There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
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
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set
lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored
porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the
diminished wind.—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
The Coming Storm”
A Coming Storm by Sanford White, 1863
This painting of the banks of Lake George by Sanford Gifford was
first owned by Edwin Booth, the brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. And it
so inspired poet Herman Melville that he wrote a poem about it.
By Herman Melville
ALL feeling hearts must feel for him
Who felt this picture. Presage dim--
Dim inklings from the shadowy sphere
Fixed him and fascinated here.
demon-cloud like the mountain one
Burst on a spirit as mild
As this urned lake, the home of shades.
But Shakespeare’s pensive child
Never the lines had lightly scanned,
Steeped in fable, steeped in fate;
The Hamlet in his heart was ‘ware,
Such hearts can antedate.
No utter surprise can come to him
DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
“Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas,” 1963, by Edward Ruscha
Isaac Newton on Atheism
“Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had
many professors. … Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures
are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the
body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent
juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all
of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them?
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE …………
Uxorial \uk-SOR-ee-ul\ of, relating to, or characteristic of a wife. With help from -ial, -ious, and -icide, the Latin word uxor, meaning "wife," has given us the English words uxorial, uxorious (meaning "excessively fond of or submissive to a wife"), and uxoricide ("murder of a wife by her husband" or "a wife murderer"). Maritus means "husband" in Latin, so marital can mean "of or relating to a husband and his role in marriage" (although maritus also means "married," and the "of or relating to marriage or the married state" sense of marital is far more common). And while mariticide is "spouse killing," it can also be specifically "husband-killing."
Annus mirabilis \ann-us-muh-RAH-buh-lus\ : a remarkable or notable year
To British poet John Dryden, the
"year of wonders" was 1666. That was the year of a great British
naval victory over the Dutch, as well as the date of the great London fire.
When he titled his 1667 poetic review of 1666 and its events Annus Mirabilis,
Dryden became one of the first writers to use that Latinate phrase in an
otherwise English context. Annus mirabilis is a direct translation from New
Latin, the form of Latin that has been used since the end of the medieval
period (especially for scientific descriptions and classification). The phrase
is not extremely common, but it is used by writers and historians to denote any
particularly remarkable year.
Megrim (MEE-grim) 1. (In plural, megrims) Low spirits. 2. Whim. 3. Migraine. From misreading of in as m in the word migraine. From French migraine, from Latin hemicrania (pain in one side of the head), from Greek hemi- (half) + kranion (skull). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ker- (horn or head), which also gave us unicorn, horn, hornet, rhinoceros, reindeer, carrot, carat, and cerebrate. Earliest documented use: 1440.
THE ART AND BEAUTY OF BALLET
I'm a big big Fan of Bukowski
I have gotten so used to melancholia
that
I greet it like an old
friend.
Charles Bukowsk
The Hypocritical Peace of Father Daniel Berrigan.
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous. Thomas Merton
The Rev. Daniel J. Berrigan, Jesuit priest, poet and war protester has died at age 94. A product of the 1960s, Berrigan spent a life speaking out about what he saw as the interconnection between America’s racism and poverty, militarism and capitalist greed that were all due to an unjust society.
In his view, America was always wrong…….about everything…..a slanted view he kept till the end of his life, telling The Nation in 2008 “This is the worst time of my long life. I have never had such meager expectations of the system.”
Substitute the word meager for what he truly meant, America. For him this was not the land of opportunity although America had offered Berrigan every opportunity one could dream of including the role of media darling and a bit part in a major motion picture.
For those of you who are too young to have heard of the Berrigan Brothers or for those of you have forgotten about them, among their many stunts was the break-in to a federal office y force and burning of Selective Service draft records in Catonsville, Md.
Men of large egos, the Berrigan Brothers notified the press in advance and explained their criminal actions away as acts of civil disobedience….and then they ran away and hid. He liked to call himself “a fugitive from in justice”…but where was the injustice?
They were tracked down and arrested, at a tremendous cost to the American taxpayers and then used the American judicial system that they decried as unfair and tilted, for a platform to preach their anti-war message. How many ghetto kids were allowed the same space in their cases before the court to use the system as a platform for anything?
They admitted that they willfully destroyed government property and then spent years on appeals to stay out of prison for what they had done. And then, when their appeals had run out…remember they promoted the fact that they had committed their crimes….they ran away rather than face the consequences for what they had done.
They said that they didn’t buy into the lefts argument that there was a “moral necessity of joining illegal action to legal consequences.” But their actions said otherwise.
While in prison, instead of examining the dubious righteousness of his actions Daniel Berrigan used his criminal behavior to promote his image. On the taxpayers dime he wrote a one act play “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” a one-act play in free verse drawn directly from the court transcripts, and found the time and leisure to pen “Prison Poems,”
When not living off of the government he lived off of the Catholic Church but yet, professionally, as a priest, he was a time consuming trouble maker, a malcontent who had to be closely supervised and moved from one position to the next with regular frequency.
Unlike most people in the world, Berrigan could afford to travel and after his release from Danbury prison he opted to travel to the Middle East where he determined that it was Israel who was the bad guy in that never ending mess and accused the only democracy in the area of militarism and the domestic repressions of “old-fashioned theological anti-Semitism.” And he was correct although I would have been more specific, Berrigan’s charges were part and parcel of my beloved churches old fashioned Roman Catholic anti-Semitism.
The evil empires and governments of his day and the mass genocides they oversaw…..North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Castro, Red China, Pol Pot….Divini Redemptoris….. went unscathed by Daniel Berrigan tongue. No, Berrigan’s scoldings were one sided and reserved for this United States.
Never once did Berrigan stand up against the repression and brutality of the Communist dictatorships in the world. He chose instead to tear down the first world democracies first. He took a pacifists stance regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but never spoke against the terrorist who murdered thousands on September 11th.
He was seen all over Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park supporting the brainless souls of the Occupy Wall Street protest but when Priests were accused, correctly, of sexually abusing thousands of children over a series of decades, Berrigan’s big mouth was silent. Father Berrigan, it seems, knew who was buttering his bread and he allowed that to silence his endless, endless, endless call for justice in America.
The art and joy of cinematography
No Country For Old Men (2007, USA)
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
Roger
Ebert
The movie opens with the flat, confiding voice
of Tommy Lee Jones. He describes a teenage killer he once sent to the chair.
The boy had killed his 14-year-old girlfriend. The papers described it as a
crime of passion, "but he tolt me there weren't nothin' passionate about
it. Said he'd been fixin' to kill someone for as long as he could remember.
Said if I let him out of there, he'd kill somebody again. Said he was goin' to
hell. Reckoned he'd be there in about 15 minutes."
These
words sounded verbatim to me from No Country for Old Men, the novel by Cormac
McCarthy, but I find they are not quite. And their impact has been improved
upon in the delivery. When I get the DVD of this film, I will listen to that
stretch of narration several times; Jones delivers it with a vocal precision
and contained emotion that is extraordinary, and it sets up the entire film,
which regards a completely evil man with wonderment, as if astonished that that
such a merciless creature could exist.
The man
is named Anton Chigurh. No, I don't know how his last name is pronounced. Like
many of the words McCarthy uses, particularly in his masterpiece Suttree, I
think it is employed like an architectural detail: The point is not how it
sounds or what it means, but the brushstroke it adds to the sentence. Chigurh
(Javier Bardem) is a tall, slouching man with lank, black hair and a terrifying
smile, who travels through Texas carrying a tank of compressed air and killing
people with a cattle stungun. It propels a cylinder into their heads and whips
it back again.
Chigurh
is one strand in the twisted plot. Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff played by Jones, is
another. The third major player is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a poor man who
lives with his wife in a house trailer, and one day, while hunting, comes
across a drug deal gone wrong in the desert. Vehicles range in a circle like an
old wagon train. Almost everyone on the scene is dead. They even shot the dog.
In the back of one pickup are neatly stacked bags of drugs. Llewelyn realizes
one thing is missing: the money. He finds it in a briefcase next to a man who
made it as far as a shade tree before dying.
The plot
will involve Moss attempting to make this $2 million his own, Chigurh trying to
take it away from him and Sheriff Bell trying to interrupt Chigurh's ruthless
murder trail. We will also meet Moss' childlike wife, Carla Jean (Kelly
MacDonald); a cocky bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson); the
businessman (Stephen Root) who hires Carson to track the money after investing
in the drug deal, and a series of hotel and store clerks who are unlucky enough
to meet Chigurh.
"No
Country for Old Men" is as good a film as the Coen brothers, Joel and
Ethan, have ever made, and they made "Fargo." It involves elements of
the thriller and the chase but is essentially a character study, an examination
of how its people meet and deal with a man so bad, cruel and unfeeling that
there is simply no comprehending him. Chigurh is so evil, he is almost funny
sometimes. "He has his principles," says the bounty hunter, who has
knowledge of him.
Consider
another scene in which the dialogue is as good as any you will hear this year.
Chigurh enters a rundown gas station in the middle of wilderness and begins to
play a word game with the old man (Gene Jones) behind the cash register, who
becomes very nervous. It is clear they are talking about whether Chigurh will
kill him. Chigurh has by no means made up his mind. Without explaining why, he
asks the man to call the flip of a coin. Listen to what they say, how they say
it, how they imply the stakes. Listen to their timing. You want to applaud the
writing, which comes from the Coen brothers, out of McCarthy.
The $2
million turns out to be easier to obtain than to keep. Moss tries hiding in
obscure hotels. Scenes are meticulously constructed in which each man knows the
other is nearby. Moss can run but he can't hide. Chigurh always tracks him
down. He shadows him like his doom, never hurrying, always moving at the same
measured pace, like a pursuer in a nightmare.
This
movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices,
immoral certainties, human nature and fate. It is also, in the photography by
Roger Deakins, the editing by the Coens and the music by Carter Burwell,
startlingly beautiful, stark and lonely. As McCarthy does with the Judge, the
hairless exterminator in his "Blood Meridian" (Ridley Scott's next
film), and as in his "Suttree," especially in the scene where the
riverbank caves in, the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings
are in the face of implacable injustice. The movie also loves some of its
characters, and pities them, and has an ear for dialog not as it is spoken but
as it is dreamed.
Many of
the scenes in "No Country for Old Men" are so flawlessly constructed
that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction
drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was
"Fargo." To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another.
MISH MOSH..........................................
Mish
Mash: noun \ˈmish-ËŒmash, -ËŒmäsh\ A : hodgepodge, jumble “The painting was just a mishmash of colors
and abstract shapes as far as we could tell”. Origin
Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps
reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn
to mix. First Known Use: 15th century
THE ART OF WAR............
AND NOW, A BEATLES BREAK
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** TESTIMONIAL ***
Thanks to Andrew Heinze for allowing us to share his recent email comment:
“Since my first submission to a competition in 2010, almost every production, award and honor I’ve won started with a listing from NYC Playwrights. Keep on keepin’ on, NYC Playwrights, and thank you!"
You can learn more about Andrew and his work at andrewheinze.com
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
VOW KEEPERS
Written by David Valdes Greenwood
Directed by Dev Bondarin
June 6, 7PM
IATI Theater, 64 E. 4th St, NY NY
“Make a rule, break it. Offer a vow, twist it to bits. It’s not just the old in-out that cuts." London and Charlie awaken on their wedding day to find a pair of time travelers who claim they've come to stop the couple. With the clock ticking in this dark comedy that plays like Dr. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the young lovers have to re-imagine what marriage and commitment means in the face of the unexpected.
Tickets
This Reading is free of charge–your kind donation is accepted. The first glass of that red elixir of life–wine–is on us. All proceeds ensure that we continue to support the genesis of theater: the playwright! Seating is limited–RSVP by clicking link: https://www.artful.ly/store/events/7952
*** DISCOUNT TICKETS ***
RED CARAVAN presents RUBBERMATCH
Ten years after tragedy drives a group of college friends apart, two are unexpectedly reunited: Ceci, fleeing a broken relationship, tries to find a new home by moving in with Nina. But when their attempts to reconnect uncover old wounds, Nina's repression is pitted against Ceci's self-destructive tendencies. RubberMatch asks: when can a friend's help become an act of violence?
$12 tickets with code NYCPW
For more information see the NYCPlaywrights web site at:
http://nycp.blogspot.com/2016/05/discount-tickets-rubbermatch.html
***
*** GETTING IT WRITTEN at PRIMARY STAGES ***
Putting yourself out there as a professional playwright takes more than just getting the words down on the page, but for many playwrights, the “business” end is the final, most terrifying frontier. This class will help you face and enjoy the process of developing the strong relationships required to get your play produced.
Instructors: Joshua Harmon (Writer, Significant Other), Jesse Alick (Literary Manager, The Public), Robert Askins (Writer, Hand to God), Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Director, Hand to God), Michelle Bossy (Associate AD, Primary Stages), Leah Hamos (Agent, Gersh Agency), Bailie Slevin (Founder, Entertaining Finance)
http://primarystages.org/espa/writing/getting-it-ready
*** SUBMISSIONS FOR THESPIS THEATER FESTIVAL’S 9th SEASON ***
Plays and musicals accepted!
Prizes:
Best Play: $3,500
Best Director, Actress, Actor & Singer: $500 (each)
Best Musical Score: $300
Most Original Play, Best Set Designer, Best Stage Manager: $200 (each)
Thespis Theater Festival is like no other. We offer a 14-week long festival that allows each production to breathe: that includes a 5-hour tech and 3 performances at prime theater-going hours.
We also invite the members of each cast and crew to see all shows in the festival for free, giving you time to learn from and get inspired by each others' work.
In terms of staging, we offer:
* 55 Professional lights plus 6 LED colored lights
* 50 props, including real furniture pieces, that your production can use for free. So no more double-parking in Manhattan to swap your props in and out of the theater.
90% of our past productions have made excellent sets with our props
* Two projector screens; one 21x 14 screen upstage and one 14x14 screen stage left
The 99-seat theater is roomy and intimate at the same time, with 2 stage exits and 6 audience spots for wheelchairs.
The stage itself is 29 x 22'.
If you choose to bring in props and costumes, you can store everything backstage for the duration of your run.
We also offer a large dressing room with lighted mirrors and a sink, as well as a clean bathroom 6 feet away from the dressing room area.
As mentioned above, 5 hours of tech time are given to all productions and all performances are offered during prime performance hours.
Thespis is proud to offer a professional and nurturing space in which to run off- off- Broadway shows in NY.
We make your run as easy as possible so that you can enjoy the art of it!
For more info and to submit your work, please
visit Thespisnytheaterfestival.com
*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***
The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation (DVRF) is pleased to announce and solicit submissions for the 2016 edition of its Emerging Playwrights program. The program is intended to help develop and ultimately bring to public attention new and promising dramatic work from playwrights who have not yet achieved commercial success. For 2016, we will select and develop one full-length play over the course of several months, culminating in a week-long intensive workshop and subsequent public presentation before an audience that would include industry professionals.
***
Two years ago the New York New Works Theatre Festival was created by Gene Fisch, Jr. as a philanthropic project for the arts where Broadway Producers and Television writers donated their time to review and mentor the work of aspiring writers. We have decided to enjoy a third year given the success of our first two and we would like to invite your group's members to participate. We are calling for submissions for both plays and musicals; the selected shows will perform in the heart of the world's premier theatre district at the 199 seat Elektra Theatre. It's quite a special endeavor.
***
The Elite Theatre Company’s 2016 One-Act Play Writing Competition offers North American playwrights the opportunity to submit for judging no more than one (1) one-act play with a running time of no more than 30 minutes each. There will be up to 5 winners; each winner may have their one-act play(s) produced on stage by Elite Theatre Company in 2017, for a run of up to 12 performances.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the NYCPlaywrights web site at http://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** PLAYS INTO MUSICALS ***
La Cage aux Folles (French pronunciation: [la kaʒ o fɔl]) is a 1973 French farce by Jean Poiret[2] centering on confusion that ensues when Laurent, the son of a Saint Tropez night club owner and his gay lover, brings his fiancée's ultraconservative parents for dinner. The original French production premièred at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal on 1 February 1973 and ran for almost 1,800 performances.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cage_aux_Folles_(play)
La Cage aux Folles (French pronunciation: [la kaʒ o fɔl]) is a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein[1] and lyrics and music by Jerry Herman.[1] Based on the 1973 French play of the same name by Jean Poiret, it focuses on a gay couple: Georges, the manager of a Saint-Tropez nightclub featuring drag entertainment, and Albin, his romantic partner and star attraction, and the farcical adventures that ensue when Georges's son, Jean-Michel, brings home his fiancée's ultra-conservative parents to meet them. La cage aux folles literally means "the cage of mad women". However folles is also a slang term for effeminate homosexuals (queens).
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cage_aux_Folles_(musical)
***
Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913.
Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(play)
My Fair Lady is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist, so that she may pass as a lady. The original Broadway, London and film versions all starred Rex Harrison.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady
***
I Am a Camera is a 1951 Broadway play by John Van Druten[1] [2] adapted from Christopher Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin, which is part of The Berlin Stories. The title is a quote taken from the novel's first page: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."[3] The original production was staged by John Van Druten, with scenic and lighting design by Boris Aronson and costumes by Ellen Goldsborough.[1] It opened at the Empire Theatre in New York City on November 28, 1951 and ran for 214 performances before closing on July 12, 1952.[4]
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Camera
Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit, inspiring numerous subsequent productions in London and New York, as well as the 1972 film by the same name.
It is based on John Van Druten's 1951 play I Am a Camera, which was adapted from the short novel Goodbye to Berlin (1939) by Christopher Isherwood. Set in 1931 Berlin as the Nazis are rising to power, it is based in nightlife at the seedy Kit Kat Klub, and revolves around the 19-year-old English cabaret performer Sally Bowles and her relationship with the young American writer Cliff Bradshaw.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabaret_(musical)
***
Spring Awakening (German: Frühlings Erwachen) (also translated as Spring's Awakening and The Awakening of Spring) is the German dramatist Frank Wedekind's first major play and a seminal work in the modern history of theatre.[1] It was written sometime between autumn 1890 and spring 1891, but did not receive its first performance until 20 November 1906 when it premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin under the direction of Max Reinhardt. It carries the sub-title A Children's Tragedy.[2] The play criticises the sexually oppressive culture of nineteenth century (Fin de siècle) Germany and offers a vivid dramatisation of the erotic fantasies that it breeds.[3] Due to its controversial subject matter, the play has often been banned or censored.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Awakening_(play)
Spring Awakening is a rock musical with music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater. It is based on the German play Spring Awakening (1891) by Frank Wedekind. Set in late-19th-century Germany, the musical tells the story of teenagers discovering the inner and outer tumult of teenage sexuality. In the musical, alternative rock is employed as part of the folk-infused rock score.
Following its conception in the late 1990s and various workshops, concerts, rewrites and its Off-Broadway debut, the original Broadway production of Spring Awakening opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on December 10, 2006. Its cast included Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele, Skylar Astin and John Gallagher, Jr. while its creative team comprised director Michael Mayer and choreographer Bill T. Jones. The original Broadway production won 8 Tony Awards, including Tonys for Best Musical, Direction, Book, Score and Featured Actor. The production also garnered 4 Drama Desk Awards whilst its original cast album received a Grammy Award. In addition, the show was revived in 2015 on Broadway and garnered 3 Tony Award nominations, among other honors.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Awakening_(musical)
***
The Matchmaker is a play by Thornton Wilder.
The play has a long and colorful history. John Oxenford's 1835 one-act farce A Day Well Spent had been extended into a full-length play entitled Einen Jux will er sich machen by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy in 1842. In 1938, Wilder adapted Nestroy's version into an Americanized comedy entitled The Merchant of Yonkers, which attracted the attention of German director Max Reinhardt, who mounted a Broadway production. It was a dismal failure, running for a mere 39 performances.
Fifteen years later, director Tyrone Guthrie expressed interest in a new production of the play, which Wilder extensively rewrote and rechristened The Matchmaker. The most significant change was the expansion of a previously minor character named Dolly Gallagher Levi, who became the play's centerpiece. A widow who brokers marriages and other transactions in Yonkers, New York at the turn of the 20th century, she sets her sights on local merchant Horace Vandergelder, who has hired her to find him a wife. After a series of slapstick situations involving mistaken identities, secret rendezvous behind carefully placed screens, separated lovers, and a trip to night court, everyone finds themselves paired with a perfect match.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matchmaker
Hello, Dolly! is a musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955.
Hello, Dolly! was first produced on Broadway by David Merrick in 1964, winning a record 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, a record held for 35 years. The show album Hello, Dolly! An Original Cast Recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.[1] The album reached number one on the Billboard album chart on June 6, 1964 and was replaced the next week by Louis Armstrong's album Hello, Dolly! [2]
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello,_Dolly!_(musical)
***
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both, but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor quality, however, and later editions corrected the text to conform more closely with Shakespeare's original.
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet
West Side Story is an American musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and conception and choreography by Jerome Robbins.[1] It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.
The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid-1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood. (In the early 1960s much of the neighborhood would be cleared in an urban renewal project for the Lincoln Center, changing the neighborhood's character.)[2][3] The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The members of the Sharks, from Puerto Rico, are taunted by the Jets, a white gang.[4] The young protagonist, Tony, a former member of the Jets and best friend of the gang leader, Riff, falls in love with Maria, the sister of Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks. The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in American musical theater. Bernstein's score for the musical includes "Something's Coming", "Maria", "America", "Somewhere", "Tonight", "Jet Song", "I Feel Pretty", "A Boy Like That", "One Hand, One Heart", "Gee, Officer Krupke", and "Cool".
More…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Story
DON'T YOU WANT
TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD?
I DO
I DO
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
THE ART OF PULP
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
Farm Wife
by R.S. Thomas
Hers is the clean apron, good for fire
Or lamp to embroider, as we talk slowly
In the long kitchen, while the white dough
Turns to pastry in the great oven,
Sweetly and surely as hay making
In a June meadow; hers are the hands,
Humble with milking, but still now
In her wide lap as though they heard
A quiet music, hers is the voice
That coaxes time back to the shadows
In the rooms corners.
O, hers is all
This strong body, the safe island
Where men may come, sons and lovers,
Daring the cold seas of her eyes.
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE
PHOTOS FROM FILM
Roy DeCarava, Child in Window, Clothesline, New York, 1950
Paolo Magnifichi, Italy, 1960
Corpses of Japanese soldiers after an unsuccessful banzai charge in the Battle of Attu, May 29, 1943.
Bruce Davidson, The Statue of Liberty, 1958.
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS..........
MUSIC FOR THE SOUL
The Ramsey Lewis Trio, Chicago 1960 by William Claxton
TODAY'S ALLEGED MOB GUY
Coleman Brothers: In Boston during the 1930s, gambling was controlled by Paddy Coleman who ran the Southie, Roxbury and Back Bay. Coleman entered his trade in 1913, but had never been arrested or had his operation shut down
This was in some part due to the fact that his partner in crime was Knocko McCormack, brother to U.S Congressman John W. McCormack, who himself had once been the lawyer for the late Gustin gang. The Gustin gang, which ruled over the Irish dominated south end of Boston in the 1900s was led by the four Wallace brothers who had the good sense to hire a young lawyer named John McCormack to be their lawyer. McCormack would later become the Speaker of the House of representatives during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.
Overall, Coleman's operation was enormous. He employed hundreds of runners, clerks and gofers and his bribes to the local Police in his Empire could run as high as $100,000 to a single Police captain. Eventually, the brazenness that Coleman ran his operation with raised the eyebrows of the city's good people who demanded a clean up action by the Governor, none other than himself, James Michael Curley. Curley sprung into action by naming a new Commissioner of Police, an advertising man with no background in law. He lasted in the job for less than a year and a half.
Next came Joseph Francis Timilty, an old friend of Joe Kennedy's, who held the post for seven years. Curley and Timilty went back quite a way. Timilty's Irish immigrant father owned one of Boston's more successful construction companies and ended up with $3 million in road jobs from Curley's office when he was the city's mayor. This eventually led to Timilty being indicted for conspiracy to monopolize the road paving materials industry in the state, but Boston being Boston, the case went nowhere and strangely disappeared.
When Curley took over the governor's mansion he brought Timilty with him, as his military aide. The job entitled Timilty to wear a full General's uniform cape and all, and now when Curley needed a Police commissioner he could "rely" on, Timilty of course was his boy. In his first year on the job, Timilty ordered the arrest of a number of very smalltime bookies, rattled his sword a great deal and in effect, did nothing else.
he Yankee element in the city went after Timilty, who easily ran public relation circles around them until 1943 when he was indicted by a WASP inspired and run investigation when he was unable to explain where he had gotten $37,370 that he was holding in a safe deposit box. In the end, two Irish Catholic judges made the entire episode disappear and the WASP inspired investigation closed down after smashing into a series of Celtic built political and legal walls.
30 days must have passed because there is another child beaten to death in foster care
Vigil held for toddler who died
in foster care
Laila Marie Daniel
HENRY COUNTY, Ga. —
Several gathered for a prayer
vigil Sunday in Henry County for Laila Daniel, 2, who died while in the care of
a foster family in November.
It's been three months since
Laila's death, and the people who organized the vigil say they don't want
people to forget her death could have been prevented.
According to police, Laila's
foster mother, Jennifer Rosenbaum, called 911 and said Laila choked on a piece
of food.
An autopsy revealed Laila had
bruises all over her body and was malnourished.
Rosenbaum was arrested and
charged with murder. Her husband, Joseph Rosenbaum, was also charged with child
cruelty.
Channel 2 Action News
discovered two workers with the Division of Family & Children Services were
fired for a series of mistakes that investigators deemed partially responsible
for the child's death.
Jennifer Rosenbaum is a
National Guard veteran, a law school student, a community activist and was a
candidate for the Henry County Commission.
New clues illuminate mysteries of ancient Egyptian portraits
Same artist painted several lifelike paintings buried with mummies
WASHINGTON — Scientists are getting a clearer picture of how ancient Egyptians painted lifelike portraits that were buried with mummies of the depicted individuals. These paintings sharply departed from Egyptians’ previous, simpler artworks and were among the first examples of modern Western portraits, archaeologist and materials scientist Marc Walton reported February 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The “mummy portraits” date to more than 2,000 years ago, when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt.
Three such portraits of Roman-era Egyptians, found more than a century ago at site called Tebtunis, were created by the same artist, said Walton, of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Identities of the boy and two men in the portraits are unknown. Separate computerized analyses of colors and shapes in the stylistically similar paintings revealed that brushstrokes of the same width were used to apply the same pigment mixes to different parts of each portrait. All three portraits, for instance, included a purple shoulder sash that the artist painted with a blend of indigo and a red pigment derived from the madder plant.
Many pigments in the portraits probably came from Greece, Walton said. Ancient Greeks’ naturalistic painting style influenced the Egyptians’ switch to portrait painting, he suggested. But the paintings also suggest even more distant influences: Walton’s team traced red lead used in Egyptian pigments to Spain and wood on which the portraits were painted to Central Europe. Egyptians traded over long distances by 3,400 years ago (SN: 1/24/15, p. 8).
Walton plans to study 12 more Egyptian mummy portraits, as well as paintings of women in pink garb and ones of military gods that have also been found in Egyptian tombs.
ship is safe in harbor, but
that’s not what ships are built for. John A. Shedd
Latin Word of the Day
Studium: study, eagerness. Example sentence: Repetitio est mater studiorum. Sentence meaning: Repetition is the mother of studies.
Sub rosa literally means "under the rose" in New Latin. Since ancient times, the rose has often been associated with secrecy. In ancient mythology, Cupid gave a rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to keep him from telling about the indiscretions of Venus. Ceilings of dining rooms have been decorated with carvings of roses, reportedly to remind guests that what was said at the table should be kept confidential. Roses have also been placed over confessionals as a symbol of the confidentiality of confession. Sub rosa entered the English language in the 17th century, and even before then, people were using the English version, "under the rose." Earlier still, unter der Rose was apparently used in Germany, where the phrase is thought to have originated
AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR YOU...................
THE HUMAN FACTOR
Sao Paulo Cathedral in Brazil is one of the most beautiful landmarks in the world, but on 4 September, 2015, it became marred by horror. Elenilza Mariana de Oliveira had been praying inside the Cathedral when 49-year-old Luiz Antonio de Silva held a gun to her head and dragged her to the steps out the front of the church, taking her hostage. Authorities were called and surrounded the Cathedral, unable to get a clear shot of Luiz. That was until valiant 61-year-old Francisco Rodrigues de Lima, a local homeless man who saw the horrifying scene unfold, ran and charged at Luiz. The two men fell to the ground, allowing Elenilza to escape. Enraged, Luiz pointed his gun at Francisco and shot him. This gave authorities a chance to shoot and kill Luiz. Tragically, Francisco died from the gunshot wounds he received, giving his life to save that of a complete stranger - a true testament of heroism and selflessness.
The Observation and
Appreciation of Architecture
ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCHES
1. Arch of Constantine, AD 313, Roman
Forum
2. Arch of Hadrian, c. AD 81, Jerash
(Jordan)
3. Arch of Septimus Severus, c. AD 193,
Lepcis Magna (Tunisia)
4. Arch of Trajan, c. AD 100, Benevento
5. Arch of Tiberius, c. AD 30, Orange
6. Arch of Septimus Severus, c. AD 200,
Roman Forum
7. Arch of Titus, c. AD 71, Roman Forum
8. Arch of Trajan, c. AD 100, Timgad
Batna (Algeria)
9. Arch of Trajan, c. AD 100, Ancona
10. Arch of Caracalla, AD 211,
Volubilis (Morocco)
The triumphal arch is 1) a portal, a
functional structure through which an honored person passed as part of a ritual
taking place on a specific occasion; 2) a building, with staircases leading to
rooms in the attic story; and 3) a symbolic monument that perpetuates the
memory of a significant event.
Like the victory column, the triumphal
arch transposes a basic architectural member from a structural context into a
sculptural context, using it as a free-standing scaffold for images and
inscriptions. This creative repurposing of elements of architecture is
profoundly un-Greek and, as such, constitutes one of the major innovations of
Roman art.
By the year 400 AD, over 50 triumphal
arches had been erected in the city of Rome alone.
WHY ARE WE NOT DOING THIS IN AMERICA?
Studies Show Paternity Leave
Benefits Everyone
By: Lindsay Patton
Feminism benefits more than
just women. A recent study on women in leadership further proved gender
equality is good for all. It turns out that companies with women at the
executive level see more profits, which benefit all employees.
The study, titled “Is Gender
Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Survey,” was released by the
Peterson Institute for International Economics and surveyed more than 21,000
firms from 91 countries on the presence of women in corporate leadership.
An interesting finding within
the report is that companies with women in leadership have stronger paternity
leaves policies, while maternity leave did not see an increase or decrease
depending on leadership.
Additional studies back up the
Pearson Institute’s research and found that women missed less work, are less
likely to suffer from postpartum depression and earn more when paternity leave
is accessible to men. Paid paternity leave also creates more potential for
equal hiring practices, as managers won’t look at either candidates within
childbearing range as a “risk” to the company. “In most societies, to varying
degrees, women are more likely than men to take on the double burden of work
and family— and to be expected to do so,” according to the Peterson Institute
study.
When Mark Zuckerberg took two
months of paternity leave when his daughter was born, people got talking, but
Norway has had a generous paternity leave policy since 1993. Before the policy
was put in place, approximately three percent of men in Norway took paternity
leave. Since then, approximately 35 percent of Norwegian men take leave. In
comparison, 96 percent of American men are back to work within two weeks of
their child being born.
Currently, only three states
offer paid family leave and expand unpaid leave: California, Rhode Island and
New Jersey. Six states expand unpaid family leave and 41 states follow federal
guidelines for family leave. As paternity leave is slowly becoming available,
more men are taking advantage of the few opportunities available. In
California, 17 percent of men took leave the year it was offered. That
percentage grew to 26 percent five years later.
Still, the United States is far
behind many other countries when it comes to family leave. According to a 2014
Boston College study, there are approximately 70 countries that offer some sort
of paid leave for fathers.
The study also lists a number
of benefits associated with paternity leave:
“The reasons for extending
leave to fathers are numerous, but most often reflect the expression of a few
consistent values: the desire for greater gender equity, a reflection of the
changing roles of men and women at home and in the workplace, and the desire to
allow fathers the time to immerse themselves in parenting on a full-time
(albeit often brief) basis. Research suggests that early, more intense
engagement in parenting for men has positive long-term effects for both father
and child.”
So, how do we get paternity
leave to be widely available in the United States?
Well, for those who can access
it, just take it. Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California,
San Diego, found that more men started taking paternity leave when they saw
other men do the same.
It also happens to be an election
year, so we can vote for those who will fight to mandate paid parental leave
for everyone.
Chinese
media in uproar over US move to honor dissident
DIDI
TANG, The Associated Press
BEIJING
(AP) — A Chinese nationalist newspaper says American politicians are resorting
to petty actions following a unanimous bill approval by the Senate to rename
the plaza in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington after an imprisoned
Chinese political dissident.
The
Communist Party-controlled Global Times called the move Sunday provocative and
said it’s intended to outrage Beijing, although China would not consider it a
big deal.
“The
U.S. has been at its wits’ end in dealing with China as it is reluctant to
employ military threats or economic sanctions that may backfire,” the newspaper
wrote. “The only option for Washington seems to be petty actions that disturb
China.”
The
Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for
comment.
Senate
Bill 2451, as proposed by Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of
Texas, wants to rename the plaza after Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace laureate
serving an 11-year sentence on the conviction of inciting state subversion.
The
bill still needs to clear the House of Representatives and must be signed by
the president before it can become a law, and make “1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza” as the
official address of the Chinese Embassy. Its current address is 3505
International Place.
Cruz’s
office said the bill expresses solidarity with Chinese dissidents.
The
Global Times says the bill is driven by Western jealousy and is unlikely to
disturb China, which has grown confident to brush aside ill-intended moves by
the West.
“This
latest move by Congress cannot change the fact that Liu jeopardized China’s
national security and was sentenced to jail,” the paper wrote in its editorial.
“Whether Liu feels proud of such turbulent embraces from the West or not, he
has become a tool of the West against China.”
The First
Children Who Led Sad Lives
On sale now at Amazon.Com
Several
children of presidents met cruel fates in the first 150 years of our country's
history
By Joshua
Kendall
SMITHSONIAN.COM
In recent
decades, most First Children have led charmed lives. Doted on by an adoring
public, they have enjoyed opportunities that are rarely available to other
Americans. Chelsea Clinton and Jenna Bush, for example, both parlayed their
celebrity into cushy contracts with NBC News.
Clinton said to People magazine recently that she sees it as her duty to
make sure that her daughter, Charlotte, “realizes how blessed she is—how
blessed we [the members of our family] all are.”
For the
first century-and-a-half of the republic, however the sons and daughters of
presidents often struggled. Historian Michael Beschloss has alluded to their
collective misfortune as the “curse of the famous scion.” Several endured
accidents or health crises that led to early death. As a group, they
experienced much higher rates of alcoholism and mental illness than their
peers. Destitution was not uncommon. In the 19th century, a few First Children
did achieve success—Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert, eventually became the CEO of
the Pullman Palace Car Company and Webb Hayes, the second son of Rutherford B.
Hayes, helped to found the corporate behemoth, Union Carbide—but these cases
were the exception rather than the rule.
In stark
contrast to Clinton and Bush, Abigail (“Nabby”) Adams, the eldest child of John
Adams, lived in abject poverty for most of her adult life. She suffered through
a difficult marriage to William Smith, a mentally unstable former aide-de-camp
to George Washington. Smith would repeatedly abandon her and their four children
for months—sometimes even years—at a time. In the late 1790s, when a few of
Smith’s speculative ventures went belly up, Nabby lived with her husband in a
tiny cottage on the grounds of a debtors’ prison. “My dear sister’s destiny
might have been better,” Adams’s second son, Thomas, wrote of Nabby, who died
of cancer at 48.
Nabby’s
brother, Charles, Adams’s third son, met an even crueler fate. Though he passed
the bar in 1792, the Harvard grad never could make a decent living in his
chosen profession. A chronic alcoholic, who was also a serial adulterer,
Charles often lived apart from his wife and two daughters. Weighed down by
worry over the distress of both Nabby and Charles, John Adams confessed to his
wife, Abigail, a couple of years into his administration, “My children give me
more pain than all my enemies.” In the fall of 1799, Adams disowned Charles,
whom he never spoke to again. A year later, the destitute Charles died of
cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 30.
While
John Quincy Adams, the first-born son of John Adams, was a stratospheric
success—before becoming president in 1824, he served two terms as James
Monroe’s secretary of state—his eldest son, George Washington Adams, committed
suicide a month after the end of his presidency, drowning himself in the Long
Island Sound while sailing from Providence to Washington. George, who had
worked in Daniel Webster’s Boston law office for a few years, had recently
fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a chambermaid. Due to his deep
depression, he often spent his days locked in his tiny room where he “lived
like a pig,” as one of his brothers put it. After learning of his son’s death,
the devastated former president vowed to God to “employ the remaining days
which thou has allotted me on earth to purposes…tributary to the well-being of
others.” A year later, John Quincy would stage a remarkable comeback as an
abolitionist Congressman.
Due to
his recklessness, John Tyler, Jr., the third of President John Tyler’s eight
children with his first wife, was a constant embarrassment to the family. A
year after Vice President Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison, the married
John Jr. made a pass at Julia Gardiner, the Long Island beauty who would become
his father’s second wife a couple of years later. Tyler ended up firing John
Jr., who was then serving as his personal secretary. “The P. [President] says
he really believes [John Jr.] part a madman,” Julia wrote. After the Civil War,
John Jr. subsisted on a string of lowly patronage posts. “It were better,”
concluded a journalist upon his death in 1896, “to be buried alive than to live
a life so useless.”
Born in
the Army base in Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1814, Sarah Taylor was nicknamed “Knox”
by her father, Zachary Taylor, the career military man who was elected
president in 1848. At eighteen, she fell in love with Jefferson Davis—then a
recent West Point graduate stationed in Wisconsin. Her father opposed the union,
saying, “I’ll be damned if another daughter of mine shall marry into the army.
I know enough of the family life of officers. I scarcely know my own children,
or they me.” Despite his objections, she married the future president of the
Confederacy in 1835. Three months after the wedding, Knox, who had moved to
Louisiana with her husband, died of malaria at the age of 21.
In
January of 1853, two months before his inauguration, Franklin Pierce, along his
wife Jane and his third and only surviving child Benny, boarded a train in
Andover, Massachusetts, which crashed soon after it left the station. The 11
year old died instantly. “Gen. Pierce took him up,” the New York Times
reported, “he did not think the little boy was dead until he took off his cap.”
The Pierces
were never the same. “How shall I be able to summon my manhood to gather up my
energies for the duties before me, it is hard for me to see,” the devastated
president-elect wrote to a friend that month. The First Lady hardly ever
appeared in public and spent hours writing letters to her dead son. The loss of
Benny affected the nation, as Pierce’s rudderless administration did little to
stop America from heading toward a bloody internecine conflict.
In May of
1874, 18 year-old Nellie Grant, the only daughter of President Ulysses S. Grant
married Englishman Algernon Sartoris in a lavish East Room ceremony. The
president was reluctant to approve the union because this minor aristocrat
would be taking her back to his native land. “I yielded consent,” Grant stated,
“but with a wounded heart.” His fears were well grounded. As Henry James would
later put it, Sartoris was a “drunken idiot of a husband,” who often abandoned
Nellie and their three children by carrying on affairs with other women all over
the globe. After Sartoris’s death a decade later, the miserable Nellie moved
into her mother’s home in Washington. Soon after her second marriage in 1912,
Nellie suffered a stroke, which left her paralyzed for the last seven years of
her life.
Theodore
Roosevelt’s eldest child, Alice, evolved into a vibrant Washington socialite
who hobnobbed with presidents until her death at 96. But his four sons, all of
whom served heroically in the armed forces, fared much less well. After
fighting in both Mesopotamia against the Turks and in France against the
Germans in World War I, TR’s second son, Kermit, ran the Roosevelt Steamship
Company. A decade later, however, he succumbed to alcoholism and
depression—afflictions for which his elder brother, Archie, had sent him to a
mental hospital. Though Kermit was over 50 when World War II started, he was
still eager to return to the battlefield. Fully aware of Kermit’s frail health,
Army Chief of Staff George Marshall sent him to a post in Alaska where he was
unlikely to do any fighting. In June of
1943, Kermit shot himself in the head “due to despondence resulting from
exclusion from combat duties.”
Of his
six children, Theodore Roosevelt felt closest to Quentin, his youngest, who was
born in 1898. Of the avid reader and natural athlete, TR once remarked, “There
is something very Theodore about all this.” Like his three older brothers,
Quentin jumped at the chance to serve in World War I. In the spring of 1917, after finishing his sophomore
year at Harvard, Quentin headed to France. A year later, he saw action as a
fighter pilot. On July 14, 1918, the Germans shot him down. The former
president was crushed. “Since Quentin’s death,” TR said in the fall of 1918,
“the world seems to have shut down upon me.” The heart-broken former president
died a few months later.
The
eldest of Woodrow Wilson’s three daughters, Margaret Wilson had a delicate
constitution. “She has been a nervous
child her whole life and is evidently unfitted by temperament to take a full
college course,” her mother, Ellen Wilson, wrote to the Dean of Goucher
College, which Margaret left after two years. After Wilson became president in
1913, Margaret took voice lessons to become a professional lieder singer. In
1918, after spending several months entertaining the troops in France, she
suffered a nervous breakdown, which ended her performing career. For most of the 1920s, Margaret, who never
married or found another vocation, was a lost soul. In fact, in the last year
of her father’s presidency, she was almost kicked off the Fifth Avenue bus
because she did not have the dime fare. (A sympathetic driver, who had no idea
who she was, decided to lend her the fare.) A decade later, she discovered
Hindu philosophy and went to live in an ashram in South India where she died of
uremia.
BE THE GUY ON THE LEFT
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....
CYBERDATE
An award winning full length
play.
"Cyberdate.Com
is the story of six ordinary people in search of romance, friendship and love
and find it in very extraordinary ways. Based on the real life experiences of
the authors misadventures with on line dating, Cyber date is a bittersweet
story that will make you laugh, cry and want to fall in love again."
Ellis McKay
Cyberdate.Com,
was chosen for a public at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007
as part of the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the
play won the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.
The play was also given a full reading at The Frederick Playhouse in Maryland
in March of 2007.
OTHER
PLAYS BY JOHN WILLIAM TUOHY............................
ROGER TOUHY, CHICAGO GANGSTER, NOW IN PAPERBACK
MY
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AVAILABLE NOW
********************
SAMPLE CHAPTER
Chapter One
To
read the first 12 chapters of this book, visit it's BlogSpot
@
amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am
soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and
full as much heart! ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
I am here because I worked too hard and too long not to be here. But although I
told the university that I would walk across the stage to take my diploma, I
won't. At age fifty-seven, I'm too damned old, and I'd look ridiculous in this
crowd. From where I'm standing in the back of the hall, I can see that I am at
least two decades older than most of the parents of these kids in their black
caps and gowns.
So
I'll graduate with this class, but I won't walk across the stage and collect my
diploma with them; I'll have the school send it to my house. I only want to
hear my name called. I'll imagine what the rest would have been like. When
you've had a life like mine, you learn to do that, to imagine the good things.
The ceremony is about to begin. It's a warm June day and a hallway of glass
doors leading to the parking lot are open, the dignitaries march onto the
stage, a janitor slams the doors shut, one after the other.
That banging sound.
It's Christmas Day 1961 and three Waterbury cops are throwing their bulk
against our sorely overmatched front door. They are wearing their long woolen
blue coats and white gloves and they swear at the cold.
They've finally come for us, in the dead of night, to take us away, just as our
mother said they would.
"They'll come and get you kids," she screamed at us, "and put
youse all in an orphanage where you'll get the beatin's youse deserve, and
there won't be no food either."
That's why we're terrified, that's why we don't open the door and that's how I
remember that night. I was six years old then, one month away from my seventh
birthday. My older brother, the perpetually-worried, white-haired Paulie, was
ten. He is my half-brother, actually, although I have never thought of him that
way. He was simply my brother. My youngest brother, Denny, was six; Maura, the
baby, was four; and Bridget, our auburn-haired leader, my half -sister, was
twelve.
We
didn't know where our mother was. The welfare check, and thank God for it, had
arrived, so maybe she was at a gin mill downtown spending it all, as she had
done a few times before.
Maybe
she'd met yet another guy, another barfly, who wouldn't be able to remember our
names because his beer-soaked brain can't remember anything. We are thankful
that he'll disappear after the money runs out or the social worker lady comes
around and tells him he has to leave because the welfare won't pay for him as
well as for us. It snowed that day and after the snow had finished falling, the
temperature dropped and the winds started.
"Maybe she went to Brooklyn," Paulie said, as we walked through the
snow to the Salvation Army offices one that afternoon before the cops came for
us.
"She didn't go back to New York," Bridget snapped. "She probably
just--"
"She always says she gonna leave and go back home to Brooklyn," I
interrupted.
"Yeah," Denny chirped, mostly because he was determined to be taken
as our equal in all things, including this conversation.
We
walked along in silence for a second, kicking the freshly fallen snow from our
paths, and then Paulie added what we were all thinking: "Maybe they put
her back in Saint Mary's."
No
one answered him. Instead, we fell into our own thoughts, recalling how,
several times in the past, when too much of life came at our mother at once,
she broke down and lay in bed for weeks in a dark room, not speaking and barely
eating. It was a frightening and disturbing thing to watch.
"It don't matter," Bridget snapped again, more out of exhaustion than
anything else. She was always cranky. The weight of taking care of us, and of
being old well before her time, strained her. "It don't matter," she
mumbled.
It
didn't matter that night either, that awful night, when the cops were at the
door and she wasn't there. We hadn't seen our mother for two days, and after
that night, we wouldn't see her for another two years.
When we returned home that day, the sun had gone down and it was dark inside
the house because we hadn't paid the light bill. We never paid the bills, so
the lights were almost always off and there was no heat because we didn't pay
that bill either. And now we needed the heat. We needed the heat more than we
needed the lights.
The cold
winter winds pushed up at us from the Atlantic Ocean and down on us from frigid
Canada and battered our part of northwestern Connecticut, shoving freezing
drifts of snow against the paper-thin walls of our ramshackle house and
covering our windows in a thick veneer of silver-colored ice.
The house was built around 1910 by the factories to house immigrant workers
mostly brought in from southern Italy. These mill houses weren't built to last.
They had no basements; only four windows, all in the front; and paper-thin
walls. Most of the construction was done with plywood and tarpaper. The
interiors were long and narrow and dark.
Bridget
turned the gas oven on to keep us warm. "Youse go get the big mattress and
bring it in here by the stove," she commanded us. Denny, Paulie, and I
went to the bed that was in the cramped living room and wrestled the stained
and dark mattress, with some effort, into the kitchen. Bridget covered Maura in
as many shirts as she could find, in a vain effort to stop the chills that
racked her tiny and frail body and caused her to shake.
We
took great pains to position the hulking mattress in exactly the right spot by
the stove and then slid, fully dressed, under a pile of dirty sheets, coats,
and drapes that was our blanket. We squeezed close to fend off the cold, the
baby in the middle and the older kids at the ends.
"Move over, ya yutz, ya," Paulie would say to Denny and me because
half of his butt was hanging out onto the cold linoleum floor. We could toss
insults in Yiddish. We learned them from our mother, whose father was a Jew and
who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York.
I
assumed that those words we learned were standard American English, in wide and
constant use across our great land. It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties
and moved from the Naugatuck Valley and Connecticut that I came to understand
that most Americans would never utter a sentence like, "You and your
fakakta plans".
We
also spoke with the Waterbury aversion to the sound of the letter
"T," replacing it with the letter "D," meaning that
"them, there, those, and these" were pronounced "dem, dere,
dose, and dese." We were also practitioners of "youse," the
northern working-class equivalent to "you-all," as in "Are youse
leaving or are youse staying?"
"Move in, ya yutz, ya," Paulie said again with a laugh, but we didn't
move because the only place to move was to push Bridget off the mattress, which
we were not about to do because Bridget packed a wallop that could probably put
a grown man down. Then Paulie pushed us, and at the other end of the mattress, Bridget
pushed back with a laugh, and an exaggerated, rear-ends pushing war for control
of the mattress broke out.
From the
Inside Flap
By Dr. Wm. Anthony Connolly
This
incredible memoir, No Time to Say Goodbye, tells of entertaining angels,
dancing with devils, and of the abandoned children many viewed simply as
raining manna from some lesser god.
The young
and unfortunate lives of the Tuohy bruins—sometimes Irish, sometimes Jewish,
often Catholic, rambunctious, but all imbued with Lion’s hearts—told here with
brutal honesty leavened with humor and laudable introspective forgiveness. The
memoir will have you falling to your knees thanking that benevolent Irish cop
in the sky, your lucky stars, or hugging the oxygen out of your own kids the
fate foisted upon Johnny and his siblings does not and did not befall your own
brood. John William Tuohy, a nationally-recognized authority on organized crime
and Irish levity, is your trusted guide through the weeds the decades of
neglect ensnared he and his brothers and sisters, all suffering for the
impersonal and often mercenary taint of the foster care system. Theirs, and
Tuohy’s, story is not at all figures of speech as this review might suggest,
but all too real and all too sad, and maddening. I wanted to scream. I wanted
to get into a time machine, go back and adopt every last one of them. I was
angry. I was captivated. The requisite damning verities of foster care are all
here, regretfully, but what sets this story above others is its beating heart,
even a bruised and broken one, still willing to forgive and understand, and
continue to aid its walking wounded. I cannot recommend this book enough.
In
1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered
Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next
ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state
schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep
River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the
same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny
compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to
overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
“I am here because I worked too
hard and too long not to be here. But although I told the university that I
would walk across the stage to take my diploma, I won’t. At age fifty-seven,
I’m too damned old, and I’d look ridiculous in this crowd. From where I’m
standing in the back of the hall, I can see that I am at least two decades
older than most of the parents of these kids in their black caps and gowns.
So I’ll graduate with this class, but I
won’t walk across the stage and collect my diploma with them; I’ll have the
school send it to my house. I only want to hear my name called. I’ll imagine
what the rest would have been like. When you’ve had a life like mine, you learn
to do that, to imagine the good things.
The ceremony is about to begin. It’s a
warm June day and a hallway of glass doors leading to the parking lot are open,
the dignitaries march onto the stage, a janitor slams the doors shut, one after
the other.
That banging sound.
It’s Christmas Day 1961 and three
Waterbury cops are throwing their bulk against our sorely overmatched front
door. They are wearing their long woolen blue coats and white gloves and they
swear at the cold.
They’ve finally come for us, in the
dead of night, to take us away, just as our mother said they would.”
********************
“Otherwise, there were no long goodbyes
or emotional scenes. That isn’t part of foster care. You just leave and you
just die a little bit. Just a little bit because a little bit more of you
understands that this is the way it’s going to be. And you grow hard around the
edges, just a little bit. Not in some big way, but just a little bit because
you have to, because if you don’t it only hurts worse the next time and a
little bit more of you will die. And you don’t want that because you know that
if enough little bits of you die enough times, a part of you leaves. Do you
know what I mean? You’re still there, but a part of you leaves until you stand
on the sidelines of life, simply watching, like a ghost that everyone can see
and no one is bothered by. You become the saddest thing there is: a child of
God who has given .”
********************
“As I said, you die a little bit in
foster care, but I spose we all die a little bit in our daily lives, no matter
what path God has chosen for us. But there is always a balance to that sadness;
there’s always a balance. You only have to look for it. And if you look for it,
you’ll see it. I saw it in a well-meaning nun who wanted to share the joy of
her life’s work with us. I saw it in an old man in a garden who shared the
beauty of the soil and the joy he took in art, and I saw it in the simple
decency and kindness of an underpaid nurse’s aide. Yeah. Great things
rain on us. The magnificence of life’s affirmations are all around us,
every day, everywhere. They usually go unnoticed because they seldom arrive
with the drama and heartbreak of those hundreds of negative things that drain
our souls. But yeah, it’s there, the good stuff, the stuff worth living for.
You only have to look for it and when you see it, carry it around right there
at the of your heart so it’s always there when you need it. And you’ll need it
a lot, because life is hard.”
********************
“As sad as I so often was, and I was
often overwhelmed with sadness, I never admitted it, and I don’t recall ever
having said aloud that I was sad. I tried not to think about it, about all the
sad things, because I had this feeling that if I started to think about it,
that was all I would ever think of again. I often had a nightmare of
falling into a deep dark well that I could never climb out of. But then
there was the other part of me that honestly believed I wasn’t sad at all, and
I had little compassion for those who dwelled in sadness. Strange how that
works. You would think that it would be the other way around.”
********************
“In late October of 1962, it was
our turn to go. Miss Hanrahan appeared in her state Ford Rambler, which, by
that point, seemed more like a hearse than a nice lady’s car. Our belongings
were packed in a brown bags. The ladies in the kitchen, familiar with our love
of food, made us twelve fried-fish sandwiches each large enough to feed eight
grown men and wrapped them in tinfoil for the ride ahead of us. Miss Louisa,
drenched with tears, walked us to the car and before she let go of my hand she
said, “When you a big, grown man, you come back and see Miss Louisa, you hear?”
“But,” I said, “you won’t know who I
am. I’ll be big.”
“No, child,” she said as she gave me
her last hug, “you always know forever the peoples you love. They with you
forever. They don’t never leave you.”
She was right, of course. Those we love
never leave us because we carry them with us in our hearts and a piece of us is
within them. They change with us and they grow old with us and with time, they
are a part of us, and thank God for that.”
********************
“One day at the library I found a
stack of record albums. I was hoping I’d find ta Beatles album, but it was all
classical music so I reached for the first name I knew, Beethoven. I checked it
out his Sixth Symphony and walked home. I didn’t own a record player and I
don’t know why I took it out. I had Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony but nothing to
play it on.”
********************
“The next day, when I came home
from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found
my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm.
“Ma,” I asked. “Where did you get the
money for the record player?”
“I had it saved,” she lied.
My father lived well, had a large house
and an expensive imported car, wanted for little, and gave nothing. My mother
lived on welfare in a slum and sold her blood to the Red Cross to get me a
record player.
“Education is everything, Johnny,” she
said, as she headed for the refrigerator to get me food. “You get smart like
regular people and you don’t have to live like this no more.”
She and I were not hugging types, but I
put my hand on her shoulder as she washed the dishes with her back to me and
she said, in best Brooklynese, “So go and enjoy, already.” My father always
said I was my mother’s son and I was proud of that. On her good days, she was a
good and noble thing to be a part of.
That evening, I plugged in the red
record player and placed it by the window. My mother and I took the kitchen
chairs out to the porch and listened to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony from
beginning to end, as we watched the oil-stained waters of the Mad River roll
by. It was a good night, another good night, one of many that have blessed my
life.”
********************
“The next day I was driven to New York
City to take the physical. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen.
Several hundred young men, maybe even a thousand, in their skivvies, walking
around an enormous room, all of us lost, dazed, and confused.
Some of these guys had dodged the draft
and were there under the watchful eyes of dozens of federal marshals
lined against one of the walls. After eight hours of being poked,
prodded, stuck, and poked again, I was given a large red envelope. I had been
rejected. I had the respiratory problems of an old man, high blood pressure,
partial loss of hearing, very bad teeth, very flat, very wide feet and I tested
positive for tuberculosis.
“Frankly,” the doctor said, “I don’t
know how the hell you’re even standing ,” and that was when the sergeant told
me that if they bottled everything that was wrong with me “we could take over
the world without a shot.”
********************
“I had decided that I wanted to earn my
living as a writer and the only place in Waterbury where they paid you for
writing was at the local newspaper. My opportunity came when the paper had an
opening for a night janitor. Opportunities are easy to miss, because they don’t
always show in their best clothes. Sometimes opportunities look like
beggars in rags. After an eight-hour shift in the shop tossing thirty-pound
crates I hustled to the newspaper building and cleaned toilets, with a
vague plan that it would somehow lead to a reporter’s .”
********************
“One Friday afternoon at the close of
the working day the idiot bosses in their fucking ties and suit coats
came and handed out pink slips to every other person on the floor. I got
one. They were firing us. Then they turned and, without a word, went back to
their offices. Corporate pricks.”
********************
“There is a sense of danger in leaving
what you know, even if what you know isn’t much. These mill towns with their
narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if
I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The
other reason I didn’t want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person
who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn’t one of the
people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It wasn’t
clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty
behind me. I wasn’t happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn’t worry
about it. It didn’t define me. We’re always in the making. God always has us on
his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a new
purpose.”
********************
“I was tired of fighting the windstorm
I was tossed into, and instead I would let go and ride with the winds of
change. How bad could it be, compared to the life I knew? I was living life as
if it were a rehearsal for the real thing. Another beginning might be rough at
first, but any place worth getting to is going to have some problems. I wanted
the good life, the life well lived, and you can’t buy that or marry into it.
It’s there to be found, and it can be taken by those who want it and have the
resolve to make it happen for themselves.”
********************
“Imagine being beaten every day
for something you didn’t do and yet, when it’s over, you keep on smiling.
That’s what every day of Donald’s life was like. His death was a small death.
No one mourned his passing; they merely agreed it was for the best that he be
forgotten as quickly as possible, since his was a life misspent.”
********************
“Then there are all of those children,
the ones who aren’t resilient. The ones who slowly, quietly die. I think the
difference is that the kids who bounce back learn to bear a little bit more
than they thought they could, and they soon understand that the secret to
surviving foster care is to accept finite disappointments while never losing
infinite hope. I think that was how Donald survived as long as he did, by never
losing his faith in the wish that tomorrow would be better. But as time went
by, day after day, the tomorrows never got better; they got worse, and he
simply gave . In the way he saw the world, pain was inevitable, but no one ever
explained to him that suffering was optional.”
********************
“In foster care it’s easier to measure
what you’ve lost over what you have gained, because it there aren’t many gains
in that life and you are a prisoner to someone else’s plans for your life.”
********************
“I developed an interest in major
league baseball and the 1960s were, as far as I’m concerned (with a nod to the
Babe Ruth era of the 1920s), the Golden Age of Baseball. Like most people in
the valley, I was a diehard Yankees fan and, in a pinch, a Mets fan. They were New
York teams, and most New Englanders rooted for the Boston Red Sox, but our end
of Connecticut was geographically and culturally closer to New York than
Boston, and that’s where our loyalties went.
And what was not to love? The Yankees
ruled the earth in those days. The great Roger Maris set one Major League
record after another and even he was almost always one hit shy of Mickey
Mantle, God on High of the Green Diamond.”
********************
“For the first time in my life, I was
eating well and from plates—glass plates, no less, not out of the frying pan
because somebody lost all the plates in the last move. Now when we ate, we sat
at a fine round oak table in sturdy chairs that matched. No one rushed through
the meal or argued over who got the biggest portion, and we ate three times a
day.”
********************
“The single greatest influence in
our lives was the church. The Catholic Church in the 1960s differs from what it
is today, especially in the Naugatuck Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly
conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have been the
last generation of American Catholic children who completely and
unquestioningly accepted the sernatural as real. Miracles happened. Virgin
birth and transubstantiation made perfect sense. Mere humans did in fact,
become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian angels walked beside us and our
patron saints really did put in a good word for us every now and then.”
********************
“Henry read it and said, “A story has
to have three things. They are a beginning, a middle and an end. They don’t
have to be in that order. You can start a story at the end or end it in the
middle. There are no rules on that except where you, the author, decide to put
all three parts. Your story has a beginning and an end. But it’s good. Go put
in a middle and bring it back to me.”
I went away encouraged, rewrote the
story and returned it to him two days later. Again he looked it over and said,
“It’s a good story but it lacks a bullet-between-the-eyes opening. Your stories
should always have a knock-’em-dead opening.” Then, looking with exaggerated
suspicion around the crime-prone denizens of the room with an exaggerated
suspicion, he said loudly, “I don’t mean that literally.”
********************
“A few days after I began my short
story, I returned to his desk and handed him my dates. He pushed his
wire-rimmed reading glasses way on his nose and focused on the two pages.
“Okay, you got a beginning; you got yourself a middle and an end. You got a wing-dinger
opening line. But you don’t have an establishing paragraph. Do you know what
that is?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer.
“It’s kinda like an outdated road map
for the reader,” he said. “It gives the reader a general idea of where you’re
taking him, but doesn’t tell him exactly how you intend to get there, which is
all he needs to know.”
********************
“I don’t know’,” he said. “Those three
words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage.” And
with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering
scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person
narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most
literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that
if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no
merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was
mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as
a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it was
that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of
things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of
standards. It was bout quality in the author’s craftsmanship.”
********************
“The foundries were vast, dark
castles built for efficiency, not comfort. Even in the mild New England
summers, when the warm air combined with the stagnant heat from the machines or
open flames in the huge melting rooms where the iron was cast, the effects were
overwhelming. The heat came in unrelenting waves and sucked the soul from your
body. In the winter, the enormous factories were impossible to heat and frigid
New England air reigned sreme in the long halls.
The work was difficult, noisy,
mind-numbing, sometimes dangerous and highly regulated. Bathroom and lunch
breaks were scheduled to the second. There was no place to make a private
phone call. Company guards, dressed in drab uniforms straight out of a James
Cagney prison film [those films were in black and white, notoriously tough,
weren’t there to guard company property. They were there to keep an eye on us.
No one entered or the left the building
without punching in or out on a clock, because the doors were locked and opened
electronically from the main office.”
********************
“So he sings,” he continued as if
Denny had said nothing. “His solo mio, that with her in his life he is rich
because she is so beautiful that she makes the sun more beautiful, you
understand?” And at that he dropped the hoe, closed his eyes and spread out his
arms wide and with the fading sun shining on his handsome face he sang:
Che bella cosa è na jurnata 'e sole
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa
Che bella cosa e' na jurnata 'e sole
Ma n'atu sole,
cchiù bello, oi ne'
'O sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
'O sole, 'o sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
sta 'nfronte a te!
It looked like fun. We dropped our
tools and joined him, belting out something that sounded remarkably like
Napolitano. We sang as loud as we could, holding on to each note as long as we
could before we ran out of breath, and then we sang again, occasionally
dropping to one knee, holding our hands over our hearts with exaggerated looks of
deep pain. Although we made the words , we sang with the deepest passion, with
the best that we had, with all of our hearts, and that made us artists, great
artists, for in that song, we had made all that art is: the creation of
something from nothing, fashioned with all of the soul, born from joy.
And as that beautiful summer sun set
over Waterbury, the Brass City, the City of Churches, our voices floated above
the wonderful aromas of the garden, across the red sky and joined the spirits
in eternity.”
********************
“It didn’t last long. Not many good
things in a foster kid’s life last long. One day, Maura was gone. Her few
things were packed in paper bags and a tearful Miss Louisa carried her out to
Miss Hanrahan’s black state-owned Ford sedan with the state emblem on the door,
and she was gone. The state had found a foster home that would take a little
girl but couldn’t take the rest of us. There were no long goodbyes. She was
just gone. I remember having an enormous sense of helplessness when they took
her. Maura didn’t know where she were going or long she would be there. She was
just gone”
********************
“After another second had passed I
added, “But you’re pretty, pretty,” and as soon as I said it I thought,
“Pretty, pretty? John, you’re an idiot.” But she squeezed my hand and when I
looked at her I saw her entire lovely face was aglow with a wonderful smile,
the kind of smile you get when you have won something.
“Why do you rub your fingers together
all the time?” she asked me, and I felt the breath leave my body and gasped for
air. She had seen me do my crazy finger thing, my affliction. I clenched my
teeth while I searched for a long, exaggerated lie to tell her about why I did
what I did. I didn’t want to be the crazy kid with tics, I wanted to be James
Bond 007, so slick ice avoided me.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I bite my
nails, see?” and she showed me the backs of her hands. Her finger nails were
painted a color I later learned was puce.
“My Dad, he blinks all the time, he
doesn’t know why either,” she continued. She looked her feet and said, “I
shouldn’t have asked you that. I’m really nervous and I say stid things when
I’m nervous. I’m a girl and this is my first date, and for girls this really is
a very big deal.”
I understood completely. I was so
nervous I couldn’t feel my toes, so I started moving them and to
make sure they were still there.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I don’t know
why I do that with my fingers; it’s a thing I do.”
“Well, you’re really cute when you do
it,” she said.
“I know,” I said, and I don’t know why
I said it, but I did.”
********************
“So began my love affair with books.
Years later, as a college student, I remember having a choice between a few
slices of pizza that would have held me over for a day or a copy of On the
Road. I bought the book. I would have forgotten what the pizza tasted like, but
I still remember Kerouac.
The world was mine for the reading. I
traveled with my books. I was there on a tramp steamer in the North Atlantic
with the Hardy Boys, piecing together an unsolvable crime. I rode into the
Valley of Death with the six hundred and I stood at the graves of Uncas and
Cora and listened to the mournful song of the Lenni Linape. Although I braved a
frozen death at Valley Forge and felt the spin of a hundred bullets at Shiloh,
I was never afraid. I was there as much as you are where you are, right this
second. I smelled the gunsmoke and tasted the frost. And it was good to be
there. No one could harm me there. No one could punch me, slap me, call me
stid, or pretend I wasn’t in the room. The other kids raced through books so
they could get the completion stamp on their library card. I didn’t care about
that stid completion stamp. I didn’t want to race through books. I wanted books
to walk slowly through me, stop, and touch my brain and my memory. If a book
couldn’t do that, it probably wasn’t a very good book. Besides, it isn’t how
much you read, it’s what you read.
What I learned from books, from young
Ben Franklin’s anger at his brother to Anne Frank’s longing for the way her
life used to be, was that I wasn’t alone in my pain. All that caused me such
anguish affected others, too, and that connected me to them and that connected
me to my books. I loved everything about books. I loved that odd sensation of
turning the final page, realizing the story had ended, and feeling that I was
saying a last goodbye to a new friend.”
********************
“I had developed a very complicated and
little-understood disorder called misophonia, which means “hatred of sound.”
Certain sounds act as triggers that turn me from a Teddy bear into an agitated
grizzly bear. People with misophonia are annoyed, sometimes to the point of
rage, by ordinary sounds such as people eating, breathing, sniffing, or
coughing, certain consonants, or repetitive sounds. Those triggers, and there
are dozens of them, set off anxiety and avoidant behaviors.
What is a mild irritation for most
people -- the person who keeps sniffling, a buzzing fly in a closed room—those
are major irritants to people with misophonia because we have virtually no
ability to ignore those sounds, and life can be a near constant bombardment of
noises that bother us. I figured out that the best way to cope was to avoid the
triggers. So I turned off the television at certain sounds and avoided loud
people. All of these things gave me a reputation as a high-strung, moody and
difficult child. I knew my overreactions weren’t normal. My playmates knew it”
********************
“Sometimes in the midst of our darkest
moments it’s easy to forget that it’s to us to turn on the light, but
that’s what I did. I switched on the light, the light of cognizance.”
********************
“I don’t know what I would have
done if they had hugged me. I probably would have frozen in place, become
stiff. It took most of my life to overcome my distaste for physical contact and
not to stiffen when I was touched, or flinch, twitch, fidget, and eventually
figure out how to move away. I learned to accept being hugged by my children
when they were infants. Their joy at seeing me enter a room was real and filled
with true love and affection and it showed in their embraces. Like a convert,
when I learned the joy and comfort of being hugged by and hugging those I
loved, I became a regular practitioner.”
********************
“Most people don’t understand how
mighty the power of touch is, how mighty a kind word can be, how important a
listening ear is, or how giving an honest compliment can move the child who has
not known those things, only watched them from afar. As insignificant as they
can be, they have the power to change a life.”
********************
“They were no better than common
thieves. They stole our childhood. But even with that, I was heartbroken that I
would not know the Wozniaks anymore, the only people who came close to being
parents to me. I would be conscious of their absence for the rest of my life. I
needed them. You know, if you think about it, we all need each other. But even
with all of the evidence against the Wozniaks, I had conflicted emotions about
them, then and now. They were the closest I had to a real family and real
parents.
But now I was bankrt of any feelings at
all towards them at all.
I felt then, and feel now, a great
sense of loss. I felt as if I were burying them. when I never really had them
to lose in the first place. Disillusioned is probably a better word. In fact
the very definition of disillusionment is a sense of loss for something you
never had. When you are disillusioned and disappointed enough times, you
shoping. That’s what happens to many foster kids. We become loners, not because
we enjoy the solitude, but because we let people into our lives and they
disappoint us. So we close and travel alone. Even in a crowd, we’re
alone.
Because I survived, I was one of the
lucky ones. Why is it so hard to articulate love, yet so easy to express
disappointment?”
********************
“My first and lasting impression of the
Connecticut River Valley is its serene beauty, especially in the autumn months.
Deep River was a near picture-perfect New England village. When I arrived
there, the town was a typical working-class place, nothing like the trendy
per-income enclave it became. The town center had a cluster of shops, a movie
theater open only on weekends, several white-steepled churches (none of them
Catholic), the town hall, and a Victorian library. It was small, even by
Ansonia standards.”
********************
“While I may not have been a
bastion of good mental health, many of these boys were on their way to becoming
crazier than they already were. Most couldn’t relate to other people socially
at all, because they only dealt inappropriately with other people or didn’t
respond to overtures of friendship or even engage in basic conversations.
Some became too familiar with you too
fast, following their new, latest friend everywhere, including the showers,
insisting on giving you items that were dear to them and sharing everything
else. They also had the awful habit of touching other people, putting their
hands on you as a sign of affection or friendship, and for people like myself,
with my affliction and disdain for being touched unless I wanted to be touched,
these guys were a nightmare. It was often difficult to get word in edgewise
with these kids, and when I did, they interrted me—not in some obnoxious way,
but because they wanted to be included in every single aspect of everything you
did.
The other ones, the stone-cold silent
ones, reacted with deep suspicion toward even the slightest attempt to befriend
them or the smallest show of kindness. If you touched some of these children,
even accidentally, they would warn you to back away. They didn’t care what
others thought of them or anything else, and almost all their talk concerned
punching and hurting and maiming.
I noticed that most of these kids, the
ones who were truly damaged, were eventually filtered out of St. John’s to who
knows where. Institutions have a way of protecting themselves from future
problems.”
********************
“Jesus,” I prayed silently, “please fix
it so that my turn to read won’t come around.”
And then the nun called my name, but
before I stood I thought, “I’ll bet you think this is funny, huh, Jesus?”
I stood and stared at the sentence
assigned to me and believed that, through some miracle, I would suddenly be
able to read it and not be humiliated. I stood there and stared at it until the
children started giggling and snickering and Sister told me to sit.”
********************
“My affliction decided to join
us, forcing me to push my toes on the floor as though I were trying to eject
myself from the chair. I prayed she didn’t notice what the affliction was
making me do. I half expected to be eaten alive or murdered and buried out back
in the school yard.
“I’m not afraid of you, ya know,” I
said, although I was terrified of her. The words hurt her, but that wasn’t my
intent. She turned her face and looked out the window into North Cliff Street.
She knew what her face and twisted body looked like, and she probably knew what
the kids said about her. It was probably an open wound for her and I had just
tossed salt into it.
I was instantly ashamed of what I done
and tried to correct myself. I didn’t mean to be hurtful, because I knew what
it was like to be ridiculed for something that was beyond one’s control, such
as my affliction, and how it made me afraid to touch the chalk because the feel
of chalk to people like me is overwhelming. If I had to write on the
blackboard, I held the chalk with the cuff of my shirt and the class laughed.
“You look good in a nun’s suit,” I
said. It was a stid thing to say, but I meant well by it. She looked at
the black robe as if she were seeing it for the first time.”
********************
“Jews were a frequent topic of
conversation with all of the Wozniaks, which was surprising, since none of them
had any contact at all with anything even remotely Jewish.
While watching television, Walter would
point out who was and who was not Jewish and Helen’s frequent comment when
watching the television news was, “And won’t the Jews be happy about that!” To
bargain with a merchant for a lower price was to “Jew him ,” and that sort of
thing.
Walter’s mother and father were far
worse. They despised the Jews and blamed them for everything from the start of
World War I to the Kennedy assassination to the rising price of beef.
I didn’t pay much heed to any of this.
It wasn’t my problem, and if I were to think through all the ethnic, racial and
religious barbs the Wozniaks threw out in the course of a week, I’d think about
nothing else.
After being told about a part of my
mother’s heritage, the Wozniaks began their verbal and cultural assault against
us. As odd as it sounds, they might not always have intended to be mean.”
********************
“Explaining the Jews in a Catholic
school when you’re Irish is like having to explain your country’s foreign
policy while on a vacation in France. You don’t know what you’re talking about
and no matter what you say, they’re not going to like it anyway.”
********************
“You could read the story of his
entire life on his face in one glance.”
********************
“As interesting as that was, it
didn’t inspire me. What did was that here was a Jew who was tough with his
fists, a Jew who fought back. The only Jews I had ever heard of surrendered or
were beaten by the Romans, the Egyptians, or the Nazis. You name it, it seemed
like everyone on earth at some point had taken their turn slapping the Jews
around. But not Benny Leonard. I figured you’d have to kill Benny Leonard
before he surrendered.”
********************
“One afternoon Walter brought Izzy to
the house for lunch and, pointing to me, he said to Izzy, “He’s one of your
tribe.”
Dobkins lifted his head to look at me
and after a few seconds said, “I don’t see it.”
“The mother’s a Jew,” Walter answered,
as if he were describing the breeding of a mongrel dog.
“Then you are a Jew,” Izzy said, and
sort of blessed me with his salami sandwich.”
********************
“Sometimes a man must stand for what is
right and sometimes you must simply walk away and suffer the babblings of
weak-minded fools or try to change their minds. It’s like teachin’ a pig to
sing. It is a waste of your time and it annoys the pig.”
********************
“Father, I can’t take this,” I
said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a priest, Father.”
“And my money’s no good because of it?
What are you? A member of the Masonic Lodge?”
“Naw, Father,” I said. “I just feel
guilty taking money from you.”
“Well, you’re Irish and Jewish. You
have to feel guilty over somethin’, don’t ya? Take the money and be happy ye
have it.”
― John William Tuohy, No time to say
goodbye: memoirs of a life n foster care
********************
“I caddied—more accurately, I
drove the golf cart—for Father O’Leary and his friends throughout most of the
summer of that year. I was a good caddie because I saw nothing when they passed
the bottle of whiskey and turned a deaf ear to yet another colorful reinvention
of the words “motherless son of a bitch from hell” when the golf ball betrayed
them.”
********************
“Weeks turned into months and a year
passed, but I didn’t miss my parents. I missed the memory of them. I assumed
that part of my life was over. I didn’t understand that I was required to have
an attachment to them, to these people I barely knew. Rather, it was my
understanding that I was sposed to switch my attachment to my foster parents.
So I acted on that notion and no one corrected me, so I assumed that what I was
doing was good and healthy.”
********************
“I felt empty a lot and I sometimes had
a sense—and I know this sounds strange—that I really had no existence as my own
person, that I could disappear and no one would notice or remember that I had
ever existed. It is a terrifying thing to live with. I kept myself busy to
avoid that feeling, because somehow being busy made me feel less empty.”
********************
“Denny thought our parents needed a
combination of material goods and temperamental changes before he could return
home.
“If Dad buys Ma a car, then she’ll love
him, and they’ll get back together and she won’t be all crazy anymore,” he
said. For years he held out the possibility that those things would happen and
all would change. “If we had more things, like stoves and cars,” he told me at
night in our bedroom, “and Ma wasn’t like she is, we could go home.”
********************
“Because we were raised in a
bigoted and hate-filled home, we simply assumed that calling someone a “cheap
Jew” or saying someone “Jewed him ” were perfectly acceptable ways to
communicate. Or at least we did until the day came when I called one of the
cousins, a Neanderthal DeRosa boy, “a little Jew,” and he told me he wasn’t the
Jew, that I was the Jew, and he even got Helen and Nana to confirm it for him.
It came as a shock to me to find out we
were a part of this obviously terrible tribe of skinflint, trouble-making,
double-dealing, shrewdly smart desert people. When Denny found out, he was
crestfallen because he had assumed that being Jewish meant, according to what
his former foster family the Skodiens had taught him, a life behind a desk
crunching numbers. “And I hate math,” he said, shaking his head.
So here we were, accused Jews living in
a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Not a good situation. Walter’s father was the worst.
Learning about our few drops of Jewish blood seemed to ignite a special,
long-held hatred in him. He became vile over nothing, finding any excuse to
deride the Jews in front of us until Helen made him stop. We didn’t know what
to make of it, except to write it off as another case of Wozniak-inspired
insanity, but as young as we were, we could tell that at some point in his life
he had crossed swords with a Jew someplace and came out on the losing end and
we were going to pay for it. But because we really didn’t feel ourselves to be
Jews, it didn’t sink in that he intended to hurt us with his crazy tirades. As
I said, it’s hard to insult somebody when they don’t understand the insult, and
it’s equally hard to insult them when they out and out refuse to be insulted.
Word got around quickly.”
********************
“I hit him for every single thing that
was wrong in my life and kicked him in a fierce fury of madness as he sobbed
and covered his face and screamed. I hit him because Walter hit me and I hit
him because I hated my life and I hit him because I just wanted to go home and
I hit him because I didn’t know where home was.”
********************
“I also told him about the
dramatic, vivid verbal picture of God that the nuns drew for us—an enormous,
slightly dangerous and very touchy guy with white hair and a long white beard.
“It’s all the talk of feeble minds,” he
whispered to me in confidence. “Those nuns know as much about prayer as they do
about sex. Listen to me, now. God is everywhere and alive in everything, while
them nuns figured God is as good as dead, a recluse in a permanently bad mood.
Well, I refuse to believe that to my God, my maker and creator, my life is
little more than a dice game.” He stopped and turned and looked at me and said,
“Never believe that a life full of sin puts you on a direct route to hell. Even
if you only know a little bit about God, you learn pretty quick that he’s big
on U-turns, dead stops and starting over again.”
As each day passes and my memories of
Father O’Leary and Sister Emmarentia fade, and I can no longer recall their
faces or the sounds of their voices as clearly as I could a decade ago, what
remains, clear and uncluttered, are the lessons I took from them.”
********************
“Eventually, many years later, I
came to see him the way everyone else saw him—a nice guy who, despite all the
damage he did to us, wasn’t a bad man, not inherently bad, anyway. He just
wasn’t very bright, and was in over his head on almost every level of life. He
was capable of only so much and not a drop more, and because he seemed so
harmless and lost, people not only liked him, they protected him.
My mother, despite her poverty, left
the opposite impression. She left no doubt that she was psychologically tough
and mentally sharp, and because of that the Wozniaks disliked her.
And that was another difference between
my mother and father. My father was a whiner, a complainer, a perpetually
unhappy man unable to comprehend the simple fact that sometimes life is unfair.
My mother never complained, and yet her poverty-stricken life was miserable.
She never carried on about the early death of her raging alcoholic mother, or
the father who raped her, or of a diet dictated by the restrictions of food
stamps.”
AMAZON REVIEWS
By
jackieh on October 13, 2015
After reading about John's deeply
personal and painful past, I just wanted to hug the child within him......and
hug all the children who were thrown into the state's foster system....it is an
amazing read.......
By
Jane Pogoda on October 9, 2015
I truly enjoyed reading his
memoir. I also grew up in Ansonia and had no idea conditions such as these
existed. The saving grace is knowing the author made it out and survived the
system. Just knowing he was able to have a family of his own made me happy. I
attended the same grammar school and was happy that his experience there was
not negative. I had a wonderful experience in that school. I wish that I could
have been there for him when he was at the school since we were there at
probably at the same time.
By
Sue on September 27, 2015
Hi - just finished your novel
"No time to say goodbye" - what a powerful read!!! - I bought it for
my 90 year old mom who is an avid reader and lived in the valley all her
life-she loved it also along with my sister- we are all born and raised in the
valley- i.e. Derby and Ansonia
By
David A. Wright on September 7, 2015
I enjoyed this book. I grew up in
Ansonia CT and went to the Assumption School. Also reconized all the places he
was talking about and some of the families.
By
Robert G Manley on September 7, 2015
This is a wonderfully written
book. It is heart wrenchingly sad at times and the next minute hilariously
funny. I attribute that to the intelligence and wit of the author who combines
the humor and pathos of his Irish catholic background and horrendous
"foster kid" experience. He captures each character perfectly and the
reader can easily visualize the individuals the author has to deal with on
daily basis. Having lived part of my life in the parochial school system and having
lived as a child in the same neighborhood as the author, I was vividly brought
back to my childhood .Most importantly, it shows the strength of the soul and
how just a little compassion can be so important to a lost child.
By
LNA on July 9, 2015
John Tuohy writes with compelling
honesty, and warmth. I grew up in Ansonia, CT myself, so it makes it even more
real. He brings me immediately back there with his narrative, while he wounds
my soul, as I realize I had no idea of the suffering of some of the children
around me. His story is a must read, of courage and great spirit in the face of
impoverishment, sorrow, and adult neglect. I could go on and on, but just get
the book. If you're like me, you'll soon be reading it out loud to any person
in the room who will listen. Many can suffer and overcome as they go through
it, but few can find the words that take us through the story. John is a gifted
writer to be able to do that.
By
Barbara Pietruszka on June 29, 2015
I am from Connecticut so I was
very familiar with many locations described in the book especially Ansonia
where I lived. I totally enjoyed the book and would like to know more about the
author. I recommend the book to everyone
By
Joanne B. on June 28, 2015
What an emotional rollercoaster.
I laughed. I cried. Once you start reading it's hard to stop. I was torn
between wanting to gulp it up and read over and over each quote that started
the chapter. I couldn't help but feel part of the Tuohy clan. I wanted to
scream in their defense. It's truly hard to believe the challenges that foster
children face. I can only pray that this story may touch even one person facing
this life. It's an inspiring read. That will linger long after you finish it.
This is a wonderfully written memoir that immediately pulls you in to the lives
of the Tuohy family.
By
Paul Day on June 15, 2015
Great reading. Life in foster
care told from a very rare point of view.
By
Jackie Malkes on June 5, 2015
This book is definitely a must
for social workers working with children specifically. This is an excellent
memoir which identifies the trails of foster children in the 1960s in the
United States. The memoir captures stories of joy as well as nail biting
terror, as the family is at times torn apart but finds each other later and finds
solace in the experiences of one another. The stories capture the love siblings
have for one another as well as the protection they have for one another in
even the worst of circumstances. On the flip side, one of the most touching
stories to me was when a Nun at the school helped him to read-- truly an
example of how a positive person really helped to shape the author in times
when circumstances at home were challenging and treacherous. I found the book
to be a page turner and at times show how even in the hardest of circumstances
there was a need to live and survive and make the best of any moment. The
memoir is eye-opening and helped to shed light and make me feel proud of the
volunteer work I take part in with disadvantaged children. Riveting....Must
read....memory lane on steroids....Catholic school banter, blue color
towns...Lawrence Welk on Sundays night's.
By
Eileen on June 4, 2015
From ' No time to say Goodbye
'and authors John W. Touhys Gangster novels, his style never waivers...humorous
to sadness to candidly realistic situations all his writings leaves the reader
in awe......longing for more.
By
karen pojakene on June 1, 2015
This book is a must-read for
anyone who administers to the foster care program in any state. This is not a
"fell through the cracks" life story, but rather a memoir of a life
guided by strength and faith and a hard determination to survive. it is
heartening to know that the "sewer" that life can become to steal our
personal peace can be fought and our peace can be restored, scarred, but
restored.
By
Michelle Black on
A captivating, shocking, and
deeply moving memoir, No Time to Say Goodbye is a true page turner. John shares
the story of his childhood, from the struggles of living in poverty to being in
the foster care system and simply trying to survive. You will be cheering for
him all the way, as he never loses his will to thrive even in the darkest and
bleakest of circumstances. This memoir is a very truthful and unapologetic
glimpse into the way in which some of our most vulnerable citizens have been
treated in the past and are still being treated today. It is truly eye-opening,
and hopefully will inspire many people to take action in protection of
vulnerable children.
By
Kimberly on May 24, 2015
I found myself in tears while
reading this book. John William Tuohy writes quite movingly about the world he
grew up in; a world in which I had hoped did not exist within the foster care
system. This book is at times funny, raw, compelling, heartbreaking and
disturbing. I found myself rooting for John as he tries to escape from an
incredibly difficult life. You will too!
By
Geoffrey A. Childs on May 20, 2015
I found this book to be a
compelling story of life in the Ct foster care system. at times disturbing and
at others inspirational ,The author goes into great detail in this gritty
memoir of His early life being abandoned into the states system and his
subsequent escape from it. Every once in a while a book or even an article in a
newspaper comes along that bears witness to an injustice or even something
that's just plain wrong. This chronicle of the foster care system is such a
book and should be required reading for any aspiring social workers.
ROGER TOUHY,
THE LAST GANGSTER
Editorial
Reviews
From
Publishers Weekly
JFK's
pardons and the mob; Prohibition, Chicago's crime cadres and the staged
kidnapping of "`Jake the Barber'" Factor, "the black sheep
brother of the cosmetics king, Max Factor"; lifetime sentences, attempted
jail busts and the perseverance of "a rumpled private detective and an
eccentric lawyer" John W. Tuohy showcases all these and more sensational
and shady happenings in When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange
Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping that Never Happened. The author
started investigating Touhy's 1959 murder by Capone's gang in 1975 for an
undergrad assignment. He traces the frame-job whereby Touhy was accused of the
kidnapping, his decades in jail, his memoirs, his retrial and release and,
finally, his murder, 28 days after regaining his freedom. Sixteen pages of
photos.
From
Library Journal
Roger
Touhy, one of the "terrible Touhys" and leader of a bootlegging
racket that challenged Capone's mob in Prohibition Chicago, had a lot to answer
for, but the crime that put him behind bars was, ironically, one he didn't
commit: the alleged kidnapping of Jake Factor, half-brother of Max Factor and
international swindler. Author Tuohy (apparently no relation), a former staff
investigator for the National Center for the Study of Organized Crime, briefly
traces the history of the Touhys and the Capone mob, then describes Factor's
plan to have himself kidnapped, putting Touhy behind bars and keeping himself
from being deported. This miscarriage of justice lasted 17 years and ended in
Touhy's parole and murder by the Capone mob 28 days later. Factor was never
deported. The author spent 26 years researching this story, and he can't bear
to waste a word of it. Though slim, the book still seems padded, with
irrelevant detail muddying the main story. Touhy is a hard man to feel sorry
for, but the author does his best. Sure to be popular in the Chicago area and
with the many fans of mob history, this is suitable for larger public libraries
and regional collections. Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH
BOOK
REVIEW
John
William Tuohy, one of the most prolific crime writers in America, has penned a
tragic, but fascinating story of Roger Touhy and John Factor. It's a tale born
out of poverty and violence, a story of ambition gone wrong and deception on an
enormous, almost unfathomable, scale. However, this is also a story of triumph
of determination to survive, of a lifelong struggle for dignity and redemption
of the spirit.
The
story starts with John "Jake the Barber" Factor. The product of the
turn of the century European ethnic slums of Chicago's west side, Jake's
brother, Max Factor, would go on to create an international cosmetic empire.
In
1926, Factor, grubstaked in a partnership with the great New York criminal
genius, Arnold Rothstien, and Chicago's Al Capone, John Factor set up a stock
scam in England that fleeced thousands of investors, including members of the
royal family, out of $8 million dollars, an incredible sum of money in 1926.
After
the scam fell apart, Factor fled to France, where he formed another syndicate
of con artists, who broke the bank at Monte Carlo by rigging the tables.
Eventually,
Factor fled to the safety of Capone's Chicago but the highest powers in the
Empire demanded his arrest. However, Factor fought extradition all the way to
the United States Supreme Court, but he had a weak case and deportation was
inevitable. Just 24 hours before the court was to decide his fate, Factor paid
to have himself kidnapped and his case was postponed. He reappeared in Chicago
several days later, and, at the syndicates' urging, accused gangster Roger
Touhy of the kidnapping.
Roger
"The Terrible" Touhy was the youngest son of an honest Chicago cop.
Although born in the Valley, a teeming Irish slum, the family moved to rural
Des Plains, Illinois while Roger was still a boy. Touhy's five older brothers
stayed behind in the valley and soon flew under the leadership of
"Terrible Tommy" O'Connor. By 1933, three of them would be shot dead
in various disputes with the mob and one, Tommy, would lose the use of his legs
by syndicate machine guns. Secure in the still rural suburbs of Cook County,
Roger Touhy graduated as class valedictorian of his Catholic school.
Afterwards, he briefly worked as an organizer for the Telegraph and
Telecommunications Workers Union after being blacklisted by Western Union for
his minor pro-labor activities.
Touhy
entered the Navy in the first world war and served two years, teaching Morse
code to Officers at Harvard University.
After
the war, he rode the rails out west where he earned a living as a railroad
telegraph operator and eventually made a small but respectable fortune as an
oil well speculator.
Returning
to Chicago in 1924, Touhy married his childhood sweetheart, regrouped with his
brothers and formed a partnership with a corrupt ward heeler named Matt Kolb,
and, in 1925, he started a suburban bootlegging and slot machine operation in
northwestern Cook County. Left out of the endless beer wars that plagued the gangs
inside Chicago, Touhy's operation flourished. By 1926, his slot machine
operations alone grossed over $1,000,000.00 a year, at a time when a gallon of
gas cost eight cents.
They
were unusual gangsters. When the Klu Klux Klan, then at the height of its
power, threatened the life of a priest who had befriended the gang, Tommy
Touhy, Roger's older brother, the real "Terrible Touhy," broke into
the Klan's national headquarters, stole its membership roles, and, despite an
offer of $25,000 to return them, delivered the list to the priest who published
the names in several Catholic newspapers the following day.
Once,
Touhy unthinkingly released several thousand gallons of putrid sour mash in to
the Des Plains River one day before the city was to reenact its discovery by
canoe-riding Jesuits a hundred years before. After a dressing down by the towns
people Touhy spent $10,000.00 on perfume and doused the river with it, saving
the day.
They
were inventive too. When the Chicago police levied a 50% protection tax on
Touhy's beer, Touhy bought a fleet of Esso gasoline delivery trucks, kept the
Esso logo on the vehicles, and delivered his booze to his speakeasies that way.
In
1930, when Capone invaded the labor rackets, the union bosses, mostly Irish and
completely corrupt, turned to the Touhy organization for protection. The
intermittent gun battles between the Touhys and the Capone mob over control of
beer routes which had been fought on the empty, back roads of rural Cook
County, was now brought into the city where street battles extracted an awesome
toll on both sides. The Chicago Tribune estimated the casualties to be one
hundred dead in less then 12 months.
By
the winter of 1933, remarkably, Touhy was winning the war in large part because
joining him in the struggle against the mob was Chicago's very corrupt, newly
elected mayor Anthony "Ten percent Tony" Cermak, who was as much a
gangster as he was an elected official.
Cermak
threw the entire weight of his office and the whole Chicago police force behind
Touhy's forces. Eventually, two of Cermak's police bodyguards arrested Frank
Nitti, the syndicate's boss, and, for a price, shot him six times. Nitti lived.
As a result, two months later Nitti's gunmen caught up with Cermak at a political
rally in Florida.
Using
previously overlooked Secret Service reports, this book proves, for the first
time, that the mob stalked Cermak and used a hardened felon to kill him. The
true story behind the mob's 1933 murder of Anton Cermak, will changes histories
understanding of organized crimes forever. The fascinating thing about this
killing is its eerie similarity to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas thirty
years later, made even more macabre by the fact that several of the names
associated with the Cermak killing were later aligned with the Kennedy killing.
For
many decades, it was whispered that the mob had executed Cermak for his role in
the Touhy-syndicate war of 1931-33, but there was never proof. The official
story is that a loner named Giuseppe Zangara, an out-of-work, Sicilian born
drifter with communist leanings, traveled to Florida in the winter of 1933 and
fired several shots at President Franklin Roosevelt. He missed the President,
but killed Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak instead. However, using long lost
documents, Tuohy is able to prove that Zangara was a convicted felon with long
ties to mob Mafia and that he very much intended to murder Anton Cermak.
With
Cermak dead, Touhy was on his own against the mob. At the same time, the United
States Postal Service was closing in on his gang for pulling off the largest
mail heists in US history at that time. The cash was used to fund Touhy's war
with the Capones.Then in June of 1933, John Factor en he reappeared, Factor
accused Roger Touhy of kidnapping him. After two sensational trials, Touhy was
convicted of kidnapping John Factor and sentenced to 99 years in prison and
Factor, after a series of complicated legal maneuvers, and using the mob's
influence, was allowed to remain in the United States as a witness for the
prosecution, however, he was still a wanted felon in England.
By
1942 Roger Touhy had been in prison for nine years, his once vast fortune was
gone. Roger's family was gone as well. At his request, his wife Clara had moved
to Florida with their two sons in 1934. However, with the help of Touhy's
remaining sister, the family retained a rumpled private detective, actually a
down-and-out, a very shady and disbarred mob lawyer named Morrie Green.
Disheveled
of not, Green was a highly competent investigator and was able to piece
together and prove the conspiracy that landed Touhy in jail. However, no court
would hear the case, and by the fall of 1942, Touhy had exhausted every legal
avenue open to him.Desperate, Touhy hatched a daring daylight breakout over the
thirty foot walls of Stateville prison.The sensational escape ended three
months later in a dramatic and bloody shootout between the convicts and the
FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover.
Less
then three months after Touhy was captured, Fox Studios hired producer Brian
Foy to churn out a mob financed docudrama film on the escape entitled,
"Roger Touhy, The Last Gangster." The executive producer on the film
was Johnny Roselli, the hood who later introduced Judy Campbell to Frank
Sinatra. Touhy sued Fox and eventually won his case and the film was withdrawn
from circulation. In 1962, Columbia pictures and John Houston tried to produce
a remake of the film, but were scared off the project.
While
Touhy was on the run from prison, John Factor was convicted for m ail fraud and
was sentenced and served ten years at hard labor. Factor's take from the scam
was $10,000,000.00 in cash.
Released
in 1949, Factor took control of the Stardust Hotel Casino in 1955, then the largest
operation on the Vegas strip. The casino's true owners, of course, were Chicago
mob bosses Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Murray Humpreys and Sam Giancana. From
1955 to 1963, the length of Factor's tenure at the casino, the US Justice
Department estimated that the Chicago outfit skimmed between forty-eight to 200
million dollars from the Stardust alone.
In
1956, while Factor and the outfit were growing rich off the Stardust, Roger
Touhy hired a quirky, high strung, but highly effective lawyer named Robert B.
Johnstone to take his case. A brilliant legal tactician, who worked incessantly
on Touhy's freedom, Robert Johnstone managed to get Touhy's case heard before
federal judge John P. Barnes, a refined magistrate filled with his own
eccentricities. After two years of hearings, Barnes released a 1,500-page
decision on Touhy's case, finding that Touhy was railroaded to prison in a
conspiracy between the mob and the state attorney's office and that John Factor
had kidnapped himself as a means to avoid extradition to England.
Released
from prison in 1959, Touhy wrote his life story "The Stolen Years"
with legendary Chicago crime reporter, Ray Brennan. It was Brennan, as a young
cub reporter, who broke the story of John Dillenger's sensational escape from
Crown Point prison, supposedly with a bar of soap whittled to look like a
pistol. It was also Brennan who brought about the end of Roger Touhy's mortal
enemy, "Tubbo" Gilbert, the mob owned chief investigator for the Cook
County state attorney's office, and who designed the frame-up that placed Touhy
behind bars.
Factor
entered a suit against Roger Touhy, his book publishers and Ray Brennan,
claiming it damaged his reputation as a "leading citizen of Nevada and a
philanthropist."
The
teamsters, Factor's partners in the Stardust Casino, refused to ship the book
and Chicago's bookstore owners were warned by Tony Accardo, in person, not to
carry the book.
Touhy
and Johnstone fought back by drawing up the papers to enter a $300,000,000
lawsuit against John Factor, mob leaders Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo and Murray
Humpreys as well as former Cook County state attorney Thomas Courtney and Tubbo
Gilbert, his chief investigator, for wrongful imprisonment.
The
mob couldn't allow the suit to reach court, and considering Touhy's
determination, Ray Brennan's nose for a good story and Bob Johnstone's legal
talents, there was no doubt the case would make it to court. If the case went
to court, John Factor, the outfit's figurehead at the lucrative Stardust
Casino, could easily be tied in to illegal teamster loans. At the same time,
the McClellan committee was looking into the ties between the teamsters, Las
Vegas and organized crime and the raid at the mob conclave in New York state
had awakened the FBI and brought them into the fight. So, Touhy's lawsuit was,
in effect, his death sentence.
Twenty-five
days after his release from twenty-five years in prison, Roger Touhy was gunned
down on a frigid December night on his sister's front door.
Two
years after Touhy's murder, in 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered
his Justice Department to look into the highly suspect dealings of the Stardust
Casino. Factor was still the owner on record, but had sold his interest in the
casino portion of the hotel for a mere 7 million dollars. Then, in December of
that year, the INS, working with the FBI on Bobby Kennedy's orders, informed
Jake Factor that he was to be deported from the United States before the end of
the month. Factor would be returned to England where he was still a wanted
felon as a result of his 1928 stock scam. Just 48 hours before the deportation,
Factor, John Kennedy's largest single personal political contributor, was
granted a full and complete Presidential pardon which allowed him to stay in
the United States.
The
story hints that Factor was more then probably an informant for the Internal
Revenue Service, it also investigates the murky world of Presidential pardons,
the last imperial power of the Executive branch. It's a sordid tale of abuse of
privilege, the mob's best friend and perhaps it is time the American people
reconsider the entire notion.
The
mob wasn't finished with Factor. Right after his pardon, Factor was involved in
a vague, questionable financial plot to try and bail teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa
out of his seemingly endless financial problems in Florida real estate. He was
also involved with a questionable stock transaction with mobster Murray
Humpreys. Factor spent the remaining twenty years of his life as a benefactor
to California's Black ghettos. He tried, truly, to make amends for all of the
suffering he had caused in his life. He spent millions of dollars building
churches, gyms, parks and low cost housing in the poverty stricken ghettos.
When he died, three United States Senators, the Mayor of Los Angles and several
hundred poor Black waited in the rain to pay their last respects at Jake the
Barber's funeral.
Interesting
Information on A Little Known Case
By Bill Emblom
Author John Tuohy, who has a
similar spelling of the last name to his subject Roger, but apparently no
relation, has provided us with an interesting story of northwest Chicago beer
baron Roger Touhy who was in competition with Al Capone during Capone's heyday.
Touhy appeared to be winning the battle since Mayor Anton Cermak was deporting
a number of Capone's cronies. However, the mob hit, according to the author, on
Mayor Cermak in Miami, Florida, by Giuseppe Zangara following a speech by
President-elect Roosevelt, put an end to the harrassment of Capone's cronies.
The author details the staged "kidnapping" of Jake "the
Barber" Factor who did this to avoid being deported to England and facing
a prison sentence there for stock swindling, with Touhy having his rights
violated and sent to prison for 25 years for the kidnapping that never
happened. Factor and other Chicago mobsters were making a lot of money with the
Stardust Casino in Las Vegas when they got word that Touhy was to be parolled
and planned to write his life story. The mob, not wanting this, decided Touhy
had to be eliminated. Touhy was murdered by hit men in 1959, 28 days after
gaining his freedom. Jake Factor had also spent time in prison in the United
States for a whiskey swindle involving 300 victims in 12 states. Two days
before Factor was to be deported to England to face prison for the stock
swindle President Kennedy granted Factor a full Presidential Pardon after
Factor's contribution to the Bay of Pigs fund. President Kennedy, the author
notes, issued 472 pardons (about half questionable) more than any president
before or since.
There are a number of books on
Capone and the Chicago mob. This book takes a look at an overlooked beer baron
from that time period, Roger Touhy. It is a very worthwhile read and one that
will hold your interest.
GREAT
BOOK FROM CHICAGO AND ERA WAS MY DAD'S,TRUE TO STORY
Very good book. Hard to put down
Bymistakesweremadeon
Eight long years locked up for a
kidnapping that was in fact a hoax, in autumn 1942, Roger Touhy & his gang
of cons busted out of Stateville, the infamous "roundhouse" prison,
southwest of Chicago Illinois. On the lam 2 months he was, when J Edgar &
his agents sniffed him out in a run down 6-flat tenement on the city's far
north lakefront. "Terrible Roger" had celebrated Christmas morning on
the outside - just like all square Johns & Janes - but by New Year's Eve,
was back in the bighouse.
Touhy's arrest hideout holds
special interest to me because I grew up less than a mile away from it. Though
I never knew so til 1975 when his bio was included in hard-boiled crime
chronicler Jay Robert Nash's, Badmen & Bloodletters, a phone book sized
encyclopedia of crooks & killers. Touhy's hard scrabble charisma stood out
among 200 years' worth of sociopathic Americana Nash had alphabetized, and
gotten a pulphouse publisher to print up for him.
I read Nash's outlaw dictionary
as a teen, and found Touhy's Prohibition era David vs Goliath battles with
ultimate gangster kingpin, Al Capone quite alluring, in an anti-hero sorta way.
Years later I learned Touhy had written a memoir, and reading his The Stolen
Years only reinforced my image of an underdog speakeasy beer baron - slash
suburban family man - outwitting the stone cold killer who masterminded the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
Like most autobiographies tho,
Touhy's book painted him the good guy. Just an everyday gent caught up in
events, and he sold his story well. Had I been a saloonkeeper back then I could
picture myself buying his sales pitch - and liking the guy too. I sure bought
into his tale, which in hindsight criminal scribe Nash had too, because both
writers portray Touhy - though admittedly a crook - as never "really"
hurting anybody. Only doing what any down-to-earth bootlegger running a million
dollar/year criminal enterprise would have.
What Capone's Mob Murdered Roger
Touhy author John Tuohy does tho is, provide a more objective version of
events, balancing out Touhy's white wash ... 'er ... make that subjectively ...
remembered telling of his life & times. Author Tuohy's account of gangster
Touhy's account forced me - grown up now - to re-account for my own original
take on the story.
As a kid back then, Touhy seemed
almost a Robin Hood- ish hood - if you'll pardon a very lame pun. Forty years
on tho re-considering the evidence, I think a persuasive - if not iron-clad
convincing - case can be made for his conviction in the kidnapping of swindler
scumbag Jake the Barber Factor. At least as far as conspiracy to do so goes,
anyways. (Please excuse the crude redundancy there but Factor's stench truly
was that of the dog s*** one steps in on those unfortunate occasions one does.)
Touhy's memoir painted himself as
almost an innocent bystander at his own life's events. But he was a very smart
& savvy guy - no dummy by a long shot. And I kinda do believe now, to not
have known his own henchmen were in on Factor's ploy to stave off deportation
and imprisonment, Touhy would have had to be as naive a Prohibition crime boss
- and make no mistake he was one - as I was as a teenage kid reading Nash's
thug-opedia,
On the other hand, the guy was
the father of two sons and it's repulsive to consider he would have taken part
in loathsomeness the crime of kidnapping was - even if the abducted victim was
an adult and as repulsively loathsome as widows & orphans conman, Jake
Factor.
This book's target audience is
crime buffs no doubt, but it's an interesting read just the same; and includes
anecdotes and insights I had not known of before. Unfortunately too, one that
knocks a hero of mine down a peg or two - or more like ten.
Circa 1960, President Kennedy
pardoned Jake the Barber, a fact that reading of almost made me puke. Then
again JFK and the Chicago Mob did make for some strange bedfellowery every now
& again. I'll always admire WWII US Navy commander Kennedy's astonishing
(word chosen carefully) bravery following his PT boat's sinking, but him
signing that document - effectively wiping Factor's s*** stain clean - as
payback for campaign contributions Factor made to him, was REALLY nauseating to
read.
Come to think of it tho, the
terms "criminal douchedog" & "any political candidate"
are pretty much interchangeable.
Anyways tho ... rest in peace
Rog, & I raise a toast - of virtual bootleg ale - in your honor:
"Turns out you weren't the hard-luck mug I'd thought you were, but what
the hell, at least you had style." And guts to meet your inevitable end
with more grace than a gangster should.
Post Note: Author Tuohy's
re-examination of the evidence in the Roger Touhy case does include some heroes
- guys & women - who attempted to find the truth of what did happen.
Reading about people like that IS rewarding. They showed true courage - and
decency - in a world reeking of corruption & deceit. So, here's to the
lawyer who took on a lost cause; the private detective who dug up buried facts;
and most of all, Touhy's wife & sister who stood by his side all those
years.
Crime
don't pay, kids
Very good organized crime book. A
rather obscure gangster story which makes it fresh to read. I do not like these
minimum word requirements for a review. (There, I have met my minimum)
Chicago
Gangster History At It's Best
ByJ. CROSBYon
As a 4th generation Chicagoan, I
just loved this book. Growing up in the 1950's and 60's I heard the name
"Terrible Touhy's" mentioned many times. Roger was thought of as a
great man, and seems to have been held in high esteem among the old timer Chicagoans.
That said, I thought this book to
be nothing but interesting and well written. (It inspired me to find a copy of
Roger's "Stolen Years" bio.) I do recommend this book to other folks
interested in prohibition/depression era Chicago crime research. It is a must
have for your library of Gangsters literature from that era. Chock full of
information and the reader is transported back in time.
I'd like to know just what is
"The Valley" area today in Chicago. I still live in the Windy City
and would like to see if anything remains from the early days of the 20th
century.
A good writer and a good book! I
will buy some more of Mr. Tuohy's work.
Great
story, great read
ByBookreaderon
A complex tale of gangsters,
political kickback, mob wars and corrupt politicians told with wit and humor at
a good pace. Highly recommend this book.
One
of the best books I've read in a long time....
If you're into mafioso, read
this! I loved it. Bought a copy for my brother to read for his birthday--good
stuff.
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.
The Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings. Abridged.
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: Senator Kefauver is a great person!
The committee did a amazingly great job investigating organized crime in
different cities, the same as the author did putting it all together in one
book!!It was really interesting to read this record! I felt like I was there in
a court room! Seriously, very impressive!
Amazon review: It's great that we have such a great
historical document in print! Senator Kefauver and the committee investigate
Organized Crime all over the country: Miami, NY, New Orleans, Philadelphia,
Kansas city, etc. This record
has many interviews with mafia leaders.
Rare and great photographs! It's one of the best criminal books I ever read! I
would highly recommend it to anyone!
The Connecticut Irish
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: This book is not a history of the
Irish in Connecticut so much as it is a history of people of Irish decent of
the great State of Connecticut, but in that, it does a very good job reporting
the facts and being wholly inclusive. It has presents dome very wonderful
photographs and fives a brief but disturbing picture of the Anti-Irish movement
in the New England states.
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: "Shooting the Mob: Organized
Crime in photos, Crime Boss Tony Accardo" was a welcomed addition to my
book collection. For one thing, not much is written about ,"the Big
Tuna", Tony Accardo; the Chicago Outfit's "man of many talents",
let alone any photos. This book gives the reader a chance to gain some
knowledge on the amazing Outfit boss/consigliere, that might not otherwise be
available.
For me, it was a must for my
collection; not to give too much away, but there are photos and personal
information about the life and times of Anthony "JB" Accardo; from
his days hanging around the "Circus Cafe" with "Tough" Tony
Capezio, John "Screwey" Moore and "Machine Gun" Jack
McGurn, to catching "the Big Guy's",attention, "Snorky" who
then had him sitting in the lobby of his hotels with a Thompson Sub-Machine Gun
on guard duty!
Things just kept getting better for the
capable "Joe Batters"!!
Mob Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo
Lonardo and others: The court testimony of FBI New York Undercover Agent Joe
Pistone
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: What I loved about this book is that
even though its mostly testimony before government investigative inquires, you
can sense the hood attitudes and their arrogance. This is the real mob talking
about everyday life as a gangster. Good stuff
Amazon review: This is the story of gangland told in
the federal testimony of the hoodlum who decided to talk about life in the
underworld. Although some Chicago gangsters are included in the text and photos
(Lots of photos here) the concentration is on the New York mob.
An Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time
Line. 1837-2000 K
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: Love the pictures in the book, some
of them I've not seen before. This is a good outline for what one needs to know
about the rise and fall of what was once a mighty underworld mob.
Amazon review: Pretty good outline in photos and
text of the Chicago Outfit from start to what is basically its finish, the last
year of the 20th century.
EMERSON
Amazon review: I purchased this book for my daughter
who loves Emerson. The quotes are organized in categories and are easy to find
and read. The book includes the most memorable quotes of Emerson and my
daughter loves it.
Amazon review: This is really enjoyable to read and
I like how it is done and you can look up all sorts of things. I have shared
some of Emerson's quotes from this book on my website right from this book,
giving him credit.
Amazon review: Made me hungry for more!!
Amazon review: It's a keeper!
The New England Mafia.
Amazon review: Good book about the New England mafia
with some nice rare pictures
Amazon review: Coming from RI - The book was great
Amazon review: This held my interest, read it in two
sittings, quite late at night. Most of the main characters were familiar to me,
being a born and bred New Englander, got a kick out of some of the
descriptions. A good easy read with lots of history and Mafia insight.
Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos Paperback –
December 20, 2011
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: This is a funny book, okay a little
bloody in places but believe it or not, the recipes are actually pretty good
and there are several good stories about mobsters and meals. The mob stories
are mixed with authentic Italian recipes and other Outfit anecdotes and all of
it makes for fun reading and actually some pretty good cooking.(Including the
meat sauce recipe from the prison scene in "Gooodfellas") Most of the
recipes are very simple fare, quick to make and include classic dishes like
Shrimp Scampi, a simple Tomato Sauce, Veal Piccata, Asparagus with Prosciutto,
Baked Stuffed Clams, Veal Chops Milanese, Caponata and Lobster. The book has
about 50 something photos of dead mobsters followed by a recipe. The bloody
scenes aside, this book would make compliment most cooking libraries and will
works especially well for the novice cook.
Shooting the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine's
Day Massacre. Paperback – December 7, 2011
by Shadrach Bond
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: A detailed photographic account of
the murders that shocked the underworld, the St. Valentine's Day massacre. The
author tells the story of what happened and how it happened on that fateful day
for the Northside gang and demonstrates with photos. Good book.
Shooting the Mob: Organized Crime in Photographs. Dutch Schultz.
Paperback – May 4, 2012
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: Dutch Schultz continues to capture
and fascinate and his story, including his last words, are detailed here with
dozens of photographs from Schultz early days in crime until the bitter end.
Amazon review: Dutch Schultz (Arthur Flegenheimer)
was the problem child of organized crime in New York City in the 1920s and
1930s who made his fortune in bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket. The
book gives a quick but accurate account of the Dutchman's rise and his battle
in two tax evasions trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey. It covers his
murder, probably on the orders of fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an effort to
avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill
Dewey, which they declined. After Schultz disobeyed the Commission and
attempted to carry out the hit, they ordered his assassination in 1935. The
book has a very fine series of photographs. Good reading at a fair price.
Shooting the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters,
Gangsters and Hoods.
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: This book covers the full gamut of
gangsters with many excellent photos. The story accompanying each slain hoodlum
varies from a few pages to one or two lines. The book suffers from atrocious
editing of the text. Words are frequently mispelled or missing, sentences often
end half way through only to resume as a new sentence and paragraphs sometimes
end midsentence. There are also no sources for anything. If not for this, the
book would have received five stars.
Amazon review: There is no shortage of corpses in
this book. Its page after page of dead hoodlums from the underworld with a
passage on how they got that way and by whom. Gory but I must say, fascinating
as the violence of the underworld so often is. The book is a guilty pleasure.
The Salerno Report. The Mafia and the Murder of President John F.
Kennedy: The report by Mafia expert Ralph Salerno Consultant to the Select Committee on Assassinations
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: A must read for anyone studying the
Kennedy assassination. Among the many conspiracy theories is the possible
involvement of Mafia. As we all know there are no definite conclusions, and
history may never resolve the issue, but this report is engaging and captive
reading.
Amazon review: The Salerno Report is far more
accurate than the Warren Report
Amazon review: Evidence mounted in a certain
direction. The truth is still discoverable, and this ghastly event in our
history deserves still more examination. This book contributes to the eventual
revelation of what really happened.
Baby Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
READERS REVIEWS FROM
AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: There are more intense books that go
into supposed motivation and recording techniques and equipment, but this is a
lovely work that illuminates the songs and the stories behind them without
being overbearing in doing so. I really enjoyed it - bought several copies to
give as gifts. Well done!
Rosenthal murder case
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
"The old Metropole. The old
Metropole," brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. "Filled with faces dead
and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can't forget so long as I
live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us at the table,
and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning the
waiter came up to him with a funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him
outside. 'all right,' says Rosy, and
begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his chair. "'Let the bastards
in here if they want you, Rosy, but don't you, so help me, move outside this
room.' "It was four o'clock in the morning then, and if we'd of raised the
blinds we'd of seen daylight."
"Did he go?" I asked
innocently.
'Sure he went." Mr. Wolfshiem's
nose flashed at me indignantly. "He turned around in the door and says:
'Don't let that waiter take away my coffee!' Then he went out on the sidewalk,
and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away."
"Four of them were
electrocuted,"
I said, remembering. "Five, with
Becker"
The Great Gatsby
Amazon review: The Becker-Rosenthal trial was a 1912
trial for the murder of Herman Rosenthal by Charles Becker and members of the
Lenox Avenue Gang. The trial ran from October 7, 1912 to October 30, 1912 and
restarted on May 2, 1914 to May 22, 1914. Other procedural events took place in
1915.
In July 1912, Lieutenant Charles Becker was
named in the New York World as one of three senior police officials involved in
the case of Herman Rosenthal, a small time bookmaker who had complained to the
press that his illegal casinos had been badly damaged by the greed of Becker
and his associates. On July 16, two days after the story appeared, Rosenthal
walked out of the Hotel Metropole at 147 West 43rd Street, just off Times
Square. He was gunned down by a crew of Jewish gangsters from the Lower East
Side, Manhattan. In the aftermath, Manhattan District Attorney Charles S.
Whitman, who had made an appointment with Rosenthal before his death, made no
secret of his belief that the gangsters had committed the murder at Charles
Becker's behest.
At first, John J. Reisler, also known as
"John the barber," told the police that he'd seen "Bridgey"
Webber running away from the crime scene directly following the killing. He
recanted under duress from gangsters the next week, and was charged with
perjury.
The investigation was covered on the front
page of the New York Times for months. It was so complex that the NYPD recalled
thirty retired detectives to help investigate; they were said "to know
most of the gangsters."
One of these old-timers, Detective
Upton, formerly of the NYPD "Italian Squad," was instrumental in the
July 25, 1912, arrest of "Dago" Frank Cirofici, one of the suspected
killers. He and his companion, Regina Gorden (formerly known as "Rose
Harris"), were "so stupefied by opium that they offered no objection
to their arrests," according to the New York Times.
Joe Petrosino
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Review: Any book about Joe Petrosino can't be
all bad. Far too little attention is paid to Petrosino these days. The foolish
Public remembers names of scumbags like Capone, Gotti, Valachi, Tony Soprano,
etc. Far too few people remember New York Cop Joe Petrosino. In a time when
Italians were segregated, harassed by Cops and treated as second class
citizens, Petrosino arose as the first Italian anti-gangster Cop. Then, as now,
gangsters claimed they were the victims of prejudice, discrimination and
profiling. Petrosino rose above his times to become a Pioneer in anti-Mafia
police work. Tough as nails, un-corruptible, and utterly fearless, Petrosino
was assassinated by the Mafia in their usual cowardly style.
Review: This book is a welcome bit of
scholarship on the great Petrosino. Tuohy's book does contain an, apparent,
misprint. There is a lone word, without authority, regarding Petrosino being
"corrupt," perhaps a reference to his tough police tactics.
Corruption, however, implies a personal power or profit motive. Tuohy provides
no evidence or argument of any such motive or activity on Petrosino's part. On
the contrary, the only evidence is that Petrosino was a good, honest Cop.
Petrosino is a role model for young and old alike, oppressed immigrants, and
even whining minority gangsters and their sympathizers, such as Sharpton,
Obama, Jackson, and Holder.
Review: I have several books from The Mob
Files Series and I have really enjoyed reading them. The Joe Petrosino story is
definitely one worth reading. He had an interesting life working against the
mafia. I enjoyed seeing the pictures in the book and they helped bring the
story to life.
BLOGLAPEDIA’S BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art
for the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of
Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The
Kennedy’s in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The
Prohibition in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A
really small company run by writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The
Day Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND
CIVILIZATIONS
The
Works of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS BOOKS
The
Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children
A Halloween play for young
children. By consent of the author, this play may be performed, at no charge,
by educational institutions, neighborhood organizations and other
not-for-profit-organizations.
A fun story with a moral
“I believe that Denny O'Day is an
American treasure and this little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens
to be very small, by pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the
pumpkin patch on Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance
to prove that just because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here
is the point that I found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size
doesn't matter when it comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I
think children need to hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is
a ongoing lesson isn't it?”
Paperback: 42 pages
http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children
It's
Not All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the
books contents
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what
From the Author
I spent my childhood, from age
seven through seventeen, in foster care.
Over the course of those ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and
concerned people told me, "It's okay to be foster kid."
In saying that, those very good
people meant to encourage me, and I appreciated their kindness then, and all
these many decades later, I still appreciate their good intentions. But as I
was tossed around the foster care system, it began to dawn on me that they were
wrong. It was not all right to be a
foster kid.
During my time in the system, I
was bounced every eighteen months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a
boy's school and to a group home before I left on my own accord at age seventeen.
In the course of my stay in
foster care, I was severely beaten in two homes by my "care givers"
and separated from my four siblings who were also in care, sometimes only
blocks away from where I was living.
I left the system rather than to
wait to age out, although the effects of leaving the system without any family,
means, or safety net of any kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived
in poverty for the first part of my life, dropped out of high school, and had
continuous problems with the law.
Today, almost nothing about foster care has
changed. Exactly what happened to me is
happening to some other child, somewhere in America, right now. The system, corrupt, bloated, and
inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.
Something has gone wrong in a
system that was originally a compassionate social policy built to improve lives
but is now a definitive cause in ruining lives.
Due to gross negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what
the foster care system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care
has become our epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have
lived through it.
Yet there is a suspicion among
some Americans that foster care costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and
is at odds with a satisfying life.
Others see foster care as a part of the welfare system, as legal plunder
of the public treasuries.
None of that is true; in fact, all that sort
of thinking does is to blame the victims.
There is not a single child in the system who wants to be there or asked
to be there. Foster kids are in foster
care because they had nowhere else to go.
It's that simple. And believe me,
if those kids could get out of the system and be reunited with their parents
and lead normal, healthy lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of
legal plunder of the public treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are
doing the plundering.
We need to end this needless suffering. We need to end it because it is morally and
ethically wrong and because the generations to come will not judge us on the
might of our armed forces or our technological advancements or on our fabulous
wealth.
Rather, they will judge us, I am certain, on
our compassion for those who are friendless, on our decency to those who have
nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to make our nation and our world
a better place. And if we cannot
accomplish those things in the short time allotted to us, then let them say of
us "at least they tried."
You can change the tragedy of foster
care and here's how to do it. We have
created this book so that almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to the
world. You have the power to improve the
lives of those in our society who are least able to defend themselves. All you need is the will to do it.
If the American people, as good, decent and
generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster care, in their name and
with their money, they would stop it.
But, generally speaking, although the public has a vague notion that
foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete picture. They are not aware
of the human, economic and social cost that the mismanagement of the foster
care system puts on our nation.
By tweeting the facts laid out in
this work, you can help to change all of that.
You can make a difference. You
can change things for the better.
We can always change the future
for a foster kid; to make it better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up
(or tweet out) because it's your country.
Don't depend on the "The other guy" to speak up for these
kids, because you are the other guy.
We cannot build a future for
foster children, but we can build foster children for the future and the time
to start that change is today.
No
time to say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster
Paperbook 440 Books
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir
BOOKS
ABOUT FILM
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film
Paperback: 416 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/
BOOKS
ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL
Scotish
Ghost Stories
Paperback 186 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell
HUMOR
BOOKS
The
Book of funny odd and interesting things people say
Paperback: 278 pages
http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people
The
Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook
Perfect
Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises
http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social
BOOKS
ABOUT THE 1960s
You
Don’t Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969
Paperback 122 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969
Baby
Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/
Baby
Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s
IRISH- AMERICANA
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/
The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/
The Wee book of Irish Blessings...
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/
The
Wee Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words
http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/
Everything
you need to know about St. Patrick
Paperback 26 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick
A
Reading Book in Ancient Irish History
Paperback 147pages
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History
The
Book of Things Irish
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/
Poets
and Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish
Paperback 158 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/
The
History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated
Paperback 356 pages
http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/
BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND
The
New England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/
Wicked
Good New England Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The
Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers
Paperback 64 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion
The
Life of James Mars
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut
Stories
of Colonial Connecticut
Paperback 116 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford
What
they Say in Old New England
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/
BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME
Chicago Organized Crime
Chicago-Mob-Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook
The
Mob Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook
An
Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/
The
Mob Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre
The
Life and World of Al Capone in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone
AL
CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930
edition.Over 200 new photographs
Paperback: 340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs
Whacked.
One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit
Paperback: 172 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/
Las Vegas Organized Crime
The
Mob in Vegas
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook
Bugsy
& His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/
Testimony
by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files
Series)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook
Rattling
the Cup on Chicago Crime.
Paperback 264 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged
The
Life and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor
The
Mob, Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago
Paperback 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago
When
Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos
Organized
Crime in Hollywood
The Mob in Hollywood
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/
The
Bioff Scandal
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios
Organized
Crime in New York
Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/
Mob
Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/
The
New York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins
The
New York Mob: The Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/
Organized
Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate
http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook
Shooting
the mob: Dutch Schultz
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)
http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City
Paperback 382 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York
THE RUSSIAN MOBS
The
Russian Mafia in America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/
The
Threat of Russian Organzied Crime
Paperback 192 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook
Organized Crime/General
Best
of Mob Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/
Best
of Mob Stories Part 2
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/
Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook
Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
More
Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs
http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
The
New England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook
Shooting
the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/
The
Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/
The Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill
each other"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/
The
Mob across America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/
The
US Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987
http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/
The
Mob Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Book of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.
Paperback: 436 pages
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/
The
Mob and the Kennedy Assassination
Paperback 414 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters
BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST
The
Last Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Paperback 152 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself
BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Chicago:
A photographic essay.
Paperback: 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas
STAGE PLAYS
Boomers
on a train: A ten minute play
Paperback 22 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook
Four
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy
Four
More Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/
High
and Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve
Cyberdate.
An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/
The
Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of
Gangster Dutch Schultz.
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/
Fishbowling
on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with
Dutch Schultz
Print Length: 57 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/
American
Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook
She
Stoops to Conquer
http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/
The
Seven Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play
Print Length: 14 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/
BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA
OUT
OF CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/
McLean
Virginia. A short informal history
http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/
THE QUOTABLE SERIES
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
HERE'S WORD FROM
EMERSON.....................
Concentration is the secret of
strength in politics in war in trade in short in all the management of human
affairs.
The only prudence in life is
concentration.
I can reason down or deny
everything except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will and I cannot make
him respectable.
Let the stoics say what they
please we do not eat for the good of living but because the meat is savory and
the appetite is keen.
The
Quotable John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/
The
Quotable Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/
The
Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/
The
Quotable Henry David Thoreau
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Robert F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook
The
words of Walt Whitman: An American Poet
Paperback: 162 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Popes
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti
The
Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran
Paperback 52 pages
Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet,
and writer was born on January 6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in
what was then part of Ottoman Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In
1895, the family immigrated to the United States when Kahlil was a young man
and settled in South Boston. Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a
member of the avant-garde community and became especially close to Boston
artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and
supported Gibran’s creative projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and
watercolor, Kahlil attended art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a
symbolist and romantic style. He held his first art exhibition of his drawings
in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met
Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who ten years his senior. The two formed an important
friendship and love affair that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell
influenced every aspect of Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his
editor when he began to write and ushered his first book into publication in
1918, The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical
cadence somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran died in New York City on
April 10, 1931, at the age of 48 from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/
The
Quotable Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
The
Quotable Machiavelli
Paperback 36 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-L-Thayer
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 230 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotabe Oscar Wilde
Paperback 24 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons-words/
The
Quotable Helen Keller
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby
The
Art of War: Sun Tzu
Paperback 60 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Shakespeare
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Shakespeare-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Gorucho Marx
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander
