LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS

Where Gaps of Expression are Liberated

ABOUT

Luellen Smiley is a creative nonfiction writer, author, columnist, and historian whose writing is deeply rooted in a controversial personal history. She is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a close friend, associate, and business partner of notorious Las Vegas gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Her father was sitting only feet from Siegel when Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947.

That extraordinary childhood history became the foundation for Smiley’s first book, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter’s Tribute, published in 2017. The memoir explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a man connected to organized crime while trying to reconcile her love for her father with the secrecy, fear, and criminal world surrounding him.

Smiley’s work has appeared in publications including the New York Post, MORE Magazine, Southern California newspapers, and Authorlink. She wrote the newspaper column Smiley’s Dice—Adventures in Livingness, which earned a Blue-Ribbon Award from the California Newspapers Association for her Growing Up With Gangsters columns.

Her interest in her father’s history also led her to become a researcher and commentator on organized crime history. She has participated in television, radio, and documentary interviews.

Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction. Her own website describes the project as exploring a woman whose life is destabilized by gaslighting and psychological manipulation.

Her writing career reflects a recurring theme: using personal experience and research to uncover the truth behind complicated relationships and extraordinary lives. From the secretive world surrounding her father and Bugsy Siegel to the deeply personal territory of Gaslighting Greta, Smiley’s work transforms difficult experiences into stories of survival, discovery, and ultimately reclaiming one’s voice.

Luellen Smiley is an author whose life has given her an unusual perspective on secrecy, manipulation, family loyalty, betrayal, and survival—and she uses that perspective as the raw material for her nonfiction storytelling.

THE POST OFFICE AND FACEBOOK


Post Office. St. Louis, Missouri, by Boehl & K...
Post Office. St. Louis, Missouri, by Boehl & Koenig (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

About the post office, it’s a relic, a dying old fortress of communication, where we all stood in line at one time to send our letters, the ones that took us a few more minutes than we can afford today.  I wrote a lot of letters, long five page letters written on delicate stationary, and art cards I bought in museums and boutiques.

The Post Office loses 96 million dollars a day according to a reporter on television.  We have stopped buying stamps, because we don’t mail letters. We don’t even need to send packages, because we  buy it online and let them ship it directly.  The cards are printed by the shipper, and impersonally attached to the gift. The type is formal, and even though you know that person, had his mind on you for the minute they typed out that note, well, it’s not the same really.  Progress is raping  us of the personal touch.  People like Zuckerberg are reinventing the way we share our thoughts, our photos, our everything.

Letters, of people that acquired prominence in the world of literature, art, and science were  adapted into books.  I wonder if their emails will be considered for a book.

The postman still comes to the house, he’s usually talking on his cell phone, or listening to his iPod, when he drops the mail off.   There is no need to rush to see what he’s brought, it’s always the same, a stack of bills, a few discount fliers, and a real estate brokerage announcement that they can sell our house in thirty days.  The postman has changed too.  They used to say hello, and have a nice day.  I suppose if I wanted to have a conversation with the Postman I could go to their Facebook page.

I’m going to check, and see if they have a Facebook page….  The first three  Facebook post offices:  one in the UK, one in St Louis, and one in Pakistan.  Clicked more, and there they are. You can Facebook the Post office.


Discover more from LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.


2 responses to “THE POST OFFICE AND FACEBOOK”

  1. Terrible but true ! Good call. How many people are able to see the growing distance between people of, say even 30 years ago to now? Well, no one under 30 that’s for sure. A tragedy that they will probably never understand direct communication, a heart felt written love note, the anticipation of something in the mailbox.
    Technology…..a blessing and a curse.

    Like

Leave a Comment