The western Oklahoma town of Cheyenne rests near ground scarred by a painful history. It was here, in late 1868, that Lieutenant Colonel George Custer led a dawn assault on the peace-seeking Southern Cheyenne village of Chief Black Kettle—an event once widely chronicled as a "battle," but now recognized as the Washita Massacre. Decades after, the town named for those displaced people found itself locked in a different kind of survival story: an early-20th-century rivalry for regional dominance.

In 1902, my great-great-grandfather H.B. Kliewer gained his U.S. citizenship. He had been living in Hillsboro, Kansas, ostensibly orphaned when his father died shortly after the family emigrated from Russia in the late 1880s. Until a few days ago, I had only a vague outline of this story. I knew my family had emigrated from Russia as part of the larger Mennonite migration discussed in David Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard, but I was unfamiliar with the texture of this family’s settler story.

Tune in this week to enjoy two compositions, one featuring a harpsichord and the other a piano!

Some folks might be able to skip watering during the winter where they live...but here on the High Plains, you'd do well to keep an eye on the moisture in your soil, or things might get a bit more dry than your trees would like!