My book, The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia, ends with a segway into the next book, which will explore the adventures of the author and a whole new crime family. In the epilogue, he talks about the loyalty problems in the mafia, which I understood to be the main takeaway from the book, aside from having a wonderful time reading it. In the mafia, and in normal life, loyalty to others is a large part of life. "I've seen guys so loyal they would die for each other and then break up over money or rank in the crew." (Frank Di Matteo, pg 220) Loyalty was one of the most important qualities of a good mafia member. In a similar way, loyalty is an important part of friendship. Those who are loyal to others can work better and more reliably. If you weren’t loyal to those you work and/or live with, you may lose their trust. And they may become distant. Allies are a part of war, but also a part of social life. Those who pick a side and stay on it will reap the profits. This is valuable today because loyalty is, has been, and will always be an important part of people’s lives. Whether it is loyalty to a friend, to a country, or to your crew, it is the most valuable part of that relationship. Loyalty is the glue.
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The book that I am reading, Growing Up Mafia: The President Street Boys, many events surrounding the Gallo crew and the Gallo-Colombo War are addressed. Some such events include: the Masseria hit, several small conflicts during the Gallo-Colombo War, the attempted hit on Larry Gallo, the hit on Joey Gallo, and other small stories surrounding the whole thing. The book provides a unique perspective on the events described, since the author was the son of Larry Gallo’s close friend and collaborator. The Gallo Crew, and countless others in the American Mafia, helped shape the way we perceive and investigate crime. Before the American Mafia was exposed, many people didn’t believe that there was organized crime. The press was constantly pumping out stories of the mafia that the public ate up, but probably didn’t believe. Many politicians went as far as to deny the existence of the American Mafia before the press and public. Funnily enough, they were wrong. With the spread of organized crime that erupted from the exposure and coverage of La Cosa Nostra by the press, many new crime organizations have started, failed, or kept going. Some are still running to this day. Organized crime has even gone as far as to spread throughout the internet. The Gallo Crew had a large part in this, primarily because they were notorious gangsters for a while, before it all collapsed.
The book, Growing Up Mafia, shows the perspective of a boy, growing up in the mafia, experiencing main events through the Gallo Brothers. One event the author recounts is the murder of Joe “The Boss” Masseria. The information that the public got was correct, according to the author. Lucky Luciano went to the bathroom in Scarpato’s, and four hitmen walked into the restaurant and shot Masseria, Luciano leaving afterwards. “The men ate, and ate, and they drank Italian red wine. The feast lasted for three hours, Luciano patted himself on his belly, belched, and left the table to go to the can and take a piss. As soon as Masseria was alone at the table, four gunmen--Bugsy Siegel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, and Joe Adonis--burst into the restaurant and aerated Joe the Boss. Joe tried to hide but couldn’t avoid the path of six bullets, at least one of which was fatal. Fourteen more slugs tore up the restaurant wall behind Masseria. Luciano came out of the restroom and left the restaurant before the police arrived.”(page 23, Growing Up Mafia) I have not read much of the book so far, but I believe it will include other major events, including the war between the Gallos and the Profaci Family. Compared to the actual events, the only difference is the perspective. The perspective of the everyday citizen at the time, was not that informed in the whole thing. All was later put together for the general public. The characters in this book (the Gallo brothers, their crew, and more) had an inside perspective, and a clear view of the actual events and reasoning behind them. After all, they were very involved, being the subject of many of these events. I expect the rest of the book to have a clear connection to real events, with a unique inside view of the mafia.
Community Service Project: Mentoring - By: Ethan Flood, Olivia Dubay, Nicholas Mauro, and Owen Wing1/31/2018 Mentors are a necessity for some kids. “1 in 3 young people will grow up without a mentor.”(Mentor 2018) True, there are many kids who don’t need mentors, and thus, don’t get any, but, there are those who genuinely need mentors for both educational and psychological support. Many of said children don’t get any. Mentors are people, either student or adult, who help a student in need. The mentor can guide the student in their studies, be a friend, or even play with them. Being a mentor means supporting a student who needs support, but, unfortunately, there aren’t enough mentors We are interested in helping children of younger ages with their educational needs, and becoming friends with them. We understand that lack of education is a major problem in today’s society, however common or rare it is. Education is more valuable than many people think. In a world with ever-accelerating technology, and knowledge at our fingertips, children need to be able to gather, process, and put information that they gain to use. We believe that Education is a topic that is important to all people around the globe, and should be a topic commonly talked about when problems arise. Now, is one of those times. One day, a world where only the rich few, who are born into a world where only they get mentors and proper education might exist. And in that world, the less fortunate people descend into a pit of uneducation that they won’t be able to get out of without help. This is a world that we are trying to avoid, and the only way we can be sure, is to bring all types of people to equal positions in education. Surely, you want to avoid a place like that, don’t you? The issue is that there are not enough people mentoring, so not enough kids get the education they deserve. This problem as been going on ever since people have started to care about their education and since we’ve transitioned to the digital age. For some kids, learning on a screen is too hard, so when “everything goes digital”, they have trouble learning. They need face to face learning but it is a whole lot harder than it sounds. The cost of a mentor can be expensive, especially for families living off of minimum wage. “kids born into less-stable families are at much higher risk for bad outcomes in life – education, health, income, you name it.”(Dubner 2017) Some kids can’t pay online to be taught by a computer that they can’t ask questions to. You have to take into account that one of the reasons kids get mentored online is because it is a lot easier for the company to be online than having to hire someone and have them mentor. The company will make more money and will take less time to establish a mentoring program. After all, time is money. Other kids, (specifically those who request mentors or are recommended for them, but don’t get any) aren’t able to get the full experience that they could have with a mentor. In Wake County there are many different mentoring programs. Ages vary, but most of the Mentees range from Elementary to High School.(Wake County Network of Care 2018) Many of these programs include educational aspects and also try to help the kids find a better quality of life. A tutor is someone that helps you with homework and helps you study. One thing that makes mentoring better than plain tutoring programs is that the mentor acts like an older sibling or a friend, which helps build a stronger connection. Most mentorship programs around the triangle use mentors. A few of these mentorship programs also help to build a stronger faith. A large part of all of these programs is to have mentors be there for someone when they might not have anyone to support them at home. After our research in the mentorship programs in North Carolina, we found that there are multiple programs helping our community, but we believe there is always more that can be done. We feel that there is still a need for help, even with all the organizations that are helping. What most groups do is help the kids after school. A group like this is the Boys and Girls club. They have kids, usually Elementary School through Middle school age, come to their organizations after school and help them with their homework and studies. They also teach the students structure and learning methods since most kids in this program do not come from the best areas, and thus, aren’t taught such things. We feel that we should go to the schools during the school day and understand how they feel in school. Also, we can actively help them understand the information they are given during the school day, instead of helping them after school. We could also find out vital details such as what makes them succeed and what makes them struggle. As an 8th grade middle school student, I, and other students, can help by offering volunteer mentoring services to youth (elementary school children) at their various schools. At these schools, we could read books to children, help young students with basic math, and more importantly, provide support. The benefits of giving information to the young students or helping them to understand certain information are tremendous. Children with mentors have increased intellectual ability, more self confidence, and a healthier social attitude. There are two major categories where students with mentors profit; academic and non-academic. On the academic side, mentored children can learn to have more, higher quality participation as well as intellectual gains. These children can also learn about future planning and goal setting as well as having more self confidence and a better social attitude. We propose that we send 15-20 mentors to Bugg Elementary for the Bugg Expo. (You can find our action plan here: Action Plan) According to this source, mentoring in a youth school setting is shown to be a “cost-efficient way of increasing the positive relationships students have in their lives, while also having the potential to boost factors that can lead to educational success, such as connectedness to the school environment and peers, improved relationships with teachers and staff, improved feelings of academic competence, and greater access and use of other supports, such as tutoring, credit tracking, counseling, and postsecondary planning.” This site also includes lots of studies about school based mentoring that is beneficial/important information to know. Along with providing support educationally, student mentors can act as friends to support and provide guidance. “Although it takes place at schools, our School-Based Mentoring program isn’t limited to the classroom. Of course, some Littles do talk with their Bigs about class, or do homework, or read together, but it’s perfectly fine to shoot hoops in the gym or play on the playground. At the end of the day, it's really all about starting a friendship, providing guidance and inspiring them to reach their potential. (Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, 2013b)” Work Cited “School Based Mentoring.” National Mentoring Resource Center, 2017. 2018 <http://www.nationalmentoringresourcecenter.org/index.php/what-works-nin- mentoring/key-topics.html?layout=edit&id=182> Bayer, Amanda, Grossman, Jean, and DuBois, David. “School-Based Mentoring Programs: Using Volunteers to Improve the Academic Outcomes of Underserved Students.” Aug. 2013 24 Jan. 2018 <https://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/School-Based%20Mentoring_Programs.pdf> Gordon, Janet, Downey, Jane, and Bangert, Art. “Effects of a School-Based Mentoring Program on School Behavior and Measures of Adolescent Connectedness.”School Community Journal, vol. 23, no. 2, 2013 <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1028864.pdf>Accessed 26 Jan. 2018 Dubner, Stephen. “When Helping Hurts” Freakonomics. July 12, 2017. January 29, 2018 <http://freakonomics.com/podcast/when-helping-hurts/> “Mentoring Impact” Mentor. 2018. Jan. 24 2018 <http://www.mentoring.org/why-mentoring/mentoring-impact/> “Wake Network of Care Mentoring Program” Wake Network of Care. 2018. Jan. 24 2018<http://wake.nc.networkofcare.org/mh/services/subcategory.aspx?tax=PH -1400.5000> “Benefits of Mentoring” Mentoring Partnership. 2018. Jan 26 2018 <http://www.ncmentoring.org/about-mentoring/impact/> https://www.dur.ac.uk/hr/mentoring/mentoringguidelines/mentoringbenefits/ Mrs. Cowan at Bugg Elementary School [email protected] Response to "Share Dr. King’s belief in ‘three meals a day’ for the hungry"(by William Lambers)1/15/2018 The issue that this article refers to is world hunger. It explains how Dr. King's ideals about it are being missed nowadays, and that there is still hope to fix it. Hunger is everywhere. In fact, there are most likely hungry and/or starving citizens in our community right now. According to the article, some kids rely on the school lunches for nutrition and can go hungry over the summer without it. I, until now, didn't think much about hungry and starving people, especially not here, where I live. However, the more I think about it, I realize we are more or less pretending it doesn't exist and we are blocking it from ourselves. To there point where kids like me forgot it could even exist here! If there are starving children out there, who can't gain an education, can't move up in the world, and can't do anything about this, I won't stand for that... And there are kids like that. As explained in the article, costs on healthcare go up when starving children are brought to the hospital constantly. Also, with economic trends nowadays, more starving people will be appearing all around us. And you might end up one of them. If we can manage to feed, and support those in need, we can bring the economy up with a potential workforce long neglected. How many times have you walked past a homeless person, and pretended not to notice? If you became one of them, would you regret not looking over and helping? How do you think others might act when they saw you on the ground, asking for money or food? You wouldn't want them to neglect you. It doesn't take much to help people like these. Do some quick research to find a worthwhile charity if you're into that. If you don't have money to donate or don't want to, try volunteering at a soup kitchen or some other volunteer service. In fact, you could donate food to such things! There are many ways to help those in need. Just remember to think; "what would I want if I were starving?" Most of my life so far was surrounded by pets, and, involuntarily, they taught me that you can’t hold onto things forever, no matter how much you want to. I had two cats ever since I was born; Frodo, a boy, and Eleanor, a girl. Frodo lived on to be a cat that seemed to believe he was superior and deserved the best of pets, and Eleanor lived on as a real life scaredy-cat until she couldn’t run anymore. My parents got the cats before they had me. My mom tells me sometimes of how the cats would come up to my baby carrier or crib and sniff around to figure out what I was. Since I was a baby and all I’d reach out at the cats and they would jump back, only to come sniffing again. I first remember playing with them at our house in Georgia. They lived in the basement because my parents didn’t want them leaving the house or getting fur everywhere, as cats do. We had a little laser pointer that they loved. Although I eventually lost the laser, my cats hung out with me anyways. They even began coming to me when I called them. For a while, I would marathon the entire Star Wars movie series over and over to the point when my dad and I agreed that I had watched Star Wars at least 100 times. All throughout that time, the Frodo and Eleanor sat next to, on and behind me. We got older, and I got more homework, and they, mostly Frodo, would sit at the top of the stairs, behind a glass door and meow for me to pet them. Every once in awhile, I would get up and go pet them and hug them and scratch under their chins. In my little kid mind, I would get worried that my cat Frodo was crying when I pet him because I could see wet marks on my pants after petting him. It turned out though, that he was just loving the pets so much that he drooled on me… I wasn’t happy about that. Years passed, and within them, I played video games and watched movies in a basement room, on a big, hairy, blue couch. The white carpet floor and the old, not quite old television set, welcoming me with blankets and soft cats.It was pure luxury for a lazy gamer like me. Unfortunately, that phrase, “all good things must come to an end,” turned out to be true, even for my animal siblings. Eleanor, the cuter of the two, the one I considered innocent, turned out to be sick, very sick. We had to put her down, because we couldn’t bear to make her suffer. After that, we moved. Frodo went to live with my grandma in virginia with her other two cats and dog. We figured that we visit her often enough that we could still be around Frodo enough. But, the first visit after the move, we saw Frodo in bad condition. He had lots of mucus around his nose, looked fatter and worse overall. He couldn’t even move two feet without having to rest for a while. He couldn’t even jump onto our laps… We put him down too. Both of my cats, the ones I spent most of my life around, died eventually. When you lose something, you can’t dwell on it. It will only make you more sad, you may even wish you could go back. But despite that, never forget it, or you lose something more. Why have happy times if you forget that they existed? |