To fully understand the history of BEGA-US, you should first be aware of the history of BEGA, an international company based in Menden, Germany, and its relationship to our company here in Carpinteria, CA. BEGA, which is a family held company, was founded in 1945. At its inception BEGA began producing outdoor lighting with just 50 employees. Over the years, through the growth of its product sales and acquisitions of other manufacturing operations, BEGA has developed into a vertically integrated manufacturing company with an international presence, now employing over 1000 people worldwide. BEGA was first introduced to the U.S. market through a licensing agreement with Prescolite in 1961. This agreement provided for certain products to be sold under the Prescolite name. In 1985, former Prescolite president, Larry Routh, formed a joint venture partnership with the managing partners of BEGA in order to bring the entire BEGA product offering to the U.S. This partnership was the inception of BEGA-US, a U.S. corporation. After a modest beginning, essentially converting a limited number of European designs to U.S. standards, BEGA-US is now a $50 million corporation with a state-of-the-art 120,000 square foot manufacturing facility with corporate offices located in Carpinteria (Santa Barbara), CA. BEGA-US employs 110 people, which includes a full engineering staff as well as an in-house powder coat paint facility. More than 50% of our product content is now U.S. sourced, with many products being 100% designed and built here in our California facility. This means that BEGA-US products qualify under the "Made in America" Act! Additionally, all products offered by BEGA-US bear the UL label and carry a three year limited warranty. Our approach to product design is to innovate, not follow. Each product family is conceived to satisfy a general or specific lighting task as defined by its architectural or exterior surroundings. BEGA designs are intended to be classic, to blend with and complement all types of architecture, whether old or new. To accomplish this goal, we use only the highest quality materials. Our approach to engineering emphasizes practicality. At BEGA, our attention to detail, fit, tolerances, and installation methods is paramount.

The BOOM Collection is a selection of luminaires handcrafted by traditional methods from copper, cast bronze, brass, cast aluminum and hand-blown glass. Stylish luminaires which impress not only by their high-quality materials and workmanship but also by their modern lighting technology. As a carefully coordinated building detail, they help to accent sophisticated buildings and historical architecture.

'I don't paint so much anymore,' I say, looking to my feet. 'Oh. Well, I got a boy who needs to do some art. You can help him out,' Aunty Pam says, like I have no say in the matter, like she didn't hear what I just said about not painting so much anymore. 'Jackson, this is Tomas. He's living with me for a little while.' It's a hot summer, and life's going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It's almost Christmas, school's out, and he's hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson's Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city - but this time a mysterious boy with a troubled past comes with them... As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret - a secret he thought he'd locked away for good. Compelling, honest and beautifully written, The Boy from the Mish is about first love, identity, and the superpower of self-belief. 'The Boy from the Mish is an extraordinary debut novel, and I loved this tender, beautiful story with all my heart. Jackson and Tomas stole my heart, and I'll be thinking about them for a long time.' NINA KENWOOD 'A lightning bolt to the soul. The Boy from the Mish announces a bold, necessary new talent.' WILL KOSTAKIS 'How I wish I had this big-hearted book when I was a teenager. It would've changed my life. Let it change yours.' BENJAMIN LAW 'It is, honestly, a book I've been searching for over my whole career as an editor, as well as all my years as a (queer) reader. I'm not ashamed to say that it made me cry (repeatedly) and awed me with the power of its storytelling.' DAVID LEVITHAN, Scholastic US Editorial Director 'A deftly woven tale that is both a raw, unflinching look at the experience of growing up gay and Aboriginal, and a sweet, truly endearing love story you just can't turn away from. This is Own Voices storytelling at its best.' HOLDEN SHEPPARD 'Honest. Funny. Beautiful. This book is all the things.' GABBIE STROUD

1922. The Australian author, Henry Handel Richardson's (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), is best remembered for The Fortunes of Richard Mahony trilogy. Her novel, Maurice Guest, plays out the history of Maurice and Louise against the background of the musical life in Leipzig, of which she has intimate knowledge, having studied music there herself. The other figures in the drama, Madeleine, Krafft, Ephie, Schwarz's wife, landladies and musical students, are inevitably pieces in the principal game, and yet are never deliberately so placed there by the author in order to assist the final catastrophe. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

For four hundred years there has been a special relationship between Britain and what is now the United States of America in many aspects of life, not least in gardening. From the early settlers taking their familiar English plants to the New World and early plant-hunters bringing back exciting new plants for English gardens to the twenty-first-century English infatuation with "prairie gardening," ideas and plants have been crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic. In Gardening Across the Pond, Richard Bisgrove explores four centuries of translantic influences, from the Tradescants, plant-hunting in seventeenth century Virginia, to the prairie landscapes of the 2012 London Olympic Park, and attempts to answer that thorny question--is the English cottage garden an American invention?

Heda's Banquet Piece, Frans Hals' Willem Coymans, and Rembrandt's Lucretia. Paintings by these and other masters attracted the American collectors P. A. B. Widener, his son Joseph, and Andrew W. Mellon, whose bequests form the heart of the National Gallery's distinguished and remarkably cohesive collection of ninety-one Dutch paintings.