Posted on by Patrick

For “Take-A-Knee” Perspective, You Can Read All About It

You remember Colin Kaepernick, right? When he used to be a football player he took a knee for a cause, and after hanging dormant for the better part of a year, his knee has taken on a new life of its own, has become the catalyst for words and actions and tough talk and hurt feelings and harsh realities and, maybe, liberating ideas. In all this dust-up we can’t lose track of the knee. We mustn’t let the subject be changed, the agendas that come from the mouth can’t be allowed to overpower the knee.

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Posted on by Patrick

To Me, A Cigar; To Them, The Devil

The Old Glory Society is a gentlemen’s cigar club that exists, not only in the physical world, but in your mind. In the Society’s formative years, I served as lead propagandist and I still write words about cigars and the groovy, historic vibe that surrounds them under the Society’s sacred banner.

Cigar Salutations From The Old Glory Society

I was at the carwash, I had an unlit cigar between my teeth, something I call a chewer (a cigar to be chewed on for an afternoon and then tossed, as the act of chewing makes it unsmokable). There was a young boy there, maybe three years old, with his mom and they were facing in opposite directions with the little dude facing me and my cigar. He stared at me with a blend of curiosity and terror. He had no reference point in his little mind for what I had in my mouth and as he gaped at me he started unconsciously backpedaling toward his mom. At the point when he backed into her she turned and looked at me and immediately clutched the boy close, spun him around as if to avert his eyes and headed off in the opposite direction.

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Posted on by Patrick

“I Know It Was You, Fredo”

Fun Facts: The Mob

Life is mostly about the pursuit of knowledge and, therefore, the collection of fun facts. All my fun facts were harvested personally…They started as a physical book purchase from Amazon, then moved to a Kindle download where I bookmarked them by hand; at the conclusion of a book they were transcribed into a Snoopy Moleskine, and finally, they appear here for your personal wonderment.
  • Earliest Italian organized crime was known as the “Black Hand”.
  • Italian mafia organizations: The Camorra in Campania/Naples; the Cosa Nostra in Sicily; the Ndrangheta in Calabria.
  • La Cosa Nostra means “Our Thing” or “This Thing of Ours”.
  • A “made man” in the mafia is one who has full membership in La Cosa Nostra; when this happens, the tradition is to prick one’s finger, smear blood on the picture of a saint and then burn the picture in the palm of the hand.

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