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Thread: MC Discussion
August 18th, 2013 04:46 PM #1
MC Discussion
I don't know about you, but naming my number one main character is the hardest thing to do. It often takes me a while, sometimes a whole month or two before I can find that perfect name. And the villain is next.
But what I want to know is how you come up with your MC's name and how you go about finding it.robin | intj | ravenclaw | sci-fi writer
List under construction...
August 18th, 2013 04:50 PM #3
I find a picture of someone that looks similar to my main character, and think about how I would name that person in the picture. Once I come up with a few, I think about the personality of my MC and then see which of the names match the best. If that doesn't work, I just find another picture and the process repeats!~ Catholic. College. Communicative Disorders. ~~(updated 11/3/15)
Saints, Classics, & Norwegian Boyfriend's Influence
~♀ ~ Alice Georgina ~ Aurora Seraphina ~ Elizabeth "Elska" Cecilia ~ Genevieve Astrid ~ Juliet Sunniva ~
♂ ~ Caspian Alexander ~ Declan Raphael ~ Ronan Oliver ~ Sebastian Anthony ~
Musings: ~ Charlotte Francesca ~
(I'm using the soo-NEE-va pronunciation of Sunniva)
August 18th, 2013 05:23 PM #5
The names usually just come to me. Occasionally I'll go and read a few lists on Behind the Name and see if anything leaps out at me. I recently had another idea for a book, I was searching for the main characters name when I came across Eckhard. It means 'edge' which is perfect for the story so I decided to use that as a surname. Then I was discussing the names I'd made up for my world and in telling her about the new story she suggested Eli as a name. I'd been thinking about how I didn't currently have a twist on William and then - like lightning- Elliam Eckhard was born.
Basically I don't put a lot of fuss or faff into it. I just let the names come to me or I go in search of them.~Boys~
★ August Eli Benedict ★ Bram ★ Casimir Mordecai ★ Edmond John Meirion ★ Gillon ★
★ Jory Leander ★ Julian Charles ★ Macsen ★ Magnus ★ Vasiliy ★
★ Aira Rose ★ Arietta ★ Clover ★ Delphina ★ Eleni ★ Fiorella ★ Hester Isobel ★
★ Iris ★ Lilah ★ Merit ★ Sylvia ★
Sorry to anyone who read TSI. First draft was terrible. Second drafting now.
August 18th, 2013 06:22 PM #7
When I write (which is not very often), I will usually ask my younger sister to give me a random list of 50 names she thought of, and then I will pick a few off that list and give some different diminutives and alternatives for each name I picked. Then I will think about if the names match the main character, and then I'll go on Nameberry. Which seems like a lot of work for a one-page short story I'm just going to stick in the paper shredder later.Catalina || 18 || College Student
Girls: Augusta || Bryony || Caroline || Elizabeth || Katherine || Margaret || Rosemary || Ruth
Boys: Adrian || August || Bennett || Elliott || Ezra || Foster || Joel || Lowe || Porter || Weston
August 18th, 2013 06:40 PM #9
I actually come up with a name and THEN fit a personality around the name. I come up with the name by looking on Nameberry and finding a name that I would want to read about. It's quite simple actually.Erin (Writer, Nerdfighter, Ravenclaw; Not expecting, just collecting)
(Adelaide, Betty, Cassia, Georgia, Ocean, Violet)
(Asher, Gabriel, Josiah, Oakley, Rowan, Wayland)


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Your doing great, wish my kids had your gumption at your age.
- Get your self a valuable mentor, there are a lot of great commercial guys on this site, pick yourself one good one to listen to.
- Draw up a plan together for this next year, and then you execute that plan, reporting back to your mentor at least a couple of times a month.
As you learn you're planing will get better, and your execution of your planing will get better.
Good luck,

subset: commoncrawl


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Posted at 12:59 AM on July 12, 2013
Kristen is absoluty beautiful!!!! She has matured so much since Twi. I believe she is probably the most natural beauty in HW. I kinda wish some of her clothes were not so revealing so people would stop saying she looks sluty. Who is looking at her clothes any how? Look at that beautiful face and eyes!! We'll see what kind of actress she is when she does this new movie. This will give her a chance to really act I hope. You go Kristen try to forget about your personal problems for a while if you can. If the acting thing doesn't work out you can certainly do modeling. Paris set you apart from all the others. WOW
Posted at 11:13 AM on July 5, 2013
kristen you look perfectly glamorous, your taste in outfits are beautiful you coordinate what you wear. ive read every thing i could get my hands on.ive read about you since you were young you carried your self very mature. kristen if you need to talk privately im here and i would not repeat what you had to say, ive had simular expierence babygirl take care of yourself with love sandrarose


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Antibiotic residues are a cause for concern. FDA bulk tank testing will begin in 2012
Will dairies with meat residue violations also have antibiotic residues in their bulk tanks? In an attempt to answer this question, in 2012, the FDA will relaunch its program to test for antibiotic residues in bulk tanks. In 2009, 861 of over 3 million tanker loads of milk (0.026 percent) tested positive for drug residues. Penicillin, a drug some individuals are hypersensitive to, was the main culprit.
In all, 1,800 milk samples will be collected from two groups of dairy producers. Producers on the FSIS Residue Violator List will account for 900 samples, with another 900 random samples from dairies throughout the U.S.
After FDA personnel visit the farm to collect samples, the milk will be tested for 26 drug residues. The process of collecting samples and testing will take about a week. Blind testing, which removes any connection to the farm of origin, will be done. Bulk tank samples are being taken to eliminate any antibiotic dilution that may occur by the time a tanker reaches the processing plant.
Unlike when this plan was initially proposed, blind testing will be done to remove the risk of producers being dropped by their cooperative and reduced the need for processor product recalls.
Why they're testing . . .
The FDA believes that repeat cull cow violations may correlate to potential milk residue violations.
Cull dairy cows and calves account for a large percentage of antibiotic residue tissue violations. An inspector-generated analysis of sampling violations in 2008, showed that dairy cows accounted for 44 percent and bob veal accounted for 46 percent of total violations, noted Pam Ruegg,with the University of Wisconsin, at the 15th UW-Arlington DairyDays. These numbers far outweigh violations caused by bulls, market hogs, and beef cows.
Producers whose animals test positive for antibiotic residues are added to the USDA's FSIS Residue Violation List. In cull cows, the most common residue compounds are penicillin, flunixin, slfadimethoxine, and desfuroylceftiofur.
Reduce your risk
Whenever a drug is used in an extra-label manner, the withdrawal time for meat and milk changes from what is indicated on the label, noted Ruegg. If you're unsure what the withdrawal time should be, visit the FARAD website to make sure you keep cows out of the tank and off the truck for an appropriate amount of time. If you are still unsure, test milk for residues before adding cows back to the bulk tank.


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Pulaski Technical College will begin offering a culinary arts degree - the first of its kind in central Arkansas - beginning in January.
The Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board on Oct. 27 unanimously approved PTC's proposal to establish the Pulaski Technical College Arkansas Culinary School. Pulaski Tech's Board of Trustees approved the proposal on Aug. 28.
"The Arkansas Culinary School has had tremendous success in preparing aspiring chefs for careers in food preparation and the hospitality industry," said Dr. Dan F. Bakke, college president. "Through this venture we will expand the academic programs we are able to offer students and better serve the workforce needs of central Arkansas."
Aspiring chefs will be able to earn an associate degree in culinary arts or complete a technical certificate in either culinary arts or pastry arts at the new Pulaski Technical College Arkansas Culinary School. The Arkansas Culinary School currently offers an apprenticeship program with classes in culinary techniques and kitchen management.
The Associate of Applied Science in Culinary Arts is a 72-credit-hour program that will prepare students for professional entry into the food service industry. Students will master food preparation and learn culinary techniques, kitchen management skills, sanitation and safety procedures, cost control management, nutrition, styles of table service, and menu design and strategy.
Both technical certificates require 30 credit hours. The certificate in culinary arts will prepare students for entry-level positions in the food service industry. Students who pursue a certificate in baking and pastry arts will learn skills in baking, pastry techniques, cakes and cake decoration, candies and chocolates, breads and food service sanitation.
Students will attend classes at the Culinary School location, which has operated in Little Rock since 1995 on the campus of Performance Food Group, 4901 Asher Ave. Pulaski Technical College has purchased the culinary school's assets.
Pulaski Technical College officials expect the new programs to serve 75 students initially and as many as 250 over the next three years.
Todd Gold, who is president of the Arkansas Culinary School, and Allison Shaskan, the current executive director, will serve as director and assistant director, respectively, at the Pulaski Technical College Arkansas Culinary School.
Pulaski Technical College


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The risks of fluoridation on child development discussed at Binghamton University
BINGHAMTON, NY --Fluoride's effects on the neural/behavioral development of children will be the topic of the annual Robert Isaacson Lecture, to be held at 4 p.m. Tuesday, October 14, in the Susquehanna Room of the Binghamton University Union. The talk is free and open to the public.
Guest speaker Paul Connett, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, will discuss research regarding the addition of fluorides to drinking water as a potential human health hazard, especially to the development of children. Connett's efforts to reduce environmental hazards has taken him to 49 states and 50 countries, making over 2,000 public presentations
Distinguished Professor Isaacson, for whom the lecture is named, was part of the National Research Council's Committee on the evaluation of the toxicological and clinical data on fluoride. The committee later published the report, "Fluoride in the Drinking Water" which described the risks and benefits posed by fluoridated drinking water.
This event is sponsored by the Binghamton University Center for Development and Behavioral Neuroscience.
For more information contact the Department of Psychology at (607) 777-2370.


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Speaking Event: Driving Growth
A flood of natural gas released by hydraulic fracturing is turning energy markets upside down. How will that impact the way America powers its economy and moves people and goods around?
Many countries are investing in clean fuels and putting a price on carbon emissions. Will the United States also start to price fuels to include their full costs? How will that impact the economy?
Join us for a broad conversation with leaders of one of the country's biggest energy companies and one of the largest environmental organizations.
Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund
Rhonda Zygocki, Vice President, Policy & Planning, Chevron
Cost: $20 standard, FREE for members, $7 students (with valid ID)


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How the Outfit Killed JFK
On the anniversary of his death, Hillel Levin rehashes one of America's greatest mysteries: Who Killed JFK?
[Editor's Note: It has been nearly 50 years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy and America is no closer to distinguishing fact from fiction. Many have tried, throwing theories at the wall to see what sticks and still we are left to wonder what happened on that fateful day in Dallas, November 22nd, 1963.
Appearing in the November 2010 issue of Playboy, investigative author Hillel Levin attempts to unravel the details of the FBI's investigation and the Warren Commission's findings surrounding the daylight murder of an American icon. The following is the article in full.]
Having just retired from the FBI, Zack Shelton traveled in 2002 from his Texas home to reminisce with old Chicago comrades. They met over meals, at places that had once been their hangouts. Most of them were also retired, gray and beefy. They wore open-necked shirts and khakis or jeans. Back in their bureau days they had been a lean and edgy crew—dark suits and ties were standard attire. Together they had put the first cracks in the previously impervious shell of Chicago's Mafia, known as the Outfit.
Now Shelton was on a similarly quixotic task. He believed a small-time criminal locked up in an Illinois prison may have committed the greatest crime of their time. His name was James Files, and he had once been a driver for the Outfit's most feared hit man. Files told Shelton both he and the hit man were in Dallas when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Files even claimed that he had fired the fatal shot from behind a fence on the infamous grassy knoll.
Shelton knew it sounded preposterous, but he had reason to take Files seriously. When he repeated the Files confession to his old buddies, Shelton was prepared to be laughed out of the restaurant. Instead, they all listened intently. In fact, like Shelton, some of them also had their own revelations about the assassination or knew other agents who had. They regretted never having had a forum in which to air them.
"There's one thing about FBI agents," says Shelton. "They're damn good investigators. They don't operate on the basis of theories. They deal in facts, and the facts have never supported the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin."
The evidence, Shelton believes, shows that organized crime orchestrated Kennedy's murder. An increasing number of historians agree, but they still don't know who the shooter—or shooters—may have been. There is also virtually no understanding of the Outfit's role in the conspiracy.
If Special Agent Shelton learned any lesson during his eight years in Chicago, it was never to underestimate the Outfit or Tony Accardo, the man at its helm for five decades. Unlike the Mafia dons on the East Coast, Accardo had little interest in the public spotlight or absolute power. After he took control of the Outfit, in the mid-1940s, he built what is now acknowledged to be the biggest empire in the history of American organized crime, with rackets extending from Chicago to California.
Accardo was willing to divide the spoils by geography rather than by family. Inside Chicago that meant five groups, each with its own boss. Although most of these mob bosses were Italian, they were not necessarily related to those who worked for them. Their associates and underlings could be Greek, Jewish or German. Depending on where an illegal act took place, unaffiliated criminals—even weekend poker players—had to pay a street tax to the local Outfit boss. Failure to pay could result in a beating or death.
Shelton's fellow agent Jim Wagner transferred to Chicago from New York and immediately recognized how crime in Chicago was organized. "The Outfit had a superior business model because it used geography instead of family," he explains. "You didn't have the blood feuds like in New York, where different families fought over the same territory."
Nothing fueled the Outfit's expansion as much as its influence on unions—the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in particular. The union's pension fund, which was run out of Chicago, financed construction of the Outfit's first casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. As he did in his hometown, Accardo was willing to let other mobsters play—but on his terms.
A key component of the Outfit's success was its infiltration of the Democratic Party in Chicago's First Ward. Mob operatives influenced the election of judges, who then found reasons to throw out charges against the Outfit. The mob's political connections also helped it buy voting cards from residents of Chicago's public housing projects that it could then punch for its favored candidates. When a slender margin in Illinois ensured Kennedy's electoral victory over Richard Nixon in 1960, Shelton says, "the mob really did believe it gave Kennedy the election."
If that was true, the Kennedy administration showed little gratitude. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy made organized crime his signature issue, lighting a fire under J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, which had previously gone easy on the Mafia. In the last year of the Eisenhower administration the Justice Department convicted only 35 low-level mobsters. By the end of 1963 RFK had pushed that number to 288, including high-ranking bosses. More alarming for the Outfit, while it was using the Teamsters pension fund to build casinos, RFK targeted Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa with a team of investigators known as the Get Hoffa squad. The squad's first indictments against the union leader were for accepting payoffs from trucking companies and for subsequent jury tampering in those trials. In the summer of 1963 it brought new charges involving pension funds.
Five months later, JFK was assassinated. G. Robert Blakey, then a member of RFK's Justice Department, was well aware of what organized crime had at stake in snuffing out the Kennedy administration's onslaught. "It seemed obvious that if there was a conspiracy, it would be from the mob," says Blakey. In Brothers, a recent book on RFK, author David Talbot quotes Bobby telling a confidant after JFK's assassination: "If anyone was involved, it was organized crime." According to Blakey, neither Hoover nor JFK's successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, wanted to open that can of worms. "The risks of where that investigation would lead were too high," says Blakey. "It was much more convenient for Oswald to be the lone assassin."
In the late 1970s Blakey served as chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, which took a second look at the Warren Commission's findings. On the basis of acoustical evidence, Blakey's investigators determined there was a "high probability" that more than one gunman fired at the president and that "individual members" of "organized crime" may have been involved. The committee also found that Hoover had kept the FBI's organized crime task force out of the investigation and didn't pursue leads tying Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby, to the Mafia.
But back in 1963, if the Warren Commission had called in the FBI agents monitoring the Outfit, it probably wouldn't have learned much. Although it was the dawn of electronic surveillance and mob leaders were supposedly unaware of the bugs planted in their meeting places, the FBI never had enough information to bring a major case against the Outfit in the 1960s. "Unfortunately," Blakey says, "we learned later that the surveillance was incomplete."
In Chicago, for example, agents never fully understood the executive nature of the Outfit's hierarchy. They thought Sam "Momo" Giancana ruled the Outfit. Giancana was the Chicago mob's most flamboyant boss after Al Capone, but he remained in power only until 1965. It's now clear Giancana always answered to Accardo. According to Blakey, no bug or wiretap ever caught Accardo talking to Giancana. Because of Accardo's understated ways, the media, law enforcement and even some local criminals never completely knew the extent of his control.
When Zack Shelton transferred to the FBI's Chicago office in 1978, his first case involved the murders of several burglars who had broken into Accardo's home. It was natural to assume the mob boss had ordered their executions. For a few weeks it appeared the 28-year-old agent and his partner would put Accardo behind bars for the first time in his long criminal career. "During the investigation we pulled the phone records of everyone we could think of," Shelton remembers. The agents could see a call alerting Accardo to a break-in at his house and then the crime boss's call to his right-hand man, Joey Aiuppa, down the chain of command to Aiuppa's driver, Gerry Carusiello, another longtime burglar, who did the dirty work.
The agents learned enough to impanel a grand jury. The first time he saw Accardo, Shelton understood why people underestimated his brutality. At 73, Accardo dressed in conservatively tailored suits and looked more like a retired corporate executive than a crime lord.
Accardo covered his tracks with ruthless efficiency. Carusiello was killed before he could testify. Accardo's longtime Italian houseman, who testified to a grand jury in broken English, may have said too much, because he soon disappeared. Shelton got a warrant to search Accardo's home for signs of the witness's whereabouts but could find nothing other than a pair of prescription glasses at the bottom of an incinerator.
When the agents searched Accardo's enormous basement—which was as big as the upper floor of the opulent house—they found a hidden walk-in safe. Inside were stacks of new bills that totaled $275,000. Shelton and his partner traced the money to Las Vegas. However, the FBI had just begun to investigate how the Outfit had skimmed cash from casino counting rooms. Rather than blow that operation, they returned the funds to Accardo and never brought charges against him for the deaths.
The investigation could not have had a more unsatisfying outcome for Shelton. "About all we managed to do was keep that money from him for about 18 months," he says. "But God, it sure was an interesting case."
If nothing else, this case taught Shelton two important lessons about Accardo: The mob leader knew no mercy when it came to insulating himself from a serious crime, and Shelton had seen for himself the sort of cash that gushed from Las Vegas. Only years later did he realize these lessons could shed light on the assassination of JFK.
Around the time of the burglary investigation, Shelton had a much more run-of-the-mill case against a ring of hijackers. The group's members would overpower truckers at rest stops and abscond with the entire tractor trailer.
The crew was led by James Files, who was the sort of white man with no overt ethnicity that mobsters called a hillbilly. In fact, Files was born into a broken home in Alabama but raised by a single mother in the tough Italian neighborhood of a Chicago suburb. Shelton had no idea how Files fit into the crazy-quilt pattern of the Outfit. "All I knew was that he had to have the blessings of the mob to be operating on that scale."
Shelton used another hillbilly to infiltrate Files's crew. It was only a matter of time before the agent built a case for the interstate transport of stolen goods. Then one day Shelton debriefed his informant about a trip he had taken to Dallas with Files. As usual, they were hauling stolen vehicles, but when they passed through Dealey Plaza, the snitch told Shelton, "Files went weird on me. He said, 'If the American people really knew what happened there, they wouldn't know how to handle it.'"
The comment seemed so bizarre that neither the informant nor the FBI agent knew what to make of it. "There was no reason for this guy to make up that story about Files," Shelton says. "And Files was the last person I'd expect to comment about JFK's assassination or any topic of that kind, but it sounded as though he really knew what happened. Maybe because it was so unexpected, it stuck with me."
Over the next decade Shelton and the other agents in the organized crime unit turned the tide against Accardo. With Operation Strawman, Shelton's team caught the Outfit selling casinos to the Kansas City mob. The investigation won the 1986 conviction of 78-year-old Aiuppa, who spent the next 10 years in prison. During the same period Shelton's squad also tapped the lines of the Teamsters pension fund offices to bring charges against union leaders. "I loved being in Chicago," says Shelton. "Every day was different and exciting, and we did a hell of a lot of good."
Shelton didn't think about Files again until 1992, after he had been transferred to the FBI office in Beaumont, Texas. He read in a local newspaper about Joe Hugh West, a private investigator and former Baptist preacher from Houston who claimed to have revelations regarding JFK's murder. As Shelton skimmed the article, two Outfit names jumped off the page: Charles Nicoletti, a notorious hit man, and Johnny Roselli, the Outfit's first enforcer in Las Vegas. West claimed he had a source who could place both men in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
Although Shelton was vaguely familiar with the conclusions of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he had yet to hear anyone claim that Outfit heavyweights had been involved—especially Nicoletti or Roselli, who could not have acted without Accardo's approval.
Shelton gave the private investigator a call. Although West had a reputation as a huckster (he held his press conferences in front of a banner emblazoned with TRUTH, INC.), he seemed sincere about finding the culprits behind JFK's assassination. He revealed the ex-con who had been his source for the information about Nicoletti and Roselli. "I even went to court and got immunity for the guy so he couldn't be convicted for any crime he told us about," Shelton says. "But I pretty quickly caught him in a couple of lies. I told Joe, 'Don't take anything this guy says to the bank.' When Joe heard that, it was as if the life went out of him. I felt sorry for the man, so I said, 'If you can track down a guy named James Files, he might have some good information.'"
Shelton returned to Beaumont and was warned by his supervisor never again to mention JFK. Shelton expected the matter to be closed in early 1993 when he read that West had died following heart surgery. Soon after, West's lawyer, Don Irvin, called to announce that "the crusade lives on." Irvin told Shelton that West had succeeded in tracking Files to a state prison in Illinois, where he was doing the equivalent of a life sentence for the attempted murder of a cop. Files had initially rebuffed West, but the former preacher persevered through phone calls, a visit and extensive correspondence. The prisoner was devastated to learn of West's sudden death.
As a tribute to West, Files agreed to talk extensively to Irvin, who then relayed what he heard to Shelton. He had much more to say than anyone anticipated. Files told of being remanded for a court-martial from the Army after he was charged with shooting other soldiers in Laos in 1960, but he then claimed to have been plucked out of a veterans' hospital during a psychiatric evaluation and recruited to train anti-Castro Cubans in Florida. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, Files said, he returned home with a chip on his shoulder against his nation and the president. Nicoletti saw him racing stock cars and tapped him to be his driver.
For most Chicago mobsters, muscular Charles Nicoletti—nearly six feet tall and with a lantern jaw—could be a frightening sight. Nevertheless, he defied the stereotypes of a mob killer. On most days he wore a suit and tie. His hangouts included insurance agencies, car dealerships and a company that made burial vaults.
Despite the businessman trappings, Nicoletti was the son of an abusive father, whom he killed at the age of 12 after the man beat his mother. The Outfit became his family, and Nicoletti worked his way up the ranks by dealing dope and making book, for which he was repeatedly arrested and jailed. Inside the mob, Nicoletti's intelligence and heartlessness made him effective as an enforcer. Charles Crimaldi, another hit man who had turned informant, called Nicoletti "the most respected and the most dangerous" man in the Outfit, adding, "He don't want to impress anybody. He just wants to go about his business."
By the early 1960s police believed Nicoletti was the Outfit's third-ranked leader and right-hand man to Giancana. At this stage Nicoletti's skills were reserved for only the most sensitive contracts, and when he went out with another hit man, Files claimed to be the third man behind the wheel.
Despite Nicoletti's fearsome reputation, Files called him "Mr. Nicoletti" and said he was the closest thing to a father figure he ever had.
During his discussions with Irvin, Files gave vivid accounts of the weeks leading up to the assassination. Then 21, he was playing pinball at his favorite hangout when Nicoletti first told him that Giancana had put out a contract on "your friend"—the president. Nicoletti instructed Files to acquire the weapons and bring them to Texas in the hidden trunk compartment of a 1963 Chevrolet, a "work" car that couldn't be traced.
Files told Irvin the following story about his journey to Dallas: He stayed in a courtyard motel on the western outskirts of Dallas and met Lee Harvey Oswald, who took him downtown to point out the best escape routes from the city. Oswald also took him to an abandoned field, where Files test-fired guns hidden in the trunk. (Oswald, he said, didn't want to shoot.) Upon their return to the motel Oswald took a picture of him standing shirtless next to his portable record player—a photo Files kept but one that would have been more telling had it included the photographer.
Files claimed he made contact with another Outfit leader on November 21. Early that morning he drove to the swanky Cabana Motor Hotel in Dallas, where he picked up Johnny Roselli. Then 58, Roselli had carefully cut silver hair and wore tinted glasses and silk suits. He was every bit the flashy mob kingpin Nicoletti was not, but back in his younger Chicago days Roselli was equally feared as a hit man. By 1963 he was hanging out at the Friars Club in Los Angeles with his pal Frank Sinatra and was caught a few years later in an elaborate card-cheating scheme. It brought him a brief prison sentence and a permanent ban from Las Vegas casinos. In Dallas, Files said, he took Roselli to a pancake house, where he met Jack Ruby.
According to Files, Nicoletti did not join him until the morning of November 22. The two went to Dealey Plaza, using as a guide a map of the motorcade route that Roselli had gotten from Ruby. He and Nicoletti picked a spot in the Dal-Tex tower (next to the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald worked) for Nicoletti to shoot from. Only then, Files says, did the hit man ask him to be a backup. Nicoletti feared Roselli was too rusty to hit a target from a long distance, and he knew Files had been trained as a sniper in the Army. Files said he set up behind the stockade fence on the grassy knoll to get a shot from the front of the procession. The weapon he chose was a Remington Fireball, a cross between a rifle and a pistol that could fit inside an attaché case. Nicoletti's one instruction was not to hit Jackie. Files followed the motorcade through the scope of his Remington and shot a .222 caliber bullet that hit the president in the right temple. He then casually took off his jacket, turned it inside out and put his gun back in its case.
During his brief encounter with Oswald, Files said, the two did not discuss each other's mission. He believed Oswald never fired a shot and was unwittingly there as a patsy—as Oswald himself said after his arrest. Other hit men were in town to kill Oswald, but he slipped away before they got to him—the major glitch in the day's operation.
For Irvin, James Files was the missing link to the real conspiracy behind the JFK assassination. Irvin wanted Shelton to interview Files to make sure he didn't turn out to be as flaky as West's previous sources.
"I thought some of what Files said was a little too good to be true," Shelton admits. "That was my first impression. But I thought there was a ring of truth to it, too. Nicoletti was the perfect person for the Outfit to send. I could understand why it wanted Roselli in Dallas too, because they trusted him to operate things. But at that stage of his life Roselli couldn't have been a shooter. It made sense that Nicoletti would have wanted someone else to back him up."
But nothing about the Files story was more compelling for Shelton than the fates of the three central Outfit characters: All of them had been killed in the mid-1970s after being summoned by congressional committees: Giancana and Roselli around the time of a Senate investigation and Nicoletti just a day after one of Blakey's investigators called looking for him. All had ranked high enough in the mob's hierarchy to have directly implicated Accardo and Aiuppa in a conspiracy to kill the president. Was Accardo covering his tracks?
Shelton's efforts to interview Files in 1993 were leaked to the press by one of Irvin's associates, and the FBI wouldn't allow it. The bureau instead sent two other agents to interview the Illinois prisoner, and they deemed his information unworthy of further investigation. Shelton watched from the sidelines as TV impresario Dick Clark produced a show for NBC based on Files's confession. At the last minute the network brought in consultants who declared Files a fraud, and the program was scrubbed.
Shelton still wouldn't let go of the Files story. Although he realized it had many holes, he says, "There was just too much detail for him to have made everything up." After he retired from the FBI in 1998 and opened his own private investigation firm, he approached Clark about getting the Files story back on the air. "Dick Clark had me out to his office," Shelton recalls, "and I think he believed there was something to pursue, but he had just been burned too badly to try again." Meanwhile, Joe West's organization had splintered. Some of the pieces had been picked up by a Dutch investor, Wim Dankbaar, who offered to cover Shelton's expenses if he could corroborate Files's claims. (Dankbaar used some of Shelton's research in his book and video, Files on JFK.)
For Shelton that collaboration came with the discovery of two men who claimed independently that they had helped bring the hit men to Dallas. Chauncey Marvin Holt said he drove Nicoletti from a ranch in Arizona, and William Robert Plumlee said he flew Roselli into town the day before the assassination. Each man had spent a significant part of his life on the Gulf Coast, and each had connections to the mob, the CIA and Cuba.
According to an extensive FBI file, Plumlee claimed he made his first clandestine flights to Cuba in support of Castro, supplying guns mobsters had stolen from a National Guard armory. He served time for passing a bad check but was still used as a contract pilot by the CIA, helping to equip such right-wing guerrilla groups as Oliver North's Contras. Plumlee claimed his CIA contacts had ordered him to fly Roselli to Dallas the day before the assassination.
The CIA connection with Roselli was not farfetched. It is now known that in 1960 the CIA approached Roselli through a Las Vegas hotel executive (and former FBI agent) to assist in a plan to assassinate Castro. Roselli introduced the go-between to Giancana and Tampa mob boss Santo Trafficante Jr., who had casinos expropriated by Castro and was briefly jailed in Cuba after the revolution. The CIA supplied poison that a Trafficante confederate was supposed to slip into Castro's food, but nothing came of the effort.
Roselli testified about the escapade when it was revealed in 1975 during the hearings into Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders led by Idaho senator Frank Church. But Roselli may have talked too freely. He disappeared within weeks of his third appearance before the committee, in 1976. His body was found sawed in half and stuffed inside an oil drum floating off Biscayne Bay. His death so rattled Plumlee that he contacted local FBI agents to inform them of his role in bringing Roselli to Dallas, but he claimed the effort was to "abort" the assassination, not assist it.
Chauncey Holt, who said he brought Nicoletti to Dallas, had a background even more problematic than Plumlee's. He admitted to having worked as an accountant for businesses owned by gangster Meyer Lansky. Holt also worked for Peter Licavoli, a leader of Detroit's Mafia and a supporter of Jimmy Hoffa. Holt said he met Nicoletti and Ohio hit man Leo Moceri (who disappeared in 1976, shortly after Hoffa) at Licavoli's ranch in Tucson and drove the two to Dallas. They intended to arrive on November 21 but did not get into town until the morning of the assassination because of car trouble. Holt claimed he was the oldest-looking member of the three "tramps"—the apparent vagrants found in a boxcar after the assassination and photographed as they were marched into Dallas police headquarters. They were held briefly, and their true identities have been a source of speculation among conspiracy theorists ever since.
Holt also claimed to have been in another iconic shot—of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, a few months before the assassination, during an anti-Castro demonstration. Holt was photographed standing to the side ready to lend moral support as Oswald faced down demonstrators.
Holt said that in addition to working for mobsters he provided contract services for the CIA. A trained artist, he forged documents, including the alias ID card Oswald used to purchase the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, the supposed assassination weapon. He said he had also created counterfeit Secret Service credentials for others to use in Dallas. Holt first "came out" as a conspirator in a 1991 Newsweek article and sat for several interviews, some videotaped, before his death from cancer, in 1997. Although he never admitted knowing who had orchestrated the assassination, he did speculate that the presence in Dallas of people like him, with such murky backgrounds in both crime and espionage, may have been part of the plan to "muddy the waters."
In 2002 Shelton traveled to San Diego to meet with Holt's daughter, who had her father's videotapes. Later, Shelton had dinner with a retired FBI agent, who asked why he was in town. When Shelton told him about Files, the agent replied with his own story from when he worked on the Teamsters pension fund case. He had monitored a wiretapped conversation between a pension executive and a Hoffa bodyguard. "He heard [the bodyguard] say that Ruby made all these calls to Chicago before the assassination. That always bothered him because the Warren Commission concluded that Ruby had no significant tie to the underworld. All these years he knew that was bullshit, but there was no one he could talk to about it."
The dinner was an epiphany for Shelton. "I realized there had to be other agents who think they know something about the assassination. I just had to reach out to them."
When Shelton returned to Chicago later that year to excavate the memories of his bureau colleagues, he was most interested in the response of Jim Wagner, who had led the organized crime unit. Wagner became the FBI's foremost Outfit expert and was a tower of integrity. "Jim listened to me talk a little about the Outfit and the assassination, and then he said, 'Zack, I think you're right on.'"
Like Shelton, Wagner had his own unexpected brush with JFK history. In his case, it happened in 1989 when the feds revealed that a mob attorney had put a wire on one of the Outfit's most important political operatives in the First Ward. A few Outfit soldiers came forward to wear wires so they wouldn't go to prison. One of them was Lenny Patrick. In his prime, Patrick controlled the Outfit's bookmaking and juice operations on Chicago's West Side. By the time Wagner worked with him, he was 76, "a crotchety old man," Wagner remembers, "sickly but still dangerous."
Before Patrick would meet his mob boss, he would first go to a safe house, where Wagner would fit him with a concealed recorder. The agent also gave him cash to feed his loan sharks so the FBI could build extortion cases against them, too. It wasn't long before Wagner suspected Patrick of stealing some of that money.
One day when Patrick showed up at the safe house Wagner was waiting for him with a lie detector. "I told Lenny an examiner was on his way to strap him into the polygraph so I could find out what he was doing with the cash." Patrick confessed to stealing it. In the spirit of the moment, the agent decided to ask about a few other subjects as well. Wagner had once been a history teacher and was always fascinated by the assassination. He remembered Patrick was supposedly a friend of Jack Ruby's.
Patrick had always downplayed their relationship, but he admitted to Wagner that he had been "Rubenstein's" mentor in the Outfit, having plucked him out of a boxing club. Patrick said he taught him how to be a bookie, and when Ruby's best friend was killed for taking bets without paying his street tax, Patrick was the one who banished Ruby to Dallas. Patrick admitted he was one of the last to speak with Ruby before he killed Oswald.
After hearing that, Wagner said, "I backed up, and I asked, 'Then who hit Kennedy?'" "He said, 'We did it.'" "'But who did it?'" "'You know. Momo [Giancana] had the main guys there.'" "When I pressed him to tell me exactly who, he clammed up. He said he had told me enough and didn't want to talk about it anymore. But then he said, 'It was us, and we'll have to pay for it.'"
If the Outfit had supplied the firepower for the assassination and the cleanup with Ruby, as Lenny Patrick told Wagner, then who groomed Lee Harvey Oswald as the patsy? For Shelton there is one indisputable candidate—a longtime Accardo ally from Oswald's hometown with both the motivation and the energy to choreograph JFK's assassination.
His name was Carlos Marcello. Short in stature and bullnecked, he was known as the Little Man or the Godfather of the Gulf Coast. When Shelton asked Chicago agents about the assassination, one referred him to his brother, Michael Wacks, also an agent, who had spent a year working undercover on a sting involving Marcello.
Like Accardo, Marcello came to power in the 1940s. Like Accardo, he enjoyed unusual longevity for a mob boss, with domination of his home turf and an expansive reach that extended throughout the Gulf Coast. Unlike Accardo, however, he maintained a high profile as a civic leader, real estate tycoon and owner of a popular restaurant and hotel in New Orleans. But if an associate had his confidence, he'd identify certain out-of-town partners by saying, in his gangster patois, "Dey Maf, like me."
Marcello was a partner with Tampa boss Trafficante and the Outfit in several different rackets. Most often the Southern bosses were junior partners to Chicago because the Outfit controlled the union leaders who gave access to pension funds. But in 1963 Marcello and Trafficante wanted their own piece of the Las Vegas bonanza, and like prospectors at a gold rush they were eager to stake their claim on the Strip before it was too late.
Their plans hinged on a loan from the Teamsters pension fund. They courted Hoffa to do the deal, but Hoffa was distracted by indictments from RFK's Justice Department. Marcello was no more a fan of Bobby than the union leader was. As attorney general, Kennedy deported Marcello to Guatemala, where he was stranded for a few days in a jungle before he could return to the U.S. It was a story the affable Marcello could not retell without sputtering in rage.
The mob bosses' go-between with the Teamsters was Trafficante's trusted trial lawyer Frank Ragano, who was also defending Hoffa against the government's charges. According to Ragano, in August 1963, when the mob bosses had the lawyer approach Hoffa yet again about the loan, the union leader responded, "The time has come for your friend [Trafficante] and Carlos to get rid of him. Kill that son of a bitch John Kennedy."
At breakfast the next morning in a corner of Marcello's restaurant, Ragano passed along Hoffa's request. He expected the mob bosses to laugh it off, but they responded instead with stony silence. Looking back on the incident in his 1994 memoir, Ragano wondered whether the assassination conspiracy was already under way.
Marcello discussed the Kennedys with a former Las Vegas promoter. Explaining that he needed to chop off the head of the dog (JFK) so the tail (RFK) would die, he told the promoter that he would find a "nut" his people could manipulate into taking the blame.
Marcello's "nut" could have been Oswald, who grew up in Marcello's fiefdom. According to Blakey's investigators, Oswald's uncle, a bookie, and his mother had connections to Marcello. Another mutual acquaintance was David Ferrie, who was Oswald's childhood friend and an anti-Castro activist. Ferrie worked as a private investigator for Marcello's lawyer and was in court with him on the day of the assassination. Ferrie died of a cerebral aneurysm soon after New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison fingered him as a co-conspirator in JFK's assassination.
Conspiracy theorists who believe Oswald was manipulated by others typically blame agents associated with the CIA or Cuba—not the mob. Of all Oswald's activities before the assassination, none have led to more speculation about espionage than his trip to Mexico City from September 27 to October 2, 1963. As he did in New Orleans, Oswald made another public display of his affections for Cuba by visiting the nation's embassy and requesting a visa to travel there. CIA headquarters later destroyed photos of Oswald entering the embassy and tapes of him calling there.
But according to Jim Wagner, there could have been a mercenary purpose for Oswald's trip. Looking through FBI archives, Wagner discovered that Accardo sent a courier with $100,000 in cash to Mexico City the same weekend Oswald was there. It may have been a coincidence, since the Outfit did have extensive interests in Mexico City. Or the Outfit may have been in a better position than Marcello to pay off Oswald.
In the days after the assassination Oswald's various pro-Castro activities seemed "too pat—too obvious" to Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, who had taken control of the Justice Department when RFK could no longer function. If the CIA or anti-Castro interests had planned to use the assassination as an excuse to invade Cuba, they quickly backed off.
And if the mob had used the assassination to muzzle the Justice Department, it could not have been more successful. Over the next three years the workload of federal organized crime prosecutors would be cut in half; their time in front of grand juries was reduced by 72 percent. President Johnson was not the threat to organized crime JFK had been—which was probably no surprise for Marcello, whose domain extended to Texas. Shelton uncovered reports that the Little Man regularly paid off LBJ. According to one of his sources, a wealthy San Antonio investor named Morris Jaffe "used to take bags of cash" from Marcello to LBJ—even when Johnson was in the White House. By the time Shelton heard this story, Jaffe had died, so he called Jaffe's son. "When I asked him if that was true," Shelton says, "he answered, 'My dad knew a lot of people. He was close to J. Edgar Hoover, too.'"
In 1981 Trafficante and Accardo were both indicted for a kickback scheme involving a Tampa union. Although they beat that rap, Trafficante was indicted on another charge in 1986. The next year, shortly before his death, he told lawyer Ragano, "Carlos fucked up. We shouldn't have killed Giovanni. We should have killed Bobby."
Carlos Marcello had his own troubles with the feds. In the early 1980s he was convicted in a sting known as Operation Brilab. Agent Mike Wacks pretended to be a crooked insurance executive. In return for kickbacks, the Little Man opened doors to politicians and union executives across the country.
After a long career in the FBI, Wacks thought he had seen it all, but this sting opened his eyes even wider. "Mob guys like Accardo and Marcello felt like they ran a separate government," he says. "Marcello knew right off the top of his head who was amenable to kickbacks, whether it was a politician or a union figure, across his whole region. Not just in Texas and Louisiana, but Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma." Wacks was ready to rope in the Outfit when a leak to the press brought the sting to an abrupt end.
During his year undercover, Wacks became close with Marcello. "He was pushing 70, but I only wished I worked so hard. He could have hundreds of deals going at the same time and bounce around until 3:30 a.m. with a girlfriend half his age. Then at seven the next morning he'd call to see why you weren't at work already."
Even decades later, Wacks says, Marcello could not hide his hatred for the Kennedys. "Historians don't understand the loyalty mob bosses felt politicians owed them. They thought they were on the same level. If they put someone into power and he didn't do their bidding, their solution was to take him out."
Even though Wacks was exposed as an agent, Marcello remained cordial to him. "We had spent so much time together," Wacks explains, "that the old man treated me almost like a son."
After Marcello went to prison for Brilab in 1983, he suffered a stroke. Doctors believed he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and he started muttering in his sleep about the Kennedy assassination. A plan was devised to transfer him to a federal prison hospital in Minnesota and embed an agent as his cell mate to record the nocturnal admissions. Again, word leaked out and the operation was aborted.
Wacks did not believe such subterfuge was necessary. When he went to visit him in prison, he found Marcello as lucid as ever. The old man refused to talk about the assassination with the case agent Wacks brought from Dallas, but he told Wacks, "If I ever get out of here, you come to see me with my lawyer, and I'll explain my involvement with dat thing."
Only 18 months later, in 1990, Marcello's convictions were overturned and he was released. But Wacks's superiors would not permit him to take Marcello up on his offer. "That really pissed me off," says Wacks. "I said to my boss, 'What's it going to harm us?' But he said, 'We don't want to go there.' For some reason, the bureau wanted to close the book on the assassination. That bugs me to this day."
For G. Robert Blakey, now a professor at the Notre Dame Law School, what Zack Shelton and the other agents have found adds weight to his thesis about organized crime's role in the assassination. "Little by little, more pieces about organized crime's involvement keep coming out. Nothing of substance has come out on the CIA other than that it wanted to cover things up. The stories of most substance are related to organized crime. Trafficante's confession to his lawyer is very significant. Ragano was in a position to know, and he made notes about the conversation soon after it took place."
For similar reasons, Blakey says, "I would believe what Lenny Patrick told Jim Wagner. The phone records showed he was in the middle of everything with Ruby, and I'm sorry he never felt he could talk to the House Select Committee."
Blakey is more skeptical about Files. "The acoustical evidence does show a bullet was fired from the grassy knoll, and it was fired at a supersonic rate nearly simultaneous with the third shot. But I believe that bullet missed. If you look at the X-ray evidence of the skull, it's pretty conclusive the fatal shot came from behind." (The committee also concluded that bullet fragments taken from Texas governor John Connally and JFK came from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano. In 2004, however, the science behind the FBI's analysis was discredited, and the gun that fired the bullets remains unknown.)
Shelton does not dispute Blakey about the shot or that Files may have embellished his story with information he got from Joe West. Despite Files's claims about CIA contacts, nothing has ever been found to corroborate them. Shelton did meet Files in 1998. Files will remain in prison until 2016, when he will be 74. Shelton says, "I am 100 percent convinced that Files was there. I'm not sure he made the fatal shot, but you had the best hired killers in the world there to do it."
Even if Files was no more than a fly on the wall, for Shelton he still had a unique vantage point. "You talk to some people in this field, and they think people don't care to know what really happened in Dallas. But I don't find that to be the case when I talk to other FBI agents. They are absolutely in awe of this information. It's almost 50 years after the assassination. Don't you think it's time we finally found out who did it?
The Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was John F. Kennedy's lone assassin hangs from a single thread known as the "single-bullet theory." Since Oswald could have fired only three shots, and one missed, the theory maintains that the remaining two bullets killed the president and injured Texas governor John Connally, who was seated in front of JFK. Without the improbable passage of this bullet, the commission could not have argued Oswald was the only shooter. The author of the single-bullet theory is Arlen Specter, who in 1964 was the commission's assistant counsel. Today he is the 80-year-old senator from Pennsylvania. In his memoir, Passion for Truth, Specter writes, "I have always been confident that the single-bullet conclusion is correct. I have also had a sense that if the conclusion turns out to be incorrect, that would be okay, too, because it was an honest, good-faith, soundly reasoned judgment."
But according to the testimony of retired FBI agent James Sibert, Specter, who was the agent's sole contact with the Warren Commission, misrepresented Sibert's comments and excluded his report on JFK's autopsy from the official record.
On the afternoon of November 22, 1963 Sibert and his partner, Francis O'Neill, were summoned to Andrews Air Force base to accompany the president's body to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. As Sibert testified to the Assassination Record Review Board at the National Archives in 1997, "We were there to observe, obtain any bullets [and] hand-carry them to the laboratory to preserve the chain of evidence."The agents helped lift the coffin from the ambulance and carry it into the examination room. One or the other agent was then present while Dr. James Humes conducted the autopsy. Both agents took meticulous notes. Humes, the chief Navy pathologist, talked through each step of the procedure. Given Sibert's proximity to such an epic scene in American history, his memories are vivid. He noted the entrance wound of the so-called single bullet. It was not in the back of the neck. Instead, as he wrote in his official report, the bullet hole was "below the shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column." There was no doubt about what he saw because Humes probed the hole, looking for either the exit wound or the bullet, and was surprised he could find neither. Sibert suggested the bullet could have been made of some substance that had dissolved inside the president. He called headquarters to speak to a munitions expert but learned instead that a bullet had been found in a stretcher back at Parkland Memorial, the Dallas hospital where JFK had been declared dead.
Sibert wrote in his report that when he relayed this news to Humes, the pathologist speculated that when the Parkland doctors tried to revive JFK by massaging his heart, "it was entirely possible that through such movement the bullet had worked its way back out of the point of entry and had fallen on the stretcher." Humes had already pointed out that the gash in the president's throat was not an exit wound but a tracheotomy. He also commented that the Parkland doctors had closed up the scalp around missing pieces of skull.To complete their mission at the Naval Hospital the agents retrieved the bullet fragments that Humes could extract from the corpse. Back in their home office outside Washington, D.C., Sibert and O'Neill dictated their report. It was transcribed and mimeographed by an FBI stenographer, who, along with the agents, signed one copy. According to the bureau's policy at the time, the agents then destroyed their notepads.
Four months later Specter summoned them to a meeting with no other witnesses present. Soon after, in a memo to the general counsel, Specter wrote, "Special Agent Sibert advised that he made no notes during the autopsy." That statement, Sibert says, "is absolutely false. There would be no way in the world I'd make a statement that I made no notes during the autopsy."
Specter never requested further information from the agents. As Sibert later told the ARRB, "I can now see why for many reasons someone thought it was inadvisable to bring us before the Warren Commission." In fact, it was years before Sibert learned that Humes had burned his original autopsy notes in a fireplace and then altered his findings to correspond with the single-bullet theory.
In his book Specter claims Humes changed his mind after he consulted with doctors at Parkland hospital on November 23. But as late as November 29, in a taped conversation with President Johnson, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover did not mention a neck wound and told of a "complete bullet" that "rolled out of the president's head" and was found in his stretcher.
In Specter's defense, the pressure to put the blame on a lone assassin could not have been greater, as we learn from Johnson's other November 29 conversations. After speaking with Hoover, LBJ met with Earl Warren to persuade the reluctant Supreme Court chief justice to head the investigation. Unless it was brought to the right conclusion, Johnson argued, there could be nuclear war with the Soviet Union, which would put "40 million" lives at stake. As Warren later wrote, he replied, "Mr. President, if the situation is that serious, my personal views do not count. I will do it."Earlier this year, in a bid for reelection as senator, Specter lost Pennsylvania's Democratic primary, effectively ending his political career. Now would be the time for him to open an honest debate about the conspiracy that killed our 35th president.


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Hey, young ladies — why not toss your tiara onto the stage and try out to become the next Miss El Dorado County? It's not just about physical beauty anymore — there are rewards brighter than the crowns that grace the winners' heads.
Alora Martin is only 19 years old, yet this is the second year she has organized and presented the Miss El Dorado County Pageant, which includes not only that title but Junior Miss and Miss Teen El Dorado County.
Martin, herself a pageant veteran and future beauty contest participant, said her age is probably the biggest stumbling block she has faced in walking this particular runway.
"My biggest challenge restarting the pageant has been a combination of finding contestants and getting their parents to take me seriously," said the woman with the flowing long hair and absolutely stunning smile. "Most people expect someone older to be in charge."
But make no mistake — the lady knows what she wants and is determined to get it. Perhaps surprisingly, what she wants is actually for other young women to enjoy the benefits that accrue from competing in pageants.
Big reward
"My greatest reward has been to see the growth in the girls, to see them go from quiet and shy in rehearsal to blossoming onstage," said Martin, owner of Sashay the Stage Productions.
Martin, who grew up in Rescue, said as a little girl she always dreamed of participating in the Miss El Dorado County competition but by the time she was of age, the contest no longer filled the stage at the county fair.
She was determined to do something about that and last year was the premier of the resurrection of the pageant.
The 2014 pageant saw Sharee Daley crowned as Miss El Dorado County, with Tristan Hunter and Kylee Hunter taking the titles of Miss Teen El Dorado County and Jr. Miss Teen El Dorado County, respectively.
"Yes, they are sisters," said proud mom Rebecca Hunter. "The judges had no idea. Both of them winning made it all the more fun." And the fun kept going, according to the Hunter sisters, who live in Cameron Park.
Memorable moments
"This has been one of the most memorable experiences of my youth," said Tristan. "I encourage all young women to participate. It's a great way to make new friends, increase self-confidence and learn lifelong skills.
"I wouldn't trade this experience for anything."
Tristan said one of the highlights of her yearlong reign as Miss Teen El Dorado County was participating in the American Legion's Fourth of July parade in South Lake Tahoe.
"I was honored to be in the same parade as some of our nation's veterans," she said.
Kylee agreed with her sibling about the year past.
"I encourage every young woman to do this pageant — it's a wonderful experience and confidence booster," said the Junior Miss El Dorado County. "One of the most fun experiences for me was being a judge for the Miss Gold Country Pageant and seeing all the beautiful participants."
Kylee said she also got a kick out of a youngster who asked whether she might try on Kylee's shiny tiara.
"When I was at an event for Junior Miss El Dorado County I was able to let a little girl wear my crown and make her feel like she truly was a princess," Kylee recalled. "That was the moment when I decided that I would help show young girls how much they are really worth. It inspired me to be a role model of good morals and modesty.
"My goal is to help inspire young girls to believe they are all princesses, being who they truly are."
And that has been Pageant Director Martin's goal all along, to promote self-esteem and confidence in young women.
"I don't care what they wear or how they walk, if they have the courage to step on the stage in front of an audience, they are incredibly beautiful on the inside, in my opinion," said Martin. "I don't think you can overstate the value of that."
Judges for the Miss El Dorado County pageant consider poise and confidence, along with the contestants' ability to convey their opinions eloquently, among other criteria, according to Martin. She said it's also important that they are enjoying themselves.
"We want to make this pageant the experience of a lifetime," she said.
Toward that end, Martin said she wishes to thank a few folks for backing her efforts to return the pageant to the county fair.
"The El Dorado County Fair has given us so much assistance and support, which has been amazing," she said. "We are also very proud this year to welcome some new supporters — the Jenni Lynn Boutique in Cameron Park and Early Toast Mimosa House in El Dorado Hills."
Martin said more help would be entirely welcome, particularly sponsors to donate prizes for the contestants and winners.
It is not necessary to have a sponsor in order to compete for the pageant titles, Martin added, and the deadline for entering this year's contest is June 11.
"Registering on the website, sashaythestage.com, is most certainly the easiest way," said the director. "Simply print out the paperwork and mail it in. Contestants can attach a check or pay through the link on the Website."
Martin, who herself has been in beauty pageants since age 2 and is preparing for competing in an upcoming pageant, said she would like to expand the El Dorado County event.
"I would love to find a way to include younger girls and start more pageants for them to participate in," she said. "I'm not entirely sure what my future plans are at this point, but no matter what, the pageant will always fit in.
"This is my passion and I can't imagine not doing it."
Show your support for that youthful fire by attending the 2015 Miss El Dorado County pageant, which begins at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 18, at the Budweiser stage at the fairgrounds, 100 Placerville Drive in Placerville. The El Dorado County Fair is June 18-21 this year.


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Town Square
Simitian to discuss pet-neuter bill Saturday
Original post made by Karey, Evergreen Park, on Jun 19, 2007
I'm writing to share my opposition to this bill. I hope you'll read on to see how this bill will hit you very personally!
Being involved with my dog clubs, I've been seeing a lot of publicity opposing this bill. Has the world outside my dog clubs been seeing it? It's very scary - especially since it is trying to address an issue that I *am* interested in seeing addressed - pet neutering. I definitely favor pet breeding only being done by responsible people who know what they are doing and make the best interests of their pet species/breed their number number one priority, who have educated themselves on healthy animal husbandry, who take complete responsibility for the placement of their litters, and who are proactive in the education of their buyers in matters of pet health and pet training and pet control and pet happiness.
However this bill, AB1634 "the healthy pet act" that recently narrowly passed out of the state assembly, takes a broad and unresponsible swipe at the issue of pet overpopulation. Generalizing the problem statewide and applying a single global fix is destructive to efforts that are already succeeding in these matters and is turning a blind eye to other major factors contributing to animal shelter overpopulation.
This bill proposes that all pets in this state shall be neutered before they are 4 months old (this may be getting modified to 6 months). Major holes and flaws in the bill are already being identified by all who read the bill.
1. Dozens and dozens of exceptions are already being written into the bill, trying to support legitimate breeders and legitimately intact animals, making it an unmaintainable labyrinth to figure out who and what defines legitimate, and by whom and how legitimacy or illegitimacy will be enforced. All service and show animals will have the burden of proof to document whether they are legitimate - police, search and rescue, seeing eye, therapy, the huge stockdog industry, etc. The majority of amateur breeders who are bettering their breeds, and buyers of their breeds, with careful thoughtfulness will no longer be legal. Breeders outside the state and outside the law will dominate in the void left by responsible amateur breeding.
2. All the successes currently enjoyed by urban and suburban animal shelters whose kill rates are dramatically decreasing (due to publicity and cooperation with the huge network of amateur breeders in this state) will be overridden and invalidated by a bill that claims education doesn't work. Further, a bill that addresses domestic pets doesn't help the rural shelters filled to the gills with feral animals.
3. On a more personal level, I'm curious as to the appropriateness of the government being involved in decisions of a medical nature, decisions whose bottom line should be informed by a trained medical professional. Veterinarians will be the first to recommend their clients neuter their pet, but the age at which to neuter your pet is completely dependent on the nature of the pet. Ask your vet about the long-term risks of neutering your pet too early in their physical development. Physical development varies amongst pets, depending on their adult size and their species. Further: how many people will stop getting regular vet care (rabies shots!) for their pets because they don't want their vet to report them for an illegally intact pet?
4. There is a multi-million dollar business in this state in dog and cat shows, bringing huge revenues to the local communities hosting them. The main dog purebreed registry in this country, the AKC, and its sponsor Eukanuba are already drafting propositions to abandon plans to hold the 2009 AKC Nationals in Long Beach. Be aware that this equivalent of Westminster requires that all entrants be intact (UNneutered). It's not just politics - people bringing their animals to these shows don't want to risk getting picked up by the Neuter Police and have the foundation of their breeding line be forceably neutered, just for crossing the stateline. The risk is real unless they can locate whomever has been designated as the local enforcing agency and prove (before the knife comes out) that the animal is "legitimate".
I'm very worried about the future of the USDAA Southwestern Regional Dog Agility Championships (500 dogs) that have been held in Sunnyvale annually since 2002. This bill would spell the end to the annual Golden Gate Kennel Club benched dog show (2200 dogs) held at the Cow Palace every winter.
Saturday morning, come on down to city hall at 10AM and show your state senator how you'd like him to represent you in this matter, especially if you oppose! Big money is behind the support for this bill (PETA and friends), and it will take numbers - lots of bodies who are worried about the future of pet ownership in California - to succeessfully oppose it!
Thanks for your time...
Comments (3)
a resident of Charleston Gardens
on Jun 19, 2007 at 3:36 pm
So now that Joe has addressed the "using a cell=phone while driving" issue, which occupied his time in our state senate for years, he is pushing another bill which will intrude on our privacy and further curtail our rights.
One can see how Joe got his start in Palo Alto politics
a resident of Evergreen Park
on Jun 19, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Hi Marvin, I can tell you that Joe isn't responsible for this bill. However he will have to decide how he will vote on it now that it is not only passed up to the senate but directly into the senate committee on which he is a member (the business and professions committee, through which it must pass before going to the senate floor). Hearing him speak on it when he held sidewalk hours a couple weekends ago, I found him to be interested and noncommittal. He is at an opinion-forming stage at this point - the perfect time to strike! He did confess that he knew to handle any issue involving kids and pets with kid gloves; I hope that means he'll take his responsibility very seriously to examine the issue without partisan bias.
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jun 21, 2007 at 10:44 pm
With all the issues facing the state and the region around here I would think he could work on something more important!
I read that Los Altos Police can't use radar to catch speeders as the law dosen't allow it's use if everyone speeds thru a neighborhood. I guess our lawmakers might pass a law that says if a bank gets robbed enought times the theivs can's be arrested. This is the kind of logic that is going on with speeders. I wonder if enough cars drove past his house going 50 mph he would say: "That's OK".
Another issue he could address is that commuters to Palo Alto burn several million gallons of gasoline each week. Guess he loves C0 2. I know he is against private home ownership or allowing private land to be used to build housing unless it a "Corporate" operation. Palo Alto is a "Anti-enviroment" city with 60,000 commuters coming to the city every day from as far away as the Sacramento Valley.
He is probably for coal powered power plants (if their lobbiests give him enough money) After all Nuclear power could put the coal industry out of much of it's business. He is probably against coal power plants stop emitting uranium, thorium and mercury into the atmosphere.
Working on these issues would take some thought and work to solve them. Retiring and collectiong millions in retirment pay seems to be his goal.
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text:
Woodland police reported an attempted kidnapping Sunday afternoon at Westgate Shopping Center.
At about 3:35 p.m., officers were dispatched to 367 W. Main St., according to Cpl. Dave Krause. The victim, a 31-year-old Woodland woman, reported that she was walking between parked vehicles in the parking lot.
The suspect, seated in a pickup, opened his door blocking her way, Krause said.The suspect grabbed the victim's hair and pulled her toward the pickup. The victim yelled for help and a bystander approached.
Krause reported the suspect released the victim's hair and drove away eastbound on West Main Street. The victim was not injured.
The suspect was described as a Latino male in his late 30s, with a large build, dark hair, and a mustache, wearing a light blue-hooded sweatshirt, green sweat pants and no shoes, Krause said. The vehicle was described as a white, compact, 1990s model pickup.
Anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to call Woodland police dispatch at 666-2411.
Follow The Democrat at twitter.com/woodlandnews


text:
forum: Food & Drink
Pages: 1 | Home » Food & Drink » Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
#1 Tue 07 Aug 12 12:23pm
- Member
- Member since Tue 07 Aug 12
Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
I am an absolute bread fanatic but recently discovered that some long term health problems I have could be dramatically improved by eliminating some foods.
I have attempted to make my own bead using some of the ingredients below but the results were not very good to say the least!
I am not expecting miracles but can anyone help me come up with the best possible, gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
I can have anything from the list below?
Many thanks
� Coconut flour
� Oat bran flour
� Brown rice bran flour
� Tef or teff flour
� Buckwheat flour
� Millet flour
� Almond flour
� Flaxseed flour
� Ground Hemp Seeds
Fats, oils and liquids
� Coconut oil
� Olive oil
� Sesame oil
� Yogurt
� Coconut butter
� Coconut milk
� Condensed coconut cream
� Ghee
� Eggs
� Water
Rising agents and thickener/binder
� Guar gum
� Aluminium free baking soda
� Aluminium free baking powder
Seasoning, spices and herbs
� Sea salt
� Black pepper
� Allspice
� Basil
� Bay leaf
� Cardamom
� Cilantro (Coriander)
� Cinnamon
� Cloves
� Cumin
� Fennel
� Ginger
� Garlic
� Nutmeg
� Oregano
� Parsley
� Turmeric
� Thyme
� Rosemary
Sweeteners and flavourings
� Apple cider vinagar
� Raw Stevia
� Truvia
#2 Tue 07 Aug 12 6:08pm
- Forum champ
- From Scotland
- Member since Wed 06 Apr 05
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
Why not try almond bread? A recipe I use (from Elana Amsterdam's Almond Flour Cookbook) goes as follows:
3/4 cup almond butter plus 1 extra tbspn
4 eggs
1/4 cup almond flour (ground almonds)
1/4 cup arrowroot
1/2 tspn baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tspn salt
olive oil for greasing
1 tbspn almond flour
Firstly, using the olive oil and one of the extra tbspns almond flour, grease and flour a 2lb loaf tin.
Then put the almond butter into a large bowl and beat (an electric whisk is easiest) until it goes lighter in colour and creamier in texture. Add the eggs one at a time, incorporating each one fully, and then mix in the dry ingredients. Put the batter into the greased and floured tin, and put in the oven at 160C/350F for 40 - 45 mins until a knife or skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Turn out onto a rack to cool. This tastes like a dense, dark rye bread, and will keep for up to 7 days if wrapped tightly. It also freezes well.
Hope that helps!
#3 Wed 08 Aug 12 9:39am
- Member
- Member since Tue 07 Aug 12
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
Thank you for the reply, I will give it a go!
To be honest, I am looking for something a little more adventurous to try.
Probably looking to create the impossible but I believe that from the list above and a little know how that there is a very good bread to be made.
Thanks again
#4 Wed 08 Aug 12 11:04am
- Member
- Member since Sun 08 Jan 12
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
My partner is extreme Celiac.
We have experimented with making breads in a bread machine and they are usually quite heavy and dense, they taste good though. We have not found a good commercially made Gluten free bread, that is why we tried to make our own.
I will try the recipe above.
My partner is a Gluten free vegetarian and it has been fun converting my cooking style and recipes to suit, they all work, it is not hard.
We would love Jamie to do a show or just an episode on Gluten free cooking.
Thanks Doz
You inspire me Jamie Thank you so much
#5 Wed 08 Aug 12 1:44pm
The White Rabbit
- Forum super champ
- From Sydney, Australia
- Member since Tue 22 Jun 04
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
Our gluten free thread for cross reference
#6 Mon 29 Oct 12 6:09am
- Member
- Member since Mon 29 Oct 12
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
You can try Julian Bakery Paleo Bread or Almond Bread it's free of all those products.
#7 Mon 29 Oct 12 7:03am
- Forum champ Occupation museum guide in Tallinn Seaplane Hangars
- From Tallinn, Estonia
- Member since Tue 16 Mar 10
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
Buckwheat is really good and sweet, I recommend trying that and making it like the usual poundcake with eggs, yoghurt and a raising agent.
also, flaxseeds and potatoes make excellent little pan cakes. can you eat potatoes? mixing some boiled crushed potatoes inside the bread or potato flakes can help hold it together
#8 Thu 06 Jun 13 6:26pm
- Member
- Member since Thu 06 Jun 13
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
hello guys !
I am looking for a yeast free ,no dairy and soda bicarb bread recipe ! Has anyone tried it yet ? i know one of the indian breads CHAPATTIS but they are flat thin sheets ..I want something like naan bread or any other fluffy bread.Please post
#9 Fri 07 Jun 13 10:36am
- Forum super champ Occupation avoiding housework
- From The land of song.
- Member since Tue 04 Oct 05
Re: Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?
I've just found your same question on this thread too http://www.jamieoliver.com/forum/viewto … 97#p698897 omkar56
I suggested that maybe the food team might be of help.
The only thing I can think of is like a griddle cooked potato farl , but I'm not familiar enough with the recipe as to be sure it doesn't have a self raising flour added to it .
I'm sorry I can't look up a recipe at the moment.
Pages: 1 | Home » Food & Drink » Gluten, wheat, yeast, soy, sugar free bread?


text: Ok so new battery installed and plugs too so now to the questions that probably have been asked millions of times. 1. Do you drive yours in Auto 4wd or 2wd? Which is better for the vehicle/tranny/transfer case and which is better on milage? 2. Have you replaced your exhaust system? Mine is going out, you can hear the rattling of the cat somewhere. 3. Can I bypass the stereo mid console and hook up headphones directly to the above dvd player? Previous owners killed all the switches. 4. Someone installed a weird switch for the stereo. It's a toggle and it loud one way with ipod but loud other way with regular radio. What the heck?


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Detalles bibliográficos
Título: JAY TRUMP: A STEEPLECHASING SAGA (AUTHOR ...
Editorial: Winants Bros. Inc., Baltimore
Año de publicación: 1966
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216 pp; Signed by author, previous owner's inscription on smae page. Light edge wear on spine, minor scuffing on front board. An attractive book in tight binding. ; Always Delivery Confirmation. 35 Years Fast Excellent Service. We Know How To Pack Books.; Signed by Author. N° de ref. de la librería 93370
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text:
Circular saws are great for cutting plywood and 2x's, but you can also cut everything from logs to concrete to steel beams with the right blade or the right type of saw.
This saw on steroids is the Makita 16-5/16-in. circular saw (model No. 5402NA). It's huge! In fact, it's so big that you can cut 6-1/4 in. deep at 90 degrees and 4-3/16 in. deep while the saw is set at 45 degrees. You'll get the best results and save wear on the saw if you precut a kerf with a standard saw first. That way the saw will have 2 in. less depth to hog its way through. One of these will set you back close to $800.
The Prazi USA PR2000 12-in. beam cutter is like a mini chain saw that attaches to a standard "sidewinder" circular saw or a worm drive saw. It cuts very fast and is pretty affordable at $150. Installation is as simple as replacing the blade with the Prazi bar.
The Milwaukee 10-1/4-in. circular saw (model No. 6470-21) is for those who need to cut lots of 3-1/2-in. material. It cuts amazingly square every time, so you'll have perfect joints when you're putting your project together. One will set you back $350.
If you have big wood to cut that calls for closer tolerances than you can get with a chain saw, it's time to enter the big leagues of circular saws. Every log or timber frame builder uses saws like the ones shown here. These beasts are expensive and rarely available for rental, so we're talking about a big investment if you need one to build your dream cabin in the woods. They may look intimidating, but you'll feel comfortable with any of them after a few cuts. You can find and order these bad boys at many online tool suppliers.
Called "ferrous" because they can cut iron-containing metals such as steel, these can cut any metal up to 1/4 in. thick. But not cast iron.
Use a 24-tooth carbide framing blade for 90 percent of your cutting. Not just framing—any wood where an ultra-clean cut isn't needed.
Don't toss your old blades. Stick one in your saw for demo work, cutting shingles and nail-embedded lumber, and cutting up exterior doors so they'll fit in the trash can.
Grab a 40-tooth finish blade to make finish cuts such as cutting off door bottoms, veneered plywood or plastics.
You'll need these for cutting concrete, stone, pavers or any other masonry. Segmented blades will give you the fastest cut.


text:
Posted: Apr 02, 2017 10:37 PM PDT
Updated: Apr 03, 2017 07:10 AM PDT
2009: The Iowa Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage in the state by upholding a lower court's ruling in favor of six same-sex couples who had been denied marriage licenses in the state. Marriage licenses became available to same-sex couples on April 27. [ + - ]
2009: Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong, 41, opens fire in an immigrant community center in Binghamton, New York, killing 13 people and wounding another four before taking his own life. [ + - ]
2008: ATA Airlines, once one of the 10 largest U.S. passenger airlines and the largest charter airline, ceases all operations a day after filing for bankruptcy for the second time in five years. [ + - ]
2007: College Football Hall of Fame coach Eddie Robinson, who won 408 games over his 57 years as head coach at Grambling State University, the most ever for any college football coach at the time of his 1997 retirement, dies of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 88 in Ruston, Louisiana. Robinson, who coached at Grambling, a historically black university in Louisiana, from 1941 to 1997, was surpassed in coaching victories by St. John's University coach John Gagliardi in 2003 and Penn State coach Joe Paterno in 2011 and is now ranked third overall in college football wins. [ + - ]
1996: A U.S. Air Force airplane carrying Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 on board. Brown, the first black man to head up the U.S. Department of Commerce, was 54 when he died. [ + - ]
1996: Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his remote cabin outside Lincoln, Montana. Combing his cabin, FBI investigators found a wealth of bomb components, 40,000 handwritten journal pages that included bomb-making experiments and descriptions of the Unabomber crimes; and one live bomb, ready for mailing. They also found what appeared to be the original typed manuscript of the manifesto. [ + - ]
1991: English writer Graham Greene, best known for novels such as "The Power and the Glory," "The Confidential Agent," "The Third Man," "The Quiet American" and "Our Man in Havana," dies of leukemia at the age of 86 in Vevey, Switzerland. [ + - ]
1989: Pepsi dismisses Madonna as a spokesperson after her "Like a Prayer" video was called "blasphemous" by the Vatican. [ + - ]
1986: Actress and singer Amanda Bynes, known for the TV shows "All That," "The Amanda Show" and "What I Like About You," as well as movies like "Big Fat Liar," "What a Girl Wants" and "She's the Man," is born in Thousand Oaks, California. [ + - ]
1985: Singer-songwriter Leona Lewis, whose hits include "Bleeding Love," "Better in Time" and "Happy," is born in London, England. [ + - ]
1982: Actor Warren Oates, best known for movies such as "The Wild Bunch," "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," "Two-Lane Blacktop," "Race with the Devil" and "Stripes," dies of heart attack at the age of 53 in Los Angeles. [ + - ]
1982: Actress Cobie Smulders, best known for her role on the TV sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," is born Jacoba Francisca Maria Smulders in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. [ + - ]
1981: Airline entrepreneur and pioneer Juan Trippe, who founded Pan American World Airlines, one of the world's most prominent airlines of the 20th century, dies at the age of 81 in New York City. [ + - ]
1981: The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. [ + - ]
1974: In what becomes known as the "Super Outbreak," 148 tornadoes are confirmed in 13 U.S. states, including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and New York. The event, at the time the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history, left 319 dead, injured more than 5,000 and extensively damaged about 900 square miles along a total combined path length of 2,600 miles. The tornado outbreak wouldn't be surpassed in size until the April 25-28, 2011, tornado outbreak that left 324 dead across the Southeast, Southern Midwest and Northeast parts of the U.S. Pictured here is a "Super Outbreak" tornado that hit just west of Cincinnati. The tornado was rated as an F5, one of two F5s on that day that struck the Dayton-Cincinnati area. [ + - ]
1973: Actor Adam Scott, best known for his TV roles in the sitcoms "Parks and Recreation" and "Party Down," and for movie roles in "Step Brothers," "Piranha 3-D," "Our Idiot Brother," "Friends with Kids" and "Hot Tub Time Machine 2," is born in Santa Cruz, California. [ + - ]
1973: Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his chief competitor, using the prototype DynaTAC phone. That public demonstration landed the DynaTAC on the July 1973 cover of Popular Science magazine. However, it would take another 10 years for a version of the phone to become the first cell phone to be commercially released. Cooper is seen here re-enacting that first mobile phone call in 2007. [ + - ]
1972: Actress Jennie Garth, best known for starring as Kelly Taylor on the television series "Beverly Hills, 90210," is born in Urbana, Illinois. [ + - ]
1971: Downhill skier Picabo Street, who won gold medals in super G at the 1998 Winter Olympics and in downhill at 1996 World Championships, along with three other Olympic and World Championship medals, is born in Triumph, Idaho. [ + - ]
1968: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, less than 24 hours before he was assassinated. [ + - ]
1966: The unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 10 becomes the first manmade object to orbit the moon. It had been launched from an Earth-orbiting platform on March 31, 1966, and completed its first lunar orbit in about three hours. The Luna 10 was battery powered, operated for 460 lunar orbits and made 219 active data radio transmissions before being shut down on May 30, 1966. [ + - ]
1961: Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy, best known for movies such as "Beverly Hills Cop," "The Nutty Professor," "Dreamgirls" and "Shrek," is born in Brooklyn, New York. [ + - ]
1959: Actor David Hyde Pierce, best known the four-time Emmy-winning role of psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the sitcom "Frasier," is born in Saratoga Springs, New York. [ + - ]
1958: Actor Alec Baldwin, best known for his roles in movies such as "Beetlejuice," "The Hunt for Red October," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "The Departed" and "The Cooler," and the TV sitcom "30 Rock," is born in Amityville, New York. [ + - ]
1956: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a four tornadoes, including a deadly F5 tornado that devastated the cities of Hudsonville and Standale and left 20 people dead. Other tornadoes part of the same system killed another nine people in Wisconsin, three in Tennessee and one in Kentucky. [ + - ]
1948: President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid to help rebuild European economies after World War II. [ + - ]
1944: Singer Tony Orlando, best known as the lead singer of the 1970s group Tony Orlando and Dawn, is born Michael Anthony Orlando Cassavitis in New York City. Tony Orlando and Dawn recorded the hit songs "Knock Three Times" and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree." [ + - ]
1942: Singer and actor Wayne Newton, best known for his Las Vegas performances and the songs "Daddy, Don't You Walk So Fast," "Years" and "Danke Schoen," is born Carson Wayne Newton in Norfolk, Virginia. [ + - ]
1941: Rock musician William Jan Berry, one half of the duo Jan and Dean, is born in Los Angeles, California. Jan (left) and Dean Torrence (right) were best known for songs such as "Surf City," "Dead Man's Curve" and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena." Berry died on March 26, 2004, after suffering a seizure at the age of 62. [ + - ]
1936: Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed by electric chair for the 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the infant son of pilot Charles Lindbergh. [ + - ]
1934: Primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall, considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, is born in London, England. Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park. [ + - ]
1926: Astronaut Gus Grissom, one of the original NASA Project Mercury astronauts and the second American to fly in space, is born in Mitchell, Indiana. Grissom was killed along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee on Jan. 27, 1967, in a fire that ignited during a pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. [ + - ]
1924: Actor Marlon Brando, best known for his Oscar-winning roles in "The Godfather" and "On the Waterfront," is born in Omaha, Nebraska. Brando also received six more Academy Award nominations, including nods for "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Julius Caesar" and "Last Tango in Paris," and is known for his roles in other movies like "Apocalypse Now," "The Wild One," "Guys and Dolls," "Mutiny on the Bounty," "Superman" and "The Freshman." He died of respiratory failure at age 80 on July 1, 2004. [ + - ]
1924: Actress and singer Doris Day, best known for movies such as "Romance on the High Seas," "Calamity Jane," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "Pillow Talk" and "That Touch of Mink," is born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio. In a singing career that lasted 20 years starting in the mid-1940s, she also released 29 albums, with her songs spending a total of 460 weeks in the Top 40 charts. [ + - ]
1922: Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. [ + - ]
1897: German composer Johannes Brahms, one of the giants of classical music, dies of cancer at the age of 63 in Vienna, Austria. [ + - ]
1882: Outlaw Jesse James is shot to death in St. Joseph, Missouri, by Robert Ford, a member of his gang. [ + - ]
1865: During the American Civil War, Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. Fires set by retreating Confederate soldiers to destroy bridges, the city's armory and warehouses had burned out of control in the mostly evacuated city, leaving much of Richmond in ruins. [ + - ]
1860: The first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins. The Pony Express would last a year and a half before the first transcontinental telegraph system put it out of business. [ + - ]
1823: William Magear "Boss" Tweed, the politician most notable for being the "boss" of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th century New York City and state, is born in New York City. Tweed spent a year in jail for stealing up to $45 million from New York City taxpayers through political corruption and died in jail in 1878 while waiting for a civil trial in which New York State was seeking to recover $6 million in embezzled funds. [ + - ]
1783: Author Washington Irving, best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle," is born in New York City. [ + - ]
A.D. 33: Generally agreed-upon date for the historical crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christianity. [ + - ]


text:
Share a taste of Wisconsin's finest…crafted by cheesemakers, here in the heart of Dairyland. Whether you choose the four, six or eight bar package, you'll be delighted with the quality and the variety of these premium collections. The perfect find for the natural cheese lovers in your life.
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Use plants to add pizzazz in your holiday decor
Learn more about the selection and care of the most common indoor plants enjoyed this holiday season during the presentation from 6:30-8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, at Pequot Lakes High School.
Instructor JoAnn Weaver, University of Minnesota certified Master Gardener, will provide information on Amaryllis, Azalea, Cyclamen, Holiday Cactus, Kalanchoe, Norfolk Island Pine, Poinsettia and Paper White.
Class fee is $10. A minimum of five registered students is needed to hold class. Pre-registration is required. Contact Pequot Lakes Community Education for information or to register at218-568-9200.