Enjoy

MISH MOSH..........................................

Mish Mash: noun \ˈmish-ˌmash, -ˌmäsh\ A : hodgepodge, jumble “The painting was just a mishmash of colors and abstract shapes as far as we could tell”. Origin Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn to mix. First Known Use: 15th century

 An RGB rainbow Saturn composed from raw images from the Cassini space probe taken on November 16, 2012

I'm a big big Fan of Bukowski

  

MUSIC FOR THE SOUL

John Lee Hooker

DON'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD? I DO

Moutain Chapel in Winter - Ernst Ferdinand Oehme

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

Nude looking at horizon by Hans Brasen, Danish (1849-1930)

I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM

Jesse Owens wins gold in Nazi Germany, 1936.

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

THE ART OF PULP

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

WHAT IS LOVE?

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Bertrand Russell

             

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile. Denis Waitley

             

Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law. Rabindranath Tagore

             

Love has no age, no limit; and no death. John Galsworthy

It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well. Charles Bukowski

             

Falling in love is the best way to kill your heart because then it's not yours anymore. It's laid in a coffin, waiting to be cremated. Ville Valo

             

We live in the world when we love it. Rabindranath Tagore

             

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. Henry Ward Beecher

             

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship. Amelia Earhart

             

             

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all. Soren Kierkegaard

             

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all. Rita Mae Brown

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'. Sydney J. Harris

             

There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more. Dave Grohl

             

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present. Marianne Williamson

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture. Abraham Joshua Heschel

           

You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day that these words constitute the principle of your entire life and that with the help of divine grace you will observe these solemn vows that today, before God, you formulate. Pope John Paul II

I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I am very happy to do that, I want to do that. Princess Diana

             

Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it. Al Lopez

             

 I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them. Elisabeth Kubler Ross

             

I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love. James Herriot

             

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old. George Eliot

             

From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings. Helen Hayes

             

We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. Walter Anderson

             

Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain. Billie Holiday

             

Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Jack Kingston

             

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree. Richard Dawkins

             

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal partnership. Ann Landers

             

I love mankind; it's people I can't stand. Charles M. Schulz

             

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

             

Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market. Erich Fromm

             

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness. Thomas Carlyle

I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for. W. C. Fields

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age. Jeanne Moreau

             

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it. Josh Billings

             

Love knows how to form itself. God will do his work if we do ours. Our job is to prepare ourselves for love. When we do, love finds us every time. Marianne Williamson

             

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command. Alan Watts

              

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. Thomas Carlyle

             

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you're in love. Ray Bradbury

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love. Niccolo Machiavelli

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear. Niccolo Machiavelli

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. Pablo Picasso

             

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. Vincent Van Gogh

I was half in love with her by the time we sat down.  That's the thing about girls.  Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1945

             

There is no sincerer love than the love of food. George Bernard Shaw

Those who are faithful kow only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. Plato

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others.  That is what the world calls a romance. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

A heart that loves is always young. Greek Proverb

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. Charles Bukowski

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. Helen Keller

             

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. Plato

             

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. Khalil Gibran

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Oscar Wilde

Who, being loved, is poor? Oscar Wilde

With love one can live even without happiness.  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To love another person is to see the face of God. Victor Hugo

             

Life is the flower for which love is the honey. Victor Hugo

Love is the greatest refreshment in life. Pablo Picasso

Photographs I’ve taken

Merry Go Round in Central Park (Think Salinger)

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....

Here's the dog that lives across the street from me...I just figured you might like to meet him

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

THE OLD ITALIANS DYING

Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

For years the old Italians have been dying

all over America

For years the old Italians in faded felt hats

have been sunning themselves and dying

You have seen them on the benches

in the park in Washington Square

the old Italians in their black high button shoes

the old men in their old felt fedoras

                    with stained hatbands

have been dying and dying

                    day by day

You have seen them

every day in Washington Square San Francisco

the slow bell

tolls in the morning

in the Church of Peter & Paul

in the marzipan church on the plaza

toward ten in the morning the slow bell tolls

in the towers of Peter & Paul

and the old men who are still alive

sit sunning themselves in a row

on the wood benches in the park

and watch the processions in and out

funerals in the morning

weddings in the afternoon

slow bell in the morning Fast bell at noon

In one door out the other

the old men sit there in their hats

and watch the coming & going

You have seen them

the ones who feed the pigeons

                    cutting the stale bread

with their thumbs & penknives

the ones with old pocketwatches

the old ones with gnarled hands

                    and wild eyebrows

the ones with the baggy pants

                    with both belt & suspenders

the grappa drinkers with teeth like corn

the Piemontesi the Genovesi the Siciliani

                    smelling of garlic & pepperoni

the ones who loved Mussolini

the old fascists

the ones who loved Garibaldi

the old anarchists reading L’Umanita Nova

the ones who loved Sacco & Vanzetti

They are almost all gone now

They are sitting and waiting their turn

and sunning themselves in front of the church

over the doors of which is inscribed

a phrase which would seem to be unfinished

from Dante’s Paradiso

about the glory of the One

who moves everything…

The old men are waiting

for it to be finished

for their glorious sentence on earth

                    to be finished

the slow bell tolls & tolls

the pigeons strut about

not even thinking of flying

the air too heavy with heavy tolling

The black hired hearses draw up

the black limousines with black windowshades

shielding the widows

the widows with the black long veils

who will outlive them all

You have seen them

madre de terra, madre di mare

The widows climb out of the limousines

The family mourners step out in stiff suits

The widows walk so slowly

up the steps of the cathedral

fishnet veils drawn down

leaning hard on darkcloth arms

Their faces do not fall apart

They are merely drawn apart

They are still the matriarchs

outliving everyone

in Little Italys all over America

the old dead dagos

hauled out in the morning sun

that does not mourn for anyone

One by one Year by year

they are carried out

The bell

never stops tolling

The old Italians with lapstrake faces

are hauled out of the hearses

by the paid pallbearer

in black mourning coats & dark glasses

The old dead men are hauled out

in their black coffins like small skiffs

They enter the true church

for the first time in many years

in these carved black boats

The priests scurry about

                    as if to cast off the lines

The other old men

                    still alive on the benches

watch it all with their hats on

You have seen them sitting there

waiting for the bocce ball to stop rolling

waiting for the bell

for the slow bell

                    to be finished tolling

telling the unfinished Paradiso story

as seen in an unfinished phrase

             on the face of a church

in a black boat without sails

making his final haul

*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***

*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***

The Snowdance® 10 Minute Comedy Festival is a festival of original comedies that run 10 minutes or less. Submitted scripts will be judged by the Snowdance Selection Committee. A selection of scripts will be chosen for production during the Snowdance Festival in the winter of 2017. These selections will round out a complete performance. Audiences attending Snowdance performances will have the ability to vote for the production they enjoyed the most.

***

New York Theater Workshop 2017 Fellowships

For 20 years, NYTW has honed an inclusive fellowship program for emerging theatre makers with a multiplicity of perspectives. These fellowships have taken many forms, supporting playwrights, directors, designers and administrators.

In its current iteration, the 2050 Fellowship is a yearlong residency for emerging playwrights and directors. The 2050 Fellowship provides a space for experimentation, artistic and administrative support, and mentorship. The 2050 Fellows are emerging artists who, with their unique voices, give us perspective on the world in which we live; and who challenge us all to contend with this changing world.

***

Metropolitan Playhouse, New York's OBIE Award-winning explorer of America's Theatrical Heritage, is currently accepting submissions for new plays inspired by the life and history of New York's Lower East Side.

Plays MUST pertain specifically, though not necessarily exclusively, to the East Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan. Please DO NOT submit plays that do not conform to this simple guideline. We are eager not to waste your--and our--time. Plays that do not in some way illuminate life and/or conditions in that neighborhood--past, present or future--will not be considered. The subject or theme may well pertain to other places as well, but they must be quite specifically applicable to the East Village/Lower East Side.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site athttp://www.nycplaywrights.org ***

*** FRINGE FESTIVALS ***

New York International Fringe Festival Will Skip 2017

Over the past 20 summers, the New York International Fringe Festival has shepherded 3,680 productions onto downtown stages, 193 of them this August alone. But performance spaces in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side may be seeking new tenants next year. In a move that officials hastened to say was not a precursor to its demise, the festival — popularly known as FringeNYC — is taking 2017 off.

More…

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/theater/new-york-international-fringe-festival-will-skip-2017.html

(NYCPlaywrights has never posted a NY International Fringe Festival call for submissions because it charges a submission fee.)

Web site - http://fringenyc.org

***

Edinburgh Fringe Festival

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world and takes place every August for three weeks in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city.

Every year thousands of performers take to hundreds of stages all over Edinburgh to present shows for every taste. From big names in the world of entertainment to unknown artists looking to build their careers, the festival caters for everyone and includes theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, circus, cabaret, children's shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word, exhibitions and events.

In 2016 there were 50,266 performances of 3,269 shows in 294 venues, making it the largest ever arts festival in the world.

The Fringe story dates back to 1947, when eight theatre groups turned up uninvited to perform at the (then newly formed) Edinburgh International Festival, an initiative created to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War. Not being part of the official programme of the International Festival didn’t stop these performers – they just went ahead and staged their shows on the ‘Fringe of the Festival’ anyway – coining the phrase and our name ‘(Edinburgh) Festival Fringe’.  Year on year more and more performers followed their example and in 1958 the Festival Fringe Society was created in response to the success of this growing trend.

More…

https://www.edfringe.com/about-us

+++++

Stewart Lee: the slow death of the Edinburgh Fringe

I remember my first experience of the Edinburgh Fringe through a nostalgic haze. The Fringe was the postwar utopian ideal, but with jokes, experimental theatre and a lot of fried food; anyone could perform in it if they could raise the programme entry fee, still only a modest £246 today. Anyone might get audiences and even reviews. We slept in a church hall with no running water, but in a city that, until 1995, still had a 50p public bathhouse. You couldn't get a bottle of water in Edinburgh today for 50p.

I went for the first of 25 Fringes to date in 1987 when I was 19. Wordsworth's French revolution paen, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" reflected my Fringe experience. (Except, being a student, I was rarely up at dawn, though I was technically alive.) But I will now show you how the state of Comedy in the Fringe today reflects the cultural bankruptcy of late capitalism. And I will also plug my own £15 Edinburgh show (less than half the price of Michael McIntyre, and one that will nudge me into fringe profit when offset against decades of loss), and those of my friends and family, while appearing to rail against property values, lack of social access, and the exploitation of the workers (by which I mean comedians, actors and dancers, who have never done a decent day's work in their lives).

More…

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jul/30/stewart-lee-slow-death-edinburgh-fringe

***

Hollywood Fringe Festival

The Hollywood Fringe Festival is an annual, open-access, community-derived event celebrating freedom of expression and collaboration in the performing arts community. Each June during the Hollywood Fringe, the arts infiltrate the Hollywood neighborhood: fully equipped theaters, parks, clubs, churches, restaurants and other unexpected places host hundreds of productions by local, national, and international arts companies and independent performers.

Participation in the Hollywood Fringe is completely open and uncensored. This free-for-all approach underlines the festival’s mission to be a platform for artists without the barrier of a curative body. By opening the gates to anyone with a vision, the festival is able to exhibit the most diverse and cutting-edge points-of-view the world has to offer. Additionally, by creating an environment where artists must self-produce their work, the Fringe motivates its participants to cultivate a spirit of entrepreneurialism in the arts.

More…

http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/learn

***

Minnesota Fringe Festival

There is one big thing that makes Fringe different from any other event in town: All the shows you'll see at Fringe were selected randomly.

Yep. That's right. Each year we select our lineup by placing numbered ping-pong balls into a bingo cage and pulling them out, one by one. From stage veterans to people who are brand new to theater, Minnesota Fringe is a forum for anyone with a story to tell and provides the support to make producing a show as easy as possible.

Anyone (yes, anyone) can apply to have a show in the festival. If you'd like to have a show in the 2017 festival, applications will go live in November here on our website.

More…

http://www.fringefestival.org/news/

***

Chicago Fringe Festival

Q: What is a Fringe Festival anyway?

A: A Fringe Festival can be loosely defined as a performance festival that seeks the un-tried and the weird. A movement that started in 1947 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Fringes now appear across the U.S. and all over the world. Our closest Fringes are Elgin Fringe, Minnesota Fringe, Kansas City Fringe and Indianapolis Fringe.

Q: When and where will Chicago Fringe be?

A: Chicago Fringe historically takes place Labor Day weekend and the following weekend in the Jefferson Park neighborhood.

Q: How many shows will be in the festival?

A: We currently accept 50 performance groups to the Fest each year.

Q: How much are tickets? Where do the sales go?

A: Tickets will be $10 to each performance, with some package rates available. Performers get 100% of their box office revenue, meaning they could make back their investment many times over.

Q: I hate to be a jerk, but why do we even need a Fringe? Isn’t Chicago just a big Fringe year round? Further aren’t we a saturated market that doesn’t need this?

A: We’re glad you asked. We believe that Chicago does need a Fringe and we have engineered our festival to meet the needs of our city. This festival will, above all, create a place where Chicago performance artists can interact with performers from across town and the world in a fun immersive environment. It will encourage performers and patrons alike to travel beyond their comfort zones and go someplace new. It will allow patrons to show up and in one day get to see 5 or 6 groups all within walking distance – groups that they may not have traveled to see individually throughout the year. It will allow groups struggling to get seen to catch a buzz. It will further put Chicago on the map as a, if not the, major theatrical center of the United States.

More…

http://chicagofringe.org/about-us/

***

Melbourne Fringe

Melbourne Fringe is a celebration of cultural democracy and art for everyone. By embracing diversity and a spirit of independence, we create a unique space for artistic self-expression linked to the life of our great city. We’re here to challenge perceptions and shake up the hierarchy, to be brave and unafraid, to explore the boundaries of what art is and can be. And what’s more, everyone’s invited.

That’s why Melbourne Fringe is the most adventurous, inclusive, all-encompassing multi-artform festival in Australia. Every year we feature more than 6000 artists from every discipline you can name, and a few others besides, performing 400+ events in over 160 metro and regional venues to an audience in excess of 300,000 people.

More…

https://melbournefringe.com.au/about-us/about-melbourne-fringe

***

SHENZHEN FRINGE FESTIVAL

深圳湾艺穗双周

Fringe Festival is original born in Edinburgh in 1947, which is becoming one of the biggest and most popularart events in the world. The spirit of Fringe is following the idea of open and free, concerning about the special and diversification, finding out potential of the art and bringing more imagination possibility with no boundary.

Shenzhen Fringe Festival is a "free and easy" art festival, which sets its main stage in streets and squares. It's also an attempt of cultural activities of public art in China. We're searching for a method to blend fringe arts into people's daily life, to let people see the possibility of Chinese public creativity. Fringe will definitely bring Shenzhen more surprise and energy. ge designs, shows the outstanding achievement of graphic design. With the goal to “DESIGN FOR CHINA’S FUTURE”, The judgment result will reflect interaction relationship between modern design, culture, commerce and daily life, and contribute in establishing a new value standard for design in China future.

More…

http://www.szfringe.org

***

Scranton PA Fringe Festival

The Scranton Fringe Festival is dedicated to creating a bold and engaging platform for creative and thought provoking art with minimal risk to artist and audience. Regional as well as touring artists will be welcomed to present work with no censorship placed on content or artistic expression while striving to promote Scranton as a viable and creative environment.

12093442_869117083195623_489775918_nThe Scranton Fringe Festival is held annually across four days in multiple venues throughout downtown Scranton. Theatre, music, dance, film, comedy, puppetry and every other sort of performing-arts-production you can imagine are welcomed on the fringe! The festival is kept accessible and affordable for artists (no application fees, little to no production fees) and audiences (special free programming, affordable tickets, hopper passes, etc) alike!

More…

http://www.scrantonfringe.org/about

***

United States Association of Fringe Festivals

What is Fringe?

Very generally speaking, Fringes are...

Focused on the performing arts: Theater, dance, puppetry, spoken word and the like make up the Fringe core, but festivals often may include film and visual arts elements. Fringes don't have a focus on a single discipline or genre, but are a performing-arts smörgåsbord

Uncensored: No one gets too fussy about swears or nudity but squeaky-clean content isn't marginal or discouraged, either

Easy to participate in: Ticket prices are low for audiences and production fees are low for artists. Show selection varies from festival to festival but is generally quite open to participation by the gamut of amateurs to professionals

Festivals: They last from just a few days to a few weeks and involve lots of people at multiple venues

Original: Fringes feature a huge array of original material—sometimes by design, but usually because that’s what Fringes naturally do well

Rapid-fire: Typically, tech is minimal and time is a factor at our festivals. Shows are often kept brief (Fringes most frequently have shows right around 60 minutes in length) and technical requirements kept simple (minor sets, streamlined cues, nothing elaborate)

It all started in 1947 in Edinburgh, Scotland, as an alternative festival that played concurrently with the Edinburgh International Festival. In 1948, Robert Kemp, a local journalist, gave it the name Fringe…

More…

http://fringefestivals.us

***

World Fringe

The international Fringe Festival Association set up to serve the global Fringe community, including festival staff, venues, performers & artists, agents, audiences, suppliers, media, sponsors & supporters, and wider industry professionals.

World Fringe organises and facilitates one-to-one meetings, conversation and spreading the word about existing Fringe Festivals as well as consulting with new and developing Fringes. World Fringe hosts networking events, conferences, talks and workshops on where to go and how to get involved. It offers advice on whose who, what’s on where and how it can be useful. World Fringe educates the festival sector and audiences on the importance of ‘Fringe’.

More…

http://www.worldfringe.com/about-world-fringe-3/

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You Could Own F. Scott Fitzgerald’s House

Live in the Victorian rowhouse where a career was born

By Erin Blakemore

SMITHSONIAN.COM

Got $625,000? You could own a piece of literary history. As T. Rees Shapiro reports for The Washington Post, fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald now have the chance to purchase a Minnesota rowhouse in which he wrote one of his first and most famous novels.

The novel in question was This Side of Paradise, which launched the young author into superstardom when it was published in 1920. Fitzgerald wrote his debut novel while holed up in a bedroom in his parents’ home in St. Paul, Minnesota under tense circumstances: He was drinking heavily, had broken up with his girlfriend Zelda and hoped that if he finished and sold the book, he could win her back and marry her.

Fitzgerald’s parents moved into a unit in Summit Terrace, a collection of ornate Victorian row houses, in 1918 (four years earlier, they had moved to another house in the row). The national landmark home was designed by Clarence Johnston, a prominent Minnesota architect known for constructing some of the state’s most stately mansions. The house’s Zillow listing touts its historic features, like a “dramatic 3-story staircase,” walk-in pantry, formal dining room and three fireplaces.

It was an unlikely setting for a tortured young writer, but certainly a comfy one for book writing. To write This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald cannibalized an earlier novel, The Romantic Egotist, he had written while in college. But This Side of Paradise was bigger and better. It’s the story of a young writer who loses the love of his life in a post World War I setting—a premise that was pretty similar to the situation Fitzgerald found himself in after he moved back home. But Fitzgerald wasn’t content to write a mere Mary Sue-type novel. Rather, he transformed a familiar coming-of-age story into a thoroughly modern novel of disaffected youth and postwar wealth and corruption.

Spoiler alert: Fitzgerald didn’t just publish the book; he got the girl, too. When the book sold, an impressed Zelda accepted his hand in marriage. “I hate to say this, but I don’t think I had much confidence in you at first,” she wrote in regard to the book. “It’s so nice to know that you really can do things—anything.” Her gushing praise was just the beginning. Critics loved Fitzgerald’s book, declaring it a work of “glorious spirit of abounding youth,” and he became an immediate literary superstar.

There’s no telling whether you’ll write your next bestseller in the house Fitzgerald once occupied, but it’s not that often you get a chance to live in a house of history for less than a cool million. But there’s a price to pay for living among literary fame—as Shapiro reports, the residents of the home must steel themselves for a cavalcade of curious tourists. 

TRUE CRIME BY JOHN WILLIAM TUOHY

ROGER TOUHY, CHICAGO GANGSTER, NOW IN PAPERBACK 

ROGER TOUHY, THE LAST GANGSTER

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

JFK's pardons and the mob; Prohibition, Chicago's crime cadres and the staged kidnapping of "`Jake the Barber'" Factor, "the black sheep brother of the cosmetics king, Max Factor"; lifetime sentences, attempted jail busts and the perseverance of "a rumpled private detective and an eccentric lawyer" John W. Tuohy showcases all these and more sensational and shady happenings in When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping that Never Happened. The author started investigating Touhy's 1959 murder by Capone's gang in 1975 for an undergrad assignment. He traces the frame-job whereby Touhy was accused of the kidnapping, his decades in jail, his memoirs, his retrial and release and, finally, his murder, 28 days after regaining his freedom. Sixteen pages of photos.

From Library Journal

Roger Touhy, one of the "terrible Touhys" and leader of a bootlegging racket that challenged Capone's mob in Prohibition Chicago, had a lot to answer for, but the crime that put him behind bars was, ironically, one he didn't commit: the alleged kidnapping of Jake Factor, half-brother of Max Factor and international swindler. Author Tuohy (apparently no relation), a former staff investigator for the National Center for the Study of Organized Crime, briefly traces the history of the Touhys and the Capone mob, then describes Factor's plan to have himself kidnapped, putting Touhy behind bars and keeping himself from being deported. This miscarriage of justice lasted 17 years and ended in Touhy's parole and murder by the Capone mob 28 days later. Factor was never deported. The author spent 26 years researching this story, and he can't bear to waste a word of it. Though slim, the book still seems padded, with irrelevant detail muddying the main story. Touhy is a hard man to feel sorry for, but the author does his best. Sure to be popular in the Chicago area and with the many fans of mob history, this is suitable for larger public libraries and regional collections. Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH

BOOK REVIEW

     John William Tuohy, one of the most prolific crime writers in America, has penned a tragic, but fascinating story of Roger Touhy and John Factor. It's a tale born out of poverty and violence, a story of ambition gone wrong and deception on an enormous, almost unfathomable, scale. However, this is also a story of triumph of determination to survive, of a lifelong struggle for dignity and redemption of the spirit.

     The story starts with John "Jake the Barber" Factor. The product of the turn of the century European ethnic slums of Chicago's west side, Jake's brother, Max Factor, would go on to create an international cosmetic empire.

     In 1926, Factor, grubstaked in a partnership with the great New York criminal genius, Arnold Rothstien, and Chicago's Al Capone, John Factor set up a stock scam in England that fleeced thousands of investors, including members of the royal family, out of $8 million dollars, an incredible sum of money in 1926.

     After the scam fell apart, Factor fled to France, where he formed another syndicate of con artists, who broke the bank at Monte Carlo by rigging the tables.

     Eventually, Factor fled to the safety of Capone's Chicago but the highest powers in the Empire demanded his arrest. However, Factor fought extradition all the way to the United States Supreme Court, but he had a weak case and deportation was inevitable. Just 24 hours before the court was to decide his fate, Factor paid to have himself kidnapped and his case was postponed. He reappeared in Chicago several days later, and, at the syndicates' urging, accused gangster Roger Touhy of the kidnapping.

     Roger "The Terrible" Touhy was the youngest son of an honest Chicago cop. Although born in the Valley, a teeming Irish slum, the family moved to rural Des Plains, Illinois while Roger was still a boy. Touhy's five older brothers stayed behind in the valley and soon flew under the leadership of "Terrible Tommy" O'Connor. By 1933, three of them would be shot dead in various disputes with the mob and one, Tommy, would lose the use of his legs by syndicate machine guns. Secure in the still rural suburbs of Cook County, Roger Touhy graduated as class valedictorian of his Catholic school. Afterwards, he briefly worked as an organizer for the Telegraph and Telecommunications Workers Union after being blacklisted by Western Union for his minor pro-labor activities.

     Touhy entered the Navy in the first world war and served two years, teaching Morse code to Officers at Harvard University.

     After the war, he rode the rails out west where he earned a living as a railroad telegraph operator and eventually made a small but respectable fortune as an oil well speculator.

     Returning to Chicago in 1924, Touhy married his childhood sweetheart, regrouped with his brothers and formed a partnership with a corrupt ward heeler named Matt Kolb, and, in 1925, he started a suburban bootlegging and slot machine operation in northwestern Cook County. Left out of the endless beer wars that plagued the gangs inside Chicago, Touhy's operation flourished. By 1926, his slot machine operations alone grossed over $1,000,000.00 a year, at a time when a gallon of gas cost eight cents.

     They were unusual gangsters. When the Klu Klux Klan, then at the height of its power, threatened the life of a priest who had befriended the gang, Tommy Touhy, Roger's older brother, the real "Terrible Touhy," broke into the Klan's national headquarters, stole its membership roles, and, despite an offer of $25,000 to return them, delivered the list to the priest who published the names in several Catholic newspapers the following day.

     Once, Touhy unthinkingly released several thousand gallons of putrid sour mash in to the Des Plains River one day before the city was to reenact its discovery by canoe-riding Jesuits a hundred years before. After a dressing down by the towns people Touhy spent $10,000.00 on perfume and doused the river with it, saving the day.

     They were inventive too. When the Chicago police levied a 50% protection tax on Touhy's beer, Touhy bought a fleet of Esso gasoline delivery trucks, kept the Esso logo on the vehicles, and delivered his booze to his speakeasies that way.

     In 1930, when Capone invaded the labor rackets, the union bosses, mostly Irish and completely corrupt, turned to the Touhy organization for protection. The intermittent gun battles between the Tuohy’s and the Capone mob over control of beer routes which had been fought on the empty, back roads of rural Cook County, was now brought into the city where street battles extracted an awesome toll on both sides. The Chicago Tribune estimated the casualties to be one hundred dead in less than 12 months.

     By the winter of 1933, remarkably, Touhy was winning the war in large part because joining him in the struggle against the mob was Chicago's very corrupt, newly elected mayor Anthony "Ten percent Tony" Cermak, who was as much a gangster as he was an elected official.

     Cermak threw the entire weight of his office and the whole Chicago police force behind Touhy's forces. Eventually, two of Cermak's police bodyguards arrested Frank Nitti, the syndicate's boss, and, for a price, shot him six times. Nitti lived. As a result, two months later Nitti's gunmen caught up with Cermak at a political rally in Florida.

     Using previously overlooked Secret Service reports, this book proves, for the first time, that the mob stalked Cermak and used a hardened felon to kill him. The true story behind the mob's 1933 murder of Anton Cermak, will changes histories understanding of organized crimes forever. The fascinating thing about this killing is its eerie similarity to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas thirty years later, made even more macabre by the fact that several of the names associated with the Cermak killing were later aligned with the Kennedy killing.

     For many decades, it was whispered that the mob had executed Cermak for his role in the Touhy-syndicate war of 1931-33, but there was never proof. The official story is that a loner named Giuseppe Zangara, an out-of-work, Sicilian born drifter with communist leanings, traveled to Florida in the winter of 1933 and fired several shots at President Franklin Roosevelt. He missed the President, but killed Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak instead. However, using long lost documents, Tuohy is able to prove that Zangara was a convicted felon with long ties to mob Mafia and that he very much intended to murder Anton Cermak.

     With Cermak dead, Touhy was on his own against the mob. At the same time, the United States Postal Service was closing in on his gang for pulling off the largest mail heists in US history at that time. The cash was used to fund Touhy's war with the Capone’s. Then in June of 1933, John Factor en he reappeared, Factor accused Roger Touhy of kidnapping him. After two sensational trials, Touhy was convicted of kidnapping John Factor and sentenced to 99 years in prison and Factor, after a series of complicated legal maneuvers, and using the mob's influence, was allowed to remain in the United States as a witness for the prosecution, however, he was still a wanted felon in England.

     By 1942 Roger Touhy had been in prison for nine years, his once vast fortune was gone. Roger's family was gone as well. At his request, his wife Clara had moved to Florida with their two sons in 1934. However, with the help of Touhy's remaining sister, the family retained a rumpled private detective, actually a down-and-out, a very shady and disbarred mob lawyer named Morrie Green.

     Disheveled of not, Green was a highly competent investigator and was able to piece together and prove the conspiracy that landed Touhy in jail. However, no court would hear the case, and by the fall of 1942, Touhy had exhausted every legal avenue open to him. Desperate, Touhy hatched a daring daylight breakout over the thirty foot walls of Stateville Prison. The sensational escape ended three months later in a dramatic and bloody shootout between the convicts and the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover.

     Less than three months after Touhy was captured, Fox Studios hired producer Brian Foy to churn out a mob financed docudrama film on the escape entitled, "Roger Touhy, The Last Gangster." The executive producer on the film was Johnny Roselli, the hood who later introduced Judy Campbell to Frank Sinatra. Touhy sued Fox and eventually won his case and the film was withdrawn from circulation. In 1962, Columbia pictures and John Houston tried to produce a remake of the film, but were scared off the project.

     While Touhy was on the run from prison, John Factor was convicted for m ail fraud and was sentenced and served ten years at hard labor. Factor's take from the scam was $10,000,000.00 in cash.

     Released in 1949, Factor took control of the Stardust Hotel Casino in 1955, then the largest operation on the Vegas strip. The casino's true owners, of course, were Chicago mob bosses Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Murray Humpreys and Sam Giancana. From 1955 to 1963, the length of Factor's tenure at the casino, the US Justice Department estimated that the Chicago outfit skimmed between forty-eight to 200 million dollars from the Stardust alone.

     In 1956, while Factor and the outfit were growing rich off the Stardust, Roger Touhy hired a quirky, high strung, but highly effective lawyer named Robert B. Johnstone to take his case. A brilliant legal tactician, who worked incessantly on Touhy's freedom, Robert Johnstone managed to get Touhy's case heard before federal judge John P. Barnes, a refined magistrate filled with his own eccentricities. After two years of hearings, Barnes released a 1,500-page decision on Touhy's case, finding that Touhy was railroaded to prison in a conspiracy between the mob and the state attorney's office and that John Factor had kidnapped himself as a means to avoid extradition to England.

     Released from prison in 1959, Touhy wrote his life story "The Stolen Years" with legendary Chicago crime reporter, Ray Brennan. It was Brennan, as a young cub reporter, who broke the story of John Dillenger's sensational escape from Crown Point prison, supposedly with a bar of soap whittled to look like a pistol. It was also Brennan who brought about the end of Roger Touhy's mortal enemy, "Tubbo" Gilbert, the mob owned chief investigator for the Cook County state attorney's office, and who designed the frame-up that placed Touhy behind bars.

     Factor entered a suit against Roger Touhy, his book publishers and Ray Brennan, claiming it damaged his reputation as a "leading citizen of Nevada and a philanthropist."

     The teamsters, Factor's partners in the Stardust Casino, refused to ship the book and Chicago's bookstore owners were warned by Tony Accardo, in person, not to carry the book.

     Touhy and Johnstone fought back by drawing up the papers to enter a $300,000,000 lawsuit against John Factor, mob leaders Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo and Murray Humpreys as well as former Cook County state attorney Thomas Courtney and Tubbo Gilbert, his chief investigator, for wrongful imprisonment.

     The mob couldn't allow the suit to reach court, and considering Touhy's determination, Ray Brennan's nose for a good story and Bob Johnstone's legal talents, there was no doubt the case would make it to court. If the case went to court, John Factor, the outfit's figurehead at the lucrative Stardust Casino, could easily be tied in to illegal teamster loans. At the same time, the McClellan committee was looking into the ties between the teamsters, Las Vegas and organized crime and the raid at the mob conclave in New York State had awakened the FBI and brought them into the fight. So, Touhy's lawsuit was, in effect, his death sentence.

     Twenty-five days after his release from twenty-five years in prison, Roger Touhy was gunned down on a frigid December night on his sister's front door.

     Two years after Touhy's murder, in 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered his Justice Department to look into the highly suspect dealings of the Stardust Casino. Factor was still the owner on record, but had sold his interest in the casino portion of the hotel for a mere 7 million dollars. Then, in December of that year, the INS, working with the FBI on Bobby Kennedy's orders, informed Jake Factor that he was to be deported from the United States before the end of the month. Factor would be returned to England where he was still a wanted felon as a result of his 1928 stock scam. Just 48 hours before the deportation, Factor, John Kennedy's largest single personal political contributor, was granted a full and complete Presidential pardon which allowed him to stay in the United States.

     The story hints that Factor was more than probably an informant for the Internal Revenue Service, it also investigates the murky world of Presidential pardons, the last imperial power of the Executive branch. It's a sordid tale of abuse of privilege, the mob's best friend and perhaps it is time the American people reconsider the entire notion.

     The mob wasn't finished with Factor. Right after his pardon, Factor was involved in a vague, questionable financial plot to try and bail teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa out of his seemingly endless financial problems in Florida real estate. He was also involved with a questionable stock transaction with mobster Murray Humpreys. Factor spent the remaining twenty years of his life as a benefactor to California's Black ghettos. He tried, truly, to make amends for all of the suffering he had caused in his life. He spent millions of dollars building churches, gyms, parks and low cost housing in the poverty stricken ghettos. When he died, three United States Senators, the Mayor of Los Angles and several hundred poor Black waited in the rain to pay their last respects at Jake the Barber's funeral.

Interesting Information on A Little Known Case

By Bill Emblom

Author John Tuohy, who has a similar spelling of the last name to his subject Roger, but apparently no relation, has provided us with an interesting story of northwest Chicago beer baron Roger Touhy who was in competition with Al Capone during Capone's heyday. Touhy appeared to be winning the battle since Mayor Anton Cermak was deporting a number of Capone's cronies. However, the mob hit, according to the author, on Mayor Cermak in Miami, Florida, by Giuseppe Zangara following a speech by President-elect Roosevelt, put an end to the harrassment of Capone's cronies. The author details the staged "kidnapping" of Jake "the Barber" Factor who did this to avoid being deported to England and facing a prison sentence there for stock swindling, with Touhy having his rights violated and sent to prison for 25 years for the kidnapping that never happened. Factor and other Chicago mobsters were making a lot of money with the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas when they got word that Touhy was to be parolled and planned to write his life story. The mob, not wanting this, decided Touhy had to be eliminated. Touhy was murdered by hit men in 1959, 28 days after gaining his freedom. Jake Factor had also spent time in prison in the United States for a whiskey swindle involving 300 victims in 12 states. Two days before Factor was to be deported to England to face prison for the stock swindle President Kennedy granted Factor a full Presidential Pardon after Factor's contribution to the Bay of Pigs fund. President Kennedy, the author notes, issued 472 pardons (about half questionable) more than any president before or since.

There are a number of books on Capone and the Chicago mob. This book takes a look at an overlooked beer baron from that time period, Roger Touhy. It is a very worthwhile read and one that will hold your interest.

GREAT BOOK FROM CHICAGO AND ERA

Very good book. Hard to put down

Bymistakesweremadeon

Eight long years locked up for a kidnapping that was in fact a hoax, in autumn 1942, Roger Touhy & his gang of cons busted out of Stateville, the infamous "roundhouse" prison, southwest of Chicago Illinois. On the lam 2 months he was, when J Edgar & his agents sniffed him out in a run down 6-flat tenement on the city's far north lakefront. "Terrible Roger" had celebrated Christmas morning on the outside - just like all square Johns & Janes - but by New Year's Eve, was back in the bighouse.

Touhy's arrest hideout holds special interest to me because I grew up less than a mile away from it. Though I never knew so til 1975 when his bio was included in hard-boiled crime chronicler Jay Robert Nash's, Badmen & Bloodletters, a phone book sized encyclopedia of crooks & killers. Touhy's hard scrabble charisma stood out among 200 years' worth of sociopathic Americana Nash had alphabetized, and gotten a pulphouse publisher to print up for him.

I read Nash's outlaw dictionary as a teen, and found Touhy's Prohibition era David vs Goliath battles with ultimate gangster kingpin, Al Capone quite alluring, in an anti-hero sorta way. Years later I learned Touhy had written a memoir, and reading his The Stolen Years only reinforced my image of an underdog speakeasy beer baron - slash suburban family man - outwitting the stone cold killer who masterminded the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Like most autobiographies tho, Touhy's book painted him the good guy. Just an everyday gent caught up in events, and he sold his story well. Had I been a saloonkeeper back then I could picture myself buying his sales pitch - and liking the guy too. I sure bought into his tale, which in hindsight criminal scribe Nash had too, because both writers portray Touhy - though admittedly a crook - as never "really" hurting anybody. Only doing what any down-to-earth bootlegger running a million dollar/year criminal enterprise would have.

What Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy author John Tuohy does tho is, provide a more objective version of events, balancing out Touhy's white wash ... 'er ... make that subjectively ... remembered telling of his life & times. Author Tuohy's account of gangster Touhy's account forced me - grown up now - to re-account for my own original take on the story.

As a kid back then, Touhy seemed almost a Robin Hood- ish hood - if you'll pardon a very lame pun. Forty years on tho re-considering the evidence, I think a persuasive - if not iron-clad convincing - case can be made for his conviction in the kidnapping of swindler scumbag Jake the Barber Factor. At least as far as conspiracy to do so goes, anyways. (Please excuse the crude redundancy there but Factor's stench truly was that of the dog s*** one steps in on those unfortunate occasions one does.)

Touhy's memoir painted himself as almost an innocent bystander at his own life's events. But he was a very smart & savvy guy - no dummy by a long shot. And I kinda do believe now, to not have known his own henchmen were in on Factor's ploy to stave off deportation and imprisonment, Touhy would have had to be as naive a Prohibition crime boss - and make no mistake he was one - as I was as a teenage kid reading Nash's thug-opedia,

On the other hand, the guy was the father of two sons and it's repulsive to consider he would have taken part in loathsomeness the crime of kidnapping was - even if the abducted victim was an adult and as repulsively loathsome as widows & orphans conman, Jake Factor.

This book's target audience is crime buffs no doubt, but it's an interesting read just the same; and includes anecdotes and insights I had not known of before. Unfortunately too, one that knocks a hero of mine down a peg or two - or more like ten.

Circa 1960, President Kennedy pardoned Jake the Barber, a fact that reading of almost made me puke. Then again JFK and the Chicago Mob did make for some strange bedfellowery every now & again. I'll always admire WWII US Navy commander Kennedy's astonishing (word chosen carefully) bravery following his PT boat's sinking, but him signing that document - effectively wiping Factor's s*** stain clean - as payback for campaign contributions Factor made to him, was REALLY nauseating to read.

Come to think of it tho, the terms "criminal douchedog" & "any political candidate" are pretty much interchangeable.

Anyways tho ... rest in peace Rog, & I raise a toast - of virtual bootleg ale - in your honor: "Turns out you weren't the hard-luck mug I'd thought you were, but what the hell, at least you had style." And guts to meet your inevitable end with more grace than a gangster should.

Post Note: Author Tuohy's re-examination of the evidence in the Roger Touhy case does include some heroes - guys & women - who attempted to find the truth of what did happen. Reading about people like that IS rewarding. They showed true courage - and decency - in a world reeking of corruption & deceit. So, here's to the lawyer who took on a lost cause; the private detective who dug up buried facts; and most of all, Touhy's wife & sister who stood by his side all those years.

Crime don't pay, kids

Very good organized crime book. A rather obscure gangster story which makes it fresh to read. I do not like these minimum word requirements for a review. (There, I have met my minimum)

Chicago Gangster History At It's Best

ByJ. CROSBYon

As a 4th generation Chicagoan, I just loved this book. Growing up in the 1950's and 60's I heard the name "Terrible Touhy's" mentioned many times. Roger was thought of as a great man, and seems to have been held in high esteem among the old timer Chicagoans.

That said, I thought this book to be nothing but interesting and well written. (It inspired me to find a copy of Roger's "Stolen Years" bio.) I do recommend this book to other folks interested in prohibition/depression era Chicago crime research. It is a must have for your library of Gangsters literature from that era. Chock full of information and the reader is transported back in time.

I'd like to know just what is "The Valley" area today in Chicago. I still live in the Windy City and would like to see if anything remains from the early days of the 20th century.

A good writer and a good book! I will buy some more of Mr. Tuohy's work.

Great story, great read

ByBookreaderon

A complex tale of gangsters, political kickback, mob wars and corrupt politicians told with wit and humor at a good pace. Highly recommend this book.

One of the best books I've read in a long time....

If you're into mafioso, read this! I loved it. Bought a copy for my brother to read for his birthday--good stuff.

What Makes Call-Out Culture So Toxic

Asam Ahmad

Call-out culture refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others. People can be called out for statements and actions that are sexist, racist, ableist, and the list goes on. Because call-outs tend to be public, they can enable a particularly armchair and academic brand of activism: one in which the act of calling out is seen as an end in itself.

What makes call-out culture so toxic is not necessarily its frequency so much as the nature and performance of the call-out itself. Especially in online venues like Twitter and Facebook, calling someone out isn’t just a private interaction between two individuals: it’s a public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are. Indeed, sometimes it can feel like the performance itself is more significant than the content of the call-out. This is why “calling in” has been proposed as an alternative to calling out: calling in means speaking privately with an individual who has done some wrong, in order to address the behaviour without making a spectacle of the address itself.

In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing. For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass judgment on someone’s entire being, as if there is no difference between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking down the street (who is of course also someone’s friend). Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories.

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that there is a mild totalitarian undercurrent not just in call-out culture but also in how progressive communities police and define the bounds of who’s in and who’s out. More often than not, this boundary is constructed through the use of appropriate language and terminology – a language and terminology that are forever shifting and almost impossible to keep up with. In such a context, it is impossible not to fail at least some of the time. And what happens when someone has mastered proficiency in languages of accountability and then learned to justify all of their actions by falling back on that language? How do we hold people to account who are experts at using anti-oppressive language to justify oppressive behaviour? We don’t have a word to describe this kind of perverse exercise of power, despite the fact that it occurs on an almost daily basis in progressive circles. Perhaps we could call it anti-oppressivism.

Humour often plays a role in call-out culture and by drawing attention to this I am not saying that wit has no place in undermining oppression; humour can be one of the most useful tools available to oppressed people. But when people are reduced to their identities of privilege (as white, cisgender, male, etc.) and mocked as such, it means we’re treating each other as if our individual social locations stand in for the total systems those parts of our identities represent. Individuals become synonymous with systems of oppression, and this can turn systemic analysis into moral judgment. Too often, when it comes to being called out, narrow definitions of a person’s identity count for everything.

No matter the wrong we are naming, there are ways to call people out that do not reduce individuals to agents of social advantage. There are ways of calling people out that are compassionate and creative, and that recognize the whole individual instead of viewing them simply as representations of the systems from which they benefit. Paying attention to these other contexts will mean refusing to unleash all of our very real trauma onto the psyches of those we imagine represent the systems that oppress us. Given the nature of online social networks, call-outs are not going away any time soon. But reminding ourselves of what a call-out is meant to accomplish will go a long way toward creating the kinds of substantial, material changes in people’s behaviour – and in community dynamics – that we envision and need.

Asam Ahmad is a Toronto-based writer who still has a hard time trusting words. He coordinates the It Gets Fatter Project, a body positivity group started by fat queer people of colour.

GUNS AND GLAMOUR

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

READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS

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

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

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

Amazon review: Mr. Tuohy, has out done himself with this prized piece of literary work! Since I'm a Chicagoan, born and raised for 40 years, some of them on the very same streets where some of the Outfit's associates and higher-ups lived, and after the first few pages I'm hooked. His writing style to me is very easy to digest, and his photos are spectacular, either due to it's rarity or the person being photo, alot of these Outfit bosses/hitman didn't like to be photographed, and believe me, they made sure that you knew it. To take the Chicago Outfit and write about the ups and downs the Organization went through during this 100 year time frame is an amazing feat. You get some real good stories, written without an agenda, just to get the information out to the public. A brilliant topic which was handled with care and dignity by Mr.Tuohy, as I'm finding out is the case in ALL OF HIS BOOKS, be they organized crime or based on something else. Get if a try, you'll end up buying more than the one book, betcha you can't read just one!!!

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

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

Kindle Edition

From the Inside Flap

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

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

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

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

General conclusions

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

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

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

Conclusions regarding the Kennedy assassination

The HSCA concluded in its 1979 report that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Committee further concluded that it was probable that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS THE MOON FORMED FROM MELTED BITS OF EARTH

GATHERING INFO FROM A ROCKY COLLISION COURSE

By Rebecca Boyle

Around 4.5 billion years ago, when the solar system was still in its infancy, a Mars-sized planet collided with the proto-Earth and blasted our baby planet to smithereens. Earth’s rocks did not just melt; they vaporized, the very elements in those rocks turning into gas the way boiling water turns into steam. Eventually, the remains of the original Earth cooled and settled down, condensing to once again form solid planet. The leftovers formed the moon.

That’s the latest twist in the decades-old story about how Earth’s moon came to be, and it’s based on new measurements of elements in both worlds.

The moon, our first friend, is more than a familiar fixture in the night sky; it dictates the slosh of tides, stabilizes Earth’s rotation, and might contribute to earthquakes. It is also the best place we have, other than Earth, for studying the formation of rocky worlds. Scientists are still unsure how it formed, in part because it’s hard to reconcile the moon’s chemical composition with the origin stories our computers tell.

In the 1970s, scientists proposed the moon formed from a grazing collision with a Mars-sized world. Earth’s surface would have liquified and part of it would have sloughed off. The moon coalesced from that debris and leftover pieces from the impactor, a scenario which came to be called the giant impact hypothesis. But analysis of moon rocks returned home after the Apollo missions suggested it can’t be that simple. The isotopic compositions of elements in Earth and moon rocks are the same. That would mean the Earth and the Mars-sized impactor were the same, too, and that’s very unlikely.

To explain this similarity, scientists needed to come up with a way to make the moon mostly from the Earth, and not the impactor, says Kun Wang, a geochemist at Washington University in St. Louis. He was intrigued by a new computer model that debuted this spring at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. In this model, the Mars-sized object hit Earth with such violence that the impactor and Earth’s mantle vaporized.

“Maybe the core is still solid, but the mantle, and the Mars-size planet itself, all vaporized,” Wang told Popular Science. “Earth and the Mars-size planet, after the impact, will evaporate entirely.”

When the temperature starts to decrease with time, the vapor begins to condense, forming liquid moonlet drops. The material would eventually coalesce into a disk — something like the rings of Saturn, says Robin Canup, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. The moon eventually formed from this material, and most of the rest fell back to Earth.

Wang published a new analysis of moon rocks today in Nature Geoscience, which he says supports this idea. The key is potassium, a volatile element found in abundance in both Earth and lunar rocks. Wang and his coauthor, Stein Jacobsen, examined lunar dust from several Apollo missions and counted potassium isotopes. The element K has three stable isotopes, but only two--potassium-39 and potassium-41--are abundant enough to count with enough precision, Wang says. He spent a year studying Earth rocks to fine-tune his measurements before he tried it with moon dust.

He found the lunar samples had heavier potassium signatures. Wang says this supports the idea that the moon formed from vaporized Earth rock: the heavier stuff condensed first, forming the moon. He says the isotope data can be used like a “paleo barometer” of sorts, revealing the physical conditions during the Earth-shattering event that formed the moon.

Canup says the result is a key piece of evidence that will drive new and improved moon-formation theories.

“The data is ahead of the models, which it should be. Now the burden is going to be on those of us doing models of the disk and the impacts, to argue that we can or can’t explain this new piece of data,” she says.

Six Years On, China's Jailed Nobel Laureate, Family Face a Bleak Future

AFP

Six years after winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo looks unlikely to be given the chance to 'seek medical parole' overseas like high-profile dissidents have done before him, a close associate told RFA.

Liu, 60, is unlikely to qualify for parole, because he has never admitted to committing any crime.

And since his Nobel prize was announced in 2010 to the fury of Beijing, Liu's wife Liu Xia has remained under strict house arrest and close police surveillance at the couple's home, denied contact with friends and fellow activists.

"Liu Xia still visits Liu Xiaobo regularly, once a month, but in reality, we are in a situation of stalemate," Beijing-based activist Hu Jia, a close friend of the Lius, told RFA on Friday.

Hu's own contact with Liu Xia has been severely limited since her brother Liu Hui, jailed for 11 years for "bribery" charges in 2013, was released on bail -- with strict conditions attached.

Liu Xia has been warned that her brother could go back to jail if she has any contact with the outside world, including fellow rights activists, foreign diplomats or journalists, Hu said.

Hu said he is now unable even to have a shouted conversation with Liu Xia from outside her window, because Liu Hui is effectively being held hostage to ensure Liu Xia remains silent.

"Her cutting off of ties with [fellow activists] has now become a huge obstacle to our involvement and a lot of effort we could put in on her behalf," he said.

Symbolic value of Nobel Prize

Hu said he believes Liu Xiaobo is also unlikely to accept any deals offered to him by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

"For example, if he were to go into exile overseas, he would have his freedom and security, but his ability to have any impact on Chinese society would just fade away," Hu said.

Activist Xu Qin, who works for the China Human Rights Observer group founded by detained veteran Wuhan activist Qin Yongmin, said Liu's Nobel prize still has symbolic value, however.

"The name of a Nobel laureate in itself sends a message," Xu said. "It represents a whole group of people, ordinary Chinese people."

"His prize is a symbol of the Chinese people's love of human rights," she said.

Hubei-based rights group Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch said in a recent statement that the Chinese authorities are increasingly targeting the relatives of dissidents for persecution.

Founder and spokesman Liu Feiyue said "guilt by association" is becoming more and more common as the government seeks to stamp out any hint of public opposition or dissenting opinions.

"The harassment, threatening and terrorizing of family members is a particularly evil example of human rights violations," Liu said. "It is an evil that goes further than what is humanly acceptable."

"Added to that is the fact that the authorities are using these evil tactics more and more frequently, and in more and more serious ways," he said.

Reported by Goh Fung for RFA's Cantonese service, and by Yang Fan for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

I can’t say I enjoyed my steamed burger like this guy below did. It lacked flavor and is a bloody mess, watery grease everywhere.

I ate it so you don't have to: Connecticut is weird and so are its steamed cheeseburgers

By Nick O'Malley | nomalley@masslive.com

Continuing in our series of making fun of other states' weird foods, we take a trip down to Connecticut, a weird state that named its baseball team the Yard Goats and steams its cheeseburgers.

Now, to be fair, the entire state isn't at fault here. The steamed burger trend is mostly limited to the area around Meriden, Conn., similar to how theChow Mein Sandwich oddity in Massachusetts is tethered to the Fall River area. Even within that affected region, the legacy of the steamed cheeseburger can be traced back to one unassuming location: Ted's Restaurant in Meriden.

Despite its status of the birthplace of one of the more devious forms of burger heresy in the region, Ted's is a rather unassuming enterprise, situated along a row of small residential buildings with only street parking available.

It's within this unassuming infrastructure that Ted's does something remarkable: They make a steamed cheeseburger tastes pretty darn good -- even if it is weird.

Steamed Cheeseburgers

If you've ever run into a super-high quality cheeseburger -- maybe with some Kobe beef involved -- you're probably aware there is usually a person who's goal in life it to protect that meat's sanctity and ruin it for you. In order to eat that type of burger "correctly," you'll usually be pressured into ordering it rare to medium-rare with few toppings to bring out the flavor of the meat more. It ruins the fun of burgers.

The steamed cheeseburger at Ted's is the exact opposite of that and is therefore awesome.

As for how Ted's actually steams the burgers: They load the patties and blocks of cheese in a custom steamer that cooks them through.  The burgers are really juicy and the cheese is really melty. Now, this is where disagreements start to rise.

The steaming process does that same thing with burgers that it does with everything else: removes the oils and fills the whole thing up with water. Now, for some, that is a death knell for the burger's fortune. However, with the demise of classic burger flavor comes the rise of everything else that can be done to make a cheeseburger taste good.

It's here that the burger patty itself begins to fade in a gray area -- literally, since there's no pink in the meat. But if you're smart and ordered your burger with at least cheese (I got the standard "everything"), you'll start to see how the steamed burger shines.

For some, "juicy" will translate into "watery." However, that's not the point. What makes the burger tick isn't the patty itself, it's the other components -- namely the cheese.

Oh, that cheese. It comes in a big, goopy mess and however you want it. Rather than placing a slice of cheese on top of the burger like the rest of the world, Ted's pops in a 2 oz. block of cheddar into the steamer along with the patties. This results in a beautiful golden cascade of cheese that droops down the side and encompasses the patty and some of the bun in a cheddar sarcophagus that would house only the greatest of Egypt's burger pharaohs.

You can get the steamed cheesevalanche on a burger, on a steamed chicken sandwich (also a thing) or atop Ted's home fries, cooked up right on the skillet next to the burgers.

That, combined by an excellent supporting cast of bun and toppings, results in a burger that absolutely works, despite the weirdness of the steam.

For a look at the steaming process, the Phantom Gourmet had a pretty good feature of the restaurant and how they actually go about steaming the burgers:

With that said, I cannot recommend ordering a plain hamburger at Ted's. To be fair, I wouldn't recommend doing that anywhere. Put stuff on your burger. It's the way George Washington intended it to be when he invented it -- or something.

So what do they taste like?

When I was in Boy Scouts early on, we were given license to choose what we'd do for meals on cooking trips. And seeing as how we were mostly 13-year-olds who'd hardly done more than cook a Hot Pocket, this resulted in us thinking that we could totally pull off tacos. The nuanced cooking process we utilized involved taking a pound of hamburger meat and putting it on a square skillet that could hardly fit it, forcing the liquid to leak out the side and leave a bear-luring trail of meat juice on the ground. We then took that meat, unseasoned, and tried to make tacos with it.

This is what the meat in a steamed cheeseburger tastes like but it doesn't matter.

The first bite I took of the steamed cheeseburger with "everything" (lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, salt & pepper, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise) was met with a resounding spill of steamy meat juice. The burger comes hot, it's not messing around with the moisture inside.

However, at no point did the burger, situated on a hearty Vienna roll, ever come close to getting overly sloppy from the juices.

Once I steeled myself against the burger's juicy advances, I got my first bite and was met by a joyous revelry of the cheese and the condiments and bun and even that burger texture. It doesn't taste like the sort of $10 burger you'd get at Local Burger or Plan B. But even so, it plays in a harmonious burger symphony, only with the secondary characters building to a resounding crescendo in your mouth while the patty simply lays the foundation of the song.

Steamed Chicken Sandwich - Ted's has some other items on the menu, including some steamed chicken sandwiches. I tried the "California Dreamin" sandwich with bacon and garlic mayo. As expected, it wasn't the most flavorful chicken but the overall sandwich has plenty of flavor, especially with the bacon involved.

Loaded home fries - Ted's doesn't have french fries but they do serve up orders of griddle-cooked home fries that are a nice mix up from the norm. I got mine loaded with an order cheese magma and bacon.

Afterglow Rating

For this trip, I met up with former MassLive producer and Connecticut resident Leeanne Griffin. As loathe as I am to admit it, I had to say I was wrong to bash the steamed cheeseburger for so long.

I was the Squidward to her Spongebob:

And fortunately, unlike Krabby Patties, steamed cheeseburgers don't go straight to your thighs.  Not as much, at least.

The Final Word

The steamed cheeseburger at Ted's Restaurant is a great cheeseburger. Now for some, the quality of the patty and the burger, in general, go hand in hand but when talking about a cheeseburger as a concept whose toppings and condiments cater to certain tastes, the steamed cheeseburger is good burger -- even if it is weird.

________________________________________

"I ate it so you don't have to" is a regular food column looking at off-beat eats, both good and bad. It runs Thursday at noon-ish.

The Quotable Emerson

Life lessons from

 the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson

On evolution

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

  

On economy and economics

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

On education

I pay the schoolmaster but it is the school boys who educate my son.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education but the means of education.

On egotism

The pest of society are the egotist they are dull and bright sacred and profane course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.

On eloquence

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

On empire

An empire is an immense egotism.

On energy

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile and coal carries coal by rail and by boat to make Canada as warm as Calcutta and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

On enthusiasm

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.

  

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

On envy

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

  

On equality

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today and it will appear again tomorrow.

On exaggeration

There is no One who does not exaggerate!

'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

On example

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable Only in our belief in such society.

On excellence

There is always a best way of doing everything.

On exercise

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance plain clothes old shoes an eye for nature good humor vast curiosity good speech good silence and nothing too much.

  Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

On expectation

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

On experience

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

  

The more experiments you make the better.

On extra mile

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

On eyes

The eye is easily frightened.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

On faces

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history and his wants.

On facts

 If a man will kick a fact out of the window when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation and on the other two morals. The game of thought is on the appearance of One of these two sides to find the other; given the upper to find the underside.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment an endless seeker with no past at my back.

On faith

Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

On fame

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

On familiarity

The hues of the opal the light of the diamond are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

On farming and farmers

The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.

On fate

Whatever limits us we call fate.

If you believe in fate believe in it at least for your good.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

On faults

A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them so will other men.

On fear

Fear defeats more people than any other One thing in the world.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

Do the thing we fear and the death of fear is certain.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

On finance

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

  

On flowers

Earth laughs in flowers.

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

On fortune

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.

On freedom

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life if freedom fail?

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves as most men are and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence or the statute right to vote by those who have never dared to think or to act.

On friends and friendship

Go oft to the house of thy friend for weeds choke the unused path.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

We talk of choosing our friends but friends are self-elected

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare And he who has One enemy will meet him everywhere.

Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to One when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

A day for toil an hour for sport but for a friend is life too short.

The Only way to have a friend is to be one.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them but I seldom use them.

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

On funerals

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

On generosity

It is always so pleasant to be generous though very vexatious to pay debts.

  

On genius

Only an inventor knows how to borrow and every man is or should be an inventor.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

To believe your own thought to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.

When Nature has work to be done she creates a genius to do it.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Coffee is good for talent but genius wants prayer.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

On gentlemen

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman -- repose in energy.

On gifts

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

On goals

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

On God

'Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

The dice of God are always loaded.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

On evil

Them meaning of good and bad of better and worse is simply helping or hurting.

On goodness

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

On government

The less government we have the better.

On gratitude

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends the old and new.

On greatness

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Not he is great who can alter matter but he who can alter my state of mind.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

A great man stands On God. A small man on a great man.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force that thoughts rule the world.

He is great who is what he is from nature and who never reminds us of others.

 On guests

My evening visitors if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.

On heaven

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

On happiness

To fill the hour -- that is happiness.

I look on that man as happy who when there is question of success looks into his work for a reply.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some On yourself.

On health

Health is the condition of wisdom and the sign is cheerfulness -- an open and noble temper.

Give me health and a day and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

On heroes and heroism

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great abide by yourself and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common nor the common the heroic.

On heroes and heroism

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is braver five minutes longer.

Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right.

On history and historians

Our best history is still poetry.

On honesty

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

On honor

The louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spo0ns.

On humankind

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilizati0n.

On humor

There is this benefit in brag that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out and hold him to it.

On hypocrisy

At the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins.

On Illusion

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

On ideas

We are pris0ners of ideas.

It is a less0n which all history teaches wise men to put trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.

On idleness

There is no prosperity trade art city or great material wealth of any kind but if you trace it home you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

That man is idle who can do something better.

   

On imagination

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; Only the precursor of the reason.

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.

We live by our imagination our admiration s and our sentiments.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

On imitation

Imitation is suicide.

On immortality

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come too such as are fit for it and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

On impossibility

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

On individuality

Our expenses are all for conformity.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

  

On influence

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

  

 On inheritance

Of course money will do after its kind and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

On inspiration

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost by virtue or by vice by friend or by fiend by prayer or by wine.

On instinct

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.

On institutions

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

On integrity

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.

On intelligence and intellectuals

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks he is free.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

If a man's eye is On the Eternal his intellect will grow.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

On intervention

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.

On intuition

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide the huge world will come round to him.

On invention and inventor

Man is a shrewd inventor and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron wood and leather to some required function in the work of the world.

  

On kindness

You cannot do a kindness too soon for you never know how soon it will be too late.

On kings

If you shoot at a king you must kill him.

On knowledge

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools not for the college; for boys not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Knowledge is the only elegance.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

On language

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

On life

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining but they also make them artificial.

Cities give us collision. 'Tis said London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

The city is recruited from the country.

 

On love

 A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.

On language

Language is the archives of history.

  

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

On law and lawyers

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

  

On law and lawyers

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency and qualifies all his qualifications but who throws himself On your part so heartily that he can get you out of a scrape.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

On leadership

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

The measure of a great leader is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

The first thing a great person does is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

We are reformers in the spring and summer but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning and conservers at night.

On learning

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him and in that I am his pupil.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

The years teach us much the days never knew.

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale their feet are cold their heads are hot the night is without sleep the day a fear of interruption --pallor squalor hunger and egotism.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

On libraries

A man's library is a sort of harem.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes and your ears and your curiosity and turn you inside out or outside in.

Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero which Locke which Bacon have given forgetful that Cicero Locke and Bacon were Only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. Hence instead of Man Thinking we have the book-worm.

On lies and lying

Every violation of truth is not Only a sort of suicide in the liar but is a stab at the health of human society.

On life

The life of man is the true romance which when it is valiantly conduced will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

If we live truly we shall see truly.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Life too near paralyses art.

Like bees they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Live let live and help live

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

It is not length of life but depth of life.

On light

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

  

On literature

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

On loneliness

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

On love

All mankind loves a lover.

The power of love as the basis of a State has never been tried.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

  

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

On luck

There is no chance and no anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

M

On machinery

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge and every creature civil or savage or brute has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

On manners

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Manners are the happy way of doing things; each Once a stroke of genius or of love --now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish with which the routine of life is washed and its details adorned. If they are superficial so are the dewdrops which give such depth to the morning meadows.

Manners require time and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture On the friezes of the Parthenon and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

On marriage

Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged from the beginning of the world that such as are in the institution wish to get out and such as are out wish to get in?

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to One such as he!

On art

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

  

On masses

The masses have no habit of self- reliance or original action.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude lame unmade pernicious in their demands and influence and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them but to tame drill divide and break them up and draw individuals out of them.

On men

Men are what their mothers made them.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

On women

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

On mentors

My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols it is through a transfer of idolatry.

On mind

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

 We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

On minorities

Shall we judge a country by the majority or by the minority? By the minority surely.

All history is a record of the power of minorities and of minorities of One.

On mobs

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

On money

The world is his who has money to go over it.

Money often costs too much.

Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. It is so much warmth so much bread.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune and when you have it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

Money which represents the prose of life and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology is in its effects and laws as beautiful as roses.

On morality

The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.

On motivation

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

On murder

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.

On music

Music causes us to think eloquently.

On nature

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

A man is related to all nature.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of hidden stuff.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps and is Nature.

On nature

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

Nature... She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea and her nay nay

On necessity

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

By necessity by proclivity and by delight we all . In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

Necessity does everything well.

We do what we must and call it by the best names.

On nicknames

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

O

On obedience

The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

On obstacles

As long as a man stands in his own way everything seems to be in his way.

On opinions

Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

The Only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.

On opportunity

Be an opener of doors.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face in every fair sky in every fair flower and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

If a man can write a better book preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor though he build his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.

  

Every wall is a door.

  

On opposites

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

On parents and parenting

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past?

On power

The education of the will is the object of our existence.

On passion

Passion though a bad regulator is a powerful spring.

On patience

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

On peace

Peace cannot be achieved through violence it can only be attained through understanding.

Peace has its victories but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing but the triumph of principles.

On people

The people are to be taken in small doses.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own and such as are good of their kind; that is he seeks other men and the rest.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time in history men are born a whole age too soon.

On performance

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature to make water run up hill to twist a rope of sand.

On perseverance

By persisting in your path though you forfeit the little you gain the great.

On persuasion

That which we do not believe we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

 

On philanthropists

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

On philosophers and philosophy

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

On plagiarism

Genius Borrows nobly.

On planning

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

Few people have any next they live from hand to mouth without a plan and are always at the end of their line.

On pleasure

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

On poetry and poets

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was Once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

On politics

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

On population

 If government knew how I should like to see it check not multiply the population. When it reaches its true law of action every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

On possessions

Some men are born to own and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.

On possibilities

We have more than we use.

The power which resides in man is new in nature and none but he knows what that is which he can do nor does he know until he has tried.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.

On poverty and the poor

Poverty consists in feeling poor.

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

The creation of a thousand forest in one acorn.

On power

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

  

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

A good indignation brings out all One's powers.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing had not the power.

Wherever there is power there is age.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

  

There is no knowledge that is not power.

On praise

When I was praised I lost my time for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of and that day I made nothing new.

Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.

On preachers and preaching

Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.

The good rain like a bad preacher does not know when to leave off.

On present

Today is a king in disguise.

Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

Finish each day before you begin the next and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

On progress

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

 

On promises

All promise outruns performance.

On property

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

     

If a man owns land the land owns him.

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness right reasoning promptness and patience in the players.

On purpose

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose...

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

On pursuit

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness whether it be to make baskets or broadswords or canals or statues or songs.

On quality

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees they must put their lives into the sting they give.

On quotations

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself is to one.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first r of it. Many will read the book before One thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this that line will be d east and west.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes because I perceive that we have heard the same truth but they have heard it better.

  

On radicals

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive Only out of hatred and selfishness.

On reality

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

On reform

Every reform was Once a private opinion and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

On rejection

 Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit and urge us to new and unattempted performances.

 On religion

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

On respectability

Men are respectable only as they respect.

On riches

Man was born to be rich or grow rich by use of his faculties by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness right reasoning promptness and patience in the players.

On risk

I dip my pen in the blackest ink because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

On rumors

We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath past and to come.

On recognition

The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.

On sympathy

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere and in it we unfold easily and well.

On safety

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

On scholars and scholarship

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

The office of the scholar is to cheer to raise and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow unhonored and unpaid task of observation. He is the world's eye.

On science

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic by which temples cities and men were swallowed up and all trace of them gone. We are coming On the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

Do what we can summer will have its flies.

On sea

The sea washing the equator and the poles offers its perilous aid and the power and empire that follow it... Beware of me it says but if you can hold me I am the key to all the lands.

On security

No One has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.

  

Nothing is secure but life transition the energizing spirit.

On self-esteem

Whatever games are played with us we must play no games with ourselves.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

It is easy to live for others everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

On self-expression

Insist On yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have0Only an extemporaneous half possession.

On self-improvement

The never-ending task of self-improvement.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet all honors crown all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held On his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.

On self-reliance

This gives force to the strong -- that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

No One can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators but names and customs.

On self-respect

Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy a bastard or an interloper.

  

On sacrifice

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

On self-trust

Self-trust is the first secret to success.

  

On time

Society is infested by persons who seeing that the sentiments please counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists--talkers who mistake the description for the thing saying for having.

On service

He is great who confers the most benefits.

No man can help another without helping himself.

On silence

Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

On skepticism

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

On sky

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

On slavery

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

 On society

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

Society is a hospital of incurables.

 Society always consists in the greatest part of young and foolish persons.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators but names and customs.

Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character and reveals it by hiding.

On state

The State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen.

On strength

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

On stupidity

The key to the age may be this or that or the other as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is -- Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men at all times and even in heroes in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity custom and fear.

On success

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

If man has good corn or wood or boards or pigs to sell or can make better chairs or knives crucibles or church organs than anybody else you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house though it be in the woods.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat grind paint and work like a digger On the railroad all day and every day.

  

On snow

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky arrives the snow.

  

On sailing

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

On talent

Every man has his own vocation talent is the call.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

On talkativeness

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

On taste

A man is known by the books he reads by the company he keeps by the praise he gives by his dress by his tastes by his distastes by the stories he tells by his gait by the notion of his eye by the look of his house of his chamber; for nothing On earth is solitary but everything hath affinities infinite.

On taxes and taxation

Every advantage has its tax.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

On teachers

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

On temper

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

On temptation

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

On thoughts and thinking

What your heart thinks is great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

If a man sits down to think he is immediately asked if has a headache.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

Some thoughts always find us young and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look he has a helm which he obeys which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can Only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

There is no thought in any mind but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

Thought makes everything fit for use.

To think is to act.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

A man's what he thinks about all day long

We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker On this planet.

What is the hardest thing in the world? To think.

On time

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

This time like all times is a very good One if we but know what to do with it.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

The surest poison is time.

So much of our time is spent in preparation so much in routine and so much in retrospect that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

On trade

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish huckstering Trade.

We rail at trade but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America and destroyed feudalism and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

On translation

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable -- any real insight or broad human sentiment.

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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

http://www.facebook.com/FosterCareNews

Aging out of the system

http://agingoutofthesystem.blogspot.com/

Murder, Death and Abuse in the Foster Care system

http://murderdeathandabuseinfostercare.blogspot.com/

Angel and Saints in the Foster Care System

http://angelsandsaintsinthefostercare.blogspot.com/

The Foster Children’s Blogs

http://fosterchildrensblog.blogspot.com/

Foster Care Legislation

http://fostercarelegislation.blogspot.com/

The Foster Children’s Bill of Right

http://thefosterchildrensbillofrights.blogspot.com/

Foster Kids own Story

http://fosterkidsownstory.blogspot.com/

The Adventures of Foster Kid.

http://theadventuresoffosterkid.blogspot.com/

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

http://rfkinhisownwords.blogspot.com/

The 1980s were fun

http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/

The 1990s. The last decade.

http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/

ORGANIZED CRIME

The Russian Mafia

http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/

The American Jewish Gangster

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

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

The Quotable Machiavelli

Paperback 36 pages

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

The Quotable Greeks

Paperback 230 pages

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

The Quotabe Oscar Wilde

Paperback 24 pages

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

The Quotable Helen Keller

Paperback 66 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby

The Art of War: Sun Tzu

Paperback 60 pages

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

The Quotable Shakespeare

Paperback 54 pages

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

The Quotable Gorucho Marx

Paperback 46 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander