about a star indicating foot beat

Press Z, enter "ped"

Seems these are just kind of non-standard pedal markings? I'd recommend using standard ones that will be easily understood by musicians. They are found on the Lines palette. The ones I recommend are the ones that look like this _____/ and ______, but the old styles ones with "Ped" and "*" symbols similar to what is shown are there too. If you really wanted to reproduce that particular look, you'd delete the "Ped" portion via the Inspector, but again, I definitely don't recommend that if you're writing for musicians today., who will expect one of the more standard markings. And then you won't need to write in a special explanation of what they mean.