Ten Tiny Turtles on the telephone

Maybe it's all the vegetables I've been eating on the new diet regimen, but today is one of those days where this particular Sesame Street song, seared in my memory of course, is playing over and over again. not that it's a bad thing....

Once again, please pardon the lack of posts as of late...

We've been hitting the gym a LOT lately, twice a day leaving precious little time for anything else Now if only we had known about his amazing wonder product....

Ready for a lot of spooning?

Yes actually.

My Melancholy Baby - Judy Garland

Yes, It's been one of those weeks folks(already) this melancholy baby could use someone to come to.....

PERFECT!

Drive-In Porn???

Good thing they're checking I.D.s!

Carol Burnett Show: Chi Chi and Mark Spritz

Died too soon, needed now more than ever....

A brief mention by Edith Wharton in her autobiography "A Backward Glance" introduced me to the novelist and muckraker "David Graham Phillips. Mrs Wharton had mentioned "Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise" as a very fine work and I followed her opinion.

How right she was. I read it immediately ( along with all his other titles) It's a piece of work that's always stayed with me and pokes up in my psyche every now and then in the most interesting of situations.

David Graham Philips is perhaps best known for producing one of the most important investigations exposing details of the corruption by big businesses of the Senate, in particular, by the Standard Oil Company. His article in Cosmopolitan in March 1906, called "The Treason of the Senate", exposed campaign contributors being rewarded by certain members of the U. S. Senate. The story launched a scathing attack on Rhode Island senator Nelson W. Aldrich, and brought Phillips a great deal of national exposure. This and other similar articles helped lead to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, initiating popular instead of state-legislature election of U. S. senators.

His own true story was no less interesting than his writing. Considered a progressive, a muckraker, a dandy and a ladies man, Phillips' reputation cost him his life in January 1911, when he was shot outside the Princeton Club at Gramercy Park in New York City. The killer was a Harvard-educated musician named Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, who came from a prominent Philadelphia family. Goldsborough believed that Phillips' novel The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig had cast literary aspersions on his family. (It has also been purported that Phillips was having an affair with Mrs Goldsborough, thus causing the shooting from jealous rage)

When confronting Phillips, Goldsborough yelled, "Here you go!" After Phillips collapsed, he yelled, "And here I go!", shooting himself in the head. Admitted to Bellevue Hospital, Phillips died there a day later.

Following Phillips' death, his sister Carolyn organized his final manuscript for posthumous publication as "Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise". In 1931, that book would be made into an MGM motion picture of the same name and starring Greta Garbo and Clark Gable.

The Madona Shrine

I grew up In east Boston, Orient Heights,to be exact. NOT a lot going on there. Back then it was basically an Italian-American neighborhood separated from the city by water and bounded on one side by the airport(Thanks Logan for all my current hearing problems)

One nice, and unusual point of interest was, and still is, The Madonna Shrine. A 35 foot statue of the original Madonna, (NO NOT THE POP ICON) surrounded by a large brick plaza which doubled as an outdoor chapel.

And offers very nice views of the neighborhood as well as the airport. Yes you can see the particular three decker I grew up in down there. Many a time I wandered up here, making use f the plaza to stage as a castle, fort, tower or spaceship. I was a bored well read child with an active imagination. the views of the airport beyond only further fueled my dreams of getting the hell out of Dodge.


And yet lately, I've been thinking of the old neighborhood with a lot more nostalgia and affection. maybe I'm just getting older and sappy...

Here's a little history, or herstory as the case may be, from the Shrine's site:

The 35-foot-high statue of the Blessed Mother was created by Italian-Jewish sculptor Arrigo Minerbi — free of charge. He had escaped Nazi persecution thanks to the protection of the Don Orione Fathers in Milan, and this statue was his way of thanking them. It stands across the street from the Don-Orione Retirement Home.

So the next time you're visiting Boston and a little fed up with the over touristy-ness of Fanuel Hall take a little side trip across the bay to Eastie and visit the old gal, she'd love to see you!

It's friendship!

Just the perfect blendship!

How I spent my Saturday mornings way back when...

And what I wouldn't give to spend a a Saturday morning in my pajamas sprawled on the living room floor eating fruit loops and hanging with my bother again! Hey hey hey! Gonna have a good time!

For Men Only!

At the Gayety!

Spiders that crawl...and bats that fly...

....Silence my tongue if I'm telling a lie...Witches Honor!!

I Have to do it the Hard Way

When someone like Hedy Lamarr

Steps into the swankiest bar,

All the fellas get up

Light her cigarette up.

Me, I'd have to smoke a cigar.

And then they call me a car.

Re: @wawoodworth | Old Spice

New Spice | Study like a scholar, scholar

Currently running though my head!

Too damn true.

Indicate choice (6+, 7+, 8+ 9+)

Yeah right.  How much do you want to bet there's a warehouse bin chock full of 6+ medallions somewhere in Cooper Station....

Another day n the 90s!

We're going into an additional few days of our own!

Go-Go's - Turn To You

Still in it.

Having just landed my current library job after over a year of unemployment, the college I am now working for is announcing new lay offs. Lordy! Lordy! Lordy! How long will this rain of crap continue????

You don't know s**t from.....

Oh Might Isis!

dedicated foe of evil, defender of the weak, champion of truth and justice!

LOVE IT!

I wouldn't mind a handsome new Philco radio-phonograph console in my living room, or a handsome new ANYTHING stylish and broadly built for that matter....

Ummm.......

NO COMMENT!

Oh Mary, Please.......

Why Not?

Breakfast of champions

T'is true.....

Sorry for being so incommunicado....

But we've been very very busy and very very happy now that we are once again working in a bona fide job in a bona fide library!

Run Sam! Run as fast and as far away as you can!!!!!

From Craigslist:

Sam...remember last spring...? - m4m - 50 (metrowest)

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Date: 2010-05-28, 9:49AM EDT

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Was it obsessive love...were you an object to distract my mind from the horror that was going on in my life? Did you do it purposely? What ever happened to you?
I know you couldn't have disappeared..things turned out o.k...how much do you know Sam? Why did you never explain at some point? You know me as the Ledgewalker..
I know you as many faces and personalities...tangent connections...all part of a dream...I know you will probably never respond..if you ever see this...I just wanted you to know..I am well..all is o.k...I am still processing the pain...in my self destructive way ..but I am o.k. with it...the cars Sam, did I halucinate the cars?

• Location: metrowest
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1763650347

Feast or Famine

After over a year of unemployment I'd taken a stop gap job at the caterer I've been bartending for, as their staff coordinator. They've said directly that they are grooming me for further management positions and possibly sales. All was fine and dandy. good hours, good pay, alas no benefits, so I was still sweating bullets without health care.

And SHAZAAM! Within two weeks of starting if three competing job offers came jumping out of the woodwork! One of them is a librarian job in keeping with my professional career, only part time but with benefits......

SOOOOO Guess who is now officially off unemployment????? With benefits and full time pay combined from the two jobs!!!!!

Guess who finally broke through a 225lb max lift?

That's right, the same little fella who used to struggle with 95lbs when he started out.

BUONA PASQUA A TUTTI

Happy Easter everybody!

Let's hope Spring brings a little fulfilled hopes along with Spring Fever!

For Jason

"Yoiks...and away!!!