A Gold Star For George

The Wildlife Park is awarding gold stars to the animals, and George the giraffe has the perfect spot on his fence for one. But will George win a gold star? George and his animal friends introduce young children to reading with leveled text and full-color illustrations.

A blue star for each family member serving in America's military... a gold star if that life was lost in defense of the nation's freedom. IN WORLD WAR I, the American tradition of the service flag began. Families displayed a simple fabric banner with a blue star for each family member serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. If a family member died in the nation's service, a gold star covered that individual's blue star on the family service flag. Not a symbol of mourning, the gold star represented the family's pride and the honor and glory accorded to that individual for making the supreme sacrifice in defense of the America's freedom. Soon, the term "gold star mother" came to be used to identify and honor women who had lost a son or daughter in wartime military service. Following the war, as the nation focused its attention on those veterans who had returned whole in mind and body, gold star mothers served as a constant reminder of the true cost of war. In 1928, a group of these women formed American Gold Star Mothers, Inc., an organization created to honor those who had died by being of service to veterans and their families in need, supporting gold star families, and caring for veterans who had returned with physical, emotional and psychological wounds. From that humble beginning, American Gold Star Mothers, Inc. has become an icon of national service, opening its membership time and again to gold star mothers of later wars and conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Their amazing legacy of service is an important yet largely unknown chapter in American history. This book presents the story of gold star mothers in America and the first comprehensive history of American Gold Star Mothers, Inc., drawn from nearly a century of archival materials. The fascinating story of the strong women who honored their fallen sons and daughters by dedicating themselves to the service of veterans and peace is both compelling and inspiring.

This full-color book covers every aspect of one of the best-loved classic racing machines, from its beginnings back in Small Heath though the Brooklands days, Trials, the Café Racer scene to the classic scene of today. Lavishly illustrated.

Founded in a working-class neighborhood in southeast Houston in 1941, Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios is a major independent studio that has produced a multitude of influential hit records in an astonishingly diverse range of genres. Its roster of recorded musicians includes Lightnin’ Hopkins, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Junior Parker, Clifton Chenier, Sir Douglas Quintet, 13th Floor Elevators, Freddy Fender, Kinky Friedman, Ray Benson, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child, and many, many more. In House of Hits, Andy Bradley and Roger Wood chronicle the fascinating history of Gold Star/SugarHill, telling a story that effectively covers the postwar popular music industry. They describe how Houston’s lack of zoning ordinances allowed founder Bill Quinn’s house studio to grow into a large studio complex, just as SugarHill’s willingness to transcend musical boundaries transformed it into of one of the most storied recording enterprises in America. The authors offer behind-the-scenes accounts of numerous hit recordings, spiced with anecdotes from studio insiders and musicians who recorded at SugarHill. Bradley and Wood also place significant emphasis on the role of technology in shaping the music and the evolution of the music business. They include in-depth biographies of regional stars and analysis of the various styles of music they represent, as well as a list of all of Gold Star/SugarHill’s recordings that made the Billboard charts and extensive selected historical discographies of the studio’s recordings.

This book is a historical novel about the life of a young man growing up during the Great Depression and World War II in the cold fields of South Pennsylvania and the struggles he incurred after his father was killed in the mining accident. Old George was shell-shocked coal miner who lived in a shack near the community where the boy lived. Martin was a talented artist who has very little to look forward to when he found out that George had a lot of money and he didnt keep it in the bank. Martin befriends the troubled old man with the intent of getting a hold of the money for his own use. His friendship with George grew, and when the old man froze to death during the snowstorm, Martin searched for the money. The old mans cabin was ravished and burned by a horde of local people who had the same idea. Martin eventually found the money, and he gave it to an orphanage where Georges blind niece resided.

Words, Words, Words is a wide–ranging collection of literary essays that astonish the reader with their candor, insight, and generosity. Many of them reveal the absurdity that so often underlies our most passionate thoughts, our most cherished moments, even our most disturbing fears and recognitions. They echo everywhere with a kind of cosmic laughter that never lets us forget we are constructs of our own capacity to see through language — that at a most fundamental level, what we think about our selves is inevitably an extension of what we learn in our reading of others. Here we also get to find out what Bowering most cherishes about writers and writing: who Al Purdy was; what David McFadden's work pays attention to; when the world of poetry changed; where Artie Gold appeared as a light fixture in our darkness; how bpNichol's Martyrology legitimized the vernacular; why we cannot read history without encountering Shakespeare. Neither precious nor shy, their subjects range from the sublime to the ridiculous — from the inarticulate nature of grief to a modest proposal for the uses of the dead. Together, they constitute a history of the education of Canada's first Poet Laureate: from his adolescent dreams of becoming a writer; his early recognition of the discipline required to forge a life in language; the ongoing feud between the TISH authors and the self–appointed nationalist police; Bowering shares with us what he has learned in a lifetime of exercising his craft — even including what constitutes bad writing. Whether in deconstructing the cliches of genre fiction; the ghetto of identity politics; the hapless failure of any attempt to harness language to utilitarian purposes; the abuse of language required to write "sensitive" prose and verse; he constantly reminds us that the first and most important rule of life is: pay attention.

Best known as Mr. Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise™ and captain of the Starship Excelsior, George Takei is beloved by millions as part of the command team that has taken audiences to new vistas of adventure in Star Trek®—the unprecedented television and feature film phenomenon. From the program’s birth in the changing world of the 1960s and death at the hands of the network to its rebirth in the hearts and minds of loyal fans, the Star Trek story has blazed its own path into our recent cultural history, leading to a series of blockbuster feature films and three new versions of Star Trek for television. The Star Trek story is one of boundless hope and crushing disappointment, wrenching rivalries and incredible achievements. It is also the story of how, after nearly thirty years, the cast of characters from a unique but poorly rated television show have come to be known to millions of Americans and people around the world as family. For George Takei, the Star Trek adventure is intertwined with his personal odyssey through adversity in which four-year-old George and his family were forced by the United States government into internment camps during World War II. Star Trek means much more to George Takei than an extraordinary career that has spanned thirty years. For an American whose ideals faced such a severe test, Star Trek represents a shining embodiment of the American Dream—the promise of an optimistic future in which people from all over the world contribute to a common destiny.