Category: Within The Realm

This past Easter Sunday was my Kindergarten teacher Louise Carson’s 90th Birthday. On the occasion of her birthday we revisit Mrs. Carson to discuss what it was like trying to teach a bunch of kids like me. And, as usual with any discussion with Mrs. Carson, we learn a little something along the way.

The largest non-military battle in the American West occurred 150 years in the Cherokee Nation. Often told as a tale of a Western gunfight, the battle at the Whitmire School on Peacheater Creek in the Goingsnake District was a much more complicated affair. It was a jurisdictional conflict between the Cherokee Nation and the United States Federal Court in Fort Smith. Who is to blame for the bloodshed is still debated and a recent Supreme Court ruling had reignited the jurisdictional conflict once again. Hear the complicated story for yourself!

It’s been a while since I started this podcast. I know not a lot of folks have heard the first episode and my quick introduction of the show and what it was I was setting out to do. There’s been a lot of improvement on storytelling, recording quality, etc. since that first episode, so now is as good a time as any for a re-introduction to what I’m trying to accomplish with this show. Hello, it’s me.

Has your life ever been changed by a chance meeting with someone? Mine has. Over three decades ago, quite by accident, met author Jerry Ellis while he was working on his first book. He uttered a few sentences to me that changed the way I saw the world and my place in it. We recently reconnected to talk about that day and what has transpired since!

Educating a half-wild kid with a poor outlook on the whole affair was the task at hand for Grade School Principal Ellis DeWeese. Dedicated to teaching and to the future of his students, he found a way to redirect at least one kid’s ambivalence by employing the old “flag program” trick. I was that kid and I’m glad to have been duped by the King of Stealth education himself.