Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays, Greetings of the Season.
I don’t suppose there is a greater time of year for children than those who celebrate Christmas and believe in Santa Claus
Looking back it was a magical time for me. When we lived in a two bedroom townhouse in Old Harbor Village, a family that would eventually reach eight persons, we never put up a Christmas tree before Christmas.
After the children went off to bed, my mother and father would drag in the tree that they had hidden outside and set it up, put all the lights and decorations on it, and place the presents under the tree. It was magical coming down into the living room in the morning when it was still dark outside seeing the amazing transformation. A bare room was turned into a room of wonder and delight with the colorful lights and bulbs on the tree and the gaily wrapped presents under the tree.
My youth was a happy and peaceful existence. It did have its childhood sicknesses and traumas like every childhood. But I always managed to sleep soundly after being put to bed except for one night. I could not sleep Christmas Eve no matter how hard I tried. The night was the longest one of the year filled with anticipation and lying awake wondering if Santa had come yet.
Our living room was one of two rooms on the first floor the other being the kitchen. It was small. Almost half of it was taken up by a grand piano. I am unable to figure how the tree fit in there. I have no idea how my parents were able to pull this off with six kids. I assume they enjoyed a few drinks going through all the rigmarole involved in doing this celebrating that their children were safely tucked in bed and the presents properly place out.
How I arrive at that conclusion was looking back on one Christmas morning when I went down stairs and the gift I had yearned for: a basketball, sat under the tree. I was so delighted I wanted to share my good luck with my dad. He had not come down yet so I rushed upstairs to show him. He was trying to catch a few more winks. As he tried to sleep I stood beside him bouncing the ball over and over again. He didn’t seem as pleased as I had expected him to be putting the pillow over his head. Looking back years later because his reaction which was so unusual stuck in my head I tend to think he had a little bit of a headache. Imagine being in that condition and having a basketball bouncing over and over again next to your head. It must have been sheer torture.
Another Christmas I remember was when I did not get the present I asked for. I came down hoping to see a puppy under the tree and was crushed and disconsolate when it wasn’t there. My dad was so great that seeing my state somehow he was able to go out and find a boxer puppy to bring back to me. That’s all my parents needed to add to the family was a little puppy although we did have one earlier, a Boston terrier named Sparkie.
As parents we always enjoyed sitting around having a glass of eggnog or wine wrapping presents as the kids slept soundly. We’d stay up late doing it always realizing that we would pay for it in the morning when the kids rose at the earliest possible moment. Many good memories there but the most poignant was when my son wanted a Swiss Army knife. I forewarned him to be careful with it for it was very sharp and if he didn’t handle if properly he could not keep it. The morning went by and I saw him sitting at the counter in the kitchen with tears in his eyes. Yes, he had cut his finger with it and dreaded having to tell me.
When the kids leave the nest Christmas takes on a different hue. It is true as one notable philosopher said, “Christmas is for kids.”
May we all be kids on this date.
this just in
https://kaplanherald.com/2018/01/04/with-extra-to-come-back-new-jfk-paperwork-provide-contemporary-leads-54-years-later/
Dallas mayor was CIA asset
One particular document from the August release has created . It that shows that Earle Cabell, mayor of Dallas at the time of the Nov. 22, 1963, shooting, became a CIA asset in late 1956.
The CIA had withheld the information on grounds that it was not considered relevant. No related documents have been released, but even alone it is important. Cabell’s brother Charles was deputy director of the CIA until he was fired by Kennedy in January 1962.
This screenshot of a newly released CIA document from 1956 shows that Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell had been an asset. He was mayor at the time of the JFK assassination.
“That shows why Dallas was the place,” said Zack Shelton, a retired veteran FBI agent who fervently disbelieves that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman. “I think the investigation or focus is going to be turned more into Oswald not being the lone wolf.”
Shelton, now 67 and retired in Beaumont, Texas, was an FBI agent in Chicago combating organized crime in the 1980s. In the process of helping bust a contraband ring involving an alleged mafia hitman named James Files, Shelton was told that Files had curious things to say about the Kennedy killing roughly 20 years earlier.
That tip to Shelton launched a chain of events that led to Files confessing from prison in Illinois that he was one of several gunmen in Dallas on the fateful day, and that he fired from the famous grassy knoll.
Many historians dismiss Files’ claims, but Shelton maintains that Files was indeed an assassin and was part of the Cosa Nostra mob organization headed in Chicago by Salvatore “Sam the Cigar” Giancana. Files was released from prison in 2016 after a long stint for attempted murder.
The CIA and FBI documents released so far say nothing about Files or another assassin he allegedly worked with named Charles Nicoletti, but that’s no surprise to Wim Dankbaar. He’s a Dutch national with and videos devoted to debunking what he considers a myth — that Oswald killed Kennedy or that he acted alone — and promoting the view that Files assassinated Kennedy.
“Do you really think they haven’t deep-sixed the incriminating files?” Dankbaar asked in a testy telephone interview.
The November tranche of new documents does include some about Giancana’s courier, a former Chicago cop who went by the alias Richard Cain and met in Mexico City with CIA staff; he was also an informant for the FBI. A 1992 biography written by Giancana’s family said the mob boss had told his younger brother that Cain and Nicoloetti, not Oswald, were in the Texas Book Depository from where shots at Kennedy were fired.
In addition, several new documents discuss the CIA and its work with mobsters to prevent Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba and later oust him.
There’s this bar in New Orleans
Another revelatory JFK document released in full on Dec. 15 was the transcript of a 1978 interview by the House Select Committee on Assassinations with Orest Pena. According to Pena, a bar owner in New Orleans, Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. government agent or informant.
How did he know? Because Pena himself was an informant, he said. He had given details to the Warren Commission in July 1964 but, as the new document shows, later revealed much more detail about Warren de Brueys, an FBI agent in New Orleans to whom Pena said he reported.
Oswald, he claimed, frequented a breakfast place regularly not only with de Brueys but with agents from U.S. Customs and Immigration in New Orleans. Pena believed Oswald had an office in the same government complex.
Pena also testified to the House panel that de Brueys had threatened him if he shared with investigators details of their meetings and training of anti-Castro instigators, and that his FBI handler had transferred to Dallas before the assassination. Pena’s testimony, however, was largely discounted by two government commissions.
“Their reasons for denying this were weak,” said Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which boasts theof JFK assassination documents; Bradford is another disbeliever in the official version of events.
The newly released transcript is likely to spark new interest in the New Orleans link to the assassination and searches of government records in multiple agencies, he said.
We now know with some certainty that
Memphis police officer Earl Clark fired
the rifle that provided the “kill shot”
to assassinate Martin Luther King.
We know with some certainty
that security guard thane caesar
was one of the shooters that assassinated
Robert Kennedy
https://flyingtigercomics.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/ted-charach-thane-eugene-cesar-shot-rfk-maybe-a-third-shooter-too/
in other news
Frenchy had just finished writing a book detailing
the FBI-Mafia connection in the assassination
of President Kennedy
http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_663c9f9f-89bc-5acf-93b4-486ff50c9176.html
Kent ‘Frenchy’ Brouillette, New Orleans mob figure, found stabbed to death in St. Roch home
DEC 8, 2015 –
watch it on youtube
http://articles.courant.com/1993-02-08/features/0000106188_1_hoover-frontline-mob-figures
Documentary Ties FBI Chief Hoover To Corruption, Mob Figures
`Frontline’ Tells `Secrets’ About Hoover
February 08, 1993|By JAMES ENDRST; Courant Television Columnist
Even in an age where there are no secrets and no heroes and, therefore, little left to shock us, “The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover” on this week’s edition of the PBS documentary series “Frontline” is jaw-dropping stuff.
By far the best in-depth weekly news hour on television, “Frontline” (Tuesday at 9 p.m. on WEDH, Channel 24) outdoes even itself this week with a deeply disturbing and historically significant investigation of Hoover.
Director of the FBI for nearly 50 years under eight presidents before his death in 1972, Hoover, according to “Frontline,” was “personally corrupt, sexually compromised and tainted by ties to organized crime.” Much of the program and its related issues center on the much whispered about but, here, highly detailed homosexual relationship between Hoover and Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s senior aide at the FBI.
That relationship, supposedly photographed, appears to have been used by the American Mafia to blackmail Hoover. As a result, Hoover, a man who is now known to have kept secret files on the private lives of politicians, presidents and anyone he needed to control, found the tables turned.
Anthony Summers, author of “Official and Confidential,” an investigative biography of Hoover newly published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, says in the film, “For all the fuss about pursuing the John Dillingers and the small-time hoods of the Midwest, anyone at the top in law enforcement at that time knew the real threat to society came from elsewhere.” Summers goes on to say that although Hoover went after the Mob in a very public way in the early ’30s, on the eve of World War II he suddenly stopped, even going so far as to deny the existence of the crime syndicate long after its presence became obvious. The result was that the Mafia was allowed to grow virtually unchecked.
There are any number of instances and issues revealed or brought into sharp focus in “The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover” to ignite a citizen’s fury. From his lavish and illegal lifestyle to
his heavy gambling, which, again, compromised Hoover by tying him to organized crime, he seemed to be breaking every major rule in his own FBI handbook.
“He used to place bets through [columnist Walter Winchell],” says Sy Pollack, an associate of underworld figure Meyer Lansky, “and those bets used to be placed with [gangster] Frank Costello, and they were no $2 bets. They ran into the hundreds and thousands.”
The most newsworthy and astounding revelation, however, comes from Evelyn Lincoln, secretary to President Kennedy. Lincoln, for the first time, confirms that “one of the factors that made John F. Kennedy choose Lyndon Johnson for vice president were the malicious rumors fed to Lyndon B. Johnson by J. Edgar Hoover about [Kennedy’s] womanizing.” Hoover managed to keep his life — and his power plays, which made him invulnerable even to presidents — a secret.
John Dowd, chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force who was assigned to investigate Hoover four years after the FBI director’s death, says on “Frontline” that he looked into “40 years of fraud and corruption by J. Edgar Hoover in which Hoover had taken, at taxpayers’ expense, goods and services provided by employees of the FBI.”
Had Hoover been alive when the probe took place, Dowd says, “I believe he’d have been indicted, prosecuted and convicted.”
Instead, Hoover was buried as if he had been a president.
In the opening sequence of “The Secret File,” Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger is heard proclaiming Hoover “a man who epitomized the American Dream of patriotism, dedication to duty and successful attainment.”
But by the end of “The Secret File,” most viewers will probably want to spit on Hoover’s grave.
“The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover,” an episode of the PBS series “Frontline,” will be broadcast Tuesday night at 9, locally on WEDH, Channel 24
P.S. and Note Bene:
I have also had the great pleasure of meeting in person William Faulkner’s grand niece. She was on a ladder, stocking shelves, in a book store in Denver Colorado, and as I walked into the store I saw her standing there, with her midi-skirt, a lovely figure of form and grace and a very pretty face, and she stepped down to answer my question. We chatted for a bit, and when she told me who’s grandniece she was I told her about visiting her grand-uncle’s home on the outskirts of Tupelo Mississippi, as was touring the South then, Louisiana, Miss, Alabama, visiting college football fields and wild life sanctuaries and civil war battlefields and walking through swamps, bayous, forests, Elvis Presley lake, Lafite’s Wetland area (as I recall it’s called) and visiting zoos and gettiing bitten by some giant insect in a swamp and the Zoo’s vet patched me up . . .and crossing the Mississippi and Jackson and Shiloh just across the border in southern tennessee and of course home of the Alabama football team, how is it spelled Tuscaloosa, and a man in a store who was related to one of the Boston Celtics . . . .anyway that was my Southern Excursion a few weeks tour in the fields of one of the most beautiful bountiful friendly folk in all of America
I met Miss Faulkner . . .the grandniece of William, the writer, talk about a man who could write three page sentences . . .anyway she was in Denver, and I was on a several week tour of the sorta-southwest . . .Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico . . .I espied 7 states from the top of PIke’s Peak
I remember her till this day . . .so lovely, lively, alert, hopeful, wondrous, wonderful, idealistic in a practical realistic American way, working hard, finishing up college, salt of the earth. . . . .this was the early 1990s, as I recall . . .she was about 20 . . . . I was “old” even then . . .
Did you ever hear Santana play . . .at Woodstock . . .i’ve got his best hits . . .always liked him . . he was and is great . . .also liked Alice Cooper’s beautiful flyaway . .played it a thousand times . . .still do
anyway Santana had a distant cousin, maybe, named something like Santayana, Georges I believe, the spelling is probably wrong and he played a song that went something like this:
IF WE DON’T KNOW THE PAST WE ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT
Oh, yuh, that capital T that rhymes with P, doesn’t stand for Pool, it stands for Prosecutors (Federal Prosecutors) . . . .most of the state prosecutors I’ve known, in fact all I’ve known personally, are honest hard-working straight shooters.
p.s. And after the Federal Prosecutors’ 20-year jihad against political enemies and currying favor with political pals (the Congressman’s wife) . . .twenty years, we could go back to Raymond Donovan, and don’t think State Prosecutors don’t revel and delight in persecuting political foes, they do and have and will continue to do so, too, unless and until We the People put a stop to it) but back to my point . . . these 20 or 30 or 40 year jihads by Prosecutors against Perceived Political Foes consume immense resources, judicial and investigatory. . . and all the while the DRUG EPIDEMIC now claims over 60,000 lives annually . . .OPIATES over 45,000 lives annually, the rest barbiturates, speed, hallucinogens, depressants, sedatives, etc, etc.) AND WHAT ARE OUR FEDERAL PROSECUTORS DOING ABOUT IT? WHO ARE THEY SICCING THEIR INVESTIGATORY DOGS ON . . .NOT DRUG DEALERS, NOT DIVERSION FROM THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY, NOT ILLICIT DRUG MANUFACTURERS OR ILLICIT IMPORTERS FROM FOREIGN LANDS CROSSING OUR BORDERS . . .NO . . THE RESOURCES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ARE TARGETING INNOCENT COPS, INNOCENT NURSES, INNOCENT CHUCK TURNER TAKING $200 IN A PREACHER’S HANDSHAKE, INNOCENT LOCAL POLS, INNOCENT MOTEL OWNERS, INNOCENT PROBATION OFFICERS . . .WHILE 60,000-PLUS DIE ANNUALLY AND MILLIONS ANNUALLY SUFFER THE SCOURGE OF OPIATES, SPEED, TRANQUILIZERS, SEDATIVES, HALLUCINOGENS, BLACK-MARKETED, OUR FEDS SIC FBI AGENT ON RETIRED GENERALS TO ASK THEM TRICK QUESTIONS SO THAT THEY MAY BE INDICTED FOR “LYING TO AN FBI AGENT”
THERE’S TROUBLE TODAY HERE AND NOW IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND SOME STATE GOVERNMENT PROSECUTOR’S OFFICES . . . TROUBLE, AND I AINT TALKING RIVER CITY . . .I’M TALKING EXCESSIVELY ZEALOUS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PROSECUTORIAL TROUBLE WITH A CAPITAL “T”
★ the Laws of Physics , as we know them , ….
thought is the slave of life
and life is time’s fool
Richard Dolan was working on his
PhD in American History 15 years
at the Univ of Rochester
My first trojan horse of the new year
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L5QIGf2uqc8
UFO’ S AND EXOPOLITICS
He uses a phrase …. ” And I am going to take a look at THE VAST ILLEGAL STRUCTURE OF SECRECY that has arisen in the last six decades or so . ”
A memorable phrase. Particularly here , as I have been suggesting that this is the dynamic with which one must approach the John Connolly …. Phenomenon .
This lecture only a month old. It is timely , as he indicates that we are in a period now where disclosure of the documented and long standing encounters of US with ” THEM ” is both possible and more than likely . Considering that the recent camera footage of two Navy Top Guns in pursuit of a craft that defied the Law of Physics , as we know them , was officially released , he may be onto something .
” Everything secret degenerates …..”
A quote borrowed by Judge Mark Wolf that was the lead sentence in his Opinion .
Even Judge Wolf’s Opinion .
Dolan is quite a scholar .
Wa-llahi! Anybody interested in recent news from Iran and, what it means? Why are you two (Bill and John), bitch’in at each other all the time? Winter boredom? All that mob/FBI shit is losing it’s legs. Who gives a damn. Let’em all rot. On to something new.
A person propounds a theory that is as complex and variegated as Ted Kacynzski’s manifesto . It is a conspiracy theory . In a remarkable feat of rhetorical excess in service of what are good motives the philosopher solves divers murders . He has everything conned . Nothing escapes his judgement . He infallibly guides us to the real truth as to why John Connolly was scapegoated . A point that I have made on numerous occasions . Sunshine is the best disinfectant . Trying to put a shine on a sneaker that is the FBI Boston Office as personified by John Connolly at that time helps no one . Especially John .
If you have some pithy and well referenced observations to make about Iran and the upheaval there on the street , then have at it . I’ll read it .
THE PAST IS NOT DEAD , THE PAST IS NOT EVEN THE PAST . Bill Faulkner
The disinfectant sunshine hits the Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Stern’s gang, Sterns’ team of Sterns himself (pal of Al) Wyshak, Durham and the poor Miami prosecutors and Miami Trial court they dragged into their shennanigans. Faulkner nailed it: Sterns’ team and their ilk went after H. Paul Rico, John Connolly, Finneran, Kenny Conley, the Probation Officers, innocent nurses, let off the hook Schneiderman and the Congressman’s crooked wife pilfering millions not $200 like Chuck Turner, went after an honest man’s motel, and tried to drag in Chris Bulger in the Probation Case and Bob De Leo (sp) Senate President (unidicted co-conspirator in the phony Probation Case) and now their going after a Milton lawyer State Senator whose crimes in the 100-plus indictment seem to be that his is both at the same time a State Senator and a Lawyer, who represents folks and consults with folks. Something every lawyer/elected official in AMerica does.
If you think John Connolly’s and RICO’s cases are THE PAST you are, my fellow-blogger, not only sadly mistaken, not only likely delusional, but I suspect you have an axe to grind in this matter.
I’ve admitted my allegiances; I am a friend of John Connolly, knew him and his family and his friends and neighbors most of my life, grew up in the same town with the same salt of the earth.
What are your allegiances, learned literary fellow, that you want to bury the past and deny the fact that Martin Buber (was it?) said, “First they came for the FBI agents, then the Probation Officers, then the lawyers/state senators/ then the nurses and small businesses, and when these Satanic power abusing forces inside the Federal Government came for General Mike Flynn and his son, and set him up with an immaterial phony lying to an FBI agent charge, as they did to John Connolly, Tom Finneran, and tried to do to Billy Bulger, and trying this very second out of that crummy DOJ prosecutors office in Boston and it looks just as crummy in D.C. (the Dosier, Hillary exonerated), then . . . never mind then . . . .I’ve visited Faulkner’s home in Mississippi as I’ve visited Hemingway’s in Key West . . . .Men who spoke the simple truth . . . .
It’s not the FBI . . .good men and women, except the rare Morris-types . . .it’s the corrupt politically motivated, politically aligned Federal Prosecutors who pick and choose what pols to nail . . . and use perjurious serial killers as witnesses . . .and “lying to an FBI agent” as a ruse . . .and twist laws (rico statute) facts and procedures (double jeopardy, statutes of limitations, 15 years to drag out a case while an innocent man sits in prison) . .
THAT’S THE PRESENT . . .AS THEY SAY IN MEDICINE: P.I. PRESENT ILLNESS OR PATIENT (BOSTON, D.C. FEDERAL PROSECUTORS) PRESENTS WITH . . . OR AS APPLIED TO MYSELF AND PETITIONERS: PATIENTS’ CHIEF COMPLAINT IS CORRUPTION IN THE FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE’S PROSECUTORS OFFICE.
THEN, PART II IS THE “PAST HISTORY”
THEN THE P.E. PHYSICAL EXAM, AND ALL THE LAB RESULTS
THE PRESENT ILLNESS DOMESTICALLY IS A CORRUPT FEDERAL PROSECUTORS OFFICE BOTH IN BOSTON AND WASHINGTON D.C. . . . SECRETIVE, OVERLY ZEALOUSLY, TARGETTING POLITICAL OPPONENTS, TWISITNG LAW, FACT AND REASON TO PERSECUTE, PROSECUTE AND IMPRISON, ALL THE WHILE AIMING AT BIGGER FISH TO FRY, BIGGER POLITICAL TARGETS, LIKE BILLY BULGER IN BOSTON AND PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP IN WASHINGTON D.C.
I’M REMINDED OF MR. COHEN’S GREAT SONG: “THE END” . . .I LIKE POETS LIKE DYLAN AND COHEN . . . AND W..B. YEATS 1916 ; ET AL: AND WRITE IT IN VERSE: CONNOLLY, MCDONOUGH, PEARSE . . .A TERRIBLE BEAUTY IS BORN
REQUIEM FOR A NUN …. Bill Faulkner
” The past is not dead , it it’s not even past .”
Even the paraphrase from memory clearly indicates the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of what you are maintaining in your splenetic critique of its being used in service of the …. EXACT OPPOSITE …of how it was really used .
Its meaning is clear .
Your meaning , regrettably , is not .
Take a closer look .
★ ” The past is NEVER dead , it’s not even past . ” Faulkner
This is the precise quote . For some reason , having to do with linguistic echoes ( my term ) or something , there are a hundred minor variations of it quoted variously in print .
ARE YOU AWAKE ?
FAKE NEWS !!!!!!!!!!
* One of those was that Tony Veranis was killed , for WHATEVER the reasons , although you speak authoritatively as if you were there .
We get too heated when we discuss these things, and I apologize if anger is reflected in my narrative, towards those with whom I disagree.
But I don’t apologize for disagreeing vehemently . . . at times. The sounds of fury. I knew Tony Veranis personally as an older guy who lived a few blocks away, a hero from our neighborhood, a neighborhood of many boxers. It was a sport back then even in many high schools and most colleges.
I know well and have known well another older guy Tony’s brother Ralph . . . a great human being, a great man, with a big heart and soul, a giver, a sharer, a friend, loyal and true, a good neighbor, a good sense of humor. . . .I could write stories of his manifest courage and caring, too. How he helped me personally . . .
The Veranis’s were half-Irish, half-Lithuanian . . .Wikipedia has them as Italian immigrants . . . .Carr the Cur probably wrote it and falsified his boxing record too, like he falsified Martorano’s murders in Hitman . . . if you’re getting your “facts” from Carr you’re being duped and deceived.
One correction (and I may be wrong, off by an inch or so): John Martorano was a short rotund pudgy fatso . . .Tony Veranis was tall, lean, fit as a fiddle . . . tall for a welterweight . . . .(I put the exact data in a book I wrote; height, weight, etc.)
like I say correct me if I’m wrong, but that short fat bloated sluggish conscienceless slug (the shrinks would call him a sociopath if not a psychopath), that cold-blooded cowardly merciless murderer who snuck up from behind on virtually all his unarmed and defenseless victims was SHORTER than Tony Veranis.
Carr is the liar who distorts facts to promote his books and to make his murderous buddies whom he idolizes like “Johnny” Martorano into demi-false-gods . . .demented Carr lied to cover for the gaping holes in the demented serial killer Martorno’s stories.
If they both “reached for their guns” and Fatso Slug Martorano outdrew the lighting fast hands of the unarmed Tony Veranis . . .Tony would have had him K.O.ed and floored before he pulled a trigger . . . . the only way he could shoot him in the “back” of the head not near the neck but near the “top” was if Tony was bending down to tie his shoes or lace up his sneakers, before Fatso shot him.
You see (I hope) that both Carr the Cur and Martorano the cold blooded cowardly murderer lied repeatedly to the public, in writing, verbally, and to the prosecutors, and the federal prosecutors KNOW Martorano lied (I firmly believe this; it is my logical conclusion from all the facts as I know them; that is my considered opinion after studying this for almost two decades, they must have known Martorano was lying). . . . and they didn ‘t care then and they don’t care now. If they care now, Wyshak is still in charge somewhere, so is Durham, Sterns is teaching at Harvard, have them recognize and reconcile the shooting in the back of the head of Mr. Tony Veranis of Savin Hill with the lies the Murder Man and Carr the Cur have been selling the people. The CORONER’s report says back of the head, as I recall reading it. Father Peter Hart, whom everyone from Savin Hill, knows and respects, says Tony was sober, in recovery, doing well, turning his life around, living at home, taking care of his mom and ailing dad, working construction, staying away from the wise guys . . .
the Sports Writer/Graphic Artist Bob Coyne drew a great portrait of Tony, titled”Owes Debt to Boxing” comparing Tony to Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey who turned their lives around . . .
the great Sports Columnist (Boston Globe) Bud Collins wrote in April 27, 1966, two days after Tony was murdererd: “Veranis Found Self . . .Too Late.” He quotes the medical examiner, Dr. Tudor, who described Tony’s execution thusly: “It was a real professional job.” Collins described how Tony had turned his life around, was helping his mother and dying father.
Collins concluded his article: “Nothing Tony Veranis ever did warranted his vicious killing. He was a good, nice kid, as nice as I’ve met in Sports. Confused, I guess, but trying to find the right way. He seemed to have found it when I saw him six months ago. But he did something to offend the animals that killed him.”
You know what he did? He beat up Jimmy Martorano (a Mafiosa made-man murderer, and Murder Man John Martorano’s brother) and another guy in a fair fight. The two mugs probably tried to jump Tony and Tony kayoed both.
I remember my older brother hearing a commotion at night outside our house in Savin Hill, and he looked out the window. And there were two big six-footers confronting the smaller (let’s say 5-9) Billy O’Shea, a golden gloves boxing champ (not a pro) and the next morning at breakfast I remember my older brother telling me that with just two punches Billy had knocked out flat the two bigger men.
Like, I said, boxing was a sport, in all our neighborhoods, back in the 1950s and mid-1960s. It still is, and I could list the greats from Southie, Savie, Dot, Brighton, Allston, Hyde Park, Roxbury, Eastie, North End, etc, etc, etc. . . .
Tony Veranis was one of the greats . . . a nice young man, a great prospect . . .he retired early from boxing . . . he had a bright life before him . . .his lifelong prospects were very favorable indeed, surrounded by loving family, friends and neighbors, and great priests and nuns and teachers and coaches.
I’ve thought about this for 20 years . . .As a young man I had an 11 week long summer fellowship in Community Psychiatry at the D.C. general hospital in Washington D.C. We made home visits to the projects with courageous nurses; I was born in Old Harbor and raised in Savin Hill . . .I’ve had guns pointed at me in anger and seen a man I was helping and standing beside shot in the back….I’ve visited friends in the hospital shot by gunmen . . .we had “killers” in our neighborhood . . .I know a bit about mob mentality, mendacity, mass media agitprop, the Dreyfus Affair, human psychology, drug addiction (I worked in the field) and have known personally hardened ex-cons of every stripe who’ve turned their lives around.
I smelled a fish when the Boston Globe first ran pre-election cartoons against the Honorable Robert Quinn of Savin Hill, the A.G. running for governor. I’ve seen how low the Globe can go in distorting facts, in spinning, in defaming, in defaming entire neighborhoods and ethnic groups. I’ve seen innocent men and women mercilessly prosecuted by the FEDS especially in Boston who seemed to be doing the bidding of the Globe.
I’ve seen the Academics belittle, demean, defame good people, good communities acting with dignity to oppose Leftist programs and Idealogies, and the Leftists usurping and using and manipulating the wheels of government to force their views upon we the people. The FEDs releasing secret transcripts to their friends in the Media. I’ve seen the extent men like Carr and Cullen will blur fact, opinion, rumor, hearsay, innuendo to tar and feather, to lynch, to harangue, harass, intimidate, demean and mock their foes and foes’families or people they just don’t like.
Do I throw stones? I try not to. BUT I THROW THEM BACK AT THE STONE THROWERS WHO ARE STONING GOOD, DECENT, INNOCENT FOLKS.
In high school, I was a “defensive specialist.” We had a good football team; we had a boxing team, too, at school, back then, a club: two coaches: the lightweight champ from Notre Dame and the New England Intercollegiate Light Heavyweight Champion from Boston College. The former was Mr. Murphy; he became a D.A.; the latter was Mr. Mitchell, he went into business; after college he was Army, Special Forces . . .I hope I remember their names correctly . . . my best friend in high school and college . . . a lifelong friend . . . Arthur B. was on the same teams I was . . .pursued the same sort of career . . .I could go on
Howie Carr is a johnny come lately to Boston . . . and “knows” stuff only second and third hand (from the Globe usually) which means he knows little of the people he writes about . . .he idolizes amoral perjurious murderers . . . . he mocks the deaths of people I’ve had breakfast with at their houses in their kitchens. . . he mocks the deaths of many: he runs a “death pool” and laughs when someone dies . . . his audience is in stitches whenever someone old and famous dies. Carr mocks the dead; he mock’s the families; he mocks their losses.
I was born in Southie and raised in Savie, I’ve been lifelong friends with . . . . and a neighbor of . . . . good people . . . salt of the earth.
Bill C.: I love this post. Mainly the second half, but the whole thing stirs my memories in a wonderfully nostalgic way.
I’m going to cut and paste it and save it so I can read it whenever I want. I wish my mother’s five brothers were alive so I could send it to them.
Carr is convenient for you . He can be a 24k sob , obviously. But , he is a more complex character than that . Things happened . Many bad things happened . One of those was that , for WHATEVER the reasons , although you speak authoritatively as if you were there . Martorano was a killer . That was his profession . Whatever good issues you have with this, or with his style and personality , Tony Veranis was not the first or last to suffer from the actions of a man …. who did not simply drop down out of Space … to end Tony Veranis’s life . You eulogize him properly . It will not bring him back . Whether the account debunking Carr’s version , that Veranis was shorter and shot from above and not while reaching for his gun , was accurate or whether Martorano was shorter , matters not .
Yet , In a nostalgic ramble you explain ALL about the Tony Veranis murder . Which was gratuitous because you were quibbling about two versions of how Johnny Martorano shot him , each of which belied the Carr version , You , vicariously and for no sound reason except EGO , rehearse the whole nasty scene so as to sensationalize your account . You were not there . You do not ” Throw Stones . ” YOU THROW HEADSTONES .”
Tony Veranis RIP .
I think you are shortchanging yourself, perhaps , Ms. Freeh .
We practice telepathy among ourselves . Words are required here .
We soldier on .
JKM
I could not have said it better myself.
The local contabulary on vocabulary has
selected you as the winner of the 2017
winner of the word salad buffet award
you will soon receive your free subsciption
to the journal of irreproducible results
beam me up scotty
in other southie newes magazines….
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency
Peer-reviewed journal
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the field of Criminology. The jourdnal’s editors Jean McGloin and Chris Sullivan. Wikipedia
Impact factor:
2.231 (2011)
ISO 4 abbreviation:
J. Res. Crime Delinq
Discipline:
Criminology
LCCN:
64009395
OCLC number:
1783073
Editors:
Jean McGloin, Christopher J Sullivan
People also search for:
Crime & Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, Criminology
*THANK YOU !
Do you think I need you to tell me that Johnny Martorano … like Robert Mitchum and his hobo stories … Embellished ?
Who was it who said ” What an outstanding class is that of which I am the only member . ” Or words to that effect . You are in high dudgeon . You are not the … Sole Observer … of this tangled tableau . Yep, more holes in Johnny’s stories than the number of shots he required to get the job done. Also well documented .
I was familiar with the Tony Veranis … fabrication . The forensics indicated a brutal execution of a very tough guy by another tough guy who was several inches taller and shooting down. This is not the six guns at dawn in the middle of Dry Gulch Ave. gunfight that the imaginative Howie has portrayed in Hitman . But Johnny Martorano was a hitman . Johnny Martorano certainly killed Tony Veranis .
Thank you for a consummate summation of a oh too familiar story .
hAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT SINCE 1988, THE STATE STREET FARCE, ALAN DERSHOWITZ HAS MALICIOUSLY RELENTLESSLY SAVAGED THE REPUTATION OF BILLY BULGER, INSISTING HE BE IMPRISONED . . .HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN DERSHOWITZ PUBLICLY PRONOUNCED JIHAD AGAINST BILL BULGER 30 YEARS AGO, THAT THE BOSTON GLOBE 40 YEARS DECLARED JIHAD AGAINST THE HONORABLE CONSERVATIVE SON OF SOUTH BOSTON
hAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT THE MACHINERY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND EVEN CONGRESS WAS DEPLOYED TO ATTACK BILL BULGER
AND AFTER 40 YEARS OF SKULLDUGGERY, LEAKED GRAND JURY TESTIMONY, TURN-COAT BACK STABBING, FOUL MOUTHING BY THE UNSCRUPULOUS HOWIE CARR, SMEARS BY PETER GELZINIS, CULLEN ET AL, CALLS FOR BOYCOTTS BY JEFF JACOBY OF THE BOSTON GLOBE, ACADEMIC HYSTERICS AND HISTRIONICS FROM THE LIKES OF DERSHOWITZ, ET AL, AND A FEDERAL PROSECUTORS OFFICE RUN AMOK (SCHWATZ, PROBATION, KENNY CONLEY, MOTEL OWNERS, NURSES, SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE ETC) . . .AFTER 40 YEARS OF CONSTANT JIHAD BILLY BULGER, AN INNOCENT MAN, RETIRED WITHOUT A MISDEMEANOR ON HIS RECORD, UNSCATHED BY ALL THE VICIOUS VITRIOLE AND VITUPERATIONS. YET, JOHN CONNOLLY, ANOTHER INNOCENT MAN, FALSELY INDICTED, FALSELY PROSECUTED IN TWO STATES (MASS FEDS; MIAMI BY FED FRED WYSHAK ET AL) REMAINS INCARCERATED SINCE 2002 BECAUSE THE PROVEN ADMITTED PERJURER SAID JOHN HANDED HIM A CASE OF WINE WITH $1,000 IN AN ENVELOPE INSIDE AND IN MIAMI THE WELL REHEARSED MARTORANO AND FLEMMI BOTH FLAT OUT BOLD FACED LIED TELLING THE SAME STORY “IN 1982, WHITEY TOLD US JOHN CONNOLLY TOLD HIM THAT IF CALLAHAN TALKS WE’LL ALL BE IN TROUBLE.”
OVER 15 YEARS IN PRISON BECAUSE STERNS/WYSHAK/DURHAM WERE ABLE TO FOOL TWO JURIES INTO BELIEVING THESE ASININE RIDICULOUS “STORIES” OF SERIAL MURDERERS/ATTEMPTED MURDERERS AND SERIAL PERJURERS. i’D LIKE TO PUT WYSHAK ON POLYGRAPH AND ASK HIM TWO THINGS: DOES HE BELIEVE THOSE PATENTLY FALSE STORIES? 2. HOW MANY DIFFERENT STORIES DID FLEMMI, MARTORANO, AND MORRIS TELL HIM BEFORE HE AND THEY SETTLED ON THOSE BLACKENED BEAUTIES?
i’D ASK WYSHAK A THIRD QUESTION: SINCE WE KNOW MARTORANO LIED ABOUT THE KILLING OF TONY VERANIS . . .HE TOLD CARR ET AL HE BEAT TONY TO THE DRAW AS BOTH REACHED FOR GUNS, BUT THE CORONER PROVED TONY VERANIS WAS SHOT IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD (LIKE CARR’S “HITMAN” SHOT ALMOST ALL HIS VICTIMS) AND MARTORANO MERCILESSSLY AND BRUTALLY BEAT TONY’S LIFELESS BODY AFTER SHOOTING HIM IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD . . . .SO SINCE WE KNOW JOHN MARTORANO LIED, WHY IS HE NOT RE-ARRESTED FOR PERJURY? OR DID HE TELL YOU, MR WYSHAK, A THIRD OR FOURTH STORY YOU’VE YET TO DISCLOSE TO THE PUBLIC?
It is now -1 degrees Fahrenheit in the parking lot
of Flying Pond Variety.
We congregate here every year at 8pm.
the place where the contingent of MTC
Irregulars can welcome in the New Year
in a safe therapeutic environment.
Our eyes look upward to the star filled skies,
scanning for objects who are moving fast
looking for a safe landing spot on the asphalt scarred
tarmac next to the propane gas cannisters filling
machine.
For this is where the whisper stream aliens come
to join the MTC Irregulars speaking in the universal
language of Word Salad.
ugh!
Lamestream media cover up in action 1958
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqy0rRnKIoQ
Mike Wallace Interview With Donald Keyhoe 1958 UFO’s Are Real -Full- Interview
Yep , that ’51 event he cited where a UFO circled the Korean Fleet , 14 ships simultaneously radar plotting it , and after some period of time accelerated out at an estimated 1000 mph , is highly credible . The whole friggin’ Fleet saw it .
He is a sober and conscientious man , as they say . He is highly credentialed .
The recent revelation , with supporting now highly publicized fighter jet camera footage by the two pilots , of Flying Eagles Squadron stationed on the NIMITZ Commander David Fravor and his Wingman is on YouTube.
Fravor was the Squadron leader , stationed on the NIMITZ training the best pilots in the Navy on the prototype Phantom Jet in 2003 . This .. documented encounter …is of recent experience however .
He is not a guy who wears an aluminum hat except when he and his colleagues are partying hard on a two weeks shore leave .
He does not try to account for or explain the … Craft. He just reports his trained observations as they circle above the Ocean .
” To tell you the truth , one of my first thoughts was , I want to fly that thing.”
Commander David Fravor
What does the FBI know about John , that for innumerable good reasons should remain undisclosed , that JOHN knows that they know , and that you have no inkling of ? Why has John been remarkably reticent all these years ?
Not interested in getting in a ” criss-crossing streams ” contest with you about John . I would like to know if indeed he was involved in orchestrating several murders .
You have become a one trial pony on this issue. You have focused much attention on an obvious Constitutional travesty there : in first incarcerating him on fantastic legal grounds , and then putting the imprimatur of the FBI full court press on him with the unprecedented slam process by the Florida State Supreme Court Appellate Division . WHY ?
When John can answer that question with more than that ferocious Fred said ” He got too close to the Bulgers .” we will be closer to the truth . The truth is John was in it up to his eyeballs . And none of it involved a legendary Irish-American politician who was just too damn smart , and morally straight, not to distance himself from such …..
” Madcap Behavior . “
The Truth is you cannot say what “Up to his eyeballs means”
John did an honorable job
He was framed scapegoated
Framed because Dershowitz the Globe Wyshak et al , AN EVIL TROIKA, ACADEMIA,MEDIA, THE FEDS ….WERE AFTER BILLY BULGER
Scapegoated because the bastardsin the DOJ/FBi . . .the muckety muck higher ups . . .wanted to sell out the man on the longest lowest rung of the ladder to PRETEND they were not knee deep in the TEI Program . . . .THE tei program brought down the new england mafia .. .john connolly primarily responsible for doing that . . . .but the Boston Globe and their pansy prosecutor Wyshak didn’tlike the fact that to catch hardened Mafia types, you had to get close to them, you had to get your hands on squealers like Whitey and Flemmi . . . . And so Dershowitz saw his loophole to even the score with Billy Bulger . . . to get his pound of flesh . . . . make John Connolly walk the plank until he squeals on Billy B . . .Wyshak, conscienceless went along . . .The Globe hateful of all things Billy Bulger and Southie since forced busing and St. Pat’s Parade and since Bill bulger was Senate President went along and pushed, and Wyshak leaked and the Globe printed and spun, and Dershowitz cheered on Sterns (his buddy) Wyshak and all his cronies at the Globe and they all patted each other on the back in their Javert-like Zeal to get Billy B they crucified John Connolly . . . .
John Connolly has been as vocal as the prison systems in Florida and the FEDs will let him be . . . .18 years later since his indictment he has STEADFASTLY DENIED ANY WRONGDOING . . .REFUSED TO CUT ANY DEALS WITH THE CORRUPT WYSHAK/STERNS GANG . . .REFUSED TO BE “SQUEEZED” AS ALAN DERSHOWITZ WROTE IN HIS OP-ED PIECES . . .REFUSED TO KOWTOW TO CULLEN AND THE GLOBE . . .REFUSED TO SELL OUT FOR “FREEDOM” OFFERED HIM REPEATEDLY BY WICKED WYSHAK AND THE FEDS ET AL . . . .ALL HE HAD TO DO WAS MAKE UP A FEW LIES ABOUT BILLY BULGER AND SOME CO-WORKERS IN THE FBI . . .JOHNN CONNOLLY, AN HONORABLE MAN, REFUSED TO LIE . . .
AND OTHERS DELIGHT IN KICKING A MAN WHEN HE IS DOWN, IN GANG-BANGING A DEFENSELESS MAN, IN REFUSING TO RAISE THEIR FREE VOICES TO CONDEMN THE CORRUPT CULLEN/MURPHY AND BOSTON GLOBE, THE CORRUPT STERNS, WYSHAK, DURHAN, ET AL, THE CORRUPT DERSHOWITZ ET AL
AND I ASK ALL WHY?
i KNOW THE 100 FBI AGENTS CONTINUALLY PETITION ALL BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT AND HAVE DONE SO FOR 15 OR MORE YEARS . . . I KNOW JOHN CONNOLLY’S LIFELONG FRIENDS HAVE CONTINUED TO DO SO FOR 15 YEARS OR MORE . . .IKNOW THE AUTHORS OF MANY BOOKS, IGNORED BY MEDIA, LIKE RICO, HAVE CONTINUED TO DO SO
AND I KNOW THE CORRUPT MEDIA IN AMERICA CONTINUES TO GLORIFY HOWIE CARR, THE CRUMB LYING BUMB CHARACTER ASSASSASSIN, AND ALAN DERSHWOTIZ, THE CORRUPTY LYING BUM CHARACTER ASSASSIN AND ALL THE FEDERAL PROSECUTORS WHO’VE GOT PROMOTIONS, WHO’VE LEAKED AND/OR CAN’T FIND THE CONSTANT LEAKERS TO THE GLOBE, AND WHO’VE NAIVELY OR MALICIOUSLY TRUSTED THE UNCORROBORATED WORDS OF SERIAL KILLERS, SERIAL PERJURERS, SERIAL RAPISTS, SERIAL DRUG DEALERS, SERIAL BULLY BOYS, SERIAL SELL OUTS . . . THE WHOLE DEPRAVED LOT OF MORRIS, WEEKS, FLEMMI, SALEMME AND THE MARTORANOS . . . .THAT’S WHO OUR CORRUPT FEDS HAVE TOLD US TO BELIEVE . . . THE SERIAL MURDERERS/PERJURERS WHOSE STORIES CHANGE BY THE MONTH
ASK WEEKS ABOUT THE SIX FBI AGENTS WITH MACHINE GUNS ON WHITEY’S PAYROLL ON STANDBY AT HIS BIDDING
ASK FLEMMI HOW MUCH MONEY BOSTON EDISON GAVE TO THE BOSTON GLOBE, BY REDUCING ITS ELECTRICITY BILL
ASK WYSHAK TO PUT IN WRITING ALL THE STORIES THE CON MEN TOLD HIM AND STERNS AND TELL THE PUBLIC HOW HE CAME TO SELECT WHICH ONES TO PUT BEFORE A JURY
I COULD GO ON AND WILL . . .THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS ACADEMIA-MEDIA-FED FEEDING FRENZY WAS TO TAKE DOWN ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE POLITICIAN, BILL BULGER, LIKE THEIR TRYING TO TAKE DOWN PRESIDENT TRUMP BY FRAMING INNOCENT MEN LIKE GENERAL MIKE FLYNN AND HIS SON, LIKE THEY TRIED TO TAKE DOWN BOB DELEO AND UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR IN THE DEBACLE PROBATION OFFICERS CASE, LIKE THEY TRIED TO DESTROY OTHER CONSERVATIVE POLITICIANS IN MASSACHUSETTS WHO DIDN’T DO THE TROIKA’S LEFTIST BIDDING . . .BOB QUINN, ED KING, TOM FINNERAN, RAY FLYNN (TOO PRO-LIFE FOR THE LEFTIES) . . . LIKE THEY TRIED TO CRUSH AND DESTROY THE ST. PAT’S DAY PARADE
AND ONLY THE WILLFULLY BLIND FAIL TO SEE WHAT’S GOING ON
AND STILL I ASK, POINT TO ONE SINGLE SOLITARY THING YOU THINK, YOU BELIEVE JOHN CONNOLLY DID THAT WAS WRONG . .WRITE A LETTER TO A JUDGE? FREE SPEECH. TELL AN FBI AGENT IT WAS NONE OF HIS DAMNED BUSINESS WHAT LAW OFFICES HE CALLED. . .SHOUT FROM THE ROOFTOPS HE, A PRIVATE CITIZEN, HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE, THAT AN INDICTMENT WAS COMING DOWN . . . .
THE DARK SIDE IS IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THOSE WHO CONTINUE TO KICK A DEFENSELESS MAN WHEN HE’S DOWN
AND HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS: THIS MAN, JOHN CONNOLLY, HAS NEVER GIVEN UP THE FIGHT . . . NOT ONCE SINCE HIS PHONY INDICTEMENT IN 1999, NINE YEARS AFTER HE RETIRED FROM THE FBI, UNTIL TODAY, NEARLY 20 YEARS AFTER FIRST INDICTED AND NEARLY 10 AFTER HIS TRIAL IN MIAMI, JOHN CONNOLLY CONTINUES WITH ALL HIS HEART, SOUL AND MIND TO FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT AGAINST THE EVIL TROIKA
WHY?
BECAUSE HE IS INNOCENT!
STOP PAINTING BLACK WITH A BROAD BRUSH STUFF YOU DON’T KNOW!!!!!
Don’t rant . ” Up to his eyeballs in it ” is a simple metaphor . John had access .
What do you think you really ” Know ” when all anyone , with any wit , can agree on is that a majority of the witnesses committed perjuries . You have argued the case effectively .
Ego .
Beware of it !
I read a lot of John Cheever in college .
I liked a certain story a lot , among the many I liked . It involved a very ill protagonist , bedridden , who is visited daily by a female friend . She … wallows … in the pathos of the scene that is daily enacted . One morning an impulse , unbidden yet urgent , compels him to rise up in bed and , effectively , cast her out . He gets well within a couple of days after that . He had searched out in her a sort of … Black Hole … that sucked his energies into the vortex of her personality . It was , basically , psychic vampirism . In the guise of friend had come a sort of succubus , though not strictly speaking .
Not strictly speaking , belaboring points about the injustice to John that are fairly obvious to all who have had again , the wit , to examine them , detracts from any honest assessment of the unusual suspect in this case . I already know that you are in an ” Alternate Reality ” regarding so much of this stuff that you would have to believe in UFO’s if you were actually exposed to the Truth .
This is not your fault .
Yes , did meet Jimmy Bulger @15 .
Whaddya Know !
You have a penchant for hurling the black invective about you as if you were standing in the Dollar Cyclone at Triple O’s . Stop flailing about . No one is ” kicking a defenseless man when he was down .” Although I have lived long enough to know what unusual psychic kicks some people get at vicariously participating in the reality of the suffering .
This is not Compassion . It is more what the Buddhists call … Unskillful Means . If you really want to help John then just ratchet back the chest thumping tirade in defense of a man who needs various … Truths … to ….Out ….if he is to get out . ( Your expostulations , lamentations, confabulations , and imprecations about these matters are duly noted .)
You do not know what you do not know .
I understand this . You are a decent guy . You are way out of line though .
And you do not even know it .
Which tells me that there is a lot else that you , and several authors you cited , only think that you ” Know .”
You are litigating a case in which Discovery has not been very fair at all to you . The Guv’mint apparently decided you could not handle the Truth .
“psychic vampirism”
I love it. It might not be clinically exact, but I love it anyway.
Enabling people destroys their ability to withstand. Doctors do it (enable)instinctively a million times a day. Without the sick, they go hungry.
The case for Connolly’s innocence is certainly a strong one. I have read every word of his defenders, here. Remember when I told you that I gave the salient points to my cousin, the retired assistant DA of Dade County. She remembered the case down to all the names that were in the courtroom. Judge, prosecutors, etc. Her opinion? There’s more to it. That’s all. Not, “He’s guilty/innocent”, or any other opinion. Just that, what was presented here by his supporters looks solid, but there is a pile of words somewhere that the other side can assemble that will make a case for the opposite side. I know it sets some blood to boiling and it might not be worth a nit.
My question is how can justice be so twisted, in plain view, for so long, without at least a retrial or at best a dismissal?
Bill,
Once he said John was “up to his eyeballs in it”, game over. You win. Just another rumor mongering pretender that enjoys kicking a man when he’s down. The world is full of these internet experts that will opine on anything in an attempt to look like they know something about a subject they have only gleaned information about from the agenda driven media. Ignore him and move on. Those that know John know the truth about his character. Those that don’t won’t be convinced otherwise
” Out of The Past was a picture I did on loan-out for RKO with Robert Mitchum . I don’t remember much about him except that his stories about being a hobo kept changing every time he told them . “…
THE RAGMAN’S SON . Autobiography , Kirk Douglas .
And how about the Dark Side of people who defame, malign, and spread false rumors about others? Look up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin of bearing false witness . . . hey, I’m not throwing stones . . .I’m trying to defend those wrongfully prosecuted and wrongfully imprisoned . . .now look up the word DETRACTION . . .it’s explained by people who study ethics
Oh, how quickly we are to pillory and burn and cast stones. Please Read Character Assassins II and tell me AFTERWARDS if it rings a bell
Until then, Repent! It takes a big man, with a modicum of humility, to admit it when wrong.
As for me, I admit and apologize to all I’ve unintentionally wronged. As for fighting fire with fire . . . .as for fighting for truth, justice, and the American Way, I offer no apologies nor apologetics.
Like David Grey sang, “Lies, Ruin, Disease: Into wounds like these: Let the Truth sting!
The same travesty of justice perpetrated against H. Paul Rico was perpetrated against John J. Connolly, Jr. Please read the following book review: Note how Ms. Stevenson blames Howie Carr, Boston Reporters and Boston Federal Prosecutors. What Carr and others did to RICO, Carr, Dershowitz, Sterns, Durham, Wyshak, Cullen deliberately did to John Connolly, relying on the same perjurious/serial killers, Martorano, Flemmi, Weeks, Morris, et al, and helped along (unwittingly I believe and as I’ve written) by Judge Wolfe (who was waylaid, ambushed and misled by Wyshak et al, as I’ve PREVIOUSLY described it on various blogs and posts over the years since 1999).
Book Review: “RICO: HOW POLITICIANS, PROSECUTORS AND THE MOB DESTROYED ONE OF THE FBI’S FINEST SPECIAL AGENTS” by Joe Wolfinger and Chris Kerr with Jerry Seper.”
By Luanne Stevenson, BLOGCRITICS.ORG Published 10:00 pm, Saturday, June 29, 2013
“It’s an incredible story with an intriguing cast of characters, and the plot screams to be read. This book has the potential to become another great Hollywood movie about a hero-done-wrong, the mob and corruption in government, but Rico: How Politicians, Prosecutors and the Mob Destroyed One of the FBI’s Finest Special Agents isn’t a work of fiction. It’s a real and unbelievably tragic story.
“Joe Wolfinger and Chris Kerr are two retired FBI agents who never met Paul Rico but knew he was “legendary” in the Boston FBI Field office in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Rico’s work devastated organized crime in New England, and he was commended by the FBI director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover. So how did this beloved family man and respected agent end up dying alone, shackled to a bed in a hospital prison? The facts will astonish you.
“Wolfinger and Kerr did their research, reading through mounds of court documents. They conducted more than 100 interviews with retired agents, police officers and deputies, along with current law enforcement, attorneys and prosecutors and with the help of Jerry Seper, a Washington Times reporter, wrote a book that will set the record straight about Paul Rico, who, unfairly, wasn’t presumed innocent and died before his case could even be brought to trial.
“Both Wolfinger and Kerr met with Rico’s wife and family and decided that if any of their ‘digging’ uncovered evidence suggesting Rico’s guilt in the conspiracy to murder Roger Wheeler, a Tulsa multimillionaire businessman, and John B. Callahan, once the president of World Jai Alai Inc., they would forgo the book project to prevent the Rico family from suffering any more pain. But what they uncovered is a murder-mystery that spins a tale of revenge, lies and corruption, all supported by factual evidence and makes the reader conclude that truth and justice did not prevail in the Paul Rico case. Every bit of evidence, corroborated by the authors, sheds light to the fact that Paul Rico was never guilty of any wrong doing or misconduct. Paul Rico was only guilty of bringing down the La Cosa Nostra and for that he paid a terrible price.
“Mob boss Raymond Patriarca, at one time, had complete power over a corrupt Rhode Island government. Judges were in his pocket, and he had a reason to want revenge against Rico. Then there were uncorroborated claims made by two infamous mafia hit men who had much to gain by offering false testimony by pointing their crooked fingers at Paul Rico. And yet, as Wolfinger and Kerr suggest and back up with facts, The Harford Courant (in particular, Ted Driscoll, one reporter for the Courant) and the Boston media are guilty of falsely “convicting” Rico and publishing lies about skimming with the WJA.
“Howie Carr, Boston’s controversial talk show host and Boston Herald columnist, is guilty of slandering an innocent man. If you read Carr’s column from April 2013, you’ll walk away thinking Rico was corrupt, and yet what Wolfinger and Kerr uncovered and laid out clearly in their new book, is that Rico was undeniably innocent. Carr failed at his fact checking (that is, if he even bothered to fact check) and didn’t know what he was talking about.
”The author’s use a detailed, factual and flawless timeline of events and brilliantly describe how there are many guilty players in the fall of Paul Rico. John V. Martorano and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, notorious Boston gangsters and known perjurers, lied to escape death penalties. There was Judge Wolf and Judge Gertner who misused and abused their power to prejudice the public against an innocent man. Then there was Mike Huff, an investigator who pursued the Wheeler case for 22 years and admitted to the authors in their interview with him, that there was “no smoking gun” but Huff had a fixed agenda and believed rumors. He was too naive and inexperienced to see that he was putty in Flemmi’s hands when “interviewing” Flemmi about Rico’s involvement in the Wheeler murder. Flemmi’s tale was unsubstantiated, flawed and riddled with errors. The evidence was so thin it made the Tulsa County District Attorney refuse to charge Rico until he caved under pressure. Prosecutors, congressmen, detectives, judges, lawyers and bad reporters are all guilty of damaging an innocent person’s reputation and ruining one true hero’s life.
“The authors write; ‘As readers, we must do a better job of evaluating reporting. Before we jump to a conclusion, we should wait for facts to emerge.” It’s unfortunate that Paul Rico never saw his day in court.’ I agree with the authors when they write; ‘If Rico had lived, he probably never would have been convicted. This book is for FBI agents, police officers and citizens who are fair minded and interested in the truth.’
“This is a fascinating story that will keep you thinking long after you put it down.”
SEE: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-Rico-How-Politicians-Prosecutors-4639374.php
blogging is not truth
behaviour is truth
The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible
by DAVID SATTER August 17, 2016 4:00 AM All available evidence points to Putin’s complicity in the 1999 apartment-building bombings in Russia. Those who have tried to investigate have been killed off, one by one. I believe that Vladimir Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror committed against his own people. The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag. I have been trying to call attention to the facts behind the bombings since 1999. I consider this a moral obligation, because ignoring the fact that a man in charge of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal came to power through an act of terror is highly dangerous in itself. Russian human-rights defenders Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, and Alexander Litvinenko also worked to shed light on the apartment bombings. But all of them were murdered between 2003 and 2006. By 2007, when I testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the bombings, I was the only person publicly accusing the regime of responsibility who had not been killed.
Read more……
You are making light of corruption .
Who does John Connolly have to blame for his plight ?
In every respect , in your analysis , everyone except John .
The raw deal he got …on balance …has been noted by me , several times.
Get off your soapbox . You Virtue Signal by spinning an ironic observation that conveyed an essential truth … Noble Cause Corruption Is A Real Bear … into a comment that ignores John’s nine years in ” a Florida hellhole , ” This is sophistry.
How many futile petitions to the Governor of Florida to pardon John Connolly can one fit on the head of your ego ?
Until you calm down and realize that both Rico and Connolly had a significant dark side your arguments will always ring unrealistic . They were creatures of the FBI culture that trained , nurtured , encouraged , and ultimately punished them . They were punished by a Gang , if you will , that fanatically protects its members .
Why ?
And for the love of God please don’t say ” Because he got too close to the Bulgers .”
You are only half committed to John’s Cause . If you were fully committed you would ask different questions than you do . Half a commitment is a half more than the general run , however , and that’s to your merit .
Happy New Year !
JKM : Put up or shut up; you too are complicit in imprisoning innocent men by rumor mongering and maliciously false innuendos.
Have you read RICO?
Have you read any of the other pro-John Connolly books I’ve cited on this blog?
It seems not: You’ve got your closed mind made up
Name me one act of either John or Rico that you pretend to know is their “Dark Side”
You are not so gullible, vacuous or partial as to believe the words of Mafia Hit Men unsupportable, unsustainable, unverifiable, undocumented, unprovable claims of serial-killers-perjurers, are you?
Who else in John and RICO’s 20-plus years of distinguished service has said a negative word about them, except the serial killers and the attempted murderer and admittedly corrupt cop Morris, solicited by Wyshak, Durhan and Sterns, and they got paid handsomely for their perjuries and prevarications, all in an effort to snag bigger game: Remember Wyshak’s 10 words: he got too close to the BULGERS and SOUTH BOSTON.
Now who is mouthing off from his High Horse? I’d call you a stuffed shirt, but Jesus said not to throw stones even at pretentious pseudo-intellectuals with blinders on . . . or is it your high horse that wears the blinders?
Read the following post: NOT MY WORDS: BUT AN OBJECTIVE REVIEWER FROM SEATTLE
As always, you know when you are losing an argument . . . when the facts get in the way . . . . and you have to resort to ad hominem attacks
I wish you insightfulness!
I take that back” You’re not a bastard! You’re just deceiving yourself
Face the Facts . . . Face the Truth . . .The Truth will set you free
Another rock thrown with the assurance that it is being thrown because the rock thrower hates rock throwers !
How Christian of you .
You are frustrated because I do not subscribe to your view that John was the victim of a vast … WHAT ? …conspiracy .
Rumor mongering is for those who can’t find their ass with their right hand because … by their own account … they ” Know ” only that the Government’s star witnesses were thieves , rascals , killers, and perjurers . And , often , all four of these .
You are not John’s best , though certainly you are his most ardent, defender . I will not be baited into educating you about the difference between rumor and fact . You have gassed on endlessly about … travesties of justice , and legions of insupportable facts … all the while blissful ignoring that where all that leaves you is … In The Dark .
It may be that John is a paragon of virtue . It may well be that he is indeed the honorable agent who wrote false reports based on a familiarity with James Bulger , and then inserted them into the FBI rotor . He may be the straight shooter whom Rep. Sal Albano said came to him to put the kibosh on parole for Salvati , Limone , Greco and Henry Tameleo .
Although that may be ” rumor mongering ” by Sal Albano , Right ?
Essentially , there was clearly a massive coverup . You sabby that, Correct ?
And John was the Patsy .
I Agree .
So , enough fish wife mongering in your tone of address . I am trying to push the conversation forward . But , unless you stop speechifying and start listening ,
you will not be helpful to John .
You did this with Roy Moore . I agree that he was smeared . But in your wild dithyrambic defense of him you ignored what the voters , oh we simple folk , could not ignore : That there was enough circumstantial … propinquity ..to teenage girls … historically , that they felt it required a very long look . People are funny like that .
Cannot get a true look at John until all the facts are in . Your version treats of a man who is being crucified .
Only One went up on the Cross in this entire saga . And , whether John nailed his feet to the vertical element along with the others is what I would like to know .
Figure it out ! And when you do, keep your mouth shut .
Mystery Director .
★ blissfully ….
Btw … I once has a stuttering lawyer , who was very competent, write in a brief that :
” Mr McDonald is a highly intelligent , well-educated deadbeat . ”
” I am , as you know , a novice at this , your Honor . Is this legal parlance ? ” I asked the Judge .
He assured me it was not and then proceeded to tear that lawyer a new one . The truth was that I was enormously tickled at the lawyer’s having shown his ass to me that way . He was consistently bested by me , I can’t help it , in a case that was eventually heard before a three Judge State Supreme Court panel .
In many respects you remind me of him .
You get frustrated : You are wildly complimenting me and actually soaring , in one case , in impassioned prose that turns on a phrase I used that left you rapturous . Or , you are so vexed at what I write that you … The Panjarum of Pomposity … are calling me a pseudo-intellectual with blinders on .
Physician , heal thyself !
You gave away the game a long time ago . I think you are very bright . But , your EGO .
Ugh !
★ I once has a stuttering lawyer … A stuttering lawyer, you see … that’s what I has . ( sic )
June 2015 for full panel’s 6-4 decision, as I recall two years ago . . . . and still haven’t heard a word from the State’s Highest Court, the equivalent of the Mass Supreme Judicial Court
As H. Paul Rico was falsely charged and malignantly prosecuted, so too was John Connolly
Realize this: John Connolly’s Miami Trial . . . lead counsel Federal Prosecutor Fred Wyshak . . . that’s right, the FEDs and Mass State Cops virtually took over the Miami courtroom . . . John’s trial ended in December 2008 . . . . It is December 2017, 9 years later and we still do not have a final decision from Florida’s STATE COURTS . . . .
It took about 5.5. years to get a written decision (2-1) from an Appeals Court reversing John’s conviction on the phony “murder by gun” count, then another 1.5 to -2 years (JUne 2017, as I recall) for the full panel of the Appeals Court to reverse the reversal by a 6-4 decision. The Majority’s decision was irrational, disrespected all prior case law, and so twisted simple rules of statutory construction that it “held” a person swimming in Martha’s Vineyard or three weeks earlier talking to Whitey in an office was “in possession” of the murder weapon used to kill John Callahan in Miami.
Please do not make light of CORRUPTION when it’s staring us in the face. Nine years in a Florida Hell Hole without a final state court decision . . . . and they call that “due process” . . . . what a grotesque travesty of justice
Who’s to blame: Fred Wyshak and his colleagues in Boston for perpetrating this grotesque travesty of justice and affront to decency and fairness? Have he and his colleagues no consciences? Has Alan Dershowitz no conscience? He sprouts about the enormity of putting one innocent man in prison . . .”better to let 100 guilty go free” . . . he who was silent during the St. Pat’s Day Parade debacle . . . he who editorialized “Connolly’s just a cop”, squeeze him to get William Bulger, another innocent man . . . .
This is Alan’s approach to justice: Squeeze one innocent man to get another innocent man?
What’s the saying: Temper justice with mercy. These people seem to have tempered injustice with pitilessness. Ruthless so and sos! Watch your languare. Are they lacking insight? Are they petty, mean spirited, small minded, vindictive, power-abusing men. A pox on all their houses, if so! I take that back. Leave their houses alone. A pox on them! I take that back, too.
I learned a long time ago, hating takes too much out of you. So, I wish them well, I wish them peace, and justice, and the mercy they’ve shown others and the fair dealings they’ve extended others, I wish returned to them ten fold; I hope one day they experience and understand the flip side of the coin: As they old saying goes: When you point a finger at someone, there’s usually three pointing back at yourself.
So, I don’t throw stones. I turn the other cheek, once or twice or thrice. And I call a spade a spade. I say the Boston Office of the Justice Department has been corrupt for many decades as has the Boston Globe.
The robbed who smiles steals something from the thief . . . . and they are a pack of thieves, in my humble opinion. They’ve stolen good men’s reputations. And many good men know what they’ve done.
In a free country, you have the right to throw stones at your government officials, especially the corrupt ones in the judiciary and the prosecutor’s offices.
Corruption is a reality in the Boston Office of the Justice Department as it was in the Judicial System of the Commonwealth for three years running with the Parade case. (1991-1995).
Read reviews of “RICO” http://www.ricobook.com/reviews.htm
Consider the men and women falsely prosecuted and maligned by the overly zealous federal prosecutors in the Boston Office. Want a list?
Reading the tee leaves . Rico ? His story is incomplete. He does not deserve a hagiography . He had many good qualities . Noble Cause Corruption is a bear .
Agree, Abe, lot’s of top recommendations: will try to get to most or at least gander at most, if not all:
HERE’S THE BOOK REVIEW OF “RICO”
“5.0 out of 5 stars Failure of our Justice System, February 16, 2013
Anthony T. Riggio – “RICO-How Politicians, Prosecutors and the Mob Destroyed One of the Finest Special Agents”, was a labor of love by two retired FBI Agents who I have met during my career with the FBI. I met Chris Kerr briefly at FBIHQ and knew Joe Wolfinger from both FBIHQ and the Inspection staff.
Both men with ghost writer Jerry Seper put together a work that almost defies believability. I only met Paul Rico once after he retired but knew of him and respected his reputation as an FBI Agent and as an agent who was a master at developing criminal informants. Paul Rico becomes the victim of a perfect storm of corruption of local and federal prosecutors and the informants he developed.
This work is so full of intrigue that it reads as good as a novel. The Authors may have known Paul Rico but it was very briefly. They took on an investigative task to examine the career of Paul Rico as an FBI Agent and conducted exhaustive investigation into the allegations against Rico and in my humble oppinion proved his innocence and laid naked the curruption of several prosecutors who through unbridled ambitions put together a case of injustice of the highest order causing a very respected FBI Agent, who was in bad health, to be arrested and who died in jail before his innocence could be proven in a court of law.
The Authors put together what the prosecutors should have put together before any arrests were ever made. That this could happen is absolutely a story that defies honesty and goodness one would expect from its law enforcement officials.
If you like intrigue and conspiriatorial dramas this is a book you should read. Am I biased? You bet your life. I salute both Wolfinger and Kerr for their selflessness in writing this book. While it will not reap them great financial rewards, it certainly sets the record straight and proves the innocence of a man accused for no other reason than he was an FBI Agent and brings closure to his close family and friends who already knew he (RICO) was a victim of a system that should never have been allowed to carry out such an injustice.
BTW, I did read this book on my Kindle. “
Post Script: I didn’t meet those agents, I never worked for the FBI, but a guy named Ruggerio, I think it was, wrote the above quote about the book mentioned above “RICO .”
Let me make that perfectly clear:
. . Me? I am and have been for many years just a wage earner, an hourly laborer making less than double the minimum wage, figuratively slaving away, night and day, and literally working night and day, in the vineyards of verdant fields and hills somewhere west of a rather large city in the northeast quadrant of the good old U. S. of A.
Peace and Happy New Year and I aslo second NC’s recommended reading list, some of which I’ve finished.
The good thing about the books people have recommended on this blogsite is that every one I have read was great. I usually make a list on January 1 of about 25-30 I have been told about and usually get to most of them. JKM nailed The Janisarry Tree by Jason Goodwin. I am working my way through that series. Brilliant writing.
A book that is probably a lot like Dispatches is Storm Of Steel. It is a true journal by a young, front line German officer experiencing trench warfare in WW One. It’ll get you.
1. “RICO-How Politicians, Prosecutors and the Mob Destroyed One of the Finest Special Agents”, was a labor of love by two retired FBI Agents who I have met during my career with the FBI. I met Chris Kerr briefly at FBIHQ and knew Joe Wolfinger from both FBIHQ and the Inspection staff.
2. Matt’s book, Don’t Embarass the Family
3. Paul J. Walkowski et al, From Trial Court to the United States Supreme Court: Anatomy of a Free Speech Case, a.k.a. How the Mass. Courts stole St. Patrick’s Day (Branden 1995)
4. Also three obscure books by an unknown (Xlibris Publishers) a. The Fix: the Corruption of Massachusetts Courts and Agencies (circa 2008);b. Character Assassins: Carr, Dershowitz, Mudd: Who’ll Live in Infamy? (circa 2011) and Character Assassins II (2012)
5. Why Bob Dylan Matters, by professor of Greek, Roman, classic literature . . . I forget his last name, Johnson, or something . . . It’s fabulous . . .A New Zealander came to Chicago to teach in early 1970s, at the peak of rock & roll post Woodstock
6. This month’s SMITHSONIAN magazine: The Year that Shattered America. The entire issue is devoted to 1968.
et alia, et alia, et alia
Some say the biggest geo political blunder of the last thousand years was the first world war. It destabilized Europe and led to the emergence of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini and gave us WW2. What were it’s origins and how did America get involved? Quality books that address that issue are Eric Larsen’s DEAD WAKE. Max Hasting’s CATASTROPHE. Martel’s THIRTY DAYS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. Thomas Fleming’s ILLUSION OF VICTORY and Pat Buchanan’s UNNECESSARY WAR. All good reads. 2. Hampton Sides wrote three entertaining books called HELL HOUND ON HIS TRAIL ( the chase for MLK’s killer) KINGDOM OF THE ICE and BLOOD AND THUNDER. Happy New Year
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=herr&sortby=17&tn=dispatches
dispatches
Thank you. I just ordered one. That was easy…..I think.
The Ragman’s Son will be next.
THE RAGMAN’S SON ….. Kirk Douglas
JKM, I neither try to keep up or down . . . I try only to be myself . . .something no one else on planet earth can try to do . . . . who was that guy who said if stuff turns out wrong, then all the angels swearing I was right, won’t matter a twit? on this good earth, what matters to us may not at’all in the grand scheme of things . . .
“I try only to be myself .”
But you and JKM have intuition. Open minds. And as Jung said, only through the awareness of possibilities is intuition fully satisfied.
So, any good books to recommend? I’m trying to find a copy of Dispatches, a highly recommended book on Vietnam. Its not as easy as I thought it would be. Twice I have been on Amazon and ordered only to have my order derailed. Is it Hillz and her witches? I need that book!
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff
Thanks. I have read much of Conrad and always thought he must have been an extraordinary man. I have an essay somewhere about his racist ideas based on The Heart Of Darkness. I never read it. Probably available if I Google some form of the question; Conrad racist views darkness. I’ll give it a shot.
What a collective predicament :
Humanity !
Trying to keep up .
By keeping others down .
You look at what people really want .
You see how they suffer .
We all die .
Be good !
Do your best to keep up . I am flattered that , as I pointed out , I apparently became one of your literary allusions . Keep those cards and letters coming . Btw … I get all of your literary allusions , and even some that you don’t get . Flow with the go , as Royce Gracie likes to say . It’s a real keeper !
There was an English major at BC from Dorchester, a good friend, Frank, who went on to get his Masters in English and I think his doctorate . . . no, after his master’s he got a law degree . . . well, Frank spoke like you write . . . .it was always clear to me . . . although I didn’t catch every literary allusion
Ditto, JKM, your streams often flow into and out of mine, and nothing wrong with criss-crossing streams either . . . .who was it gave us “the sea within . . . . without” windmills of the mind, moon river . . . .moon river, talk about laser beams
thanks for the feedback . . . it expands my consciousness of my subconsciousness
★ state of mind
… as if with laser beam accuracy aiming them at me , or so he thought delusionally .
She was his phantom of delight : a lively, lovely , lissome lass …
Curious that .
Bill C. . Your flight of imagination is , as ever , intriguing. Here it involves your protagonist agonizing over peace and pieces he divines ‘ twixt the thighs tantalizing of a church organist . Further on , as stated , the fervid prose proves predictive of the man’s state of mind in regard to the infatuation that has left him in , apparently , a drunken rapture. We learn that his stats of mind is delusional .
Ahhh, the gentle and unaccountably bizarre insinuations of a mythopoesis that then , word for word , uses as sequitur a phrase ….” lively, lovely , lissome lass” … that I fashioned.
We are each responsible for our own experience . Your , imaginative , experience with a church organist by whom someone is smitten , is different than my own . No heavy panting you see . No fulsome romantic pinings or any such … interferences …. in the space we shared . Eros was there , yes , but not to be possessed . Just want to be clear that in your … ahem … unusual … Homage … shall we say , there is no problem distinguishing between one lively, lovely, lissome lass … And another .
I Enjoy your stream of consciousness , as always .
“A lively, lovely, lissome barefoot organist?”
Sweet Mother of Jesus, it reminds me of a Princess, Contessa, lady-in-waiting or Queen
It reminds me of Suite Judy Blue Eyes or Sweet Judy Blue Eyes by Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, though I preferred Lynyrd Skynard’s Sweet Home Alabama or Free Bird or . . . .Alice Cooper’s Beatiful Flyaway or Nat King Cole’s “Chestnut’s roasting by an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at the bud, Yuletide carols being sung by a choir . . .”
But not wondering too far afield from verdant pastures, and lovely, lively ladies, I remember CBN sang,
“lacy lilting lyrics. Losing love lamenting . . ..
To my ears it was: “lacy, lilting, eery, oozing love, lamenting . . .
So catalyzing all of these disparate chemistries and tying up loose ends, we get this synthesis: Two Poems by a Master: And an original amalgam (sp?) of a short story by Anna Bell Lee, my pseudonym or alias. (One, two, three . . . that Mr. Lee, no relation to Stagger Lee, as I’ve previously stated:
W.B. Yeats:
Note (parenthetical remarks are not Yeats:
BIRDS SIGH FOR THE AIR (life’s breath, the lilt of an Irish air; Irish heirs: lovers’ spawn. )
THOUGHTS FOR I KNOW NOT WHERE ( the virginal young lovers thoughts are fresh and at the moment of ecstasy ineffable, unfathomable, thoughts beyond thoughts akin to heavenly joy; the young lovers know not wear and tear, nor whence comes love, nor do we old timers, nor to where it will lead, nor will the young lovers know love’s labors’ gains, pains and tears for a year or so or more to come.)
FOR THE WOMB THE SEED SIGHS
NOW SINKS THE SAME REST
ON THOUGHTS, NEST AND TREMBLING THIGHS
THAT IS YEATS’ “LOVE SONG”
HIS OTHER BEAUTY OF A POEM HE CALLS “A DRINKING SONG”:
Wine comes in at the mouth
Love comes in at the eye
That’s all we shall know of truth
Before we grow old and die
I raise my cup to my lips
I look at you, and I sigh
Two finer, grittier, neater, exactly encapsulating love poems were never writ, I opine, and who could do so so pithily, naturally, and make them so authentically heartfelt and true . . . they ring true.
A VERY SHORT STORY: by the old man, about a young man: (First Draft)
He, sitting amidst and among the Congregation’s throng, heard her sing and play, most every Sunday, and felt her music sting, zing, reverberate deeply, vocally, instrumentally piercing his very soul:
He prayed incoherently invoking inner and outer inchoate spirits beyond reason, rhyme, time, space and season:
“Lord, make me an instrument of thy yonder lass’s peace, her inner thigh’s piece, he prayed; she, Laura, the pianist/organist, the face at the misty midnight mass, she so superbly plays poetically, largo, presto, pianissimo, her obscure tone poems and pastorals, self-picked, she plays flawlessly, error free, erotically, heroically, virtuoso, as if with laser beam accuracy aiming them at me or so it seems to me, he thought delusionally.;
She was his phantom of delight: a lively, lovely, lissome, lass lingering on each note, fingering lightly, delicately the keyboard’s ivories, her lacy, lilting, eerily ethereal lyrics softly lofting o’er the kneeling congregants’ heads, lifting their hearts and minds heavenwards, elevating all listening, and I the lowly desultory hunchback Thomas from the park she elevates above all with her wholesomeness, her natural unassuming airs loosely oozing love, letting him languish, lamenting unrequited love, hoped for love ever receding, unquenchable love ever never ashed, ever re-kindled, re-fired, burning, yearning to hold and have her yet never really hoping so, too, and then one day from out of the blue, from the darkest corner of his transfixed tormented soul came an inkling, a spark, a sudden insight, all of a sudden it sprang forth full blown,
a thought, an idea, and he surmised, accepted and silently exclaimed, “God doth not need man, his kingdom is stately, thousands at his bidding speed and post oe’r land and sea with haste. . . they also serve who only stand and wait . . . for an encore, a babe, a date, another day, another dollar, another song to be sung for someone like me . . . by someone like her . . .
the mills of God grind slowly yet exceedingly fine and all good things come to those who wait patiently for patience, like perseverance and fortitude and honesty and gratitude, is a virtue, AND the good will out!
Coincidentally, at last night’s Christmas Eve Party, a young woman received two presents from an old man: ONean old man gave a young woman a short book by C.S. Lewis (excerpts from Mere Christianity) along with the Historian Paul Johnson’s terse biography of Napoleon, while shortly thereafter another young woman presented another old man (not as old as the first) a copy of Lewis’s Mere Christianity.
The World is your mind turned inside out .
George MacDonald
I meant “Puggie”. My machine changed the u to an I.
Gok , Thank God for that !
It’s not unlike , perhaps , the Buddhist belief that The Mind , uncluttered , is in a groundless state of Joy . It is groundless because it is Total , Absolute , and requires no reference to other than itself . I do not accept the Buddhist theories of Re-Incarnation . I do like the Buddha’s pointing at the Sun that is Mind , and his recognition that thoughts are simply clouds. And that with patience one sits still and listens to The Silence that is G-O-D , and lets the Sun simply do its Will .
Surprised By Joy .
C.S Lewis’s partial autobiography and theological confessions .
Good and Evil ? … Tolkien and Lewis shared an insight I like. They rejected the concept of Evil per se. There was only GOOD . The extent to which each sinner , so to say , falls away from THE GOOD , is a measure , not of ” Evil , ” but of alienation .
When I was harmonizing and thumping along with the barefoot Cassandra playing the organ at the Congregational Church in Greenfield a few years ago I shared an insight .
The … Congregationalists … whom I had more than a dalliance to satisfy curiousity with …are …a Good bunch !
Different take on the mystical conversation than Catholics however . They do not seem to require an interlocutor . I was tickled when the Service arrived at the … Question and Answer and Comment … Space .
Forget exact context, but the conversation was around to the urgency of people seeking G-O-D and benefitting from his mercy .
I raised my hand.
What a Church , methinks !
” It is all very true . It is usually the case that a change of heart can move you in the direction of God . What is also true , perhaps , is that a person can be completely unconcerned about searching for God . And then they find that God has been searching for them . ”
A lively, lovely, lissome barefoot organist ?
ALL G-O-D .
JKM, your first paragraph above is a keeper!
…and the beautiful boxer was named “Piggie”. Right?
Beautiful post! So reminiscent! And btw, the Boston Terrier’s name was “Sharpie” !!!
Merry Christmas and Happpy New Year to one and all, and I mean all . . . .except perhaps those about to harm some innocents . . . .but let’s stay with the postive thoughts . . . . Christmas is primarily for children and the young at heart . . . but the older I get the bigger kick i get out of the kids
Plus Christmas Music . . .classical, popular, country, etc is SPECTACULAR ….I play over and over “A baby changes everything” by Ms. Faith Hill . . . .it just played again . . . .
Joy to the World . . . . and remember Dicken’s Christmas Carol and Tiny Tim’s final words, “God bless us, every one.!”
So, Peace on earth to men of good will . . . . and to men up to no good, special forces!
My Uncle Jack’s Christmas letter home from WW II….all you need to know is that 846 was an address and that Joe was Jack’s imaginary friend. Please remember all those who are serving far away from home. Merry Christmas!
Italy
28 November 1944
Thanksgiving Eve
Hello:
I’ve just finished a V-mail letter, but I hate to let it go with that. It leaves so much more to be said, particularly at this time of year. We’ve always been a strong ‘holiday’ family – with Isabelle as our CO. Things are Christmasy with her around anywhere from the 15th of November on. And except for that interlude of a few years when I was under the influence of Tuft’s Medical School ( all too often, literally) I was always her chief supporter. Remember how I used to be able to “smell” Christmas on our nightly walks? Well, I still can – though it’s rather horribly diluted by the Italian scene.
Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to reminisce. One of my clearest pictures is of a day which must have been about three days before Xmas. it was in 846 and I can still recall the sight, sound and smell of the day. Catherine was practicing in “Siberia” and by the time the sound had passed through that refrigerating unit we called a hall, it had attained the paradox of being chilled into warm, mellow tone. And I was busily stowing away a load of gingerbread men made from the molasses cookies batter. Good music, a warm room, and Mother busy as hell turning out more stuff to eat. I’d evidently reached my private Nirvana.
Another one was the year I got my electric train. There I was lying in bed unable to sleep and listening to my train going like hell for a minute only to end in one hell of a crash. That was Xmas Eve and I wasn’t any too sure about the future of that train, believe me. After each crash I’d strain my ears to get in on the consultation that followed, only to have to sweat out another short-lived run of the Reilly Flyer. I’ll never understand why that thing ran the next day.
Then there was the year that Guilermo played Eric von Stonheim and took the picture of our tree. He should have had a whip. He was probably the first totalitarian I ever met.
And Dad ‘ringing’ the tree with those red thingamajigs. He set a new standard in interior decorating that night… And the huge trees Mary and I would lug home. Isabelle being on hand to spur us on with carols, naturally…Mary putting on the last quarter-ton of icicles…And going nuts replacing burnt-out before the company came…Mother cooking like mad to feed the hungry horde….Joe and I fighting it out for thirds and fourths on the meat and dressing…Joe doing pretty damn well for himself, too…
Hell, I can’t keep this up. I’ll drive myself crazy. I just wanted you to know that I do remember all those Christmases- and want more of them. I may have become a realist in foreign affairs but I’ll always be a sentimentalist and a sucker for the Reilly Christmas season. We’ve missed three, but we’ll more than make up for them on the fourth.
So here’s a Merry Christmas for 1945. I’ll be there.
Jack
Matt, Merry Christmas to all the Connollys, I can DITO to everything you said except we got a beagle. Christmas in the Old Harbor was a Christmas gift that we were very lucky
to be part of. Thanks for the memories and also your blog.
” Christmas is for cops and kids and cantankerous Norfolk County ADA ‘s .”
James “Whitey” Bulger
Though , clearly , not in that order .
Carpe Diem !