THE DREAM DANCER: “Best Free Nook Book I've read so far!

Another marvelous review of THE DREAM DANCER on Barnes and Noble:
“Best Free Nook Book I've read so far! This is a terrific book. It starts a little slow, but that is necessary "business" that needs to happen to set up the rest of the story. This many-layered story will keep you up at night wondering about humanity. “

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Attention Matt Damon: review of THE HERO

Two four-star reviews of THE HERO on Kindle:

The Hero is a keeper, September 11, 2011
By ohara:
Most of the self-published books on Kindle that I've bought have been duds, but not The Hero. Interestingly, it begins as a romance, then morphs into a mystery/thriller that I couldn't put down. Retired reporter Ken Crowe has woven together a great story and engaging characters, with just enough color to securely anchor it in time and place. This could easily be the basis for a Matt Damon film.

Don't miss it, November 23, 2011
By M. Simpson "Kindle lover"
I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery. It took a while for the mystery to develop but I didn't mind. The book was good even when it was a romance. It was a truly entertaining story from the beginning to the very end.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THIS IS A REMARKABLE BOOK: THE DREAM DANCER REVIEW

The Dream Dancer by Kenneth C. Crowe
From Barnes & Noble: Anonymous
Posted November 1, 2011
Word wise

THIS IS A REMARKABLE BOOK. The characters are extremely well written, the plot is uncommon, and the conflicting cultures of the people all interweave to make a truly outstanding piece of literature.
I ALMOST DIDN'T READ THIS BOOK. I was bored with the first few paragraphs, and told myself I should be enjoying reading, not enduring it. I made a deal with myself that I would read the first chapter, and if I still wasn't interested I would allow myself to quit this book. I finished the book in less than 24 hours, and have gone back and reread many of the passages in the next 2 days.
I FOUND MYSELF ENGROSSED IN THE PEOPLE AND THE DIFFICULTIES THEY FACED. I’ve read other books which tell a story of white versus red races. Other writers also depict the unjust ways the whites meet out “justice." The joy with this writer is how the book explains some of the cultural differences between races, and the strength of one man standing up for his people and their beliefs.
I now have 2 more books by this author in my shelves, awaiting the chance to read them. I also expect I'll be rereading this book.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

COLOR OF the SEA by John Hamamura

The protagonist, Sam Hamada, takes us into Japanese-American and Japanese cultures. He sees the world through those two very different cultural filters
The author gives us the underlying cause of the Japanese attack on the U.S.—that the Roosevelt Administration had cut off the supply of oil to Japan. He describes the humbling of the Japanese as employees of white Americans in Hawaii, the prejudice against Japanese immigrants in California, and the humiliation of the Japanese in their defeat by American arms on Okinawa.
I was a boy in grade school during World War II; I remember after the attack on Pearl Harbor smashing a few Japanese-made objects against a wall in Woodside, Queens. We were inspired by the propaganda machine of the time to hate the Japanese. The first time I ever heard anything good said about the Japanese came from my brother Bill, who had been wounded twice as a Marine infantryman during the Battle for Okinawa. I was shocked when he said, shortly after returning home, that Japanese were good soldiers, but poorly led and so inadequately equipped that he wondered at the stupidity of going to war in such circumstances.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THE MAN WHO KILLED THE DEER by Frank Waters (1942)

The power of this novel lies in the information it delivers about the Pueblo culture, while at the same time telling a fascinating story. The protagonist is Martiniano, a Pueblo Indian who has just returned from years of education in white boarding schools. He is a man caught between the white and the Pueblo cultures. Through the course of the novel, Martiniano, who is a decent human being, moves closer to his lost Indian culture and by the end is back to the blanket as Byers says. Byers is a white trader with an intimate understanding of the Pueblos and an extraordinary closeness to them—and yet he really doesn’t fully understand them.
The Deer is at the core of the Pueblo spiritual life which centers on the belief that all of nature is interconnected that this life is very much controlled by the other world.
There is a perfect balance in the telling of the story, which opens with Palemon, a traditional Pueblo and Martiniano’s close friend, sensing something, he doesn’t know what. He rises from bed and goes up on the mountain, where he finds Martiniano, who has been injured while hunting. Palemon the fetches the deer Martiniano has killed out of season and without the ceremony appropriate under the Pueblo spiritual life. The deer’s spirit will haunt and shape Martiniano through the story. At the end of the book, Martiniano, who has moved closer to his spiritual roots, rises from his bed, haunted by the drums of the kivas, to go up the mountain for an inexplicable reason to rescue Palemon’s injured son, who was completing the rite of passage from boy to man. Ergo the balance of the story and the spiritual/physical life.
At the end, Martiniano decides to submit his own son to the Pueblo system of spiritual education—with the emphasis on the spirit, the unity of the tribe and nature--instead of pursuing the white man’s path of getting and spending.
In reading “The Man Who Killed the Deer”, I began to see why some suspect Carlos Castaneda was writing fiction rather than anthropological studies in his Don Juan books. The roots of the information of Don Juan’s teaching are available in “The Man who killed the deer” including the peyote path.

 A SUGGESTION: My novel, OOOEELIE, is now available as a free download on, KINDLE, SMASHWORDS, BARNES & NOBLE, and i-TUNES.

Try it, enjoy it, and if you are in the mood, review it.

A Song for Sandy Pope

Just the other day, singer-songwriter John Paul Wright of Louisville, KY, uploaded his latest song, “Ain’t No Easy Run (Sandy Pope)” onto YouTube. He was on his way home from the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) convention in Cleveland when the sight of tractor trailers barreling along reminded him that Sandy Pope was once a truck driver.
As the title of JP Wright’s song implies he sings about Sandy Pope’s campaign to oust James P. Hoffa from the presidency of the Teamsters.
With the ballots in the mail and supporters making calls from phone banks to turn out her voters, we will find out next month whether Pope can fulfill her goal of getting 150,000 Teamsters to vote for her. As JP Wright sings to the individual Teamsters listening: “One vote for Pope and the election’s won. Hoffa’s days are done.”
If the turnout for this election is similar to the 2006 election, then 150,000 would assure a victory for Pope. What she has going for her is a base of support from TDU, which is worth 90,000 to 100,000 votes, the rest would have to come from new Teamsters who want to create a rank and file activist union, from women attracted to a woman candidate, from those old timers disenchanted by Hoffa’s performance as president over the past 12 years.
Among the disenchanted is Fred Gegare, currently an international vice president and the third candidate for the presidency. Gegare decided to run against Hoffa over what he considered his disastrous handling of union finances, contracts and pensions.
The only hope for a change of direction in the Teamsters is Sandy Pope. She comes from the reform milieu with the promise of instilling activism in the Teamsters both internally and externally as did Ron Carey in the victorious strike against UPS in 1997.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

Shingles after three years

Today marks the third anniversary of the shingles attack on my left eye. Every morning I awaken with itching, aching or an unpleasant sensation around the left eye, usually above it, in the eye brow, on the forehead, in the scalp.
My ophthalmologist told me not to expect a quick cure, then that the aftermath of the shingles (postherpetic neuralgia) would continue for a year or two. I assume now that barring a miraculous cure, I will endure this minor plague for the rest of my life.
The round robin of itching, aching or unpleasant sensations continues through all my waking hours. In addition, I get tired easily in doing my daily exercises or heavy household chores. In fact, I take a daily hour-long nap. When I’ve tried cutting out the nap or trimming it to a half hour, I fall asleep watching TV or reading in the evening. So I’ve come to accept the need for that nap. Besides, I enjoy it.
One side effect of my PHN (postherpetic neuralgia) is that many of my relatives have gotten the vaccine, Zostavax, which cuts the odds of getting shingles by 50 percent. My experience shows that is a chance well worth taking.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Everyone should read this book

What joy. Someone with the moniker Phyllis L reviewed THE DREAM DANCER on Kindle. It is the first review of what I consider my best novel in the two years that THE DREAM DANCER has been available on Kindle. Ms. L gave it five stars. Others among the 8,000 plus who have downloaded the novel from various sites have indicated they appreciated THE DREAM DANCER. Kindle readers have given it 10 “likes it,” seven readers on Apple have given it an average of 4.5 stars and three on Barnes & Noble also have given it an average of 4.5 stars.
Ms. L’s review of THE DREAM DANCER:
“This story really made me aware of the brutal way my ancestors were treated, I loved the way he told the story, I think everyone should read this book and ask theirselves ...Was this my ancestor that was this cruel? And How can I in this day and age make life better for people worse off then me...There but by the grace of God go I....”

A SUGGESTION: my novel, OOOEELIE, is well worth reading. Free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Apple.

THE MEMORY GENE by Tom Baum

“The Memory Gene” is a quicksand novel. I considered the opening two chapters so trite that I almost didn’t continue, but I did. And then, I got drawn in and kept going right to the end.
Tom Baum’s “The Memory Gene” is worth reading for the original, impressively imaginative plot.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Bibliotastic review of THE HERO

An editor at Bibliotastic (www.bibliotastic.com), the London-based publisher and distributor of free ebooks, gave my novel, THE HERO, four stars and a very nice review:
I liked this story. It kept me interested and guessing as to where it would end up. I particularly liked Ryan as the character who is delving into things that bring up a past he would much rather forget. His character is really well written and has his own secrets. I also liked how Nicky's story was interwoven with his. Overall I thought the story was full of intrigue and well worth reading. It had plenty of twists and turns!
In addition, Bibliotastic redid the cover of THE HERO. I like their version much better than my own. Check out the Bibliotastic website to see it.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

The seed of The Absconder

The seed of my latest novel, THE ABSCONDER, was planted during my boyhood in Woodside, Queens when three young fellows went on a robbery spree in 1950 killing a poor soul while trying to steal his car.
Two of the killers, who lived within blocks of me, were executed in Sing Sing within a year. The third member of the trio was saved from the chair, but spent the next 28 years in prison..
THE ABSCONDER is the story of a fictional version of that survivor, who goes on the run rather than being returned to prison by a vengeful parole officer.
If you could ask the classic question of protagonists: What do you want? his
answer would be: “To walk free through fields of wheat, no matter what the cost.”
One of the underlying themes of THE ABSCONDER is fulfillment of the Jesuit premise: “Give me the boy, and I will give you the man.”
THE ABSCONDER is now available on Kindle, Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Sony.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

SANDY POPE wins the first round of Teamsters 2011 election

Sandy Pope won the first round of the Teamsters 2011 election—the media battle before and after the convention--walking across James P. Hoffa like he wasn’t there. Fred Gegare, the third candidate wasn’t even in the running.
Media success is crucial to foster name recognition. Hoffa has had his thanks to his dad. No doubt that Sandy Pope’s appeal to journalists is the fact that a woman with a black belt in karate is running for the presidency of a union with a reputation of burly, big-bellied men who drive trucks.
Hoffa, unlike Sandy Pope, has never driven a truck as a real rank and file Teamster. He does have the belly that goes with the old out-of-date image.
Before last month’s Teamsters Convention in Las Vegas, Sandy Pope scored with a major piece about her in The Nation and on public radio stations across the nation via an interview on The Story with Dick Gordon.
During the convention, the New York Times, CNN, and ABC featured her. After the convention, she managed to wind up in a big story in The Sunday Times of London.
The assumption is that the combination of support by a large bloc of Teamsters local leaders and his incumbency makes Hoffa an almost sure bet to win another five years in the presidency.
But there are factors at play that could cause that sure bet to stumble. Sandy Pope is getting the needed name recognition, she has the support of the potent reform group, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, she has a substantial record as a local union leader in New York City as well as a background as a working Teamster and organizer, and in addition, the issue that made her attractive to journalists could very well bring in votes from the women who make up 20 to 25 percent of the union.
And, the decision of Midwestern Teamster leader and International Vice President Fred Gegare to run for the presidency against Hoffa could change the outcome of the 2011 election. There is the possibility Gegare could win and the probability he will take a substantial number of votes away from Hoffa.
In his acceptance speech on July 1 as a presidential candidate at the convention, Gegare contended that Hoffa betrayed the members by allowing United Parcel Service to withdraw its employees from the Central States Pension in 2007 in exchange for making it easier for the IBT to organize the 12,000 workers in UPS-owned Overnite Trucking.
Without UPS, which has created its own plan, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars every year into Central States to fund its workers’ retirement, the storied pension fund is in serious trouble, according to Gegare, who is a fund trustee.
Gegare said that he told Hoffa at the time: “Don’t let it happen. You’re going to destroy everything your father built. You are going to ruin the foundation of this great organization...You ain’t going to see the tsunami coming if you let them take 45,000 participants out of Central
State Pension Fund.” Gegare told the convention, “They gave the farm away to UPS...That’s criminal. I’m telling you,
we cannot afford it. I got four retired for every
one working.”
Gegare sounded a warning to the union as a whole: “
Let me tell you something. If Central States goes down, there’s going to be a domino effect from the New England pension fund, Central PA, Central States, and the Western pension fund, because we all got the same top employers. If they did it to me, I keep telling the members, they’re going to do it to you. You got to get involved.”

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

THE DREAM DANCER soars as a freebie

Over the weekend, Amazon cut the price of my novel, THE DREAM DANCER, from a modest 99 cents for a Kindle copy to zero, free, nothing. The impact?
On the first day of the giveaway, Saturday, July 16, 2011, there were 553 downloads of THE DREAM DANCER putting the novel at 181 on Kindle’s free-ebooks best seller list; number five in Literary Fiction and number three in the Occult genre.
By the following day (Sunday), there had been 2,022 downloads with THE DREAM DANCER ranked 69 on Kindle’s free-ebooks best seller list; number one in both the Occult and Mythology genres, and number two in Literary Fiction.
For the first half of July while THE DREAM DANCER was still selling for 99 cents, one copy was sold providing me with a royalty of 35 cents. Now I wish the 2000 plus readers who downloaded this now free ebook had been willing to pay the measly penny short of a dollar, but they weren’t.
I must admit I’m happy just to have more readers, especially thousands of more readers.
For those who don’t know what the term downloading means, let me explain: Downloading an ebook is like selecting a hard-copy book from a bookstore or library shelf. You add it to the lists of books on your Kindle, or whatever device you are using, and hopefully read it.
I consider THE DREAM DANCER my best novel. In the two years that it has been available through Amazon, no one has reviewed it. I was happy to see one person clicked “the like it button” over the weekend.
I hope that all the 2,000 plus downloaders (so far) will read THE DREAM DANCER and that some among them will review it. And most of all I hope that thousands more will download and try it.
Oh, the reason for Amazon slashing the price? The company has a policy offering its books for the lowest price out there. THE DREAM DANCER was being distributed by Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple, etc. as a freebie. Amazon discovered that and matched it.

Herman Benson, the soul of the Association for Union Democracy

Herman Benson has spent the past 42 years as the soul of the Association for Union Democracy on a quest as elusive as the Holy Grail: to instill union democracy in the American labor movement. At the age of 96, he says that biology is finally catching up with him. Not that he is going to retire.
Benson recently informed AUD’s board of directors that he is relinquishing his roles as editor of the Union Democracy Review and secretary treasurer. He plans to continue as a member of the board of directors, to write from time to time for the Review, and to be on call via telephone and e-mail for union members who need his help. A lot of them have over the past decades.
Back in the late 1980’s Benson stepped down as AUD’s executive director passing that post to Susan Jennik, a union activist and labor lawyer. Benson and Jennik played central roles in assuring that the rank and file election of the Teamsters hierarchy, promised in the federal court decent decree aimed at cleaning the mob and corruption out of the union, was run by court-approved officers not the IBT and its locals.
As a result and with the significant help of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, Ron Carey became the first rank and file-elected president of International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1991.
That must have been Benson’s crowning triumph. I’m sure that he enjoys the memories of dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds, of lesser victories.
Benson was in his 70s when he gave up his role as AUD’s executive director. At the time, I was Newsday’s labor writer and intended to do a major piece on his retirement and his dedication to trying to make the American labor movement a linchpin of democracy. Well, I didn’t write it because he didn’t retire. And the same is true now. He isn’t retiring and is continuing to do what he can as a one-man revolution of union democracy despite the claws of biology.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

Bibliotastic an inviting new outlet for indie authors

Every indie author hungers for a review, no less a number of reviews. Bibliotastic.com, the latest indie author outlet on the scene, not only urges its audience to review the ebooks downloaded but also provides a team of in-house reviewers. Potentially, you can get inside and outside reviews.
When the site was officially launched on Feb. 6, 2011, London-based bibliotastic proclaimed that it “aspires to be to the free ebook market what YouTube is to user-generated video.” That is pretty ambitious, but what really caught my eye was the statement by Bernard Gerard, one of the co-founders, said: “What our authors long for more than anything is feedback from the reader.” No kidding. All of us indie authors hunger for just that.
I have added my novel, THE HERO, to bibliotastic.com’s list in the mystery category. I look forward to a review of THE HERO by the bibliotastic.com editors with some excitement and trepidation. Will they get around to reviewing it; will they find it marvelous, mundane or somewhere in between? My personal opinion: I consider THE HERO a really good book, better than most, but nowhere as good as my novel, THE DREAM DANCER, which is the closest I have come to a work of art.
The bibliotastic site lists three regular reviewers; it is worth going to the page to read their brief bios. With just three regulars it could be a while to read your book reviewed, if ever. So indie authors had better hurry to list their books before the queues for reviews go around the block.

Recalling Gen. Jaroslaw Dombrowski

The 140th anniversary of the suicidal death of Gen. Jaroslaw Dombrowski(aka Dabroski) via a knowingly fruitless stand on rue Myrha during the waning moments of the Paris Commune was two weeks ago on May 23, 2011.
For some unknown reason a Polish-French committee observed that occasion on May 25, 2011 in rue Myrha. I came across a reference to that date while doing some casual browsing in preparation of another rewrite of my novel, BEN CONNOLLY. I originally undertook this novel as a fictionalization of the life of Januarius A. MacGahan. I was in love with that project and spent 10 years of writing and research. The end result crashed on take off and was unreadable. I tried to resurrect MacGahan by changing him from a restricting historical character to the imagined Ben Connolly. That turned out not to be much of a novel either.
The best part of the experience was spending 30 days in Paris in 1984 when the dollar loomed like Mount Everest over the franc. I ate in a lot of good restaurants while roaming the scenes of the Paris Commune of 1871.
Getting back to Dombrowski: he became a red hero, a martyr to the cause, celebrated with a Polish biopic in 1975 directed by Bohdan Poreba, in the Spanish Civil War the Dabroski Battalion bore his name, at least one Polish school in Warsaw is named after him, and there are statues of him in the Ukraine.
Although he was a Russian officer, he joined the Polish uprising against the Czar in 1862 and wound up being sentenced to Siberia. He escaped, joined the Parisians—called the Communards--revolting against the French government, and eventually became the commanding general of the Communard forces. He was 34 when he accepted his fate and the hopelessness of escaping from Paris in his charge against the federal force on rue Myrha.
I have two Nineteenth Century biographies of Dombrowski, one in French, the other in German. Back in the 1980s, I flashed through the German version picking out bits of information at the New York Public Library. Recently through the joys of Google I found bookstores with scanned copies of the originals. I purchased both I don’t know if I will ever get around to the painful task of translating them. My German is limited and my French is worse.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Fred Gegare’s June Surprise

With the Teamsters 2011 convention a little more than three weeks away, Fred Gegare has come up with a June Surprise: Aaron Belk, the late Ron Carey’s executive assistant, has been added to his Fighting for the Members Slate as a candidate for Southern Region vice president.
Aside from rising from a loading dock in Memphis to the top of the Teamsters’ hierarchy by being elected an international vice president on Carey’s reform slate in 1991, Belk distinguished himself in trying—though unsuccessfully—to block the political contributions in 1996 that resulted in Carey’s downfall. At a 1998 Congressional hearing, Belk testified: “I can hold my head high and I can look at myself in the mirror each morning knowing that I did my job to the best of my ability by turning down these large contribution requests and by refusing to support and condone the actions of the 1996 Carey campaign staff and their consultants.”
At the end of this month, we’ll find out whether Gegare, currently an international vice president, will make the 2011 Teamsters election a three-way race by overcoming the barrier facing all outside candidates of being nominated for president by winning the votes of five percent of the 1,700 or so delegates to the Teamsters convention in Las Vegas.
James P. Hoffa, the incumbent international president, and New York Teamsters Local 805 president Sandy Pope are expected to be the other two candidates in the fall election. Hoffa, barring the unforeseen, certainly will be nominated. Pope has the backing of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the nationwide reform group, whose support was crucial to Carey two elections in 1991 and 1996 to the presidency of the Teamsters. Last month, Pope announced she had enough delegates pledged to be nominated.
Pope is running alone—without a slate—hoping to win the votes of the rank and file by contrasting her history as Teamster over the past 33 years—working as a selector, a truck driver, a local union organizer, an international staffer, and finally elected president of a local—against Hoffa’s scant background with summer jobs as a Teamster while in college and later as a lawyer. He was elected international president in 1998 primarily because he was the son of the legendary Jimmy Hoffa. Gegare—who has 39 years of experience at every level of the Teamsters—split with Hoffa last year proclaiming his leadership was disastrous.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

My Boyhood Hero William J. Crowe

My boyhood hero, my brother Bill, died yesterday at the age of 84. So many of my memories of him are when we were young. One of my favorites was a trip to Rockaway Beach back in late July or ear1y August of 1945. Billy had just turned 19, I was 11, and this angry woman came up to us and said to him, “Why aren’t you in the service?” People were like that back in WW II. Billy said, “Because my father has pull.” And we left her fuming. In fact, Billy had just gotten out of a military hospital after recovering from the second wound he suffered as a Marine in the Battle of Okinawa.
He met his wife, Lee, who was a WAVE, when he was stationed in Washington, D.C., before mustering out of the service. Whenever he arrived at his favorite bar in D.C., the piano player would sing Harrigan (H-A-double R-I-G-A-N spells Harrigan). He and Lee got married and moved to Youngstown, Ohio, her home town, where he went to Youngstown University on the GI Bill, then worked in the steel industry and had three kids. When Lee died a few years ago, her best friend asked me where she and Billy had met. I told her in Washington after he came back from Okinawa. The friend hadn’t known that Billy was not only a Marine, but an infantryman who had seen some dreadful action.
Billy loved the ocean and came home to New York every summer to go to the beach and to go swimming in the Atlantic. I can still see him hanging out with his friends before the war in front of Marco’s Candy Store on 47th Street in Woodside; and taking me to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on a bitter cold, windy day and asking what do you want to eat: chow mein or Pizza? I would say both. He ran in the Penn Relays for St. Ann’s High School in Manhattan. He loved boxing. Our father had been a boxer in his youth. Billy took me to many a boxing match at places now long gone: the outdoor arena at Queens Plaza in Long Island City and Sunnyside Gardens on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside.
No matter how old a brother is, no matter how fulsome a life he had led, it is heartbreaking to lose him.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THE LAKE OF DREAMS, a lockpickers novel

THE LAKE OF DREAMS
by Kim Edwards

This is a literary work, meaning that like most literary novels it moves slowly. The protagonist, Lucy Jarrett, is a modern woman, who travels the world working in exotic places, moving from affair to affair until she finds a Japanese man to love.
Lucy’s DNA provides her the mystical skill of picking locks, which she applies to ordinary locks and to an almost heroic task in uncovering the buried, tragic story of a pioneering feminist among her antecedents.
In the course of achieving her goal, Lucy manages to put the death of her father in a context which releases her from a lifetime of guilt and provides a previously unknown 90-something cousin with a mollifying solution for her abandonment as a child and adult.
The novel is worth reading for both the unfolding detective-like skills of the protagonist; the vivid picture of the transformation of a town’s economy from a production to a cutesy, tourist milieu; and for the comparison of society’s restrictions on an independent woman in the early 1900s versus the unfettered life that an educated and self-confident Lucy pursues in modern times.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

The Arabs and The Aeneid

As I was in the process of editing my latest novel, THE ABSCONDER, I came across a scene in which the protagonist, Chris, who has memorized THE AENEID in Latin and in English says, “I won’t bore you with the Latin. But I can offer you what Aeneas said to his companions when Troy was burning around them and the Greeks were overwhelming them: Come, let us die/We’ll make a rush into the thick of it./The conquered have one safety: hope for none.”
Those lines immediately gave me a better understanding of the passionate courage of the Arab populace across the Middle East rebelling against the dictators that have deprived them of the basic freedoms every human being should enjoy. To make the quote fit the Arab uprisings all that is required is to substitute the word oppressed for conquered. The result would be: Come, let us die/We’ll make a rush into the thick of it./The OPPRESSED have one safety: hope for none.”

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Gegare on how Hoffa lost millions

Fred Gegare today (March 16, 2011) on his website revealed at least one of his serious disenchantments with Teamsters President James P. Hoffa contending that a panicked Hoffa dumped millions of dollars in stock held by IBT entities at rock-bottom prices during the financial crisis of 2009.
“Nearly $30 million dollars of Teamster dues money and charitable contributions were lost when Hoffa's weak knees got the best of him. Countless millions more have been lost because the IBT no longer owns the stock and can't benefit from the market's rebound,” Gegare said.
Gegare has an inside knowledge of the Hoffa Administration since he is an International Vice President who was elected on Hoffa’s 2006 slate. He shocked the Teamsters world when he announced last year that he was running for Teamsters International president against Hoffa.
At the time, Gegare claimed that the union faced a dire future under Hoffa’s disastrous leadership. That generality finally has been brought somewhat into focus by Gegare proclaiming today on his website that Hoffa ignored the advice of financial professionals and bypassed the Teamsters General Executive Board to sell the stock. He said, “By running scared, Hoffa incurred staggering losses that have crippled some of the IBT's most important funds. The Strike and Defense Fund plunged nearly $15 million. The Scholarship Fund saw $3.4 million vanish. The General Fund experienced a $10.2 million decline.”
If Gegare has many more weapons of character destruction to use against Hoffa such as this rush to sell the stocks that portrays him as somewhat clueless then the Teamsters 2011 election will prove to be exciting indeed. In addition the question of the silliness of the rank and file voting to elect James P. Hoffa as a strong leader, because his father Jimmy Hoffa was, will be resurrected.
Gegare is heading the Fighting for the Members slate in his campaign against Hoffa.
Sandy Pope, president of New York Teamsters Local 805, also is running for the Teamsters International Presidency with the backing of Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

IBT Election Supervisor to Hoffa: tsk, tsk

Richard W. Mark, the official overseeing the Teamsters 2011 International union election, issued his decision today (March 15, 2011) on the Hoffa campaign’s attempt to use the IBT’s treasury (in the form of jobs and benefits) to buy off the opposition led by Fred Gegare. The penalty imposed amounts to tsk, tsk.
Tsk, tsk has a variety of meanings: You should be ashamed of yourself or perhaps, I disapprove of what you are doing or have done.
In sum, Teamsters International President James P. Hoffa (son of Jimmy Hoffa) and some of his cohorts were found by Mark to have offered jobs and at least one extra pension to three Teamsters officials, IBT Car Haul Director Fred Zuckerman and International Trustees Henry Perry and Frank Gallegos, in exchange for their support or for not running in the 2011 Teamsters International Election.
Kenneth Conboy, the Teamsters Election Appeals Master, ordered Mark to come up with a punishment short of denying Hoffa the privilege of running for reelection. Why? The crucial element: the three refused the offers.
Back in 1997, Conboy was the official who barred Ron Carey from running for reelection in 1996 for his supposed involvement in a scheme to misuse the Teamsters’ treasury in his election campaign. Five years later—and somewhat too late—a federal jury found that Carey was telling the truth when he swore to federal agents and a Grand Jury that he knew nothing about the dirty deal. A tsk, tsk wasn’t imposed on Carey, but as part of his pre-trial punishment he was not only barred from running for reelection, but was expelled from Teamsters membership.
Mark’s remedy for the failed dirty deal: “The Hoffa campaign and each candidate on the Hoffa-Hall slate are ordered to cease and desist from using union resources to conduct campaign activity.”
In addition, Mark ordered the posting of a notice to Teamsters members across North America saying: “The Election Supervisor found that before and during May 2010, IBT officials associated with the General President Hoffa’s campaign offered IBT jobs, including salary and benefits, to three individuals in exchange for a promise to support the Hoffa campaign in various ways.”
While the Hoffa folks might be embarrassed by having to face the members who actually read the notice, the sentence imposed by Mark falls far short of Gegare’s demand that Hoffa be disqualified as a candidate.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

An interview with the author of THE TRUCKERS

An interview with Kenneth C. Crowe, author of THE TRUCKERS, by the $100 Plus News of the Association for Union Democracy (www.uniondemocracy.org)
The interview appeared in $100 Plus News on Jan. 6, 2011:

$100 Plus News: What made you write the story now? Were you working on it for some time?
Ken Crowe: The original version of THE TRUCKERS was completed ten years ago in July, 2000. My agent figured there was no market for a labor novel. So, I put the book away with other novels I had written, seemingly doomed to gather dust in a closet. Along came the e-book and online publishing revolution in 2008 led by Amazon’s CreateSpace and Smashwords. I took the novels out of the closet and began rewriting them and putting them on the internet as e-books and
paperbacks. Last summer, I reached THE TRUCKERS. I rewrote the ending to accord with the emergence of Sandy Pope as the TDU-backed, rank and file candidate for IBT president.

$100 Plus News: There is a tension between Helmut Knall and Tommy Kerrigan about whether the International Pres. should get involved in local elections, with Kerrigan believing it was inappropriate despite Knall’s attempts to persuade him that he must support local reformers against the “old guard” which still ran the majority of the locals. Do you believe that dynamic was present
in the Carey administration? Is that meant to be a lesson for reformers?
Ken Crowe: Ken Paff has always believed in reforming the Teamsters from the bottom up. When Ron Carey was elected the IBT’s general president he thought that Teamsters at the local level shared his vision of unselfish, committed leadership, that the good guys would follow his example and the membership would oust those who didn’t. Ken Paff was right in that winning the top
is not enough.

$100 Plus News: Was there any merit to Kerrigan’s position to stay out of local politics?
Ken Crowe: No. That is like the President of the United States staying out of Congressional and Senate elections. A sympathetic base (local union officials in the case of The Truckers or the Teamsters) makes governing so much easier and leading so much more pleasant.

$100 Plus News: After the novel ended we are left with the irony that despite Kerrigan’s successful efforts to win the battles against the companies for the rank and file, it was union enemies from within that were his undoing. In that regard it’s a sad story, though Kerrigan comes across as a hero who gave his life for the working person. Any thoughts?
Ken Crowe: The sophisticated, vicious, unrelenting campaign to destroy Truckers Union president Tommy Kerrigan had its parallel in the Hoffa campaign operatives’ continuous onslaught to undermine Ron Carey from the moment he was elected. Just as in my novel, THE TRUCKERS, the Teamsters old guarders were aroused by self-interest and some rather sordid consultants to turn
out their supporters in their locals or risk losing their comfortable life styles to an awakened rank and file. Myths are built on the bodies of the assassinated, the murdered, and the martyred.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

A review of THE TRUCKERS by Kenneth C. Crowe

The following review of THE TRUCKERS appeared in the Association for Union Democracy’s Jan. 4, 2011 edition of $100 Plus News. It is reprinted with AUD’s permission:

THE TRUCKERS by Kenneth C. Crowe
(CreateSpace, Charleston, SC: 2010) 300pgs.
Available in paperback on Amazon.com for $9.99 and
as an e-book on Kindle and Smashwords.com

AUD REVIEW:

This is an entertaining and fictional account of
the administration of a reformist IBT international
President called Tommy Kerrigan. The
novel is very loosely based on the Carey presidency
of the 1990s. But it is clearly fiction, and
Mr. Kerrigan’s fate turns out to be very different
than Mr. Carey’s. Mr. Crowe dedicates the
novel to Ken Paff, then, and still, director of the
Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) --
who in the novel is the fictional character
“Helmut Knall.”
A very palpable tension between Kerrigan and
Helmut Knall’s “TFOCC” (“Truckers Fighting
Organized Crime and Corruption”) is present
throughout the story. The reader is introduced
to it on page 11, when Kerrigan is planning his
post-election victory party and is consulting
with his top aide “Cobb Wowka” on who
should be on the invitation list. Wowka advises
Kerrigan not to invite Knall, but Kerrigan
reminds Wowka that “TFOCC did a lot for us.”
Wowka replies “Not for us. For their agenda.
Never forget that... Now that you’ve won,
Helmut and crew might get a little hungry for a
piece of action, which is okay, but we want to
keep them at a certain distance. Don’t let them
get the notion they’re gonna run this union
instead of you.” Kerrigan responds accordingly:
“I’ll give ‘em a couple of jobs. I’m sure we
can find an opening for Helmut in Alaska or
Hawaii.” “Right on buddy,” replies Wowka.
Helmut Knall is a smart, no-nonsense, pain-inthe-
neck whose advice to Kerrigan seems
always to be ahead of the game and works each
time Kerrigan does follow it. But Knall’s first
piece of advice, Kerrigan does not follow. The
uninvited Knall interrupts the victory party and
demands to speak to Kerrigan -- Kerrigan
reluctantly gives him a few minutes -- and
Knall points out that though Kerrigan has won
a great victory he needs to remember that most
of the locals are still being run by the “old
guard” -- the officials who owe their allegiance
to “Steamer Staski” and his successors. The
Steamer Staski character is loosely based on
the administration of Jimmy Hoffa, Sr. On his
victory party night, Knall implores Kerrigan to
help Trucker reformers get elected in the locals:
“The union is the locals, the locals are the
union. You should know.” But Kerrigan is
never willing to do this, as he tells Knall time
and time again throughout the book that an
“International President should not get
involved in the politics of the local.”
Meanwhile, the “old guard” infiltrate the
Kerrigan administration, and become his most
trusted aides, only to betray him, and eventually
succeed in their goal to get rid of him.
Sabotage by the old guard starts with its defiance
of Kerrigan’s call to go on a strike, then
moves on to a series of “dirty tricks” and smear
campaigns having to do with Kerrigan’s personal
relationships and alleged ties to organized
crime. Using its influence with an all too
compliant press, and even the FBI and Justice
Department, the old guard overwhelms
Kerrigan with government investigations into
alleged links to organized crime, or “communists.”
Knall advises Kerrigan on union strategy -- it
was the TFOCC’s plan to strike a major carrier,
a strike which turned out to be a a smashing success,
and makes Kerrigan a hero within the union. Later,
Knall and the TFOCC bail out Kerrigan
in another strike when the old guard begins to sabotage
it. But as the dirty tricks by the old guard become more
and more outrageous, and the investigations proceed,
mob characters appear – and are ready to go after
Kerrigan, reacting to schemes orchestrated by
Kerrigan’s union foes.
In the end, Kerrigan makes great gains for the Trucker
rank and file in its battles with employers, but, sadly,
is unable to withstand the relentless assault by his
internal union enemies.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

CRYSTALENS AFTERMATH

My wife, Rae, had Crystalens installed in both eyes after cataract surgery in November and December. Afterwards her left eye began bothering her variously with the sensation of something in the eye, itching, pain, and dry eye. Sometimes these are very intense afflictions.
In January, our ophthalmologist found nothing wrong and suggested an over-the-counter eye drops. Sometimes the eye drops help, sometimes, the drops seem to increase the uncomfortable sensations.
Searching the web for Crystalens aftermath and problems, one mostly gets ads on how wonderful Crystalens are and from surgeons who want to install them. There are scattered accounts by individuals looking for help about having dry eyes or the sensation of something in the eye—and their doctors have suggested eye drops, which don’t cure the problems. As one interlocutor wrote of his problems: “Obviously, nothing helps.”
Hopefully something does help. If you have had problems such as Rae’s in the aftermath of Crystalens implants, please let us know via comments or my e-mail, kencrowe@optonline.net. We are interested in both the extent of the population of these problems and well as a cure.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

A TALE OF TWO TEAMSTERS PRESIDENTS

Two Teamsters presidents, the late Ron Carey and James P. Hoffa, have both been accused of using the union’s dues money to enhance their chances for reelection.
Each contended they were innocent. The difference in their cases is that after an extraordinary investigation that lasted five years, Carey was cleared by a federal jury of charges that he lied in denying he knew about the scheme to swap $885,000 of Teamsters dues money in exchange for contributions to his reelection campaign. Hoffa has yet to be exonerated.
Through the years, Carey’s cries of innocence went unheard as he was barred from running for reelection and then summarily dismissed from Teamsters membership by the union’s Independent Review Board.
Anyone who attended Carey’s trial in the fall of 2001 would say he was proven innocent rather than found not guilty. His defense team including the late Mark Hulkower, Reid Weingarten, Bruce Bishop and Bob Hauptman absolutely destroyed the government’s case in the process of proving it was based on the lies of a witness providing false testimony to avoid a prison sentence.
Now Hoffa is facing the prospect of experiencing what the late Teamsters President Jackie Presser called the hot seat of the union’s presidency.
Hoffa and members of his current slate are accused of offering lucrative jobs and at least one extra pension to three Teamsters officials, IBT Car Haul Director Fred Zuckerman and International Trustees Henry Perry and Frank Gallegos, in exchange for their support or not running in the 2011 Teamsters International Election. The payoffs, apparently to last for one year, would have cost the IBT treasury at least a quarter of a million dollars—and that doesn’t include the value of the extra pension offered to Zuckerman.
The three, who are to be commended, declined the offers—for whatever reasons: perhaps integrity or perhaps they just couldn’t endure the way Hoffa was running the union. Zuckerman and Perry currently are vice presidential candidates opposing the Hoffa slate in the upcoming IBT election.
IBT Election Supervisor Richard W. Mark uncovered the attempted misuse of Teamsters’ dues money during a six-month-long investigation ordered by Kenneth Conboy, the Teamsters Election Appeals Master. In a strange decision, Mark said there was nothing he could do about the unsuccessful scheme because Zuckerman, Gallegos and Perry refused to go along—and didn’t collect any money.
Expressing his dismay over Mark’s failure to punish Hoffa and company, Perry told the Memphis Commercial Appeal: “It was like, you go in the bank, you pull the gun, you hear the police coming, you run out. You didn't commit a crime.”
Conboy, in effect agreed with Perry’s assessment by ordering Mark to go back to the drawing board to impose a penalty but one short of disqualifying Hoffa as a candidate.
In issuing that directive to Mark, Conboy maligned the memory of Ron Carey by saying “In that case, Ron Carey, the IBT president elect in 1996 knew of a scheme to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars of union funds for the benefit of his campaign.” Conboy either is unaware of the exoneration of Carey by the Manhattan federal court—or isn’t willing to acknowledge that the subsequent evidence emerged to show that Carey should never have been disqualified.
In the same vein in light of the outcome of his trial, I have never understood why Carey was not reinstated as a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Mark now has the burden of figuring out what his solution should be for Hoffa and company’s failed attempt to use the members’ money in their reelection campaign.
Hoffa must also be wondering whether the Teamsters Independent Review Board will investigate the case and wallop him with a penalty that could end his bid for the union presidency.
Fred Gegare, who filed the original complaint that ultimately resulted in Mark’s investigation and is running against Hoffa for the presidency, contends that just like Carey, Hoffa should be disqualified from running again and expelled from Teamsters.
Sandy Pope, the New York Teamster running for the presidency, said in one on her releases, “It’s an open secret that Hoffa uses our dues money to reward his supporters—and to funnel them extra salaries in exchange for campaign contributions. But this is the first time the problem has been officially documented.”


A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

MARK HULKOWER remembered

Mark Hulkower, the brilliant litigator who played a crucial role in saving the late Teamsters president Ron Carey from prison and lasting disgrace, died of cancer last Saturday at the age of 53.
Carey had been put through five years of hell--dumped from the presidency of the Teamsters and pilloried in the press for supposedly participating in a rip off of union funds—before he finally went to trial in Manhattan federal court in the fall of 2001.
Hulkower was part of a potent defense team that included two other lawyers from the Washington, DC firm of Steptoe & Johnson: Reid Weingarten and Bruce Bishop with Bob Hauptman, Carey’s former Special Assistant for Management and Budget, serving as the researcher, analyst of the documents used in evidence, and a source of insight into the operations of the complex union.
Hulkower and Weingarten subjected the prosecution’s key witness to devastating cross-examinations which revealed the government’s case was a lie.
Among the many successful assaults on that witness was one in Hulkower asked with almost boyish innocence: “Would you steal money from the (Carey) campaign?” The witness responded, “No sir.” Then Hulkower produced piles of invoices showing that this crucial government witness was indeed a thief who stole from the campaign.
After the jury returned the verdict exonerating Carey, Hulkower made the pithy observation that the case was “a Greek tragedy with a happy ending.”

THE JYNX review

I got a pleasant surprise today when I checked out THE JYNX on Smashwords finding this review:
Review by: Charles Aylworth on Dec. 28, 2010 :
Up to the minute gender-reversed romance novel. A good read, well worth the time. You can almost name the major players, especially if you are a fan of faux-news.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

To Ed Lowe: My regrets

To Ed Lowe, who died on Saturday, I offer my regrets for never having told him—as I intended--that I based a character on him in my novel, THE JYNX.
My character, Ted Neary, not surprisingly was a widely-read Newsday columnist who was the catalyst in transforming protagonist Billy Plunkett from an obscure wood sculptor into one with a national reputation.
Ted Neary enters the novel in Chapter Forty One:

First Billy spotted the old Plymouth Horizon parked in front of the house, then he saw the guy sitting on the front porch in the rocker with his feet propped up on the railing, slugging beer from a bottle.
He wanted to find out what the stranger was doing on the porch before he unloaded his gear. He walked up the porch steps and immediately recognized him. Ted Neary. The wire glasses, the black mustache and thick black hair on his head. Even the baggy sports jacket. He had seen Neary interviewed on TV and his picture in the paper a couple of times a week. He remembered the opening words of the column he did on Tommy Ledge a good number of years ago. “When Tommy Ledge, Huntington’s legendary clammer, isn’t scooping up those delicious bivalves somewhere on Huntington Bay, he can be found on his favorite bar stool in Sugar’s.”
“Hey,” Neary said with the grin that was part of his anatomy as Billy came onto the small porch.
Billy responded, “My name is Ted Neary and I write a newspaper column.” That was Neary’s pitch on radio and TV ads for his column. “Why are you here? You looking for another legend?”
Neary’s grin grew stretching almost to his ears. “I thought you might like a beer,” he said proffering the cardboard carrier with four Budweisers left in it.
“Looks like you had a two beer wait.”
“Nice day. I didn’t mind. How’d the clamming go today?”

I remember writing about the Ted Neary character with pleasure and with a clear vision of the beer-drinking, always smiling Ed Lowe in mind.
I worked with Ed for 30 years. Among my brightest memories was a night before Christmas Eve in the early 1970s before he became a columnist. Ed had an assignment to do a human interest story in keeping with the season. He wrote the item in verse to the beat of the Night Before Christmas. Before the story even reached the desk almost everyone in the city room had read and enjoyed it as an original, hilarious piece of writing.
The editor on the desk, who was rather a stiff, straight-laced creature, flashed through Ed’s offering and said with consternation on his face: “We can’t print this; it rhymes.” His reaction filled the city room with a mixture of contempt and laughter.
I’m not sure, but I think Ed’s version got in that Christmas Eve edition of Newsday. If it didn’t, it should have.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THE DAME, THE NAME, THE DISENCHANTED

If I were a twitterer, this would be my offering for this year’s race for general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters:
The 2011 Teamsters election summarized: The dame (Sandy), the name (James), the disenchanted (Fred).
The dame, of course, is Sandy Pope, president of New York Teamsters Local 805. Dame can be use as a term for a woman, but I am using it in the expansive concept of a woman of accomplishment. In the United Kingdom, they bestow the title on female high achievers—and that’s what Sandy is. Sandy is a real Teamster having worked her way up from the hard jobs of selector and truck driver.
The name, obviously, James P. Hoffa, the son of Jimmy Hoffa, an earlier Teamster president of some repute. James P. rode his father’s name into the Teamsters presidency in 1999. His claim to being a Teamster comes from summer jobs in his college years and then becoming a lawyer for various IBT entities a couple of years after graduating from law school.
The disenchanted candidate is Fred Gegare, another real Teamster up from the rank and file from Green Bay Wisconsin, who was a vice president on Hoffa’s team until he stunned Teamsters through North America last summer when he announced he could no longer endure Hoffa’s pitiful performance as general president. He says on his campaign website: “"Over the last twelve years, James Phillip Hoffa has proven that running a union of 1.4 million members like a family fiefdom is disastrous. He has shown that the Teamsters Union will not be successful as long as it is run from Washington, D.C. by unelected lawyers, consultants and personal assistants. Just like Hoffa, they have never done the work of real Teamsters. Just like Hoffa, they are more concerned with taking care of themselves than about fighting for the members."
Another shock to Hoffa came last July when Tom Keegel, secretary-treasurer of the IBT, announced he would retire instead of running again on the Hoffa slate. Keegel warned that the Teamsters were being led in the wrong direction and said “"I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do know that continuing down the same road as the IBT has traveled for the last few years will not lead us out of our present difficulties or help us avoid the problems yet to come."
In my latest novel, THE TRUCKERS, there are two characters who seem to be very much like two of the real life characters in this year’s IBT election. The rank and file candidate, Carolyn Gordon, a tough, fearless woman who heads a small Truckers local in Colorado, is running against Steve Staski, a minor television and film actor. Steve is the choice of the Old Guard because he can run on the name of his famous father, Steamer Staski, The Truckers who was murdered on a picket line.
The rank and file leader Helmut Knall says to a doubting aide who thinks Carolyn doesn’t have much of a chance against the Staski name: “We’re going to get a million dollars worth of free publicity because she’s so young and she’s a woman.”
“Like Little Stevie gets because he’s a Staski and an actor,” the aide says.
Knall replies: “The difference is he acts tough. Gordon is tough. And don’t forget she made a name for herself, while he inherited his.”

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.