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

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.

The Indian

On a hilltop in Kansas stands a weather-beaten monument to the Indian, who at the time of the placement of the statue was becoming a memory of days gone by. The statue continues it’s vigil over the valley below but in the overgrowth of the hill, it is unseen, except for those who know where to look. The Indian, the statue, has a story that mirrors the Indian, the people. 

Dexter, Kansas and the Hindenburg

Even out here in the windswept section of the place where the Great Plains, the Ozark Mountains and the Indian Territory collide, small, sometimes forgotten things may have a bigger impact than you know. An important discovery near the little burg of Dexter, Kansas, or the lack of that discovery had a big impact on another burg, the Hindenburg which exploded as it was mooring in New Jersey in 1937. That, at the time unprofitable, discovery would have an impact on air travel and the efforts into space.

With A Little Help From The Great Spirit

It’s a story that can only take place in America. They had come west, illprepared, to a new home where they hoped to start fresh for themselves and their families. The new residents of Nicodemus, Kansas, mostly former slaves from Kentucky were unready for the rugged and harsh environment of the Plains, but a roving band of Native Americans came across the hapless migrants. After discussing the situation, the Great Spirit touched their hearts. The following day they returned to Nicodemus and shared their bounty with the new-comers. A story that had many causes and effects that could only happen in America.