Wiley Post: Highway Man to the Edge of Space

Wiley Post made headlines. He crushed the record for circumnavigating the globe and then broke his own record a year later with the first solo trip around the world. He reached unheard of heights in his plane, the Winnie Mae, verifying the existence of the jet stream. His final flight ended in headlines reporting his death and that of his traveling companion, Will Rogers. A short but spectacular public life that began with its own head line “Bandit Caught, Lodged in Jail.”

The Best Possible Result

It took years to get the ball rolling but the Texas County landscape would soon have a good sized body of water provided by the Corps of Engineers. It was to provide all the usual things a lake would, especially high-paying government jobs and money flowing through local businesses. As the construction wore on, conditions kept getting dryer and dryer. Just as dollars were not flowing into the local economy, water wasn’t flowing into the Lake…

150 – A Look Back, A Look Ahead

A milestone – a marker on a real or figurative trail that allows you to know how far you’ve come and how far you’ve got to go. Here on our 150th episode, I take a moment to consider this particular milestone.

Episodes featured :

From Kansas to the Keiper Belt

Granddad’s Prayer

Aid For The Tenth Leper

The Music of Clearviews:

Clearviews – Band Camp page

The Broad Street Pump

For this episode, we will depart from the usual back road or mountain trail, far from where the Great Plains, the Ozark Mountains and the Indian Territory collide for the cobble stone street of London, 1854. This story has all the elements of a good Within The Realm tale: A significant event in an overlooked place, this time just with an English accent! Our story involves a doctor on the cutting edge, a neighborhood facing an overwhelming problem and a pump handle.

Piggy Banks or Aid For The Tenth Leper

The Piggy Bank, that most useful tool in teaching thrift and saving for a rainy day. The idea has been around for centuries, but the concept of a little slotted-back pig in every child’s room is pretty recent and from the unlikely starting point of White Cloud, Kansas. The bank was inspired by Pete the Pig, sold by Wilbur Chapman to lend aid to the world’s lepers. Pete eventually inspired over a million dollars donated toward that cause.