WHY I
WRITE FOR A LIVING………………….
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the
only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the
only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet,
keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when
you find it. Steve Jobs
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in
Washington DC. He holds an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University.
He is the author of No Time to Say Goodbye:
Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care and Short Stories from a Small Town. He is
also the author of numerous non-fiction on the history of organized crime
including the ground break biography of bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When
Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and "Guns and Glamour: A History of
Organized Crime in Chicago."
His non-fiction crime short stories have
appeared in The New Criminologist, American Mafia and other publications. John
won the City of Chicago's Celtic Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of
Beverly, and his short story fiction work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared
in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of 2008.
His play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a
public performance at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007 as
part of the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the
play won the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
HERE'S MY
LATEST BOOKS.....
This is a book of short stories taken from
the things I saw and heard in my childhood in the factory town of Ansonia in
southwestern Connecticut.
Most of these stories, or as true as I recall
them because I witnessed these events many years ago through the eyes of child
and are retold to you now with the pen and hindsight of an older man. The only
exception is the story Beat Time which is based on the
disappearance of Beat poet Lew Welch. Decades before I knew who Welch was, I
was told that he had made his from California to New Haven, Connecticut, where
was an alcoholic living in a mission. The notion fascinated me and I filed it
away but never forgot it.
The collected stories are loosely modeled around
Joyce’s novel, Dubliners (I also borrowed from the novels
character and place names. Ivy Day, my character in “Local Orphan is Hero” is
also the name of chapter in Dubliners, etc.) and like Joyce I
wanted to write about my people, the people I knew as a child, the working
class in small town America and I wanted to give a complete view of them as
well. As a result the stories are about the divorced, Gays, black people, the
working poor, the middle class, the lost and the found, the contented and the discontented.
Conversely many of the stories in this book
are about starting life over again as a result of suicide (The Hanging
Party, Small Town Tragedy, Beat Time) or from a near death experience (Anna
Bell Lee and the Charge of the Light Brigade, A Brief Summer) and natural
occurring death. (The Best Laid Plans, The Winter Years, Balanced and Serene)
With the exception of Jesus Loves
Shaqunda, in each story there is a rebirth from the death. (Shaqunda is
reported as having died of pneumonia in The Winter Years)
Sal, the desperate and depressed divorcee
in Things Change, changes his life in Lunch Hour when
asks the waitress for a date and she accepts. (Which we learn in Closing Time,
the last story in the book) In The Arranged Time, Thisby is given the
option of change and whether she takes it or, we don’t know. The death of
Greta’s husband in A Matter of Time has led her to the diner
and into the waiting arms of the outgoing and loveable Gabe.
Although the book is based on three sets of
time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the diner is opened in the early morning
and closed at night, time stands still inside the Diner. The hour on the big
clock on the wall never changes time and much like my memories of that place,
everything remains the same.
http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Small-William-Tuohy/dp/1517270456/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444164878&sr=1-1&keywords=short+stories+from+a+small+town
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....
Well done is better than well said. Benjamin Franklin
WHAT LOVE IS........................
Love is always being given where it is not required. E. M.
Forster
Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull
and common life. Aphra Behn
Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never
knew was missing. Torquato Tasso
If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's
sake only. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence,
and its only end. Benjamin Disraeli
Love conquers all. Virgil
The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and
one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one
gives rise is not the passion of the other. Honore de Balzac
Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the
pleasures prove, That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy
mountain yields. Christopher Marlowe
For love is immortality. Emily Dickinson
We may give without loving, but we cannot love without giving.
Bernard Meltzer
Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar. Theodor
Adorno
Love's greatest gift is its ability to make everything it
touches sacred. Barbara de Angelis
Take away love and our earth is a tomb. Robert Browning
When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical
limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and
right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue
water. Gwendolyn Brooks
Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of
spiritual evolution. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme
activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone
else. Jose Ortega y Gasset
Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its
rainbow. James M. Barrie
To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever
is to live forever. Henry Drummond
Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion. Miguel
de Unamuno
The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be
loved proved much longer than I realized. Henri Nouwen
Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have
been loved. William Congreve
To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. David
Viscott
Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for
they enkindle and melt the soul. Saint Teresa of Avila
Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak
without provoking strength. Theodor Adorno
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to
hope, to love and to put its trust in life. Joseph Conrad
He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and
nothing holds him back. Henri Matisse
In every living thing there is the desire for love. D. H.
Lawrence
No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be
loved. Mignon McLaughlin
Though lovers be lost love shall not. Dylan Thomas
Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery. Fulton
J. Sheen
Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort
of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both
together make up one whole.Samuel Taylor Coleridge
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's
neighbor. Eric Hoffer
Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart
can hold. Zelda Fitzgerald
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its
hope, even the ruins to which it clings. Gustave Flaubert
O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of
a thousand stars. Christopher Marlowe
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me. W. H.
Auden
Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things
that revolve around love. Marc Chagall
When you're in love you never really know whether your elation
comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her;
whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or
from the meeting of your sparks. Natalie Clifford Barney
Who loves, raves. Lord Byron
There is room in the smallest cottage for a happy loving pair.
Friedrich Schiller
There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved. Thomas
Fuller
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for
the sake of loving is angelic. Alphonse de Lamartine
Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Love is metaphysical gravity. R. Buckminster Fuller
True love is quiescent, except in the nascent moments of true
humility. Bryant H. McGill
There is no limit to the power of loving. John Morton
Ultimately love is everything. M. Scott Peck
More than kisses, letters mingle souls. John Donne
What is love? It is the morning and the evening star. Sinclair
Lewis
We love because it's the only true adventure. Nikki Giovanni
If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love
you I shall not love. Samuel Beckett
When love is at its best, one loves so much that he cannot
forget. Helen Hunt Jackson
Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are. John
Dryden
Photographs I’ve taken
New Orleans Preacher at a street wedding
AMAZON REVIEWS
For
No Time To Say Goodbye
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY AVAILABLE NOW
********************
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.
In
1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered
Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next
ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state
schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep
River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the same
home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny
compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to
overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp
By 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
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.
Have you seen Billy the Kid’s
suspenders?
Ever since billionaire
businessman, collector and sailor William Koch — brother of the better-known
duo Charles and David Koch — paid $2.3 million for an authenticated tintype of
legendary New Mexico outlaw and cattle rustler Billy the Kid in 2011, the
market for bona fide Kid memorabilia has been particularly hot.
Now the search is on for a pair
of suspenders some experts believe the Kid, also known as William H. Bonney,
was wearing in 1878 when he allegedly posed on a rock in New Mexico with one
pistol in his right hand and another in a holster. When the albumen print
surfaced this year, it was known as Two Gun Billy.
Jim Williams, a Western antique
dealer with a shop in Springfield, Mo., who is trying to authenticate the photo
for its owners, met a man last month in Oklahoma who said he had once owned the
patterned suspenders the purported Billy is wearing in the photo. The man, who
has declined to be named, said a Derringer holster was attached to the
suspenders, causing Williams and others to now refer to the photo as Three Gun
Billy.
Williams is optimistic about
tracking down the suspenders. The current owner — or his or her descendants —
could well be connected to a club, group or history association, he said.
The suspenders in the sepia-toned
photo are actually red and yellow and are decorated with card suits. The words
“Little Casino” are embroidered along one suspender and “Big Casino”
embroidered down the other. When he purchased the suspenders, the man said, he
was told that Billy had won them from Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett in a
card game. Garrett was the same sheriff who killed the Kid and later made the
young outlaw famous by writing a book about him.
Cassino, also spelled Casino, is
an Italian fishing card game that was said to be popular in Lincoln County at
the time. A liquor store in Lincoln County was named for it. In the game, the
two of spades is called Little Cassino and the 10 of diamonds is called Big
Cassino. Those are the nicknames associated with Garrett and the Kid.
The man who owned the suspenders,
and sold them about 35 years ago, said the holster attached to them was marked
with the name of the maker and “Lincoln County.” He said he couldn’t remember
the name of the maker.
The photo is one of nearly 500 in
an Old West collection believed to have been owned by Frank Phillips, the
founder of Phillips Petroleum. It was purchased, with others, from an antique
store in Oklahoma near Phillips’ ranch by a couple of Western enthusiasts in
the 1990s.
Available on Amazon.Com
Williams was hired by the couple
to try to authenticate and market the photo, which currently lacks the
provenance of the Koch tintype.
But Williams might be getting
closer.
Last month, he took a 2-foot by
3-foot enlargement of the photo to the Wild West History Association’s Roundup
in Oklahoma City, Okla., where he encountered the man who said he had owned the
suspenders. After speaking with the man, Williams examined the photo more
closely. He now says he can see the handle of the Derringer sticking out from
under the Kid’s left arm. The butt of the gun is small, with a round protrusion
in the center that he said is the center screw.
Williams said he believes the
man’s story. “The idea of having suspenders with Little Casino and Big Casino,
you just can’t make that up,” he said.
Available on Amazon.Com
The man was a collector of Wild
West items and was familiar with the area of New Mexico depicted in the
photograph. Williams believes it was taken on a hillside between Lincoln and
Tularosa, overlooking a 19th-century village called South Ford, now part of the
Mescalero Apache Reservation. He said he found the actual rock Jan. 20 and was
able to match up the mountains in the background and the old Indian trails.
He believes the photo was taken
April 3, 1878, a couple of days after the murder of Lincoln County Sheriff
William Brady and the day before a shootout at Blazer’s Mill between the
Lincoln County Regulators — a cowboy posse to which the Kid belonged — and the
buffalo hunter Buckshot Roberts.
The Kid was convicted of killing
Brady in 1881.
The day of the Blazer’s Mill
shootout, which set off the Lincoln County War, the Regulators were looking for
anyone associated with the murder of their ally, rancher and merchant John Tunstall.
Cathleen Briley, who represents
the Phillips Collection, along with Williams, said the man who once owned the
suspenders does not have a record of his sale and wants to remain anonymous
because, she said, he doesn’t want to be “subjected to abuse” by those who
doubt the origins of purported photos of Billy the Kid that have shown up in
recent years.
In particular, she cited a
tintype purchased from a Fresno, Calif., memorabilia shop in 2010 that the
owners believe shows the Kid and his friends holding croquet mallets. A
documentary on the photograph aired last fall on the National Geographic
Channel. The image drew skepticism and generated controversy.
Briley said she and Williams just
want to find the suspenders’ current owner in order to let them know, “What you
have is a big deal.”
“It’s just a remarkable thing,”
she added.
“It’s a fascinating story,”
Williams agreed. “Somebody’s got to know where they’re at.”
Williams said the Phillips
Collection includes over 20 photographs of people involved in the Lincoln
County War that have been confirmed by family members.
As for Three Gun Billy, he
believes there is a “great chance” it is authentic. “Because there’s no
provenance, some will say it’s not him,” he said. “But we’re confident it is,
although it will take more research to convince more people.”
AND NOW A FEW BEAUTIFUL WORDS FROM WHITMAN
Available on Amazon.Com
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot
fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and
actress
not to the
audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own,
or the
indication of his own.
A Song of
the Rolling Earth
THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.
A Clear
Midnight
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing
flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever
so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this
then?
I do not ask any more delight,
I swim in it as in a sea.
“I Sing
the Body Electric’
Were you thinking that those were the words—
those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words—the substantial words
are in the ground and sea,
They are in the air—they are in you.
Were you thinking that those were the words—
those delicious sounds out of your friends’
mouths?
No, the real words are more delicious than they.
Human bodies are words, myriads of words;
In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or wo-
man’s, well-shaped, natural, gay,
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or
the need of shame.
To the
Sayers of Words
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** NY WINTER FESTIVAL COMPETITION ***
BEST PLAY $2,500
Best Short Play $1,500
Best Director, Actress, Actor and Singer $500 each
Best Musical Score $300
Best Original Play, Stage Manager and Set Designer $200.
All genres are welcome, including MUSICALS.
PLAYS OR MUSICALS BETWEEN 30 AND 90 MINUTES
ONE ACT PLAY WELCOME BUT MUST BE
30 MINUTES OR LONGER.
Our 10th Festival Season
There is no question why Venus/Adonis has taken the world of playwrighting festivals by storm, becoming one of the largest festival in the country in just 6 years.
for more info
*** MRT SEPTEMBER PLAY CHALLENGE ***
Seeking fully produced,
11- 25 minute plays
for Manhattan Rep’s
SEPTEMBER PLAY CHALLENGE
$200 prize for best play!
9/21 - 9/29, 2016
Plays are given a tech rehearsal, a dress rehearsal, 2 performances & 2 more performances if your play goes to the Finals.
To submit, please email:
The script, a synopsis,
set and lighting requirements,
play’s production history
your mailing address, and a contact email address to:
manhattanrep@yahoo.com
by 9/7, 2016
Put “SEPTEMBER PLAY CHALLENGE” in the subject.
NON-EQUITY ONLY.
We supply a technician to run the tech.
Once accepted, there’s a $30 commitment fee.
*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***
The Village Playwrights announce a call for submissions for QUEER SCARE III, staged readings of 10 minute plays to celebrate Halloween on Oct 26, 2016 from 8 to 10 pm at the LGBT Community Center.
Playwrights must be from Metro New York area
Plays must be under 10 minutes.
Plays must have a LGBTQ and Halloween theme
***
The University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance is excited to announce our third annual 10-Minute Play Festival for spring of 2017. We will begin accepting submissions for this festival on August 15, 2016; the submission period closes on October 31, 2016. Nine selected 10-minute plays will receive productions as part of a multi-evening festival, produced in the newly upgraded José Quintero Theatre on the University of Houston campus. This festival is open to all applicants, amateur or professional.
***
The Bechdel group accept new plays and screenplays, scripts in development, partial scripts, drafts - anything in progress. Our readings are designed to provide an opportunity to further script development, so we're excited about work that is not yet 'complete'. We typically feature 20 - 35 pages (roughly a half hour) of a script.
Your submission MUST:
Pass the Bechdel Test. You must have two female characters, with names, who have a full scene/conversation that is not about their romantic relationships.
We are constantly discussing the Bechdel Test and the way it serves (or fails to serve) our mission. We know that as a 'test', there are flaws and gaps. We are indeed interested in scripts that push boundaries and raise discussion points - however, this is our baseline. Please do not send us two-handers with one male and one female character or scripts with only one female character.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site athttp://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** A CONVERSATION WITH TONY KUSHNER ***
Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. He co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film Munich, and he wrote the screenplay for the 2012 film Lincoln, both critically acclaimed movies, for which received Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. For his work, he received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013.[1]
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and Rachel Maddow
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and Dan Savage
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and Oskar Eustis
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and John Lahr
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and Ivo Van Hove
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner, Frank Rich, Terrence McNally, Paul Rudnick and Larry Kramer
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and Stephen Sondheim
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and Laura Flanders
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner and Terry Gross
***
A conversation with Tony Kushner, Steven Spielberg and Doris Kearns Goodwin
*** CUNY professor seeks theater production survey participation ***
CUNY professor Teresa Fisher is conducting a research study in the area of new play development, focusing on how the process differs when done in an academic versus professional theatre setting.
More…
http://nycp.blogspot.com/2016/08/cuny-professor-seeks-theater-production.html
*** PRIMARY STAGES ESPA ONLINE WRITING (FD, REWRITE, TV) ***
ONLINE WRITING CLASSES at Primary Stages ESPA: We can help you create or polish a draft of your new play or screenplay through weekly assignments and lectures, providing the necessary structure and deadlines to those outside the New York area or with unpredictable schedules. This Fall’s lineup of Online Classes include: THE FIRST DRAFT with ADAM SZYMKOWICZ (Writer, Hearts Like Fists) and CARIDAD SVICH (Writer, 2012 OBIE Winner for Lifetime Achievement); THE REWRITE with JENI MAHONEY (Founding AD, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference), and TELEVISION WRITING with ANDREA CIANNAVEI (Screenwriter, "The Path" on Hulu). Classes start in September. Payment plans available.
http://primarystages.org/espa/online-classroom
*** NY WINTER FESTIVAL COMPETITION ***
BEST PLAY $2,500
Best Short Play $1,500
Best Director, Actress, Actor and Singer $500 each
Best Musical Score $300
Best Original Play, Stage Manager and Set Designer $200.
All genres are welcome, including MUSICALS.
PLAYS OR MUSICALS BETWEEN 30 AND 90 MINUTES
ONE ACT PLAY WELCOME BUT MUST BE
30 MINUTES OR LONGER.
Our 10th Festival Season
There is no question why Venus/Adonis has taken the world of playwrighting festivals by storm, becoming one of the largest festival in the country in just 6 years.
for more info
http://newyorktheaterfestival.com/winterfest-festivals/
*** MRT SEEKS PLAYS ***
Seeking fully produced, (cast and ready to be performed by Mid-September)
10 minute (or under) plays
for MRT’s 10 Minute Play Contest.
$250 prize
9/14 - 9/22, 2016 at Manhattan Rep
Each play receives a tech rehearsal, dress rehearsal, 2 performances and 2 more if your play goes to the Finals.
To submit please email:
The script, a synopsis,
set and lighting requirements,
production history,
mailing address, and contact email to:
manhattanrep@yahoo.com
by 8/29, 2016.
Put “10 Minute Play Contest” in the subject heading.
NON-EQUITY ONLY.
Once accepted, there is a $30 commitment fee.
http://www.manhattanrep.com/
*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***
Milano Playwriting Festival and its producer It’s Time Produzioni Srls are looking for new plays from across the globe. The selected plays will be presented as reading/mise en espace/staging during Milano Playwriting Festival, March 31 – April 2, 2017. If an agreement between the parts is reached, It’s Time Produzioni Srls will also act as literary agent by presenting the plays to Italian and foreign artistic directors / producers.
***
Now entering its second season, the Upstream Artists’ Collective of Brooklyn, New York is looking for script solicitations from local, national, and international playwrights.
Season 2: Deception will engage the practice of “greenwashing”: businesses falsely marketing their products and services as sustainable. Upstream seeks writers that can use this as inspiration for exciting and provocative new plays.
***
Living Room Theater is seeking playwrights to develop plays about immigration for its New Play Incubator this October/November. Playwrights will be divided into 2 groups and meet 3 times. In the course of 3 weeks, the playwrights will create a 10 minute play related to immigration. Each group will culminate in a staged reading for the public. Actors and director will be provided for the reading. Playwrights may attend auditions and rehearsals if they like.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site athttp://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** TWO HANDERS ***
Two-hander is a term for a play, movie, or television programme with only two main characters.[1] The two characters in question often display differences in social standing or experiences, differences that are explored and possibly overcome as the story unfolds.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-hander
***
Two-Handers With Plenty to Applaud
PLAYWRIGHTS justly lament the incredible shrinking of the American theater. As the costs of producing have risen over the last few decades, the plays being regularly produced have been getting smaller and smaller. A cast of five actors now seems deluxe at an Off Broadway theater, and stories are rife of literary managers and dramaturges gently suggesting to playwrights that their work might be more marketable if they could airbrush out a few more characters.
But the truism that less is more is as viable an argument in theater as it is in other aesthetic realms. Strictly speaking, all that is required to create a potent dramatic event is two characters. Put a pair onstage, and you automatically have a relationship, and from the complicated ways in which two people relate to each other can grow myriad dramatic developments. The people up there will connect or they will conflict, and the result will be any of a number of compelling possibilities: betrayal, conciliation, destruction, erotic attraction.
More…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/theater/09two.html
***
Freakonomics: A Hidden Side of Eugene O’Neill’s HUGHIE?
I just saw a wonderful performance of Eugene O’Neill‘s Hughie at the Long Wharf Theatre. (If you’re within driving distance of New Haven, I recommend that you go see it before it closes on November 16.) The entire play, which runs about an hour, is set in the lobby of a shabby hotel (O’Neill describes the hotel as a “third-class dump, catering to the catch-as-catch-can trade”). The Long Wharf set is an amazing re-creation of a 1928 lobby — complete with a massive wooden front desk. Brian Dennehy delivers a powerful performance as Erie Smith, a mournful denizen of the hotel. For most of the play, Erie is imploring, cajoling, and talking to a rather implacable night clerk, Charlie Hughes (played by Joe Grifasi).
More…
http://freakonomics.com/2008/11/06/a-hidden-side-of-eugene-oneills-hughie/
***
For decades, playwright was captivated by 'Zoo'
Edward Albee may have written his landmark play “The Zoo Story’’ in 1958. But four decades later he decided it wasn’t finished. Over the years, he’d always had a nagging feeling that something was missing from the piece’s unsettling encounter between two very different men on a Central Park bench: the troubled outcast Jerry and mild-mannered middle-class everyman Peter.
More…
http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/05/08/edward_albee_finally_finishes_zoo_story/
***
Forty-five years since “Love Story” turned moviegoers into weepy messes and “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” became an international catchphrase, stars Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw have reunited as epistolary soulmates in A.R. Gurney’s two-hander “Love Letters.” The play seems tailor-made for the pair, who imbue their performances not only with palpable spark and gripping emotional depth but also with an aura of winsome nostalgia for a time when they were the industry’s most romantically tragic — and, therefore, most perfect — onscreen couple.
More…
http://variety.com/2015/legit/reviews/love-letters-review-ali-macgraw-ryan-oneal-national-tour-1201619929/
***
Caryl Churchill is not a playwright who repeats herself. She doesn't have an immediately identifiable writing style or revert to certain kinds of characters or situations. Although her work tends to be politically aware, highly original and inventive in terms of stagecraft, each play is distinctly different. A Number, first published in 2002 when the world was agog with news that a sheep called Dolly had been cloned, is short, spare and evocative, a quiet but anguished musing on the topic of cloning, identity and nature versus nurture. The exposition emerges organically through the play's five scenes rather than being supplied up front, but the result isn't intentionally brain-teasing or elliptical. Plot isn't at the forefront; ideas are.
More…
http://www.westword.com/arts/a-number-ponders-identity-issues-and-nature-vs-nurture-5112775
***
Winnie is buried to her neck in scorched earth. A black revolver rests beside her chirping and disembodied head. Willie, her companion, feebly scratches on all fours at the impossible mound that separates them—at one point nearly rolling down its face into an empty abyss below. “Oh,” cries Winnie, “this is a happy day!”
Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy Happy Days was revived in 2014 by veteran director Andrei Belgrader and (married) actors Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub. It recently completed a nearly year-long journey from Los Angeles’s Theater at Boston Court (where it originated) via the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company at Babson College to The Flea Theater in Lower Manhattan. The performance at The Flea can be seen as part of a larger wave of recent Beckett revivals in the New York area; actors Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart gave Waiting For Godot the big Broadway treatment at the Cort Theater in the winter of 2013–14, and BAM hosted four of the Irish playwright’s lesser-known works during its Next Wave Festival last year.
More…
http://bombmagazine.org/article/1722828/samuel-beckett-s-i-happy-days-i
***
THEATER: SUICIDE TALK IN ''NIGHT MOTHER'
''WE'VE got a good life here,'' says Thelma Cates to her daughter, Jessie, in Marsha Norman's new play, '''Night, Mother.'' Many would agree. Thelma, who is a widow, and Jessie, who is divorced, live together in a spick-and-span house on a country road somewhere in the New South. There are no money problems. Nights are spent in such relaxed pursuits as crocheting and watching television.
More…
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/01/theater/theater-suicide-talk-in-night-mother.html
***
Playwright David Ives on How Venus Got Her Fur
My play Venus in Fur began with a very powerful, very bad idea.
A few years ago I re-read Histoire d’O, the notorious erotic French novel of the 1950s. Story of O (as it’s known in English) is the tale of a woman identified only as “O” who from the very first page accedes to her lover’s demands for various kinds of sexual submission. O masochistically submits for two hundred more pages, the classical severity of the book’s style and the odd purity of the main character’s commitment lending the novel an air of spirituality, of larger meaning and metaphor. By the end, O, who has willingly passed through stations of sometimes gruesome erotic engagement, approaches a state of near personal extinction.
More…
http://www.broadway.com/buzz/158278/playwright-david-ives-on-how-venus-got-her-fur/
Alien life could be harder to
find than we thought: 'Goldilocks' planets must have the right internal
temperature to be habitable
• 'Goldilocks
zone' has been used for decades to find habitable exoplanets
• This
is the exact distance from a star for liquid water to exist on a planet
• But
now a second criteria has been discovered for planets to be habitable
• They
must start out in a certain temperature range, a new study says
•
By ABIGAIL BEALL FOR MAILONLINE
For decades it had been thought
the most important sign for finding alien life was how far away a planet is
from its star.
In our solar system, Venus is too
close to the sun and Mars is too far to have liquid water, but Earth is just
right.
This distance is referred to as
the 'habitable zone,' or the 'Goldilocks zone.'
But a new study has found simply
being in this zone is not enough, and planets must also start with an internal
temperature that is 'just right'.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR ALIEN HUNTERS
Planets cannot self-regulate
their temperatures like it was once thought.
This means there is another
condition that has to be 'just right' before a planet could host life.
This could narrow down the number
of planets that might be capable of hosting alien life.
'The lack of the self-regulating
mechanism has enormous implications for planetary habitability,' Professor
Korenaga said.
Astronomers had previously
thought planets were able to regulate their own internal temperature.
This was thought to be done
through a process called mantle convection – a process where the underground
rocks shift, caused by internal heating and cooling.
If this was the case, a planet
might start out too cold or too hot, but it would eventually settle into the
right temperature if it is the right distance from a star.
But the new study, by researchers
at Yale University and published in the journal Science Advances, suggests this
is not the case.
THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE
In astronomy and astrobiology,
the habitable zone is the range of orbits around a star in which a planet can
support liquid water.
This habitable zone is also known
as the ‘Goldilocks’ zone, taken from the children’s fairy tale.
The temperature from the star
needs to be 'just right' so that liquid water can exist on the surface.
The boundaries of the habitable
zone are critical.
If a planet is too close to its
star, it will experience a runaway greenhouse gas effect, like Venus.
But if it's too far, any water
will freeze, as is seen on Mars.
Since the concept was first
presented in 1953, many stars have been shown to have a Goldilocks area, and
some of them have one or several planets in this zone, like 'Kepler-186f',
discovered in 2014.
Because of this, the study says
being in the habitable zone is not sufficient to support life - a planet also
must start with an internal temperature that is just right.
'If you assemble all kinds of
scientific data on how Earth has evolved in the past few billion years and try
to make sense out of them, you eventually realize that mantle convection is
rather indifferent to the internal temperature,' said Jun Korenaga, author of
the study and professor of geology and geophysics at Yale.
Professor Korenaga found the
degree of self-regulation expected for mantle convection and suggests that
self-regulation is unlikely for Earth-like planets.
This could narrow down the number
of planets that might be capable of hosting alien life.
'The lack of the self-regulating
mechanism has enormous implications for planetary habitability,' Professor
Korenaga said.
'Studies on planetary formation
suggest that planets like Earth form by multiple giant impacts, and the outcome
of this highly random process is known to be very diverse.'
This results in a huge variety in
internal temperatures when Earth-like planets first form.
This would not be a problem for
the evolution of planets if they were able to regulate their own temperatures.
But since they are not able to,
it means our own planet must have been within a certain temperature range when
it first formed.
'What we take for granted on this
planet, such as oceans and continents, would not exist if the internal
temperature of Earth had not been in a certain range, and this means that the
beginning of Earth's history cannot be too hot or too cold.'
THE TOP 20 PLANETS WE COULD FIND
ALIEN LIFE
Nasa's Kepler telescope has been
busy in the hunt for alien life, finding over 4,000 new planets outside our
solar system over the past three years.
Last month, a team of astronomers
has narrowed down this list to those with the most potential to have liquid
water, or even life.
They pinpointed 20 out of the
4,000 that are most likely to be like our own, and are starting to look more
closely at these candidates.
A group led by San Francisco
State University physicists searched through the list Kepler had returned to
find those most likely to support life like our own.
They found 216 Kepler planets are
located within the 'habitable zone' - an area around a star in which an
orbiting planet's surface could hold liquid water.
Of those, they list 20 that are
the best candidates to be habitable rocky planets like Earth.
These include Kepler-186 f,
Kepler-62 f, Kepler-283 c and Kepler-296 f.
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
Max Ritvo, poet who chronicled
cancer battle, dies at 25
Touching
the Floor
Max
Ritvo, 1990 - 2016
I touch my palms to the
floor
and granite rhinos surge
up my arms
and lock in my shoulders.
Water flecks on my back
and my head is shaved
by bladed cream.
But then my time in my
body is up
and it’s time for my mind:
It seeks wisdom
and the rhinos fall into a
well,
their faces falling apart—
I want to know what their
last words are
but their lips are fading
into the purple.
I put my hands into the
ground again
but rhinos come only for
the body
and never for the mind.
I used to want infinite
time with my thoughts.
Now I’d prefer to give all
my time
to a body that’s dying
from cancer.
Copyright ©
2015 by Max Ritvo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 9, 2015, by the
Academy of American Poets.
By ROBERT JABLON August 27, 2016
6:55 pm
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Max Ritvo, a
poet who chronicled his long battle with cancer in works that were both
humorous and searing, has died. He was 25.
Ritvo died Tuesday morning at his
home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, his mother, Ariella Ritvo-Slifka,
said Friday.
Ritvo was diagnosed at 16 with
Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare cancer that affects bones and soft tissue in children
and young adults.
Treatment brought about a
remission that permitted Ritvo to finish high school and attend Yale
University, where he performed in an improv comedy group. His teachers included
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Gluck.
Ritvo’s cancer returned in his
senior year, but he completed Yale and this year earned a master’s degree from
Columbia University.
Ritvo’s battle with the disease
informed his works. A June poem in The New Yorker discussed an experiment where
cells from his tumors were used in cancer drug treatment experiments with mice.
“I want my mice to be just like
me,” Ritvo wrote. “I don’t have any children. I named them all Max. First they
were Max 1, Max 2, but now they’re all just Max. No playing favorites.”
Ritvo’s first book of poetry,
“Four Reincarnations,” is scheduled to be published this fall.
In radio and podcast interviews,
Ritvo spoke about his suffering. But he rejected any idea that he was a victim
of the disease — especially a heroic one.
At their wedding last summer,
Ritvo and his wife, Victoria, banned words such as “inspirational” from the
speeches, his mother said.
“He was about love and
compassion, human and animal rights and about writing and sharing himself with
the world,” she said. “He didn’t want people to see him as an invalid.”
Ritvo saw humor not as a coping
mechanism but as an intrinsic part of dealing with his illness.
“You know, we imagine in our
hysteria that it’s disrespectful for the sadness. But when you laugh at
something horrible, you’re just illuminating a different side of it that was
already there and it’s not a deflection, it makes it deeper and makes it
realer,” he said last month in the WNYC Studios podcast “Only Human.”
Ritvo also inspired people with
his attitude, his wife said.
“Max said ‘I love you’ to
everyone. He hugged everyone. He just wanted there to be more love and
laughter,” she said.
Ritvo was writing until just days
before his death and had told his family that the end would be near when he was
no longer able to write.
The day before his death, he told
his mother and wife: “I can’t write anymore, I can’t speak, I can’t breathe…I’m
not me…You guys have to be OK with me going,” his mother said.
Earlier this month, Ritvo tweeted
a link to poem called “The Final Voicemails,” which he said was “about goin a
bit loopy under quarantine and what Death is.”
Its final lines: “Red as earth,
red as a dying berry, red as your lips, red as the last thing I saw — and
whatever next thing I will see.”
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM
Marc Riboud
Magnum photojournalist obsessed
with showing ‘life at its most intense’
By Amanda Hopkinson
Marc Riboud, who has died aged
93, was one of the generation of French photojournalists who formed the core of
the Magnum Photos agency in the immediate postwar years. His own longevity was
matched by that of his output, which ran from his first snapshots of the 1937
Paris Exhibition to international coverage of people’s lives across Asia and
Africa, Japan and the US, and into the new millennium, documenting “the grace
of everyday life, especially in sun-drenched parts of the world”.
Two images in particular have
assumed iconic lives of their own. In 1953, Riboud shot Zazou painting the
Eiffel Tower, regularly referred to by critics as balletic. The composition is
what first arrests the viewer’s gaze: a stark metal fretwork, within which
there are vertiginous glimpses of a distant Champ de Mars far below, on which
the painter’s extended limbs – even his paintbrush – form an integral part of
the geometry. Zazou’s balance is phenomenal, his attitude even more so; the
Buster Keaton hat and even his name are straight out of music hall. A feel-good
picture, it elicits a smile to follow the initial gasp. Small wonder that,
having earned Riboud his first spread in Life magazine (over the hideous
caption “Blitheful on the Eiffel”), it was recycled as a Hennessy cognac
advert.
The other much-mentioned image,
of a young US girl with a flower (1967) shows a 17-year-old confronting a line
of soldiers on an anti-war demonstration outside the Pentagon. She is meeting
their pointed bayonets with a flower extended, beseechingly, as a peace
offering. Riboud said: “I had the fleeting impression the soldiers were more
afraid of her than she of their bayonets.” The subject did not see the picture
until a decade later, in mass-circulation posters and postcards, and revealed
herself as Jan Rose Kasmir. Photographer and subject were reunited in London in
2003, when Jan joined two million others protesting against war in Iraq.
Riboud was born in
St-Genis-Laval, near Lyon (which he called “the saddest city in France”) into a
solidly bourgeois banking family, “the fifth and shyest” of seven children of
Camille and Hélène Riboud. His father’s plans for Marc to enter “a respectable
profession” were sabotaged when he gave him a Vest Pocket Kodak for his 14th
birthday. In an interview he gave me in 1990, Riboud reckoned shyness rendered
him desperate to escape his family, although he listened to the brother who
told him: “Well if you can’t talk, you’d better at least be able to see”.
At school he obtained “nul in
Latin, French and English. But I did marvellously in maths and geometry. Henri
[Cartier-Bresson] called me a born surveyor, a more polite way of saying I had
a strong visual over verbal sense.”
The two photographers met in
Paris, after Riboud had completed training as a mechanical engineer, started
work in a factory at Villeurbanne, then taken a week’s holiday “to make
photographs”, so discovering his exit route from provincial tedium. Like
Cartier-Bresson, Riboud had joined the resistance against Nazi occupation – in
his case, aged only 17, seeing active service in the Vercors region between
1943 and 1945. But it was Riboud’s compositional skills that caused
Cartier-Bresson to recommend him to the Hungarian war photographer and fellow
founder of Magnum Photos, Robert Capa. That and Riboud’s “eye for the details
of the instant”.
Riboud discussed “Henri” and
“Bob” in our interview at his Paris apartment overlooking the Luxembourg
Gardens, describing Cartier-Bresson as a “benevolent dictator”, who told him
what to read and photograph, as a means of interpreting the world. “But Capa
was pope. Henri sent me to see him and he told me I’d be good for Magnum. I
couldn’t see why. Unlike him, I had no English and no girls, and was very
timid. So I was sent to London. I returned to Paris six months later, still
without either ... I was still in London when Capa was killed [in Indochina in
1954] and my brother Jean recalled me to Paris. When I arrived, Henri announced
that photography was finished.”
The death of photography has been
announced as frequently – and inaccurately – as that of the novel. Riboud
lasted at Magnum until 1979, when he decided to work independently while
keeping his archive with the famous agency. The politics of resistance
continued to inform Riboud’s work, prompting his investigations into the two
great blocs of world communism, the USSR (where he spent three months in 1960)
and China (which he visited repeatedly over 30 years), and a documentation of
both sides in the Vietnam war. Yet Riboud claimed: “I am not either a war photographer
or a news photographer ... I have always been more sensitive to the beauty of
the world than to its violence and monsters. My obsession has been with
photographing life at its most intense, as intensely as possible.”
Relatively rare examples of his
political subjects included the trial of Klaus Barbie, former head of the
Gestapo in Lyon, for which he returned to his home city; the Watergate
hearings; the end of apartheid in South Africa; and Barack Obama’s first
presidential election campaign in the US. Riboud’s predominantly black and
white images exemplify characteristics of what is known as “humanitarian” or
“concerned” photography: documenting the lives of ordinary rather than famous
people; a focus on what happens behind the scenes rather than what is on
display; and “good geometry” (clearly visible even when a picture is viewed
upside down). Riboud played with the concept of the “decisive moment”. To him,
the photographer was “all about impatience, not patience. All about the
indecisive moment.”
Riboud continued photographing
until Alzheimer’s rendered it impossible for him to load a camera before
setting out in search of “images to capture by wandering and observing,
following my instincts. I love surprises, in life as in photography.”
Riboud is survived by his second
wife, Catherine Chaine, and their son, Théo, and daughter, Clémence; and by the
two sons, David and Alexei, of his first marriage, to Barbara Chase, which
ended in divorce.
• Marc Riboud, photographer, born
24 June 1923; died 30 August 2016
The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby by
Joseph Campbell
Originally written as a folk
song, with Herbert Hughes, figures from Irish mythology are used here to weave
a fresh, beguiling spell
Carol Rumens
The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby
Sleep, O babe, for the red
bee hums
The silent twilight’s
fall:
Aibheall from the Grey
Rock comes
To wrap the world in
thrall.
A leanbhan O, my child, my
joy,
My love and heart’s
desire,
The crickets sing you
lullaby
Beside the dying fire.
Dusk is drawn, and the
Green Man’s Thorn
Is wreathed in rings of
fog:
Siabhra sails his boat
till morn
Upon the Starry Bog.
A leanbhan O, the pale
half moon
Hath brimmed her cusp in
dew,
And weeps to hear the sad
sleep-tune
I sing, O love, to you.
Faintly sweet doth the
chapel bell
Ring o’er the valley dim:
Tearmann’s peasant-voices
swell
In fragrant evening hymn.
A leanbhan O, the low bell
rings
My little lamb to rest
And angel-dreams, till
morning sings
Its music in your breast.
Sleep, O babe, for the red
bee hums
The silent twilight’s
fall:
Aibheall from the Grey
Rock comes
To wrap the world in
thrall.
A leanbhan O, my child, my
joy,
My love and heart’s
desire,
The crickets sing you
lullaby
Beside the dying fire.
Notes:
Aibheall: (EE-val) The name of the queen of the northern fairies
leanbhan: (LYAN-uh-van) Little child, baby
Tearmann: (CHAR-uh-muhn) Sanctuary, refuge, or church land, name of village near Lough Gartan
Siabra: (SHEE-vra) a prankster class of trooping fairies, also spelled Shefro or Siofra.
Joseph Campbell (Seosamh
MacCathmhaoil) was a Belfast Catholic, born into a family of road-builders in
1879. He was a song collector before he became a poet and playwright, and he
supported the Easter Rising as an ardent Republican. He later emigrated to the
US, where he died in 1944.
The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby is
one of the most perfect of his collaborations with the composer and folk-song
arranger Herbert Hughes, although perhaps less well known than My Lagan Love.
I don’t know how much Joseph
Campbell’s work is valued in his native land; he’s certainly not as well-known
in the UK as he should be. His poems are alive, sinewy and original. I hope new
readers will agree.
Take a look at The Piper, for
example, with its many richly specific details. (Who, by the way, is the piper
celebrated in the poem? This wonderful gallery may give you some ideas – and at
least a notion of what he might have looked like, “in proper black,
whey-bearded, wan”.)
There’s a further small but
sparkling selection of Campbell’s work available on poemhunter. I was tempted
by all of them. I finally picked The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby because I
remembered owning once a much-loved recording by Scottish folk group the
Corries. I learned and sang along to the lyrics without understanding a good
part of them. It’s only since recently reading the text, with footnotes on the
Irish words and references, that I’ve cleared up some of my phonetic confusion
– and yet, at the same time, I’ve not lost the sense of skin-tingling mystery I
felt at the first encounter. The lyrics are wonderfully atmospheric. As in The
Piper, the use of proper nouns, though naming mythological characters in this
instance, brings an unforced authenticity: they are presented without a flourish,
merely as part of an intimately known if supernatural landscape. And Campbell’s
gift for the small, tellingly-placed detail is immediately apparent in the
reference to the bee’s colour. “The red bee” (a mason bee, perhaps?) is a
powerful image.
How much the poem may owe to an
original set of folk lyrics is a pertinent question. I don’t know the answer.
But it seems to me that the third stanza may be an attempt at Christianising a
pagan cosmology. It’s less successful as poetry, and is omitted from some
versions. It might suggest more than one hand at work.
Liam Guilar mounts a trenchant
and amusing argument in defence of Campbell on his blog. I don’t know if
literature teaching is the deciding factor in Campbell’s neglect: a welter of
trend-following and reputation-mongering affects the lives of the dead poets in
unpredictable ways. Campbell’s poems are certainly a lot more than footnotes,
and beyond technically competent. He stands out from the other minor writers of
his time and place, finding ways to sharpen and re-present the matter of
Ireland without falling too deep into sentimentality or tub-thumping. I hope
that, whether you come to this poem familiar with its musical setting, or are
reading it for the first time, you will share my enjoyment of Campbell’s
language, and go on to discover more of his vigorous achievement.
You can hear the poem’s musical
setting here.
THE BEAT POETS
Beat
poetry evolved during the 1940s in both New York City and on the west coast,
although San Francisco became the heart of the movement in the early 1950s. The
end of World War II left poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso questioning mainstream politics and
culture. A Brief Guide to the Beat Poets | Academy of American Poets https://www.poets.org/poetsorg
The Beat Generation Bagel Shop
That Didn’t Sell Bagels
Sticking it to the man with
bagels—or not
JUDY BERMAN
By the late 1950s, even the
newspaper reports out of San Francisco sounded like excerpts from Jack Kerouac
novels. “In a sweaty, smoky room no bigger than most living rooms, we sat elbow
to elbow, the faithful and the curious, hugging our espresso cups, nursing our
beer, sipping our wine at tiny tables set on sawdust,” Associated Press
reporter Saul Pett wrote in 1959. “The walls held signs and hand-printed notes
heralding jazz sessions and poetry readings, a big Cub Scout pennant featuring
the words, ‘Be Square,’ assorted posters and scrawled questions, commands and
legends such as: ‘Juice from a sun-kissed albatross.’ ‘Did you dig Gig?’ ‘Have
you seen the castrated angel?’ ‘Read the testament from the underground.’”
This particular testament from
the underground was a description of Co-Existence Bagel Shop in North Beach,
the Italian neighborhood that gained national attention as the home of the Beat
movement. Along withCaffè Trieste and Coffee Gallery, as well as nightspots
like The Place and The Cellar, this short-lived establishment at the corner of
Grant Avenue and Green Street became a headquarters for dissipated poets,
student intellectuals, and artsy bums. It supplied everything a Beat could
possibly need: caffeine, alcohol, chess, food. Francis J. Rigney and L. Douglas
Smith, who make a sociological study of the place in their 1961 book The Real
Bohemia, described it as “the brunch wagon for members of the community.” But
the one item that probably wasn’t on its menu?Bagels.
As eclectic as its clientele, the
Bagel Shop was a unique hybrid of stereotypical Beat coffeehouse and real
Jewish deli—one whose “oddly delicious macaroni salad” the author Jim Harrison
still remembered fondly decades later. “They had a cold counter and served
sandwiches and coffee and beer and wine,” says Brandon Loberg of San
Francisco’s Beat Museum. He could confirm that a photo exists of Bagel Shop
owner Jay Hoppe sitting at a table in the shop with The Place proprietor Leo
Krikorian, “both munching on bagels.”
It seems likely that the image was a bit of an
in-joke, though. A Chicago Daily Tribune reporter noted in 1958 that
Co-Existence “never sold a bagel in its history.” Charles Fracchia, the founder
and president emeritus of theSan Francisco Museum and Historical Society, often
visited the cafe during his mid-’50s college days. “It was always crowded, lots
of smoke,” Fracchia recalls. “Lots of whooping it up.” But he can’t remember
ever seeing a bagel served either.
That’s not to say the bagel
reference was necessarily beatnik nonsense. “The idea of the bagel, because it
was Jewish, seemed vaguely incendiary, as did the idea of co-existence,” former
US poet laureate Robert Hass told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003. Loberg
agrees that because “North Beach was Italian, it may have been seen as
subversive to put ‘bagel’ in the title.”
Like many of his Beat-era
neighbors, Hoppe essentially disappeared from the historical record when his
cafe closed, so we may never know whether the Bagel Shop’s young proprietor
intended its name to read as provocative or simply bizarre. But the place
certainly became a target of the straight world’s ire in its final years, as
the focal point of an SFPD initiative nicknamed the “beatnik patrol” and home
base of the cops’ most enthusiastic antagonist: poet Bob Kaufman.
More than just a hangout for
writers, the Bagel Shop was also a performance space that hosted open mics. “If
you wanted to read a poem, and maybe have some guy with a saxophone playing in
the background, that was all very much a part of the zeitgeist of the place,”
Fracchia recalls. And for Kaufman, any afternoon at the Bagel Shop could become
an open mic. His spontaneous readings grew so popular that fans sometimes
camped out in hopes he’d drop by.
Kaufman is a fascinating figure
too rarely mentioned among the marquee names of the Beat Generation. Born in
1925 to a black mother and a Jewish father, he was one of the few prominent
writers of color in a circle that took much of its inspiration from
African-American jazz musicians. Among Kaufman’s best-known works is “Bagel
Shop Jazz,” which describes the cafe’s patrons—male and female, black and
white, clad in turtlenecks and dark tights—as “Nightfall creatures, eating each
other / Over a noisy cup of coffee.”
It wasn’t a lack of talent that
kept Kaufman from becoming as famous as writers like Kerouac and Allen
Ginsberg. In a posthumous profile for The American Poetry Review, his younger
contemporary A. D. Winans called him “arguably the most intelligent of all the
Beat poets and writers, including Ginsberg” —who happened to be one of
Kaufman’s co-editors at the era-defining Beatitude magazine. As a radical in a
scene full of largely apolitical individualists, he simply preferred the more
democratic life of a street poet.
The beatnik patrol, led by
Officer William Bigarani —who Loberg says “saw himself as being on the
frontlines of a culture war”—gave Kaufman the opportunity to put his
anti-authoritarian ideals into action. It’s not entirely clear why the cops
devoted so much attention to Co-Existence Bagel Shop, but Loberg hypothesizes
that “it had to do with the fact that it was open during the daytime, and that
it was a very visible gathering place.” Fracchia recalls that a single vendetta
could be enough to turn the SFPD against an establishment. “The police
department, particularly in those days, was a very tight-knit operation,” he
says. “If they had some sort of dislike for a place, that place would be targeted.”
Kaufman ended up in jail so often
that the Bagel Shop put out a can to collect bail money for him. His most
notorious face-off with Bigarani happened when the patrolman spotted a poem
Kaufman had posted in the cafe’s window likening him to Adolf Hitler. As Loberg
tells it, “He’s infuriated and marches into the Bagel Shop to tear the thing
down, out of the window. As he’s doing so, he feels a warm sensation on his
leg. He looks over and Bob Kaufman has his pants unzipped and he’s urinating on
Bigarani’s leg.”
Not that Kaufman was the only
person to get arrested at the Bagel Shop. In The Streets of San Francisco, his
book on law enforcement in mid-century San Francisco, Christopher Lowen Agee
tells the story of 20-year-old Wendy Murphy, whom Bigarani arrested outside the
Bagel Shop in the wee hours of the morning. Her crime: walking around barefoot
because her sandal had broken. If the cops couldn’t catch anyone committing a
real crime, they could always fall back on a catch-all vagrancy charge. Even
Hoppe himself ended up in custody during the spring of 1960, after an incident
in which a neighborhood character known as “Mad Marie” clobbered him with a
brick.
Six months later, on October 12,
Hoppe shut down Co-Existence Bagel Shop. “I am tired of having to deal with a
sick city administration and a psychopathic police department,” he declared. “I
am tired of San Francisco and I never want to see it again.” But simple
economics may have had as much to do with the cafe’s demise as Bigarani. In his
guidebook The Beat Generation in San Francisco, Bill Morgan points out that
patrons would occupy a table for hours after purchasing a single beverage and
“the staff gave away too much potato salad.” By June 1961, the New Statesman
noticed that the space had become a “sandals-and-jewelry shop.” Now the
storefront at 1398 Grant Ave. houses a Chinese restaurant.
As it turns out, the demise of
Co-Existence coincided with the waning of what is sometimes called the San
Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Toward the end of the 1950s, the media got a hold
of Beat culture. Beatnik poseurs started flocking to North Beach and crowding
out the artists—a pattern that would repeat itself over and over in the decades
that followed, from Haight-Ashbury to Williamsburg.
It may not have survived into the
present, the way Caffè Trieste has, but Co-Existence Bagel Shop did live long
enough to inspire a similar establishment thousands of miles away. In 1959, the
AP reported that police in DC were blocking a 24-year-old “bearded beatnik”
from opening a cafe called the Coffee ‘n’ Confusion Club, “patterned somewhat
after the Co-Existence Bagel Shop.” Ultimately, the coffeehouse not only
opened, but went down in history as the place where a teenage Jim Morrison gave
his first public performance. And the funny thing is, the Coffee ‘n’ Confusion
Club really did sell bagels.
Available on Amazon.Com
And why not death rather than
living torment? To die is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself:
banish'd from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment!
Visit our Shakespeare Blog at the
address below
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
Available on Amazon.Com
HERE'S A WORD FROM
EMERSON.....................
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
Concentration is the secret of
strength in politics in war in trade in short in all the management of human
affairs.
The only prudence in life is
concentration.
I can reason down or deny
everything except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will and I cannot make
him respectable.
Let the stoics say what they
please we do not eat for the good of living but because the meat is savory and
the appetite is keen.
Available on Amazon.Com
MISH
MOSH..........................................
Fact and Fiction
Mish
Mash: noun \ˈmish-ˌmash, -ˌmäsh\ A :
hodgepodge, jumble “The painting was just a mishmash of colors and abstract shapes as
far as we could tell”. Origin Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse
masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps
reduplication of mishn to mix. First Known Use: 15th century
I'm a big big Fan of
Bukowski
MUSIC FOR THE SOUL
Benny Golson,
AND NOW, A BEATLES BREAK
DON'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD?
I DO
Moroccan Blue, Chefchaouen, Morocco
TODAY'S ALLEGED MOB GUY
Fecarotta, John: Born 1928 Murdered
Sept. 14, 1986. Fecarotta’s arrest record, which went back to 1965, included 17
arrests and two felony convictions (Burglary and armed robbery) dating back to
1942 when he was only 14-years-old. Most of his arrests were for using muscle in
collecting loans for syndicate loan sharks.
Fecarotta
Fecarotta owned a flashy Mercedes-Benz and was known to flaunt a
mistress while his wife drove around west suburban Riverside in a station
wagon. He grew up in the old Italian neighborhood near West Ohio Street and was
a member of the mob's South Side "26th Street crew," which controls
the rackets in the 1st Ward and nearby Chinatown. The 26th Street Crew--also
known as the "Chinatown Crew" or "South Side Crew"--emerged
in the 1950s and flourished through the '60s and '70s, surviving on extortion
money taken from the area's storage and trucking companies, railroad depots,
junkyards and chop shops. Vincent Inserra, who headed the organized
crime squad of the Chicago FBI office from the early 1960s to the mid-'70s said
"They were known for bombings. Not necessarily to kill people. But if they
wanted to put fear into the hearts of people, that would do it."
"When [Outfit bosses] needed someone killed, they called
people they trusted," said another former agent "They needed people
who couldn't talk on them because they had already killed people. There were
several people from the 26th Street Crew who had killed people. They were the
logical choice."
Gambling was a big cash maker for the crew and helped to establish
the crew as a pillar in the Outfits wheel of power. Headed by Frank
"Skids" Caruso from the late 1950s through the 1970s, the crew set up
illegal backroom betting parlors. They took bets on virtually anything and when
a gambler couldn’t pay his debts, they made him a juice loan, which earned them
even more cash.
When heroin was popular, the crew took its cut
of that as well, charging dealers a set fee to operate in their territory.
In the 1980s, the crew became the Old Neighborhood
Italian-American Club located 26th Street and Princeton Avenue. There, crew
bosses and enforcers would gather to drop off payments or play craps in the
back rooms. Gambler Ken Eto testified that Fecarotta supplied the
muscle that kept the deadbeats in line. A customer who routinely disrupted the
monte game was taken by car to a secret location where he was beaten by
Fecarotta with a two-by-four. Although Fecarotta was essentially
hired muscle, he was, on record anyway, a business agent and organizer for
Local 8 of the Industrial Workers Union although federal officials charged he
was a ghost employee. He lost the union job in 1982 during a federal probe of
the union.
Fecarotta was jailed in April of 1986 for refusing to answer
questions from investigators from the President's Commission on Organized Crime
in Washington DC.During the hearings Chief Judge Aubrey Robinson in U.S.
District Court ordered Fecarotta to enter George Washington Hospital after he
complained about pains in his arm. It turned out he was fine.
During the hearings, Fecarotta also acknowledged that he knew
Anthony Accardo, Joseph Aiuppa, Joseph Lombardo, Anthony Spilotro, Vincent
Solano, Joseph DiVarco, Cerone and LaPietra.
ressed to
explain how he knew so many gangsters if he himself was not a gangster, Fecarotta
explained that he grew up with these men and accidentally “Bumped into these
guys in restaurants, bowling alleys or the tracks, and then only to say hello
and talk about their families or talk about girls and play a little
cards." He said he knew gambler Ken Eto, by then a
government witness whom had already testified that Fecarotta was a made member
of the Mafia, but according to Fecarotta’s version, he knew Eto over the past
twenty five years because he worked for him as a "watchman" trying to
catch cheaters.
Asked about imprisoned mob chief Angelo LaPietra, his reputed
boss, Fecarotta said: "There is nothing to tell about him. I don't know
anything about him. Actually, he is a friend. He is not an enemy."
"Who are your enemies?" Ryan asked.
"My enemies? My wife," Fecarotta answered.
"Who else?" he was asked.
"I don't think I have too many enemies," Fecarotta said.
"If I do, I don't know them."
Fecarotta claimed he made a living as a gambler, winning up to
$25,000 a year betting on horse races. He never had a credit card, never
declared his racetrack winnings on income tax returns and paid cash for
everything, including his Mercedes.
When it became known that Fecarotta's brother, Thomas, was a
Chicago police officer, a prosecutor asked "How does he feel about your
life of gambling?"
"He never made any comment," Fecarotta replied.
According to gangster Nick Calabrese, the Outfit's enforcer in Las
Vegas, Tony Spilotro had angered his bosses by indulging in a series of
burglaries, dope deals and murders that brought unwanted federal attention. The
bosses wanted them dead. According to Calabrese, the Spilotro's were
picked up by James Marcello, considered by some to be the Boss of the Outfit in
2000 and were driven to a house in the Bensenville suburbs. Tony Spilotro
thought he was supposed to get a promotion and that Michael Spilotro was to
become a made member. When they got to the house, they were taken to the
basement for the ceremony, and Marcello, Calabrese, and four other men beat
them to death.
Gangster John Fecarotta was assigned to bury the bodies. The
problem was the bodies were found only a week after they left Michael
Spilotro’s Oak Park home on June 14, 1986. A farmer found their badly beaten
bodies in a makeshift grave in an Indiana cornfield, because the ground was
freshly overturned. Suspecting poachers had killed and then buried a deer on
the spot he turned the ground over and found the Spilotro brothers.
Oddly enough, had Fecarotta buried the bodies in an adjacent
wooded area just 30 feet from the cornfield, they might never have been
found. The most bizarre part of the murder plot was the mob's
plan to feed phony information to the FBI that Spilotro and his brother were
alive and living in Italy. They intended to plant the brothers' clothing or
other personal items in hotel rooms to indicate they had been there but had
fled hurriedly. When the brothers' bodies were found they were wearing only
underwear. The discovery of the bodies ended the plan and cost Fecarotta his
life.
Fecarotta was set up on the ruse that he and other mobsters were
going to drop off a bomb which Nick Calabrese, working on orders from his
brother and crew chief Jimmy LaPietra, (LaPietra died in 1999 of natural causes
after serving 11 years in a federal prison for skimming money from a Las Vegas
casino.) When Fecarotta climbed into the stolen Buick at about 7:00
PM that Sunday night, Nick Calabrese showed him the so-called bomb they were
going to use on the victim which was actually a bunch of flares tied to together
with tape made to look vaguely like dynamite.
As they pulled up near a bingo hall on West Belmont, just before
8:00 PM, Calabrese pulled his gun to kill Fecarotta. But Fecarotta fought him
off, struggling with Calabrese until the gun went off, wounding Calabrese in
the forearm. Fecarotta ran for his life down a nearby alley, and Nick Calabrese
bolted after him, knowing if Fecarotta escaped, it would mean his own death
sentence from the mob. Calabrese caught up with him and grabbed him
by the neck and put a final bullet into the back of his head as he stood in the
doorway of Brown's Banquets Inc., a bingo hall at 6050 W. Belmont Avenue.
Calabrese’s error was that he left behind a bloody glove, which investigators
recovered and kept. Years later, DNA tests tied Nick Calabrese to the glove and
the murder. Faced with the facts, he became a federal witness.
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
Moonlight on the Norwegian coast, 1876, Knud Baade. Norwegian
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS
EDITORS..........
THE ART OF PULP
THE ART OF WAR............
AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR
YOU...................
The Observation and
Appreciation of Architecture
Details from Coen estate in Blowing Rock North Carolina
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 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
