tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31670206435882492842024-03-12T19:00:14.228-07:00Writing Your LifeBabette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-58973136229848856652014-01-13T08:51:00.000-08:002014-01-13T08:51:05.392-08:00Omnimystery News ConversationThank you to Lance Wright and Omnimystery News for interviewing me. I thoroughly enjoyed <a href="http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2014/01/a-conversation-with-novelist-babette-hughes-1401130800.html#.UtQX8fRDuSo">our conversation</a>.<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; letter-spacing: inherit; margin: inherit; padding: inherit;">MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2014</span></h2>
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<a href="http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2014/01/a-conversation-with-novelist-babette-hughes-1401130800.html" style="color: #993300; text-decoration: none;">A Conversation with Novelist Babette Hughes</a></h3>
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<img alt="Omnimystery News: Author Interview with Babette Hughes" height="175" src="http://news.omnimystery.com/graphics/image-author-interview-175px.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; border: 0px none transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; height: 175px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 175px;" title="Omnimystery News: Author Interview with Babette Hughes" width="175" /><br />with Babette Hughes</div>
We are delighted to welcome back novelist <span style="font-weight: bold;">Babette Hughes</span> to Omnimystery News today.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2013/11/an-excerpt-from-the-red-scarf-by-babette-hughes-1311200800.html" style="color: #202ab1;">Babette first visited with us last November</a>with an excerpt from her second Kate Brady novel, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Red Scarf</span> (Lamplight Press; August 2013 hardcover, trade paperback and ebook formats) and we wanted to catch up with her to talk a little more about the book.<br />
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Omnimystery News: Tell us a little more about your series character, Kate Brady.<br />
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<img alt="Babette Hughes" height="222" src="http://author-tours.omnimystery.com/graphics/photo-babette-hughes-2014.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; border: 0px none transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; height: 222px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 175px;" title="Babette Hughes" width="175" /><br />Photo provided courtesy of<br />Babette Hughes</div>
Babette Hughes: In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Hat</span> and its sequels<span style="font-style: italic;">The Red Scarf</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Necklace</span>, I have taken Kate Brady's character from the age of 18 to 80 — not only for the changes it offers in the writing, but also because of the different political, social and economic forces that exist at each age.<br /><br />OMN: Are the characters in your books based on any real people?<br /><br />BH: My father, a bootlegger who was murdered by the Mafia in a turf war when I was a baby, inspired the character Ben in<span style="font-style: italic;">The Hat</span> and Solly in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Red Scarf</span>. But those are the exceptions. The other characters just spring on the page as I work, fueled by the richness of the unconscious. All of which makes fiction writing not only difficult, but mysterious and interesting.<br /><br />OMN: Describe your writing process.<br /><br />BH: Some writers work from an outline, but I don't. I try to develop the plot organically instead of from the top down. In other words, if I can get my characters to come alive on the page I'll just follow them along as they tell me their stories.<br /><br />OMN: And where do you usually write?<br /><br />BH: It's my own space with my favorite things — books, files, notes, manuscripts. Computer and printer. Phone that I can turn off. Light from two large windows. Plants. That is where I close the door and turn on my imagination.<br /><br />OMN: Have any specific authors influenced how and what you write today?<br /><br />BH: Alice Munro, who just won the Nobel Prize in literature, has been my favorite writer for years, whom I read and reread. Also Elmore Leonard for his clean, crime prose. Philip Roth. Norman Mailer. I could go on and on. I learn from reading.<br />
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In addition to her novels, Babette Hughes is a contributing blogger for<span style="font-style: italic;">The Huffington Post</span>. She has also been published in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturday Review</span>; been contributing editor of <span style="font-style: italic;">Cleveland Magazine</span>; a twice-weekly columnist for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Cleveland Press</span>; and has published articles and book reviews in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Cleveland Plain Dealer</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Sunday Magazine</span>. She has also written, produced and appeared in television documentaries and news and feature stories for Cleveland television stations WKYC-NBC and WNBK-UHF.<br /><br />In addition to her writing career she has been been National Director of Women's Political Action for Hubert Humphrey in his 1972 Presidential campaign, as well as founder and President of Discover Yourself, Inc., a motivation and self realization program for women. She has also been Director of Public Relations for Revco D.S., Inc. in Twinsburg, Ohio, and Account Executive with Frazier Associates, in Washington, DC. She and her husband live in Austin, Texas, and are the parents and step-parents of eight children.<br /><br />Learn more about the author and her work on her website <a href="http://www.babettehughes.com/" style="color: #202ab1;" target="_blank">BabetteHughes.com</a>.<br />
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<a href=""><img alt="The Red Scarf by Babette Hughes" height="265" src="http://author-tours.omnimystery.com/graphics/cover-hughes-red-scarf-2013-175px.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; border: 0px none transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; height: 265px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 175px;" title="The Red Scarf by Babette Hughes" width="175" /></a></div>
<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Red Scarf</span><br />Babette Hughes<br />A Kate Brady Novel<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">The Red Scarf</span> opens with Kate Brady, aka, Mrs. Ben Gold trying to find a normal life as the widow of the Godfather of the Jewish mafia, Ben Gold. Ben Gold is dead and the file is closed as far as law enforcement is concerned. The angry remaining Sarsini brother is the killer, or at least that's what the FBI believes. Good riddance is what they and everyone who knew Ben Gold think, and Kate agrees wholeheartedly. Ben had treated her badly, was not a good man, and frankly deserved exactly what he got.<br /><br />And, so, as <span style="font-style: italic;">The Red Scarf</span> picks up her story she is attending college, living on the millions of dollars of ill-gotten gain that Ben had left her, and trying to put the life of a moll behind her. But once again, even from beyond the grave, Ben Gold drags her back into the dangerous world of gangster and guns.<br /><br />When handsome FBI agent Adam Fairfield is introduced as a guest lecturer, she feels immediately drawn to him, and he to her. A torrid love affair ensues and soon, she is risking her life by revealing her darkest secret to him, trusting that he won't put her away for life, or worse.<br /><br />For Kate, this story is about more than the thrill of bringing down another bad man who is intimidating her community and abusing his wife. This is about redemption. It's about getting on with her life and leaving behind as best she can the lengthy laundry list of mistakes she had made as a young and impressionable woman.</div>
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Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-14946074541382582602013-11-20T17:52:00.000-08:002013-11-20T17:52:39.948-08:00The Red Scarf Excerpt on Omnimystery News<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Are you a mystery fan? The Red Scarf was featured on <a href="http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2013/11/an-excerpt-from-the-red-scarf-by-babette-hughes-1311200800.html#.Uo1epcSsim5">Omnimystery News</a> today. </div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; letter-spacing: inherit; margin: inherit; padding: inherit;">WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013</span></h2>
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<a href="http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2013/11/an-excerpt-from-the-red-scarf-by-babette-hughes-1311200800.html" style="color: #993300; text-decoration: none;">An Excerpt from The Red Scarf by Babette Hughes</a></h3>
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<img alt="Omnimystery News: An Excerpt courtesy of Babette Hughes" height="150" src="http://news.omnimystery.com/graphics/image-excerpt-200px.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; border: 0px none transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; height: 150px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 200px;" title="Omnimystery News: An Excerpt courtesy of Babette Hughes" width="200" /><br />The Red Scarf by Babette Hughes</div>
We are delighted to welcome novelist<span style="font-weight: bold;">Babette Hughes</span> to Omnimystery News today.<br /><br />Babette's second suspense novel to feature Kate Brady is <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Red Scarf</span>(Lamplight Press; August 2013 hardcover, trade paperback and ebook formats), and we are pleased to introduce the book to you with an excerpt.<br />
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<a href=""><img alt="The Red Scarf by Babette Hughes" height="265" src="http://author-tours.omnimystery.com/graphics/cover-hughes-red-scarf-2013-175px.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; border: 0px none transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; height: 265px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 175px;" title="The Red Scarf by Babette Hughes" width="175" /></a></div>
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September 6, 1933<br /><br /><span style="font-size: 24pt; vertical-align: top;">I</span>T IS THE FIRST DAY OF MY CRIMINAL justice class at Cleveland College. Waiting with the other students for the professor to arrive, I try to look innocent. I have taken the precaution of sitting in the back row between a boy with acne and a chubby girl with a pretty face and too much makeup. I wish I were like them. I wish acne and weight were all I have to worry about. I wish I could shake the plump girl until her teeth rattle. I want her green life.<br /> The room smells of paper and the cologne on the girl sitting next to me. Someone has carved initials in the wood of my desk. Does "H. R." belong to the wood carver? Or to the wood-carver's spouse? But that's silly — most eighteen-year-olds aren't married. As I was. To my regret. And surely to my former husband's, who is now safely buried with the other dead Jews in Mayfield Cemetery.<br /> The door opens and the dean arrives with a man so handsome there is a collective intake of breath from the girls in the room. Who is he? I knew Dean Conway from his boring speech to the freshman assembled last week in the auditorium. But the other? I would have remembered if I had seen him before. You don't forget a face like that.<br /> "Good morning, students," Dean Conway says, with a pasted-on smile. "I have a swell surprise for you. The instructor for this class will be a real-life F.B.I. agent. This," he says, gesturing to him grandly, "is Adam Fairchild. "Before joining the Bureau, he taught law and criminal justice at Ohio State University. How about those credentials? How lucky can you get?" Someone starts to clap, the dean joins in and then the rest of the class.<br /> Fairfield is standing a bit to the side, his hands in his pockets, looking like Tyrone Power or maybe Douglas Fairbanks without the mustache.<br /> I slide my eyes over to the door. Too far away.<br /> "I leave you now in the capable hands of Special Agent Fairfield," Dean Conway says, pausing and lifting his chin as if posing for a photograph.<br /> "Thank you, Dean. I only hope I don't disappoint after that introduction," he says, grinning as if he knows better.<br /> He takes a sheet of paper from the desk. "Please stand as I read your name so I can get a look at you." As he reads the names, each student stands, saying, "Here." As I wait for him to call my name, I start to sweat. When he does, I rise, manage a mumbled "Here," and slide back down into my chair. His eyes linger on me. Or am I imagining it? No. I am not imagining it. He knows who I am. I thought I could disappear among hundreds of college students. I thought by using my maiden name I could erase the time when I was Mrs. Ben Gold. I was wrong. I should have packed up and gone as far from Cleveland as I could get — California. Oregon. Anywhere but here. Well, it isn't too late — this is my first day in Mr. F.B.I's class. It's a big country.<br /> I see that he's dressed for the part of charming professor in one of those tweed jackets with leather on the elbows, a blue shirt and neatly knotted brown tie. Even though his hair is cropped short, I can see the grey starting. Still, it's hard to tell his age — 30's? 40's?<br /> After the roll call, he looks at me again. I make myself return his stare as if that will make him drop his. It does not. I drop mine.<br /> He looks at his watch. "There's still time for me to tell you a bit about the F.B.I," he says, sitting down on the edge of the desk. "Before J. Edgar Hoover became Director it was just the Bureau of Investigation. But Hoover got it federalized so we could cross state lines to chase the bad guys. How many of you have heard of Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde and Machine Gun Kelly?"<br /> A bunch of hands shoot up.<br /> "Okay, I can tell you that we know Nelson's in San Francisco, a source has Machine Gun Kelly in Chicago, and we've spotted Bonnie and Clyde in Des Moines. Believe me, their days of robbing banks and killing people are numbered." There is a sudden gravity about him with that grim look you see on the faces of F.B.I. agents in the newsreels.<br /> The boy with acne raises his hand.<br /> "Mr. Arlington," Fairfield says, nodding.<br /> "So how does a person get in?" the boy asks.<br /> "You want to be an F.B.I. agent?"<br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> "Well, son, you've got some years to go — you have to be twenty-five. And before that, you have to have gone to law school. You have to be a lawyer. And come from a good family."<br /> Good family. That lets me out.<br /> The boy sits down.<br /> A skinny girl in a navy blue dress raises her hand.<br /> "Miss Sawyer," Fairfield says. But he is looking at me again.<br /> I feel my face heat up and look down at my white schoolgirls' blouse to check on buttons.<br /> "Does the F.B.I. take women?" she asks.<br /> "Not any I know of," he says. "Although there were a few. Emma Jentzer back some twenty years or so. Also, Alaska Davidson and Lenore Houston in the old bureau." He stops, as if searching his memory. "And oh, yes, Jessie Duckson." He lets go of his charming smile. "Maybe by the time you're twenty-five Hoover will let women in. So go to law school, just in case. That way, if you can't be an agent, you'll have a back up. You can be a lawyer."<br /> "I don't know any women lawyers, do you?" There was a nice edge to her voice. I liked her.<br /> "Well, no. A great injustice. But perhaps you'll change that and be the first woman agent in modern times."<br /> The girl looks doubtful.<br /> Another hand is raised.<br /> "Mr. Linsky," Fairfield says.<br /> I am impressed with his memory of names after only one hearing. More to worry about.<br /> "So how come Mr. Hoover can't catch Dillinger?"<br /> "Well, Mr. Linsky, we have it on good authority he's in Dayton, Ohio. As we speak. He moves around a lot but we'll get him. Sooner or later we'll get him." He narrows his eyes. You can imagine him wearing sun glasses, a fedora, and that serious expression, moving silent as a cat, stalking Dillinger, ready; you can imagine him shooting. No questions asked. Just the Springfield Armory Model M 14 machine gun with 20 round USGI — like the gun that laid under my husband's side of the bed. Or the Smith & Wesson 22, with a clip that holds 12 rounds. Small enough to fit in a pocket or hide in a hat. Small enough to fit in a woman's hand. I feel a small thrill.<br /> The boy sits down.<br /> Fairfield looks at his watch again, opens a notebook, and recites the course agenda: Intro to Criminal Justice; Criminal Law; Criminal Investigation; Intro to Forensic Chemistry; Human Relations. I dutifully write the list in my notebook with a shaking hand, now convinced that he knows who I am.<br /> "Class, please read chapters one through four in your textbook, ‘Intro to Forensic Chemistry' by the next class," he's saying. My classmates begin noisily scraping chairs, murmuring, moving toward the door. A couple of girls almost trip as they turn for one more look at Fairfield.<br /> I close my notebook and gather up my books.<br /> I am almost at the door when he calls from the front of the room, "Miss Brady."<br /> Pretending not to hear him, I put my head down and keep on walking.<br /> "Miss Brady!" he calls. "My office, please! Room 321."</div>
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<img alt="Babette Hughes" height="222" src="http://author-tours.omnimystery.com/graphics/photo-babette-hughes-2013.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; border: 0px none transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 1px 1px 5px; height: 222px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 175px;" title="Babette Hughes" width="175" /><br />Photo provided courtesy of<br />Babette Hughes</div>
In addition to her novels, Babette Hughes is a contributing blogger for <span style="font-style: italic;">The Huffington Post</span>. She has also been published in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturday Review</span>; been contributing editor of <span style="font-style: italic;">Cleveland Magazine</span>; a twice-weekly columnist for the<span style="font-style: italic;">Cleveland Press</span>; and has published articles and book reviews in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Cleveland Plain Dealer</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Sunday Magazine</span>. She has also written, produced and appeared in television documentaries and news and feature stories for Cleveland television stations WKYC-NBC and WNBK-UHF.<br /><br />In addition to her writing career she has been been National Director of Women's Political Action for Hubert Humphrey in his 1972 Presidential campaign, as well as founder and President of Discover Yourself, Inc., a motivation and self realization program for women. She has also been Director of Public Relations for Revco D.S., Inc. in Twinsburg, Ohio, and Account Executive with Frazier Associates, in Washington, DC. She and her husband live in Austin, Texas, and are the parents and step-parents of eight children.<br /><br />Learn more about the author and her work on her website<a href="http://www.babettehughes.com/" style="color: #202ab1;" target="_blank">BabetteHughes.com</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Red Scarf</span><br />Babette Hughes<br />A Kate Brady Novel<br />
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The Red Scarf opens with Kate Brady, aka, Mrs. Ben Gold trying to find a normal life as the widow of the Godfather of the Jewish mafia, Ben Gold. Ben Gold is dead and the file is closed as far as law enforcement is concerned. The angry remaining Sarsini brother is the killer, or at least that's what the FBI believes. Good riddance is what they and everyone who knew Ben Gold think, and Kate agrees wholeheartedly. Ben had treated her badly, was not a good man, and frankly deserved exactly what he got.<br /><br />And, so, as The Red Scarf picks up her story she is attending college, living on the millions of dollars of ill-gotten gain that Ben had left her, and trying to put the life of a moll behind her. But once again, even from beyond the grave, Ben Gold drags her back into the dangerous world of gangster and guns.<br /><br />When handsome FBI agent Adam Fairfield is introduced as a guest lecturer, she feels immediately drawn to him, and he to her. A torrid love affair ensues and soon, she is risking her life by revealing her darkest secret to him, trusting that he won't put her away for life, or worse.<br /><br />For Kate, this story is about more than the thrill of bringing down another bad man who is intimidating her community and abusing his wife. This is about redemption. It's about getting on with her life and leaving behind as best she can the lengthy laundry list of mistakes she had made as a young and impressionable woman.<br />
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Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-52970724483668680332013-09-23T14:10:00.000-07:002013-09-23T14:13:07.335-07:00Boardwalk Empire Season 4: Acres of Diamonds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC5WDx2H9fMTbA-7RM40UTkA885yUseEdXe-Z6MAevTG32gUo5zsOk89M8KeERPgrC9scw8phWkk3iWsCRpedn7yFAr5Smn5qLC76lxWSSDM3WbJ9peswM-siBeRRGQ1nr8wWqDdbKv0Y/s1600/boardwalk-empire-gillian-smoke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC5WDx2H9fMTbA-7RM40UTkA885yUseEdXe-Z6MAevTG32gUo5zsOk89M8KeERPgrC9scw8phWkk3iWsCRpedn7yFAr5Smn5qLC76lxWSSDM3WbJ9peswM-siBeRRGQ1nr8wWqDdbKv0Y/s320/boardwalk-empire-gillian-smoke.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I know this is going to shock a lot of Boardwalk Empire
fans, but I actually felt a pang of sympathy for Gillian Darmody last night. I
thought my brief compassion for Gillian might stem from the fact that she is
one of the only vulnerable female characters on the show this season,
but that can’t be so. We have Harrow’s sister, Emma—pregnant, recently widowed,
with very few prospects –and we have Sally—a savvy booze slinging roadhouse
owner who is pushed around by Tampa con-artist, August Tucker. Boardwalk Empire
has many male characters to empathize with as well, so why Gillian Darmody? Why this week?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Gillian is telling the hardscrabble life of my mother. To my
recollection, my mother didn’t resort to prostitution or heroin, but she did
marry a bootlegger at 18—a man who could show her the comforts of life that she
wouldn't dare to dream of as a child raised in a Jewish Orphan Asylum with no
prospects of a higher education or pulling herself up by her bootstraps. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Just like Gillian lost her son, Jimmy, to Prohibition
related crime, my mother lost her husband, my father, to the mafia during a
bootlegging turf war in 1924. When my father died, my mother was no longer the
attentive housewife and mother. She embraced the 1920s culture of debauchery—drinking,
staying out late with her ‘boyfriends’, and neglecting her children. <o:p></o:p></div>
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By the end of the episode I was routing for Gillian to win
Roy’s heart. Maybe it will give her the chance to repair her life and “call
herself to account” as Emma suggests to Richard during their good-byes. I can’t
help but hope that Gillian becomes the exemplary mother and has a wholesome life
with her grandson, but maybe this is a wish from my past and only the writers
of Boardwalk Empire can make it so.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Babette-Hughes/e/B001K8I026">Read More</a> by Babette Hughes<o:p></o:p></div>
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For a recap of <a href="http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2013/09/boardwalk_empire_recap_acres_of_diamonds.html">Acres of Diamonds</a><o:p></o:p></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-29456663553211394022013-09-16T17:19:00.000-07:002013-09-16T17:40:51.374-07:00Boardwalk Empire Season 4: Resignation<div class="MsoNormal">
My father, Luis Rosen, was a bootlegger during the
Prohibition. He was murdered in a turf war by the Jewish mob in November 1924.
In last week’s episode, when the screen flashed, <i>February 1924</i>, I couldn’t help but remember the newspaper articles recounting
the cold-blooded murder of my father and uncle. What are these mad men willing
to do for power? Apparently the Boardwalk Empire characters are eager to pay
the price for a piece of the pie. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO2b_CZLUK11E6wUm6xvil0NzWASn157dieIGdTILSJG7R8gsb__yL7qiQELgcoJiJ0hk1GTqJflPTjDaRjOB1UxdLFFwjKJZ7ib0anxR2uyHcBZBYI6SVpTqnHg4eWw_1lO2htjdfc5Q/s1600/ClevelandPress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO2b_CZLUK11E6wUm6xvil0NzWASn157dieIGdTILSJG7R8gsb__yL7qiQELgcoJiJ0hk1GTqJflPTjDaRjOB1UxdLFFwjKJZ7ib0anxR2uyHcBZBYI6SVpTqnHg4eWw_1lO2htjdfc5Q/s320/ClevelandPress.jpg" width="247" /></a></div>
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In the beginning of Sunday night’s episode, Detective Van
Alden, a.k.a. Mueller, is willing to crack some skulls to buy his wife a new
davenport—a far cry from where he was in Season One. He is O’Bannon’s muscle
during the day and Capone’s “political pressure” during the evenings. How
quickly Van Alden has gone from praying and preaching the gospel of sobriety to
defending a group of booze swilling sociopaths. At the democratic rally, we
watch Van Alden embrace his new power when letting out a roar of strength
before he bats another Democrat over the head at Capone’s request—making sure
these citizens spread the word “…voting Democrat is bad for your health.”</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our next shocker for a plunge at power is Eddie. Last season
he took a bullet in the leg to protect his beloved boss, Nucky, and he is ready
for his promotion. Eddie has proved to be Nucky’s right-hand man in business
and hygiene, and he “resigned” in order to get Nucky’s attention. Fortunately
for Eddie, Nucky didn’t call his bluff. Will Eddie be successful in his new
powers or will he finally fail Nucky?<o:p></o:p></div>
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BE’s third swing for power is the new character Dr.
Narcisse. The New York businessman strolls into the Onyx with Cora, sharing his
knowledge of God’s word and his own personal beliefs—“ a thing mixed is a thing
weakened”. Narcisse suspends all black entertainment acts at the Onyx to muscle
Nucky and Chalky into 10% of Onyx’s income, using Cora’s testimony of Dunn “raping”
her as leverage. He also plants the
beginnings of a wedge between Nucky and Chalky—pointing out that a relationship
between a black and white man can only be based on the white man’s need to use
the black man to gain power. I have a feeling with the build of race relations
and the introduction to Dr. Narcisse, an equivalent to a black supremacist, we
are going to see the two communities clash, but who will win the struggle
according to history?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Speaking of history, the head of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, has made his appearance this season. He is in
Atlantic City and ready to infiltrate the northeast crime ring through the US
Attorney General. It looks like Nucky is on the government’s radar yet again.
Is his stronghold in DC worth being in Hoover’s spotlight?<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Babette-Hughes/e/B001K8I026">Read more</a> by novelist and <i>Huff Post</i> blogger Babette Hughes. </div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-53278997140170607662013-09-09T13:16:00.001-07:002013-09-09T13:16:16.227-07:00Boardwalk Empire: Season 4, “New York Sour”<br />
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With Harrow home from his last tour of “business” and a mob
boss truce for Nucky maybe the episode should’ve been entitled “Clean Slate”
considering both men are starting over for themselves. Harrow is back home in
Wisconsin after “dealing with” some home title “issues” and Nucky, now a
bachelor, is seducing new actresses and has his hand back on the reins of
Atlantic City after paying Masseria and Rothstein some fat cash. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Chalky’s built his new night club, Onyx, upon the ruins of
Babette’s (sorry to see my namesake go!), and the club’s opening night offers
the dazzling party scene of the roaring 20s—scantily clad black women shaking
their tail feathers while white men and women guzzle their giggle water and use
words like “primitive”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Gillian is also trying to be the poster girl for motherhood
reform during her trial to gain back custody of Jimmy’s son from Harrow’s gal,
Julia. Little do the courts know, she is fully addicted to heroin and selling
herself for $30 a customer to save the cat house. Will <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Livingston">Ron Livingston </a>from <i>The Office</i> save her from herself? (That
woman is pure evil, and although I am not a violent person, I am hoping that
her days are numbered.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Al Capone is making a mark for himself through the newspaper,
and I am sure the writer will be sure to spell Al’s name right in the future.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It may be a clean slate for most of the Boardwalk Empire
characters this premiere but there is one man who has already muddied his
opportunities for success. Chalky White’s right-hand man, Dunn, has stirred up
some trouble for “15 minutes of jelly”. While Chalky and Dunn are in New York,
scouting acts to bring to the Onyx, Dunn takes the talent agent’s wife up on a scandalously
irresistible offer. In the midst of “jelly”, Dunn and the wife are caught by
the talent agent, Dickey. Without giving away the story, let’s just say,
somebody dies. With the birth of Onyx and Dunn’s indiscretions, I’d say BE
writers are making race a major topic this season. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Here’s a recipe for a <a href="http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/The-New-York-Sour-51155490">New York Sour</a> for next Sunday. Enjoy!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Looking for more <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Babette-Hughes/e/B001K8I026">Prohibition Mayhem</a>?<br /><br /><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Nonagenarian author Babette Hughes has penned three books, including the forthcoming </span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Red Scarf</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">, due out in July. She lives in Austin, Texas. To learn more about Babette and her work, please go to: </span><a href="http://babettehughes.com/author.html" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #058b7b; cursor: pointer; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">http://babettehughes.com/author.html</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-22784650890021094162013-06-17T14:29:00.000-07:002013-06-17T14:29:30.275-07:00My Left Breast - Chapter 2<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal;">May 20, 2013, </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/babette-hughes/breast-cancer-anger-my-left-breast_b_3209201.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">The Huffington Post</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal;">, Babette Hughes</span><br /></em></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Writer <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/babette-hughes/breast-cancer-anger-my-left-breast_b_3209201.html" style="border: 0px; color: #6a5bff; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">Babette Hughes shared her experience with breast cancer</a> in a powerful blog post recently. Here is a follow up to that must-read blog.</em></div>
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Back home after the diagnosis, I make dinner, noting that the salmon smells fishy. I cut the ends of the string beans and wash the romaine for a salad. I hear my husband's key in the door. He comes into the kitchen, says hi and gives me a kiss. His face feels scratchy. "It's cancer," I say, smiling. (Smiling!) I feel my absurd grin, pleased to be crazy.</div>
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But over the next days my brain begins to let in a little news at a time, like a gate that opens and closes at mysterious intervals, as if it knows how much my mind can handle without imploding. The gate swings open when I'm alone and I find myself crying at a traffic light; or on the freeway (risk cheating cancer by getting killed by the pickup truck tailgating me); or standing in the shower with a tight heart. The gate closes when I run errands, have dinner with friends, sit in the radiation waiting room. As the hours and days go by the gate stays open longer and longer until I begin to get it. I get it. This thing on my breast can kill me! Reading and writing become lost to me. The now wide-open gate has me imagining the unthinkable. Imagining my own death, my absence from my own life. In a crazy, perverse way it is secretly thrilling. I have cancer! I'm still alive! I check out my will and talk to my husband about his options when he's a widower.<br style="border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px;" />When you show up for your doctor's appointment you are handed a clipboard on which lies a questionnaire with a laundry list of every disease, malady and symptom known to man. You are supposed to check those that you have or had, or think you have or had. You are also asked to check whether you have it sometimes, often, never or frequently. You obediently ponder the clipboard and make your checks.</div>
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And wait. And wait. Finally a woman fetches you and your clipboard. She leads you into a small room. There is an examining table, a desk, a computer, a chair. There is an illustration of the human body on the wall with its map of organs and blood vessels and arteries, but no genitalia. It is as sexless as I have felt since I found the lump.</div>
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The assistant invites me to sit in the chair. She is young and pudgy with pretty blond hair. She is wearing a tiny diamond engagement ring. She settles in front of the computer, and looks at the clipboard. Then she says, "When was your last mammogram?"</div>
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"Didn't I fill that out? I thought I filled it out."</div>
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She looks at me. "No, you didn't."</div>
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"My last mammogram? It was a year ago, I think. Well, actually, a little over a year," I lie.</div>
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Actually it is almost two years but I'll be damned if I'll admit it to this sullen kid.</div>
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"Are your parents alive?" she asks, turning back to the screen.</div>
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"No."</div>
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"What did they die of?"</div>
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"My mother died of polycythemia --well actually it was leukemia, but the polycythemia started it," I say.</div>
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"And?" she says, waiting, fingers poised on the keyboard.</div>
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I am silent. I hear voices in one of the examining rooms.</div>
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"Your father?"</div>
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"My father."</div>
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I clear my throat. "He died young. No medical history there -- he died too young to get anything."</div>
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I look at my watch. I want to get out of this barren room with the sexless person on the wall.</div>
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She turns to me and I smell her perfume. It smells of lilac. "What did he die of?"</div>
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I am feeling a familiar rush of shame. It has rendered me speechless.</div>
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"So what did he die of?" she asks again.</div>
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I sigh. "Murder. He died of murder."</div>
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She looks at me.</div>
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"He was a bootlegger," I explain. I smile.</div>
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She turns to the computer and types something.</div>
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"It wasn't my fault, I was two years old," I want to say.</div>
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She sticks a thermometer in my mouth, puts a blood pressure sleeve on my arm and starts pumping. She doesn't make eye contact. I decide I don't like her.</div>
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She hands me a paper robe. "Take everything off above the waist. The doctor will see you shortly," she says, as she leaves the room.</div>
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I do as I am told. And wait, wishing I had brought something to read because "shortly" turns out to be a long time.</div>
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Why didn't I say "accident," to this stone-faced girl? Why didn't I say he died in an automobile accident. Or that he died in the war -- I could have said he was a war hero! Or simply repeated my mother's lie: "He died of pneumonia," she told me when I was old enough to ask.</div>
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I believed her. My father wasn't a murdered bootlegger, he died innocently in bed of pneumonia. So I don't have cancer cells multiplying mysteriously in my breast, and therefore will live to be an old, old lady with great grandchildren, no matter what the doctor says if he ever turns up.</div>
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My mother never uttered a word about my father's violent death. Even 40 years after his murder she was still unable to speak the truth. But denial was too late for me. Cancer doesn't lie. Cancer, unlike murder, doesn't kill in seconds. It's always there, on standby. And as I sat waiting for the doctor, my bare breasts covered in a paper jacket, I envied my mother's lifelong delusion.</div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hat-Babette-Hughes/dp/0865347840/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1293994316&sr=8-5">Read More</a></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-76667680771817699252013-06-03T10:00:00.000-07:002013-06-03T10:00:03.358-07:00MOTHER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2mdC0JWXS0QXywg00kS-uitdBAcbSwgd2iTbxuOZfo5vj_l8aC72UWPExusTE958M2kvc1OKq4OqEnh1Zo8WgNP2nZxUiBloJZ0e6nTNx09zd56VcEgzTStOfXNs3EuH7kzHqN3RRZM/s1600/Mother.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2mdC0JWXS0QXywg00kS-uitdBAcbSwgd2iTbxuOZfo5vj_l8aC72UWPExusTE958M2kvc1OKq4OqEnh1Zo8WgNP2nZxUiBloJZ0e6nTNx09zd56VcEgzTStOfXNs3EuH7kzHqN3RRZM/s1600/Mother.jpg" /></a></div>
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My mother fascinated my friends
with how unmotherish she was; how charming, vivacious, flirtatious; how much
like a girlfriend. Back then mothers
stayed home but she went to work every day in high heels and bracelets; people
thought she was my sister. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
But I wanted her to be like their apron clad
moms who didn’t scare and excite and hypnotize and then slip away like ether. I
longed for safer plumper arms, the smell of dinner cooking in a warm kitchen.
My mother brought home cardboard cartons of Chinese food for our dinner
smelling of her office and stale perfume. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After
being raised in an Dickensian orphanage in 1901, from the age of 3, widowed at
26 by my bootlegging father’s murder by the Mafia, she was too damaged for
mothering and shipped me around to relatives while she lived the life of a
flapper. When the Great Depression hit and she lost her money she came home to
my brother and me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Self-educated
in literature, music and art, fluent in the German and Hebrew that she learned
growing up in the Jewish Orphan Home, she had nothing but scorn for the
institutions the rest of the world lives by—school, organized religion,
government, marriage, politics. But anyone who dared label her iconoclast,
existentialist or feminist or any other “ist” would have been met with a withering
look. Her independence and courage thrilled me because I always knew how alone
and frightened she was.<o:p></o:p></div>
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She
could electrify a room with her brilliance and charm but she didn’t know when
or how to stop; people became restless, they looked away; they would leave if
they could. I was ashamed of her. I was proud of her. But I didn’t know what I
had learned from her. That is, until my
divorce. Needing independence and courage, I discovered it within myself, put there
by her spirit. Also, the pleasure of learning and the life of the mind.
Integrity of the self. Compassion from
watching her struggle, and even, from my own unmet needs, how to mother my
children.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://www.babettehughes.com/">Read more</a></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-60926643044868181842013-05-29T12:51:00.000-07:002013-05-29T12:51:59.529-07:00My Left Breast – Chapter 1<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">May 7, 2013, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/babette-hughes/breast-cancer-anger-my-left-breast_b_3209201.html">The Huffington Post</a>,
Babette Hughes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">We sit in a circle. The husbands,
too. Both facilitators are breast cancer survivors. Everyone, except the
husbands, takes turns talking. The stories are heartbreaking and boring. And
routine, astonishing, terrifying and exhausting. But after the husbands are
taken into another room (to talk about, ahem, their breastless feelings), the
stories get more interesting. There is the boyfriend who ran away after the
diagnosis, the husband whose insensitivity borders on sadism ("All he said
after my diagnosis was, Can we still go skiing next week?") A mother cries
because she doesn't want to wear a wig to her daughter's wedding. The woman who
has already outlived by a year her prognosis of imminent death talks and talks
as if her unbroken chain of outpouring words are keeping her alive. Fear, like
a foul smell, permeates the air. Outside, there are the familiar sounds of cars
heading to the office, supermarket, dry cleaners or daycare, as if we were not
sitting here in a circle of surprised despair. The air is crisp out there, and
you remember other autumns when you were growing up in Cleveland. The air was
fragrant then, the trees brilliant with color, and you would not have been able
to imagine sitting in Texas with a group of ladies soon to be maimed -- or to
die.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">I sit mute, listening to each sad story, as if it weren't my
story, too, as if I had wandered into the wrong movie at the multiplex. Then it
is my turn to speak and all eyes turn to me, waiting. I sit there. I have
nothing to say to these strangers. I have no story to tell. All I can think to
say is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;">I'm angry.</span></em><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">When the facilitator says I should
validate my anger, I want to hit her. I hate the psychobabble, the hard plastic
chairs, the snacks, the outpourings, the shared misery. I hate the word
"share." I feel patronized. But also strangely relieved. I didn't
know until that moment how angry I was. I suddenly remember that in last
night's dream, I was standing alone somewhere, surrounded by the fury of an
enraged gale. And that I woke damp with perspiration and a pounding heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">What am I angry at? My breast? How
can you be mad at your own breast? At God? Please. God doesn't do breasts. At
my kind, supportive, sensitive, frightened husband? Yes, you bet, for his
health and breastless body.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">I -- we -- are given platitudes.
About mental imaging. Meditation. Optimism. Sharing feelings. About attitude.
As if cancer gives a damn about attitude. Or about validating your anger, for
that matter. Although Norman Mailer once wrote that if he hadn't stabbed his
wife he would have got cancer, it is obviously too late for me to stab anyone.
I want to go home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">At the end of the session, everyone
hugs. I smell their face powder, feel their arms around me. One lady just wants
to shake hands. Her skin is as soft as a baby's. I leave the support group
feeling as if I have a "C" tattooed on my forehead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">But I don't want to be defined by
cancer. What I really am is a mother and stepmother. What I really am is a
grandparent, a wife, a writer, a friend. What I really am is a reader of books,
a watcher of movies. A listener, a walker, a weight lifter! I never go back to
the support group. I don't belong there. It is a case of mistaken identity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">But I am diagnosed. I don't even
have to say "with cancer," because no one ever says I've been
diagnosed with the flu, or I've been diagnosed with arthritis or I've been
diagnosed with shingles. "Diagnosed" is the code word for cancer. It
contains all the news.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The word slides off your brain like
rain because you know your doctor is mistaken. Cancer is an abstraction, a
ridiculous interruption of your life. You know it is out there with the
criminals and rapists and hurricanes; of course you know that. It is what
happens to your grandmother, or your friend's mother-in-law, or your neighbor.
But surely not to you. Laboratories make mistakes like that all the time. Ask
the experts, read the statistics: If you're slender, if you don't smoke, if you
eat your vegetables and exercise and get mammograms and have no cancer in your
family and take an aspirin every day, a cancer tumor doesn't just grow in your
right breast like a weed. Obviously, my mammogram has been substituted for
someone else's, some poor, sick woman. (You'll take her your tuna and mushroom
casserole; you'll drive on her car pool days; you'll do her grocery shopping;
only please, please, let this thing be hers.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">But I was sent for a sonogram. The
lady doctor pushed a gadget over and over the suspicious breast like some crazy
old scavenger with his metal detector mining for treasure at the beach. Her
tone announcing cancer is as brisk and matter-of-fact as the plumber's who came
to fix your shower last week. But you still don't get it. Your brain has shut
down. The word coming out of this doctor's mouth could have been
"lamp" or "tree" or "allergy." Baring your breast
and having cancer is too embarrassing. Your mind has skittered away; it has
looked elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 115%;">As I make my way to
the dressing room, I think insanely that my breast and I would have been
perfectly fine if it weren't for that stupid f*cking sonogram.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span>Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-25949370264220906942013-05-10T14:45:00.000-07:002013-05-10T14:45:26.506-07:00MOTHER’S DAY BLOG, THE DUTCHESS<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">In
the pictures I have of my mother she looks like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Simpson">Duchess of Windsor</a>. My
husband, who didn’t like her, would say, Oh oh, here comes the Duchess, when he
heard her car in the driveway. Raised in an orphanage, how did she come by that
royal presence? How could she have been so fragile, and yet accomplish so much
in her young widowhood, raising my brother and me? How can she exist so
powerfully after she is dead? She seems to have left tracks in my brain like
indelible markers that are more than memory, leaking into my present.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> She died while I was downstairs in the
hospital coffee shop drinking a milkshake and leafing through <u>Newsweek</u>. I
found her on the floor of the room after her last desperate moment of pride
trying to get to the bathroom alone. She was crumpled on the floor at the foot
of the bed, a terrifying stranger in a hospital gown. I screamed for the nurse
who came running. It took the two of us to get her back in the bed where she
lay, dignified once again, even in this unbelievable death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> In life she didn’t look like anyone’s
mother. She was too young-looking, too chic. Back then mothers stayed home but
she went to work every day in high heels and bracelets; people thought she was
my sister. She fascinated my friends with how unmotherish she was, how
charming, vivacious, flirtatious; how much like a girlfriend. But I wanted her
to be like their apron-clad moms who didn’t scare and excite and hypnotize and
then slip away like ether. I longed for safer plumper arms, the smell of dinner
cooking in a warm kitchen. My mother brought home cardboard cartons of Chinese
food for our dinner, smelling of her office and stale perfume.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> She was a big talker. There didn’t
seem room enough in her head and mouth for all she had to say. Her favorite
subjects were politics and moral choice. Communism and capitalism Socialism.
Suffrage. The New Deal. She pontificated on courage and independence and spoke
about art and music as if she were raised in a palace instead of an orphanage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> Reading everything and remembering
everything she read she loved getting into political arguments with people
because her head was stuffed with esoteric information just waiting to spring
on some poor Republican. Who would soon find himself hopeless outmatched by her
facts, her passion, her verbosity..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> In those days the sex life of single
women was hidden, but I could always tell when she had a date with a new
boyfriend because she’s get in such a high mood. Once she sent me to live with
a relative while she went off to a hotel. To my vast relief, that one lasted
only a couple of months and she came back for me. Other times I remember
hearing a man’s voice from my bed at night, laughter, the clinking of ice in
glasses. The next day my mother would look younger, prettier; even then I
recognized the signs. The whisky glasses. The scent of a male mixed with the
sort of flowery mannerliness my mother had in those days. Once there was a
whole bouquet in a vase; he was a sport, my mother said. She was always alone
when I got up for school the next morning and I wondered if maybe her boyfriend
was married. But I pretended she didn’t let him stay overnight because of
me--for her dignity and mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> Self-educated in literature, music and
art, fluent in the German and Hebrew that she learned growing up in the Jewish
Orphan Home, she had nothing but scorn for the institutions the rest of the
world lives by—school, organized religion, government, marriage, politics. But
anyone who dared label her iconoclast, existentialist or feminist or any other
“ist” would have been meet with a withering look. Her independence and courage
thrilled me because I always knew how alone and frightened she was. She was my
heroine. No book or movie ever had such a star.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> But she was too alone and overwhelmed
for mothering, too damaged from her orphanhood. Exhausted most of the time,
often asthmatic, she shipped me around to the relatives she didn’t like. I
never rebelled, not even in adolescence. My girlfriends’ complaints about their
mothers amused me because when it came to mothers I was the one with plenty to
criticize, and I never did. The way I saw it the only thing that stood between
me and total terrifying orphanhood was my flawed and fragile mother. Who
somehow always managed to be there. Sort of. More or less. Anyway, I wasn’t
about to pick on my mother. I felt this kind of weird loyalty. I had to take
care of her. But of course I couldn’t. I was too young for her neediness and
fragility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"> So I broke away from her grasp on my
life and heart into a teenage marriage. Her unhappiness at my abandonment oozed
from her pores, her moist eyes, her eager misery, blackmailing me into visits I
didn’t want to make, sneaking money to her from my grocery allowance. I was a
dutiful daughter, attentive to her complaints and demands for attention,
feeling as guilty as if her frailties were my own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">She could electrify a room with
her brilliance and charm, but she didn’t know when or how to stop; people
became restless; they looked away, they would leave if they could. I was
ashamed of her. I was proud of her. But I didn’t know what I had learned from
her. That is, until my divorce. Needing independence and courage, I discovered
it within myself, put there by her spirit. Also, the pleasure of learning and
the life of the mind. Integrity of the self. Compassion, from watching her
struggle, and even, from my own unmet needs, how to mother my children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">I was often asked why my
attractive youthful mother never remarried. But deprived from birth of parental
love and widowed at twenty-eight, she seemed to demand more love than there was
in the world, more than anyone could ever give her, souring every relationship
of her life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";">The night before her funeral I
dreamed I was the only pallbearer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Babette-Hughes/e/B001K8I026/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1">Read More</a></span></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-70092963335239331082013-05-06T08:39:00.000-07:002013-05-06T08:42:54.468-07:00THE FUNERAL<br />
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<span style="font-family: Geneva;">I have a blurred mental
image of my mother coming home from my daddy’s funeral. She is wearing a veiled
black hat that scares me. I am two years old and had been left at home, put to
bed for my nap by a big colored lady. But I can’t sleep. The house feels too
quiet. Something big is wrong. I stand up in my crib and scream. No one comes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> Finally I am taken downstairs. Grown-ups in dark clothes
are standing around whispering. There is the cloying smell of sweet pastries,
the sound of china; ladies in aprons are busy in the kitchen. One of them gives
me a cookie. She is crying. I have never seen a grown-up cry before and I start
to wail. A man picks me up; his face feels scratchy. I scramble down and look
for my mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> I see her sitting in a big chair and run to her. She
pulls me onto her lap. I tug at the black veil knocking off her hat but, still,
I cannot stop crying. “Babette, honey, shh, don’t cry, it’s all right,” she
murmurs. I feel her heart pound through my dress and, weeping, hang onto her
until someone wipes my runny nose and pulls me away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;">My mother sits quietly in
the big chair listening to the noises of the kitchen and the murmur of the
mourners’ voices. Hearing a piercing screech she thinks it came from her own
mouth. But no one turns to her and she realizes it was a screaming tea kettle.
She stares at the mourners in their dark clothes and sorrowful faces as they
move about the dining room table laden with platters of herring, smoked
whitefish, smoked salmon, cream cheese, hard-boiled eggs, bagels and Kaiser
rolls. Home- made sponge cake, macaroons and fig newtons, baked by the ladies
in the kitchen that morning while her husband was being buried.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZtkDKcW99LkN5FCX5uQx2HIXZ3Dp9fECrhSYR0a-Q9AoTGnvmlQckOc6Zqt_zxbqmGAzP5LPuTV9g_UUF0hofzCG3PmL359JnE_ge3euuYd8Jqp4mtBgMQfjnNiF5JTwGS1PGk_MTnJU/s1600/Babette+Hughes+Lost+&+Found.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZtkDKcW99LkN5FCX5uQx2HIXZ3Dp9fECrhSYR0a-Q9AoTGnvmlQckOc6Zqt_zxbqmGAzP5LPuTV9g_UUF0hofzCG3PmL359JnE_ge3euuYd8Jqp4mtBgMQfjnNiF5JTwGS1PGk_MTnJU/s320/Babette+Hughes+Lost+&+Found.JPG" width="203" /></a><span style="font-family: Geneva;"> Upstairs, my daddy’s suits hang limply with their empty
sleeves, neatly arranged by color and season, the dark blues and grays giving
way along the rack to the summer creams and whites. Shallow drawers hold rows
of jeweled cuff links, a rainbow of ties stretches along a wall, and dozens of
stiff-collared silk shirts hang neatly in whites and pastels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> Now the mourners
are filling the large, proud living room after first washing their hands from the pitcher on the
front stoop. (Someone had set up the ancient Jewish funeral ritual as if this
were a benign death and you could wash off the wreckage.) My mother looks
around for my brother, a tow-headed blue-eyed boy of six, but he has already
escaped into the backyard our daddy had
equipped with swings, jungle gyms, even a child-sized car. Peering through the
window she sees him riding his car on the hard, gray snow, his correct little
tie off and already a rip in the scratchy suit jacket bought especially for his
father’s funeral. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> Earlier, at the burial, he had dutifully thrown a small
handful of dirt into the freshly dug grave as the rabbi muttered the Kaddish. I
see him there in the shimmer of a dream and imagine heat rays emanating from
the open grave like the disturbed air of hell. Suddenly my mother’s knees
buckle under her. The funeral director with his neat, black suit and blank eyes
reaches out and steadies her with the expressionless efficiency of his
profession, corpses and collapsing widows as unremarkable to him as an
accountant’s pencil and adding machine. Her dizziness is actually due to the
pill given her by a Dr. Magio who is said to be kept on a retainer for the time
a bullet or two has to be discretely removed, and who was called when my mother
was unable to stop screaming. She feels shame in her near-collapse and
extravagant sorrow -- mixed as it is with a curious and confusing measure of
relief that Lou Rosen’s vitality and violence are now subdued six feet under.
She is only 27 after all, her flesh still young, her thighs still slender and
surely not meant never to open to a man again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> But if she imagines freedom and options with a pounding
heart she learns soon enough that the dead do not leave. Even without the
lingering scent of his aftershave, the damp towel across the bed, the diamond
stick pin and gold cuff links on the bedside table, Lou is an ongoing gauzy
presence, everywhere and nowhere, hovering over her, over all of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> Now, sitting in
the living room, my mother watches a group of three men as they enter her house and hang up their
coats and fedoras on the racks provided by the Berkowitz Funeral Home. She
knows that the big man, the one with the drooping eyelids and heavy glasses,
ordered her husband’s murder--she wonders if the two men with him were the
actual killers. She also knows that the hundreds of white carnations and roses
covering his casket were sent by their polite murdering hands. But she is not
afraid; she has been a bootlegger’s wife long enough to know that as long as
they keep their silence widows and children are sacrosanct. She has been a
bootlegger’s wife long enough to understand the code; no one will harm her
unless, of course, she breaks it and reveals his name, which she knows to be
Joe Lonardo, the Cleveland Mafia boss who is now offering his clean hand to her
in solemn-faced sympathy. She shakes his hand and feels her stomach rise to her
throat. She is afraid she will vomit on his wingtips.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> The rabbi in his
black suit and beard and woeful expression is standing with Marvin, brother of
the deceased. Marvin has thick black hair that looks windblown, or mussed from
making love. Talking to the rabbi, gesturing with his hands, he is smiling as
if he’s at a wake with believers of an afterlife, even for Lou Rosen. The rabbi is eating a
wedge of sponge cake. He wipes his mouth with a dinky embroidered napkin. There
are crumbs in his beard. He puts his empty plate down on the grand piano,
straightens his <i>yarmulke</i>, and crosses
the room to my mother. He leans over and kisses her on the cheek; she feels his
beard brush her face and has an impulse to grab hold of it. She feels like
laughing and has to duck her head and hold her handkerchief to her mouth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> “Mrs. Rosen--Are you all right?” the rabbi asks. His
voice is deep, concerned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> She nods. She even
smiles. She wonders if she is going crazy. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"> Although
the rabbi is older than she by at least a decade, she thinks he is too young to
have anything to say to her. She wants him to go away, to leave her alone. But
he sits down in a chair at her side, looks into her eyes and speaks. What? What
did he say? She is too preoccupied to hear. She wants to ask him if her husband
killed anyone before he was killed; if God had punished him, an eye for an eye.
She wants to ask him if a bootlegger can get into heaven. Or a bootlegger’s
wife, for that matter. She wants to ask him if there is a heaven. She wants to
ask him if there is a God. Foolish woman! Not a question for a rabbi. But the
truth is she receives little comfort from his respectful attendance or his
pieties or from the funeral service or the Kaddish her son, a child of six, had
dutifully repeated in a clear child’s voice at graveside, and has no hope of
heavenly intervention into the life she has already found to be absurd. Sitting
there, receiving condolences, she feels that God is unaware of her small
mistaken existence and that it would be dangerous to get the attention of such
a capricious deity who maybe has it in for orphan girls who get mixed up with
gangsters. So she says nothing as the rabbi rises to leave, lowering her eyes
and retreating into the hushed respect reserved for the newly widowed.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Read more of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Found-Daughters-Violence-Redemption/dp/1579620728" style="text-decoration: none;"><i>Lost & Found</i></a> by author and model, Babette Rosen Hughes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
OR read her novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hat-Babette-Hughes/dp/0865347840" style="text-decoration: none;"><i>The Hat</i></a>, a story of a bootlegger's wife.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Sequel, <i>The Red Scarf</i>, to be release in July 2013</div>
<br />Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-5596672684688800482013-04-29T19:14:00.001-07:002013-05-06T08:44:00.925-07:00My Country 'Tis of Thee<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">When I was in first grade
Miss Charlton (whom we called Charlie because of her mustache) marched us into
the auditorium to learn “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” She sat down at the piano
and led us through the song word by word, playing the piano with one hand and
directing us with the other. When we came to the phrase “Land where my father
died,” I </span><span style="line-height: 32px;">couldn't</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> figure out how they all </span></span><i style="font-family: Geneva; line-height: 200%;">knew</i><span style="font-family: Geneva;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">.
At home my father’s death was this big secret. There </span><span style="line-height: 32px;">wasn't</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> even a photograph
of him anywhere, as if a picture could suddenly whisper the truth. Since all
the other kids had fathers I reasoned it must be my father who died on the land
they were singing about. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Geneva; line-height: 200%;"> He vanished
without a trace of the ordinary clutter and details of a life, leaving not a
shadow nor footprint. There were no letters or insurance papers or tax receipts
to find. Not a watch or drivers’ license or birth certificate or deed to a
house. No marriage license or diploma. No fading photograph that he had
carried, maybe of me. Not a wedding portrait or snapshot at the beach. It was
as if during the 29 years of his life on earth he was already a ghost. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbVeo-w1d1z5EyEvlY5Jom6gA3xcXsgg1xyPUymCY94hESvOZVUhG5e56ghQkjyUKLQR-rVM-2olR9k6v50vWiUXiuPApge7m_Yxq6XpmtAOvAN39lZQJkPudd7YKGYNgTGgY2PpEK8rg/s1600/Babette+Hughes+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbVeo-w1d1z5EyEvlY5Jom6gA3xcXsgg1xyPUymCY94hESvOZVUhG5e56ghQkjyUKLQR-rVM-2olR9k6v50vWiUXiuPApge7m_Yxq6XpmtAOvAN39lZQJkPudd7YKGYNgTGgY2PpEK8rg/s320/Babette+Hughes+2.JPG" width="244" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Geneva;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> I was two years
old when my bootlegging father-- and innocent uncle who just happened to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time-- were murdered, and don’t remember him. But
my older brother, Kenny, told me of his charm, violent temper and
generosity. I found two pictures of him
among my mother’s possessions after she died. In one, my father is a dark-eyed child on a
tricycle. The other shows a muscular youth standing with his brother, Marvin,
in front of a horse and delivery wagon from the family bakery. The picture is
slightly out of focus, his grin blurred, but you can see his physical strength
and his readiness to use it. In the other he stands serenely in a handsome tan
suit looking for all the world like a gentleman of banking or the law. His lips
are thick and sensual, his brown eyes deep set. He is a beautiful young man
frozen in his youth by death, silence and myth. He is a stranger and a daddy
who </span><span style="line-height: 32px;">didn't</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> love us enough to stay alive.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEaY3vtmD2MTH07BFCBs405EgDBj3sPTxyhgQEkC4cDTZn6rDiqRVtfLmo-53t23Qq7O8ra38cGYwmiNKR2WJD344PpLppLoK3EjSMcw5C2bUYqJJAum8LdV1LjCGEj45lPBBf3TCtJTk/s1600/ClevelandPress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEaY3vtmD2MTH07BFCBs405EgDBj3sPTxyhgQEkC4cDTZn6rDiqRVtfLmo-53t23Qq7O8ra38cGYwmiNKR2WJD344PpLppLoK3EjSMcw5C2bUYqJJAum8LdV1LjCGEj45lPBBf3TCtJTk/s640/ClevelandPress.jpg" width="494" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Geneva; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-85989342144055935862013-04-22T16:15:00.002-07:002013-04-22T16:19:49.539-07:00Reluctant Model<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
After my mother pulled me out of 12<sup>th</sup>
grade, we made the rounds of department stores and shops and photographers. To
my surprise, I was hired by Halle’s to model in the tearoom at lunchtime; by
Higbee’s and May’s for their fashion shows; photographer Harry Cole for his
fashion shoots and catalogues and Quinn-Maas, an expensive specialty shop. I
strutted on runways, stretched my legs and pointed my toes for the
photographer, and in fashion’s convoluted calendar, posed in fur coats and
rivers of sweat in July and bathing suits and goosebumps in January. I
demonstrated vacuum cleaners at conventions, sprayed cologne at ladies in
department stores, paced runways in my new hip-swinging stride, all the while
feeling an immense sorrow. I had become my mother’s creation, her idea of me, a
no-brainer not even fit to finish high school, a moving, speaking walking size
8, her windup girl-toy, an early pioneering Barbie, pushed down the road of her
vicarious fantasies. With no idea of who I was or wanted to be, I went along,
riveted by her will as she sat in the dark corner of the photographer’s studio,
the front row of the style shows, the table in the tearoom.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQVzhU6kd3X43kco46y54YGhXjfbvnqeNo6gDzmS_V1wSUyTRLKdsfAY6D7wGwYxHrZqOScqycPFOwEsd3J3u7uynGNNV2SHysKg22Eq2MDiUi4MQPU15RCdQi9vRDGYj25q5h3BmSf4/s1600/Higbees.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQVzhU6kd3X43kco46y54YGhXjfbvnqeNo6gDzmS_V1wSUyTRLKdsfAY6D7wGwYxHrZqOScqycPFOwEsd3J3u7uynGNNV2SHysKg22Eq2MDiUi4MQPU15RCdQi9vRDGYj25q5h3BmSf4/s1600/Higbees.JPG" /></a></div>
Backstage
I changed outfits in 50 seconds. Or rather the two dressers did, one of them
stripping the clothes off my back while the other pulled the next change over
my head. They grabbed the shoes from my feet, thrusting my toes into another
pair (you hold onto the dresser’s back for balance) hung my neck with jewelry,
patted down my hair and there I was, out on the runway again. 50 seconds flat.
If it was a swimsuit show you were stripped naked but no one looked at you, not
even the male buyers and merchandisers who were milling around backstage.
They’d watch the audience through a part in the curtain or appraise the clothes
hanging on racks, or ask someone why numbers 26, 14 and 43 <span style="line-height: 24px;">weren't</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> in the show.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Every
day from twelve until two I modeled in Halle’s tearoom. In the dressing room,
staring at my reflection at the stranger in the mirror with the breasts and shimmering
silver gown and silver sandals, I seemed to have emerged overnight willed into
being by my mother.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Read more of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Found-Daughters-Violence-Redemption/dp/1579620728">Lost & Found</a> by author and model, Babette Rosen Hughes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
OR read her novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hat-Babette-Hughes/dp/0865347840">The Hat</a>, a story of a bootlegger's wife.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Sequel, The Red Scarf, to be release in July 2013</div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-79430897786935538152013-04-11T07:32:00.000-07:002013-04-11T07:34:28.039-07:00Gun Molls<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1636.html">Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey</a>
relied heavily on the testimony of gun molls of the 1930’s. When arrested and
interrogated, the women had to choose between jail or cooperating with the
prosecutors. If they choose cooperating they were given no protection and were
either murdered by their ex-lovers or forced into hiding for the rest of their
lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Meanwhile,
she was a worker bee. Performing the housework of crime, gun molls packed the
loot and ammunition—sometimes in the frantic moments of a police s<span style="line-height: 150%;">hootout-- purchased cars, rented
apartments to be used as hideouts, opened safe deposit boxes for the loot, and
acted as go-between between gang members scattered by the police.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEmOljg_Y8TUCB9-uziwpdTM9f5z84FQ7onsoC_fFUN511jqOZJKwGK6WMLBmRax4VIL6J74VxZvcGPGBOAW_V1_si_azOcMcJ66G_v7Psx8MMv2J_EmEMsSokShIU09dLKxGYCUuThvc/s1600/BillieFrechette-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEmOljg_Y8TUCB9-uziwpdTM9f5z84FQ7onsoC_fFUN511jqOZJKwGK6WMLBmRax4VIL6J74VxZvcGPGBOAW_V1_si_azOcMcJ66G_v7Psx8MMv2J_EmEMsSokShIU09dLKxGYCUuThvc/s1600/BillieFrechette-1.jpg" /></a> <b>Billie Frechette</b>, John Dillinger’s
lover, cooked, cleaned and ran his errands. She was born Evelyn “Billie”
Frechette in 1907 in Neopit, Wisconsin to a French father and a Native American
mother. She lived on the Menominee Reservation and attended school there until
the age of 13 when she moved to a government boarding school for Native
Americans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
When
she was 26, in 1933, after struggling to make ends meet cleaning and
waitressing, she met the 30-year old John Dillinger at a dance hall in Chicago,
and fell in love. Unlike Bonnie Parker she never participated in Dillinger’s
crimes but was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trgDVhZHIrc">arrested</a> anyway by the Department of Investigation Special
Agents on April 9, 1934 for harboring a criminal. Dillinger drove around the
block several times after her arrest unable to rescue her. She served 2 years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Tipped
off to the FBI by a girlfriend, Dillinger was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx2qTUg_">shot down</a> on July 22, 1934, as he
left a movie theater in Chicago. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Bonnie Parker</b>, gun moll to Clyde Barrow,
was born Oct. 1, 1910. She was the middle child and oldest daughter of Henry
and Emma Parker. An honor student and poet she worked as a waitress at Marco’s
café where she became friends with Ted Hinton (who would ironically take part
in gunning her down.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/cRYp6Xos79k?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe> She
met Clyde Barrow in 1930. When he was arrested, she smuggled a gun into the
prison, helping him escape. Then, two years after he was arrested again and
released, she joined him on a crime spree of robbery and murder until gunned
down by the police on May 23, 1934, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana..<o:p></o:p></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-15235269811938929302013-03-25T10:23:00.000-07:002013-03-25T10:23:51.979-07:00Bugsy Siegel
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“My
friends call me Ben, strangers call me Mr. Siegel, and guys I don’t like call
me Bugsy, but not to my face.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Still the name Bugsy stuck—even if
it was behind his back. It’s unknown whether the media—who loved writing about
the violent and dangerous-- or his cohorts-- gave him the name. But whether he
liked it or not, it was his during his lifetime and beyond.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></i>He was born Benjamin Hymen
Siegelbaum on February 28, 1906. Although he was a contemporary of my
bootlegging father, he lived to the ripe old age of 41 while my dad was
murdered in a turf war with the mafia when he was 29. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Siegel
was known as the father of Las Vegas because of his early establishment of the
Flamingo Hotel & Casino in the desert. He was the son of immigrants as were
other Jewish bootleggers of the time, like Morris Kleinman, Abe Landau, Moe
Dalitz and my father, Louis Rosen. Raised in the crime- ridden section of Williamsburg,
Siegel met Meyer Lansky with whom he built an empire of bootlegging, gambling
and murder, known as Murder, Inc. They became lifelong friends--that is, until
Lansky ordered his friend’s assassination in 1947 for skimming mob money from the
Flamingo Hotel.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With
an eye out for getting into the movies (Siegel was very handsome) he moved his
operations to the West Coast. Maintaining an extravagant lifestyle in Beverly
Hills he bought a palatial estate and established friendships with Hollywood
moguls and movie stars, as well as a relationship with the infamous <a href="http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/mob_bosses/women/3.html">Virginia Hill</a>.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
was murdered in the house rented by her at 810 Linden Drive, Beverly Hills. She
was out of town at the time--there are those who say it was highly recommended
to her that she “leave town for her health.” He was buried in a $5000.00 casket
in the Beth Olam section of Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Only five family
members showed up for the service which took place before the cemetery opened.
Among his possessions were a billfold with $408 in cash, a watch, a money clip,
a key chain with 6 keys (one being for a hotel room) a ring and a pair of
cufflinks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Here is a great documentary about Bugsy!</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ip89Afi18Ho?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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</div>
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And for you Boardwalk Empire Fans...</div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
<br />
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
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Next: Gun Molls <o:p></o:p></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-32430030916195405182013-03-18T07:32:00.001-07:002013-03-18T07:32:43.968-07:00Meyer Lansky
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifv-_Me7EPK6Ak1wcS7h7BlpxIQsTXiwsOXw3ApAhzD-BG-onm_527tDpX8LJv9qmGtXK_inhyphenhypheneKulmsKAa_kOY-fCLfgbEtr2gtM5_aSb0bKjuXT1b-KmPX14wPkApXBMMD56Pvy0ps4/s1600/Lansky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifv-_Me7EPK6Ak1wcS7h7BlpxIQsTXiwsOXw3ApAhzD-BG-onm_527tDpX8LJv9qmGtXK_inhyphenhypheneKulmsKAa_kOY-fCLfgbEtr2gtM5_aSb0bKjuXT1b-KmPX14wPkApXBMMD56Pvy0ps4/s320/Lansky.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Whoever said that crime doesn’t pay
didn’t know about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgXnC6M63Bc">Meyer Lansky</a>, the Jewish bootlegger, gambler and all around
criminal, who, in 1970, was worth $300,000,000. He hid his money in a Swiss
numbered bank account, whose anonymity was assured by the 1934 Swiss Banking
Act.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Unlike
most criminals, Lansky reached the ripe old age of 81, while my bootlegging
father, who was Lansky’s contemporary, was killed at 29 -- and whatever money was
left to my mother was lost in the Great Depression.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lansky
was born Meyer Suchowljansky in Russia to a Jewish family who, he claimed
experienced vicious anti-Semitic pograms. In 1911 he immigrated to the US with
his mother and brother. He met Bugsy Siegel on the Lower East Side when they
were teenagers. They became lifelong friends—Bugsy saved Lansky’s life more
than once -- and became partners in the bootlegging trade along with Lucky Luciano.
Lansky was instrumental in Luciano’s rise to power by organizing the 1931
murder of Mafia powerhouse <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvZzxrA2G8o">Salvatore Maranzano</a>. (Get ready for that story, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds5miNwDlU4">Boardwalk Empire fans</a>!)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By
1936 he had developed a gambling empire that stretched from Saratoga, New York,
to Miami, to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Las Vegas. He was into narcotics,
pornography, prostitution, labour racketeering and extortion and also got
control of legitimate hotels, golf courses and a meat-packing plant<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
organized mob funding for Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las
Vegas. But when he kept its losing money, Lansky ordered his friend’s
execution.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Like
Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegle, he captured the imagination of authors,
television producers and moviemakers. The character Hyman Roth in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgSczBulS-Q">The Godfather Part 11</a></i> was based on
Lansky. Max Bercovicz, the gangster played by James Woods in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Once Upon A Time In America</i> was inspired
by Meyer Lansky, as well as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Havana,</i>
staring Robert Redford. Dustin Hoffman played Lansky in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343996/">The Lost City</a></i></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Does
that say something about our culture’s values? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lansky
died of lung cancer on January 15, 1983, after spending a quiet respectable
life in Miami. He was buried there in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
left behind a widow and three children.</div>
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Interview with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UNJTPtmZhI">Meyer Lansky, 1971</a></div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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Next: Bugsy Siegel<o:p></o:p></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-34915459808375628372013-02-25T19:37:00.001-08:002013-02-25T19:37:23.936-08:00Arnold Rothstein<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgnyyO-f4VKG92jsmE5bJpNMeIpcvr5eZEz1WQnoc0kK41qarL5_SUAO59xWjuA3wLLqx0hv7ZG5YZjgOPyvJJOUngzx5XqAecf28qYPKONhgbc57x84_8xUjNWLCyBMKXHG3rVGiC8Q/s1600/arnold+rothstein.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgnyyO-f4VKG92jsmE5bJpNMeIpcvr5eZEz1WQnoc0kK41qarL5_SUAO59xWjuA3wLLqx0hv7ZG5YZjgOPyvJJOUngzx5XqAecf28qYPKONhgbc57x84_8xUjNWLCyBMKXHG3rVGiC8Q/s320/arnold+rothstein.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
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When I was two years old, my bootlegging
father, <a href="http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_343.html">Louis Rosen</a>, was murdered along with my innocent uncle in a turf war
with the Mafia. They were ambushed and shot in our driveway as they arrived
home from a card game at Taback’s Cigar Store. Although the killer got away, it
was well known not only who he was but that he would never be identified. The
impact on my family and on my life-- amid the drama of Prohibition and the
Great Depression-- has animated my memoir and novels. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
father was among a Whose Who of Jewish bootleggers, whose histories are varied,
interesting and complicated. For example. Arnold Rothstein’s background made
him an unlikely “kingpin of the Jewish underworld.” His brother became a rabbi
and his father, who served as chairman of the board of New York’s Beth Israel
Hospital, was a pious and wealthy businessman known for philanthropy and
honesty, <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
Rothstein’s late 20’s he opened a gambling parlor; by 1912, when he was thirty,
he was a millionaire. He captured the imagination of his time-- Damon Runyan
modeled the character <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A2SbV-NiAM">Nathan Detroit</a> in “Guys and Dolls” after Rothstein. And in
“The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald created a Rothstein-based character, named
Meyer Wolfsheim. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
1919 Rothstein arranged, through an intermediary, to pay the <a href="http://www.thisgreatgame.com/1919-baseball-history.html">Chicago White Sox</a>
players $80,000 on the condition that they lose to Cincinnati. They did, and
Rothstein made a fortune betting against Chicago. In 1921 eight players, led by
first- baseman Chick Gandill, were convicted of trying to fix the Series.
Rothman, who never met the players and could say that he never approved the
intermediary’s scheme, was acquitted.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
was murdered by a fellow gambler in 1928 at the age of 46 without revealing his
assailant’s name. Because of his father, he received an Orthodox Jewish funeral
with the renowned rabbi, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Jung">Leo Jung</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Next:
Meyer Lansky</div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-48071429264981648162013-02-19T08:44:00.001-08:002013-02-19T09:41:33.804-08:00Downton Abbey, Season 3 Finale<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLWr3w2bLCU7SXvlJJEnr67d8E2NfxtDIFyycGPDw9Wcirt448KYkcDjldlp2lEJgUf_qkHGVNCH5AgCHbubQzmqpSukcAJroSh9hNd14NC38IEB4ILdY-Dut-MPLn7fqXbn073sv4blU/s1600/downton+abbey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLWr3w2bLCU7SXvlJJEnr67d8E2NfxtDIFyycGPDw9Wcirt448KYkcDjldlp2lEJgUf_qkHGVNCH5AgCHbubQzmqpSukcAJroSh9hNd14NC38IEB4ILdY-Dut-MPLn7fqXbn073sv4blU/s320/downton+abbey.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style"; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">According
to an interview with Julian Fellowes, creator and writer of Downton Abbey, the
theme of the series is about people
confronting change whether they like it or not. The show started in 1912, just
before the Great War, but in the 1920’s there was an accelerated rate of
change. It was actually the end of the Second World War that was the coup de
grace for <st1:place w:st="on">Crawley</st1:place> type people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">Jessica Brown Findlay</span></span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 150%;"> who played Lady Sybil, and Dan Stevens who played Mathew Crawley wanted
to leave after season three, so they had to be killed off—Sybil in </span></span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">childbirth</span></span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 150%;"> and Mathew in a car crash. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style"; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
back story about Robert and Cora is how she came to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region> as an American heiress and
met Robert who married her for her money and then fell in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The
ending of season 3 has left enough loose ends for season 4 and beyond. Mary,
now a young widow, is poised for new love and maybe a comeuppance for her
snobbery. Thomas’ revelation that he is gay is another interesting story
line. The introduction of “difficult” Rose, who has left her mean mother and
moved in with the Crawleys, provides more potential drama. And what about Lady
Edith on the threshold of finding love and becoming (gasp!) a mistress!
But all the characters in Downton Abbey are so richly drawn in their
humanity, that as I write, I am in withdrawal.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--></span>Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-82643131068063139182013-02-12T06:57:00.002-08:002013-02-12T06:57:11.312-08:00Season Three, Episode Six<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXh3d5KoEIBgD5O75V4GWQJ3WJ6F828z5NWuzQ9g2IZBJkfPg4BDK5ksy2tBeNJFE35F5bMS4zRz9apGZOnyq_r7TcUOtQ9tFBEM7wyCMqG_U-ULjfnu6EKafN4HdoQ7gUimzngtlq0ic/s1600/dowager1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXh3d5KoEIBgD5O75V4GWQJ3WJ6F828z5NWuzQ9g2IZBJkfPg4BDK5ksy2tBeNJFE35F5bMS4zRz9apGZOnyq_r7TcUOtQ9tFBEM7wyCMqG_U-ULjfnu6EKafN4HdoQ7gUimzngtlq0ic/s320/dowager1.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXh3d5KoEIBgD5O75V4GWQJ3WJ6F828z5NWuzQ9g2IZBJkfPg4BDK5ksy2tBeNJFE35F5bMS4zRz9apGZOnyq_r7TcUOtQ9tFBEM7wyCMqG_U-ULjfnu6EKafN4HdoQ7gUimzngtlq0ic/s1600/dowager1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; clear: left; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;">Watching Downton Abbey last night I was reminded of wisdom given in writing workshop I attended namely, that without conflict there is no story. Which may be one of the reasons we’re riveted each and every week.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;">For example: conflicts between physicians leading to Sybil’s death…between Mathew and Robert about running the estate…….between compassion and bias regarding an ex-prostitute trying to change her life…..between guilt and forgiveness of Sybil’s parents…between the generations as Robert Crowley and Mr. Carson cling stubbornly to changing times……between religions……between names for the baby.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;">There has to be good news, too. Mr. Bates’ final release from prison. A new baby girl. The promise of Daisy’s release from service into a new and promising future.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;">Have you ever seen such gorgeous mourning clothes? And those magnificent hats!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;">When did ladies stop wearing hats?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;"> </span>Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-59415320639568679962013-01-28T14:12:00.002-08:002013-01-28T14:12:46.159-08:00DOWNTON ABBEY: SEASON THREE, EPISODE FOUR<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
A birth and a death. A former prostitute. Kitchen and estate conflicts. The continuing saga of Mr. Bates’ murder conviction. The old guard represented by Grandmamma; the new by Mathew’s mother, Mrs. Crowley. These themes and more were all layered deliciously in the fourth segment of Downton Abbey. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But two doctors arguing vehemently and loudly about life and death treatment for a woman in labor? In front of the family yet? Please. Now I know Downton Abbey is a fairy tale!</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But what a fairy tale. And how interesting and surprising as each doctor proves to be right-- and then wrong-- about their diagnosis of Lady Sybil, leading to her death. The baby survives, as everyone upstairs and downstairs in Downton Abbey mourns Lady Sybil— no doubt among millions of viewers all over the world.</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Meanwhile there is a conflict about running the estate—with more foreshadowed to come—between young Mathew, whose money saved Downton Abbey, and Lord Crowley, the head honcho-- also illustrating the generational conflict between the status-quo and moderninity.</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here’s what I especially like about Downtown Abbey:</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>* It’s gentleness amidst all the violence in television and movies-- and in life.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span> *The classically trained actors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*The depiction of a unique time and place that is gone forever, never to return. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*It’s awareness of the changes in society and the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*The beauty of the production.</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>* The pleasure of living vicariously with dozens of servants (cooks, drivers, footmen. Ladies maids! Valets! Who dress you!)</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*I love stories and this is a good one! </div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-3208516576295201162013-01-14T09:49:00.002-08:002013-01-14T09:49:38.709-08:00Downtown Abbey: Season 3, Episode 2<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Confronted by a letter Lavinia sent from her deathbed endowing her wealth to Mathew, he finally relented and used his inheritance to save Downton Abbey. (Surprise surprise)</div>
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After keeping us—and the Abbey staff --in suspense about whether Mrs. Hughes is sick we learn with relief before the hour is up that she doesn’t have cancer.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Anna, in her search for information that can prove her husband’s innocence and obtain his release from a lifetime in prison, learns that the woman he is convicted of killing was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">afraid</b> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">of him</b>! Could our nice Mr. Bates really be a murderer? If so, I think it could put some interesting teeth into the story.</div>
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And poor Lady Edith! As if being outshone by her prettier sisters for her entire life wasn’t enough of a humiliation, she is jilted publicly by the groom as she stands at the alter in her wedding gown. Only a total jerk would do something that horrible to a woman so maybe she is well rid of him.</div>
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My favorite character in Downton Abbey is Mathew’s mother, Mrs. Crawley. Unlike her fellow aristocrats she believes that the privileged have responsibilities to the less fortunate. In this episode she is helping prostitutes and reaching out to a particular young woman who, viewers of previous episodes will recognize as having been formerly involved with the <st1:place w:st="on">Crawley</st1:place> family.</div>
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When someone is the family wonders how to help Lady Edith, who is so devastated she can’t eat or sleep, Mrs. Crawly, always a voice of reason, replies, “Get her some work to do!”</div>
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I love the hats...</div>
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Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-71325936220404790212013-01-09T11:36:00.002-08:002013-01-09T11:43:24.245-08:00DOWNTON ABBEY, Season 3, Episode 1<br />
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<span style="line-height: 150%;">Last night money reared its vulgar
head among the gentle aristocrats of Downton Abbey’s third season. It almost
wrecked the marriage of Mathew and Lady Mary when he refused to use his inherited
windfall to save Downton Abbey, suddenly on the brink of bankruptcy. Cora’s wealthy
American mother, Martha, arriving for Mary’s and Mathew’s wedding, also refused
to help. Daisy downstairs </span><span style="line-height: 24px;">hasn't</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> received her promotion from kitchen maid to kitchen
assistant. The place is understaffed. The formidable Lord Crawley of Downton
Abbey is brought down to tears. No one has the faintest idea how to survive
without valets, ladies’ maids, footmen, butlers, cooks, chauffeurs. Who knows
what pitfalls remain as the Crawlely’s are brought kicking and screaming into
the real world? And who cares?</span></div>
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I
do! And according to the New York Times I am not alone. More than 120 million viewers
in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Sweden</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">South Korea</st1:country-region>,
the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place> and dozens of other locales
are also addicted.</div>
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We
wait to see what happens to Mr. Bates in prison for murdering his wife; Mrs.
Hughes’ cancer; Tom’s dirty tricks; Martha’s American maid’s kisses. But unlike
in real life, the plotting is too deliciously predictable to have to really worry
about the Crawleys’ fate. All we have to do is relax in vicarious luxury and
watch. </div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-43303629756046805332012-12-11T12:34:00.001-08:002012-12-11T12:34:25.368-08:00How big is the Fiscal Cliff Drop Off? Comparing today's recession to The Great Depression<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLetqfZFpGWU4YoI1nonBa_6lTDr1BOaHMfnmI87IE-S7_RIxj_1bvOQISIdEeS_T-mcy7ZZPCB3cI-sTV3RfDsLXDBa2J38G6AYlUkfEo_ai8zr5KwrNIHSh-FcsZljl7K0agaUH-Bg8/s1600/great-depression-family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img bea="true" border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLetqfZFpGWU4YoI1nonBa_6lTDr1BOaHMfnmI87IE-S7_RIxj_1bvOQISIdEeS_T-mcy7ZZPCB3cI-sTV3RfDsLXDBa2J38G6AYlUkfEo_ai8zr5KwrNIHSh-FcsZljl7K0agaUH-Bg8/s320/great-depression-family.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'American Typewriter';">The other night I saw Ken Burns’ Documentary on PBS about the Kansas Dust Bowl. In 1933, during the Great Depression, huge black clouds dumped layers of sand and dust over everything and everyone, killing cattle with famine and people with dust pneumonia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moving east it dumped four million tons of prairie dirt on <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:city>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'American Typewriter';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Watching, I was reminded of living through that awful time in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:city>. My bootlegging father had been murdered in a turf war with the Mafia, leaving my mother with two children to raise during the Great Depression. A young widow, she worked in the Engineering Department in the City Hall. The City of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:city> was so broke it paid its employees in “script” which was like Monopoly play money. On payday my mother would put me in the car, drive to the grocery store, and send me in to ask if they took script. I was 8 years old. Too humiliated to go in herself she waited in the car at the curb. The answer was usually “no” so she would drive to another store and another until I came back to the car with the good news that that store actually took script. Then she would go in and buy groceries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'American Typewriter';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some have compared the Depression to the 2009 Recession, but there is no parallel. Unemployment went from 3% in 1929 to 25% after the Wall Street Crash. Fully half of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:city> workers were jobless. There were long soup lines. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 90% of its value. Scores of people were killing themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'American Typewriter';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Potatoes were a penny a pound. You could feed a family for a week on five dollars. Cars cost $500 and had a terrific rumble seat that opened in the back. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rent for a three-room apartment was $60 a month. Movies cost a dime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'American Typewriter';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rightly or wrongly President Herbert Hoover was blamed. The shanty towns of tents people had to live in were called Hoovervilles. Food dished out in soup lines was called Hoover Stew; <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hoover</st1:place></st1:city> blankets were newspapers; Hoover Wagons the broken down cars that were pulled by mules.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'American Typewriter';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But it was a better <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>. We were like family looking out for each other, united in our mutual struggle and shared experience. There was not the bitter personal and political polarization that exists today or the abyss between the rich and poor or <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>’s political paralysis. Even Al Capone opened a soup kitchen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'American Typewriter';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Surely we never want to return to those heartbreaking and dangerous years. But perhaps we can learn something from them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-44984069922732376252012-12-02T19:52:00.000-08:002012-12-02T19:52:03.821-08:00BOARDWALKE EMPIRE: Season 3, Episode 12
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEkBmT4RFlai59xR19uqJm4Luf1m71uznQhJjA4Uwz3lltHztT7I3ipCCUH-O_onx0v5_rIw6O3y7QF_FaRHENBv1qLjEuoeeh3ZoOaX9T3EmtKL7NW0Q2yRy68Q4QmUtneJbOJ9BQzwU/s1600/Harrow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEkBmT4RFlai59xR19uqJm4Luf1m71uznQhJjA4Uwz3lltHztT7I3ipCCUH-O_onx0v5_rIw6O3y7QF_FaRHENBv1qLjEuoeeh3ZoOaX9T3EmtKL7NW0Q2yRy68Q4QmUtneJbOJ9BQzwU/s320/Harrow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The season finale started with guns a blazing, and unfortunately not everyone survived the war. Sorry Gyp lovers. He was just too insane to live, but I have
faith in the Boardwalk Empire writers to create a new outlandish character in
Season Four. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This season wrapped up with lots of
people finally getting what they deserve. Unfortunately, Gillian made the cut. I wish Gyp was a dominant instead of a submissive. I guess we will have to deal with the psychotic
woman for another season. Thank goodness Harrow took Tommy to safety. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Nucky is starting a new world of problems for himself
though. He has sent the FEDS to the hooch warehouse -- incriminating Arnold
Rothstein and Joe Masseria. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Season Three is over, and I have to say, I find myself
mildly disappointed. The episodes seem consistently predictable with a few
oddities being exposed. We saw Gillian killing the Jimmy look-alike from a mile
away. We predicted Owen Sleater’s death, and Gyp definitely had it coming by
deductive reasoning. Am I getting used to the writers’ style or is the series
taking a true nose dive?</span></div>
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Several Boardwalk Empire fans have expressed disappointment with the amount of time the show spent on women's health issues. I love to see the historical aspects of the Prohibition era! Of course the turf wars and the booze runs are thrilling, but there is a lot to learn from this period. The government is intervening on social issues. Women's health, substance use --why are these issues being regulated by the United States government?</div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now it’s time to spend the next few months studying the
history of Nucky Johnson, Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, Meyer
Lansky, and Joe Masseria. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Stay tuned to the blog to see if we can figure out next
season’s plot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-81638683563945514632012-11-26T11:50:00.000-08:002012-11-26T11:50:42.504-08:00BOARDWALK EMPIRE: Season 3, Episode 11<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyqYyts3Tp6XT36bDsZiZ3BL8i_UYKeKCnohm5_69k72JOa6BP-C2__CbqZFhqdvkABz31i8P7yjht3bSHxLl4K2Ob2TEOA42dVr1DD_dONmUzrbIqoqyuRH0NztXOsIbUbaP-KossQ7c/s1600/Harrow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyqYyts3Tp6XT36bDsZiZ3BL8i_UYKeKCnohm5_69k72JOa6BP-C2__CbqZFhqdvkABz31i8P7yjht3bSHxLl4K2Ob2TEOA42dVr1DD_dONmUzrbIqoqyuRH0NztXOsIbUbaP-KossQ7c/s320/Harrow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It looks like the Boardwalk Empire fans who have been
screaming for more Capone, Luciano, Chalky and <st1:place w:st="on">Harrow</st1:place>
are finally going to get their wish! I cannot wait to see how this turf war is
going to play out! I have a feeling Gyp Rossetti’s days are numbered – seven to
be exact. </div>
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I didn’t think the writers had any more room to ramp up the
climax to this saga, but it looks like they were able to make the climax point
the size of a pin head last night. Margaret and the kids have safely escaped,
whether that is from Nucky or Gyp Rossetti’s henchmen is not known yet. It
looks like we will have to wait a year to find out how Owen perished and what
the next move is for the Thompson relationship. </div>
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Nucky and Eddie are taking refuge on the north of the
tracks, and Nucky finally knows who is truly willing to back him. Eddie took a
bullet for the man, and Chalky is risking his life and the lives of his community
members for the man who has denied him everything this season. Why are Eddie
and Chalky backing Nucky? I guess it is the only way Chalky knows he will gain
any leverage in <st1:city w:st="on">Atlantic City</st1:city>.
Gyp surely isn’t going to give Chalky the turf and respect he deserves. We
still don’t know why Eddie puts up with Nucky’s abuse. Hopefully Nucky’s eyes
stay open to who helps him out of this jam.</div>
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Speaking of men who have finally had enough abuse from their
captors, I cannot wait to see <st1:place w:st="on">Harrow</st1:place> finally
give Gillian what is coming to her. I want him to take Tommy away from that
nightmare and to live a happy and healthy life with Julia. I really have a feeling
that Harrow is going to not only save Tommy but also Nucky and the rest of the <st1:city w:st="on">Atlantic City</st1:city> gang.</div>
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Body Count Prediction: I think Gyp’s time is up next week,
and I think <st1:place w:st="on">Harrow</st1:place> is going to be the one to
send him to his maker.</div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167020643588249284.post-66769460196642703062012-11-19T07:58:00.003-08:002012-11-19T07:58:45.771-08:00BOARDWALK EMPIRE: SEASON 3, EPISODE 10<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB-hv1oLEEphQBlHe9ZhHjOZi-LH94CubvOD0pIPVG1y-p01WvqqXHX8BA7oQYgnc-hkK5TR18XN1Dh4J1W2J1O_J4V_5_i5f2fUDlq6asXJIQ8gkzLZMfNc0jiWuWG7UBPFYTEgeRGm4/s1600/owen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB-hv1oLEEphQBlHe9ZhHjOZi-LH94CubvOD0pIPVG1y-p01WvqqXHX8BA7oQYgnc-hkK5TR18XN1Dh4J1W2J1O_J4V_5_i5f2fUDlq6asXJIQ8gkzLZMfNc0jiWuWG7UBPFYTEgeRGm4/s320/owen.jpg" width="320" /></a>Unfortunately, my body count prediction was correct for this
episode. Margaret and all of the female viewers swooning over Owen are
heartbroken. Even I woke up this morning feeling a little sad for Margaret.
What is she going to do? Pregnant with Owen’s child, and we all know she hasn’t
been physically romantic with Nucky. If she knows what’s best for her, she’ll
buck up and perform her wifely duties or she’ll end up at the bottom of the sea
with Owen, instead of in <st1:city w:st="on">St. Louis</st1:city>.
OR, she can continue with her plan to move west with only the children. </div>
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Killing the wife off in mobster stories is a very touchy
area. First reason being, the first suspect in any woman’s death is the
husband. Secondly, why kill her when you can make her pay for her adultery for
years to come. Maybe Nucky will once again see the helpless woman that he fell
in love with and grow a heart. After all, he did just lose his love only weeks
ago. Speaking of which, how is Nucky healed from his PTSD symptoms so quickly?
No ear ringing, no shell shock, no flashbacks. </div>
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I was hoping this season would bring more in terms of <st1:place w:st="on">Harrow</st1:place>. It is great that <st1:place w:st="on">Harrow</st1:place>
has found love, but it’s looking like he is setting himself up for making the
body count list. Not only does it look like he is thinking of taking Tommy from
Gillian Darmody but now he is on the old man’s list. </div>
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Both Margaret and <st1:place w:st="on">Harrow</st1:place>
have intentions of making a run for it, and if there is anything I know as a
mafia crime writer it is that no one escapes without either dying or getting
their hands bloody. </div>
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Body Count: There are so many people that could make the
chopping block next week! Margaret for cheating, <st1:place w:st="on">Harrow</st1:place>
for beating up an old man, Gillian so Harrow can take Jimmy, and Gyp for the
turf war and just being plain evil. We have two more episodes, and I have a
feeling Gyp is going to get it. Maybe Chalky will come to Nucky’s rescue once
more by killing Gyp, and he will get that club after all.</div>
Babette Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02799572650493797575noreply@blogger.com0