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Al Capone...

...public enemy #1
...one of the most notorious criminals of all time
...humanitarian?

Al Capone has been portrayed throughout history as a bad man, however, there's good in all people.  Deirdre Marie Capone is the grand niece of this infamous man and has shared a different and detailed back story in, Uncle Al Capone.

From Al Capone's efforts to integrate baseball, to what really happened to him while he served time on Alcatraz, Uncle Al Capone is a detailed and poignant look at Al's background.  In this book Deirdre also shares memories of Uncle Al and what it was like growing with the stigma of the Capone name - it wasn't easy!

In addition, Deirdre also shares her grandmother's recipes for some of Al's favorite and traditional dishes.

Uncle Al Capone is an interesting and page-turning read.  I enjoyed the details and true story of Capone from someone who was there and the never seen before pics from her own family album.

Check out Uncle Al Capone at Deirdre's web site at; http://www.unclealcapone.com/

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Rice is not the first thing that comes to mind when you are drinking a nice, cold beer. And if you’re a beer connoisseur, even less so. For many years, it has been considered to be an affront to the institution of craft beer making to use rice. However, some beer makers are toying with the use of rice in beer again as homage to the practices that occurred before the Prohibition. This counterculture attitude reflects how beer brewers are looking to the past to evolve current drinkers’ palates. The following excerpt from the The Oxford Companion to Beer goes into detail on exactly how rice is used. Enjoy! — Nathalie

Anheuser-Busch is the largest single buyer of rice in the United States. Budweiser beer is brewed with rice making up a large portion of the grist.

[...]

It is commonly held, at least among craft brewers, that the use of rice in beer is to be abhorred. To quote Maureen Ogle, from an article in the LA Times, “Rice is considered by many brewers to be what the nasty, industrialized brewers use to water down their beer” and “craft brewers treat rice almost as if it were rat poison.” The article goes on to state that rice lowers the body, flavor and color of beers made with elevated rice adjunct levels, which seems rather to reinforce the notion.

In fact, German brewers arrived in America to find that it was difficult to make good beer using the high-protein, six-row barleys available in the United States at the time. Looking for ways to dilute the malt, they began to use rice and corn. The end result bears little resemblance to good German or Czech lagers but their customers enjoyed this form of beer and millions of people still do. Although rice may once have been a cheap alternative to barley malt, it no longer is. Sharply rising prices have resulted in much higher material costs for brewers employing rice in their mashes.

Interestingly, despite the assertions by many American craft brewers and beer enthusiasts that rice is anathema, some craft brewers are experimenting with production of “pre-Prohibition” lagers that mimic the beers made in the United States in the late 1800s. These are relatively highly hopped but are very light bodied, the result of the use of up to 20% rice in the mash. Other craft brewers are experimenting with the use of specialized rice types that actually add interesting flavors to the beers.

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Prohibition, or “the Noble Experiment,” refers to the period between 1919 and 1933 when the sale, manufacture, and distribution of alcohol were illegal in the United States. Although it may have lasted only 14 years, Prohibition was the culmination of decades of protest and lobbying and has ramifications that are still felt today. It remains the focal point of the ongoing debate surrounding the potential dangers and benefits of alcohol and people’s right to drink as they please.

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This Day in World History - While federal and state officials knew Capone was guilty of bootlegging, running prostitution rings, and ordering these and other murders, they could not get the evidence to convict him. Their break came in May 1929, when Capone was arrested in Philadelphia for carrying a concealed weapon. While he served his prison sentence, federal authorities combed his homes for evidence. Their efforts produced the desired results. In 1931, officials leveled more than 5,000 counts of violating the Prohibition law against Capone and dozens of followers. They also indicted Capone on twenty-two counts of evading income taxes.

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Although I do think that most of my energy, creative and otherwise, is going towards healing my body from the fall, I can feel my brain trying to steer itself back toward writing creatively again. I have two big projects: a major rewrite of "Blue Roses" and a minor rewrite of "The Godmother." Blue Roses first I think, because I'm excited about it. Although the characters from The Godmother periodically harass me, even in my dreams, to DO SOMETHING, to get the play produced. That bunch, they want out of the box. Each character has a full life that wants to be lived onstage. I could do an entire series with these characters, if I had the chance. I could see them in a TV series, for sure.
I would love to see them in an onstage series, although that is so hard to do. Not that a TV series isn't hard to do! Right? Where would THAT money come from? I guess what I mean is, that because a local production seems more doable, it seems harder. The TV idea would be completely up to someone else who came along and bought the rights.
The point is, I have enough ideas, enough character background and story to write the material. These gangsters are kicking at the file cabinet all the time. Where they are it's 1928, Kansas City, Missouri, and Prohibition is in full swing. Not really enforced in KC because of politics, so the Irish Mob is doing great. The Godmother is a young butch dyke who has just taken over for her murdered brother. She is Tomboy McCorkle and she chooses for her second Mr. Uppity Jones. Half her crew is African-American, half her girls are too. She's got a thing for her widowed sister-in-law Corker, and she's got a younger brother to raise. She's also got some serious competition to watch out for with Chee Chee di Mayo and his boys. So, you can see I'm gonna have to get to them soon.
Blue Roses is getting a complete overhaul. The current protagonist will become a background player as one of the background players steps up to take over the story. I'm excited about it. It makes so much more sense in my mind already. I'll tell you more after I complete a draft.
How do you gear up to write new creative works? do you outline? mind map? talk about your work or keep it secret? I'm planning to use Blake Snyder's Save the Cat to outline Blue Roses this time, just as I did when I wrote The Godmother. It is a screenwriting book, but it works for the stage as well. Tell me your writing secrets! I'm spilling mine.

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BOOTLEG: MURDER, MOONSHINE, AND THE LAWLESS YEARS OF PROHIBITION, by Karen Blumenthal (Roaring Brook 2011)(age 10+) provides a fascinating account of the passions on both sides of the temperance movement, which was intended to uplift American society by drying it out.  The apparent victory of the movement in the passage of the 18th Amendment led instead to a decade and a half of lawlessness and corruption... 

In BOOTLEG, Blumenthal does a terrific job of bringing the era to life and documenting the resulting societal upheavals.  An excellent introduction to the times and personalities of temperance and Prohibition.

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It began with the best of intentions. Worried about the effects of alcohol on American families, mothers and civic leaders started a movement to outlaw drinking in public places.

Over time, their protests, petitions, and activism paid off—when a Constitional Amendment banning the sale and consumption of alcohol was ratified, it was hailed as the end of public drunkenness, alcoholism, and a host of other social ills related to booze.

Instead, it began a decade of lawlessness, when children smuggled (and drank) illegal alcohol, the most upright citizens casually broke the law, and a host of notorious gangsters entered the public eye.

Check out the Bootleg book page, where you can download a chapter excerpt, read the author's epilogue, and sneak a peak at the glossary accompanying the book!

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A new HBO series, Boardwalk Empire, premiered this weekend. Worlds away from what we see on Jersey Shore, it has reignited interest in New Jersey history and culture. Bryant Simon (author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America and Professor of History at Temple University) has been interviewed for the accompanying HBO documentary, and here we ask him some questions about the “dreamlike” place that is AC.

You’ve described yourself as a native of South New Jersey. What drew you to writing the history of Atlantic City?

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in Vineland, Philly was not the place that drew us; it was more Atlantic City. That was where we went for splurge meals, special occasions, amusement parks, parades, and shopping. In fact, that’s where I got my bar mitzvah suit! Years later, my family moved just outside of Atlantic City and I watched, while riding my bike in the morning on the Boardwalk, as gambling woke the place up and irrevocably transformed it. I was transfixed by the city, by people’s nostalgia for it, by its nervous energy, and its aching sadness and painful poverty in the midst of plenty. Really, it had everything I wanted to write about it – it was like a Springsteen song, a place that could be mean and cruel, but a place of romance and possible redemption. How could I resist?

Compared to places like Las Vegas or Coney Island in its heyday, how did/does Atlantic City epitomize the urban playground?

All of these places share something in common – they are each the tale of two cities. They are places built in the interests of visitors, not necessarily residents; they sell (or sold) fantasies – fantasies that put tourists as the center of the narrative and allowed them to slip their daily skin and imagine themselves not as they were, but as they wanted to be. That is what people paid for when they went these places – they paid for fantasies.

As you researched the book, what memorable anecdotes did you come across that really captured the heart and history of Atlantic City?

One of the first things I learned about Atlantic City stayed with me throughout the project. I remember looking at a postcard from the 1920s or so. In it, the benches on the Boardwalk were pointed away from the beach. I asked if this was a mistake. “No” an expert on the city told me, “That’s how it was.” That was my first lesson that Atlantic City was essentially a stage and the visitors were both actors and audience.

You’ve been interviewed for a documentary that’s set to run in conjunction with the HBO series, Boardwalk Empire. What do you make of the series’ take on Atlantic City, and what to your mind does it say about public perception of the city?

If the show is a success, it will no doubt draw tourists to town, looking for the romantic, if still violent, past the program surely mythologizes. Yet the real Atlantic City Boardwalk of today has little relationship to the past except its common geography. Most of the dreamlike hotels – buildings that looked like French chateaux and Moorish palaces – have been torn down. The amusement piers are long gone or covered up and turned into air-conditioned malls. The crowds of people dressed in their Sunday – really their sleek and elegant Saturday night best – have been replaced by people in t-shirts and flip flops. Except for the ocean and

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This is my current WIP - a white wool felted purse knitted up with moss stitch. The fabric in the picture is going to be the lining.

The other project I just finished is for the sewing corner - a lattice covered cork board. I see these in magazines all the time and decided to finally make one after finding a cork board at Goodwill for $0.99.
The first stage was to cover it with fabric. The frame was too securely attached to remove, so I had to find a way to attach the fabric and still have it look tidy. I used a light blue cotton cut to the same size as the frame. Then I used a pencil to mark the dimensions of the cork part.
The pencil line marks the hem allowance which you fold over. Then you pin the fabric in place and make sure it's tidy and even all the way around. I used a staple gun to attach the fabric to the cork.
The last part is the lattice. (I wonder why I love lattices so much?) The little white bookshelf has a lattice inset too, so it's kind of a theme in that corner. I made the cork board lattice by marking off even intervals then pinning bias tape in place with silver tacks.

The bias tape is single fold, which works best. (I just found out the difference myself - previously I'd only bought double fold which wouldn't have looked quite right for this project.) Also, the tape is cut on the bias of course, which means it has a little bit of stretch, so after pinning it snugly in place, it will hold your odds and ends without the need of extra pins.
Here it is in the sewing corner - I also added a hook to the wall for my aprons. I think I'm finally done now! Thank you all so much for all the comments on my crafts corner, I'm happy to have inspired so many people, because I think every crafter should have their own little corner to work in.

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