In the race to scale with AI, you need data infrastructure that can match your pace. EverPierre's data storage platform brings all your data into one hub. No silos, no scrambling, just instant access to tame your data chaos. And with EverPierre's storage as a service subscription, your storage and security upgrade automatically with zero downtime, your infrastructure stays current so your business never slows down. Visit Visit EverPeerData.com to learn more today.

With EverPeer, you're not just in the race.

You're built to win it. Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at Snewscast.com and if you'd like to listen to Snewscast, add free and listen to our entire Snewsie catalog. Please go to Snewscast.com slash plus P-L-U-US to learn more. This episode is brought to you by The Wild Land. Tonight, we'll read O Pioneers, a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather, set on the wind windswept prairies of Nebraska. O pioneers tell us the story of Alexandra Berkson, a determined young woman of Swedish American descent who takes over her family's farm. Cathar's quiet, poetic prose captures both the hardships and beauty of Prairie Life at the turn of the 20th century. And Alexandra's journey reflects broader themes of endurance, transformation, and connection to the land. The novel marked the beginning of Cathars' great Plains Trilogy, which also includes the song of the Lark and My Antonia. Though she wrote this trilogy while living in New York City, Catherine drew inspiration from her own upbringing in Nebraska and from the lives of immigrants who shaped the American Midwest.

Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths.irie Spring. Evening and the flat land, rich and somber and always silent, the miles of fresh ploughed soil, heavy and black, full of strength and harshness.

The growing wheat, the growing weeds, The toiling horses, the tired men, The long empty roads, Sullen fires of sunset fading. The eternal, unresponsive sky. Against all this youth, flaming like the wild roses, singing like the larks over the the plowed. Flashing like a star out of the twilight. Youth with its insupportable sweetness, its fierce necessity, its sharp desire. Singing and singing out of the lips of silence out of the earthy dusk. The Wild Land One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska

table and was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low-drab buildings Huddled on the grey prairie under a grey sky. The dwelling-houses were set about half-hazard on the tough prairie sod. Some of them looked as if they might have been moved in overnight, and others as if they They were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply-rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain elevator at the north end of the town to the lumberyard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road, straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings, the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drugstore, the feed store, the saloon, the post office, the board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o'clock in the afternoon, the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets, but a few rough looking countrymen and course overcoats with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store into the shelter of another.

At the hitch-bars along the street, a few heavy workhorses, harness to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets. about the station, everything was quiet, for there would not be another train in

until night. On the sidewalk, in front of one of the stores, sat a little Swedish boy, crying bitterly. He was about five years old. His black cloth coat was much too big for him, and made him look like a little old man. His shrunken, brown, flannel dress had been washed many times, and left a long stretch of stalking between the hem of his skirt and the tops of his clumsy copper-toed shoes. His cap was pulled down over his ears. His nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold. He cried quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not notice him. He was afraid to stop stop anyone, afraid to go into the store and ask for help. So he sat, ringing his long sleeves, and looking up a telegraph pole beside him, whimpering, my kitten, oh my kitten, her will freeze.

At the top of the pole, crouched a shivering grey kitten,

muing faintly and clinging desperately to the wood with her claws.

The boy had been left at the store while his sister went to the doctor's office,

and in her absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole. The little creature had never been so high before, and she was too frightened to move. Her master was sunk into spare. He was a little country boy, and this village was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts. He always felt shy and awkward here, and wanted to hide behind things for fear someone might laugh at him. him. Just now, he was too unhappy to care who laughed. At last he seemed to see a ray of hope. His sister was coming, and he got up and ran toward her, in his heavy shoes. His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked rapidly and resolutely as if she knew exactly where she was going and what she was going to do next. She wore a man's long ulster, not as if it were in affliction, but as if it were very comfortable and belonged to her, carried it like a young soldier, and a round plush cap tied down with a thick veil. She had a serious, thoughtful face, and her clear, deep blue eyes were fixed intently on the distance, without seeming to see anything, as if she were in trouble. She did not notice the little boy until he pulled her by the coat, then she stopped short and stooped down to wipe his wet face. Why am I all? I told you to stay in the store and not to come out. What is the matter with you? My kiddin's sister, my kiddin, a man put her out and a dog chased her up there. His forefinger, projecting from the sleeve of his coat, pointed up to the wretched little creature on the pole. Oh, a meal! Did I tell you she'd get us into trouble of some kind if you brought her? What made you tease me so? But there, I ought to have known better myself. She went to the foot of the pole

and held out her arms crying, kitty, kitty, kitty, but the kitten only mued and faintly waved its tail. I'll Xandra turn away decidedly.

No, she won't come down.

Somebody will have to go up after her. I saw the Lindstrom's wagon in town. I'll go and see if I can find Carl. Maybe he can do something. Only you must stop crying, or I won't go a step. Where's your comforter? Did you leave it in the store? Never mind. Hold still till I put this on you. She unwound the brown veil from her head, and tidied about his throat. A shabby little traveling man, who was just then coming out of the store on his way to the saloon, stopped and gazed stupidly at the shining mass of hair she bared when she took off her veil. Two thick braids pinned about her head in the German way, with a fringe of reddish yellow curls blowing

out from under her cap. He took his cigar out of his mouth and held the wet end between the fingers of his woolen glove. My God, girl, what a head of hair!

He exclaimed quite innocently and foolishly.

She stabbed him with a glance of Amazonian fierceness and drew in her lower lip, most unnecessary severity. It gave the little clothing drummer such a start that he actually let his cigar fall to the sidewalk, and went off weekly in the teeth of the wind to the saloon. His hand was still on steady when he took his glass from the bartender. His feeble, flirtatious instincts had been crushed before, but never so mercilessly.

He felt cheap and ill-used, as if someone had taken advantage of him. When a drummer had been knocking about in little drab towns and crawling across the the wintry country and dirty smoking cars, was he to be blamed if, when he chanced upon

a fine human creature, he suddenly wished himself more of a man. While the little drummer was drinking to recover his nerve, Alexandra hurried to the drugstore as the most likely place to find Carl Lindstrom. There he was, turning over a portfolio of chromos studies, which the drug has sold to the Hanover women who did China painting. Sandra explained her predicament, and the boy followed her to the corner, where a male still sat by the pole. I'll have to go up after her, Alexandra. I think at the depot they have some spikes I can strap on my feet. Wait a minute. Carl thrust his hands into his pockets, lowered his head, and darted up the street against the North Wind. He was a tall boy of fifteen, slight and narrow chested. When he came back with the spikes, Alexandra asked him what he had done with his overcoat. I left it in the drugstore, and I couldn't climb it anyhow. Catch me if I fall a meal, he called back as he began his ascent. Alexandra watched him anxiously. The cold was bitter enough on the ground. The kitten would not budge an inch. Carl had to go to the very top of the pole and then had some difficulty in tearing her from her hold. When he reached the ground, he handed the cat to her tearful little master. Now go into the store with her a meal and get warm. He opened the door for the child. Wait a minute, Alexandra. Why can't I drive for you as far as our place, it's getting colder every minute? The girls lip trembled. She looked fixately up the street as if she were gathering her strength to face something, as if she were trying with all her might to grasp a situation which must be dealt with somehow. The wind flapped the skirts of her heavy coat about her. Carl did not say anything, but she felt his sympathy. He was a thin, frail boy with brooding, dark eyes, very quiet in all his movements. There was a delicate pallor in his thin face, and his mouth was too sensitive for a boy's. The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. Carl turned away, he said, I'll see to your team, Alexandra went into the store to have her purchases packed in the egg boxes and to get warm before she set out on her long, cold drive. When she looked for Emil, she found him sitting on a step of the staircase that led up to the clothing and carpet department. He was playing with a little Bohemian girl, Marie Toveski, who was tying her handkerchief over the kittens head for a bonnet. Marie was a stranger in the country, having come from Omaha with her mother to visit her uncle, Joe Toveski. She was a dark child with brown curly hair, like a brunette doll's, a little red mouth and round yellow brown eyes. Everyone noticed the brown iris had golden glints that made them look like goldstone or in softer lights, like that Colorado mineral called tiger eye. The country children thereabouts wore their dresses to their shoe tops, but this city-child was dressed in what was then called the Kate Greenaway Manor, and her red cashmere frock gathered full from the yoke, came almost to the floor. with her poke bonnet, gave her the look of a quaint little woman. She had a white fur-tipet about her neck and made no fussy objections when a meal fingered it admiringly. Ilexandra had not the heart to take him away from so pretty a playfellow, and she let them tease the kid in together until Jo Toveski came in noisily and picked up his little niece, setting her on his shoulder for everyone to see. His children were all boys, and he adored this little creature. His cronies formed a circle about him, admiring and teasing the little girl, who took their jokes with great good nature. They were all delighted with her, for they seldom saw so pretty and carefully nurtured a child. They told her that she must choose one of them for a sweet heart. She looked archely into the big, brown, mustacheed faces. and she ran her tiny forefinger delicately over Joe's brisly chin and said, here is my sweetheart. The Bohemians roared with laughter and Marie's uncle hugged her. Each of Joe's friends gave her a bag of candy and she she kissed them all around, though she did not like country candy very well. Perhaps that was why she thought herself of a meal. Let me down, Uncle Joe. She said, I want to give some of my candy to that nice little boy I found. She walked graciously over to a meal, who formed a new circle and teased the little boy until he hid his face in his sister's skirts. The farm people were making preparations to start for home. The women were checking over their groceries and pinning their big red shawls about their heads. The men were buying tobacco and candy with what money they had left. We're showing each other new boots and gloves and blue flannel shirts. Three big bohemians were drinking raw alcohol, tingshirt with oil of cinnamon. This was said to fortify one affectionately against the cold, and they smacked their lips after each pull

...