once again calling for submissions for its award-
winning, 18th Biennial Year End Series Festival of New Plays - THE Y.E.S.
FESTIVAL, running April 20-30, 2017
The two selected playwrights
will each receive a cash prize of $250 and an expense-paid (travel and
accommodations visit to NKU to see their plays in production. Selected plays
will receive a full production.
• Full-length plays are
eligible. All rights must be fully owned by the author.
• No children’s theatre,
one-acts, or reader’s theatre pieces will be considered.
• Adaptations will be
considered only if the adapted work is in the public domain.
• A submitted play may not
have had a previous professional or university production.
***
Submissions are now open for
the 28th Annual JetFest in 2017
JET encourages all
playwrights over 18 to submit their work. JET's programming generally reflects
issues of social conscience and human rights both in drama and comedy. Use our
past productions as a guide and if you have questions, contact us a
248-788-2900.
Entry must be a full length
original work or adaptation with a minimum running time of 85 minutes that has
not been published prior to the festival in 2017. Cast size of 7 or less is
preferred. Staged readings/workshop productions are not disqualifying factors.
***
Manhattan Repertory Theatre's
10 Minute Play Contest
Seeking fully produced,
(cast, directed and ready to be performed by July)
10 minute (or under) 1 act
plays for Manhattan Repertory Theatre's
10 Minute play Contest.
$250 prize for best 10 minute
play production.
July 7 - July 15, 2016
at Manhattan Repertory
Theatre, 303 West 42nd St. at 8th Ave.
Each 10 minute or less play
will be given a short tech rehearsal, a full dress rehearsal with the other
plays participating, a minimum of 2 performances and an additional 4 more
performances if your play production goes on to the Semi-Finals and Finals.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION
about these and other opportunities see the NYCPlaywrights web site at
http://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** THEATER JOURNALS ~ a
random selection ***
BORROWERS AND LENDERS
The Journal of Shakespeare
and Appropriation
VOLUME IX · NUMBER 2
FALL/WINTER 2015
Shakespeare, Empire, and the
Trinidad Calypso (pdf)
Translating Autobiography
into Fiction: Chiasmus and the Play of the Authorial Mind in Hamlet and Pale
Fire (pdf)
Shakespeare and the Cultural
Olympiad: Contesting Gender and the British Nation in the BBC's The Hollow
Crown (pdf)
More…
http://www.borrowers.uga.edu
***
DIDASKALIA
The Journal for Ancient
Performances
Volume 12 (2015)
12.12 Dictating Parody in Plautus’ Rudens
12.11 Review - Medea at The Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film
12.10 Review - Fatman at Move to Stand and Orpheus at Little Bulb
Theatre
More…
http://www.didaskalia.net
***
NEW THEATRE QUARTERLY
Provides a vital
international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet and
where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical
questioning. It shows that theatre history has a contemporary relevance, that
theatre studies need a methodology and that theatre criticism needs a language.
The journal publishes news, analysis and debate within the field of theatre
studies.
Violence Onstage and Off:
Drama and Society in Recent American Plays
After the ‘Years of Lead’ in
Morocco: Performing the Memory
Political Theatre in Europe:
East to West, 2007–2014
More…
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=NTQ
***
PAJ: A JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE
AND ART
Volume 38, Number 2, May 2016
(PAJ 113)
Body Surrogates: Mannequins,
Life-Size Dolls, and Avatars
Linda Mary Montano is Reborn
David Bowie: Dance, Theatre,
Other
More…
http://muse.jhu.edu/issue/33458
***
TDR: THE DRAMA REVIEW
Volume 60, Number 2, Summer
2016 (T230)
Performance, Protest, and the
Intimate-Public
My Epistemological Crisis:
Arts Criticism in the Times of Trump
More…
http://muse.jhu.edu/issue/33566
***
THE ARTHUR MILLER JOURNAL
Provides a lasting legacy to
Miller's significant contributions to American drama.
The journal is now published
twice yearly by Pennsylvania State University Press, in cooperation with the
Arthur Miller Society and the Arthur Miller Centre at the University of East
Anglia. Subscription and Submission
information appears below, for any other information contact the editor:
Stephen Marino. Member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.
Volume 11 Number 1
Spring 2016
The Salesman at Sea: Aquatic
Imagery in Death of a Salesman
"The lightning of my
being": Byronic Struggle and Apotheosis of John Proctor
Taking Flight(s): Avian
Imagery in Camino Real and After the Fall
More…
http://www.ibiblio.org/miller/Volume%2011%20Number%201%20Spring%202016
***
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THEATRE
RESEARCH
The American Society for
Theatre Research (ASTR) is a U.S.-based professional organization that fosters
scholarship on worldwide theatre and performance, both historical and
contemporary.
More…
http://www.astr.org
***
THEATRE NOTEBOOK
Theatre Notebook is a journal
of the history and technique of the British theatre. It interprets theatre
widely covering theatrical activities inside and outside theatre buildings,
professional and amateur theatre, the business of theatre, stage design, the
history of theatre buildings, acting technique, and theatre outside the British
Isles that relates directly to the history and technique of British theatre.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but as a glance at our index will
demonstrate essays that focus purely on dramatic literature are not considered.
More…
http://www.str.org.uk/notebook/intro.html
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** TESTIMONIAL ***
Thanks to Francesca Pazniokas
for the kind words about NYCPlaywrights and allowing us to share them:
“I just wanted to say thank
you for the NYCPlaywrights website, and the well-run service you provide
playwrights. It's been a real time saver and career booster for me (and other
writers I know), and so I just wanted to drop you/your team a line of thanks for
that.”
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Hudson Warehouse
Our 13th Season of Classical
Theater on the North Patio of The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside
Park – West 89th Street and Riverside Drive. All Performances are Thursday
through Sunday Nights at 6:30 PM
No tickets necessary!
Admission is pay what you can.
Directed by Nicholas
Martin-Smith
June 2nd - June 26th, 2016
More…
http://www.hudsonwarehouse.net/season.html
*** SUBMISSIONS FOR THESPIS
THEATER FESTIVAL’S 9th SEASON ***
Plays and musicals accepted!
Prizes:
Best Play: $3,500
Best Director, Actress, Actor
& Singer: $500 (each)
Best Musical Score: $300
Most Original Play, Best Set
Designer, Best Stage Manager: $200 (each)
Thespis Theater Festival is
like no other. We offer a 14-week long festival that allows each production to
breathe: that includes a 5-hour tech and 3 performances at prime theater-going
hours.
We also invite the members of
each cast and crew to see all shows in the festival for free, giving you time
to learn from and get inspired by each others' work.
In terms of staging, we
offer:
* 55 Professional lights plus
6 LED colored lights
* 50 props, including real
furniture pieces, that your production can use for free. So no more
double-parking in Manhattan to swap your props in and out of the theater.
90% of our past productions have made
excellent sets with our props
* Two projector screens; one
21x 14 screen upstage and one 14x14 screen stage left
The 99-seat theater is roomy
and intimate at the same time, with 2 stage exits and 6 audience spots for
wheelchairs.
The stage itself is 29 x 22'.
If you choose to bring in
props and costumes, you can store everything backstage for the duration of your
run.
We also offer a large
dressing room with lighted mirrors and a sink, as well as a clean bathroom 6
feet away from the dressing room area.
As mentioned above, 5 hours
of tech time are given to all productions and all performances are offered
during prime performance hours.
Thespis is proud to offer a
professional and nurturing space in which to run off- off- Broadway shows in
NY.
We make your run as easy as
possible so that you can enjoy the art of it!
For more info and to submit
your work, please
visit
Thespisnytheaterfestival.com
ROGER TOUHY,
THE LAST GANGSTER
Editorial
Reviews
From
Publishers Weekly
JFK's
pardons and the mob; Prohibition, Chicago's crime cadres and the staged
kidnapping of "`Jake the Barber'" Factor, "the black sheep
brother of the cosmetics king, Max Factor"; lifetime sentences, attempted
jail busts and the perseverance of "a rumpled private detective and an
eccentric lawyer" John W. Tuohy showcases all these and more sensational
and shady happenings in When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange
Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping that Never Happened. The
author started investigating Touhy's 1959 murder by Capone's gang in 1975 for
an undergrad assignment. He traces the frame-job whereby Touhy was accused of
the kidnapping, his decades in jail, his memoirs, his retrial and release and,
finally, his murder, 28 days after regaining his freedom. Sixteen pages of
photos.
From
Library Journal
Roger
Touhy, one of the "terrible Touhys" and leader of a bootlegging
racket that challenged Capone's mob in Prohibition Chicago, had a lot to answer
for, but the crime that put him behind bars was, ironically, one he didn't
commit: the alleged kidnapping of Jake Factor, half-brother of Max Factor and
international swindler. Author Tuohy (apparently no relation), a former staff
investigator for the National Center for the Study of Organized Crime, briefly
traces the history of the Touhys and the Capone mob, then describes Factor's
plan to have himself kidnapped, putting Touhy behind bars and keeping himself
from being deported. This miscarriage of justice lasted 17 years and ended in
Touhy's parole and murder by the Capone mob 28 days later. Factor was never
deported. The author spent 26 years researching this story, and he can't bear
to waste a word of it. Though slim, the book still seems padded, with
irrelevant detail muddying the main story. Touhy is a hard man to feel sorry
for, but the author does his best. Sure to be popular in the Chicago area and
with the many fans of mob history, this is suitable for larger public libraries
and regional collections. Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH
BOOK
REVIEW
John
William Tuohy, one of the most prolific crime writers in America, has penned a tragic,
but fascinating story of Roger Touhy and John Factor. It's a tale born out of
poverty and violence, a story of ambition gone wrong and deception on an
enormous, almost unfathomable, scale. However, this is also a story of triumph
of determination to survive, of a lifelong struggle for dignity and redemption
of the spirit.
The
story starts with John "Jake the Barber" Factor. The product of the
turn of the century European ethnic slums of Chicago's west side, Jake's
brother, Max Factor, would go on to create an international cosmetic empire.
In
1926, Factor, grubstaked in a partnership with the great New York criminal
genius, Arnold Rothstien, and Chicago's Al Capone, John Factor set up a stock
scam in England that fleeced thousands of investors, including members of the
royal family, out of $8 million dollars, an incredible sum of money in 1926.
After
the scam fell apart, Factor fled to France, where he formed another syndicate
of con artists, who broke the bank at Monte Carlo by rigging the tables.
Eventually,
Factor fled to the safety of Capone's Chicago but the highest powers in the
Empire demanded his arrest. However, Factor fought extradition all the way to
the United States Supreme Court, but he had a weak case and deportation was
inevitable. Just 24 hours before the court was to decide his fate, Factor paid
to have himself kidnapped and his case was postponed. He reappeared in Chicago
several days later, and, at the syndicates' urging, accused gangster Roger
Touhy of the kidnapping.
Roger
"The Terrible" Touhy was the youngest son of an honest Chicago cop.
Although born in the Valley, a teeming Irish slum, the family moved to rural
Des Plains, Illinois while Roger was still a boy. Touhy's five older brothers
stayed behind in the valley and soon flew under the leadership of
"Terrible Tommy" O'Connor. By 1933, three of them would be shot dead
in various disputes with the mob and one, Tommy, would lose the use of his legs
by syndicate machine guns. Secure in the still rural suburbs of Cook County,
Roger Touhy graduated as class valedictorian of his Catholic school.
Afterwards, he briefly worked as an organizer for the Telegraph and
Telecommunications Workers Union after being blacklisted by Western Union for
his minor pro-labor activities.
Touhy
entered the Navy in the first world war and served two years, teaching Morse
code to Officers at Harvard University.
After
the war, he rode the rails out west where he earned a living as a railroad
telegraph operator and eventually made a small but respectable fortune as an
oil well speculator.
Returning
to Chicago in 1924, Touhy married his childhood sweetheart, regrouped with his
brothers and formed a partnership with a corrupt ward heeler named Matt Kolb,
and, in 1925, he started a suburban bootlegging and slot machine operation in
northwestern Cook County. Left out of the endless beer wars that plagued the
gangs inside Chicago, Touhy's operation flourished. By 1926, his slot machine
operations alone grossed over $1,000,000.00 a year, at a time when a gallon of
gas cost eight cents.
They
were unusual gangsters. When the Klu Klux Klan, then at the height of its
power, threatened the life of a priest who had befriended the gang, Tommy
Touhy, Roger's older brother, the real "Terrible Touhy," broke into
the Klan's national headquarters, stole its membership roles, and, despite an
offer of $25,000 to return them, delivered the list to the priest who published
the names in several Catholic newspapers the following day.
Once,
Touhy unthinkingly released several thousand gallons of putrid sour mash in to
the Des Plains River one day before the city was to reenact its discovery by
canoe-riding Jesuits a hundred years before. After a dressing down by the towns
people Touhy spent $10,000.00 on perfume and doused the river with it, saving
the day.
They
were inventive too. When the Chicago police levied a 50% protection tax on
Touhy's beer, Touhy bought a fleet of Esso gasoline delivery trucks, kept the
Esso logo on the vehicles, and delivered his booze to his speakeasies that way.
In
1930, when Capone invaded the labor rackets, the union bosses, mostly Irish and
completely corrupt, turned to the Touhy organization for protection. The
intermittent gun battles between the Touhys and the Capone mob over control of
beer routes which had been fought on the empty, back roads of rural Cook
County, was now brought into the city where street battles extracted an awesome
toll on both sides. The Chicago Tribune estimated the casualties to be one
hundred dead in less then 12 months.
By
the winter of 1933, remarkably, Touhy was winning the war in large part because
joining him in the struggle against the mob was Chicago's very corrupt, newly
elected mayor Anthony "Ten percent Tony" Cermak, who was as much a
gangster as he was an elected official.
Cermak
threw the entire weight of his office and the whole Chicago police force behind
Touhy's forces. Eventually, two of Cermak's police bodyguards arrested Frank
Nitti, the syndicate's boss, and, for a price, shot him six times. Nitti lived.
As a result, two months later Nitti's gunmen caught up with Cermak at a
political rally in Florida.
Using
previously overlooked Secret Service reports, this book proves, for the first
time, that the mob stalked Cermak and used a hardened felon to kill him. The
true story behind the mob's 1933 murder of Anton Cermak, will changes histories
understanding of organized crimes forever. The fascinating thing about this
killing is its eerie similarity to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas thirty
years later, made even more macabre by the fact that several of the names
associated with the Cermak killing were later aligned with the Kennedy killing.
For
many decades, it was whispered that the mob had executed Cermak for his role in
the Touhy-syndicate war of 1931-33, but there was never proof. The official
story is that a loner named Giuseppe Zangara, an out-of-work, Sicilian born
drifter with communist leanings, traveled to Florida in the winter of 1933 and
fired several shots at President Franklin Roosevelt. He missed the President,
but killed Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak instead. However, using long lost
documents, Tuohy is able to prove that Zangara was a convicted felon with long
ties to mob Mafia and that he very much intended to murder Anton Cermak.
With
Cermak dead, Touhy was on his own against the mob. At the same time, the United
States Postal Service was closing in on his gang for pulling off the largest
mail heists in US history at that time. The cash was used to fund Touhy's war
with the Capones.Then in June of 1933, John Factor en he reappeared, Factor
accused Roger Touhy of kidnapping him. After two sensational trials, Touhy was
convicted of kidnapping John Factor and sentenced to 99 years in prison and
Factor, after a series of complicated legal maneuvers, and using the mob's
influence, was allowed to remain in the United States as a witness for the
prosecution, however, he was still a wanted felon in England.
By
1942 Roger Touhy had been in prison for nine years, his once vast fortune was
gone. Roger's family was gone as well. At his request, his wife Clara had moved
to Florida with their two sons in 1934. However, with the help of Touhy's
remaining sister, the family retained a rumpled private detective, actually a
down-and-out, a very shady and disbarred mob lawyer named Morrie Green.
Disheveled
of not, Green was a highly competent investigator and was able to piece
together and prove the conspiracy that landed Touhy in jail. However, no court
would hear the case, and by the fall of 1942, Touhy had exhausted every legal
avenue open to him.Desperate, Touhy hatched a daring daylight breakout over the
thirty foot walls of Stateville prison.The sensational escape ended three
months later in a dramatic and bloody shootout between the convicts and the
FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover.
Less
then three months after Touhy was captured, Fox Studios hired producer Brian
Foy to churn out a mob financed docudrama film on the escape entitled,
"Roger Touhy, The Last Gangster." The executive producer on the film
was Johnny Roselli, the hood who later introduced Judy Campbell to Frank
Sinatra. Touhy sued Fox and eventually won his case and the film was withdrawn
from circulation. In 1962, Columbia pictures and John Houston tried to produce
a remake of the film, but were scared off the project.
While
Touhy was on the run from prison, John Factor was convicted for m ail fraud and
was sentenced and served ten years at hard labor. Factor's take from the scam
was $10,000,000.00 in cash.
Released
in 1949, Factor took control of the Stardust Hotel Casino in 1955, then the
largest operation on the Vegas strip. The casino's true owners, of course, were
Chicago mob bosses Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Murray Humpreys and Sam Giancana.
From 1955 to 1963, the length of Factor's tenure at the casino, the US Justice
Department estimated that the Chicago outfit skimmed between forty-eight to 200
million dollars from the Stardust alone.
In
1956, while Factor and the outfit were growing rich off the Stardust, Roger
Touhy hired a quirky, high strung, but highly effective lawyer named Robert B.
Johnstone to take his case. A brilliant legal tactician, who worked incessantly
on Touhy's freedom, Robert Johnstone managed to get Touhy's case heard before
federal judge John P. Barnes, a refined magistrate filled with his own
eccentricities. After two years of hearings, Barnes released a 1,500-page
decision on Touhy's case, finding that Touhy was railroaded to prison in a
conspiracy between the mob and the state attorney's office and that John Factor
had kidnapped himself as a means to avoid extradition to England.
Released
from prison in 1959, Touhy wrote his life story "The Stolen Years"
with legendary Chicago crime reporter, Ray Brennan. It was Brennan, as a young
cub reporter, who broke the story of John Dillenger's sensational escape from
Crown Point prison, supposedly with a bar of soap whittled to look like a
pistol. It was also Brennan who brought about the end of Roger Touhy's mortal
enemy, "Tubbo" Gilbert, the mob owned chief investigator for the Cook
County state attorney's office, and who designed the frame-up that placed Touhy
behind bars.
Factor
entered a suit against Roger Touhy, his book publishers and Ray Brennan,
claiming it damaged his reputation as a "leading citizen of Nevada and a
philanthropist."
The
teamsters, Factor's partners in the Stardust Casino, refused to ship the book
and Chicago's bookstore owners were warned by Tony Accardo, in person, not to
carry the book.
Touhy
and Johnstone fought back by drawing up the papers to enter a $300,000,000
lawsuit against John Factor, mob leaders Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo and Murray
Humpreys as well as former Cook County state attorney Thomas Courtney and Tubbo
Gilbert, his chief investigator, for wrongful imprisonment.
The
mob couldn't allow the suit to reach court, and considering Touhy's
determination, Ray Brennan's nose for a good story and Bob Johnstone's legal
talents, there was no doubt the case would make it to court. If the case went
to court, John Factor, the outfit's figurehead at the lucrative Stardust
Casino, could easily be tied in to illegal teamster loans. At the same time,
the McClellan committee was looking into the ties between the teamsters, Las
Vegas and organized crime and the raid at the mob conclave in New York state
had awakened the FBI and brought them into the fight. So, Touhy's lawsuit was,
in effect, his death sentence.
Twenty-five
days after his release from twenty-five years in prison, Roger Touhy was gunned
down on a frigid December night on his sister's front door.
Two
years after Touhy's murder, in 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered
his Justice Department to look into the highly suspect dealings of the Stardust
Casino. Factor was still the owner on record, but had sold his interest in the
casino portion of the hotel for a mere 7 million dollars. Then, in December of
that year, the INS, working with the FBI on Bobby Kennedy's orders, informed
Jake Factor that he was to be deported from the United States before the end of
the month. Factor would be returned to England where he was still a wanted
felon as a result of his 1928 stock scam. Just 48 hours before the deportation,
Factor, John Kennedy's largest single personal political contributor, was
granted a full and complete Presidential pardon which allowed him to stay in
the United States.
The
story hints that Factor was more then probably an informant for the Internal
Revenue Service, it also investigates the murky world of Presidential pardons,
the last imperial power of the Executive branch. It's a sordid tale of abuse of
privilege, the mob's best friend and perhaps it is time the American people
reconsider the entire notion.
The
mob wasn't finished with Factor. Right after his pardon, Factor was involved in
a vague, questionable financial plot to try and bail teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa
out of his seemingly endless financial problems in Florida real estate. He was
also involved with a questionable stock transaction with mobster Murray
Humpreys. Factor spent the remaining twenty years of his life as a benefactor
to California's Black ghettos. He tried, truly, to make amends for all of the
suffering he had caused in his life. He spent millions of dollars building
churches, gyms, parks and low cost housing in the poverty stricken ghettos.
When he died, three United States Senators, the Mayor of Los Angles and several
hundred poor Black waited in the rain to pay their last respects at Jake the
Barber's funeral.
Interesting
Information on A Little Known Case
By Bill Emblom
Author John Tuohy, who has a
similar spelling of the last name to his subject Roger, but apparently no
relation, has provided us with an interesting story of northwest Chicago beer
baron Roger Touhy who was in competition with Al Capone during Capone's heyday.
Touhy appeared to be winning the battle since Mayor Anton Cermak was deporting
a number of Capone's cronies. However, the mob hit, according to the author, on
Mayor Cermak in Miami, Florida, by Giuseppe Zangara following a speech by
President-elect Roosevelt, put an end to the harrassment of Capone's cronies.
The author details the staged "kidnapping" of Jake "the
Barber" Factor who did this to avoid being deported to England and facing
a prison sentence there for stock swindling, with Touhy having his rights violated
and sent to prison for 25 years for the kidnapping that never happened. Factor
and other Chicago mobsters were making a lot of money with the Stardust Casino
in Las Vegas when they got word that Touhy was to be parolled and planned to
write his life story. The mob, not wanting this, decided Touhy had to be
eliminated. Touhy was murdered by hit men in 1959, 28 days after gaining his
freedom. Jake Factor had also spent time in prison in the United States for a
whiskey swindle involving 300 victims in 12 states. Two days before Factor was
to be deported to England to face prison for the stock swindle President
Kennedy granted Factor a full Presidential Pardon after Factor's contribution
to the Bay of Pigs fund. President Kennedy, the author notes, issued 472
pardons (about half questionable) more than any president before or since.
There are a number of books on
Capone and the Chicago mob. This book takes a look at an overlooked beer baron
from that time period, Roger Touhy. It is a very worthwhile read and one that
will hold your interest.
GREAT
BOOK FROM CHICAGO AND ERA WAS MY DAD'S,TRUE TO STORY
Very good book. Hard to put down
Bymistakesweremadeon
Eight long years locked up for a
kidnapping that was in fact a hoax, in autumn 1942, Roger Touhy & his gang
of cons busted out of Stateville, the infamous "roundhouse" prison,
southwest of Chicago Illinois. On the lam 2 months he was, when J Edgar &
his agents sniffed him out in a run down 6-flat tenement on the city's far
north lakefront. "Terrible Roger" had celebrated Christmas morning on
the outside - just like all square Johns & Janes - but by New Year's Eve,
was back in the bighouse.
Touhy's arrest hideout holds
special interest to me because I grew up less than a mile away from it. Though
I never knew so til 1975 when his bio was included in hard-boiled crime
chronicler Jay Robert Nash's, Badmen & Bloodletters, a phone book sized
encyclopedia of crooks & killers. Touhy's hard scrabble charisma stood out
among 200 years' worth of sociopathic Americana Nash had alphabetized, and
gotten a pulphouse publisher to print up for him.
I read Nash's outlaw dictionary
as a teen, and found Touhy's Prohibition era David vs Goliath battles with
ultimate gangster kingpin, Al Capone quite alluring, in an anti-hero sorta way.
Years later I learned Touhy had written a memoir, and reading his The Stolen
Years only reinforced my image of an underdog speakeasy beer baron - slash
suburban family man - outwitting the stone cold killer who masterminded the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
Like most autobiographies tho,
Touhy's book painted him the good guy. Just an everyday gent caught up in
events, and he sold his story well. Had I been a saloonkeeper back then I could
picture myself buying his sales pitch - and liking the guy too. I sure bought
into his tale, which in hindsight criminal scribe Nash had too, because both
writers portray Touhy - though admittedly a crook - as never "really"
hurting anybody. Only doing what any down-to-earth bootlegger running a million
dollar/year criminal enterprise would have.
What Capone's Mob Murdered Roger
Touhy author John Tuohy does tho is, provide a more objective version of
events, balancing out Touhy's white wash ... 'er ... make that subjectively ...
remembered telling of his life & times. Author Tuohy's account of gangster
Touhy's account forced me - grown up now - to re-account for my own original
take on the story.
As a kid back then, Touhy seemed
almost a Robin Hood- ish hood - if you'll pardon a very lame pun. Forty years
on tho re-considering the evidence, I think a persuasive - if not iron-clad
convincing - case can be made for his conviction in the kidnapping of swindler
scumbag Jake the Barber Factor. At least as far as conspiracy to do so goes,
anyways. (Please excuse the crude redundancy there but Factor's stench truly
was that of the dog s*** one steps in on those unfortunate occasions one does.)
Touhy's memoir painted himself as
almost an innocent bystander at his own life's events. But he was a very smart
& savvy guy - no dummy by a long shot. And I kinda do believe now, to not
have known his own henchmen were in on Factor's ploy to stave off deportation
and imprisonment, Touhy would have had to be as naive a Prohibition crime boss
- and make no mistake he was one - as I was as a teenage kid reading Nash's
thug-opedia,
On the other hand, the guy was
the father of two sons and it's repulsive to consider he would have taken part
in loathsomeness the crime of kidnapping was - even if the abducted victim was
an adult and as repulsively loathsome as widows & orphans conman, Jake
Factor.
This book's target audience is
crime buffs no doubt, but it's an interesting read just the same; and includes
anecdotes and insights I had not known of before. Unfortunately too, one that
knocks a hero of mine down a peg or two - or more like ten.
Circa 1960, President Kennedy
pardoned Jake the Barber, a fact that reading of almost made me puke. Then
again JFK and the Chicago Mob did make for some strange bedfellowery every now
& again. I'll always admire WWII US Navy commander Kennedy's astonishing
(word chosen carefully) bravery following his PT boat's sinking, but him
signing that document - effectively wiping Factor's s*** stain clean - as
payback for campaign contributions Factor made to him, was REALLY nauseating to
read.
Come to think of it tho, the
terms "criminal douchedog" & "any political candidate"
are pretty much interchangeable.
Anyways tho ... rest in peace
Rog, & I raise a toast - of virtual bootleg ale - in your honor:
"Turns out you weren't the hard-luck mug I'd thought you were, but what
the hell, at least you had style." And guts to meet your inevitable end
with more grace than a gangster should.
Post Note: Author Tuohy's
re-examination of the evidence in the Roger Touhy case does include some heroes
- guys & women - who attempted to find the truth of what did happen.
Reading about people like that IS rewarding. They showed true courage - and
decency - in a world reeking of corruption & deceit. So, here's to the
lawyer who took on a lost cause; the private detective who dug up buried facts;
and most of all, Touhy's wife & sister who stood by his side all those
years.
Crime
don't pay, kids
Very good organized crime book. A
rather obscure gangster story which makes it fresh to read. I do not like these
minimum word requirements for a review. (There, I have met my minimum)
Chicago
Gangster History At It's Best
ByJ. CROSBYon
As a 4th generation Chicagoan, I
just loved this book. Growing up in the 1950's and 60's I heard the name
"Terrible Touhy's" mentioned many times. Roger was thought of as a
great man, and seems to have been held in high esteem among the old timer
Chicagoans.
That said, I thought this book to
be nothing but interesting and well written. (It inspired me to find a copy of
Roger's "Stolen Years" bio.) I do recommend this book to other folks
interested in prohibition/depression era Chicago crime research. It is a must
have for your library of Gangsters literature from that era. Chock full of
information and the reader is transported back in time.
I'd like to know just what is
"The Valley" area today in Chicago. I still live in the Windy City
and would like to see if anything remains from the early days of the 20th
century.
A good writer and a good book! I
will buy some more of Mr. Tuohy's work.
Great
story, great read
ByBookreaderon
A complex tale of gangsters,
political kickback, mob wars and corrupt politicians told with wit and humor at
a good pace. Highly recommend this book.
One
of the best books I've read in a long time....
If you're into mafioso, read
this! I loved it. Bought a copy for my brother to read for his birthday--good
stuff.
ROGER TOUHY,
THE LAST GANGSTER
Editorial
Reviews
From
Publishers Weekly
JFK's
pardons and the mob; Prohibition, Chicago's crime cadres and the staged
kidnapping of "`Jake the Barber'" Factor, "the black sheep
brother of the cosmetics king, Max Factor"; lifetime sentences, attempted
jail busts and the perseverance of "a rumpled private detective and an
eccentric lawyer" John W. Tuohy showcases all these and more sensational
and shady happenings in When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange
Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping that Never Happened. The
author started investigating Touhy's 1959 murder by Capone's gang in 1975 for
an undergrad assignment. He traces the frame-job whereby Touhy was accused of
the kidnapping, his decades in jail, his memoirs, his retrial and release and,
finally, his murder, 28 days after regaining his freedom. Sixteen pages of
photos.
From
Library Journal
Roger
Touhy, one of the "terrible Touhys" and leader of a bootlegging
racket that challenged Capone's mob in Prohibition Chicago, had a lot to answer
for, but the crime that put him behind bars was, ironically, one he didn't
commit: the alleged kidnapping of Jake Factor, half-brother of Max Factor and
international swindler. Author Tuohy (apparently no relation), a former staff
investigator for the National Center for the Study of Organized Crime, briefly
traces the history of the Touhys and the Capone mob, then describes Factor's
plan to have himself kidnapped, putting Touhy behind bars and keeping himself
from being deported. This miscarriage of justice lasted 17 years and ended in
Touhy's parole and murder by the Capone mob 28 days later. Factor was never
deported. The author spent 26 years researching this story, and he can't bear
to waste a word of it. Though slim, the book still seems padded, with
irrelevant detail muddying the main story. Touhy is a hard man to feel sorry
for, but the author does his best. Sure to be popular in the Chicago area and
with the many fans of mob history, this is suitable for larger public libraries
and regional collections. Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH
BOOK
REVIEW
John
William Tuohy, one of the most prolific crime writers in America, has penned a tragic,
but fascinating story of Roger Touhy and John Factor. It's a tale born out of
poverty and violence, a story of ambition gone wrong and deception on an
enormous, almost unfathomable, scale. However, this is also a story of triumph
of determination to survive, of a lifelong struggle for dignity and redemption
of the spirit.
The
story starts with John "Jake the Barber" Factor. The product of the
turn of the century European ethnic slums of Chicago's west side, Jake's
brother, Max Factor, would go on to create an international cosmetic empire.
In
1926, Factor, grubstaked in a partnership with the great New York criminal
genius, Arnold Rothstien, and Chicago's Al Capone, John Factor set up a stock
scam in England that fleeced thousands of investors, including members of the
royal family, out of $8 million dollars, an incredible sum of money in 1926.
After
the scam fell apart, Factor fled to France, where he formed another syndicate
of con artists, who broke the bank at Monte Carlo by rigging the tables.
Eventually,
Factor fled to the safety of Capone's Chicago but the highest powers in the
Empire demanded his arrest. However, Factor fought extradition all the way to
the United States Supreme Court, but he had a weak case and deportation was
inevitable. Just 24 hours before the court was to decide his fate, Factor paid
to have himself kidnapped and his case was postponed. He reappeared in Chicago
several days later, and, at the syndicates' urging, accused gangster Roger
Touhy of the kidnapping.
Roger
"The Terrible" Touhy was the youngest son of an honest Chicago cop.
Although born in the Valley, a teeming Irish slum, the family moved to rural
Des Plains, Illinois while Roger was still a boy. Touhy's five older brothers
stayed behind in the valley and soon flew under the leadership of
"Terrible Tommy" O'Connor. By 1933, three of them would be shot dead
in various disputes with the mob and one, Tommy, would lose the use of his legs
by syndicate machine guns. Secure in the still rural suburbs of Cook County,
Roger Touhy graduated as class valedictorian of his Catholic school.
Afterwards, he briefly worked as an organizer for the Telegraph and
Telecommunications Workers Union after being blacklisted by Western Union for
his minor pro-labor activities.
Touhy
entered the Navy in the first world war and served two years, teaching Morse
code to Officers at Harvard University.
After
the war, he rode the rails out west where he earned a living as a railroad
telegraph operator and eventually made a small but respectable fortune as an
oil well speculator.
Returning
to Chicago in 1924, Touhy married his childhood sweetheart, regrouped with his
brothers and formed a partnership with a corrupt ward heeler named Matt Kolb,
and, in 1925, he started a suburban bootlegging and slot machine operation in
northwestern Cook County. Left out of the endless beer wars that plagued the
gangs inside Chicago, Touhy's operation flourished. By 1926, his slot machine
operations alone grossed over $1,000,000.00 a year, at a time when a gallon of
gas cost eight cents.
They
were unusual gangsters. When the Klu Klux Klan, then at the height of its
power, threatened the life of a priest who had befriended the gang, Tommy
Touhy, Roger's older brother, the real "Terrible Touhy," broke into
the Klan's national headquarters, stole its membership roles, and, despite an
offer of $25,000 to return them, delivered the list to the priest who published
the names in several Catholic newspapers the following day.
Once,
Touhy unthinkingly released several thousand gallons of putrid sour mash in to
the Des Plains River one day before the city was to reenact its discovery by
canoe-riding Jesuits a hundred years before. After a dressing down by the towns
people Touhy spent $10,000.00 on perfume and doused the river with it, saving
the day.
They
were inventive too. When the Chicago police levied a 50% protection tax on
Touhy's beer, Touhy bought a fleet of Esso gasoline delivery trucks, kept the
Esso logo on the vehicles, and delivered his booze to his speakeasies that way.
In
1930, when Capone invaded the labor rackets, the union bosses, mostly Irish and
completely corrupt, turned to the Touhy organization for protection. The
intermittent gun battles between the Touhys and the Capone mob over control of
beer routes which had been fought on the empty, back roads of rural Cook
County, was now brought into the city where street battles extracted an awesome
toll on both sides. The Chicago Tribune estimated the casualties to be one
hundred dead in less then 12 months.
By
the winter of 1933, remarkably, Touhy was winning the war in large part because
joining him in the struggle against the mob was Chicago's very corrupt, newly
elected mayor Anthony "Ten percent Tony" Cermak, who was as much a
gangster as he was an elected official.
Cermak
threw the entire weight of his office and the whole Chicago police force behind
Touhy's forces. Eventually, two of Cermak's police bodyguards arrested Frank
Nitti, the syndicate's boss, and, for a price, shot him six times. Nitti lived.
As a result, two months later Nitti's gunmen caught up with Cermak at a
political rally in Florida.
Using
previously overlooked Secret Service reports, this book proves, for the first
time, that the mob stalked Cermak and used a hardened felon to kill him. The
true story behind the mob's 1933 murder of Anton Cermak, will changes histories
understanding of organized crimes forever. The fascinating thing about this
killing is its eerie similarity to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas thirty
years later, made even more macabre by the fact that several of the names
associated with the Cermak killing were later aligned with the Kennedy killing.
For
many decades, it was whispered that the mob had executed Cermak for his role in
the Touhy-syndicate war of 1931-33, but there was never proof. The official
story is that a loner named Giuseppe Zangara, an out-of-work, Sicilian born
drifter with communist leanings, traveled to Florida in the winter of 1933 and
fired several shots at President Franklin Roosevelt. He missed the President,
but killed Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak instead. However, using long lost
documents, Tuohy is able to prove that Zangara was a convicted felon with long
ties to mob Mafia and that he very much intended to murder Anton Cermak.
With
Cermak dead, Touhy was on his own against the mob. At the same time, the United
States Postal Service was closing in on his gang for pulling off the largest
mail heists in US history at that time. The cash was used to fund Touhy's war
with the Capones.Then in June of 1933, John Factor en he reappeared, Factor
accused Roger Touhy of kidnapping him. After two sensational trials, Touhy was
convicted of kidnapping John Factor and sentenced to 99 years in prison and
Factor, after a series of complicated legal maneuvers, and using the mob's
influence, was allowed to remain in the United States as a witness for the
prosecution, however, he was still a wanted felon in England.
By
1942 Roger Touhy had been in prison for nine years, his once vast fortune was
gone. Roger's family was gone as well. At his request, his wife Clara had moved
to Florida with their two sons in 1934. However, with the help of Touhy's
remaining sister, the family retained a rumpled private detective, actually a
down-and-out, a very shady and disbarred mob lawyer named Morrie Green.
Disheveled
of not, Green was a highly competent investigator and was able to piece
together and prove the conspiracy that landed Touhy in jail. However, no court
would hear the case, and by the fall of 1942, Touhy had exhausted every legal
avenue open to him.Desperate, Touhy hatched a daring daylight breakout over the
thirty foot walls of Stateville prison.The sensational escape ended three
months later in a dramatic and bloody shootout between the convicts and the
FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover.
Less
then three months after Touhy was captured, Fox Studios hired producer Brian
Foy to churn out a mob financed docudrama film on the escape entitled,
"Roger Touhy, The Last Gangster." The executive producer on the film
was Johnny Roselli, the hood who later introduced Judy Campbell to Frank
Sinatra. Touhy sued Fox and eventually won his case and the film was withdrawn
from circulation. In 1962, Columbia pictures and John Houston tried to produce
a remake of the film, but were scared off the project.
While
Touhy was on the run from prison, John Factor was convicted for m ail fraud and
was sentenced and served ten years at hard labor. Factor's take from the scam
was $10,000,000.00 in cash.
Released
in 1949, Factor took control of the Stardust Hotel Casino in 1955, then the
largest operation on the Vegas strip. The casino's true owners, of course, were
Chicago mob bosses Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Murray Humpreys and Sam Giancana.
From 1955 to 1963, the length of Factor's tenure at the casino, the US Justice
Department estimated that the Chicago outfit skimmed between forty-eight to 200
million dollars from the Stardust alone.
In
1956, while Factor and the outfit were growing rich off the Stardust, Roger
Touhy hired a quirky, high strung, but highly effective lawyer named Robert B.
Johnstone to take his case. A brilliant legal tactician, who worked incessantly
on Touhy's freedom, Robert Johnstone managed to get Touhy's case heard before
federal judge John P. Barnes, a refined magistrate filled with his own
eccentricities. After two years of hearings, Barnes released a 1,500-page
decision on Touhy's case, finding that Touhy was railroaded to prison in a
conspiracy between the mob and the state attorney's office and that John Factor
had kidnapped himself as a means to avoid extradition to England.
Released
from prison in 1959, Touhy wrote his life story "The Stolen Years"
with legendary Chicago crime reporter, Ray Brennan. It was Brennan, as a young
cub reporter, who broke the story of John Dillenger's sensational escape from
Crown Point prison, supposedly with a bar of soap whittled to look like a
pistol. It was also Brennan who brought about the end of Roger Touhy's mortal
enemy, "Tubbo" Gilbert, the mob owned chief investigator for the Cook
County state attorney's office, and who designed the frame-up that placed Touhy
behind bars.
Factor
entered a suit against Roger Touhy, his book publishers and Ray Brennan,
claiming it damaged his reputation as a "leading citizen of Nevada and a
philanthropist."
The
teamsters, Factor's partners in the Stardust Casino, refused to ship the book
and Chicago's bookstore owners were warned by Tony Accardo, in person, not to
carry the book.
Touhy
and Johnstone fought back by drawing up the papers to enter a $300,000,000
lawsuit against John Factor, mob leaders Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo and Murray
Humpreys as well as former Cook County state attorney Thomas Courtney and Tubbo
Gilbert, his chief investigator, for wrongful imprisonment.
The
mob couldn't allow the suit to reach court, and considering Touhy's
determination, Ray Brennan's nose for a good story and Bob Johnstone's legal
talents, there was no doubt the case would make it to court. If the case went
to court, John Factor, the outfit's figurehead at the lucrative Stardust
Casino, could easily be tied in to illegal teamster loans. At the same time,
the McClellan committee was looking into the ties between the teamsters, Las
Vegas and organized crime and the raid at the mob conclave in New York state
had awakened the FBI and brought them into the fight. So, Touhy's lawsuit was,
in effect, his death sentence.
Twenty-five
days after his release from twenty-five years in prison, Roger Touhy was gunned
down on a frigid December night on his sister's front door.
Two
years after Touhy's murder, in 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered
his Justice Department to look into the highly suspect dealings of the Stardust
Casino. Factor was still the owner on record, but had sold his interest in the
casino portion of the hotel for a mere 7 million dollars. Then, in December of
that year, the INS, working with the FBI on Bobby Kennedy's orders, informed
Jake Factor that he was to be deported from the United States before the end of
the month. Factor would be returned to England where he was still a wanted
felon as a result of his 1928 stock scam. Just 48 hours before the deportation,
Factor, John Kennedy's largest single personal political contributor, was
granted a full and complete Presidential pardon which allowed him to stay in
the United States.
The
story hints that Factor was more then probably an informant for the Internal
Revenue Service, it also investigates the murky world of Presidential pardons,
the last imperial power of the Executive branch. It's a sordid tale of abuse of
privilege, the mob's best friend and perhaps it is time the American people
reconsider the entire notion.
The
mob wasn't finished with Factor. Right after his pardon, Factor was involved in
a vague, questionable financial plot to try and bail teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa
out of his seemingly endless financial problems in Florida real estate. He was
also involved with a questionable stock transaction with mobster Murray
Humpreys. Factor spent the remaining twenty years of his life as a benefactor
to California's Black ghettos. He tried, truly, to make amends for all of the
suffering he had caused in his life. He spent millions of dollars building
churches, gyms, parks and low cost housing in the poverty stricken ghettos.
When he died, three United States Senators, the Mayor of Los Angles and several
hundred poor Black waited in the rain to pay their last respects at Jake the
Barber's funeral.
Interesting
Information on A Little Known Case
By Bill Emblom
Author John Tuohy, who has a
similar spelling of the last name to his subject Roger, but apparently no
relation, has provided us with an interesting story of northwest Chicago beer
baron Roger Touhy who was in competition with Al Capone during Capone's heyday.
Touhy appeared to be winning the battle since Mayor Anton Cermak was deporting
a number of Capone's cronies. However, the mob hit, according to the author, on
Mayor Cermak in Miami, Florida, by Giuseppe Zangara following a speech by
President-elect Roosevelt, put an end to the harrassment of Capone's cronies.
The author details the staged "kidnapping" of Jake "the
Barber" Factor who did this to avoid being deported to England and facing
a prison sentence there for stock swindling, with Touhy having his rights violated
and sent to prison for 25 years for the kidnapping that never happened. Factor
and other Chicago mobsters were making a lot of money with the Stardust Casino
in Las Vegas when they got word that Touhy was to be parolled and planned to
write his life story. The mob, not wanting this, decided Touhy had to be
eliminated. Touhy was murdered by hit men in 1959, 28 days after gaining his
freedom. Jake Factor had also spent time in prison in the United States for a
whiskey swindle involving 300 victims in 12 states. Two days before Factor was
to be deported to England to face prison for the stock swindle President
Kennedy granted Factor a full Presidential Pardon after Factor's contribution
to the Bay of Pigs fund. President Kennedy, the author notes, issued 472
pardons (about half questionable) more than any president before or since.
There are a number of books on
Capone and the Chicago mob. This book takes a look at an overlooked beer baron
from that time period, Roger Touhy. It is a very worthwhile read and one that
will hold your interest.
GREAT
BOOK FROM CHICAGO AND ERA WAS MY DAD'S,TRUE TO STORY
Very good book. Hard to put down
Bymistakesweremadeon
Eight long years locked up for a
kidnapping that was in fact a hoax, in autumn 1942, Roger Touhy & his gang
of cons busted out of Stateville, the infamous "roundhouse" prison,
southwest of Chicago Illinois. On the lam 2 months he was, when J Edgar &
his agents sniffed him out in a run down 6-flat tenement on the city's far
north lakefront. "Terrible Roger" had celebrated Christmas morning on
the outside - just like all square Johns & Janes - but by New Year's Eve,
was back in the bighouse.
Touhy's arrest hideout holds
special interest to me because I grew up less than a mile away from it. Though
I never knew so til 1975 when his bio was included in hard-boiled crime
chronicler Jay Robert Nash's, Badmen & Bloodletters, a phone book sized
encyclopedia of crooks & killers. Touhy's hard scrabble charisma stood out
among 200 years' worth of sociopathic Americana Nash had alphabetized, and
gotten a pulphouse publisher to print up for him.
I read Nash's outlaw dictionary
as a teen, and found Touhy's Prohibition era David vs Goliath battles with
ultimate gangster kingpin, Al Capone quite alluring, in an anti-hero sorta way.
Years later I learned Touhy had written a memoir, and reading his The Stolen
Years only reinforced my image of an underdog speakeasy beer baron - slash
suburban family man - outwitting the stone cold killer who masterminded the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
Like most autobiographies tho,
Touhy's book painted him the good guy. Just an everyday gent caught up in
events, and he sold his story well. Had I been a saloonkeeper back then I could
picture myself buying his sales pitch - and liking the guy too. I sure bought
into his tale, which in hindsight criminal scribe Nash had too, because both
writers portray Touhy - though admittedly a crook - as never "really"
hurting anybody. Only doing what any down-to-earth bootlegger running a million
dollar/year criminal enterprise would have.
What Capone's Mob Murdered Roger
Touhy author John Tuohy does tho is, provide a more objective version of
events, balancing out Touhy's white wash ... 'er ... make that subjectively ...
remembered telling of his life & times. Author Tuohy's account of gangster
Touhy's account forced me - grown up now - to re-account for my own original
take on the story.
As a kid back then, Touhy seemed
almost a Robin Hood- ish hood - if you'll pardon a very lame pun. Forty years
on tho re-considering the evidence, I think a persuasive - if not iron-clad
convincing - case can be made for his conviction in the kidnapping of swindler
scumbag Jake the Barber Factor. At least as far as conspiracy to do so goes,
anyways. (Please excuse the crude redundancy there but Factor's stench truly
was that of the dog s*** one steps in on those unfortunate occasions one does.)
Touhy's memoir painted himself as
almost an innocent bystander at his own life's events. But he was a very smart
& savvy guy - no dummy by a long shot. And I kinda do believe now, to not
have known his own henchmen were in on Factor's ploy to stave off deportation
and imprisonment, Touhy would have had to be as naive a Prohibition crime boss
- and make no mistake he was one - as I was as a teenage kid reading Nash's
thug-opedia,
On the other hand, the guy was
the father of two sons and it's repulsive to consider he would have taken part
in loathsomeness the crime of kidnapping was - even if the abducted victim was
an adult and as repulsively loathsome as widows & orphans conman, Jake
Factor.
This book's target audience is
crime buffs no doubt, but it's an interesting read just the same; and includes
anecdotes and insights I had not known of before. Unfortunately too, one that
knocks a hero of mine down a peg or two - or more like ten.
Circa 1960, President Kennedy
pardoned Jake the Barber, a fact that reading of almost made me puke. Then
again JFK and the Chicago Mob did make for some strange bedfellowery every now
& again. I'll always admire WWII US Navy commander Kennedy's astonishing
(word chosen carefully) bravery following his PT boat's sinking, but him
signing that document - effectively wiping Factor's s*** stain clean - as
payback for campaign contributions Factor made to him, was REALLY nauseating to
read.
Come to think of it tho, the
terms "criminal douchedog" & "any political candidate"
are pretty much interchangeable.
Anyways tho ... rest in peace
Rog, & I raise a toast - of virtual bootleg ale - in your honor:
"Turns out you weren't the hard-luck mug I'd thought you were, but what
the hell, at least you had style." And guts to meet your inevitable end
with more grace than a gangster should.
Post Note: Author Tuohy's
re-examination of the evidence in the Roger Touhy case does include some heroes
- guys & women - who attempted to find the truth of what did happen.
Reading about people like that IS rewarding. They showed true courage - and
decency - in a world reeking of corruption & deceit. So, here's to the
lawyer who took on a lost cause; the private detective who dug up buried facts;
and most of all, Touhy's wife & sister who stood by his side all those
years.
Crime
don't pay, kids
Very good organized crime book. A
rather obscure gangster story which makes it fresh to read. I do not like these
minimum word requirements for a review. (There, I have met my minimum)
Chicago
Gangster History At It's Best
ByJ. CROSBYon
As a 4th generation Chicagoan, I
just loved this book. Growing up in the 1950's and 60's I heard the name
"Terrible Touhy's" mentioned many times. Roger was thought of as a
great man, and seems to have been held in high esteem among the old timer
Chicagoans.
That said, I thought this book to
be nothing but interesting and well written. (It inspired me to find a copy of
Roger's "Stolen Years" bio.) I do recommend this book to other folks
interested in prohibition/depression era Chicago crime research. It is a must
have for your library of Gangsters literature from that era. Chock full of
information and the reader is transported back in time.
I'd like to know just what is
"The Valley" area today in Chicago. I still live in the Windy City
and would like to see if anything remains from the early days of the 20th
century.
A good writer and a good book! I
will buy some more of Mr. Tuohy's work.
Great
story, great read
ByBookreaderon
A complex tale of gangsters,
political kickback, mob wars and corrupt politicians told with wit and humor at
a good pace. Highly recommend this book.
One
of the best books I've read in a long time....
If you're into mafioso, read
this! I loved it. Bought a copy for my brother to read for his birthday--good
stuff.
Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Xenophon; the world's original journalists?
Arguably, ancient Greek
historians were the world’s first journalists. In style, method, and approach,
ancient Greek history reads much more like journalism than history.
________________________________________
Journalism, broadly, is thought
to be a profession of the modern day and age. Journalism is thought to have
begun with brief leaflets distributed among British, French, and Spanish
colonial cities in the Americas around four hundred years ago.
But re-reading the works of
historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, it is easy to appreciate
the fact that the journalistic epoch began thousands of years ago. Ancient
Greek historians, who wrote about events that they had experienced and lived
through, were not only the world’s first historians, they were the world’s
first journalists. If journalism is describing the world you lived in and
events you were a part of, then ancient Greek histories definitely fit that
description.
Journalism, as a professional
tradition, therefore has its origins around two thousand five hundred years
ago.
So who then, is the founder of
journalism if this is the case? The founder of journalism is Herodotus (484-c.
425 BCE), the world’s first and most unreliable historian. So what did the
first work of journalism ever concern?
The world’s first work of
journalism was a work of wartime journalism. Herodotus’s “The Histories”
(published in 440 BCE) focused on the wars between the Greek city states and
the Persian Empire from 480 to 449 BCE. A man focused on “never letting the
truth get in the way of a good story” (as Mark Twain might say), Herodotus told
an exaggerated form of history. His work talked of an army of five hundred
thousand Persians invading Greece (a logical and logistical impossibility at
the time), of centaurs, and of gold eating ants. Herodotus probably loved to
drink wine and eat unusual mushrooms. And his work reflected that. “The
Histories” is a work that was epic, exaggerated, and often ridiculous. But it
none the less described events that had actually taken place, using the
firsthand accounts of Greek soldiers who had fought the Persians. Although
realistically more akin to Gonzo Journalism than Traditional Journalism, “The
Histories” remains the first true work of journalism within world history, as
well as the first true work of history in world history.
As the ancient Greek city states
grew more powerful militarily and culturally, they also became less united. The
Greek cities began to war among each other, which led to entirely new forms of
histories. The most notable of these was “The Peloponnesian Wars” by the Athenian
historian and journalist Thucydides (460-400 BCE), which centered upon a series
of wars between the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta from 431 to 404 BCE. At
the center of “The Peloponnesian Wars” was a tale of moral collapse similar to
the tales of moral collapse told in more contemporary works of journalism such
as George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” (1938) and Truman Capote’s “In Cold
Blood” (1966). “The Peloponnesian Wars” centered on how the Athenians, once
held up by the other Greek cities as a model of moralism and virtue, became
corrupted and vicious as they attained power over the other Greek cities.
Eventually, fed up with the Athenians, the Spartans and multiple other Greek
cities united against Athens and brought Karmic retribution upon the city and
its people. Athens was sacked and subjugated to the will of the Spartans and
the other Greek states.
Thucydides, as an Athenian, was
extremely close to the action and told first-hand of events that he witnessed
during the Peloponnesian Wars. He was therefore a journalist in multiple senses
of the word.
Both Thucydides and Herodotus
were journalists in that they used sources and referred to events that happened
within their lifetimes. However, no Greek historian/journalist was as close to
the action as Xenophon. A native born Athenian who worked as a mercenary within
the Persian Empire, Xenophon (c. 430-354 BCE) wrote about events that he
personally was involved in and events that he witnessed with his own eyes. His
major work, “Anabasis” (or “The Ten Thousand”), told of how Xenophon and ten
thousand other Greek mercenaries found themselves stranded in the heartland of
the Persian Empire after their Persian paymaster, the noble lord Cyrus the
Younger, was killed in battle. The work focuses on how the Greeks marched
thousands of kilometers, battling enemy kings and warlike tribes along the way.
It was a heavily personal piece of work, and frequently featured Xenophon’s
personal opinions e.g. his admiration of Spartans and other warrior societies, vivid
and subjective descriptions of ancient Middle Eastern cultures, and his
philosophical perspectives. The work concludes with the Greek soldiers reaching
the Greek coastal cities of the Black Sea, ready to sail safely by boat back to
Greece. An epic tale, “Anabasis” was Planet Earth’s original first person
account of a soldier at war. It is also thought of as a major work of ancient
philosophy, as it describes the philosophies of the ancient Greeks in practical
action i.e. how philosophical thinking was applied when at war.
Early Greek histories were
strongly influential and had a significant impact on later Greek histories as
well as histories from the Roman era, which were themselves written as first
person accounts and extremely subjective. Writers such as Polybius (2nd century
BCE), Julius Caesar (1st century BCE), Cassius Dio (2nd-3rd centuries CE), and
Amminaus Marcellinus (4th century CE) all wrote works of history that were
heavily subjective, and strongly resemble journalism in terms of their approach
and style. These tales of soldiers at war, of past empires and conflicts that
shook the ancient world, have influenced the imagination of the cultural West
for thousands of years. These were the first works of history, and they have
been invaluable to the Western cultural record and the Western cultural memory.
But they were also something else. They were the first works of journalism.
They were humanity’s first
attempts at describing and depicting the world we see, the world we experience,
and the world we witness. And for that we all owe Herodotus and co an enormous
debt.
By
Jupiter, what we know of the gas giant so far
Look towards the north-west after
sunset and there is currently one bright point of light that easily stands out
relative to everything around it. That is the planet Jupiter, shining with an
intense and steady glow.
After a journey of five years,
and decades in the planning, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has achieved orbit around
Jupiter. Soon begins the next stage in humanity’s quest to explore the largest
of the gas giants in our solar system. But what do we know of Jupiter to date?
Brightest, biggest, first
Jupiter’s brightness in the night
sky is due to its enormous size. It is by far the biggest planet of the solar
system, containing more than double the mass of all the other planets, moons,
comets and asteroids combined.
Its great size suggests that
Jupiter was also the first planet to form around the sun. The planets emerged
out of the debris left over when an interstellar cloud of gas and dust
coalesced to form our star. Early in its life, the young sun generated a wind
that blew away most of the remaining interstellar cloud, but Jupiter was able
to hold on to that history.
Locked up in Jupiter, therefore,
is the recipe for how a solar system is made – the ingredients from which the
planets and other smaller bodies came to be, and the processes and conditions
that enabled this material to come together to form such amazing and diverse
worlds.
King of the planets
Jupiter, along with Mercury,
Venus, Mars and Saturn, have all been observed since ancient times as they are
easily visible in the night sky. Different cultures who studied the stars also
realised that these objects were unique; they did not stay fixed in their
relative patterns or constellations as the stars did but moved according to
different rules.
They were referred to as the
wandering stars by the ancient Greeks and derived from this term came the name
planet.
It is remarkable just how aptly
Jupiter is named. We are now aware that Jupiter is the largest and most massive
of the planets so it is fitting to be named for the Roman king of the gods, who
was also the god of the sky. While in Greek mythology, Jupiter’s counterpart is
Zeus, the supreme god of ancient Greece.
But Jupiter is not the brightest
of the planets, that record is held by Venus. However, Jupiter and Venus are
very different in how they wander across the sky. Nowadays we can explain that
difference by where they are positioned in the solar system.
Venus, being an inner planet,
remains close to the sun, appearing as the evening star after sunset or the
morning star before sunrise. Whereas Jupiter, being an outer planet, can wander
across the entire sky.
This motion, along with the
planet’s brightness, would’ve helped to mark Jupiter as the king of the
planets.
Revolutions around Jupiter
In the year 1610, from late
January through to early March, the astronomer Galileo used his new telescope
to observe Jupiter. He easily identified and tracked first three, and then four
bright points of light. They formed a straight line either side of Jupiter, but
their positions were constantly and steadily changing relative to the planet.
Galileo was the first to see the
dance of Jupiter’s moons, now Juno has the ring-side seat.
Galileo in his publication
Sidereus Nuncius, confidently and quite correctly explained this motion as the
objects being in orbit around Jupiter. Here was proof that everything in heaven
did not orbit the Earth, which at the time led to conflict between Galileo and
the Catholic Church.
Galileo had discovered Jupiter’s
four major moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – each worlds within their
own right and often referred to as the Galilean moons.
Since that time numerous more
moons have been discovered and in the past few decades the count has jumped to
67 known satellites, the greatest number of any planet. It’s no wonder Jupiter
is often called a mini-system of its own.
The Great Red Spot
Saturn has its rings, Earth has
its blue oceans and Jupiter has its vibrant and swirling bands of clouds.
Jupiter rotates very quickly, spinning once every 10 hours. This drives the
dynamic weather patterns seen in Jupiter’s cloud tops.
One of the big questions
regarding Jupiter is just how deep do these clouds descend?
Furthermore, in recent times
Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot has been found to be shrinking. This massive
storm system measuring about twice the size of Earth, has been a feature of the
planet since it was first observed in 1664.
The shrinking Great Red Spot over
20 years. NASA
But recent observations from the
Hubble Space Telescope show that the storm may now be less than half the size
of some historical measurements. Since the 1930s astronomers have tracked this
downsizing but more recently, the shrinking appears to be happening more
rapidly.
Radiation Hazard
Jupiter has the strongest
magnetic field of all the planets. At Jupiter’s poles the magnetic field is
20,000 times stronger than Earth’s and the field extends for millions of
kilometres in space, even reaching past the orbit of Saturn.
The dynamo powering Jupiter’s
magnetic field is thought to be a layer of liquid hydrogen deep within the
planet. Hydrogen is under such high pressure inside Jupiter that it becomes a
liquid. As such, it takes on the characteristics of a metal; it can conduct
electricity because the electrons within the hydrogen atoms are able to move
around.
With the addition of Jupiter’s
fast spin, it’s the perfect combination to create the powerful magnetic field.
Jupiter’s inner magnetosphere and
the bright radiation belts. NASA/JPL
This magnetic field traps charged
particles - electrons, protons and ions - some originating from the solar wind
but also flying in from Jupiter’s Galilean moons, particularly volcanic Io.
Some of the particles are
funnelled towards Jupiter’s poles, creating Jupiter’s impressive aurora that
are 100 times brighter than the aurora experienced on Earth.
Other particles become trapped by
the magnetic field giving rise to Jupiter’s radiation belts, an insanely
intense version of the Earth’s van Allen belts. Jupiter’s magnetic field
accelerates these particles to such a degree that they zip up and down the belt
at nearly the speed of light, creating the most hazardous radiation zone in the
solar system.
Breaking all the records
Jupiter is the largest, most
massive, fastest rotating, most hazardous planet of the solar system. It has
the strongest magnetic field and the greatest number of known satellites. It
has held onto the pristine gas from the interstellar cloud that gave rise to
our sun.
Its strong gravitational
influence has helped to move material around our solar system, potentially
scattering ice, water and organic molecules from the outer cold regions of the
solar system into the inner solar system where it could be captured by the
Earth.
The first planets to be found
orbiting around other stars were hot Jupiters, an apt description for
exoplanets with masses similar to Jupiter that orbit very close to their stars
and therefore have high surface temperatures.
One of the most long-standing
questions that the Juno spacecraft will answer is how did Jupiter form? Did it
begin with a rocky core that then attracted an enormous atmosphere or was
Jupiter’s origin more akin to a star and could it possibly have collapsed
directly out of the solar nebula remaining gaseous right through to its core?
The next 18 months are set to be
very interesting as the Juno spacecraft increases our understanding of the
great gas giant, Jupiter.
A vibrant view of star cluster NGC 1929
Horsehead Nebula
Here's the first photo that NASA's Juno spacecraft sent back of Jupiter and its three moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede.
CYBERDATE
An award winning full length play.
"Cyberdate.Com is
the story of six ordinary people in search of romance, friendship and love and
find it in very extraordinary ways. Based on the real life experiences of the
authors misadventures with on line dating, Cyber date is a bittersweet story
that will make you laugh, cry and want to fall in love again." Ellis
McKay
Cyberdate.Com, was
chosen for a public at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007 as
part of the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the
play won the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.
The play was also given a full reading at The Frederick Playhouse in Maryland
in March of 2007.
OTHER
PLAYS BY JOHN WILLIAM TUOHY............................
10
People Who Literally Died From Laughing Too Much
Did you know that it’s possible
from die laughing too much? Not only that, but that there are dozens of people
who died that way. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. While extremely rare, a death
from laughter can occur, usually resulting with asphyxiation or a cardiac
arrest (that are caused by laughing). Such deaths have been recorded since the
times of Ancient Greece, and still happen from time to time.
Today, we’re listing 10 people
who died simply because they laughed too much. Without further ado, here are
the people who laughed themselves to the afterlife.
10) Zeuxis of Heraclea
As mentioned, the earliest
recorded deaths from laughter have been reported in Ancient Greece and Zeuxis
is one of those. He was a Greek painter that lived in 5 BC. He is famous for
being fascinated by nudity and painting it.
Zeuxis tried to paint Helen, the
most beautiful woman in the world, but couldn’t find a girl pretty enough to
model for him. Only one model couldn’t properly show Helen’s beauty, so he
decided to have 5 girls who modeled for him. Unfortunately, his paintings
haven’t survived until this day. Zeuxis apparently died looking at his painting
of the goddess Aphrodite, that he had to paint looking at an old woman who
ordered the painting and insisted at being the model.
9) Chrysippus
Chrysippus was a Greek
philosopher who excelled in logic, ethics, physics and the theory of knowledge.
He is known as the “Second Founder of Stoicism”. Chrysippus was born in 279 BC
in Cilicia, and died when he was 73, in an extremely bizarre way. He saw a
donkey eating his figs, and told one of his slaves to serve some wine to the
donkey so he can “wash it down”. After that, he laughed so much that he died,
according to Diogenes Laertius.
8) Martin of Aragon
Martin the Humane, also know as
“the Elder” and “the Ecclesiastic” was the King of Valencia, Aragon, Sardinia,
Corsica and Sicily, as well as the Count of Barcelona. He was born in 1396, and
reigned since 1405 until his death, 5 years later. Martin reportedly died due
to indigestion and uncontrollable laughter. He was suffering from indigestion
after eating an entire goose, when his jester entered his room and told the
king where he had been. Here is a quote of what the jester said:
“Out of the next vineyard, where
I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so
punished him for stealing figs.”
That made the king laugh so
uncontrollably hard that he died from it. All of his legitimate successors were
dead, so his nephew became the next king, after a two-year interregnum.
7) Pietro Aretino
Pietro “Scourge of Princes”
Aretino was an Italian author and satirist who invented modern literate
pornography. Talk about a first impression, huh? Aretino was known for his
brilliant satirical works, in which he mocked powerful politicians and religious
figures. He was also a blackmailer who extorted money from the people who came
to get his advice.
This popular 15th century figure
died when he was 64 years of age. You can guess the cause of death.
6) Thomas Urquhart
Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty
was a Scottish author and a translator who lived in the 17th century. He was an
anointed knight, published many literature works and is best known for his
translation of Rabelais. He was captured at the Battle of Worchester, but was
paroled shortly after.
After his return home, not much
is known about his life, but it is rumoured that he died from laughing too much
after hearing that Charles II has taken the throne.
5) Alex Mitchell
A random Englishman called Alex
Mitchell died from laughing in 1975, after watching The Goodies. Apparently, he
was watching the popular TV series’ episode Kung Fu Kapers and couldn’t stop
laughing for 25 minutes when he saw some of the funny bits from the episode. He
died from heart failure right after the laughter fit.
His widow sent a letter to the
director of the TV series, thanking them for making his last moments so joyful.
Later on, it was speculated that Mitchell died from a condition known as long
QT syndrome, which is a heart rhythm abnormality.
4) Ole Bentzen
In 1989, Mr. Ole Bentzen was
watching A Fish Called Wanda, a movie in which there is a scene where a
character gets French fries stuck up his nose. Bentzen started laughing
uncontrollably, which apparently got his heart to beat somewhere between 250
and 500 times per minute.
That caused a heart attack that
left him dead on the spot.
3) Damnoen Saen-um
Most recent noted death from
laughter happened in 2003. Damoen Saen-um, a Thai ice cream salesman, started
to laugh in his sleep. As if that wasn’t uncommon enough, he couldn’t stop
laughing for 2 whole minutes, and then suddenly stopped. His wife tried to wake
him up, but couldn’t do it, because he had already died at that point.
2) Pecos Bill
Pecos Bill is a cowboy that is
mentioned in many tales by anonymous authors. Whether he actually existed or
not isn’t certain, but if he did, his death was very unusual. Like other people
from this list, Bill died from a laughter-induced heart attack or an
asphyxiation. His maniacal laughter was caused by looking at a guy who tried to
pose as a bronco buster.
Upon seeing his efforts, Pecos
Bill started uncontrollably laughing and dropped dead.
1) Mrs. Fitzherbert
In 1782., Mrs. Fitzherbert and
her friends went to see The Beggar’s Opera performance. After a particularly
funny scene, the entire audience was laughing, but everyone was able to calm down shortly after and keep
watching the show. Well, everyone except the above mentioned miss, who was
laughing so hard that she had to exit the theatre.
It was reported that she couldn’t
get the scene out of her head for some time, and was constantly laughing until
her death.
I'm a big big Fan of Bukowski .........................
THE ART AND BEAUTY OF BALLET
Daniele Silingardi - English National Ballet
Good Words To Have
Mittimus
(MIT-uh-muhs) An official order to commit someone to prison. From Latin
mittimus (we send), the first word of such an order, from mittere (to send).
Saccharine
(SAK-uh-rin, -REEN, -ruhn, -ryn)
Excessively sweet, sentimental, or ingratiating. From Latin saccharum
(sugar), from Greek sakkharon, from Sanskrit sarkara (gravel, sugar)
Favonian Of or
relating to the west wind: mild. In "Ode to the West Wind," poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley called the "wild West Wind" the "breath of
Autumn's being." But according to Greco-Roman tradition, the west wind was
warm and usually gentle. Its Latin name, Favonius, is the basis for the English
adjective favonian and derives from roots that are akin to the Latin fovēre,
meaning "to warm." Zephyros, a Greek name for the west wind, is the
ultimate source of zephyr, meaning "a gentle breeze." In Greco-Roman
tradition, it was the north wind, Boreas (aka Aquilo), who was the rude and
blustery type.
Belie
\bih-LYE\ a:to give a false impression of
b: to present an appearance not in agreement with 2 :to show (something)
to be false or wrong 3 : to run counter to : contradict 4: disguise. The history of belie illustrates a certain
connection between lying and disguising. In its earliest known use, around 590
C.E., belie meant "to deceive by lying." By the 1200s, it was being
used to mean "to tell lies about," using a sense similar to that of
the modern word slander. Over time its meaning softened, shifting from an act
of outright lying to one of mere misrepresentation, and by the early 1600s, the
word was being used in the sense "to disguise or conceal." Nowadays,
belie suggests giving an impression at variance with the facts rather than
telling an intentional untruth.
Expergefacient
(eks-puhr-juh-FAY-shuhnt)
Awakening or arousing. A drug or other agent that awakens or arouses. From
Latin expergefacere (to awaken), from expergisci (to become awake) + facere (to
make or do). Earliest documented use: 1821.
Aftermath 1 : a second-growth crop 2 : consequence, result 3 : the period
immediately following a usually ruinous event. Aftermath dates to the late
1400s and was originally an agricultural term. Its two parts are transparent—but
only if you're familiar with an ancient word math that is now used only in
British dialectal English and that means "a mowing of a grass or hay
crop" and also refers to the crop that is gathered. The original aftermath
came, of course, after the math: it was historically the crop of (usually)
grass cut, grazed, or plowed under after the first crop of the season from the
same soil. It wasn't until the mid-late 1600s that aftermath developed its
other meanings, both of which are now far more common than the firs
Pinchbeck
(PINCH-bek) Counterfeit or spurious. An alloy of zinc and copper, used as
imitation gold in jewelry. After watchmaker Christopher Pinchbeck (1670-1732),
who invented it. It’s ironic that today his name is a synonym for something
counterfeit, but in his time his fame was worldwide, not only as the inventor
of this curious alloy, but also as a maker of musical clocks and orreries*. The
composition of this gold-like alloy was a closely-guarded secret, but it didn’t
prevent others from passing off articles as if made from this alloy... faking
fake gold!
invidious (in-VID-ee-us) tending to cause discontent,
animosity, or envy a :unpleasant,
objectionable, or obnoxious b : of
a kind to cause harm or resentment
Fittingly, invidious is a relative of envy.
Both are descendants of invidia, the Latin word for "envy," which in
turn comes from invidēre, meaning "to look askance at" or "to
envy." (Invidious descends from invidia by way of the Latin adjective
invidiosus, meaning "envious," whereas envy comes to English via the
Anglo-French noun envie.) These days, however, invidious is rarely used as a
synonym for envious. The preferred uses are primarily pejorative, describing
things that are unpleasant (such as "invidious choices" and "invidious
tasks") or worthy of scorn ("invidious remarks" or
"invidious comparisons").
Gordian
knot
(GOR-dee-un-NAHT) 1 :an intricate problem; especially : a problem insoluble in
its own terms 2 : a knot tied by Gordius, king of Phrygia, held to be capable
of being untied only by the future ruler of Asia, and cut by Alexander the
Great with his sword. According to Roman mythology, when the peasant Gordius
became king of Gordium in Phrygia, he dedicated his wagon to Jupiter and
fastened its yoke to a beam with a very complex knot. Centuries later, when
Alexander the Great arrived on the scene, he was told that he couldn't conquer
and rule Asia unless he proved himself worthy by untying the knot. Alexander
quickly solved his problem—and gained a new kingdom—by slicing the knot in half
with his sword. Since then, Gordian knot has become a term for a difficult
problem, and the phrase "cut the Gordian knot" has become a popular
way to describe a neat solution for an apparently insurmountable difficulty.
Quoz
An
odd person or thing. Of uncertain origin. Perhaps it’s a variant of the word
quiz which has a similar meaning. Or maybe the word quiz is a variant of quoz.
It’s all very quizzical. Or quozzical. 1: (of a domestic animal) having a dry
skin lacking in pliancy and adhering closely to the underlying flesh 2: having
an inflexible or ultraconservative character. Hidebound has its origins in
agriculture. The word, which appeared in English as hyde bounde in the 16th
century, originally described cattle that, due to illness or poor feeding, had
skin that clung to the skeleton and could not be pinched, loosened, or worked
with the fingers. Hidebound has also been applied to humans—both literally, to
describe people with tight skin, and figuratively. In its earliest figurative
usage, hidebound meant "stingy" or "miserly." That sense
has since fallen out of use, but a second figurative usage, describing people
who are rigid or unyielding in their actions or beliefs, lives on in our
language today.
Farrago: (fuh-RAH-goh)
A confused mixture. From Latin farrago (mixed fodder). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root bhares- (barley), which also gave us barn, barley, and
farina.
Syzygy (SIZ-uh-jee)
The nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (such as the
sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system.
At first glance, syzygy appears to be a somewhat singular member of the English
language. Despite its appearance, however, it does have etymological ties to a
few words in Modern English. Syzygy can be traced to the Greek syzygos
("yoked together"), a combination of syn- ("with, together
with") and zygon ("yoke"). Zygon is also the source of zygote
("a cell formed by the union of two gametes") and zygoma, which
refers to several bones and processes of the skull, including the zygomatic
bone (a.k.a., the cheekbone). Zygon is also related to the Old English geoc—the
source of the Modern English yoke—and the Latin jungere, from which the English
words join and junction are derived.
The Observation and Appreciation of Architecture......
Fallingwater house designed by architect Frank L. Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, USA.
AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR YOU...................
THE ART OF WAR............
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS..........
Sculpture this and Sculpture that
From Michelangelo's, David,
The art and joy of cinematography
Lolita (1962) Directed by Stanley Kubrick
MISH MOSH..........................................
Mish Mash: noun \ˈmish-ËŒmash, -ËŒmäsh\ A : hodgepodge, jumble “The painting was just a mishmash of colors and abstract shapes as far as we could tell”. Origin Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn to mix. First Known Use: 15th century
While it is not identified in the photograph’s description, this is likely from the “Bee” test detonation on March 22, 1955, as part of the overall “Operation Teapot” series of nuclear test explosions in Nevada.
A city made of staples
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
George Wesley Bellows (American, 1882-1925) evening group 1914
H. A. Brendekilde (Danish, 1857-1942), Summer landscape near Næstved with a view of Rønnebækholm’s mill. Oil on canvas, 50 x 77 cm
TODAY'S ALLEGED MOB GUY..........................................................
The self proclaimed Boss of all Bosses in the American Mafia, John Masseria, shot dead.
TRUE CRIME BY JOHN
WILLIAM TUOHY
THE ART OF PULP......................................................................
DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
DON'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD? I DO
Miramare Castle (Trieste), Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy
BLOGLAPEDIA’S BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art for
the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of
Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The Quotable
Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The Irish
American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The
Kennedy’s in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The Prohibition
in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A
really small company run by writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The
Day Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND
CIVILIZATIONS
The
Works of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS BOOKS
The
Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children
A Halloween play for young
children. By consent of the author, this play may be performed, at no charge,
by educational institutions, neighborhood organizations and other
not-for-profit-organizations.
A fun story with a moral
“I believe that Denny O'Day is an
American treasure and this little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens
to be very small, by pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the
pumpkin patch on Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance
to prove that just because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here
is the point that I found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size
doesn't matter when it comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I
think children need to hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is
a ongoing lesson isn't it?”
Paperback: 42 pages
http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children
It's
Not All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the
books contents
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what
From the Author
I spent my childhood, from age
seven through seventeen, in foster care.
Over the course of those ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and
concerned people told me, "It's okay to be foster kid."
In saying that, those very good
people meant to encourage me, and I appreciated their kindness then, and all
these many decades later, I still appreciate their good intentions. But as I
was tossed around the foster care system, it began to dawn on me that they were
wrong. It was not all right to be a
foster kid.
During my time in the system, I
was bounced every eighteen months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a
boy's school and to a group home before I left on my own accord at age
seventeen.
In the course of my stay in
foster care, I was severely beaten in two homes by my "care givers"
and separated from my four siblings who were also in care, sometimes only
blocks away from where I was living.
I left the system rather than to
wait to age out, although the effects of leaving the system without any family,
means, or safety net of any kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived
in poverty for the first part of my life, dropped out of high school, and had
continuous problems with the law.
Today, almost nothing about foster care has
changed. Exactly what happened to me is
happening to some other child, somewhere in America, right now. The system, corrupt, bloated, and
inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.
Something has gone wrong in a
system that was originally a compassionate social policy built to improve lives
but is now a definitive cause in ruining lives.
Due to gross negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what
the foster care system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care
has become our epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have
lived through it.
Yet there is a suspicion among
some Americans that foster care costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and
is at odds with a satisfying life.
Others see foster care as a part of the welfare system, as legal plunder
of the public treasuries.
None of that is true; in fact, all that sort
of thinking does is to blame the victims.
There is not a single child in the system who wants to be there or asked
to be there. Foster kids are in foster
care because they had nowhere else to go.
It's that simple. And believe me,
if those kids could get out of the system and be reunited with their parents
and lead normal, healthy lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of
legal plunder of the public treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are
doing the plundering.
We need to end this needless suffering. We need to end it because it is morally and
ethically wrong and because the generations to come will not judge us on the
might of our armed forces or our technological advancements or on our fabulous
wealth.
Rather, they will judge us, I am certain, on
our compassion for those who are friendless, on our decency to those who have
nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to make our nation and our world
a better place. And if we cannot
accomplish those things in the short time allotted to us, then let them say of
us "at least they tried."
You can change the tragedy of
foster care and here's how to do it. We
have created this book so that almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to
the world. You have the power to improve
the lives of those in our society who are least able to defend themselves. All you need is the will to do it.
If the American people, as good, decent and
generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster care, in their name and
with their money, they would stop it.
But, generally speaking, although the public has a vague notion that
foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete picture. They are not aware
of the human, economic and social cost that the mismanagement of the foster care
system puts on our nation.
By tweeting the facts laid out in
this work, you can help to change all of that.
You can make a difference. You
can change things for the better.
We can always change the future
for a foster kid; to make it better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up
(or tweet out) because it's your country.
Don't depend on the "The other guy" to speak up for these
kids, because you are the other guy.
We cannot build a future for
foster children, but we can build foster children for the future and the time
to start that change is today.
No
time to say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster
Paperbook 440 Books
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir
BOOKS
ABOUT FILM
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film
Paperback: 416 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/
BOOKS
ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL
Scotish
Ghost Stories
Paperback 186 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell
HUMOR
BOOKS
The
Book of funny odd and interesting things people say
Paperback: 278 pages
http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people
The
Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook
Perfect
Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises
http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social
BOOKS
ABOUT THE 1960s
You
Don’t Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969
Paperback 122 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969
Baby
Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/
Baby
Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s
IRISH- AMERICANA
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/
The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/
The Wee book of Irish Blessings...
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/
The
Wee Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words
http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/
Everything
you need to know about St. Patrick
Paperback 26 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick
A
Reading Book in Ancient Irish History
Paperback 147pages
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History
The
Book of Things Irish
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/
Poets
and Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish
Paperback 158 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/
The
History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated
Paperback 356 pages
http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/
BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND
The
New England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/
Wicked
Good New England Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The
Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers
Paperback 64 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion
The
Life of James Mars
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut
Stories
of Colonial Connecticut
Paperback 116 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford
What
they Say in Old New England
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/
BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME
Chicago Organized Crime
Chicago-Mob-Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook
The
Mob Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook
An
Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/
The
Mob Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre
The
Life and World of Al Capone in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone
AL
CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930
edition.Over 200 new photographs
Paperback: 340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs
Whacked.
One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit
Paperback: 172 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/
Las Vegas Organized Crime
The
Mob in Vegas
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook
Bugsy
& His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/
Testimony
by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files
Series)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook
Rattling
the Cup on Chicago Crime.
Paperback 264 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged
The
Life and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor
The
Mob, Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago
Paperback 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago
When
Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos
Organized
Crime in Hollywood
The Mob in Hollywood
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/
The
Bioff Scandal
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios
Organized
Crime in New York
Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/
Mob
Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/
The
New York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins
The
New York Mob: The Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/
Organized
Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate
http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook
Shooting
the mob: Dutch Schultz
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)
http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City
Paperback 382 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York
THE RUSSIAN MOBS
The
Russian Mafia in America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/
The
Threat of Russian Organzied Crime
Paperback 192 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook
Organized Crime/General
Best
of Mob Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/
Best
of Mob Stories Part 2
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/
Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook
Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
More
Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs
http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
The
New England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook
Shooting
the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/
The
Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/
The Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill
each other"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/
The
Mob across America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/
The
US Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987
http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/
The
Mob Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Book of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.
Paperback: 436 pages
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/
The
Mob and the Kennedy Assassination
Paperback 414 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters
BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST
The
Last Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Paperback 152 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself
BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Chicago:
A photographic essay.
Paperback: 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas
STAGE PLAYS
Boomers
on a train: A ten minute play
Paperback 22 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook
Four
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy
Four
More Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/
High
and Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve
Cyberdate.
An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/
The
Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of
Gangster Dutch Schultz.
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/
Fishbowling
on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with
Dutch Schultz
Print Length: 57 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/
American
Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook
She
Stoops to Conquer
http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/
The
Seven Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play
Print Length: 14 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/
BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA
OUT
OF CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/
McLean
Virginia. A short informal history
http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/
THE QUOTABLE SERIES
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
The
Quotable John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/
The
Quotable Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/
The
Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/
The
Quotable Henry David Thoreau
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Robert F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook
The
words of Walt Whitman: An American Poet
Paperback: 162 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Popes
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti
The
Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran
Paperback 52 pages
Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet,
and writer was born on January 6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in
what was then part of Ottoman Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In
1895, the family immigrated to the United States when Kahlil was a young man and
settled in South Boston. Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a member
of the avant-garde community and became especially close to Boston artist,
photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and supported
Gibran’s creative projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and watercolor,
Kahlil attended art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and
romantic style. He held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in
Boston, at Day's studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met Mary
Elizabeth Haskell, who ten years his senior. The two formed an important
friendship and love affair that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell
influenced every aspect of Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his editor
when he began to write and ushered his first book into publication in 1918, The
Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence
somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran died in New York City on April 10,
1931, at the age of 48 from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/
The
Quotable Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
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