2021 Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation Since 1898, residents of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, have reached across the US-Mexico border to celebrate George Washington's birthday. The celebration can last a whole month, with parade goers reveling in American and Mexican symbols; George Washington saluting; and “Pocahontas” riding on horseback. An international bridge ceremony, the heart and soul of the festivities, features children from both sides of the border marching toward each other to link the cities with an embrace. ¡Viva George! offers an ethnography and a history of this celebration, which emerges as both symbol and substance of cross-border community life. Anthropologist and Laredo native Elaine A. Peña shows how generations of border officials, civil society organizers, and everyday people have used the bridge ritual to protect shared economic and security interests as well as negotiate tensions amid natural disasters, drug-war violence, and immigration debates. Drawing on previously unknown sources and extensive fieldwork, Peña finds that border enactments like Washington's birthday are more than goodwill gestures. From the Rio Grande to the 38th Parallel, they do the meaningful political work that partisan polemics cannot.

William Sydney Porter (1862–1910), known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry's short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and surprise endings. Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses, etc. O. Henry's work is wide-ranging, and his characters can be found roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the con-man, or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York. O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. Some of his best and least-known work is contained in Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories each of which explores some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town, while advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another. Table of Contents: Cabbages And Kings: The Proem By The Carpenter "Fox-in-the-morning" The Lotus And The Bottle Smith Caught Cupid's Exile Number Two The Phonograph And The Graft Money Maze The Admiral The Flag Paramount The Shamrock And The Palm The Remnants Of The Code Shoes Ships Masters Of Arts Dicky Rouge Et Noir Two Recalls The Vitagraphoscope Heart of the West My Tussle with the Devil by O. Henry's Ghost O Henryana Options Roads of Destiny Rolling Stones Sixes and Sevens Strictly Business The Four Million The Gentle Grafter The Trimmed Lamp The Two Women The Voice of the City Waifs and Strays Whirligigs Biography of O. Henry...

Ancestors and descendants of William "Arthur" George (1883-1950), the second son of "Jim" George and Lovina Stillings. He married Amanda Margaret Jones (1885-1917), daughter of Isaac Jones and Caroline Roach, in 1902. She was born in Laurel Co., Ky. Isaac George (1635-1689) was born in Charles City, Warwick Co., Va. to the immigrant parents, John George and Jane Cole. John George was born ca. 1604 in Writtle, Essex Co., England, and married 1623 in Tillingham, Essex Co. Jane Cole, who was born ca. 1606 in Tilling- ham. Isaac George married Heston Fawdon ca. 1654 in Virginia. Descendants live in Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Illinois, Ohio and elsewhere