The Purple And The Gold

Unfolding across the freeways of LA, Purple Gold follows a dreamy stoner, Alana, who falls for a weed dealer named CJ Smith. As their relationship unfolds, Alana spends more time cruising with CJ than she does at college, and soon she's caught up in his smoke-filled world. Purple Gold is about losing yourself—thinking you’re going somewhere only to realize the car is breaking down, and you’re stuck in a place you never imagined.

A coal miner, Don, drafted to fight with the elite Rainbow Division in WWI under General Douglas MacArthur; a pregnant wife with a toddler whose relationship with her mother-in-law is constantly strained; a mother whose love for her son had her leave her Appalachian Mountain home and travel to France on the Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimage in order to take the mountains to her son and bring her son back to the mountains; and Dons son who fights in WWII with the elite Devils Brigade, the first Special Forces Unit in the U.S. Army, are remarkable because these events really took place. This six-act play is the story of two men and two women whose lives were intertwined through blood and war. Sarah Williams Dyson (1874-1957) grew up in the North Carolina mountains with her country doctor father. Sarahs only son, Don, married Vennie Lee Shull in 1914 and moved to Dante, Virginia, to work in the coal mines. Dons draft into WWI in 1917 came at a time when married men were not subject to the draft. In 1923, Vennie remarried. After Vennies divorce, Sarah, 12 years after her sons death, was invited to view Dons tomb-rock in France with other mothers and widows. In 1942, Sarah and Vennie had to watch Dons son, Claude, volunteer to fight in WWII even though he was exempt from fighting since he was the only son of a casualty from WWI. Remembering his dads only written message to him: Dont never be a solder my boy, Claude returned home severely wounded. Don and Claude both received purple hearts and other medals for their bravery. This breed of historian forsakes the myths and yellow journalism and delves into the lives of the characters through primary sources of journals, military records, letters, family Bibles, and first-hand knowledge of neighbors, family, and friends of the characters in the play.

In Echoes of Purple and Gold, Jack Keefe stacks local history like cordwood, telling forgotten tales and making odd connections that people no longer suspect. What school kid hasn't heard--or heard about--the story of Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? He was both fictional and real. The fictional Crane is the one everyone knows about. But there were also two real ones. One was a military man in the nineteenth century; the other had a lot of influence on central Illinois. How many times has anyone ever heard the surname Magoun? The name is all but gone now from the city he called home. But he was once a household name until his bank went under. Arguably, it killed him. What about General Custer and Seventh Cavalry? They didn't just magically appear in Montana to make history. First, they had to water their horses in Illinois. The general even had to do some birthday shopping there. Most people already know colors don't make a noise. But when you read the title chapter of this book, you'll understand the phrase. Echoes of Purple and Gold has stories you might think you know: high school colors, sinking ships, a hanging, and a central Illinois man who put Zane Grey on the literary map. Add a toddler who was run over by a train and still telling about it a lifetime later, the city's fattest men enjoying an enormous meal the night before Thanksgiving, plus the magic of railroads coming to town. They have never been presented as they are in this book. All these things make for history, memories...and echoes.

On October 12, 2005, a massive fire broke out in the Wines Central wine warehouse in Vallejo, California. Within hours, the flames had destroyed 4.5 million bottles of California's finest wine worth more than $250 million, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. The fire had been deliberately set by a passionate oenophile named Mark Anderson, a skilled con man and thief with storage space at the warehouse who needed to cover his tracks. With a propane torch and a bucket of gasoline-soaked rags, Anderson annihilated entire California vineyard libraries as well as bottles of some of the most sought-after wines in the world. Among the priceless bottles destroyed were 175 bottles of Port and Angelica from one of the oldest vineyards in California made by Frances Dinkelspiel's great-great grandfather, Isaias Hellman, in 1875. Sadly, Mark Anderson was not the first to harm the industry. The history of the California wine trade, dating back to the 19th Century, is a story of vineyards with dark and bloody pasts, tales of rich men, strangling monopolies, the brutal enslavement of vineyard workers and murder. Five of the wine trade murders were associated with Isaias Hellman's vineyard in Rancho Cucamonga beginning with the killing of John Rains who owned the land at the time. He was shot several times, dragged from a wagon and left off the main road for the coyotes to feed on. In her new book, Frances Dinkelspiel looks beneath the casually elegant veneer of California's wine regions to find the obsession, greed and violence lying in wait. Few people sipping a fine California Cabernet can even guess at the Tangled Vines where its life began.

Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds features exciting fiction and non-fiction decodable readers to enthuse and inspire children. They are fully aligned to Letters and Sounds Phases 1-6 and contain notes in the back. The Handbooks provide support in demonstration and modelling, monitoring comprehension and expanding vocabulary.The Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds Set contains all 60 readers in the series covering Lilac to Turquoise bands. There are 30 fiction and 30 non-fiction decodable readers fully aligned to Letters and SoundsPlease note that the Phonics for Letters and Sounds Set does not include the Phonics Handbooks which can be purchased separately.