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Archive for the ‘Smooth or Crunchy’ Category

Carlos "The Little Man" Marcello (Fe...

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Only 3 more weeks before we wrap up the twisting, turning, yet ever-inching closely to the highest offices in the country and to those whose very fortunes relied on getting rid of John F. Kennedy!!!

CARLOS MARCELLO

New Orleans Mafia don Carlos Marcello (born Calagero Minacore) was a protegé of New York mob boss, Frank Costello.  By 1963 Marcello ran a multi-million dollar empire spread over several states, including Texas, yet according to New Orleans FBI agent Regis Kennedy, he was a mere tomato salesman earning $1600 a month.  In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, aware that Marcello held only a questionable Guatemalan passport, had him abducted, flown to Guatemala City and unceremoniously dumped.  After sneaking back to the U.S. via Miami, Marcello was heard making threats against Robert Kennedy.  A Marcello associate to the HSCA that in 1962 Marcello had said, “Don’t worry about that little Bobby son-of-a-bitch, he’s going to be taken care of”.  He also supposedly spoke of using a nut, someone who couldn’t be traced back to him to kill the President.  But Oswald would have been a poor choice for Marcello, since his uncle and surrogate father, Dutz Murret, was a bookie for Marcello lieutenant, Nofio Pecora, and Oswald’s associate David Ferrie had helped plan legal strategy for Marcello’s deportation hearings and was with him in court the morning of the assassination.  Marcello also had strong ties to Jack Ruby‘s friend, Dallas Mafia chief, Joe Civello.

Marcello’s operations benefited greatly from the largess of Hoffa’s Teamster Pension Fund.  In 1965-7, with the help of lobbyist Irving Davidson, and $1 million dollars donated by his mob friends, Marcello spearheaded the “Save Hoffa” movement, later to become the “Spring Hoffa” movement.  Currently serving time for wire and mail fraud, and reportedly suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, he is due to be released in 1994.

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Jimmy Hoffa

James Hoffa

Week 31-FOLLOW  the trail!!!!! This week the trail to the White House or rather those who aspired to be there becomes really clear.  Read it and read it again and you’ll be shaking your head in disbelief. BUT the names are there, look them up for yourself.

AMONG THE MISSING

Robert Kennedy had pursued Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa since the 1950’s, when he served as chief counsel for the Senate McClellan Committee, which exposed organized crime in labor unions.  On becoming Attorney General in 1961, Robert turned up the heat, and over th next few years his “Get Hoffa Squad” brought multiple indictments against Teamster officials.  By 1962, the pressure was intense, and a teamster informant quoted Hoffa as saying “Somebody needs to bump that son-of-a-bitch off.  Bobby Kennedy has got to go”.  After the assassination, Hoffa told a reporter, “Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now”, but despite his bravado, he was convicted of jury tampering in 1964 and sent to prison, where he remained till 1971, when President Nixon pardoned him.

Under Hoffa, the Teamster Central States Pension Fund (CSPF) was managed by Chicago gangster Allen Dorfman, who made low-interest loans , involving kickbacks, to Las Vegas casino developers.  Some CSPF loans were political : in 1963 25 million was lent to the firm Webb and Knapp, financiers behind the Great South West Corporation, a shady Texas land deal backed by the Murchison family and controlled by their lawyer Bedford Wynne.  With this loan, Webb and Knapp bought 625,000 shares of over-valued real estate stock from a company run by Texas Democratic Party Chairman Eugene Locke, in whose offices the fateful Dallas motorcade route was planned.  Looke became Lyndon Johnson’s ambassador to Vietnam in 1967-8.  Webb and Knapp went bankrupt in 1965.  Hoffa vanished in 1975, and rumors persist that the mob killed him and buried his body in Jersey’s Meadowland Stadium.

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Current title card

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The Blizzard of 2010 arrived as predicted (so we can’t say we didn’t know it was coming) and in less than 3 hours our world was blanketed in a white powdery mantle.  Oh it looked so pretty coming down in big flakes.  And I noticed how quickly it was accumulating and decided to chronicle the snow storm – see previous blogs beginning with: Chronicle of a Snow Storm  .

Taking pictures from the front door or the back door only took a few moments so uh now, what do I do?  The photos in the Chronicle blogs tell the story of how white your world can be when 28″ – 30″ of snow fall in 24 hours but what was going on inside the house.  Well when you are house-bound for four days, you gotta do something!!  It was definitely easier for me than my husband, basically because I always do more things AND I have my computer.

  1. Playing on my computer has to be number one because I was on it a LOT every day;  I played  Scrabble with my Facebook friends, checked email, wrote blogs, cruised through Ebay and read other blogs.
  2. Nothing like daylight and the reflection of bright snow to show you where all the finger prints on doors and drawers are.  I spent some of each of the four days with Simple Green in one hand and paper towels in the other.
  3. Paid a lot of bills online.  Actually wrote out a couple of checks but couldn’t mail them!
  4. Because I was sleeping later and really had no where to go, I made breakfast for my husband. Yeah, really, bacon and eggs and coffee and an English muffin.
  5. Watched Dr. Phil and Judge Judy every afternoon – love them both!
  6. Ate Christmas dinner left-overs.  We had dinners of soup, stuffed shells, salad and broccoli. And dessert every night!!!
  7. Started to put away some of the Christmas decorations;  I would have done much more except that we couldn’t get to the garage to retrieve the bins.  But I did get to the back of the closet and organize a couple of boxes.
  8. Wrapped each piece of the Christmas china and packed in the one bin I had in the house.
  9. Knitted – I am way behind on a project, a gift for my new granddaughter, Francesca.
  10. Cut up the newspapers I needed for another little project.  Couldn’t seem to get beyond that part though.

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Yay late last night the plow came up our side of Broadway, a sign that perhaps life outside of these four walls could start again.  I heard the truck and plow make a least two more passes.  I was hoping that the plow had not pushed a new wall of snow up against the car.  I mean let’s not forget that this cleared parking space cost me $ 40.

We had ventured out yesterday in hopes of putting Peter on the train back to NYC and his version of civilization.  Since the majority of my readers don’t have a sense of the roads and towns around us, I can’t relate the horror story of that adventure.  Let me just say that we left at 1:15pm and got home again at 4:15pm AND Peter never got near the train station!!! State highways remained un-plowed and abandoned cars littered whatever pathway we tried to take.  AND to add to the stress of this total misadventure, we were in an accident.   Yup, an ambulance side-swiped our car and we were STOPPED on the side of the road.  Well that all happened in Day 3 and this is supposed to be about Day 4.

Today Peter decided to dig a path to the shed.  Why? Well it wasn’t to retrieve the 50 lbs of salt he had stashed in there, and it wasn’t to get the folding shovel that is supposed to be in the car at this time of the year but for some irresponsible reason was still in the shed!!  NO, he wanted to get at the bird seed so he could at least toss some seed on the snow so that our little feathered friends and our furry little squirrels would have some sustenance!  Digging his way to the bird feeder would be another day – the drifts are just too high.

Ocean GRove, La Vie en Rose, shed, blizzard, snow removal

Going to the Birds!

Ocean Grove, bird seed, La Vie en Rose, bird feeder, blizzard

A Banquet for the Birds

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Isabel Allende

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Well Christmas dinner came and went and everything was delicious and we are still eating leftovers.  So there’s no more count-down to Christmas dinner, instead I have an interesting  recipe to share with you today.

Last night I had a pretty big argument with my husband and don’t worry we are all made up – at least on the surface for sure.  Perhaps the underlying issue is something we can’t work out completely.  So in that vein, I offer you the famed recipe for Reconciliation Soup.

RECONCILIATION SOUP

1/2 cup portabellla mushrooms (1/4 cup if dried)

1/2 cup porcini mushrooms (1/4 cup if dried)

1 cup of brown mushrooms

1 clove of garlic, minced

3 TBS olive oil

2 cups of beef, chicken or vegetable stock

1/4 cup Port wine

1 TBS truffled olive oil

Salt + Pepper

2 TBS sour cream

Saute garlic and mushrooms in oil, stirring vigorously for about 5 minutes

Add the stock, truffle oil and Port wine

Season with salt and pepper

Cook over low heat with the cover on until the mushrooms are soft

Process in the blender, soup should be thick

Serve in warm bowls, garnish with sour cream

Recipe made famous by Isabel Allende – who adds the following instructions:

If you can’t find fresh mushrooms and must use dried ones, soak them in 1/2 c. of good red wine until they spring up happily; in the meantime, while they’re soaking, I calmly drink the remainder of the wine.  Then I mince the garlic clove for the pure pleasure of smelling my fingers, because I could just as easily use it whole, and then saute it with all the mushrooms in the olive oil, stirring vigorously for a few minutes — I’ve never counted, but let’s say five.  I add the stock, the port, and the truffled olive oil — not quite all of it.  I leave a couple of drops to dab behind my ears; let’s not forget, it’s aphorodisiac.  I season with salt and pepper, and cook over low heat with the lid on until the mushrooms are soft and the house smells like heaven.  The last step:  process it in the blender; this is the least poetic part of the preparation, but it’s unavoidable.  The soup should end up with a slightly thick texture, like mud, and with a perfume that makes you salivate and awakens other secretions of body and soul.  I put on my best dress, paint my fingernails red, and serve the soup, in warmed bowls, garnished with a dollop of sour cream.

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Cabin fever reached a high point last night with my disgruntled spouse.  He wants to be back in NYC and that’s that.  So we decided he should really attempt to go home today by train.  He was hesitant to leave me here with a snow bound car and two cats but I’m adamant about not leaving the car here and/or taking it back to NYC and we can’t park it.  This is what Day 3 looked like from my vantage point behind the door and in my warm cozy cottage.

 

Ocean Grove, La Vie en Rose, December 28

Chunks of Snow Piled Up

 

Broad, Ocean Grove, December 28

Look What Drifts the Winds Hath Wrought

We did attempt to get to the train station and without going into the myriad lefts, rights, detours, traffic jams,  a side-swipe and numerous stops and starts I’m pleased to report that we are now safely back in the cottage.  The adventures of the afternoon included going the wrong way on a one-way street just so we could get back because we never did get to the train station.  It’s not safe out there for man or beast.  We are hunkered down for a couple more days.

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If you had to be marooned by a storm, this would be the place I’d like to be.  I’m happy in my little cottage sitting out the blizzard.  Not so with my spouse!  He is definitely an apartment dweller and feels vulnerable here.   Well he is partially true;  if the power goes out, he really has nowhere to go,  eventually the house would get cold, not even sure I would be able to cook on the gas stove whereas in NYC rarely is everyone out at the same time and restaurants have generators.  Oh dear what is he to do?

I’m drinking the last of the eggnog and picking on hors d’oeuvres while he is fretting. I say go with the flow; we’re inside, the heat is on, there is food and lots of movies  to watch.  The lazy cats have been tucked in their beds all afternoon – of course their beds are near the radiator.

It started to snow about 10am and it quickly went from flurries to flakes to heavy snowfall.  Around 12:30 I took a few photos of the front porch and the backyard where the bird feeder hangs;

December 26th, front porch, La Vie en Rose, Ocean Grove
Front Porch 12:30pm
Bird feeder, Ocean Grove,

Backyard Bird Feeder 12:30pm

Front porch La Vie en Rose, Ocean Grove, Boxing Day

Front Porch 2:30pm

 

sparrows on feeder, Ocean Grove, 30pmVie en Rose

Boxing Day Backyard 2:30pm

 

La Vie en Rose, Ocean Grove, front porch

Front Porch 4:00pm

bird feeder, snow storm, December 26th, La Vien en Rose

Backyard Birdfeeder 4:00pm

La Vie en Rose, front porch,

Front Porch 5:00pm

La Vie en Rose, snow storm, December 26th,

Backyard 5:30pm

back porch snow storm, La Vie en Rose, December26th Ocean Grove

Back Porch 5:30pm

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Cropped screenshot of Marilyn Monroe from the ...

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GODDESS

With just a few weeks left till we conclude the conspiracy theory, COUP D’ETAT, we are getting closer and closer to the middle of this tangled web.  Over the weeks,  it has been unraveling; naming names, linking criminals to government departments, explaining connections and always inching closer and closer to the highest government level.

John Kennedy’s affair with CIA agent Cord Meyer‘s wife Mary led to experiments with marijuana and LSD, but the most famous of the 32 presidential paramours tallied by J. Edgar Hoover was actress Marilyn Monroe, who was also the lover of Robert Kennedy.  Her August 5, 1962 death, ruled suicide, was linked to these dangerous liasons, which had been observed by several interested parties.  John and Marilyn often met in the home of the president’s brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, whose house had been wired during the 1960 campaign by GOP “consultants”.  Later, Monroe’s home was bugged for wireman Bernard Spindell, whose usual employer was Jimmy Hoffa.  The Monroe tapes haven’t been made public, but according to many accounts they contain intimacies with the Kennedys, pro-Castro arguments, and support for ousting J. Edgar Hoover. Most significantly they record a visit from Robert on the day of Monroe’s death, during which the pair argued heatedly.  She felt she had been used and dumped by both Kennedys.  Knowledge of this last visit would have been a powerful blackmail tool against Robert even if he had nothing to do with her death.

One person who acquired leverage as a result of the tragedy was Hoover, who immediately confiscated Monroe’s phone records on Robert’s orders.  Hoover was hardy a disinterested party, he considered Monroe a security risk and had watched her for years because of her friendships with “communists”.  Her voluminous FBI files re mostly classified but it is said they record sex orgies with John, Robert,L A. Police Chief William Parker, and other women…and state she was pregnant by Robert and had an abortion before she died.


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J. Edgar Hoover at Oval Office, White House, W...

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Conspiracy Theory Wednesday

I wonder how many readers of this blog are wondering when is she going to stop with this conspiracy thing? Well here’s the answer – this is week 29 of our delving into COUP D’ETAT which is what this theory has been called.  I know you know the meaning of the phrase BUT just in case there is someone  out there who does not, let me explain; Coup d’etat; “the sudden overthrow of a government usually by a small group of the existing state establishment…”. We have six more weeks to go and each week now the strands of  information are coming together to form a very tangled web.  We started at the ends (corners) of the web and are working our way to the middle.  As we explore, you see that the names are becoming more and more familiar.  Our middle is the upward climb to power and those that used their power to attain more power, ultimately a Coup d’etat.

I’m not alone in this long-held belief that President Kennedy’s murder was planned, plotted and executed by a group of individuals who had much to gain if John F. Kennedy were out of power and out of the picture.  Last week the New York Post featured an article about the auction of note handwritten by Evelyn Lincoln, John F. Kennedy’s personal secretary wherein she names possible suspects behind his assassination.  This historical piece of ephemera is estimated to sell for $30,000!! The link to the article is below.

John F. Kennedy secretary’s list of assassination suspects going up for auction – NYPOST.com.

FUTURE TARGET – ROBERT KENNEDY

When Robert Kennedy became Attorney General in 1961, he found FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover uncooperative with his anti-crime campaign, so he formed his own intelligence unit, initiating massive illegal wire-tap operations against James Hoffa, Carlos Marcello and other mobsters, and political enemies such as State Department Security Evaluator Otto Otepka, who had rejected several Kennedy appointments as security risks.  Although Robert Kennedy had once worked for Joseph McCarthy and Otepka assisted the McCarthy-inspired Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security, in mid-1963 Otepka was suddenly moved to a less sensitive post, and his safe was drilled open.  Inside was found a study on American defectors to the U.S.S.R., including Lee Harvey Oswald, on whom Otepka hadfailed to issue a State Department “look-out card”.

While Robert may have suspected conspiracy in his brother’s death, he never publicly challenged the FBI’s findings.  Meanwhile, Hoover removed his private phone link to the Attorney General and did not speak to him for the next six months, after which Robert left his post.  Four years later, on the verge of capturing the Democratic nomination for the 1968 presidential race, Robert was killed by another lone nut, Sirhan Sirhan.  He may have taken to his grave the secret of his brother’s missing brain, which was removed (along with photos and 119 slides of tissue section) from the autopsy materials  before 1967, probably on orders from Robert himself, according to the HSCA.  Did he take this evidence into safe-keeping because he intended, once he became President, to reveal a conspiracy cover-up?

Have I caught y0ur attention? If you’re new to the blog or these posts, you can go back to the beginning of the theory by clicking on Conspiracy Theory Wednesday in my category column.

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I don’t know why I ever try to define anything that is my favorite.  It goes so against my Gemini twin-like indecision!  Like I could ever pick ONE movie that was my all time favorite.  Noooo I am the poster-child, er in my case, woman of Variety is the Spice of Life. I can’t make up my mind quickly when I’m in my favorite ice cream shop so I always get two scoops in two different flavors.

I don’t think I have a favorite song, I have a couple.  And now this??  What is your favorite sound? This is an attempt, an avenue, an opportunity to get more readers more involved in the blog postings.  Blatant? Maybe, but I’m pretty up front about it!.

So please send me your favorite sound or sounds because honestly I have more than one and I’m going to tell you all of them, so you can do the same.  I would love to post them and you can leave them here on the blog or email me at pbenjaytoo@gmail.com.

And how does someone choose a favorite sound?  Is it because that particular sound engenders a nostalgic memory or feeling?  Does the sound serve some need of yours?  Well let me tell you about my favorite sounds and maybe you can relate to them or you’ll get to thinking about the sounds in your life and what they mean to you.

I love the sound of ocean, the crashing of waves and the gentle lapping of waves on the shore.  However best of all I like the sound of the water splashing up against a bell buoy when you’re sleeping on board a boat.  That sound along with the gentle rocking and rolling of the boat surely must be a memory embedded from the womb.

I love the sound of thunder!  The rolling, rumbling gathering of nature’s forces that climax in a vibrating thunderclap really excites me.  There is a majestic power in this lightning-charged explosion of air and the booming, banging, cracking and crashing of thunder puts me ever in awe of Mother Nature.

I love the sound of silence. The deep, dark, thick silence that surrounds the cottage on a winter night.   The stillness is secure, safe and cozy to me.  Peter hates it-well, born and bred in the City, this kind of silence is totally foreign to him.  He can’t fall asleep, he says it’s too quiet.  I say, “that’s how it’s supposed to be”.  I can snuggle my head into my down pillow and let the darkness and silence envelope me and drift into sleep…the sound of the silence filling my head until dreams replace it.

And I love the  sound of a cat purring! As an adjunct to my love of the  sound of silence, when in the City, I love to have Nora sleep on top of my pillow and purr and purr.  She is my very own sound machine.  All I have to do is rub her belly or stroke her head and she is off and running on another round of a fairly loud purrrrring.  Sometimes she purrs herself to sleep before me!

And so I ask you again, What Is Your Favorite Sound? Please share them with us.

 

purring, Nora

Nora

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