In 2011 the National Army Museum conducted a poll to decide who merited the title of 'Britain's Greatest General'. In the end two men shared the honour. One, predictably, was the Duke of Wellington. The other was Bill Slim. Had he been alive, Slim would have been surprised, for he was the most modest of men - a rare quality among generals. Of all the plaudits heaped on him during his life, the one he valued most was the epithet by which he was affectionately known to the troops: 'Uncle Bill'.
Badger Bill needs rescuing. He's been kidnapped by two nasty sisters who are about to make him fight a boxing match against three even nastier dogs. The four most depressed llamas in the history of llamas need rescuing too. They are about to be turned into llama pies. But never fear - Uncle Shawn is here. He loves rescuing things. He has a rescuing plan, which involves dancing and a mole and an electric fence. What could possibly go wrong?
Wilmot Lenn Petersen—a.k.a. "Uncle Bill"—was a live-off-the-land eccentric, dressing strangely and growing all he needed to live among the wilds of Nevada and Arizona. During his ninety years of life, he was a cowboy, wrangler, entrepreneur, pilot, turquoise miner, and geologist. After three failed marriages, he remarried and joyfully lived the remainder of his days. The irrepressibly outspoken Uncle Bill tells his own story as collected over the decades of taped interviews by his great-niece, author Marion Petersen Koedyker. As she writes, "My great-uncle Bill (born in 1898) used to tell me stories of his colorful life. One time during a visit I asked if I could tape record his stories. He agreed, but said, 'It'll be a mighty dull listen for anyone.' Bill underestimated the impact his real-life stories had on the lives of other people. Some stories will make you laugh and some will make you cry. Some you will not believe and some you will have to reread." Full of his dry humor and unexpected life lessons, this nuanced portrait of Uncle Bill deals with sage and not-so-sage advice such as why leather on a dead body will disappear before the body is found, why it's not always a good idea to protect a woman when her husband is beating her up, why a robbery may not be what it seems, and why it's good to leave your mark at kill sites. No matter what the topic, Uncle Bill probably has a colorful story relating to it. This delightful book is a unique blend of an intensely personal oral history with an honest portrayal of a bygone generation.
When Willie's Uncle Bill comes to babysit, they have excellent adventures making icky stew, getting a haircut at Hair by Pierre, and jamming with a band.
The novel portrays three main characters in pursuit of their dreams. The main character is Molly, a woman that becomes a jockey and pursues her dream to win the Triple Crown derbies trophy. As the story evolves she proves to have an enormous resilience in the face of a disabling illness that affects her life and her career. What becomes predominant in Molly’s quest for glory is the tie between her and the champion horse. Their love for each other – either in good fortune or in tragedy - reaches further than their aspirations to achieve glory. The next character in line is Uncle Bill, who comes to realize one day that his life lacks a higher purpose. To make up for it he designs an ultimate adventure for himself which he calls “Project Everest”. Eventually Uncle Bill goes and climbs Mt. Everest and never returns from there. Reaching that peak becomes an end in itself. Did Uncle Bill succeed to arrive at that peak? Later on, a salvage team finds on the mountain peak Uncle Bill’s watch, hidden under a rock. What belongs to a larger than life story is that Uncle Bill’s preparation for climbing Mt. Everest becomes a vital activity at all population levels. It looks as if each life prepares itself to help Uncle Bill triumph over defiance. What Uncle Bill’s project proves to others is that conquering the impossible is a human trait that belongs to all of us, an aspiration of all of us to overcome the impossible. The third character that gathers attention is the teen author that lives though those events and discovers what love is. The background of the story is made up of farmlands, a bunch of neighboring farms on which the principal activity is growing animals like pigs, burrows and thoroughbred studs. It is not difficult to interpret the motives interleaved by the story as being symbolic. Molly’s desire to win the Triple Crown begins with a fortunate chance and ends with another chance – an unfortunate one, an accidental chance. Uncle’s Bill’s climbing of Mt. Everest is the result of a careful planning that ends in an illusive victory. Both fates described above are metaphors. The sense implied here is that the pursuit of fame, success, and victory is beyond life. That is, happiness is doomed to failure in the quest of the impossible; also that the boundaries of what is given to us to live are finite, prone to chance and accident.
From martyr to insult, how “Uncle Tom” has influenced two centuries of racial politics. Jackie Robinson, President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, O.J. Simpson and Christopher Darden have all been accused of being an Uncle Tom during their careers. How, why, and with what consequences for our society did Uncle Tom morph first into a servile old man and then to a racial epithet hurled at African American men deemed, by other Black people, to have betrayed their race? Uncle Tom, the eponymous figure in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimental anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a loyal Christian who died a martyr’s death. But soon after the best-selling novel appeared, theatre troupes across North America and Europe transformed Stowe’s story into minstrel shows featuring white men in blackface. In Uncle, Cheryl Thompson traces Tom’s journey from literary character to racial trope. She explores how Uncle Tom came to be and exposes the relentless reworking of Uncle Tom into a nostalgic, racial metaphor with the power to shape how we see Black men, a distortion visible in everything from Uncle Ben and Rastus The Cream of Wheat chef to Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to Bill Cosby. In Donald Trump’s post-truth America, where nostalgia is used as a political tool to rewrite history, Uncle makes the case for why understanding the production of racial stereotypes matters more than ever before.
Lots of people wish they were related to a famous person. Bill Betenson is Butch Cassidy is his great-uncle. Bill's interest in Butch Cassidy was sparked when he was four years old and attended a private screening of the Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with his great-grandmother, Lula Betenson, who wrote Butch Cassidy, My Brother. For over two decades Betenson has researched and studied the life and times of Butch Cassidy. Betenson utilized privileged family information and memorabilia, traveled to South America to conduct interviews and visit Butch Cassidy's ranch, and spent hours in dusty archives. Betenson offers up new information about this infamous outlaw's life and death.
The Recital Books congratulate students for a job well done by providing correlated repertoire to their Lesson Books that are based on concepts they've already learned. As a result, the pieces are quickly mastered. Included in Recital 1A are familiar favorites such as Lost My Partner" and "Tumbalalaika," and fun originals like "Charlie the Chimp!" and "My Secret Place."
