Know in your heart that all things are possible.................

MY DOG, BART, BORN TO BE WILD......

 

Town Players Now Seeking Plays for 2016

August 11

by BWW News Desk

Town Players of Newtown is seeking play submissions from individuals interested in directing at the Little Theatre during the group's 2016 season.

Potential directors are invited to submit up to three (3) scripts for consideration by the theater's play selection committee. Town Players puts on a variety of shows each season, from farce to period pieces to modern drama. The only type of show the theater cannot consider is a full-fledged musical due to space restrictions. Town Players is only looking to stage published works by established playwrights.

A play submission sheet is available for download at the Town Players website - www.newtownplayers.org - under Directors/How to Submit. If you would like a sheet sent to you, please request one by emailinginfo@newtownplayers.org. Submissions may be mailed to:

Town Players

Attn: Play Selection Committee

PO Box 211

Newtown, CT 06470

Submissions can also be scanned and emailed to info@newtownplayers.org with "Play Submission" in the subject line.

If you have not directed at Town Players in the past, please include a resume.

The submission deadline is October 15, 2015. Once all submissions are received, the committee will review them and let submitting directors know of their decisions.

For those interested in directing but don't have a particular play in mind, Town Players like to hear from you as well. Please send your resume, along with the time period you are available to direct, either via email or regular mail.

As a rule at Town Players, directors may not appear in their own productions.

Questions about this process in particular, or about directing at Town Players in general, may be submitted toinfo@newtownplayers.org.

Town Players' Little Theatre is a community theater, currently in its 80th season, located on 18 Orchard Hill Road, just off Route 25 (a mile north of the Sand Hill Plaza) in Newtown, Conn.

HERE'S SOME EXCERPTS FROM MY BOOK ON THE BEATLES

Across The Universe John Lennon wrote this song after having an argument with his wife Cynthia. He said, "I was l ying next to me first wife in bed, and I was irritated. She must have been going on and on about something and she'd gone to sleep and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into sort of a cosmic song rather than an irritated song... it drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it, but I was slightly irritable and I went downstairs and I couldn't get to sleep until I'd put it on paper."  The refrain "Jai Guru Deva Om" is a mantra intended to lull the mind into a higher consciousness. The words are in Sanskrit, and they mean "I give thanks to Guru Dev," who was the teacher of The Maharishi. The "Om" at the end is the drawn out "oooohm" used in meditation to relate to the natural vibration of the universe. (While visiting the Maharishi in Rishikesh, John purchased a set of brass bracelets with the words "Jai Guru Dev" imprinted on them)

A Day in The Life by The Beatles took a 41 piece orchestra to complete the recording. The musicians were told to attend the session dressed formally. When they got there, they were presented with party novelties (false noses, party hats, gorilla-paw glove) to wear, which made it clear this was not going to be a typical session. The orchestra was conducted by Paul McCartney, who told them to start with the lowest note of their instruments and gradually play to the highest.  It was finally recorded in 3 sessions: First the basic track, then the orchestra, then the last note was dubbed in. The beginning of this song was based on 2 stories John Lennon read in the Daily Mail newspaper: Guinness heir Tara Browne dying when he smashed his lotus into a parked van, and an article in the UK Daily Express in early 1967 which told of how the Blackburn Roads Surveyor had counted 4000 holes in the roads of Blackburn and commented that the volume of material needed to fill them in was enough to fill the Albert Hall. Lennon took some liberties with the Tara Browne story - he changed it so he Blew his mind out in the car.  “I didn't copy the accident.” Lennon said “Tara didn't blow his mind out. But it was in my mind when I was writing that verse. At the time, Paul didn't realize the reference was to Tara. He thought it was about a stoned politician.” John's friend Terry Doran was the one who completed John's line Now they know how many holes it takes to fill... Terry told him fill the Albert Hall, John. McCartney contributed the line I'd love to turn you on. This was a drug reference, but the BBC banned it for the line about having a smoke and going into a dream, which they thought was about marijuana and McCartney's middle section (Woke up, got out of bed...) was intended for another song. The final chord was produced by all 4 Beatles and George Martin banging on 3 pianos simultaneously. As the sound diminished, the engineer boosted to faders. The resulting note lasts 42 seconds, and the studio air conditioners can be heard toward the end as the faders were pushed to the limit to record it.

Ain't She Sweet was written by Milton Ager who wrote it for his daughter Shana Ager, who in her adult life was known as the political commentator Shana Alexander.

All My Loving Paul McCartney wrote the lyrics while shaving. He said, "It was the first song I'd ever written the words first. I never wrote words first, it was always some kind of accompaniment. I've hardly ever done it since either."  The lyrics follow the "letter song" model as used on "P.S. I Love You"

All You Need Is Love" was first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first live global television link. Watched by 400 million in 26 countries the program was broadcast via satellite on June 25, 1967. The BBC had commissioned The Beatles to write a song for the United Kingdom's contribution, a song containing a simple message to be understood by all nationalities. "It was an inspired song and they really wanted to give the world a message," said Brian Epstein. "The nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted. It is a clear message saying that love is everything." According to journalist Jade Wright, "Lennon was fascinated by the power of slogans to unite people and never afraid to create art out of propaganda. When asked in 1971 whether songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Power to the People" were propaganda songs, he answered: 'Sure. So was All You Need Is Love. I'm a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change.'"

All I've Got To Do "That's me” John Lennon said “trying to do Smokey Robinson again." This particular song was inspired by the Miracles song "You Can Depend on Me."

 And Your Bird Can Sing by The Beatles.  Lennon wrote this about Mick Jaggers pop-star girlfriend ("bird" in British Isles slang) Marianne Faithfull.

PHOTOS I'VE TAKEN..........................

I was in St. Louis, snapping photos in an Italian neighborhood when I watch this little girl dance up the street singing and twirling her umbrella. She was the vision of happiness...then I started shooting away and she grew bashful, I'm sorry I ruined her joy. 

I’ll take one of these guys over a  million people who talk a good fight about making the world a better place.

Iowa barber gives haircuts to children in exchange for them reading stories to him

MIKE BURLEY, Telegraph Herald via AP

DUBUQUE (AP) | Children who read books to a local barber have received a free haircut as part of a community event in Dubuque to help families prepare for the upcoming school year.

Barber Courtney Holmes traded the tales for trims on Saturday during the second annual Back to School Bash in Comiskey Park.

Tayshawn Kirby, 9, of Dubuque, read from "Fats, Oils and Sweets," by Carol Parenzan Smalley, informing Holmes that the average person eats 150 pounds of sugar each year. Before Tayshawn's 10-year-old brother, Titan Feeney, took his turn in the barber chair, he told his brother the new look was great.

"I just want to support kids reading," Holmes said.

St. Mark Youth Enrichment gave away books during the event, some of which were read to Holmes. Outreach coordinator Beth McGorry with St. Mark said she enjoyed watching Holmes help young children sound out the words they didn't know yet.

Caitlin Daniels, grade-level reading coordinator with the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, also helped struggling readers in the barber chair.

"It's great. All the kids, they want to have a good haircut to go back to school," she said. "They're paying through reading."

The city's acting resource manager, Anderson Sainci, coordinated the event, which involved nonprofits and other community partners.

More than 100 people learned about free resources and before- and after-school opportunities available to families and students. The first full day of classes in Dubuque is Sept. 1.

People taking pictures of people: San Diego

 I'm an amateur photographer, I travel a lot so some years ago and I noticed that everywhere I went there was someone taking a photo of someone else. It's part of the human condition and I think it’s fun so I started snapping pictures of people taking pictures. 

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

I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM.......................

  

AND COLOR (FILM) TOO...................................

CAN I HELP YOU?

Last winter I drove down to the Maryland shore where a herd of wild horses live in a state forest just off the beach. Centuries ago a ship carrying the horses sank off the coast, and the herd swam to the shore and have been there ever since. They have no fear of people but can be very aggressive and mean. In this case, I stopped to get a photo, the horse stuck his head in the car and did a search for free food. I gave him half of my tomato sandwich.    

  

Excerpt from my book "No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care.

Toward the end of the summer, one of the other boys from the third floor, Larry Hanson, told me, “They’re gonna have a huge rock concert for three days over in upstate New York, just over the border.” He lowered his voice, leaned closer, and said, “If we hitchhike, we could be there in a couple hours.”

  The concert was in Woodstock, New York and I decided to go although it was a stupid thing to do. We slipped out of the school on Friday morning, just after breakfast. We figured that no one would know we were gone until lights out at eleven o’clock . 

  Using the back roads through the small villages and towns we arrived in New Haven by early afternoon. In those days, New Haven, the home of Yale University, was a hotbed of the counter-culture, anti-Vietnam-War set, and a youth-centered city. The Green, a park in the middle of the city, was occupied by hundreds of young people. Tables gave out information on the anti-war movement, the Black Panthers and the Yippie Party, guitar music, burning incense, and dancing. Several local Episcopalian churches gave out free food: brown rice and apples.

  Hanson and I forgot about Woodstock and stayed on the Green for the rest of the day and into the night, meeting girls and sitting in large circles listening to lectures on racism, injustice, and the war.

 Around midnight we were in the back of a van with a dozen other kids, smoking grass, one joint after the other, until there was so much smoke I couldn’t see the person sitting next to me. I had never smoked a joint before, but after a while I managed to smoke two, and had entered into a detailed conversation with the kid seated next to me about the wonders of the tuna fish sandwich.

  “And then there is the mayonnaise,” I said, and then, after contemplating the wonders of mayonnaise for what might have been either ten seconds or ten minutes, I added, “God! Doesn’t mayonnaise sound just so perfect right now! Man, what a great word—mayonnaise.”

   My speech on the wonders of my favorite condiment probably would have gone on all night, but after a knock on the van’s back door someone opened it, letting out a massive cloud of white smoke into the faces of two New Haven cops. We were all too stoned to run, but I had it in my mind to go find a tuna sandwich and started walking away. 

  “Hey,” a cop yelled at me. “Marco Polo, where you goin’?”

  I snapped out of it and said, “With you?”

  “You bet your ass you are,” he said. “Get in the wagon.”

  We meekly piled into the paddy wagon when it arrived and were brought down to the central police station. When Hanson, who was several years older than I was, learned we were going to be booked as adults and tossed into jail, he told the cops we were minors from St. John’s.

  We were driven across town in a squad car to the juvenile detention center, actually a big house with bars on the windows, set in the middle of a bad neighborhood. Tossed into a locked, completely dark room, I felt around, found the bed, and fell asleep.

  The next morning we were back at St. John’s under room detention. I was allowed out for school and meals, and that was it.

At a series of meetings, none of which I was allowed to attend, the school social worker, the state social worker, Father MacDonald, my teacher, and the prefects asked the question, what was wrong with me? Would I run away from the school? Of course, if they had asked me, I would have told them, but they didn’t ask. They determined that I was suffering from some sort of hostility, and they wrote that in their files, and then they all went back to what they were doing.

   As an additional part of my punishment I was to work as the chapel steward, cleaning the church and preparing the altar. One day, while working in the sacristy, I found a twenty-gallon jug of the cheap wine used in the communion service. I had never tasted wine, so I decided to take a swig, using the chalice as my cup. I liked the sweet taste, finished off the cup, and poured myself another. I liked that, too, and poured myself a third, and then took the bottle and the chalice and my drunken self out to the steps that lea to the altar, sat down, and relaxed. And that was where they found me later that night, sound asleep, empty bottle and sacred chalice in hand.

  A prefect shook me awake and I answered by throwing a punch. More prefects came and more punches were thrown until they overpowered me. I was taken to a hospital to sober up, and the next morning, before breakfast, a state social worker arrived with my belongings packed into brown paper bags. He put me in into a black sedan with the state logo emblazoned on the side doors and I was gone.

 '

http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/

In 1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/

http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. He is the author of numerous non-fiction on the history of organized crime including the ground break biography of bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and "Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in Chicago."

His non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The New Criminologist, American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of Chicago's Celtic Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short story fiction work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of 2008.

His play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public performance at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.

Contact John:

MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM

JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM

From Professor William 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— is 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

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

SO SAYS THE BARD...................

 Central Park

       SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

What does mean?

It means this, but remember above all else that the words are being spoken by a young man to a young woman, so it’s not supposed to run smoothly. With that that said;

The poem starts with a flattering question to the beloved—"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The beloved is both "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day. The speaker lists some negative things about summer: it is short—"summer's lease hath all too short a date"—and sometimes the sun is too hot—"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved has beauty that will last forever, unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's day. By putting his love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever. "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The lover's beauty will live on, through the poem which will last as long as it can be read.

HERE'S A NICE POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY.................

Central Park

A Red, Red Rose

By

Robert Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve's like the melodie

That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I:

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only Luve

And fare thee well, a while!

And I will come again, my Luve,

Tho’ it were ten thousand mile

HERE IS AN EXCEPT FROM MY BOOK "THE BOOK OF AMERICAN-JEWISH GANGSTERS"

(Max Zellner is a pen name, it was my grandfather's born name. During World War 1 he changed it to the less German sounding Paul Selner)

Bioff Willie His name is barely known today, but for almost a decade he was at the forefront of what remains the largest extortion case in the history of American criminal justice, that set the foundation of modern organized crime.

    When the national depression knocked the bottom out of Chicago’s once enormous prostitution racket, Bioff, a pimp, started to shake down Fulton Street shopkeepers, restricting himself to the Jewish stores and thus allowing George Brown, another goon whom Bioff knew only in passing, to work the Gentile side of the street.

Since Brown and Bioff collected their payoffs from Fulton Street at the same time of the day, on the same day of the week, they starting talking and soon formed a partnership dubbed B&B, for Brown and Bioff.

   Together, Brown and Bioff merged their shake down operations on Fulton Street and expanded their control of the stagehand’s union by increasing dues by $5.00, and then pocketing the increase for themselves. Since that plan worked out so easily, over dinner one night they came up with another plan to raise more money, by threatening the theaters with a strike. Bioff came up with an even better idea. Instead of collecting money once from the theater owners, they would sell them a “a no strike guarantee,” which they would collect monthly.

   The two hoods approached Barney Balaban, owner of Chicago’s largest and most successful movie house chain, Balaban and Katz theaters. Sam Katz, who would go on to own MGM Studios, and Barney Balaban, who would one day run Paramount, had begun operating nickelodeons as teenagers, and in 1916, were among the very first to produce silent films. Balaban was a tough, two fisted, self-made man and when Bioff and Brown showed up with their extortion threats, he personally threw them out of the building, no small chore.

     Bioff and Brown talked about it and decided that they entered into the shakedown the wrong way because they were unsure of themselves and nervous, and it showed. A few days later, they went back, more self-assured, and promised Balaban that if they didn’t get their way, there would be a strike, it would last for months . . . unless Balaban gave $20,000 to B&B Enterprises.

      To soften the blow, Bioff told Balaban that the money was to go directly to unemployed union members, for emergency help, like a soup kitchen. It was a lie of course. They intended, in fact they did, steal every penny of the money. But Bioff was smart enough to know that if Balaban gave the $20,000 to a charitable cause, like a soup kitchen, then the company could write the money off of their corporate tax bill and win public admiration at the same time.

       Barney Balaban was also a shrewd dealer. He quickly figured out that neither Bioff nor Brown would keep any written documents of the transaction since they intended to steal the money anyway. That meant that Balaban and Katz could fork over $20,000 to Bioff and Brown’s “soup kitchen” and tell the government they had donated $100,000 and then pocket the additional $80,000 for themselves. The beauty of it was, Bioff and Brown would swear that they had been given any amount Balaban said they had been given. They had to. They had no other choice.

     Brown and Bioff got the twenty grand. In cash. It was delivered by Balaban’s lawyer Leo Spitz, who, before handing the money over, reached into the suitcase and pulled out $1,000 and stuffed it in his pocket “for carrying charges,” he explained.

Like the small timers they were, after the payoff, Bioff and Brown went out on the town and gambled away thousands of dollars in a mob-run casino inside the Loop, a place called the Club 100, run by Nick Circella, a surly hood who worked directly for syndicate boss Frankie Rio, a former Capone bodyguard.

      Rio and Circella were in the club that night, both of them had known Bioff for twenty years. As they sipped their espressos from the owner’s table, and watched Bioff lose another grand on the roulette wheel, Circella wondered aloud, “where two losers like Willie and Brown would get that kind of cash.” Rio was thinking the same thing and ordered Circella to find out what the two had been up to. Two days later, Frankie Rio called Bioff and Brown, and told them they were going to see Frank Nitti’s home.

After the federal government railroaded Al Capone off to prison and out of power forever, his place was taken by Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti, who got the position more out of attrition due to thinning mob ranks than anything else.

       Bioff and Brown, dressed in their best suits, waited in the drawing room of Nitti’s twenty-room mansion, having arrived 15 minutes early. George Brown was terrified. He was certain the summons to Nitti’s place was the kiss of death, although he didn’t know what he done to deserve it. But Bioff, always the smarter of the two, saw the summons for what it was, the opportunity. Otherwise, he reasoned, if they had crossed Nitti in some way they didn’t realize, they would have been dead already, left in a back alley in the loop someplace, not waiting in a living room on a Saturday morning.

     After a half hour, a young, smartly dressed thug they didn’t recognize came out and led them into a large, formal living room where Phil D’Andrea, former Capone bodyguard, Paul Ricca, Charles “Cherry Nose” Gioe, a top executive in the outfit and Louis “Little New York” Campagna were waiting. The boss himself, Frank Nitti, sat in his desk chair, glaring up at Brown and Bioff. “Where’d you get the money?” Nitti snapped. “And don’t you fuck’n lie to me.”

     George Brown was too terrified to speak, so Bioff did all the talking, explaining the entire shakedown in a matter of minutes, but blaming everything on his partner, George Brown.

     Nitti understood everything, even before Bioff had finished talking. He also saw the big picture at once. There were hundreds of movie theaters in pre-television Chicago, thousands in Illinois and tens of thousands across the United States. The potential was endless.

     Nitti leaned back in his oversized leather chair and declared that he was cutting the outfit in on B&B’s deal for 50%, although he would later increase that to 75% and then 90%. From that amount, 10% of the gross went into the mob’s general treasury and the rest was divided up among those who had invested in the scheme. Furthermore, Nitti said, he was taking the stagehand’s union from Bioff and Brown and reducing them to his bagmen within the union. They, Brown and Bioff, would handle the day-to-day problems in the local, but if they had any serious troubles, they were to report them to Nick Circella. When he was finished talking, Nitti leaned up towards his desk and said, “All right, now get out.”

     The Chicago outfit had always had its eye on Hollywood. It started with Capone. Just before he went to jail forever, Big Al had called a general meeting of the boys and told them he intended to extend his power westward to Los Angeles and ordered Nitti to draw up a plan to look into taking over Chicago’s enormous entertainment industry. Then the Taxmen came around and slammed away Capone for good, but Nitti never forgot the plan to invade Hollywood.

     Now, in 1933, Nitti looked at Hollywood and its stars and producers with skeletons in their closets, and said, “The goose was in the oven waiting to be cooked.”

   He was right, too. Los Angeles was a wide-open city. Disputes were settled in gunshots, wildcat gangsters simply moved into town and bribed politicians, elections were rigged by competing gangs. The district attorney, Baron Fritts, was already on his way to becoming one of the country’s most corrupt lawmen and the police chief, Jim Davis, was a loudmouth clown who carried two six-gun revolvers, and, was so corrupt that a detective’s badge could be purchased for five dollars. The Mayor, Frank Shaw, admitted to newspapers that he rigged elections and placed his brother in charge of a spy squad within the police department that kept track of, and intimidated, his enemies. Compared to Los Angeles, Frank Nitti’s Chicago was a bastion of order. But that was Los Angeles. Hollywood was a different place, hell it was a different planet.

     An avid reader of the daily financials, Nitti learned that the movie business was ripe for extortion, for a wage increase shakedown, because the depression had hit the industry hard, and profits were off. The danger in low profits for the studios, was that the entire motion picture business was only 15 years old. Other, older and more established businesses might be able to withstand a drain on its cash, but the Hollywood studios weren’t ready for the same trial. Still, even with sagging profits and a shaky foundation, movie pictures were one of America’s top ten grossing industries. Every day, tens of millions of dollars poured into its bank accounts, and Nitti and the syndicate wanted a piece of the cash. With control of the national union entertainment unions, they would get it, just the way Capone had planned it back in 1929.

     A few days after the meeting with Brown and Bioff, Frank Nitti met with his council at the Capri restaurant inside Chicago’s loop so he could introduce his plan to take over the entire union on a national level.

     Over lunch, Nitti pulled out the newspaper clipping he had on Balaban’s nationwide operation and said he had spent the morning on the phone with Lucky Luciano in New York. He told the boys, Paul Ricca, Louis Campagna, Frankie Rio and Nick Circella, that he and Luciano had decided that their mobs, New York and Chicago, would work together to take over the movie business across America.

     The entertainment business was too big, Nitti explained, and covered too many miles, for Chicago to try and take it alone. Besides, he added, Luciano and the other New York families already controlled the East Coast Stage Workers and projectionists’ locals whose control was vital to a successful takeover.

     Nitti said that he and Lucky had decided that the first place to start was with Barney Balaban. They would send Bioff back into Balaban’s office with a demand for a 20% increase for the projectionists. Nitti said that he expected Balaban to refuse to pay. When he did, the New York syndicate, working the Chicago syndicate, would arrange a general strike against all of Balaban’s theaters on the East Coast and the Midwest.

Nitti said that the projectionists would be out of work for a few weeks and the theater chain would close down. Then, at the last minute, Nitti would send in George Brown to act as peacemaker and stabilizer who would end the strike through peaceful negotiations, while at the same time getting the projectionists a small raise. With that done, the mob would run him for the Stagehand Union presidency in the next election. That’s what they did and it worked. The strike ended and George Brown was the hero of the working man and the studios alike.

     In June of 1934, the union held its national election in Louisville, Kentucky. With the weight of the entire national syndicate behind him, George Brown was elected national President of the IATSE, the union that, effectively, controlled the entertainment business, and Willie Bioff was appointed Brown’s “Special Representative”, at a salary of $22,000. The Chicago mob’s takeover of a giant American industry had begun.

    After the convention, Frank Nitti called Bioff and Brown into his office and told them that he had decided that it was best if they, Bioff and Brown, moved out to California where they would be closer to the studio’s offices and production centers. The pair did as they were ordered, and while Brown spent most his time locked behind his office doors drinking beer, Willie Bioff made himself busy. In less than three months, he took $250,000 in cash from the movie moguls at Warner, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, everybody paid, all of it in cash, wrapped in brown paper bundles.

     When Bioff arrived in Hollywood, Chicago representative Johnny Roselli met him at the train station and gave the little pimp an orientation tour of the city and the industry he was about to bring to its knees.

     As they drove through Beverly Hills, Roselli stopped in front of Joan Crawford’s mansion and told Bioff an interesting story. Roselli said that right after he had landed a job for himself as a staff investigator for the Hay’s office, he was given a case to look into by MGM Studios. It seemed that when one of their rising stars, a real beauty named Joan Crawford, was a starving 19-year-old actress, she had appeared in several pornographic films.

       Now in 1935, some freelance extortionists said that they had a print of the film and were shaking down MGM for $100,000 to hand over the film negative. The bosses over at MGM considered the investment they already had in Crawford, added that with her box office appeal and potential, and decided that it would be less expensive to pay the extortionists off, but not for $100,000.

      The bosses handed the case over to Roselli and told him to contact the hoods and offer them $25,000 in cash to back off. The studio would write the money off of their taxes as a business expense.

      Roselli contacted the hoods, a group of small timers, and explained that he represented not only MGM Studios but the Mafia as well. He told them that if they ever contacted the studios or Crawford again, he’d kill them.  Case solved. Roselli pocketed the studio’s $25,000, produced the film negative and the threats stopped.

       A few years later, Roselli and Bioff met again. After a complicated series of federal wage laws and disputes with the movie studios over a 20% increase in salaries, the independent entertainment unions decided to strike on April 30, 1937. A strike by these unions could close down film production across California. If that happened, the syndicate would never collect on their control over the unions.

      The studios wanted the strike broken and they wanted the syndicate to break it. Frank Nitti argued against any involvement, but this time things were reversed, the studios pressured the outfit, and took their case to Lucky Luciano and Longy Zwillman in New York. Luciano and Zwillman talked to Nitti and, reluctantly, Nitti agreed to break the strike.

      Nitti handed the job to Johnny Roselli who hired a squad of twenty leg-breakers from Chicago and San Francisco and marched them to the Hollywood police station where they were given gun permits and then brought them to the studio gates where the striking union membership was gathered.

      Armed with baseball bats and steel chains, Roselli’s goons threw themselves at the striking union members who took a severe beating that first day but were back on the strike line the next morning.

     The outfit goons continued to dole out beatings for several more weeks before the union brass imported its own sluggers, some hired from local gyms, others brought in from the Long Shoreman’s union in New York.

     Herb Sorrell, a labor organizer for the union recalled that “there were numerous fights, and it was a rough strike. In the six weeks that it lasted, there were several killed and I didn’t know how many injured. In fact it was the roughest strike I ever participated in.”

   Realizing that brute force wouldn’t win the strike, Roselli told George Brown and Willie Bioff to call a press conference with the studio bosses and declare the striking union’s leadership as “communist infiltrated.”

     Then all-powerful Screen Actors Guild voted to ignore the union’s picket lines and eventually the smaller unions either disbanded or became a part of the larger organizations. The Federation of Motion Picture Crafts was destroyed, the outfit’s union reigned supreme.

      Nitti, who always expected the worst in everything, was amazed to find out that he didn’t need a ramrod to knock down Hollywood’s golden gates. He just knocked gently and they sprung open for him. The reason for that was that Hollywood, as Nitti would quickly learn, was, like him, all about money.

      Although it later became known as the Bioff and Brown extortion scandal, it wasn’t really extortion, at least not in the classic sense, because the studio heads, by paying off Bioff and Nitti’s not to raise prices, were actually saving money, perhaps millions of dollars over what they would have to have paid a legitimate union in wage increases. Furthermore, the scandal benefited the studios in other ways because the mob, for everything that was evil about it, usually kept its word once it was paid, and the mob had agreed not to raise labor prices.

   That promise assured the studios that productions would finish without stoppage or a problem from IATSE’s 12,000 members, and as result of a toothless union, the studios fired workers at will and pushed others to work over time without compensation; as a result, films were made for less money because not as many people were needed. In fact, the payoffs to the mob, saved the studios about $15,000,000.00 in what they would have paid out in wage increases.

With the mob behind them as a working partner, the studios no longer had to deal with Communists who had infiltrated the locals and stirred up trouble, or the small time thugs who kept coming back for more nickels and dimes or the weak labor leaders who couldn’t keep their promises because they had no real control over their membership. Producers knew that with the mob in charge, they could get a picture wrapped up on schedule because there would be no strikes and as an added bonus the mob ordered Bioff & Brown to raise prices for live theater, opera, plays and concerts, which were competing with the movie business. Everybody, except the membership, was happy.

   Joe Schenck was one of the founding Fathers of Hollywood.   Joe Schenck got involved with, in fact he almost helped to design, the mob’s shakedown of the Hollywood studios in April of 1936. Unlike the gangsters who lived from day to day on their incomes, the studio heads relied on budgets.

Bioff’s surprise visits were starting to tax the bottom line. The studio heads gathered together and decided to let Nick Schenck come up with a plan that would satisfy the outfit and the studios.

     Schenck was about to pay Bioff anywhere near a million dollars, however, he did a quick take on Bioff and decided that he could be bribed. Schenck told Bioff that the DuPont representative in California wanted to increase his raw film business with MGM and the other studios. He said that DuPont was willing to pay Bioff a 7% commission to act as the designated “agent” between DuPont Chemical and the Hollywood studios; better yet, all of the actual footwork would be done by a “sub agent” assigned by DuPont, all Bioff had to do was cash the checks.

     Bioff agreed to the deal under the conditions that his income never fell under $50,000 a year and that Schenck was not to mention the commission deal to anyone else, meaning Frank Nitti, or his west coast boy, Johnny Roselli.

     Schenck called the other studio heads, explained the situation and all of them agreed, reluctantly, to switch their business from Eastman Kodak raw film to DuPont. In the last part of 1937, the raw film commission deal that Schenck had put together gave Bioff $159,025 in commissions, an enormous amount of money for that time.

      Flush with more cash than he ever dreamed possible, Willie Bioff “went Hollywood.” He started to wear expensive clothes and carried three diamond-studded, solid gold, union business cards in his wallet. Using mostly union funds, and by applying yet another special collection on the studios, Bioff was able to raise enough funds to buy a massive ranch. Here, he grew alfalfa and flowers and relaxed in his mahogany-paneled mansion where, although he could barely read, Bioff had a pine-knot library filled with the world’s greatest books and rare and expensive volumes. He bought a Louis XV bedroom and rare Chinese vases and fancied himself a connoisseur of rare vases and had a kidney shaped swimming pool built in the back yard for his seven children.

      Willie Bioff’s new ranch and the unusual methods he used to finance it weren’t missed by Montgomery Clift, the Screen Actors Guild President, who had his own informants within the studios. Clift figured, correctly, that the ranch was a payoff from Schenck to ensure Bioff’s secrecy. Then, one of Clift’s informants provided him with a copy of the check that Schenck had made out to Willie Bioff for $100,000. Clift reported the deal to the IRS and eventually Schenck was secretly indicted for tax evasion.

When questioned about the check he had written to Bioff, Schenck said it was a loan. Later on, he made the mistake of testifying to that under oath. When the government was able to prove that Schenck paid Bioff the money as a means to avoid taxes, he was indicted on several counts of tax evasion. Schenck, always the businessman, decided to cooperate with the government in exchange for his a light sentence.

      The government agreed and Joe Schenck sat before the grand jury and outlined the entire scam. The grand jury eventually found Schenck guilty of tax evasion and he was sentenced to five years at a federal prison, but Joe Schenck wasn’t just anybody. He wasn’t going to serve out his term in jail and the whole world knew it. He served just under a year, was granted a Presidential by Harry S. Truman and then went to running his studios as though nothing had happened.

     Based on Schenck’s testimony, the federal grand jury issued subpoenas for all the major studio heads, but still, up until almost the very end, the government had no real clear understanding of the extent of Bioff’s extortion scam or the fact that the mob, New York and Chicago, were involved. Then Harry Warner stood before the grand jury and filled in the gaps. Warner’s evidence was enough to put everybody involved behind bars.        

      On May 23, 1941, Brown, Bioff, Paul Ricca, Frank Nitti, Nick Circella, Charlie Gioe, and Phil D’Andrea were indicted for extortion and tax evasion. Willie Bioff had no intention of doing any jail time.    He called US Attorney Boris Kostelanetz from a jailhouse visitor’s phone and opened the conversation by saying, “This is Bioff . . . Okay, Boris, what do you want to know?”

       Bioff laid out the entire scheme for Kostelanetz, times, dates, places, names and amounts; of course he worked a good deal for himself first. In exchange for his testimony, the government agreed to let Bioff keep the money he had stolen over the past decade, furthermore, he would walk away from any charges against him.

After three weeks, Bioff finished giving his testimony to the grand jury, and when he was finished talking, indictments were handed down for Johnny Roselli, Frank Nitti, Paul Ricca, Louis Campagna, Charlie Gioe, Phil D’Andrea, Ralph Pierce and Frankie Diamond.

      There was a trial, but none of the outfit members took the stand in their own defense, the case against them was that overwhelming. On December 30, 1943, the verdict against them was returned. They were each found guilty and sentenced an average of ten years in federal prison plus $10,000 fine and were liable for the back taxes owed. It was, as the Chicago Herald American wrote, “The total demolition of the Chicago syndicate.”

     Frank Nitti never went to trial on the Bioff charges, because a day before he was indicted, he took a .45 and blew his brains out, just as he had always promised he would if he ever faced another long prison sentence.

        Paul Ricca decided he wasn’t going to do any jail time either. Working through Campagna’s wife they were put in touch with a Missouri legislator named Edward “Putty Nose” Brady who in turn placed them in contact with a St. Louis lawyer named Paul Dillon who wasn’t new to the mob. He knew Murray Humphreys, the Chicago outfit’s collector, very well and had defended two IATSE union officers at Humphreys’ request, after they were caught beating up a movie theater owner in St. Louis in 1939.

     Dillon, then 68, also had strong political connections to the Missouri underworld including Johnny Lazia, the Kansas City gambling king who was killed in 1934 and Tom Pendergast, the boss of Kansas City.

     But, what Ricca needed Dillon for was his close, personnel relationship with President Harry Truman. In 1934, at the personnel request of Missouri crime king, Boss Pendergast, Dillon had acted as Harry Truman campaign manager in his race for the senate. Dillon had also worked as a lawyer for Boss Pendergast, and represented Prendergast’s chief lieutenant, “Smiling Johnny” Lazia, on an income tax fraud charge.

     Dillon loved the power, the money and the clout working with these clients gave him. He bragged, often and loudly, that he could visit Truman at the White House whenever he wanted to.

      In October of 1945, Dillon met “Putty Nose” Brady, who had ties to the Chicago outfit that went back to the Capone organization. With Brady at the meeting was an ex-prizefighter, and occasional Brady business partner, James Testa. Dillon, according to Testa, provided them with a price list with a set amount of money he would need to have each of the Chicago hoods released by using his influence in Washington with the Truman White House.

     While Dillon was collecting his bribe money from Testa and Brady, another lawyer named Maury Hughes of Dallas, traveled to Washington and met with Attorney General Clark. The two men had grown up together. Shortly after the meeting, the Attorney General requested the gangsters transfer to Leavenworth.

     For decades no one in law enforcement was clear on what hand Clark had played in the transfer or where Hughes fit in until Murray Humphreys summed it all up when he, knowingly or unknowingly, told an FBI microphone on October 16, 1964. “Attorney General Tom Clarke was, he always was, 100% for doing favors . . . the guy Maury Hughes who went to Clarke was an ex law partner (from Dallas) and then the scandal broke.”

     Humphreys also said that another lawyer they hired, Bradley Eben, was paid the astounding fee of $15,000, an enormous amount of money in 1945, to “consult” on the case. Eben’s mother was a Truman White House employee who worked as a liaison between Attorney General Clarke and the President.

     On August 6, 1947, Dillon, made an application for parole for Ricca, Gioe, Campagna and D’Andrea. The application was strongly opposed by Boris Kostelanetz, the special assistant attorney general, even the federal judge who passed sentence wrote to the attorney general Clark objecting to the application for parole. But, on August 13, 1947, exactly one week after the application for parole had been placed, Ricca, Campagna, Gioe and D’Andrea were released on parole. A  federal parole team made up of  3 men voted unanimously to release the hoods and acted so quickly and quietly on their decision, that the parole office in Chicago didn’t have time to submit its standard analysis of the case, which meant that the parole team reached its decision having seen only a fraction of the inmates’ records.

      The public, especially in Hollywood and Chicago, were outraged over the hoods’ release, and Representative Fred E. Busbey confronted the Parole Board members and asked them, directly and without mincing words, if it was true that they had accepted a $500,000 bribe to grant paroles to the hoods. Remarkably, not one of the parole board members denied accepting the money, nor would they admit to it.

     The House Expenditures Committee recommended that the four hoods be sent back to prison and that their paroles be revoked. The carefully worded report held that the paroles had been given under highly questionable circumstances, and identified Dillon and Hughes as being personal friends of President Truman and Attorney General Clark. It concluded, however, that it could find no grounds to indict the President, Clarke or Hughes and could find no evidence that anyone had been bribed but concluded that “A good Samaritan” had spent big money to get the hoods released.

     That “good Samaritan” turned out to be Tony Accardo, who ordered each of his capos to visit the attorney’s office and drop a specific amount on the desk to free Ricca and the others. They were to say nothing except, “This is for Paul Ricca,” drop the money on the desk, and leave. By the end of the day, Ricca’s lawyers had the $200,000 needed to pay off his tax lien. Now the hoods’ Attorney could truly say that “a bunch of strangers and good and concerned citizens donated the money.”

     When Louis Campagna was called before committee he said he didn’t know who any of the estimated forty-two men were who dropped the money on the lawyer’s desk or what their motivation was.

“Do you believe in Santa Claus?” Representative Hoffman asked Campagna.

“Yes, Yes. After all this,” Campagna said “I suppose I do . . . I mean if you were me, wouldn’t you?”

     In its final report, the Congressional Committee charged to look into the entire mess wrote: “The syndicate has given the most striking demonstration of political clout in the history of the republic.”

      Willie Bioff moved to Arizona, where he lived under the name Willie Nelson, Nelson being his wife's maiden name.   Contrary to what's usually written, Willie Bioff wasn't hiding out in Arizona. In fact, he worked at the Riviera Casino in Vegas as the entertainment director for Gus Greenbaum, Chicago's man in Nevada.

      Outgoing, likable and very rich, Willie was a natural for politics, and was soon popular within the golden elite of Phoenix society, which is how he met Barry Goldwater, in November of 1952.    The two men became fast friends.

      Goldwater, a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, flew Bioff and his wife all over the state to attend various parties, and Willie landed a steady flow of cash into Goldwater's political campaign chest. Bioff even loaned Bobby Goldwater $10,000 for a farming investment in Southern California.   A month before the Mafia killed him, Willie Bioff and his wife, Barry Goldwater and his family, vacationed together in Las Vegas.

      In 1955, Peter Licavoli and Paul Ricca, boss of the Chicago mob, started to shake Bioff down for cash.  Willie paid off for a while, but then remarked that he might go to the federal government for help.    The next morning, Bioff stepped into his Ford pickup, stepped on the gas and was killed instantly by a bomb planted under the hood of the truck. Both of his legs and his right arm was blown off. 

Murder Inc group photo. From left Pittsburgh Phil, Bugsy Goldstein, Abe Kid Twist Reles, and Happy Maione. Pittsburgh Phil and Buggsy (correct spelling, two g's) Goldstein were electrocuted by the state of New York. Reles was tossed out a hotel window and killed by the cops who were working for the mob. Happy Maione, an Irishman, vanished from the face of the earth. Rumor was that he moved to Las Vegas, changed his name lived for another forty years

Excerpt from my book "When Capone’s Mob Murdered Touhy.” 

Although they may not have had a headquarters, the Touhy gang did have their own priest, Father Joseph Weber, who Roger had met back in 1923 when Weber was an Indiana State Prison chaplain while Tommy Touhy was serving time for his role in an Indianapolis department store burglary. Roger and his brother Eddie asked Weber to use his influence to get a parole hearing for Tommy. Weber agreed, and by the end of the year Tommy was paroled and the Touhys were indebted to a priest who ran one of the poorest parishes in Indianapolis. Later, after the brothers were established in the bootlegging business, they donated 10 percent of their business profits to Weber's parish. '1 was," said Roger, "God's bagman."

   The brothers benefitted the priest in other ways. Weber had always been politically active in Indianapolis and argued vehemently for the city's growing black population. Weber claimed that the Klu Klux Klan, which had its regional headquarters in Indianapolis, included some of the city's and state's leading families and politicians. As a result, Weber said, the black citizens of Indianapolis were denied even the most basic of city services.

   One day as a passing part of a conversation, Weber mentioned to Tommy Touhy that if he had the Klan's secret membership files, he could confirm his suspicions and break their power. A few days later, on April 1, 1923, a moonlit Easter Sunday, a burglar broke into the Klan's headquarters and stole the organization's state membership list, some 12,208 names, which included some of the most powerful and well respected people in the Midwest. The next day, parts of the list were published in the Catholic newspaper Tolerance under the headlines "Who's Who in Indianapolis."

   "The Klan offered me $25,000 for the records, which I turned down," Roger wrote.

   Weber didn't always stay above the fray himself. John Sambo was a small time beer hall operator who managed Sambo's Place, a Capone saloon next to the Big Oaks Golf Course on the extreme northwest edge of Chicago. The problem was that the place bordered on Roger Touhy's territory. Tommy Touhy paid Sambo a visit and he changed to Touhy's brand.

   Sambo reported to the FBI that one sunny afternoon, Roger Touhy and several of his men, including Father Weber, entered the saloon at mid-day and drank until the sun went down. That night a young Negro boy came into the bar room to shine shoes and the drunken Touhys pulled out their weapons and fired shots at the boy's feet to make him dance.

   Several months later, Sambo fell out of favor with the Touhys when he stopped selling their beer and switched to Capone's brand. An FBI report on Sambo states, "[On] one occasion Roger Touhy, George Wilke and Leroy Marshalk came into his place of business and took him down to the basement, stating that they had information that he was selling other beer. Sambo stated at that time that he believed that Touhy would have killed him, but that Marshalk, whom Sambo had known for some time, stopped him."

   To the newspapers, the public, the police and the politicians, Roger's Des Plains operation looked exactly the way he and Kolb wanted it to look; like a hick, two-bit operation that grossed a few hundred thousand dollars a year. "And Touhy, " Ray Brennan said, "was careful to foster that illusion. He lived well, but not lavishly in Des Plaines as it was a quiet town where he was considered a leading citizen. He was a contributor to charities and a member of fraternal organizations and golf clubs. Touhy and Kolb had a million-dollar-a-year business going plus a neat income from slot machines and a few road houses but they were wary enough not to brag about it. They were smart enough to pay income taxes on it."

   Roger, who was now the father of two boys, made his final move to the suburbs in the spring of 1926 and purchased a large, comfortable home, just north of the center of Des Plains. His neighbors considered the bootlegger and his family respectable, hardworking people. "Nice," recalled one neighbor. "Not what you would think for a bootlegger. They were quiet people...refined."

   'There was no stigma to selling beer." Touhy wrote. "I bought a place that some of the newspapers later called a 'mansion' or a 'gang fortress.' It was a six-room bungalow and later I put a sixty-foot swimming pool in the back. The only gang I ever had around there was a guard with a shotgun after the Capone mob tried to kidnap my kids....I lived quietly with my family during those big money years. I put a workshop, office and bar in my basement. There was a playhouse for the kids in my backyard. My wife got along well with our neighbors."

   Even when Tommy and Roger were being hounded by the police during the John Factor kidnapping, their neighbors supported them. Des Plains historian Mark Henkes wrote, "Touhy gave his money freely to people and families in a pinch. He left baskets of food on the doorsteps of homes with a $20 bill attached to the basket handle. The recipients sometimes never knew where the food came from. He paid medical bills for some families. He made good money selling beer and he gave some of it away." Even though Roger did his best to fit in, there were occasional setbacks like the incident when the Chicago Tribune and other groups were planning a historical pageant for Des Plains in which citizens would dress as early settlers and travel down the Des Plains river in wooden canoes. Meanwhile, Touhy wanted to get rid of some mash, the fermentation of beer, by pumping it into the river. He hired a crew to dig a trench and lay a sewer line from his plant to the river.

   He poured hundreds, perhaps thousands of gallons of the mash into the river. The problem was that Des Plains was going through a dry season and the river was low and barely moving. The stench from the mash was unbearable. Father Patrick O'Connor, head of St. Mary's Training School in Des Plains and a member of the parade committee, got a whiff of the foul smell in the river and immediately knew what happened. O'Connor knew Roger and called him about the problem he had created. 'What in the hell were you thinking, Rog? Half of Chicago will be here in a day and you turn the river into a flood of bootleg booze! Do something before the pageant starts."

   Roger apologized and hired more than twenty boys from Maine High School in Des Plains to dump thousands of gallons of perfume into the river, "and the pageant was a sweet-smelling success."

   So, while the public, the press and the police may have been fooled by Roger's small time image, A1 Capone knew exactly how much money Touhy and Kolb were earning out on the dusty back roads of Cook County. He wanted a piece of it, a large piece of it. As he always did, Capone first tried to talk his way into a partnership explaining the benefits of working within his operation. They met a total of six times that year, in Florida, during the winter months on fishing trips, and Capone offered to let Roger use his yacht.

   Touhy said, "He offered to let me use his yacht or stay in his big house, surrounded by a wall about as thick as Statesville's (prison) on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay between Miami and Miami Beach. I didn't accept. "

Photos of Roger Touhy and of the Touhy case;

Roger's son, Tommy 1959

Willie Sharky, Touhy enforcer

"Chicken: McFadden, Touhy labor goon

Here's some photo's from my picture book "The Life and World of Al Capone"

                                                                    Capone mother

Here's some photos of the Chicago mobs leadership through the years

Frank Nitti

         

 Nitti's second wife, Annetta

Here's some Chicago Mob photos for you..............................

Super bookie Ken Eto

The grave of the two hood sent to kill Eto and goofed it up

Eto testifies before Congress

10 Scientifically Proven Methods to Increase your Happiness Right Now

By Christina Sarich.

 The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it. ~ Richard Bach

Do you even remember the last time you felt sheer pleasure, or unmitigated glee? What is your most recent recollection of bubbling over with happiness? I mean, when you felt so giddy that your cheeks were glowing, your heart was thumping, and your eyes welled up with unfettered joy? If that hasn’t happened to you in the last little while (or even a very long while), don’t fret.

As John Barrymore once said, “Happiness often sneaks in a door you didn’t know you left open.” Chasing happiness isn’t really going to make it magically appear, but you can create the circumstances that ‘leave the door open’ to a joyful and meaningful life by setting the stage for happiness, and allowing it a grand entrance. You can feel happier right now, with these scientifically proven methods.

Exercise for seven minutes.

I don’t care if you stand in one place and jump up and down, go for a walk, or climb the stairs at your office, you can feel happier right now by being physically active. In a study described in the book, The Happiness Advantage, three groups of patients treated their depression with medication, exercise, or a combination of both medication and exercise. The results of this study should be extremely motivating. Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels early on, the follow-up assessments proved to be radically different. When tested at six months to see if they had ‘relapsed’ into depression, 38 percent of those who took medication alone slipped back into a depressed state, and for those who exercised? Only nine percent relapsed. The proof is evident. You can feel better by exercising, and it doesn’t take much.

Write down 20 things you are grateful for.

Don’t type up what you are grateful for, write them down, since it requires more neurons to do so, and you’ll feel much better. Robert Emmons, often called the world’s leading expert in the science of gratitude, says that people who keep gratitude journals experience higher levels of positive emotions, more joy and pleasure, and stay alert and optimistic more easily.

Take a 15-minute power nap.

Getting more sleep is one of the best ways to feel happier. “You’re putting energy in the bank when you go to sleep,” says Barry Krakow, MD, medical director of Maimonides Sleep Arts and Sciences, Ltd. in Albuquerque, N.M. “On a cellular level, the body is literally repairing and restoring itself. Without it, you can’t do what you want — physically or mentally.” This also means that you’ll likely find negative emotions creeping in more easily, and find it difficult to constructively handle emotions like anger or frustration, because sleep deprivation increases amygdala activity (a brain structure integral to experiences of negative emotions such as anger and rage) and a disconnect between the amygdala and the area of the brain that regulates its functions. Power napping for at least 15-20 minutes will already start to improve your mood and cognitive functioning, and getting rapid eye movement or REM sleep, which usually takes 60 to 90 minutes of napping, plays a key role in making new connections in the brain and solving creative problems. Napping is even better for you than drinking a cup of coffee.

Get outside.

There a 101 reasons nature makes us feel good, but ‘green science’ as it is called, is learning more about how the blue sky and green trees really affect us all the time. For one thing, nature teaches us that we are perfect just the way we are. When we are alone in nature, there is no classism, racism, homophobia, or sexism. A rushing river doesn’t care what level of the social hierarchy you’ve reached, or haven’t. Time slows to a more manageable pace, and we experience profound healing on levels mainstream medicine likely will never understand. For starters, you are breathing in fresh air, and absorbing Vitamin D, which is a known precursor for making happy hormones. Being outdoors is so uplifting that many people describe is as being a spiritual experience. If you can only be outside for a few minutes every day, take advantage of that opportunity. Your happiness is forever connected to being one with nature.

Be with your peeps.

Spending time with friends and family is one of those ‘can’t buy me love’ things that really does add to our overall happiness. Daniel Gilbert is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. The professor tells us that most of the things we do in life are to acquire more time with friends and family – so why not just cut to the chase, and DO that. The ‘happiness’ expert says, “We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.” The ‘can’t buy me love’ aspect is quite real, in fact. The connections we have with friends and family is worth as much as $132,000 a year in terms of life satisfaction, according to the Journal of Socio-Economics. If you don’t have friends, you can make some new ones by taking a class at a community college, joining a sports team or look for a social event to meet new people in your city.

Meditate.

A study by the University of Sydney surveyed 350 people who had meditated for more than two years, and compared those results with existing government surveys on people’s mental and physical health. Those who meditated were found to be ten percent happier than those who didn’t. While that doesn’t seem like much, meditation can also give us more mental clarity, feelings of peace and of gratitude (see number two), and 76 other scientifically verifiable benefits that you’d otherwise be missing out on.

Watch the Weather.

The American Meteorological Society has published research that found temperature has a bigger effect on our happiness than variables like wind speed and humidity. It also found that happiness is maximized at 57 degrees (13.9°C), so keep an eye on the weather forecast and head outside when the weather is prime. If you live in a warmer climate, find a shady spot and sit in nature.

Help somebody.

Doing good deeds, or helping someone else for 100 hours a year contributes massively to your overall feelings of peace, well-being, and happiness. “A lot of times we think that happiness comes about because you get things for yourself,” said Richard Ryan, a psychologist at the University of Rochester, but “it turns out that in a paradoxical way, giving gets you more, and I think that’s an important message in a culture that’s pretty often getting messages to the opposite effect.”

Stop the commute.

Okay, so you can’t just up and quit your job, but you might be able to work out a ‘flex’ schedule that allows you to work from home a few days a week, or you might even consider moving closer to your workplace. Why? Commuting makes us unhappy. A Swedish study found that commuting is so hard on folks that people are 40% more likely to divorce if one person commutes more than 45 minutes to work every day. If you absolutely must sit in traffic for an average of 38 to 60 hours a year, then at least listen to an uplifting book on tape, or learn a new language. This can make you happy, too.

Learn something new.

A core psychological need for humans is to learn and master new skills. Psychologists call this need ‘mastery.’ You can see it in babies learning to crawl or sit up for the first time, but also in grown adults mastering a violin concerto, or learning how to converse in a second language. Learning something new in one area of our lives also often triggers an add-on bonus of learning something new in another area. It’s a win-win-win situation. You learn one thing, and this helps you learn a bonus skill or concept, and this also leads to more happiness. You don’t have to get formal certificates or professional qualifications. Just learning how to plant a garden or play a new chord on your guitar can boost levels of happiness.

“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

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

               Annie Traquair Lang (American, 1885 - 1918) William Merritt Chase (c. 1910)

 Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions when it ceases to be dangerous you don’t want it. Duke Ellington

                                             Arthur Dove The Clay Wagon

 Asst. Prof. Len Thomas-Vickory and students Marisa Rasum ‘16 & Sam Glidden ‘16 painted their new crosswalk design at the Cabot Street & Essex Street intersection

                                                   Balthus - Walk of Commerce, Saint-Andre. 1954

                                                           Benkei Bridge - Tsuchiya Koitsu

Brazil's Mediums Channel Dead Artists. Is It Worship Or Just Delusion?

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro/NPR

Unlike most art exhibitions, this one starts with a prayer.

A heavyset 77-year-old woman with girlishly pinned blonde hair stands behind a table. An array of colored chalk and oil paints fan out in front of her. She puts her head in her hands and concentrates.

Her demeanor changes.

Then, to the sound of eerie music, she begins to draw. Her hands are nimble and decisive, despite her age, and very quickly, something begins to take shape: A face with a bright-green, 19th-century hat.

After 18 minutes and change — they timed it — she is finished. She signs the work, "Renoir."

The woman who is painting is actually called Valdelice Da Silva Dias Salum.

She tells me spirits began manifesting themselves around her when she was a child. But it wasn't until years later that it really began to get frightening, kind of like the movie Poltergeist. The TV would suddenly switch on; the radio would blare at full volume.

It turns out the spirits of dead French Impressionist painters were trying to make contact: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Degas. Pretty much all of them.

Salum says she grew up poor and illiterate. She didn't even know who these painters were. She says she had no artistic talent. But the spirits selected her.

All this might sound odd outside Brazil, but here it is fairly common and widely accepted.

Salum follows Spiritism, which is basically a religious offshoot of the 19th-century practice of communicating with the dead via table-rapping and séances. Spiritism is hugely popular in Brazil, with more than 4 million followers.

Spiritists believe in Jesus's Gospel, and in reincarnation. They believe that the dead can communicate with the living through mediums — and not only communicate, but create through the living, too.

"I don't know what they are going to do and what they are going to paint," Salum says. "I'm totally enveloped by them. I don't have a sense of time passing."

Unique Challenges

It's not only paintings that get channeled.

At a Spiritist bookstore in downtown São Paulo, I'm shown five books — including one by famed Brazilian spiritist Divaldo Franco — that carry Victor Hugo's name.

It's a Saturday and the place is packed with readers and books. There are more than 220 Spiritist publishing houses in Brazil.

One of the star authors is Sandra Guedes Marques Carneiro. Her books have sold more than 250,000 copies. She writes romances — of a kind. Her latest is called Salome, and she tells me she thinks it's a "sign" that I am interviewing her. The book is about a female journalist who travels to the war-torn Middle East and then comes to Brazil — kind of like me.

Carneiro emphasizes that the books are basically religious texts. The spirits are writing to try and bring about enlightenment and understanding to the earth. It makes the message more entertaining if it's wrapped in a good love story.

Her spirit author, for the record, is called Lucius, and he has a huge following — so much so that other author mediums channel him as well.

Alexandre Marques edits and publishes the work of his wife, Sandra. He says this part of the publishing industry presents some unique challenges.

"We don't have a way of commissioning books," Marques says. "They come from the other side to us."

Another difference from traditional publishing? Editing.

Surprisingly, Marques says it's actually easier to edit a dead author than a living one. Apparently, they are less defensive about the integrity of their work.

"The spirits are easier going, actually," he says.

Still, it's a labor-intensive process. It is pretty difficult to get approval for your edits from a spirit.

"We send the suggested alterations to the medium," Marques explains. "The medium consults the spiritual author. They answer if they agree or not."

Spiritual Copyright

This all gets into some strange legal ground. There was a case in which the widow of a famous dead author sued a medium for royalties because he was supposedly channeling her dead husband's spirit and writing new blockbusters.

We consulted a lawyer who's an expert in spiritual copyright. Renata Soltanovich says that, as long as the consumer who buys the work understands that it's been channeled through a medium, it's not fraud.

Back at the painting exhibition, Salum is channeling another dead painter. I'm not an art critic, but the paintings, in my opinion, are not ready to be hung in the Louvre.

I ask her why her works don't quite match the standard of some of the originals.

She explains it's hard for the spirits to cross into the corporeal world.

"It's because of my lack of knowledge," she says. "They are using me as an instrument, but I am weak."

In the end, she says, it's all about faith.

                                         14 Things You Should Know About Paid Leave in the U.S.

Many workers in this country aren't eligible for unpaid leave, much less paid leave.

By Prachi Gupta

           

At some point in your career, you will probably need to take time off from your job to care for yourself or a family member, or to welcome a tiny new human into your life. But because the federal government doesn't require your workplace to offer paid family leave, it's possible that you will have to choose between earning money and looking after a loved one – the latter which, yes, is pretty darn hard to do without an income. This has created a frustrating Catch-22 situation for many Americans, especially for low-income workers, single parents, and for women, the latter of whom are more likely to leave full-time work to care for others. Family leave policies are slowly changing, however, as both experts in the public and private sector are starting to recognize the societal and economic benefits of offering paid time off. The policies are complicated to navigate, so if you're a parent in the workforce, here are 14 things you need to know about how family leave works.

1. Every industrialized country in the world except for the U.S. offers paid leave. Despite its status as a superpower, America is the only developed country on the planet that doesn't have federal statutes protecting minimum paid vacation, sick days, and family leave. In fact, according toColumbia University professor Jane Waldfogel, who tracks paid parental leave programs globally, "most other countries offer an average of 10, 12 months or maybe more of paid parental leave." If this makes you sad, listen to John Oliver vent about it for 12 minutes and then come back here to read more.

2. Instead, America offers unpaid leave. While the federal government has not mandated paid family leave, in 1993 Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) into law. FMLA says that businesses are required to give working men and women up to 12 weeks off for pregnancy, prenatal care and childbirth; adoption or foster care; or caregiving for oneself or an immediate family member with a serious health condition. In some cases, family members of ill military servicemembers are eligible for 26 weeks of leave in a year. FMLA ensures that qualifying employees will continue to be covered under their elected health coverage throughout the time off and will return to the same (or similar) job with the same pay and same benefits they had before their hiatus. Businesses are not required to pay workers for time off under FMLA.

3. Not everyone is eligible for unpaid leave under FMLA. Aside from the obvious issue of losing your income, another drawback to the FMLA is that a lot of people and businesses don't meet the qualifications. In fact, according to a 2012 survey prepared for the Department of Labor, most worksites are not covered by the FMLA because they're too small. Only 59 percent of American workers – and less than 20 percent of all new mothers – are eligible for the FMLA. This is due to the following regulations: You have to work at a company that employs at least 50 people who live within 75 miles of the business (yes, that is weirdly specific) and you must have worked there for an entire year. In that year, you must have put in at least 1,250 hours, not including paid time off or sick days.

4. Recognizing that these regulations can be prohibitive, some states have loosened the eligibility requirements of the FMLA. For example, Maine allows private businesses with as few as 15 employees to be eligible for FMLA, while the District of Columbia extends unpaid family and medical leave to "16 weeks in a 24-month period for workers in establishments with 20 employees or more." Some states have also expanded upon the definition of "family": New Jersey, for example, recognizes "civil union partner and child of civil union partner, parent-in-law, step parent" as family members for whom an employee can care for under family leave, while Hawaii includes "grandparent, parent-in-law, grandparent-in-law or an employee's reciprocal beneficiary" as family.

5. Most people receive some pay when they take unpaid leave. Two-thirds of American workers eligible for FMLA cobble together necessary family leave time with their sick days and other accrued paid time off to pay, at least partially, for a leave. Most who receive partial or no pay, however, report having a difficult time supporting themselves. It's always worth looking into what sort of specialized benefits may be available at your workplace – some employers also offer sick leave pools, in which co-workers can donate time off.

6. However, 39 percent of American workers don't have sick days. About 43 million people don't get paid sick days, making even the aforementioned paid arrangements impossible for them. The Center for American Progress notes that less-educated and lower-income families "currently have the lowest levels of access to any form of leave, paid or unpaid," meaning that under the current system, many of the parents who most need help get the least.

7. Some private sector workers do get paid leave in America. Though not required by law, many top companies offer paid leave as part of their benefits and have found that such policies enhance employee retention, productivity, and morale. This includes corporations like Netflix, Google and Microsoft, who offer fairly generous packages for both maternal and paternal leave. But only 11 percent of workers report having paid time off. Paid leave is a privilege more readily available to college-educated workers, who, a 2014 report by the President's Council of Economic Advisersnotes, are "twice as likely to have access to paid leave as workers without a high school degree."

8. Local and state governments are starting to embracing paid leave. In 2004, California became the first state to enact a paid family leave law. Offered as an extension of the state's Temporary Disability Insurance program, employees receive partial pay (around 55 percent of one's paycheck up to $1,067 per week ) for six weeks out of a 12-month period in which a worker can take care of an ill family member, domestic partner, or bond with a child. Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Washington state have passed similar laws (Washington has yet to 

enact its law, however). A handful of states have created laws offering paid family leave to government workers, including Ohio, Virginia, and Illinois. At the local level, cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Austin, and Pittsburgh have moved to offer nonunion municipal workers paid family leave.

9. Mothers who receive paid leave are more likely to come back to work. Women are one-third more likely than men to take unpaid leave to take care of a baby or an elder, which exacerbates gender inequality and the wage gap in the workplace. But offering paid leave encourages women to come back to work. Looking at California's data, the National Partnership for Women & Families found that "first-time mothers who take paid leave are more likely than those who take unpaid leave or no leave to return to the same employer." National data suggests that paid leave policies amount to a significant difference in a woman's earnings over her lifetime, according to the Center for American Progress: "Mothers who were able to take paid leave after the birth of their first child also have present-day wages up to 16 years after they had their child, that are 9 percent higher than other mothers."

10. But paid family leave isn't just beneficial for women. Paternity leave encourages men to take time off to care for a newborn, shifting the perception that child care or caregiving is solely women's work. Over time, paternity leave programs may help break workplace gender norms, reducing the workplace stigma against men making time for family. Perhaps most important, paternity leave helps dads bond with their newborns and become more involved parents. "The more leave men take when their children are young," notes the Guardian, "the more highly satisfied they becomewith their relationship with their child – and the more likely they are to remain involved in childcare after their return to work."

11. Children are better off when their caretakers have access to paid leave, too.The White House report notes that in European countries, "paid leave programs are a relatively cost-effective way to reduce infant mortality because family leave allows parents to better care for their child and monitor their child's health," and that kids whose parents don't have paid leave "are more likely to show up sick to school and infect others." The American Public Health Association has called paid leave a public health issue.

12. Most Americans want paid leave, regardless of gender or political affiliation. A New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted in May found that 85 percent of respondents wanted government mandates for paid sick days and 80 percent were in favor of paid family leave.

13. One of the major concerns about mandating paid leave is the fear that it would put a high economic burden on businesses. Data suggests that's not the case, however. For the most part, current state laws do not require employers to pay for paid leave benefits. Funding for California's state insurance programs, for example, comes from employee paycheck withholdings. Nearly 90 percent of businesses in California said they incurred no extra costs as a result of the paid leave program. Nine percent even reported enjoying a cost savings thanks to reduced benefit costs and/or lower turnover. Overall, businesses saw higher morale, higher productivity and greater retention. Small businesses with fewer than 99 employees saw more benefits than large businesses, presumably because offering paid leave benefits helped them compete with bigger firms to attract and retain talent. Reports evaluating data from New Jersey and Rhode Island's paid leave programs similarly found that paid leave was not negative for businesses, and even had positive results,according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

14. Family leave will continue to be a major issue in the upcoming election. In January, President Obama signed an executive order giving federal employees six weeks of paid family leave and offered $2 billion to states to raise initiatives that support paid leave programs. Democrats havereintroduced bills mandating paid leave: The Federal Employee Paid Parental Leave Act, passed by the House in both 2008 and 2009 only to stall in the Senate, furthers Obama's vision to offer paid family leave to federal workers who are expecting, adopting, or taking in a new child. There's also the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which would create a federal paid leave program funded by employer and employee contributions and administered by the Social Security Administration. Republicans, who have been staunch critics of paid family leave, have offered up a less generous bill, the Family Friendly and Workplace Flexibility Act, which would permit private sector hourly-wage workers to put compensation earned by working overtime toward paid leave.

GOP presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina opposes mandating family leave. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the current front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination, both support paid family leave. On Mother's Day, Clinton published a video in strong support of paid family leave, saying, "It's outrageous that America is the only country in the developed world that doesn't guarantee paid leave." Sanders, meanwhile, who co-sponsored the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, recently announced his "Family Values Agenda," saying,. "It is time to join the rest of the industrialized world by showing the people of this country that we are not just a nation that talks about family values but that we are a nation that is prepared to live up to these ideals."

GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..

Kindred 1: of a similar nature or character : like : of the same ancestry. Kindred comes from a combination of kin (a word for one's relatives) and the Old English word rǣden ("condition"), which itself comes from the verb rǣden, meaning "to advise." Kindred entered English as a noun first, in the 12th century. That noun, which can refer to a group of related individuals or to one's own relatives, gave rise to the adjective kindred in the 14th century.

Venery 1. The practice or pursuit of sexual pleasure. 2. Hunting. For 1: From Latin veneria, from venus (desire, love). Venus was the goddess of love and beauty in Roman mythology who gave her name to the planet Venus. Earliest documented use: 1497.For 2: From Old French venerie, from vener (to hunt). Earliest documented use: 1330. In olden times one was supposed to know the terms of venery. Ultimately both senses are from the Indo-European root wen- (to desire or to strive for), which is also the source of wish, win, overweening, venerate, venison, banyan, wonted,venial, and ween.

Zydeco: Popular music of southern Louisiana that combines tunes of French origin with elements of Caribbean music and the blues. Legend has it that the word zydeco originated in the lyrics of Les Haricots Sont Pas Salés, a popular Cajun dance tune. Loosely translated, the song's title means "the beans are not salty," and when spoken in French Creole, les haricots (French for "beans") sounds something like zydeco. Zydeco first appeared in print in 1949 and has been used to describe this kind of music ever since.

 

Excerpt from my book “On the Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film”

CHAPTER 18

THE HUAC

Fall, 1950

 “The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism” Arthur Miller

Hollywood’s assault on Hollywood, in the form of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and other weapons, was born out of the cold war which began, more or less, on March 12, 1947 when President Harry Truman, in keeping with the Truman Doctrine, requested $400 million in aid from Congress to combat communism in Greece and Turkey.

The doctrine was an answer to the growing power of the Russian Soviet Union, which had already spread out into Eastern Europe, followed by the June 1949, Chinese Communists victory over Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces. Two months later, while the world watched, Mao traveled to Moscow, where he negotiates the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. A year later, on June 25, 1950, North Korean Communist forces, armed and trained by Mao’s generals, crossed the 38th parallel and invaded democratic South Korea. Two days later, Truman ordered U.S. forces into South Korea to repel the attack.

Within the United States, paranoia spread based in an absolute conviction that there was an enemy within the republic, that the Communists had established a firm foothold within the United States government and other circles of power, and were using that influence to erode democracy.  Daily events, either by happenstance or unwittingly created through self-will, seemed to confirm the paranoia that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Communist sleeper agents were active with the American boarders.      On November 1, 1952 the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb at a test site in the Marshall Islands. This was followed, less than a year later; by the Soviets announce their first test of a hydrogen bomb. It was learned later that

The secrets on the bombs preparation were passed along to the Russian by a 19 year old American Scientist.  They had our bomb. The devastation at Hiroshima was a recent memory for world. They could end the world and its formula had been given to them by one of our own. There had to answers. To find them, Congress increased the investigative powers of the once virtually toothless Special Committee on Un-American Activities, the HUAC.

In 1947, the HUAC turned its attention to exposing Communists' influence in the movie industry. Amidst much fanfare, the new HUAC chairman, Parnell Thomas, (R-N.J) and John McDowell, (R-Penn) arrived in Los Angeles in May and set up headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel where they interviewed most of their friendly witnesses, mainly from the MPA and Studio head Jack Warner who identified each and every person on his studio's payroll he suspected of being a communist or of harboring left wing sympathies.

While it true that the HUAC also launched multiple investigations into Communist infiltration of organized labors, the Federal government, Hollywood was the focus of their main assault.  The industry had just released a series of films filled with liberal sentiment and the Film Noir style, then all the rage, had taken on a disparaging view of life under any system of government. Also, there was, it should be said, at least a modicum of factual substance to the committee’s charges.  But it really had nothing to do with Communists as much as it had to do with political opportunism and an assault on Liberalism. The cold warriors intended to set an example in Hollywood with HUAC and discourage any moves by Hollywood to make films advocating social change at home or critical of foreign policy.

  The HUAC's operating theory was that Communists had established a significant base in Hollywood and were using that foothold to place subversive messages into films, discriminating against those who in the industry who opposed them and were placing negative images of the United States in films that would have wide international distribution.

It was a good theory, but it simply wasn't based in any fact or reality. At the time, Hollywood was, and had been since its start, an industry controlled from top to bottom by a handful of hard- nosed businessmen who ran the industry as a Money making entertainment outlet and nothing else. Most, like, Darryl Zanuck, were involved with every step of the film making processes, from beginning to end. The fact was that the studios fell clearly on the side of the US Government in terms of creating propaganda for the world to see.  But films and propaganda weren’t really what the committee was after. In reality, its primary target was the ultra-liberal Screen Writers Guild, founded only in 13 years before in 1933.  John Howard Lawson - later one of the Hollywood Ten - was the leader of the guild. Although he denied being an active communist at the time (He didn’t deny that he had been one in the past) he was certainly a leftist, as were a great many other unions and union members of the period (including a young Jimmy Hoffa) And although they left wing, they were not necessarily communists.

What the Committee wanted to prove, in fact, needed to prove, was that  "card-carrying party members dominated the Screen Writers Guild, that Communists had succeeded in introducing subversive propaganda into motion pictures, and that President Roosevelt had brought improper pressure to bear upon the industry to produce pro-Soviet films during the war."

While it was certainly true that Hollywood in general and the Writers Guild in particular, held more than the national average of members of the Communist party, the bulk were inactive members. Regardless, they were within their rights to be members of whatever political party they so choose.  Many had joined the party as part of a lofty and well-meaning set of ideals, especially those who came to adulthood during the great depression as an answer to the increasing economic inequity in the nation. But most, put off by the party's iron fisted rule, son became disenchanted and moved along to other beliefs.    

 The HUAC didn't care about lost ideals and disenchanted dreams. Hollywood, even Hollywood scriptwriters, caught the public’s attention and kept the public’s attention. Hollywood was good for the business of red hunting.

"Don't look for any so-called corrective legislation to result from the forthcoming Un-American Activities Committee investigation of Communism in Hollywood" Newsweek Magazine wrote on September 15, 1947 "Primarily the committee is fishing for headlines. By citing specific examples of Communist influences in movie scripts, the group hopes to alert the public to them."

 For Arthur Miller, the hearings were "The inquisition.” for Ellen Schrecker; they were "a symbolic ritual". Victor Navasky more aptly described them as  "degradation ceremonies.”

Not that the committee needed the hearings, in almost every case, they already had the names that they demanded. The Committee, run by the ultra-right wing, was determined to find Communists in Hollywood and to punish them, or, at the least, make an example of them.  While those who refused to testify before the Committee were punished by banishment, financial and professional ruin, (or some by suicide) for those who did testify the punishment was no less severe.  Such was the case of Waterfront’s future star, Lee J. Cobb.   

Cobb joined the Group Theater in 1935 where he appeared with Elia Kazan in the highly successful Clifford Odets play, Waiting for Lefty

Success came in 1947, when Henry Miller chose him to play the lead role of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, directed by Elia Kazan.  That was followed up by his highly acclaimed work on the 1948 classic, Call Northside 777.  By the start of the 1950's, Cobb was headed towards the height of his career.  Then he was named as a communist at the HUAC hearings and called in to give his testimony.  After refusing for two years to appear before the committee, on June 23, 1953, not only did he appear secretly before the HUAC, but also named names, some twenty in all.  Cobb recalled:

"The HUAC did a deal with me.  I was pretty much worn down.  I had no money.  I could not borrow.  I had the expenses of taking care of the children.  Why am I subjecting my loved ones to this?  If it's worth dying for, and I am just as idealistic as the next fellow.  But I decided it wasn't worth dying for, and if this gesture were the way of getting out of the penitentiary, I'd do it. I had to be employable again. When the facilities of the government of the United States are drawn on an individual, it can be terrifying. The blacklist is just the opening gambit - being deprived of work. Your passport is confiscated. That's minor. But not being able to move without being tailed is something else.  After a certain point, it grows to implied as well as articulated threats, and people succumb. My wife did, and she was institutionalized" 58

 The rumor around town was that Cobb had paid the HUAC twenty-five thousand dollars, through his lawyer Martin Gang, to keep his testimony a secret. If he did pay the money, it was pointless, the committee released the text anyway and the results on Cobb were devastating. Renowned for his insecurities and vanity, he had few friends in Hollywood. When his testimony became public, what few friends he did have in the industry abandoned him. His wife left him and work stopped coming his way. He was trying to support himself and his two children "On thin air and a dream" He considered filing for bankruptcy "I was in" he said "a low mental state" 59 Waterfront would be his saving role.

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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

BOOKS ON FOSTER CARE

It's Not All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the books contents

Paperback 94 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what

From the Author

I spent my childhood, from age seven through seventeen, in foster care.  Over the course of those ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and concerned people told me, "It's okay to be foster kid."

In saying that, those very good people meant to encourage me, and I appreciated their kindness then, and all these many decades later, I still appreciate their good intentions. But as I was tossed around the foster care system, it began to dawn on me that they were wrong.  It was not all right to be a foster kid.

During my time in the system, I was bounced every eighteen months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a boy's school and to a group home before I left on my own accord at age seventeen.

In the course of my stay in foster care, I was severely beaten in two homes by my "care givers" and separated from my four siblings who were also in care, sometimes only blocks away from where I was living.

I left the system rather than to wait to age out, although the effects of leaving the system without any family, means, or safety net of any kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived in poverty for the first part of my life, dropped out of high school, and had continuous problems with the law.

 Today, almost nothing about foster care has changed.  Exactly what happened to me is happening to some other child, somewhere in America, right now.  The system, corrupt, bloated, and inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.

Something has gone wrong in a system that was originally a compassionate social policy built to improve lives but is now a definitive cause in ruining lives.  Due to gross negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what the foster care system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care has become our epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have lived through it.

Yet there is a suspicion among some Americans that foster care costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and is at odds with a satisfying life.  Others see foster care as a part of the welfare system, as legal plunder of the public treasuries.

 None of that is true; in fact, all that sort of thinking does is to blame the victims.  There is not a single child in the system who wants to be there or asked to be there.  Foster kids are in foster care because they had nowhere else to go.  It's that simple.  And believe me, if those kids could get out of the system and be reunited with their parents and lead normal, healthy lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of legal plunder of the public treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are doing the plundering.

 We need to end this needless suffering.  We need to end it because it is morally and ethically wrong and because the generations to come will not judge us on the might of our armed forces or our technological advancements or on our fabulous wealth.

 Rather, they will judge us, I am certain, on our compassion for those who are friendless, on our decency to those who have nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to make our nation and our world a better place.  And if we cannot accomplish those things in the short time allotted to us, then let them say of us "at least they tried."

You can change the tragedy of foster care and here's how to do it.  We have created this book so that almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to the world.  You have the power to improve the lives of those in our society who are least able to defend themselves.  All you need is the will to do it.

 If the American people, as good, decent and generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster care, in their name and with their money, they would stop it.  But, generally speaking, although the public has a vague notion that foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete picture. They are not aware of the human, economic and social cost that the mismanagement of the foster care system puts on our nation.

By tweeting the facts laid out in this work, you can help to change all of that.  You can make a difference.  You can change things for the better.

We can always change the future for a foster kid; to make it better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up (or tweet out) because it's your country.  Don't depend on the "The other guy" to speak up for these kids, because you are the other guy.

We cannot build a future for foster children, but we can build foster children for the future and the time to start that change is today.

No time to say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster 

Paperbook 440 Books

http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir

  

BOOKS ABOUT FILM

On the Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film

Paperback: 416 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/

BOOKS ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL

Scotish Ghost Stories

Paperback 186 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell

HUMOR BOOKS

The Book of funny odd and interesting things people say

Paperback: 278 pages

http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people

The Wee Book of Irish Jokes

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook

Perfect Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises

http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social

BOOKS ABOUT THE 1960s

You Don’t Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969

Paperback 122 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969

Baby Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties

Paperback

http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/

Baby Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s

IRISH- AMERICANA

The Connecticut Irish

Paper back 140 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly

 The Wee Book of Irish Jokes

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/

The Wee Book of Irish Recipes 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/

 

 The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters

  http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/

 The Wee book of Irish Blessings... 

http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/

The Wee Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words

http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/

Everything you need to know about St. Patrick

Paperback 26 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick

A Reading Book in Ancient Irish History

Paperback 147pages

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History

The Book of Things Irish

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/

Poets and Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish

Paperback 158 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/

The History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated

Paperback 356 pages

http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/

BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND

The New England Mafia

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/

Wicked Good New England Recipes

http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/

The Connecticut Irish

Paper back 140 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly

The Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers

Paperback 64 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion

The Life of James Mars

Paperback 54 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut

Stories of Colonial Connecticut

Paperback 116 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford

What they Say in Old New England

Paperback 194 pages

http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/

BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME

Chicago Organized Crime

Chicago-Mob-Bosses

http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook

The Mob Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook

An Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000

http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/

Mob Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/

The Mob Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/

Shooting the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/

Shooting the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre

The Life and World of Al Capone in Photos

http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone

AL CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930 edition.Over 200 new photographs

Paperback: 340 pages

http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs

Whacked. One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit

Paperback: 172 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/

Las Vegas Organized Crime

The Mob in Vegas

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook

Bugsy & His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill

http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/

Testimony by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files Series)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook

Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime.

Paperback 264 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged

The Life and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.

Paperback 94 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor

The Mob, Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago

Paperback 200 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago

When Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos

Paperback 234 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos

Organized Crime in Hollywood

The Mob in Hollywood

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/

The Bioff Scandal

Paperback 54 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios

Organized Crime in New York

Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia

http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/

Mob Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/

The New York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins

The New York Mob: The Bosses

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/

Organized Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate

http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook

Shooting the mob: Dutch Schultz

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz

Gangland Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)

http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/

Early Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City

Paperback 382 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York

THE RUSSIAN MOBS

The Russian Mafia in America

http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/

The Threat of Russian Organzied Crime

Paperback 192 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook

Organized Crime/General

Best of Mob Stories

http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/

Best of Mob Stories Part 2

http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/

Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters

http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook

Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos

http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos

More Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs

http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos

The New England Mafia

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook

Shooting the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.

http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/

The Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/

The Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill each other"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/

The Mob across America

http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/

The US Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987

http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/

Early Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated

http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/

The Mob Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/

Gangster Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated

Paperback: 128 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/

The Book of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.

Paperback: 436 pages

http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/

The Mob and the Kennedy Assassination

Paperback 414 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters

BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST

The Last Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself

Paperback 152 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself

BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY

Chicago: A photographic essay.

 Paperback: 200 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas

STAGE PLAYS

Boomers on a train: A ten minute play

Paperback 22 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook

Four Short Plays

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy

Four More Short Plays

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/

High and Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve

Cyberdate. An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/

The Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of Gangster Dutch Schultz.

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/

Fishbowling on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with Dutch Schultz

Print Length: 57 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/

American Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play

By John William Tuohy

http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook

She Stoops to Conquer

http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/

The Seven Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play

Print Length: 14 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/

BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA

OUT OF CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police

http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/

McLean Virginia. A short informal history

http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/

THE QUOTABLE SERIES

The Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300 quotes

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes

The Quotable John F. Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/

The Quotable Oscar Wilde

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

The Quotable Machiavelli

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

The Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master

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

The Quotable Henry David Thoreau

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook

The Quotable Robert F. Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/

The Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook

The words of Walt Whitman: An American Poet

Paperback: 162 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet

Gangster Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated

Paperback: 128 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/

The Quotable Popes

Paperback 66 pages

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti

The Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran

Paperback 52 pages

Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet, and writer was born on January 6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in what was then part of Ottoman Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In 1895, the family immigrated to the United States when Kahlil was a young man and settled in South Boston. Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a member of the avant-garde community and became especially close to Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and supported Gibran’s creative projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and watercolor, Kahlil attended art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style. He held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship and love affair that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell influenced every aspect of Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his editor when he began to write and ushered his first book into publication in 1918, The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48 from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/

The Quotable Dorothy Parker

Paperback 86 pages

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

The Quotable Machiavelli

Paperback 36 pages

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

The Quotable Greeks

Paperback 230 pages

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

The Quotabe Oscar Wilde

Paperback 24 pages

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

The Quotable Helen Keller

Paperback 66 pages

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

The Art of War: Sun Tzu

Paperback 60 pages

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

The Quotable Shakespeare

Paperback 54 pages

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

The Quotable Gorucho Marx

Paperback 46 pages

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