Recently in Tulsa Category

Once in a while I come across a phrase that captures in 20 words what I've tried and failed to say in 2,000. It's an aphorism by cartoonist Hugh McLeod (@gapingvoid on Twitter), tweeted by former Louisiana Governor and dark-horse presidential candidate Buddy Roemer:

"Real success comes not from being invited into the yacht, but from being able to paddle one's own canoe." -- Hugh McLeod

I replied to Roemer: "Tulsa has an entire subculture devoted to getting on the yacht and staying there. Boat-rockers aren't welcome."

The members of this subculture would utterly disagree with McLeod's definition of success. Riding on the yacht is far more comfortable than paddling your own canoe, and all you have to do is to stay in the good graces of the yacht's owners.

Paul Allen's yacht at Venice, by Anton Porsche, on Flickr (Creative Commons attribution)

McLeod's metaphor of the yacht guest fills a gap in my description of Tulsa's power structures. I've written extensively about Tulsa's "Money Belt" -- a geographic pattern in voting that correlates strongly with wealth as measured by home value. I've written about the Cockroach Caucus, a coalition of various interests with a great deal of control over Tulsa, a group that has been working particularly hard to recapture lost power and hang on to it. But the very wealthy can't control Tulsa's city government and civic institutions on their own.

That's where the Yacht Guests come in. They staff the non-profits and the quangos, they run small service-oriented businesses that cater to the yacht owners, they're professionals who have the yacht owners as clients, they work as managers for the yacht owners' businesses. They may not be wealthy, but they're comfortable, and they have access to opportunities and perks that are out of financial reach for the folks who aren't on the yacht. Their main job is not to rock the boat, but from time to time, they're called upon to defend the yacht and its owners against perceived threats.

Imagine you're the executive director of a small non-profit. You have a big office with windows, an administrative assistant, and you oversee a staff of a dozen or so. A couple of times a year you represent your organization at a national conference in Las Vegas or New York or Orlando -- all expenses paid by your organization. The organization has season tickets for the Drillers and club seats at the BOK Center, purchased in the name of entertaining clients, donors, and business partners, but most of the time, you can use them for yourself. During the work day, you come and go as you please, taking long lunches, playing golf, and volunteering and serving on the boards of other non-profits, all of which you can justify as building goodwill for your organization. When 5 p.m. rolls around you're done for the day. You're not paying private school tuition -- your kids got into their first-choice public magnet school. You're invited to great parties and outings and get some great freebies.

Occasionally, like the undertaker in The Godfather, you will be asked to do a service -- serve as chairman of a charter change or recall committee, sign a petition, attack anyone seen as a threat to the yacht and its owners. Your job is to be a proxy when the yacht owners don't want their fingerprints on something. You may even have to be the scapegoat, but never fear -- you will be provided for; if you're sacked from one job, they'll find you another. You can even go through a training program to learn how to behave yourself politely on board the yacht.

Back in September, I was invited to the grand opening of Tulsa's Fab Lab. It's a very neat idea and has its origins at MIT. It's a place where anyone with an idea can come and use computerized design and fabrication equipment to make a prototype, rather than paying a fabricator or buying the equipment for yourself. The hope is to facilitate the efforts of Tulsa entrepreneurs and to inspire young people to pursue engineering, design, and manufacturing. It's a great place for the guy who's trying to paddle his own canoe to turn a dream into something tangible.

The grand opening was at 3 in the afternoon on a weekday. For me, that meant notifying my boss that I'd be out and using up a few hours from my accrued paid leave. When I got there, I saw many familiar faces -- each of whom could reasonably justify his or her presence at this event during the work day, drinking wine, eating hors d'oeuvres, and schmoozing, as a part of his or her job description. Nice work if you can get it, and if you get it, you're going to do all you can to hold onto it.

(I should add that only two or three of the guests that afternoon showed any interest in the fascinating machines available for use at the Fab Lab.)

It might have been that day that the friend who had invited me to the Fab Lab opening mentioned the organization needed to hire an executive director. Perhaps it was a hint that I should apply, but a glance at the list of major donors told me all I needed to know about my chances of being hired.

And if by some fluke I were hired? The thought had some appeal -- working out in the community, interacting with a variety of people every day, promoting a great new institution, being the boss, having my own office, and enjoying some of the other perks I mentioned above. But then it hit me: My livelihood, my family's daily bread, would be dependent on me maintaining the goodwill of the board of directors. The organization's well being would be dependent on me maintaining the goodwill of all current and potential donors. If I took such a job, for the sake of my family and the sake of the organization, I'd have to shut up completely about local politics.

I periodically hear from friends who are guests aboard the yacht. They complain, strictly off-the-record, about the bad decisions being made by the yacht owners, but they wouldn't dare speak publicly. I wrote about the phenomenon back in 2003, in a note to fellow TulsaNow board members about our stance on Vision 2025:

This may be a bit impolite to say, but it's there beneath the surface and ought to be dealt with openly. Some of our group work for organizations which are funded by supporters of this package. Others aren't personally dependent, but are involved with organizations that need the funds that the package supporters can offer. Others need the goodwill of city government to conduct business and make a living. Some of us have even been paid to facilitate and promote the vision process and to work for the "vote yes" campaign. Beyond the financial considerations, many members of our group move within a narrow circle of social and organizational connections -- a virtual "small town" within the city, focused on the arts and other non-profit organizations, centered around Utica Square and chronicled by Tulsa People and Danna Sue Walker. As in any small town, some opinions are acceptable and some are not, and speaking your mind risks ostracism.

Walt Kelly wrote about it back in 1955:

I can think of a few other occasions when I may have been subtly invited to come aboard the yacht. I think I've made it abundantly clear that I wouldn't be interested. One of my friends, a founder of several successful small businesses, was recently given a very explicit invitation aboard: If he would lend his name in support of the Save Our Tulsa at-large council proposal, he would never have to worry about financing for his businesses. My friend declined the offer. He prefers to paddle his own canoe.

It's possible to be tossed off the yacht even if you never realized you were aboard. Another friend found himself unexpectedly out of a engineering job, some time after he led a successful effort to stop a sales tax increase. Turns out that the company's owner had some real estate interests that stood to benefit if the tax had passed.

The guests aboard the yacht are not bad people. For many, being on the yacht gives them a chance to spend their days working for causes about which they are passionate. Surrendering their personal political opinions is a small price to pay for that opportunity. As the saying goes, don't hate the player, hate the game.

And the game should be hated. Yacht-guest culture rewards sycophancy and penalizes innovation. It drives creative people away. It hurts our economy.

I write all this not to heap scorn on those who are sailing happily aboard the yacht, but rather to alert you to the reality of this subculture, so you understand the forces at work in Tulsa politics. The apparent unity of the great and the good on a certain issue may be nothing more than the yacht guests keeping their hosts happy.

This coming Sunday, January 8, 2012, Tulsa author Gina Conroy will launch her new book, Cherry Blossom Capers, with a murder mystery party this Sunday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., followed by a book signing.

Cherry Blossom Capers is a collection of four novellas that combine romance and mystery, all set in and around Washington, D. C. Conroy's novella, Buried Deception, involves the discovery of a counterfeit artifact at Mount Vernon. The book is part of Barbour Publishing's "Romancing America" series -- each book is a collection of stories by different authors, but set in a particular locale.

Gina Conroy is married and the mother of four school-age kids. She has a website, Writer, Interrupted, devoted to balancing the pursuit of your writing dream with the demands of everyday life.

Gina was interviewed this week by Fox 23 -- you can read all about Gina, the book, and the launch party on the Fox 23 website.

The launch party is free, for grownups only, and space is limited. Reserve your spot by email to gina@ginaconroy.com. If you can't make the party, you can still stop by the signing, after 4, at 3024 S. Sheridan (just north of Sherwin-Williams) to buy a book and get it signed.

The book is also available at Steve Sundry (26th and Harvard), Barnes and Noble, Mardel, and Amazon.

A U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) money-laundering and forfeiture complaint filed Thursday, December 15, 2011, in U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York lists a Tulsa company, Ace Auto Leasing, Inc., as the recipient of over $20 million in wire transfers from Lebanese financial institutions with links to Lebanese terrorist group Hizbollah ("The Party of God").

The DEA news release describes the alleged money-laundering scheme:

DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara announced today the filing of a civil money-laundering and in rem forfeiture complaint (the "Complaint") alleging a massive, international scheme in which Lebanese financial institutions, including a bank and two exchange houses linked to Hizballah, used the U.S. financial system to launder narcotics trafficking and other criminal proceeds through West Africa and back into Lebanon. As part of the scheme, funds were wired from Lebanon to the United States to buy used cars, which were then transported to West Africa. Cash from the sale of the cars, along with proceeds of narcotics trafficking, were then funneled to Lebanon through Hizballah-controlled money laundering channels. Substantial portions of the cash were paid to Hizballah, which the U.S. Department of State designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. As alleged in the Complaint, the Hizballah-linked financial institutions involved in the scheme include the Lebanese Canadian Bank ("LCB") and two Lebanese exchange houses - the Hassan Ayash Exchange Company and Ellissa Holding - and their related subsidiaries and affiliates.

The two exchange houses are listed as defendants, and their assets, along with the assets of 30 used car dealers in the United States (including Ace Auto Leasing, Inc.), are named as defendants in rem.

A New York Times graphic from Tuesday, December 13, 2011, depicts the complex flow of money in the alleged money-laundering scheme. Funds from car sales in west Africa and profits from European drug sales wound up in Benin, where the funds were shipped to exchange houses in Lebanon. Some of those funds went to Hizbollah, some money went back to the US via the Lebanese Canadian Bank to buy more used cars, which were shipped to west Africa for sale.

According to page 49 of the DEA complaint (75-page PDF), Ace Auto Leasing Inc. received 219 wire transfers totalling $20,241,183, with the following breakdown by originator:

Pages 34-35 of the complaint explain what the Hassan Ayash Exchange is:

E. Hassan Ayash Exchange Company

46. The Hassan Ayash Exchange Company is a money exchange based in Beirut, Lebanon. The Hassan Ayash Exchange is owned and controlled by Mahmoud Hassan Ayash ("Hassan Ayash") and his son, Hassan Mahmoud Ayash. The exchange's principal office is located adjacent to the Caesar Park Hotel in Beirut, which is owned by Ayman Joumaa.

47. Wire transfers originating from the Hassan Ayash Exchange Company totaling approximately $141,522,091 were sent to United States accounts for the purpose of purchasing or shipping cars between in or about January 2007 and in or about January 2011.

48. Hassan Ayash and the Hassan Ayash Exchange Company facilitate bulk cash transfers and money laundering by, among others, Ayman Joumaa and Joumaa's narcotics trafficking and money laundering network.

49. Hassan Ayash has stated that he has family ties to Hizballah, including Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah. Hassan Ayash has further stated that his connections to important people in Lebanon help him provide services for clients of the Hassan Ayash Exchange. Hassan Ayash requires that an existing client of the Hassan Ayash Exchange Company vouch for a prospective client before the prospective client can establish an account with the exchange to transfer large amounts of money.

Here's what pp 47-48 of the complaint states about the other names mentioned above:

c. Khodor Fakih is a Hizballah member from Kafra, Lebanon, who now works in the car business in Cotonou, Benin. Khodor Fakih and Ali Fakih are believed to own and control Fakih for General Trade. From approximately January 2007 through early 2011, Khodor Fakih, Ali Fakih, and Fakih for General Trade wired approximately $2,589,325 to the U.S. relating to buying and shipping cars.

d. Fadi Hassan Hammoud and Mohammad Hassan Hammoud own and operate Fadi Star, a shipping company in Cotonou, Benin. Mohammad Hammoud is a Hizballah supporter from Kafra, Lebanon, and has done business with Khodor Fakih. From approximately January 2007 through early 2011, Fadi Star, Mohammad Hassan Hammoud, and Fadi Hassan Hammoud wired approximately $11,382,906 to the U.S. relating to buying and shipping cars.

KTUL seems to be the first local news outlet to pick up this story. They interviewed DEA Agent Derek Maltz:

He says the investigation is still ongoing and it's questionable whether or not the dealership owners knew they were helping Hezbollah.

"We do not have detailed specific information on what these car dealership owners knew we will investigate it jointly with our partners in the United States and hopefully we will shut them down," says Maltz.

Philbrook's Festival of Trees 2011 begins today, November 19, 2011, running through December 11, 2011, and Santa will be there for pictures weekend days throughout the festival.

Admission to the Festival of Trees is included in admission for the Philbrook Museum of Art.

To learn more about David Bates, Philbrook's Santa since 2005, visit santatulsa.com

In the wee hours of this morning, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake hit Oklahoma. Epicenter was just north of the town of Prague (rhymes with plague -- seriously), about 50 miles east of Oklahoma City, and about 60 miles southwest of Tulsa.

The US Geological Survey wants to know if you felt it and what you saw and heard at the time. That link will take you to a very brief questionnaire that will help the USGS collect data about the effects of the quake.

I was still up when it hit. I thought it was a thunderstorm getting started with a couple of sustained, booming but muffled rumbles, but that was it.

It's a sad day. Urban Tulsa Weekly editorial cartoonist Dave Simpson has resigned (or, reportedly, was fired) and has announced an end to his career amidst revelations that some of his recent submissions were ripoffs of the work of the late nationally syndicated cartoonist Jeff MacNelly. Indications are that the admitted ripoffs are just scratching the surface.

On October 25, the Daily Cartoonist revealed that, in the October 20-26, 2011, issue of UTW Simpson had repurposed a MacNelly cartoon from the Carter Administration, down to bits of junk and blades of grass, making minor alterations and relabeling it as some sort of indecipherable commentary on the Supreme Court's rejection of the Great Plains Airlines / Bank of Oklahoma settlement.

This Land news editor Holly Wall (former managing editor and arts columnist for UTW) brought the plagiarism accusation to Tulsa's attention this past Monday, and shortly thereafter the Daily Cartoonist had learned that the then-current issue of UTW, October 27 - November 2, 2011, contained yet another Simpson re-draw of MacNelly -- a cartoon about US involvement in Bosnia recycled to make some obscure point about Oklahoma selling water rights to Texas.

Before long, This Land had uncovered more examples of Simpson's cribbing from other cartoonists and invited its readers to look for still more.

On Wednesday, the Daily Cartoonist ran Simpson's apology to MacNelly's widow ("I accidentally stole the cartoon 25 years ago") and her reaction:

Mike Peters so accurately described David Simpson as a cartoon kleptomaniac. Tulsa must be in a black hole with different journalistic ethics because neither Simpson nor his editor/publisher seem repentant. His editor wanted me to write the retraction....I declined. Mr. Simpson's next gig should be matriculating at a state run giggling academy.

This was not the first time Simpson had been caught copying. His June 7, 2005, cartoon for the Tulsa World was a near-exact copy -- words and pictures both -- of a 1981 cartoon by Bob Englehart of the Hartford Courant. In November 2005, the World fired him, months after earlier attempts by Englehart and the Courant to seek redress.

Englehart said at the time, "Having not learned his lesson in the late 1970s when he was busted for stealing Jeff MacNelly's cartoons, he has recently stolen one of mine." This week Englehart elaborated for the Washington Post: "In the '70s, Simpson lost his syndication gig but not his newspaper job."

Cartoonist Mike Peters was a victim as well:

"I think it was sometime in the '80s, maybe earlier, I was syndicated with United [Feature] Syndicate and someone sent me a bunch of Simpson's cartoons traced from large parts of my cartoons, with just the caption changed," Peters, who is now syndicated by King Features, tells Comic Riffs. "I was mad but was not going to do anything about it until I realized that we were syndicated by the same syndicate.

"That meant that he was picking up papers using my cartoons with different captions on them [for] the same syndicate. So I sent my cartoons with the Simpson copies to my syndicate and he got fired the next day."

I don't imagine too many UTW readers will lament Simpson's departure. It's wonderful that an alt-weekly would have a cartoonist to poke fun at local politicos, but Simpson's work for the weekly rarely elicited a laugh, rarely seemed to have a coherent point, rarely seemed to be tuned in what was happening in Tulsa. It was as if 13 years at the World, drawing their favorites in iconographic style and toeing the editorial line, had drained all the creativity and edginess out of him.

You see, I am old enough to remember when Dave Simpson was funny. (That's pretty darned old.)

To confirm that my recollection of Simpson's past glories wasn't just a reflection of my immaturity when I first encountered him, I went to my shelf of comic and cartoon paperbacks and pulled out a 1980 collection of over a hundred cartoons he did for the late, lamented Tulsa Tribune.

As I paged through the collection, I found myself laughing out loud. Sure, they're topical, but Simpson was so on target most of the time, that the cartoons refreshed my recollection of the news stories that inspired them.

As you can see from the cover (above -- click to enlarge), Simpson was quite a good caricaturist. These 1970s newsmakers are exaggerated but recognizable to those of us who lived through the decade (and were paying attention).

I love this one. He used no labels, and at the time this cartoon needed none.

The man with the brilliant smile and the pompadour? Former Oklahoma Governor David Hall, on his way to federal prison on bribery and racketeering charges for steering state pension funds to a favored banker.

The collection includes national and global topics and covers locals that made national news: the prison escape and recapture of Rex Brinlee (apprehended at last by the ferocious Oklahoma chigger); Oral Roberts, his university, and his hospital; Anita Bryant. Sadly, the editors of the book left local politics out entirely, perhaps thinking it would limit the book's appeal, so it doesn't include caricatures of Mayors Jim Inhofe or Robert LaFortune or gadfly Betsy Horowitz or takes on the local controversies of the day.

The book includes several gently satirical pokes at Oral Roberts: A divine hand giving the big thumbs up as doctors give the thumbs down to his planned City of Faith hospital (the licensing board claimed it would create too many hospital beds for Tulsa); God as depicted on the Sistine Chapel, wearing a referee's shirt, blowing the whistle on an ORU basketball player (NCAA sanctions), a junior demon on the phone to HQ, asking for a transfer, complaining that Oral just got him to contribute $777, and this one, poking fun at ORU's strict physical fitness and appearance policies:

Paging through this collection and the recent work posted by This Land, it's apparent that Simpson has been recycling his own material (or material he'd recycled long ago from other cartoonists) for some time. The cartoon at the top of the page is a recaptioning of a cartoon from that 1980 book. I immediately recognized image 15:

as a recaption of this cartoon from the 1970s:

which we now know appropriated its central figure from a Gahan Wilson cartoon:

The lady in curlers and bathrobe appears a few pages away in the same collection, this time with a human toaster that is clearly the work of Mad magazine cartoonist Don Martin. (Haven't scanned this one yet.) Any nerdy teenage boy in the 1970s could have spotted that; it's amazing that Tribune editors didn't. And while he acknowledges Charles Schulz and Walt Disney in comics that spoof their style, he didn't acknowledge Don Martin or Gahan Wilson.

When the Tulsa World bought and shut down the Tulsa Tribune in 1992, Simpson sold off some of his originals at the Tulsa Press Club. Pickings were slim by the time I got there -- perhaps local pols had long since bought up his spoofs of them -- but I found one featuring Henry Bellmon and House Speaker Jim Barker for me and another featuring Michael Dukakis for the friend who kept me supplied with Howie Carr columns during the 1988 presidential campaign.

A month after the Tribune's death, Simpson debuted in the World, the paper's first cartoonist, as far as I'm aware, since Clarence Allen decades before. Over time, the constraints of the World's editorial position seemed to squeeze all the playfulness out of his work. I don't know that he ever poked fun at Mayor Susan Savage.

When he wound up at UTW shortly after I began writing for them, I thought he might loosen up, but it never happened. Only rarely did his work elicit even a chuckle.

For whatever reason, at some point, he stopped doing what made him successful in the first place and started phoning it in. To some extent there was clearly some phoning-it-in happening in his '70s heyday, but you might write that off to the pressure of five original cartoons a week. Did he stop paying attention to the news? Did he fail to set aside enough time to create something new and fresh? What was he doing instead?

It's sad to see talent left to atrophy. Tulsa could use the kind of editorial cartoonist that Dave Simpson was in the '70s.

This is old news, but new to me.

We're just back from a brief fall break jaunt to Table Rock Lake, a short trip that included brief stops in Siloam Springs and Eureka Springs on the way there, paddleboating, playing at tennis (and violin) in a giant bubble, a providential encounter with a classic car club (mostly Packards and Cadillacs from the '20s), dinner in an old-English-style restaurant on an old-English-style Main Street in Hollister, Missouri, a timeshare presentation, a visit to a Civil War battlefield, a drive down a 9-foot-wide highway, a moment with some buffalo, and over-indulgence at a classic Route 66 cafe with a neon "EAT" sign out front. More about all that in due time.

A surprise from the trip was the discovery that QuikTrip is no longer in the Springfield, Missouri, market. One QT that had been a frequent stop for us on trips to and from the Branson area was at US 65 and MO 14 south of Springfield. Like the QT near the eastern terminus of the Turner Turnpike, this one shared a building with a Wendy's. Today I was surprised to see that it had become a Casey's General Store. The Casey's convenience store chain is based in Ankeny, Iowa, with over 22,000 employees and 1600 corporate-owned stores mainly in Iowa and adjoining states.

It surprised me that a company as dynamic as QuikTrip would pull out of a market. According to news reports, QT announced in March 2011 that it was selling its five Springfield area stores to Casey's. QT had been in the market since 1994. QT is still in the Phoenix, Tucson, Tulsa, Dallas-Fort Worth, Kansas City, St. Louis, Wichita, Des Moines, Omaha, and Atlanta metro areas. There's only one outlier on the map: A store in Columbia, Mo. According to the QT website, the company has "580+ stores in 9 major metropolitan areas" with over 10,000 employees. (Perhaps they count Phoenix and Tucson as a single metro area.)

A October 19, 2010, CSPnet.com story mentioned that the stores would be sold:

QuikTrip Corp. is looking to sell its five Springfield, Mo., convenience stores, company spokesperson Mike Thornbrugh told The Springfield News-Leader. He said QuikTrip is focusing its efforts on very large metropolitan markets, and Springfield no longer fits the company's plans.

Elaborating on the theme in an April 21, 2011, story in the Evangel College student newspaper, The Lance:

According to Michael Thornbrugh, manager of public and government affairs, QT will be "expanding into larger metropolitan areas where each market can hold 80 to 120 locations. The new QT locations are about 5,700 square feet while all the locations in Springfield are 4,200 square feet."

The current economy did not play a role in QT closing some of their stores; Thornbrugh said that QT is growing during the tough economic times. Springfield was a good and profitable market for QT.

Management and staff at the store located next to Evangel have expressed sorrow and disappointment about the QT closing its doors. Many from the Evangel community have been patrons of QT, which opened its doors on March 31, 1995. Thornbrough had this to say to the Evangel community: "Thank you for your loyalty. We will miss the opportunity to be your choice convenience store."

With QT's increasing emphasis on ready-to-eat food, it would make sense to have a large and tight cluster of locations that can be serviced by a regional kitchen facility.

In contrast with QT's major metro focus, Casey's began with locations in small towns of 5,000 or less.

According to Convenience Store News's list of the top 100 chains, QuikTrip is the 19th largest convenience store chain in America, Casey's is 12th.

AND ANOTHER THING: Did anyone else think that new talk radio billboard west of Sheridan on the BA was a QuikTrip ad at first? Put three guys in QuikTrip-red polo shirts on a billboard, and it's likely to trigger an unintended association.

A couple of readers have emailed to express their concerns about the imminent introduction of chloramine into Tulsa's water supply. I am only beginning to study the issue, and it seems there may be reason to worry.

Rather than make you wait until I've thoroughly researched the matter, I've decided to present the concerns expressed by one of these readers, with her permission. I would be glad to post knowledgeable answers to her questions and other points of view on this issue.

Jeanine Kinney made the following remarks at the October 4, 2011, City Council committee meeting:

CHLORAMINE

The Health Department's, the Water Department's and The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) are claiming that Chloramine is safe for all everyday uses, drinking, bathing & cooking et cetera. Yet, the EPA itself admits that it has no Respiratory, Digestive, Skin & Epidemiological studies on the Human Health effects of Chloraminated water. The limited Cancer studies on Chloraminated water are so few that they are considered inadequate for assessment. Even though these studies show some evidence that Chloramine itself is a carcinogen, NO determination can be made from those handful of studies. The fact is there are not enough scientific data to know if Chloraminated water is safe for any uses for Human Beings.

Thousands of people all over the country and even in other countries have reported severe and life threatening respiratory, digestive and skin symptoms whenever they are exposed to Chloraminted water. These people have proven by avoidance and re-exposure that the Chloraminted water is the culprit for their symptoms. They do not have these symptoms when they are NOT exposed to Choramine and as soon as they are re-exposed their symptoms return. These symptoms fall into exactly the "gaps" in the scientific data about Chloramine's safety and the Respiratory, Digestive and Skin studies that DO NOT exist.

In addition to the immediate health effects that people are reporting from Chloraminated water is the grave concern about the emerging science in the very little known Disinfection By Products (DBP's) of Chloramine. These DBP's are NOT yet regulated, but are turning out to be many magnitudes more toxic than those of Chlorine. (THM's & HAA's)

Finally, Chloramine is much more corrosive to plumbing, lead pipes, copper pipes with lead solder and brass plumbing fixtures, which contain lead. Lead is being leached into drinking water because of the corrosive effects of Chloramine on combinations of these metals. Sometimes the level of lead leached into the drinking water is extremely high. Children from Chloraminated water districts are showing high levels of lead in their blood. And for those of us concerned about our environment, Chloramine is much more toxic to fish, frogs, amphibians and to other aquatic life. Water main breaks with water disinfected with Chlorine rarely does any damage unless the level of Chlorine is extremely high. But with Chloramine, however, even small traces from breaks and leaks, as well as from people washing their cars or watering their lawns can wipe out fish, frogs and amphibians in nearby ponds, streams and lakes. WHY RISK OUR FRAGILE ENVIRONMENT IF THERE ARE BETTER ALTERNATIVES????? And there are alternatives that are safer like:

Enhanced Membrane Pre-Filtration OR

Combinations of Alternative Disinfectants & Disinfection Techniques OR

Mixing well water with surface water to dilute the DBP's (Disinfection By Products) OR

Air Stripping of the THM's (Trihalomethane's), to name a few!

In closing today, I really want to believe in my heart that each of you 9 City Councilors took your position on the City Council in order to help, protect and look out for the best interest of the people of Tulsa. I plead with you to help protect the health of Tulsa's water consumer's. Please oppose the use of Chloramine as it has not been studied for the very health effects that people all over the country and all over the world are reporting.

A week later, on October 11, 2011, Kinney was at another City Council committee meeting to attempt to get answers to her questions about chloramine:

There was a Tulsa City Council meeting, Tuesday, October 11, where discussion with the Deputy Director for the Public Works Department, Clayton Edwards, & City of Tulsa Ammonia (Chloramine) conversion project leader, Joan Arthur took place. There was not one member of the TUMA (Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority) Board present for discussion. The meeting was set regarding the postponing the implementation of using Chloramines in the Tulsa public water system. The following concerns were attempted at being discussed, however, the meeting was terminated after a couple were asked and still yet unanswered.

Numerous email's & phone calls have been received regarding input and interest in Tulsa's conversion to Chloramine. Chloramine is to be used as a secondary disinfectant for Tulsa water utility consumers and those in surrounding areas, who do and will, purchase water from the City of Tulsa.

You state that Tulsa thoroughly researched the potential impact of the Stage 2 D/DBP rules and the alternatives available to meet the new regulations, for the last ten years. I would like to know exactly what treatment processes were evaluated and why these processes's were ruled out?

You state that the byproducts in some parts of the city, are projected to exceed or be very close to Stage 2 DBP standards. What data are these projections based on? Which parts of Tulsa are "problem" areas and/or areas where the levels of byproducts are projected to exceed standard levels? By how much are these areas expected to exceed the standards?

You state that a small amount of ammonia will be added to the water. Yet, no one, not even the EPA, knows if even a small amount of ammonia is safe since there is NO data regarding how much ammonia is safe in drinking water.

You state Chloramine is less reactive in the distribution system. Yet chloramine, forms many disinfection by products that are much more toxic than the currently regulated, THMs and HAAs. Some examples include iodo acetic acid, NDMA'S and nitrogen containing DBPs, according to the journal AWWA, February 2001. (NDMA is a probable carcinogen)

Using chloramine as a residual does not "adequately" protect people from re-contamination due to water line breaks, road work, construction with water lines and home plumbing leaks. It is also a greater hazard to the environment. Water main breaches and run off into storm sewers, lakes or ponds, kills fish, frogs and other aquatic life.

Chloramine is much more toxic to aquatic life than an equal dose of Chlorine. The edition of even small amounts of Chloramine to aquariums or fish ponds quickly results in death for fish as well as frogs, amphibians and other organisms. This has never happened with Chlorine unless unusually high concentrations of Chlorine were present in the tap water.
You state that trihalomethanes are linked to bladder cancer. The data shows that it takes 70 years of chronic exposure to trihalomethanes, to see a 1.7% increase in the incidence of bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is the easiest type of cancer to treat and has the lowest mortality rate.

You state that the maximum residual disinfectant level (MRDL) of 4 mg/ L is approved by the EPA. However, the EPA based this MRDL on studies that are incomplete. The EPA simply substituted data for chlorine, to fill in the "gaps" in the studies on chloramine, since the studies on chloramine were never completed. The EPA has ASSUMED that chlorine and chloramine have similar health effects, but studies from OSHA and NIOSH, prove otherwise.

Chloramine is a much more potent respiratory and dermal irritant than chlorine. It has different chemical properties and reactivity than chlorine.

CHLORINE IS NOT LIKE CHLORAMINE.

You state that you will be monitoring the lead levels in the distribution system for one year. Will you test water samples in homes, apartments, office buildings, schools and other building's in and around Tulsa? And if so how many residences & building's will be tested? How frequently will they be tested & in what manner will they be tested? (When samples are collected, will you take a first draw? Or will your flush/run the water to clear out the pipes? Flushing can miss the lead that may be present in the water, due to chloramine's corrosive effects on plumbing that contains combinations of copper, lead and brass).

You state that chloraminated water is safe for all everyday uses. However, there are NO skin, respiratory or digestive studies nor is there any epidemiological data to prove that statement. It is in fact your opinion. You can verify that these studies DO NOT EXIST, by looking chloramine up in the IRIS, published by the EPA. The EPA DID NOT study the dermal, respiratory, ocular, and digestive effects of chlorimanated water. The limited cancer studies on chloraminated water are considered inadequate for assessment. There is some evidence that chloramine itself is a carcinogen but, we do not know for sure if it causes cancer, what type and at what levels.

The truth is, that there is not enough data to know if chloraminated water is safe for ANY uses, for human beings. Until those studies are done, NO ONE can say that chloraminated water is safe. No studies = WE DO NOT KNOW!

Finally,

You state that currently 30% of all municipal water treatment systems rely on chloramine disinfection and that chloramine has been used for over 90 years. Still, ONLY studies will prove if chloramine is harmful to human health!

You state that neighboring cities like Oklahoma City, Norman, Sand Springs, Lawton, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, and St. Louis have converted their water disinfection process over to Chloramine. That DOES NOT PROVE THAT CHLORAMINE IS SAFE!

There are numerous cases in Pennsylvania, California, Washington DC, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Dallas, Vermont, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, Arizona, Florida, Oregon, Colorado, in which citizens are reporting serious health effects as a direct result of using Chloraminated water for drinking, bathing, cooking and other everyday uses of their tap water.

Where is the data supporting the finding that the reported health effects from Chloramine are "isolated?" How do you know the similar symptoms have not occurred in any of the cities using Chloramine that Tulsa has contacted? Did you contact hospitals and clinics, to ask if there had been increased reports of skin, respiratory or digestive symptoms, since the addition of chloramine to their water? How many cities and how many consumer's and residents were contacted? Until you have that information, you DO NOT KNOW what effects Chloramine is having on those residents.

Please do not put Chloramine in our water at the expense of the health of Tulsan's. We are already going to be paying more for an unsafe disinfectant when we should be paying more for a safe alternative!

MORE:

The EPA collection of frequently asked questions about chloramine.

The website of Citizens Concerned About Chloramine (CCAC)

Wikipedia article on chloramine

Last week the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group published a detailed history of George Kaiser's fortune, a fortune built with care to avoid paying taxes, according to the story's author, Bill Allison.

Allison co-authored The Cheating of America, a 2001 book on "wealthy individuals and powerful corporations avoid taxes." The article quotes figures from that book on Kaiser's success at avoiding federal taxes:

In 1997, the Internal Revenue Service sent Kaiser and his companies tax bills for more than $72 million in back taxes, interest and penalties, covering individual and corporate returns filed from 1986 to 1992. Kaiser filed returns showing his personal income averaging negative $860,000 between 1986 and 1991; his holding company, GBK Corp., and its subsidiaries reported an aggregate loss from 1989 to 1992 of $507,000--some years it made money and paid taxes, others it claimed losses and paid none.

The article tells the story of Kaiser's acquisition of Bank of Oklahoma, which started with a bad acquisition by BOK, followed by a federal bailout:

Bank of Oklahoma had largely avoided making rash loans during the state's oil boom economy that led so many other savings institutions--including savings and loans, 162 of which shut down during the crisis--from going broke. But in 1984, Bank of Oklahoma bought Fidelity Bank N.A., an Oklahoma City-based bank whose books were loaded with bad loans. Kaiser, who was a shareholder and served on Bank of Oklahoma's board of directors at the time, favored the deal, which didn't work out so well. Fidelity's bad loans were a drag on Bank of Oklahoma, which, after declaring a quarterly loss of $51 million in 1986, turned to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a bailout. The FDIC deemed it essential to the state's economy, and rather than shut it down bailed it out the bank for $130 million. Five years later, after returning the bank to profitability, the FDIC sold it to Kaiser--for $61 million.

The deal was a profitable one--by 1998, his shares in the company were worth some $917 million; on April 26, 2011, when the bank issued its last proxy statement, Kaiser's shares were worth more than $2.1 billion, while his foundation held another $251 million of its stock.

According to Allison, the money to buy BOK came as a loan from Kaiser's GBK Corp., which the IRS called a dividend. The IRS's tax bill of more than $48,000,000 was settled for less than $12,000.

Allison links to a 2007 Forbes article in which Kaiser supports Warren Buffett's call for higher marginal income tax rates. But surely higher marginal rates only provide incentive for the sort of tax avoidance that Allison has documented in this article.

I have to take issue with the headline on Allison's article: "Barack Obama's other billionaire: How George Kaiser turned Oklahoma into his personal tax haven." Allison's focus is on Kaiser's avoidance of federal taxes and doesn't mention Oklahoma taxes. However, as long as we're on that subject:

OCPA's AccountAbilityOK online database of Oklahoma spending, revenues, payrolls, pensions, and tax credits shows that George Kaiser claimed over $29.5 million in state income tax credits for fiscal years ending 2009 and 2010, nearly all of it for venture capital investments. BOK Financial Corp and Subsidiaries claimed $10.5 million in Oklahoma tax credits for FY 2010; the bulk of it, $8.3 million, was the Space Transportation Vehicle Provider tax credit.

The American Planning Association has named Tulsa's historic Swan Lake neighborhood one of ten Great Neighborhoods for 2011, part of the APA's annual recognition of "Great Places In America." (Hat tip to KRMG News for the story.)

From the APA's citation:

What dominates this attractive and popular neighborhood are the well-maintained sturdy bungalows built along tree-lined streets between 1920 and 1930. Apartment buildings, which meshed with the development's middle-class appeal, appeared on outlying streets as early as 1918. One innovative apartment complex built in 1929 featured a courtyard at its center to provide outdoor recreation space for its tenants. Duplexes and garage apartments -- many from Swan Lake's earliest days -- continue to attract singles, young couples, and empty-nesters.

Once a spring-fed watering hole, Swan Lake eventually became a community gathering place and the site of a 1910 amusement park. Today the lake and surrounding park, a popular bird watching spot, are the focus of neighborhood attention as residents raise funds to restore a 1920s stone fountain.

Finding solutions to commercial encroachment is another focus of residents. The neighborhood is within easy walking distance of the very popular Cherry Street retail and restaurant corridor, several medical facilities, and other businesses. The Swan Lake Neighborhood Association, which initiated a successful effort to add a historic preservation zoning overlay, supports efforts to keep commercial development on the perimeter of the neighborhood from expanding into the residential district.

Another positive feature noted by APA is the mix of housing: More expensive, larger single family homes around the lake and around the southern end of the neighborhood, a mix including smaller bungalows and brick apartment buildings through the northern half of the neighborhood. This is a neighborhood where you could find housing suitable for any stage of your life. The couple that spends $100 for dinner and drinks on Cherry Street lives in the neighborhood; so does their waiter and their bartender and the barista who makes the lovely designs on their after-dinner lattes.

Historic preservation has helped to preserve that diversity of housing stock. You can see what happens without that protection by heading north of Cherry Street -- affordable bungalows and brick apartment buildings replaced by $300,000-plus townhomes (which are now selling at a deep discount from their peak prices). Speculation replaced affordability for which there was a demand with luxury which apparently lacks strong demand at the moment.

Note the balance in the APA's description -- walking distance of popular shopping districts is a good thing, but protection of the residential area against commercial encroachment is important, too, especially since new commercial development is likely to be larger in scale, be less attractive, require more off-street parking, and use lower quality building materials and techniques than the commercial development from the 1920s and 1930s along Cherry Street.

The APA specifically salutes legislative efforts to prevent that encroachment:

• Organized in 1983, Swan Lake Neighborhood Association launched a successful campaign (1992) to list neighborhood in the National Register of Historic Places (1998)
• City approves neighborhood petition for Historic Preservation overlay zoning for Swan Lake and adopts design guidelines (1994)
• Residents support legislative efforts (2011) to close loophole permitting commercial development within boundaries of Historic Preservation Zoning districts
• City council places a moratorium, to expire December 1, 2011, on use of planned unit developments to amend zoning in historic districts
• As part of implementing its recently adopted comprehensive plan, PLANiTulsa, City allocates $300,000 to develop three small-area plans, including one that incorporates those parts of Swan Lake adjacent to commercial and medical corridor

I discussed the HP / PUD loophole at length back in May, when the City Council voted for the temporary change to the zoning code to close that loophole. The sunset clause was a vain attempt to placate the build-anything-anywhere lobby and keep them on the sidelines during the election. As I predicted, the Council's pusillanimity on this issue did not inoculate them from opposition and defeat, despite their hopes to the contrary. The new council, elected with chamber and developer money, is unlikely to remove the sunset clause or even to extend the moratorium.

It's probably too much to hope, but before the new council is seated the current council could, without going back to the TMAPC, vote to remove the sunset clause from the ordinance. (The TMAPC made a recommendation on the proposed ordinance back in May; they would not need to be consulted again.) It would be a positive legacy for the outgoing councilors -- protecting the integrity of a nationally recognized neighborhood, a jewel in Tulsa's crown, keeping speculators from killing the Swan that laid the golden egg.

If you want to know what the build-anything-anywhere lobby will do, given the chance, just look at Bumgarner's Folly, the big vacant lot south of 14th Street between Troost and Utica Avenues. Already, developers have eroded HP-zoned neighborhoods along Utica by razing protected homes for parking as part of PUDs for large office buildings.

Last week, at the Forest Orchard neighborhood association candidate forum, I asked Ken Brune, the Democratic nominee for the District 4 council seat, "Do you think the HP boundaries ought to be respected, or are they negotiable for the right project?" Brune's response: "I think it depends upon the project.... I think that those decisions have to be made on a case by case basis as to whether you make any changes with regard to the rules. The rules are there, the rules need to be followed, unless of course a certain project that there be an exception.... " His opponent, Republican nominee Blake Ewing, has made several clear written statements on the moratorium and on historic preservation in general:

Does he support the moratorium on PUD's in HP Districts?
Yes.

Will he vote to extend it if no small area plans are in place to protect HP District boundaries when it is set to expire in December?
Yes, though I really want to see us get to work on those small area plans.

In today's Wall Street Journal's William McGurn explores Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser's motivations in his involvement in Solyndra. Some excerpts:

The George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa, Okla., was the company's largest shareholder. The family foundation has attracted attention because it is set up as a "supporting organization" for the Tulsa Community Foundation. Supporting organizations provide donors with generous tax deductions while they are not required to give away the 5% of assets that, say, a private foundation must....

No doubt Mr. Kaiser's charitable giving has done some wonderful things for Tulsa. Unfortunately, when it came to a politically fashionable cause, Mr. Kaiser's concern for the taxpayer simply vanished. In its place was a much less appealing ethos, which he alluded to in the same Rotary speech where he spoke about "guilt."...

...As Mr. Kaiser appreciates, an oil man who denounces fossil fuels will be lionized even as he continues to make millions off them, in the same way that a billionaire such as Warren Buffet earns praise for calling for higher taxes. But if you are a businessman such as David and Charles Koch, and you use your wealth to try to preserve the economic freedom you believe will help others move up the ladder, you will soon find yourself branded as an enemy of the people.

"We're all familiar with the greedy businessman who pushes taxpayer subsidies to enrich himself," says Scott Walter, a former domestic policy adviser in the Bush administration who now writes for PhilanthropyDaily.com. "Solyndra tells us we might want to start paying more attention to the businessman who's already rich--but seeks to salve a guilty conscience by putting taxpayers on the hook for his pet causes."

(If you're not a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, you can read McGurn's entire piece for free by entering the site via a Google search for the title, "Solyndra and a Billionaire's Guilt Trip.")

McGurn's last paragraph quotes Scott Walter's article on Philanthropy Daily, "The Other Solyndra Scandal," which is worth your attention. Walter goes deeper into the special nature of GKFF and the tax advantages of this arrangement vs. direct charitable giving or setting up a traditional foundation. Effectively, you can set aside money for charitable purposes and take the tax deduction now, but wait until much later to decide how to spend it, maintaining control over the money in the meantime. (Idle thought: If you needed the money at some future time, could you take it out? What would be the tax consequences? Penalties, or just taxable at the time you withdrew it?)

A couple of excerpts from Walker:

Kaiser explains that "there's never been more money shoved out of the government's door in world history and probably never will be again than in the last few months and the next 18 months, and our selfish, parochial goal is to get as much of it for Tulsa and Oklahoma as we possibly can."

Is this zealous grab for other people's money greed? The dollars at issue weren't voluntarily donated by generous fellow citizens, nor were they knowingly risked by venture capitalists gambling with their own money. No, the dollars Mr. Kaiser sought to get his "selfish" hands on were tax dollars that his fellow citizens were compelled to provide, supposedly for the common good....

Why isn't it greedy and improper when a billionaire with enormous charitable resources - $4 billion in the George Kaiser Family Foundation as of 2009 - manipulates tax dollars into a dubious hobbyhorse project of his? Especially when that hobbyhorse is a for-profit company in which the billionaire's foundation is the largest stockholder? And when the billionaire's foundation ends up, at bankruptcy time, ahead of the taxpayers in the line to recoup something from the cratered company's assets, even though federal law appears to make it illegal to put private investors ahead of taxpayers in such circumstances?

I am still trying to get my mind around the motivations and actions surrounding George Kaiser, GKFF, and TCF. Solyndra is just the latest episode in a long-running drama that includes -- on the negative side of the ledger -- Great Plains Airlines (and the taxpayers' ultimate payback of money we didn't owe to Kaiser's Bank of Oklahoma), the downtown baseball stadium (and the heavy-handed approach to its surrounding development), the mediocre candidates Kaiser has backed for public office in Tulsa, the county river tax, and -- on the positive side -- RiverParks trails improvements, supplemental funds for beautification for new public construction, financial support for the comprehensive plan process and the city government efficiency study, purchase and preservation of the Blair Mansion and grounds, support for the Tulsa Fab Lab, and financial support for countless worthy projects and programs.

It's a complex picture. I don't buy the idea that Kaiser is all about building his own wealth. I don't buy his explanation of his success as "dumb luck," and I don't think he does either. Some describe Kaiser as very hands-off when it comes to spending his money, and that he lets himself be driven by what the community wants, but that doesn't entirely square with the facts either. (And who has the standing to define what the community wants for him?) Even if his motivation is purely altruistic, his vision of the good may be entirely at odds with that of his intended beneficiaries. Potentially, he could be a kind of cultural imperialist, with Oklahoma as his mission field.

Leverage and control are two recurring themes. It's a commonplace in Tulsa that money from GKFF comes not with strings attached, but with chains.

Because of his connection to Solyndra, who George Kaiser is and what he wants is a matter of curiosity for the rest of the world. Because of his economic power and his focus on Tulsa, who George Kaiser is and what he wants is a matter of critical concern for Tulsans.

Mainstream media sources like Bloomberg News and the Washington Post have been digging deeper into the bankruptcy of federally-subsidized Solyndra, looking particularly at George Kaiser, whose venture capital companies were involved in Solyndra's financing, and his George Kaiser Family Foundation, which held a large stake in the failed company. A few brief links:

Bloomberg News: Obama-Backing Billionaire's Charity Sought Solyndra in Tulsa

Washington Post: Investment in failed solar firm Solyndra raises questions about nonprofit's purpose

Philanthropy Daily: The Other Solyndra Scandal

New York Times, April 25, 2005: A Tax Benefit for Big Donors Often Bypasses Idea of Charity

Michelle Malkin: Solyndra Watch

KGO: Roseanne says guilty bankers should be beheaded: I imagine generous fundraising for President Obama's re-election would qualify a banker for a pardon from this modern-day Madame Defarge.

Consider this a placeholder. Will come back and add excerpts and my own thoughts later. In the meantime, read these stories for yourself.

As on each previous anniversary of the September 11, 2001, jihadi attacks on America, Trinity Episcopal Church, 5th and Cincinnati, will mark the day with a choral requiem, beginning at 8:46 a.m., the time when the north tower of the World Trade Center was hit. This year, the Trinity Choir will perform Gabriel Faure's Requiem as part of the service of Holy Communion. (On September 11, 2002, Trinity was one of hundreds of venues worldwide to take part in the "Rolling Requiem," performing Mozart's Requiem in each time zone at 8:46 a.m.)

Floral Haven, 6500 S. 129th East Ave., Broken Arrow, offers a quieter remembrance:

Floral Haven will pay tribute to those who died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 with a special remembrance on September 11, 2011. This solemn memorial will take place on the grounds of the funeral home between the main building and 129th East Avenue

This memorial remembrance will include:

• A Bronze Memorial, honoring those who died, which will later be permanently placed in our Family Center.
• Three panels, which will include:
1. The names of the people killed in the World Trade Center North and South Towers, the Pentagon and on American and United Flights 11, 175, 77 and 93.
2. A list of the First Responders who died in this tragedy.
3. The timing of the four major events of September 11th.
4. A list of the other nations who lost citizens in this attack
• Eight large flags, each representing one of the distinct groups of people killed
• A display of 2976 smaller American Flags, each bearing the name of a victim killed on September 11th.
• A guest book to sign in remembrance
• This memorial will be on display on September 11, 2011 for the entire day.

This will be a solemn and silent remembrance. There will be no formal program or speakers. Just as the Oklahoma City National Memorial pays a beautiful and silent tribute to those killed in the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, so will this one day remembrance pay a quiet and solemn tribute to those killed on September 11, 2001. Those attending will be invited to read the panels, walk among the flags and reflect on this attack and the lives that were so senselessly ended.

It is only right and proper that on the 10th Anniversary that we take a moment of time and reflect, not only on those who were lost, but also one how all of our lives were forever changed by this event.

UPDATE: At about 6:30 pm Tuesday evening, Sturdivant finally climbed aboard the fire department bucket and was lowered to safety and taken to Hillcrest hospital. Sturdivant had spent most of the afternoon talking to retired police negotiator Tyrone Lynn, who was in the bucket. Over and over again, Sturdivant would set a foot or two on the bucket platform but would then retreat to the tower.

MORE: Tyrone Lynn recounts negotiating with Sturdivant.

The man who climbed the broadcast tower atop the Clear Channel broadcast studios (the former Oertle's department store and Burlington Coat Factory) at 26th and Memorial has been identified as William Sturdivant II.

According to records on OSCN.net, and at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections website, a William Boyd Sturdivant II, born June 26, 1986, has had several run-ins with the law, a traffic arrest in May 2004, marijuana possession with intent to distribute in December 2005, burglary in January 2006, and unlawful possession of Schedule IV controlled substance in March 2007. It appears he has spent the last four years in prison, the result of repeat offenses and failure to comply with terms of deferred and suspended sentences. He was released on April 6, 2011.

What follows is a timeline of the five different cases on OSCN. The photos are from the Oklahoma DOC offender lookup website. (Click to enlarge to full size.)

2004/05/27: TR-2004-11536 and TR-04-11537: Stopped at 24th and Braden and cited for left of center in marked zone and driving with an expired license. Citation lists employer as "ANIMAL CLINIC"

2004/09/01: Failed to appear on May 27 citation. Attempt to suspend license failed, because he didn't have a valid license number. Warrant issued for his arrest.

2005/03/22: Sturdivant is arrested, pleads guilty, fined $10 plus court costs, and released.

2005/05/19: Bench warrant issued for failure to pay.

2005/07/14: Arrested and in court, found guilty of wilful failure to pay, sentenced to 15-day inmate work release program, with option to pay total cash bond and be released.

2005/07/27: Jail time completed as sentenced, release issued for 2005/07/28.

2005/10/13: Doesn't show for scheduled hearing on remaining court costs.

2005/12/09: CF-2005-5555: Arrested for unlawful possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

2006/01/16: Pleads guilty to unlawful possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Sentence deferred for two years, supervised by Division of Probation and Parole, 100 hours of community service within 180 days.

2006/01/18: Payment plan agreement

2006/01/19: CF-2006-1121: Committed 2nd degree burglary

2006/03/09: Charged with burglary

2006/05/10: Application to accelerate judgment on earlier deferred sentence; bench warrant issued.

2006/06/08: Pleads guilty to burglary. Sentenced to four years suspended, concurrent with the sentence for marijuana possession, plus 80 hours community service.

2006/06/26: Found guilty of violating terms of deferred sentence for marijuana possession, sentenced to four years suspended, supervised by Probation and Parole.

2006/06/28: Revised payment plan agreement for accumulated fines.

2007/01/04: Application to revoke suspended sentence. No hours of community service were completed. Bench warrant issued.

2007/03/21: CF-2007-1617: Unlawful possession of controlled drug schedule IV

2007/03/27: In custody.

2007/05/02: Suspended marijuana possession sentence revoked, sentenced to four years in DOC custody, consecutive to CF-2007-1617 (possession of controlled drug schedule IV) and concurrent with CF-06-1121 (burglary).

2007/05/24: Reception by Department of Corrections

2009/03/09: DOC photo

2010/06/29: DOC photo

2011/04/06: Released from DOC custody

2011/04/12: DOC notice to defendant of costs/fines due, release date 2011/04/06

2011/04/26: Payment of $50 due on June 27, and a payment on 27th of each month until case paid in full. Review scheduled for 2011/11/28.

2011/06/27: $50 payment made (listed on the docket summary for CF-2005-5555).

Today (Sunday, July 17, 2011) at 2 p.m. is the final performance of Encore! Theatre Company's production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, part of the SummerStage Festival at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. Encore! is a 501(c)(3) non-profit

The show stars Encore! artistic director Josh Barker as Willy Wonka, Blake Simpson as Charlie Bucket, Reed Probst as Mike Teevee, Victoria Hannath as Veruca Salt, Abby Casciaro as Violet Beauregarde, Anthony Conroy as Augustus Gloop, and Mark Casciaro as Grandpa Joe. The director is Mindy Barker, who also plays Mrs. Beauregarde. The cast of 39 includes a dozen Oompa-Loompas.

Following the performance, there's a special treat: "Children who attend the show will receive a FREE chocolate bar, five of which will hide a GOLDEN TICKET to win fun prizes! (While supplies last.)"

This production has been a major part of our family's summer, with our older two kids rehearsing almost every night for their first Encore! production and my wife helping to sew Oompa-Loompa costumes.

Despite (or perhaps because of) all the hard work involved in preparing for this production, our kids have enjoyed the experience, and it's been especially exciting for them to have the opportunity to perform at the PAC. The Barkers put a huge amount of effort, creativity, and skill into the sets, costumes, sound effects, and choreography.

The show begins at 2 p.m. at the John H. Williams Theater downstairs at the PAC. (Use the 2nd Street entrance, just west of Cincinnati. Tickets are $16 for adults $16, $13 for seniors $13, $11 for children under 12. No convenience charge if you buy the tickets at the box office, which opens at noon.

The organization TulsaNow will celebrate its 10th anniversary tonight, July 15, 2011, with a reception at Harwelden, 2210 S. Main. Refreshments and hors d'oeuvres from Lambrusco'z at 5:30, presentation begins at 6. The organization will unveil plans for the future and will hand out a few awards to the winners of a vote by members of the TulsaNow email newsletter list.

I've been involved with the group since before it had a name, although travel and other busy-ness has had me less involved in the last couple of years.

TulsaNow was organized in 2001 following the defeat of the "It's Tulsa's Time" sales tax increase in November 2000. Back in a 2007 UTW column, I detailed the history of the TulsaNow organization to that point:

TulsaNow has its origins in early 2001, with a gathering of friends who were discouraged about the defeat of another flawed civic improvements sales tax package. ("It's Tulsa's Time," November, 2000.) The four founding members were all active in community organizations, but none of them were in positions of power and influence. They began working their networks to find other Tulsans from all parts of the community who shared their sense of urgency to get Tulsa moving again.

I was invited to participate a few months later and have been involved ever since, for the last few years as a board member. (So there's that disclosure out of the way.)

TulsaNow attracted many people who were frustrated that Tulsa's elected officials and Chamber of Commerce leaders suffered from a cargo-cult-like fixation on building a new arena as the solution to all our problems, while places like Kansas City and Salt Lake City were using their long-term community visioning efforts to address neighborhood integrity, historic preservation, land-use policies, suburban sprawl, and revitalization of the urban core--all issues that matter to a city's livability and long-term vitality.

Members of the group were involved in the process that led up to the Vision 2025 vote, helping to facilitate the discussions and tabulate all the responses at Mayor Bill LaFortune's July 2002 vision summit and participating in various task forces. (The complete vision summit report--with the presentations and all of the responses from the participants--is still online at http://www.tulsanow.org/summit/index.htm.)

TulsaNow's October 2002 "Battle of the Plans" brought out big crowds to hear from enthusiastic Tulsans present their dreams for the city.

Although members differed as to whether the final package was worthy of our support, TulsaNow's involvement did at least encourage the inclusion of funds for downtown residential development, a trail of historical markers (the Centennial Walk), neighborhood enhancements, and river improvements. And TulsaNow hosted what was perhaps the most substantive debate during the sales tax campaign.

While many elected officials considered the passage of Vision 2025 to be the end of the discussion about Tulsa's future, TulsaNow's leaders saw much work to be done in shaping a genuine and comprehensive vision for the city, an attitude reflected in its mission statement:

"TulsaNow's mission is to help Tulsa become the most vibrant, diverse, sustainable and prosperous city of our size. We achieve this by focusing on the development of Tulsa's distinctive identity and economic growth around a dynamic, urban core, complemented by a constellation of livable, thriving communities."

My column went on to mention several of TulsaNow's public discussions, such as the 2005 "Passing the Popsicle Test" forum on form-based codes as an alternative to traditional use-segregated zoning and another forum on zoning and land use in September 2006. TulsaNow sponsored city candidate forums in 2002, 2004, and 2006, and a public debate on the 2007 county river tax proposal. In 2008, TulsaNow stole a march on the city's official, paid downtown promoters by launching the DowntownLive website, a catalog of downtown merchants and restaurants.

I think it's fair to say that TulsaNow, particularly through the public events the group has sponsored, helped stimulate public discussion about land use and planning, laying the groundwork for the successful PLANiTULSA process. PLANiTULSA's focus on public engagement wouldn't have worked without a large segment of the public that understands the importance of land use and planning to our city's ongoing quality of life and our city government's ability to pay its bills.

While the adoption of a new comprehensive plan represents a milestone toward the goals that drew many of us to TulsaNow, we still need the principles in the comp plan implemented in the zoning code, and we need a planning director, planning commission, and elected officials willing to be guided by our new plan. Perhaps TulsaNow still has a role to play in bringing these ideas to fruition.

An early Happy Independence Day to one and all!

There are fireworks somewhere around Tulsa every night this weekend, and Tasha has the definitive list of Tulsa's 4th of July 2011 fireworks celebrations, with links to parking and traffic information for the bigger displays.

There's more to the weekend than just fireworks, and Tasha's got that list, too. One interesting Saturday item: Gilcrease Museum is screening 1776, the movie version of the musical about the writing of the Declaration of Independence. Full of memorable lyrics and melodies, it's one of our favorite musicals. ("Someone oughta open up a window!")

I hope all of us will take the time this weekend to remember the reason for the season. My wife pointed me to a blog entry about Independence Day as recorded in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie:

Consider this passage from the story in which a local politician is chosen to read the entire Declaration of Independence to the crowd:

Laura and Carrie knew the Declaration by heart, of course, but it gave them a solemn, glorious feeling to hear the words. They took hold of hands and stood listening in the solemnly listening crowd. The Stars and Stripes were fluttering bright against the thin, clear blue overhead, and their minds were saying the words before their ears heard them.

As I read this passage to my family, I realized that these pioneers took it for granted that the Declaration of Independence would be read in its entirety every July 4th. More than that, they assumed that everyone in the crowd had it memorized and would be silently reciting the words along with the reader. Having this annual celebration and a shared cultural document makes this a crowd of ardent patriots, and binds them together in a unified community....

For Laura Ingalls Wilder, the combined reading of the Declaration of Independence and the singing of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" sparked new thoughts about freedom as she contemplated words which were old and familiar.

The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America's king. She thought: Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good. Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. 'Our father's God, author of liberty--'The laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.

Blogger Jennifer Courtney points out that this sort of insight is the product of the traditional emphasis on memorization in the early years of school, the grammar stage of the classical trivium:

This transition for Laura is a perfect illustration of a child moving from the grammar stage (memorizing and reciting the songs and the Declaration) to the logic stage. Her solid foundation in American history gave her a firm basis for later thinking big thoughts about the idea of freedom. She reasons out the source of freedom and rightly draws conclusions about the both the liberties and the restrictions of handling freedom properly.

Rote memorization has been trashed by progressive educators for a century or so, but learning texts like these by heart helped children internalize the ideals contained within and made them resistant to those who would undermine our founding principles. (Maybe that's why progressive educators trash memorization.)

So amidst the heat of the day and the celebrations, remember our founders, and their bold resolve to make our nation free.

And keep safe. Stay away from the blue-green algae.

Two trios, once classical, one Celtic, will be performing this Thursday and Friday evening, respectively, June 23 and 24, 2011, at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center in the Charles E. Norman Theater, as part of the SummerStage Festival.

Trio Spiritoso -- Carol Hilborn on flute, Amy Pickard on oboe, and Gordon Robson on cello -- will perform Thursday (tonight), June 23, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. General admission tickets are $10.

Trio Spiritoso returns to the SummerStage Festival to perform a variety of delightful chamber music works for trios by Beethoven, Handel, Vivaldi and contemporary composer Tomas Svoboda.

Comprising flute, oboe and cello, Trio Spiritoso provides a unique blend of instrumental timbres that enables listeners of all experience levels to enjoy the intertwining of sounds and musical ideas. Audiences can appreciate both the simplicity of a melody over harmony and bass line, as well as follow the more complex lines of contrapuntal writing.

This performance promises beautiful music in an intimate setting that will stimulate your senses, challenge your intellect and refresh your soul.

Vintage Wildflowers, back from their appearance at the Kennedy Center, will perform tomorrow (Friday) night, June 23, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. General admission tickets are $10, reserved table seating is available for $12.

Since January 2009, Tulsa-based Vintage Wildflowers has developed an enthusiastic legion of fans with their vibrant blend of three-part harmonies, backed by Celtic harp, Irish flute and fiddle. Mix in bits of mandolin, whistle, guitar, banjo, and bodhran and you have an idea of what it's like to spend an evening with these women.

Acclaimed for their instrumental prowess, onstage charm and soulful vocals, 2011 marks the trio's national debut in a performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC as well as the release of their second album "Lovely Madness".

(MORE: Here's a preview story about Vintage Wildflowers in the Washington Examiner.)

There's much more to come for this year's SummerStage Festival: Rockin' Acoustic Circus on July 29, Becky Hobbs' musical "Nanyehi: Beloved Woman of the Cherokee" on July 10, and Encore! Theatre Arts presentation of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" July 15-17.

If you buy tickets at the PAC box office for three or more performances, you can get a SummerStage Festival Pass, with a discount on those events and any others in the series.

And if you'd like to hear more from four of the six musicians who comprise Trio Spiritoso and Vintage Wildflowers, you'll find them most Sunday mornings at 10:45 playing or singing as part of the worship team at Christ Presbyterian Church, 2706 E. 51st St, Tulsa (between Lewis and Harvard). Admission is free; tithes and offerings gratefully accepted.

Greetings from the self-proclaimed "Cutest Café in Georgetown" (Snap, 1062 Thomas Jefferson St, open 11 to 11 most nights, til 10 on Sundays, crepes, bubble tea, free wifi), where I'm grabbing a quick bite of dinner to complete a wonderful weekend in the Washington area.

Planning to meet up with friends when visiting a city is always a tricky business. Just because I'm free doesn't mean they will be. And planning several different meetings is even trickier -- you can't firm up plans with Friend B until things are set with Friend A

This weekend everything fell into place --

• a spur-of-the-moment visit with a former colleague and his family in Annapolis, en route from Delaware to DC;
• breakfast, lunch, and a full Saturday morning of talking urban planning and touring new developments and redevelopments (The Kentlands, Bethesda Row, downtown Silver Spring) with a college classmate who works for Montgomery County's planning agency;
• a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian and a serendipitous opportunity to hear Bartlesville native singer/songwriter Becky Hobbs;
• breakfast and traditional Anglican worship with a blogpal at the historic Falls Church;
• lunch with a fraternity brother and his kids at a conveyor-belt sushi place in Tyson's Corner (warning: website is flash app with automatic music), followed by dessert at a fancy coffee and sweets shop;
• a free concert at the Kennedy Center by Tulsa Celtic trio Vintage Wildflowers (archived broadcast should be available here in a couple of days);
• and, in between all that, strolls around downtown Annapolis, Capitol Hill, Eastern Market, the National Mall, Foggy Bottom, the Watergate, the Potomac, Falls Church, the C&O Canal, and Georgetown.

Add to that the time I spent last weekend at my MIT class of '86 reunion / ZBT Xi centennial, and dinner several times this week with my uncle and aunt, and it's been a time of renewing and deepening ties with friends and extended family.

The weekend also marks the end of an intense nine months of travel related to a project at work. Since last August 23rd, I've been away from my family 190 days, with no more than three weeks' break between trips, and all but 11 of those days have been devoted to the day job.

My trips were focused on three cities: San Antonio, Texas (101 days), Fairfield, California (44 days), and Dover, Delaware (34 days). Earlier in the year, I spent 78 days in Wichita on a different project, spread out over five months. These few cities join a handful of other places where I have been for a month or more over a short span of time:

Lawrence, Ks.
Bartlesville, Okla.
Brookline, Mass.
Ocean City, New Jersey
Quezon City, Philippines
Altus, Okla.
London, England

I thought I might get more accomplished during my travels, but it didn't work out that way. I read a few books, did a bit of blogging, but it was hard to resist the urge to explore the area and spend time with old friends. The extended time away was a hardship for the whole family, but it was interesting to spend enough time in these cities to begin to get to know them well.

I've never traveled so much in such a short span -- 30 days away over the course of a year is closer to typical -- and I don't expect to repeat the situation.

Don't expect my blogging pace to pick up anytime soon. Now it's time to renew my ties with my immediate family. Eventually it'll be time to renew my acquaintance with the city that has been my hometown for 42 years.

This coming Friday night, June 3, 2011, at 7:30 pm, the Tulsa Boy Singers will perform their spring concert at Trinity Episcopal Church, 5th and Cincinnati in downtown Tulsa. Tickets are $10 for adults, no charge for students.

The program includes both sacred and secular pieces. If you enjoyed the singing at the recent royal wedding, you know the beautiful sound a well trained boys' choir can produce. The Tulsa Boy Singers staff does a wonderful job of teaching the singers the skills and subtleties of vocal performance, continuing a tradition of more than 60 years.

• Franz Josef Haydn, St. John of God Mass
• Herbert Sumsion, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis
• Thomas Tallis, If Ye Love Me
• Hubert Parry, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
• Stephen Chatman, Songs of a Prospector
• Hoagy Carmichael/Johnny Mercer, Skylark
• Loch Lomond
• Homeland

That last piece, Homeland, is a setting of the British patriotic hymn, "I Vow to Thee My Country," which uses a theme from the Jupiter movement of Gustav Holst's "The Planets."

Learning to sing in ensemble not only teaches musical skills, it teaches self-discipline, concentration, cooperation, and teamwork. It's been a great experience for my son, now in his sixth year with the group. If you know a boy between ages 8 and 18 who can carry a tune, consider having him try out for TBS. An opportunity for a brief one-on-one audition will be available

A reception follows the concert. A fundraising raffle for a "Wall of Wine" will be held at the reception -- $5 buys a chance to win 20 bottles of wine. You do not need to be present to win (or to enter that matter).

Like all non-profits these days, Tulsa Boy Singers struggles to cover its very modest expenses. Your support by attending, buying raffle tickets, and donating will help this valuable opportunity for musical instruction and performance to continue to serve Tulsa into the future.

As a sample of what this group can do, here's a brief clip from their 2007 tour of Britain, singing in York Minster:

The National Weather Service in Tulsa is forecasting a tornado outbreak for Oklahoma tonight, May 24, 2011. Atmospheric conditions are ripe for "strong, long-track tornadoes" of the sort that hit Joplin on Sunday evening, the sort that can rip a long half-mile-wide swath across a city, the sort that hit Moore, Oklahoma City, Midwest City, Stroud, and Mulhall on May 3, 1999.

I'm concerned that overzealous weather coverage has made us complacent. The sirens sound at the first sign of rotation in the clouds, and the temptation is to watch the TV to see whether there's really a funnel, and whether it's going to come anywhere near our part of the county, rather than actually taking cover. The odds that an announced tornado warning will result in actual damage within a mile of me seems pretty low. The last time we had any wind-related damage in midtown Tulsa was in 2006, when a microburst destroyed the ferris wheel at Bell's Amusement Park, took the steeple off of Harvard Ave. Baptist Church, and pushed tall oak trees right over.

But it's a potentially deadly mistake to assume that today will be another false alarm. Not only should you make a safe place ready for you and your family, but you should plan to be where you can get to it before the storms hit this evening. You don't want to be outdoors or in a car when the weather hits. Nor do you want to be in a large open-span building like a Walmart or Home Depot or in a glass-walled office tower. Get your errands run early, and get home well before the weather hits. Then make sure you've got batteries, water, flashlights, and a radio ready in your safe place -- whether that's your storm shelter, basement, safe room, or simply an interior hallway with a mattress over your head.

Don't forget to plan for your pets, and remember that high winds and large hail can cause a great deal of damage as well. In a nutshell, don't leave anything outside that you don't want blown around or bombarded.

When is it likely to hit? The NWS office in Norman says severe thunderstorms, possibly accompanied by large hail and tornadoes, could begin as early as 3 p.m. In eastern Oklahoma the outbreak is expected to begin around 6, but don't put it off preparations until the last minute.

MORE: NWS Norman has information on staying safe in severe weather -- the safest places to be, what you should have with you, and what to do if you're caught away from home when the weather hits.

Saw a very interesting documentary tonight on CNBC: "Inside American Airlines: A Week in the Life." Tulsa aircraft maintenance personnel feature prominently in several segments: The process of overhauling an MD-80 aircraft, cost-cutting efforts (e.g., building tailcones in Tulsa instead of buying them from Boeing), and rank-and-file reaction to the executive bonuses that led to CEO Donald Carty's resignation.

The documentary covers the dire financial state of the airline industry, something that seems to be the permanent state of things. Bob Crandall, former CEO, was asked whether he would invest in an airline right now (link goes to 2 minute video excerpt):

"The industry hasn't earned its cost of capital since it was created in the late 1930s. I don't see anything on the horizon that would change that.... I've never invested in any airline. I'm an airline manager. I don't invest in airlines. And I always said to the employees at American, 'This is not an appropriate investment. It's a great place to work. It's a great company. It does important work. But airlines are not an investment.'"

Hmm. I could have sworn AA had an employee stock ownership program.

You can watch the full 90 minute episode online as well as several excerpts at the program's webpage.

Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny, a documentary on the life and legacy of the greatest man of the 20th Century, continues its run at Circle Cinema in Tulsa's Whittier Square through April 21, 2011.

The newest production from the Moriah Films Division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, focuses on the years 1940 and 1941, when the Swastika flew over continental Europe. Only England with her back to the wall, under Winston Churchill, remained defiant.

Walking With Destiny highlights Churchill's years in the political wilderness, his early opposition to Adolf Hitler and Nazism, and his support for Jews under threat by the Nazi regime. As historian John Lukacs explains, Churchill may not have won the War in 1940, but without him, the War most certainly would have been lost.

Sir Martin Gilbert, historical consultant for the film and Churchill's official biographer, adds that had Churchill's warnings about Nazi Germany's racial policies towards Jews been heeded in the early 1930's, the Holocaust may never have occurred.

The film examines why Winston Churchill's legacy continues to be relevant in the 21st Century and explores why his leadership remains inspirational to current day political leaders and diplomats.

Showtimes:

Fri, 4/15/2011, 1:30 pm
Sat, 4/16/2011, 9:30 am & 3:30 pm
Sun, 4/17/2011, 4:00 pm
Mon, 4/18/2011, 1:30 pm
Tues, 4/19/2011, 4:00 pm
Wed, 4/20/2011, 2:00 pm
Thurs, 4/21/2011, 11:30 am & 8:00 pm

The H2O Film Festival begins Sunday, April 17, 2011, at the Circle Cinema and runs through Saturday, a series of eight films dealing with the water we drink. Of special note:

GASLAND (Sunday, 4/17/2011, 6 pm): An Oscar-nominated documentary feature on the effects of natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"). During my time in San Antonio last fall, there was much talk and concern about the impact of fracking on the Edwards Aquifer, the natural underground reservoir that sustains Austin, San Antonio, and the Texas Hill Country.

RIVER OF WASTE: The Hazardous Truth about Factory Farms (Monday, 4/18/2011, 6 pm): Shortly after his unsuccessful 2006 mayoral campaign, former Tulsa State Rep. Don McCorkell took some film courses and set out to make this film on the impact of factory farming on Oklahoma rivers and lakes, an issue that affects Tulsans every time we turn a tap.

CHINATOWN (Saturday, 4/23/2011, 9:30 pm): 1974's Best Picture, Chinatown is a fictional account of the controversy, corruption, and violence involved in bringing water from the Owens Valley in the Sierra Nevada to Los Angeles to facilitate the development of the San Fernando Valley and to set LA on course to become one of the nation's largest cities. City infrastructure sounds boring, but there are fortunes at stake and plenty of incentive for corruption when planners decide where the next waterline, expressway exit, or transit stop will go.

(For a great non-fiction account of the Owens Valley Aqueduct, the collapse of the St. Francis Dam, and the development of the San Fernando Valley, read Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles. A film based on this book is reportedly under development by Phoenix Films with director Frank Darabont.)

(Churchill portrait by British Government [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

So many people have a blog nowadays that you may stumble across a friend's blog before they let you know that they have one. Here are a few blogs of friends and associates that I've come across recently. They're worth reading, and I'm adding to the blogroll, so you'll see their latest posts show up over on the BatesLine blogroll headlines page and (as appropriate) the BatesLine Oklahoma headlines and BatesLine Tulsa headlines pages.

I've gotten to know Tulsa visionary and restaurateur Blake Ewing through his involvement in organizations like TulsaNow. He doesn't post on his blog often, but when he does post it's usually a blockbuster essay on our city's challenges and possible futures. There's been a lot of talk about his latest: "Grow up, Tulsa." (I disagree with him on a few points and may elaborate in coming days.)

English with Rae is a blog aimed at helping those learning English as a second language go beyond "This is a pen," providing examples of conversational English and American culture in context and presented in a way that makes them interesting even if English is your first language. Rae, a college friend of my wife's, spent many years in Japan and writes from her experience as a second-language learner of Japanese and with Japanese learners of English. A news item about a Honolulu restaurant adding a tip to the bills of non-English speaking guests is the starting point for her most visited article, Tipping Cows and Everyone Else, which covers three different kinds of tipping (restaurant, cow, and advice), introduces customary tipping practices, and provides examples of the Present Real Conditional form, all neatly interwoven.

Gina Conroy is an author based here in Tulsa. We know her through school, and she was my daughter's creative writing teacher. Her blog, Defying Gravity, is devoted to striking the balance in life as a wife and mom and in pursuit of her dream of novel writing. She is under contract to contribute a novella to an anthology, and a recent entry is devoted to the process and pain of cutting a 50,000-word work in progress down to 20,000. She often interviews other writing moms and dads. Many recent entries have been devoted to dreams and ambitions -- rekindling them, thwarting dream-killers, and balancing your dreams.

Urban Garden Goddess is a Philadelphia-based blogger just getting into home organic gardening. As a rookie gardener last year, Tania (a friend through blogging circles) won third prize in the individual vegetable garden category in the Philadelphia Horticultural Society's City Gardens Contest. She's also a runner, and a recent entry is about "solid eating for a solid race performance."

San Francisco architect Christine Boles and I were both active in Campus Crusade for Christ at MIT back when. Her blog illustrates some of the creative solutions she and her husband, partners in Beausoleil Architects, have devised to meet the needs of clients while respecting history and the environment. Her latest entry shows how they turned a ground floor room into a garage while preserving the bay window that makes up the historic facade. In an earlier post, she advocates for "deconstruction" and recycling of building materials over demolition and landfill. This was interesting, too: The importance of the oft-overlooked V in HVAC -- ventilation.

Texas State Representative David Simpson (R-Longview) is married to a high school classmate of mine. Last year he defeated an incumbent Republican in the primary and went on to election in November. His blog has only a few entries, but they provide some insight into the 2011 Texas legislative session and the budding conflict between fair-dealer and wheeler-dealer Republicans. He is an author of HB 1937, which would prohibit TSA groping in the absence of probable cause. His article -- Dividing the Apple -- about the tough budget decisions facing the legislature, is worth reading. An excerpt:

Civil government has nothing except that which it takes from We the People. Unlike God, the government cannot create value or substance out of nothing.

When the Federal Reserve with Congress' approval "prints more money," it simply increases the number of federal reserve notes ("dollars") that are being exchanged in our economy for goods and services. The increase in the number of federal reserve notes in circulation does not represent more wealth. It merely divides the same value of goods and services in the economy into smaller parts. If you divide an apple into 4 parts or 8 parts, it is still just one apple.

The Texas legislature cannot create wealth either. It has no money except that which it takes from We the People. It can divide the apple of wealth we enjoy and redistribute it, but it cannot create more apples.

Even so, we are running out of apple. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, the portion of the apple that our state government consumes has grown by 45% over the last decade (that number is 87% without any adjustments). As the state's portion has grown, Texas families and businesses have had to settle for a smaller portion to feed themselves.

As first steps to budget cutting, Simpson has called for cutting all corporate welfare from the budget and reducing administrative overhead in the common and higher educational systems. His name popped up in a recent AP story:

Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, put together an odd-couple coalition of Democrats and Republicans to approve an amendment zeroing out funding for the Texas Commission on the Arts and redirecting it to services for the elderly and disabled.

Channeling tea-party-like, populist anger right back at his own leaders, Simpson also has railed against hundreds of millions of dollars in what he calls "corporate welfare." It happens to include Perry's job-luring initiatives, the Texas Enterprise Fund and Emerging Technology Fund.

"These parts of the budget are more protected than schools and the weak among us," Simpson said. He failed to redirect the money, but not before raising a stink among Republicans.

Most Tulsa County Republican precinct organizations will hold precinct elections tomorrow, Saturday, March 5, 2011, at 10 a.m. (There are a few exceptions.) Any registered Republican voter is eligible to attend and vote in his precinct's election, at which precinct officials for the next two years and delegates to this year's county GOP convention are elected. The precinct meetings will also consider resolutions for inclusion in the county platform. While platform planks are often about national and state issues, it's certainly appropriate to address city and county issues in the platform as well (even if it gives Republican elected officials fits).

Click this link for the list of 2011 Tulsa County Republican precinct elections.

If you don't know your precinct number, visit the Oklahoma State Election Board precinct finder.

Thanks be to God: We are all cozy and home. Power, cable, phone, and internet all work. Plenty of food in the fridge and pantry. I made my last trips to the store and the gas station at about 10 Monday night, just as sharp ice pellets began to fall from the sky. Reasor's had almost everything we needed, but they didn't have sweet potatoes.

So I tried the Walmart Neighborhood Market, which seemed more picked-over than Reasor's, with twice as many customers packed into a smaller space, made even more cramped by the pallets of groceries in all the aisles. Apparently they won't deviate from policy, not even for a massive snow storm: Self-checkout was closed, as it normally is at that hour, although under the circumstances it could have helped a great deal. The main entrance into the produce section was blocked off, as usual at that time of day, so incoming customers had to work their way past customers in the checkout line and carts filled with items to go back on the shelves or, presumably, into the trash (including one cart with prepackaged meat, yogurt, milk, and a sickly, suspicious drip onto the floor). The customers in line had to choose between moving out of the way of incoming customers or out of the way of shopping carts trying to maneuver around the restocking pallets. (Those sweet potatoes had better be the best ever.)

As I returned from getting gasoline, I saw a jogger out in the mixed sleet and snow. Not someone who was caught in the storm and hurrying home, but someone dressed to run and jogging at a steady pace down one of our main neighborhood streets. No doubt he was out running in it just to be able to say he was.

On Tuesday I finished a project -- a Kodak photo/memory book for my dad -- the kids played Wii, we all watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (none of us had seen it before -- great movie, although the ending is improbable), and we all played Apples to Apples Jr. and Sorry. We spent some time outside in the late afternoon, when the sun came out, but we couldn't take the cold for long. Drifts were over two feet high next to our house, and the snow seemed to average about 14" around the yard. The loose powdery snow wouldn't pack into snowballs or snowmen.

This storm poses very different problems than the December 2007 ice storm. In '07, power outages were widespread and lengthy, with weatherheads and meters pulled off the sides of houses by the ice. On the other hand, the roads cleared quickly as the ground had been warm. We were cold and in the dark, but we were mobile. I sent my family to relatives in Arkansas; I toughed it out with the help of a gas-log fire and gas water heater and spending as much time as possible away from the house. Power came back Thursday afternoon after three and a half days without.

It's much nicer that we have power this go around. The powdery snow and sleet didn't stick to wires and tree branches. On the other hand, that same powdery, drifting snow has made it impossible to drive without getting stuck. It doesn't pack down, and if you push it out of the way, it doesn't stay put. It's like an ocean of tiny packing peanuts.

As a consequence, not only have all schools cancelled classes, but City of Tulsa trash service has been cancelled for Wednesday as well. Bus service was cancelled for most of the day, and may be cancelled tomorrow as well:

For Wednesday February 2, 2011, Tulsa Transit management will assess the condition of the streets in the early morning. An announcement will then be made as to the service to be run on Wednesday. The current plan for the paratransit Lift Program service for Wednesday is to run trips already scheduled for dialysis passengers only. No additional Lift Program trips will be run on Wednesday.

All Tuesday flights departing Tulsa International Airport were cancelled. As for Wednesday, Southwest Airlines has cancelled all of its departures from Tulsa before 4 pm (as far as I can tell; the website makes it difficult). A special page on the snowpocalypse states:

We have cancelled a majority of our Tuesday flights to/from TUL; and some of our Wednesday morning flights to/from TUL. Our resumption of service is contingent upon the conditions of the runways, taxiways, other airport services, and city's infrastructure to/from the airport.

Note that even if the airport is up and running, Southwest may not fly if people can't make it to the airport.

The last time I was around this much snow was during a two-week business trip in early January 2004 to East Aurora, New York, near Buffalo. The nice thing about East Aurora is that it's a compact place. I had three taverns and a movie theater within walking distance of the hotel. My first night in town, with two feet of snow on the ground, I put on my L. L. Bean Maine hunting shoes, walked a block to a tavern, and had a prime rib sandwich and a Guinness. The people who owned and operated those eateries could walk to work. (In some cases, they had only to walk downstairs.)

My parents had plenty of amusement. The birdseed they scattered on the patio brought juncos, cardinals, sparrows, finches, blue jays, mourning doves, and red wing blackbirds, and those birds attracted...

But the biggest visitor, a red-tailed hawk that came swooping in with the anticipation of a fat little junco for supper, but not expecting an icy landing, he crashed into the patio doors with lots of noise and fluttering of wings. Supper was gone and the embarrassed hawk retreated quickly to a nearby tree, then he was gone from there before I could grab the camera.

Any interesting sightings from your picture window? Has anyone been out on the roads? Leave a comment!

I can hardly believe I'm done. I can hardly believe I won't be back again soon.

I've spent most of the last three months working 60+ plus hours per week on a project in San Antonio. That's on top of another month early last fall and a few weeks last winter and summer on a related project.

On Saturday, the last remaining discrepancy was resolved. This morning, I checked out of the hotel that was my home-away-from-home. (I went from 0 nights to gold status with this particular chain in the course of the project.) It was strange to tell the desk clerk that, no, I wouldn't need to be making another reservation right now.

I don't enjoy being away from my family, but I do enjoy getting to spend enough time in a city to get to know it well. I've got plenty of observations from my own perambulations about the Alamo City and its environs and from a couple of books I picked up: Saving San Antonio, about the course of historic preservation there since the late 19th century, and HemisFair '68 and the Transformation of San Antonio, a collection of brief essays by civic leaders from the 1960s to the present, which so far seems to be more about how the '68 World's Fair failed to transform the city, and what had to happen to produce the economic growth and tourism we see today. San Antonio went through the same transition from at-large city government to a district-based city council about 20 years before Tulsa. I hope to share some of my observations here, but I make no promises. There's more hard work ahead.

Long hours working on the challenging task of getting software from the Reagan years to cooperate with a new computer didn't leave much energy for writing, particularly not for heavy research and careful word-craft.

When I was at home, it was time to play with the kids, sleep, catch up on chores and errands, and prepare for the next trip -- not to get hip-deep in local politics. (Do you have any idea how hard it is to schedule a dental checkup when you're out of town 3/4 of the time and don't know for sure when you'll next be home?)

When I did have free time, I had a "bucket list" of San Antonio events, attractions, and eateries I wanted to try when the opportunity arose. I got through a lot of them, but missed a few. I did most of the in-city things I'd hoped to do (still haven't been on a river cruise), but weekend day trips to the Gulf Coast or Houston didn't happen, and I only made it to Austin a couple of times.

While there have been periods on the past when I've been away from home frequently, my weekly spots on KFAQ with Michael Del Giorno and Gwen Freeman and my weekly column in UTW forced me to stay in touch with the latest developments back home, to sit in front of a computer screen keeping up with Tulsa news instead of exploring a new city. Without the responsibility to talk or write every week on local politics, I've been able to read for fun, work through my "bucket list," surf the web, or spend an hour on the elliptical while watching back-to-back episodes of "The Office."

There's a long post in my head about the temptation to spin a cocoon -- play Wii, watch Netflix, do yardwork, and just be a homebody -- to stop spending my time and taking risks for causes that don't directly benefit my family's welfare.

On the other hand, it seems selfish to collect all this information and all these experiences and do nothing with them.

More about that, perhaps, another time. See you soon, Tulsa. I'll be home in just a few.

The John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation has posted an online survey for Tulsa area residents on race relations and history.

By way of explaining what it covers, here's the text from the first page:

Thank you for your willingness to help improve our understanding of perceptions about race relations and knowledge of racially relevant historical events in the Tulsa area. By completing the following survey, you allow the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation and other area organizations to develop relevant programming that promotes positive race relations and reconciliation. We will also be able to track changes in perceptions over time. Your ideas are important to this effort, so we thank you in advance.

It's a medium length survey, maybe about 15 minutes in length. Most questions are multiple choice, but there are a few opportunities for free-form answers and a place for your comments about the survey.

During the demographic portion, I was amused to be given five options for "gender." That tells you something about the ideological bent (pun intended) of the people who drafted the survey.

The only "racially relevant" historical event that was mentioned was the 1921 riot. It would be interesting to compare awareness of that event with awareness of Greenwood's reconstruction after the riot, Jim Crow laws, the civil rights movement in Tulsa, the second destruction of Greenwood via the Model Cities and urban renewal programs, and the redlining of north Tulsa.

I think it's important for Tulsans in all their diversity (including those of us who think a human either one sex or the other) to document their views and opinions on this issue, and I hope you'll take time to participate.

A friend sent along a fascinating sports story from Yahoo sports blog "The Dagger": 25 years after playing for Nolan Richardson at the University of Tulsa, 6'10" center Herb Johnson, who celebrated his 48th birthday last month, is still playing pro basketball. Drafted by Cleveland in 1985, but never playing an NBA regular season game, Johnson has played pro ball in Turkey, Japan, Italy, France, and now, in his 7th season in Switzerland, his second year with team Villiers Basket in the Ligue National de Basket.

He's the oldest player on the team by 19 years. So far he's averaged over 32 minutes of playing time per game over 15 games, 11.7 points and 9.6 rebounds per game at the moment.

(There's a staggering number of foreign pro basketball leagues -- check out the list on eurobasket.com. When I spent the summer of '83 in Manila, I remember noticing the basketball standings in the papers, and more than once someone hearing my name would say, "Oh, like Billy Ray Bates," who was playing his first season in the "reinforced conference" of the Phillipine Basketball Association, after four seasons in the NBA.)

Chuck Lamson, majority owner of the Tulsa Drillers since 2006, has sold his ownership shares back to longtime owner Went Hubbard. Hubbard owned the team from 1986 to 2006, retained a minority interest after selling to Lamson, and now has sole ownership once again. Lamson played for the Drillers in the late '70s, began working in the front office while still a player, and made his way up the ladder, serving a decade as general manager before taking over as owner.

Hubbard's previous tenure as sole owner was marked by almost annual improvements in old Driller Stadium: expanding seating, re-angling the seating along the foul lines toward the infield, replacing the original artificial turf with real grass, lowering the box seats nearer to field level, improving concession stands and locker rooms, adding a party suite, picnic area, and a new front office. Driller Stadium was (still is) a great facility for minor league baseball. In 1986 Hubbard took over a new but very incomplete ballpark, turning it into a gem. Now he has a facility that has every convenience and luxury already built in.

I have yet to see a reason given for Lamson's decision to sell. The quotes in the KWGS story hint at reluctance to leave:

"I knew this day would eventually come, but it has arrived a little quicker than I imagined. It is a bittersweet day for me as I have loved my 30-plus years with the Drillers, but I am excited about the new challenges that await me...."

"This change allows me to pursue new opportunities, but more importantly, it insures a positive future for the Drillers...."

Was he forced out? Was he in over his head financially? Anyone have a clue? It all seems rather sudden and strange.

MORE: Here's an item from the Gloucester County (N.J.) Times from a couple of months ago about Lamson's induction into the Woodbury High School Hall of Fame. The story, which covers his impressive high school and junior college pitching career, the injury that stopped him from reaching the majors, and his rise from Drillers groundskeeper to president, adds the detail that he was a 51% owner of the Drillers. As of October, he was in no hurry to move on:

Although Lamson has enjoyed immense overall success in Tulsa, he's in no hurry to make a move.

"I've had opportunities, but nothing has piqued my interest," he says. "With our new ball park, our future is secure. And I love Tulsa."

Mark your calendars! This coming Friday night, December 17, 2010, offers two opportunities to hear talented young musicians in downtown Tulsa:

At 6 p.m., Barthelmes Conservatory will present their Winter Open Concert, a series of short pieces presented by the conservatory's students, in the Great Hall on the 4th floor of the Bernsen Community Life Center, 700 S. Boston Ave. The program of classical music will include music for solo piano, violin, and cello, and small ensembles. Admission is free.

At 8 p.m., the Tulsa Boy Singers will be presenting their annual Christmas concert this coming Friday night, December 17, 2010, at 8:00 p.m., at Trinity Episcopal Church, 501 S. Cincinnati in downtown Tulsa. Tickets are $10 for adults; children are free. It's a beautiful setting for beautiful music.

You can find great Christmas gifts and wonderful eats and treats -- from the usual to the unusual -- by patronizing City of Tulsa businesses as you do your Christmas shopping. The money continues to circulate in the local community, keeping people working and generating the sales tax revenue that local government needs to do its job:

ShopTulsa, an initiative to educate the public on the benefits of buying locally, launched its campaign and website last week and offers a video explaining why buying locally makes a difference:

"The video is a wake-up call," said Blake Ewing, owner of The Engine Room PR, which is leading the effort. "We wanted to show people visually how we can all benefit from spending our money, when we can, within the city limits of Tulsa-- especially during the holiday season."

Since 2008, the city has lost nearly eleven million dollars in tax revenue toward the general fund. For Tulsans, this cut in funding directly impacts their city, from the number of policemen staff to lighting the city streets. ShopTulsa hopes to shine the light on just how little it takes for Tulsans to make a big difference in their city.

"Shopping Tulsa" simply means buying products within the city limits. The more money spent within the city, the more money will stay there. Although supporting local businesses keeps the most dollars in town, even shopping at franchises or national chains within the city limits helps.

ShopTulsa will also have its inaugural Black Friday Party at 8 p.m. on Nov. 26 at The Blue Dome Diner. The party will be open to the public and will feature live entertainment along with swag bag giveaways to the first 200 attendees and the chance to win $10,000 of raffle prizes provided by local merchants.

A free raffle ticket will be given to each attendee, and more tickets will go to those who show a Black Friday receipt for at least $50 from a local store at the door. The party's band lineup and raffle prizes will be announced at the press conference.

For more information on ShopTulsa and how to get involved, or for resources on how to shop locally, please visit www.shoptulsa.org or call Allison Broyles at 918.949.3860

Here's the video Blake Ewing mentioned:

Shop Tulsa from Shop Tulsa on Vimeo.

Finally, a women's pro sports league a heterosexual male can get excited about:

The 10-team league features seven-on-seven tackle football in which women are clad in helmets, shoulder pads, bras, panties and garters.

But the mayors of Oklahoma's two largest cities aren't excited about the Lingerie Football League coming to town:

"I don't think that's anything (Tulsa) is going to want to have," Mayor Dewey Bartlett said Tuesday afternoon. "Women running around in their underwear tackling one another. It's like mud wrestling."...

After the league announced its intentions to expand into Oklahoma City for the 2011 season, Mayor Mick Cornett expressed his disapproval last week, saying "there were too many problems to list" and that the team wouldn't be allowed to play in a public facility.

Like all pro sports -- all -- the LFL is in the entertainment business. If people find them entertaining, they'll buy tickets. If not, they won't. That's the way it ought to work. Government shouldn't be in the business of promoting spectator sports or impeding them. Like movie theaters and live music clubs and pubs and dance halls, pro sports teams should pay the full cost of having a place to present their particular form of entertainment.

Of course, since government got in the business of subsidizing entertainment by the majority-forced extortion of tax dollars to build arenas and ballparks for minor league hockey and arena football teams and "major" league women's basketball teams, I suppose it makes our elected officials feel entitled to dictate what kinds of entertainment can use these publicly financed facilities. And from time to time, these officials scold their constituents for failing to patronize these particular forms of professional entertainment, sentimentally known as "not backing the home team."

I'm amused by Cornett's refusal to allow LFL to play in a public facility. He apparently had no problem with WWE's Monday Night Raw this past March 1 at the Ford Center, hosted by Cheech and Chong, which is WAY CLASSIER than girls playing football in bikinis. And Mayor Bartlett Jr hasn't said boo about the fact that Cheech and Chong are performing their pot-themed, potty-mouthed humor at the Tulsa Convention Center, in the same hall where he was sworn in a year ago.

Don't get me wrong. I like some of Cheech and Chong's comedy (the classic "Sister Mary Elephant" sketch, for example) and movies (Things Are Tough All Over). But I fail to see how stoner comedy is somehow an order of magnitude more dignified than lingerie football.

If the LFL can pay the rent, let them play BOK Center or the old Assembly Center.

And Mr. Mayor, let's add a $10 a ticket fee to all events to reimburse the taxpayers for the cost of building a venue where entertainment businesses can make money.

(P. S. to the LFL: If you do locate here, don't even think about the possibility of a palindromic team name.)

The third annual Tulseys are coming up on November 18, and voting is underway. Anyone can vote. (I'm not sure when it ends.)

Someone (I don't know who) nominated me this year for the interactive category. I'm surprised and honored to be named in such impressive company. The 2009 winner was Natasha Ball of Tasha Does Tulsa.

Interactive is one of the largest categories with eight nominees. It's aimed at "[r]ecognizing an entrepreneur involved in designing, building, managing, maintaining, marketing, promoting Websites, Interactive Advertising, Interactive Games, Online Film & Video, and Mobile content for business, consumer or general audiences." The other nominees are Michael Mason of This Land Press, Matt Galloway of Architactile, Cheryl Lawson of Party Aficionado, James Millaway of Carpe Consiliatum, Gerald Buckley of Grocio.com, Ryan Phillips of Phillips360, and Sarah Roe of MoneySavingQueen.com.

From the "About" page:

We recognize the vital importance of entrepreneurs to influence our quality of life, impact Tulsa's economic strength and inspire us to reach for something more. The Tulseys is designed to engage the Tulsa Metro region in a publicly nominated and voted on entrepreneurial awards celebration.

We are looking for entrepreneurial visionaries, game changers and rule breakers.
The third annual Tulsey Awards will recognize the heroes, pioneers and innovators of the Tulsa Metro region....

On November 18, 2010, The Tulseys will recognize and celebrate ten inspirational Tulsa entrepreneurs, along with a special appearance from the winner of the 2010 SpiritBank/Tulsa Community College Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, at the world-famous Cain's Ballroom. The Tulseys awards celebration is the climax event of the 2010 Tulsa Global Entrepreneurship Week. You will not want to miss this MTV Music- and Webby Awards-inspired celebration. Plan to attend this public event on November 18, 2010, from 7-11 p.m. There is no cost to attend.

Nominees were asked to provide responses to several questions; about half did so. You can read some of my answers on the voting page when you click my name. For posterity, you can see all of my answers (with the questions that prompted them) on the jump page here.

I hope you'll click through and click the names on the ballot. You'll learn about some interesting Tulsans engaged in innovative pursuits. (And if you choose to vote for me, thank you very much for the honor.)

From the Tulsa Police Department:

The Tulsa Police Department is urging parents and caregivers to make sure their child safety seats are properly installed on "National Seat Check Saturday," happening Saturday, September 25. As part of Child Passenger Safety Week (September 19-25, 2010), the Tulsa Police Department and the Black Officers Coalition will have certified technicians available to provide free hands-on child safety seat inspections and advice from 1000 AM - Noon at North Pointe Center 300 E. Pine Street in Tulsa.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) research, 8,959 lives have been saved from 1975 to 2008 by the proper use of child restraints. In 2008, among children under age 5 in passenger vehicles, an estimated 244 lives were saved by child restraint use (child safety seats and adult seat belts). Research shows that child restraints provide the best protection for all children up to age 8.

There are so many different ways to mess up the installation of a child safety seat, and the consequences of getting it wrong could be fatal. Even if you've been using a child safety seat for years, you could use a refresher. Proper installation is time consuming, and it's easy to become lax.

Please take a few minutes this coming Saturday morning to be sure your car seat is installed to provide maximum protection to your child.

For more information on Child Passenger Safety Week and to find the child seat inspection station nearest you visit http://www.nhtsa.gov/Safety/CPS and http://www.facebook.com/childpassengersafety

The Admiral Twin theater, a Tulsa icon that was celebrating its 60th season this year and our city's last surviving drive-in movie theater, was destroyed by fire today. The wooden structure that supported the twin screens caught fire and burned to the ground. According to news reports, the wooden screen structure was uninsurable, but there's hope of raising enough money to rebuild.

A Facebook page has been created to rally support for the Admiral Twin. One commenter on that page suggests that the stars of the movie The Outsiders, which used the theater as a location, ought to be approached to see if they would be willing to help.

I hope it is rebuilt. I remember seeing my first PG movie there -- Young Frankenstein -- making myself nauseous by getting that free refill on the 32 oz 7up, and I remember Mom saying something to Dad about the risque jokes going over my head. We've taken our kids to the Admiral Twin, too.

But there are several factors working against reconstruction. It's valuable, highly visible property fronting an interstate highway, although it's not easy to reach because of the weird left-hand exits at Sheridan and Memorial. You could probably meet payroll and cover expenses with a paid-for facility, but reconstruction was not in the business plan.

And how much will it cost to rebuild to modern standards? I don't know what codes apply to a drive-in theater screen -- maybe similar to outdoor signs? it wouldn't need to be safe for human occupation -- but I imagine you couldn't simply rebuild what was there. I don't have a map handy, but I suspect the Admiral Twin was outside the city limits when it was built in 1951.

There's another theater that may be on the verge of demolition. The old Park Lane Theater north of 51st and Sheridan is surrounded by a fence, the porte cochere has been demolished, the first floor windows are covered in plywood, and there's an Ark Wrecking dumpster out front. The theater was twinned sometime in the 1980s, served as a comedy club and venue for live theater, and more recently has been home to a business school.

The Admiral Twin was the last Tulsa theater from my childhood and youth still operating. The Continental, Will Rogers, Brook, Delman, Park Lane, Spectrum, Forum, Fox, Fontana, Annex 3/7, Southroads, Plaza 3, Village, Eleventh Street Drive In, 51 Drive In, Boman Twin, Williams Center, Woodland Hills -- all closed, many of them demolished. (The Circle is an ambiguous case -- the theater where I saw The Phantom Tollbooth is an empty shell, but there are plans to rebuild, and the Circle 2 is open next door.)

MORE: Agent Bedhead, a Tulsan who is senior film critic for the entertainment website Pajiba, has an entry about the Admiral Twin fire and about the attempt of movie PR weasels -- for the movie showing at the theater the night before the fire -- to capitalize on the tragedy. She also has some speculation on the cause and a clip from The Outsiders that highlights the drive-in in better days.

Some long-time friends, a couple of families from our church small group who left Tulsa for other cities some years ago, came back to town this weekend and suggested that we all go out to Discoveryland for their production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! and for the pre-show cattleman's ranch dinner.

I hadn't been in many years. (My wife and older two kids went a couple years ago; I had stayed home with the youngest that night.) I can remember going with my family shortly after it opened, and taking a high school classmate there on a date. When I was first dating my wife, in '86 or '87, we had dinner at Pennington's Drive-Inn (butterfly shrimp and blackbottom pie), then went out to Discoveryland, only to stand under the concourse during a heavy rainstorm that cancelled the performance.

Back to 2010: The dinner was good -- a ribeye steak sandwich, potato salad, baked beans, kernel corn, with tea or water. You pick up your plate at the cookhouse, then walk a ways to picnic tables in a big covered pavilion. We lingered over dinner, getting caught up with our friends, then headed toward the amphitheater to pick up a dessert from the concession stand and find our seats. (Desserts were simple but good -- ice cream with berries or with brownies and chocolate sauce, and snow-cones. They also have popcorn, bottled water and Coca-Cola products for sale. Prices were reasonable.)

We were just in time for the pre-show program, featuring singing, clogging, the two-step (cast members came out to the audience to teach the two-step to volunteers), and the can-can (which embarrassed our four-year-old a bit).

The cast carries a heavy load -- a 30-minute pre-show, followed by a three-hour long performance, with only a short 15-minute intermission. One of my favorite numbers, "It's a Scandal, It's an Outrage," was cut, probably because of the length of the show. I'm pretty sure the first time I saw it performed was at Discoveryland in the '70s, as it wasn't included in the Gordon MacRae / Shirley Jones movie version. The singing, dancing, and acting was all very well done. The leads have beautiful voices, as do the supporting cast members. The baritone who played Jud Fry not only had a rich voice but conveyed a menacing undertone that hasn't always been there in other productions. The older gentleman who played Judge Carnes (Ado Annie's father) stole every scene he was in.

One of the very best parts of the show came near the end as most of the lights were off, and you could look up and actually see the stars. There is something special about watching a performance under the stars, listening to the crickets and tree frogs singing in the blackjack oak trees that surround the stage.

I would love to single out cast members by name, but there were no programs available -- a problem with the print shop, my wife heard. Although the evening was thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable, the lack of programs was one of a number of logistical and maintenance problems that need to be addressed.

The seats are comfortable, but the ground beneath is dirt and grass. Granted that it's been raining, and my own yard could use some attention (thanks in large part to the nutgrass that appears to have been introduced in the fill dirt used after our curb and street were rebuilt -- any good suggestions for nutgrass control?), but I don't expect to see a huge dandelion and a big stalk of johnson grass under the seat in front of me. It was also difficult to find a flat-enough place to set down a bottle of pop or a box of popcorn where it wouldn't spill.

There were problems with the sound system: distracting feedback when certain cast members spoke or sang, and at times what should have been background crowd chatter drowned out the main dialogue.

According to my wife, the ladies' restrooms were fine. To Discoveryland's credit, they converted one of the original two men's rooms into an additional ladies' room, so there's a 3-to-1 female to male restroom ratio.

The men's room, however, had a hole in the drywall where the door handle hit it (no doorstop), a floor drain that appeared to be rusted-out, a jammed paper towel dispenser (had to pull non-perforated towels off a free-standing roll; tricky with wet hands), no toilet paper dispensers, and a bit of drywall cut away in one of the stalls. There were no low urinals (for people my four-year-old's height); the soap dispenser was far too high as well. Worst of all, the urinals were too close together, which slowed down the line as people hesitated or deferred rather than squeeze in shoulder-to-shoulder.

I note all this not to condemn the folks who run Discoveryland, who no doubt are doing the best they can to maintain a 35-year-old facility and put on a high-quality nightly performance during a tough economy.

I wonder, though, about Discoveryland's invisibility to Tulsa County's decision-makers. Here is an attraction that last year drew visitors from all 50 states and 57 foreign countries, an attraction that capitalizes on one of the most widespread and positive associations people around the world have with the state of Oklahoma. Hundreds of millions in Tulsa County taxpayer dollars have been spent on attractions that are supposed to bring in visitors to spend money, and yet no one thought to put a tiny fraction of that money toward maintaining and improving an attraction that already draws visitors from around the world.

We have a great aquarium and air and space museum and zoo, although there are better examples of each in other parts of the country. Other cities get the same acts that play the BOK Center, and other cities have minor league hockey, arena football, and basketball. But there's nowhere else you can see Oklahoma! in Oklahoma, under the stars, with a professional cast. Why not ensure that visitors from around the world get a proper "Oklahoma hello," with a facility that matches the quality of the performance on stage?

There's a chunk of Vision 2025 money -- $2 million -- that was supposed to go for infrastructure for an American Indian Cultural Center that would have been located on River Parks land on Turkey Mountain west of the river in Tulsa. Nearly seven years after the money was approved, it doesn't appear that any progress has been made toward making the AICC a reality.

A small fraction of the AICC funding could give Discoveryland a major facelift -- new sound system, new restrooms, seating area improvements. With a bit more you could add a year-round exhibit on the history of the musical, the play on which it was based, the historical and cultural setting (Indian Territory just before statehood), the careers of Lynn Riggs, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein, and the history of Discoveryland itself, thus truly fulfilling Discoveryland's designation as the "National Home of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!"

But, you object, Discoveryland is a for-profit business, and it would be improper to use tax dollars to subsidize a private businesses. We've already used Vision 2025 money to subsidize American Airlines and downtown housing development by three for-profit private developers, not to mention the ongoing and massive indirect subsidy to for-profit concert promoters and for-profit sports franchises known as the BOK Center.

Oklahoma's best hope for attracting visitors is to take the uniquely Oklahoman aspects of our history, culture, climate, and topography, and turn them into places that visitors can, well, visit.

I'll repeat something I submitted to Mayor Bill LaFortune's visit summit back in 2002, something I've been harping on since the Convention and Tourism Task Force in 1999:

Tulsa's unique qualities -- call them distinctives or idiosyncracies -- how can we raise awareness and pride locally and use this as an asset in our dealings with the rest of the world? I get the impression than some civic leaders are embarassed by our oil heritage, our Cowboy and Indian roots, and the strength of religious belief here -- so our tourist brochures trumpet the ballet and Philbrook and Utica Square, and downplay things like western swing music, the gun museum in Claremore, and ORU. When a German tourist comes to Oklahoma, he doesn't want to see the opera, he wants to see oil wells, tipis, old Route 66 motels, and tornadoes. Some adolescents go through a phase when their greatest longing is to be just like everyone else. If we're going to set ourselves apart, we have to stop trying to blend in as a modern city like every other, stop treating our quirky folkways as things to be suppressed and hidden, and celebrate them instead. It's nice to have the same cultural amenities as every other large city, but it's the unique qualities that will win the affections of our own people and capture the imaginations of the rest of the world.

We have this great gift -- a groundbreaking Broadway musical, packed with unforgettable tunes, choreography, and characters, and it's named after our state (although it nearly wasn't). Let's make the most of it.

MORE:

Discoveryland website
Wikipedia entry for Oklahoma!
Musicals 101: A good summary of Oklahoma!'s "firsts"

UPDATE 2010/07/22:

Liz Beall Eubanks writes with some perspective:

The owner of Discoveryland, William Jeffers, uses the profits to fund his Christian camp that ministers to primarily Indian children. It's on DL's property, way back in there. He lives pretty meagerly and probably does not want to take anything away from his ministry to pour into DL. It's a hard call. I doubt the gov't would want any tax dollars to be used to further a Christian camp and I also doubt Mr. Jeffers wants any tax money with strings attached.

Way back in the first week of BatesLine's existence, I posted photos of Midwest City's doomed Tinker Plaza shopping center. Downtown on the Range has photos of and commentary on the new-urbanist Midwest City Town Center that took its place.

Tyson and Jeane Wynn have posted their 50th WynnCast, covering, among other things, their hometown of Welch, Oklahoma, and the WelchOK.com news site they run to help keep their friends and neighbors informed. They also talk about the upcoming Christy awards for Christian fiction and three books that they've publicized (book publicity is their main line of work) that have been nominated.

This Land Press reports on some of the classy items for sale at the Tulsa World's online auction site. Another piece from the inaugural print edition is now online: A story by Michael Mason on the way the City of Tulsa's handles (or mishandles) the land it owns. He wonders whether it's time to put all the surplus land on the auction block. And Erin Fore has a fascinating account of her day volunteering at a Norman soup kitchen.

OCPA reports that the private-sector share of Oklahoma's personal income has dropped to an all-time low -- 62% -- thanks in large part to the Federal stimulus package. Oklahoma's private-sector proportion is about 6 percentage points below the national number, a gap that has been fairly constant over the last two decades.

The Tulsa Parks and Recreation master plan is online on the Tulsa Parks website. You can download the Tulsa Parks master plan executive summary or the entire Tulsa Parks master plan.

Speaking of parks, here are some photos from the 1970s of the Bruce Goff Playtower in Bartlesville's Sooner Park. I remember climbing this as a kid. These pictures also show (albeit not well) the Möbius Strip climbing frame that used to sit at its base; I remember watching Dad work his way around the Möbius Strip many years ago. (You held on to the top rail and put your feet on the bottom rail on the outside. As you worked your way around, keeping your hands and feet on their respective rails, you would wind up on the inside and upside down.) There's a Facebook cause to fund the Goff Playtower's restoration.

INCOG has updated the map of municipal boundaries in the Tulsa metro area. It's striking how many cities straddle county lines. Eventually Owasso and Broken Arrow will have at least half its population and land area in a county other than Tulsa County. The same could be true of Sand Springs and Sperry. It appears that Skiatook is already mainly in Osage County and has plenty of room to grow in that direction. Tulsa will always be mainly in Tulsa County, but the city has significant territory in Osage, Rogers, and Wagoner County; meanwhile the seat of Creek County has a foothold in Tulsa County. Only a few pockets of land are not within any municipality's fenceline; a rather significant area lies between Tulsa and Sand Springs and includes the unincorporated settlement of Berryhill. The municipal disregard for county lines suggests that county government is not the right framework for regional cooperation to provide government services, but rather some sort of federation of municipalities.

Irritated Tulsan has an important fountain drink etiquette reminder for QT cheap drink season.

It was a Saturday morning, and I wasn't in a hurry. I needed to drop off a rental car at the Avis location downtown then pick up my car that had been in the shop while I was out of town. I had already paid the repair bill and had the keys; I just needed to retrieve the car from the shop's parking lot. What better time to try to bus system.

I used my smartphone in the Avis office to look at bus schedules. It looked like there was a bus that would take me straight from downtown to the repair shop, and it appeared that I had plenty of time to get to a stop to catch the bus. I opted not to backtrack seven or eight blocks to the downtown bus station but instead walked to a stop along the line to the east of downtown. I headed east on 6th, walked through Centennial Park, stopping for a minute on a shaded park bench to double-check the schedule for the bus I intended to catch. The website was not optimized for mobiles, and I had to switch from "optimized mode" to "wide-screen mode" to get things to look right, but I managed to select the correct bus and the Saturday from downtown schedule using the Javascript-based pulldown menus.

The 210 bus was due to reach 3rd and Rockford at 10:06. I had about 20 minutes to walk about a half-mile. No problem.

I stayed on 6th, turned north on Rockford, walking past Tulsa Transit HQ, then paused at the bus shelter just west of Rockford on 3rd. I had another 10 minutes until the bus's scheduled arrival, and I decided I'd rather not wait next to an overgrown abandoned lot, so I walked further east along the line to the stop just east of Utica, next to the Tulsa City-County Health Department and waited. And waited.

When the bus was 10 minutes late, I began to worry. There was no significant traffic, and I couldn't imagine the bus was being delayed by large numbers of riders. A couple of buses passed in the other direction, heading downtown.

20 minutes past scheduled arrival time an Admiral bus stopped next to me. I told the driver, "I'm waiting for the 210; it's about 20 minutes late." The driver's reply: "I'm not surprised. There's a lot of traffic at the other end."

I checked the Tulsa Transit website to see if there were any service bulletins posted. I checked the Tulsa Transit Twitter account for notifications of delays. Nothing. At 27 minutes past the scheduled arrival, I called the number on the bus stop sign. I waited for about 10 minutes, through repeated announcements: "We are experiencing unusually high call volume."

While waiting for an operator, I daydreamed that Tulsa allowed jitneys to operate and that multiple independent jitney operators would pass by any minute, competing with each other to offer the best service so as to win my business and loyalty.

Finally, a man answered the phone. I complained about the 210 bus now being almost 40 minutes late and was informed that there wasn't a 10:06 bus on Saturdays. The next bus wouldn't be along until 11:26, another 40 minutes to wait.

Evidently I had misread the schedule; surprising, since I had checked twice and thought I had been careful about selecting the right day's schedule from the pull-down menu. Was there something about the site's Javascript code and my phone that didn't work well together?

I decided to walk -- 3rd to Wheeling to 6th to Delaware to 8th to College to 11th to Florence Ave to 24th to Harvard; 3.5 miles, not counting the 1.3 I'd already walked from 6th and Elgin to 3rd and Utica. I had wanted some exercise, but not quite that much, certainly not in Saturday's heat. I got to my car about 11:45, about the time that bus finally would have dropped me off.

I'm still not sure how I managed to twice misread the online bus schedule. I could have sworn that I saw "From downtown, Saturday" above the schedule with the 10:06 time the two times I checked.

Still, Tulsa Transit could make their website friendlier for smartphone users. Instead of using Javascript and depending upon the smartphone browser's implementation of Javascript for correct operation, do the processing on the host side. Instead of pulldown menus, provide a simple, unformatted list of links to routes and schedules.

And use a little compute power to save the rider's brain power from having to sort through the schedule information himself. Let the rider input his location, then return a list of the next scheduled arrival time for every bus and bus stop within walking distance. I might have chosen to walk the mile to 15th Street for a shorter wait for the bus, even though it would have meant another mile walk at the end of the journey. Seeing my best possibilities at a glance would have made it easier to choose my course of action.

Sure, someone might still want to access a Monday-Friday schedule from his mobile phone on a Saturday, so continue to make that possible, but it should be easier and simpler to access the schedules applicable to the current date and time.

The Saturday headways on the 210 route are ridiculous: 2 hours and 10 minutes between buses. The weekday headways aren't much better -- 40 minutes.

A final note: north midtown's streets are not as shady as they used to be, the result, no doubt, of the ice and wind storms (like the June 2006 microburst) of the last few years. Because of the heat I had worn a t-shirt, and I managed to get a lovely, bright red sunburn around my collar, despite the fact that I stayed on the shady side of the street as much as possible. On too many blocks, there was no shady side.

It's easy to forget the purpose of this holiday that has become the unofficial start of the summer vacation season. But the point of Memorial Day is to remember -- to remember those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who gave their lives in defense of our freedom.

A number of area cemeteries will hold special ceremonies today to honor our war dead.

Another way to honor those who died is to listen their stories as told by their brothers-in-arms who are still with us today. In 2007, the Downtown Tulsa Kiwanis Club invited their members who had served in World War II to talk about their war experiences during a couple of the club's weekly meetings. The sessions were videotaped, and you can view them (about 75 minutes in all) at Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton's web site.

The daily paper has an appalling story about tenants in several Tulsa apartment complexes going without central air conditioning because of the complexes' owner's bankruptcy, which is tied to the previous owner's default on mortgages and alleged non-disclosure of said default:

In a subsequent lawsuit in the same court, RC Sooner Holdings alleges that the bankruptcy was filed because the previous owners of the apartments, the development family behind the SpiritBank Event Center in Bixby, sold eight apartment complexes to RC Sooner Holdings without telling the buyer that the properties' mortgages were in default.

"We were duped," said Gorguin Shaikoli, vice president of Delaware-based RC Realty, which previously managed the properties for RC Sooner Holdings. "We thought we did all the due diligence."
Lawsuits, defaulted loans

Additionally, RC Sooner Holdings alleges that RemyCo, The Remy Cos., Home Realty Ventures and six members of the associated Remy family acknowledged that they were in default on their loans to Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise that buys mortgages from primary lenders, and agreed to pay $1.8 million in forbearance -- meaning to hold off on collection of the debt -- one month after selling the properties and transferring the loans to RC Sooner Holdings.

The lawsuit notes that Fannie Mae did not become aware of the transfer in ownership until January.

Fannie Mae, alleging that the sale of the apartments without its knowledge was a breach of the loan contracts, has also filed eight lawsuits in Tulsa County District Court against the Remys and the legal entities they created to own the apartments.

The lawsuits seek full repayment of the $28.58 million remaining balance on the eight loans.

As the story notes, the Remy family was behind the development of Regal Plaza and the Spirit Bank Event Center in northern Bixby. Regal Plaza was developed with the help of a sales tax rebate -- the city would pay the developer 1% of retail sales from the complex over the first 10 years. Tim Remy was also involved in a proposal for a retail development on the south bank of the Arkansas River in Bixby, called South Village, which likewise would have been assisted by a sales tax rebate. If the development didn't happen (and so far, it hasn't) or failed to bring in city sales tax revenue, the developer wouldn't get any of the money.

Bixby wisely chose incentives that didn't put the taxpayers at risk. Other cities have foolishly fronted money for developers and found themselves stuck and out of luck when the development flopped for one reason or another.

The Remy family of companies seemed to be the image of a healthy, progressive, successful real estate development and investment company. (For example, see this Journal Record feature story on the Remy Companies from 2006.) Regal Plaza was innovative for a suburban retail development (although it doesn't work as well as a pedestrian-friendly environment as it could have). It now appears that much of that success was built on a foundation of sand.

Whether their financial problems are rooted in dishonesty, hubris, the national economy, or some combination of the three, the Remy situation should be taken as a warning to local governments contemplating public-private partnerships. No matter how solid the private partner appears to be, structure the deal to put all the risk on the private partner. Don't stick the taxpayer with the bill.

By now you've surely heard one of the wonderful podcast tributes to recently departed Tulsans at Goodbye Tulsa. But Goodbye Tulsa is part of something bigger. This Land Press describes itself:

As a collaboration of Oklahoma's best writers, thinkers, and artists, the aim of This Land is to deliver engaging content that's relevant to Oklahomans, and to encourage a richer sense of community through our various projects.

The project is attracting a growing number of contributors, including some names you've seen on bylines in the local alternative press. For example, my friend and former colleague Erin Fore is writing about her new, simpler, nicotine-, booze-, and car-free life in Norman. Photographer Michael Cooper is posting portraits of fascinating Tulsans. He's posted a great shot of musician and sometime politician Rocky Frisco and one of Melinda and Marcia Borum making the mugs that are used to serve coffee at Melinda's Shades of Brown. Josh Kline is writing about movies. Ray Pearcey's first piece for This Land is about the Fab Lab in Kendall Whittier.

Some interesting things are happening at This Land Press. Keep an eye on it.

I forgot one of the fun things I don't get to do this weekend:

Tulsa's Admiral Twin, our only surviving drive-in theater, celebrates its 60th anniversary tonight with a showing of The Outsiders, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Tulsa novelist S. E. Hinton's first and most famous book. The Admiral Twin was one of the filming locations, so tonight you can go to the Admiral Twin and see what it looked like in 1982 when they were trying to make it look like it did in 1965.

A special screening of the 1983 film The Outsiders will be presented at the Admiral Twin Drive In on April 24, 2010 in conjuction with the 60th Anniversary of the Drive In. The Outsiders Drive In scenes were filmed at The Admiral Twin in 1982. This is a rare event and The Outsiders has not been shown at the Admiral in a long time so lets make this a celebration! Representatives from The Official Outsiders Website will be on hand for information and the Pre-Party begins at 6:00 PM Sharp till the movie starts so come out early and meet the local Tulsa Actors, Crew people, Tulsa Greasers and Soc's who were a part of the film, music will also play from the movie. Memoribilia will be on display with rare pictures, posters and movie props from The Outsiders. Anyone who owns a Vintage car is encouraged to come out. Costume contest for the best dressed Greaser or Soc with a prize giveaway. Gates open at 600pm and it is recommended that you get there early.

Stay gold, Admiral Twin.

MORE:

Joshua Blevins Peck has a story in UTW about the Admiral Twin. He'd like them to bring back the big speakers that you'd hang on your car window. Personally, I'd rather them bring back the seats in front of the concession stand.

Stephanie Stebbins enthuses about the Admiral Twin on FilmSnobbery.com. (She needs some better info, however, if she thinks that "there really isn't THAT much left in operation on Route 66.")

There are some exciting events in Tulsa over the next few days, but because of a heavy and strange work schedule I won't be able to make any of them. But that doesn't mean you have to miss them:

Friday, April 23, 2010: National Fiddler Hall of Fame Gala, Tulsa PAC, 7 pm. Two of my favorite bands are performing, both with Tulsa ties. The main act is Hot Club of Cowtown: Brady Heights resident Whit Smith on guitar, Elana James on fiddle, and Jake Erwin on bass, a trio that brings together western swing and gypsy jazz, Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt. (Not that they were far apart: Curly Lewis, fiddler for Johnnie Lee Wills and His Boys, said at the first NFHOF gala that all the western swing fiddlers wanted to play like Hot Club de France jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli.) The opening act is Rockin' Acoustic Circus, a group of talented young musicians that brings together bluegrass, jazz, blues, swing, classical, and rock-n-roll and which features (I say without fear of contradiction) the prettiest bluegrass cellist on the planet.

Saturday, April 24, 2010: QuikTrip Air and Rocket Racing Show: Fly-bys of military and civilian aircraft, including a B-2 Stealth Bomber! Rocket races! Aerobatics! Wing walking! Channel 2 Weather Show! World War II warbirds!

Already sold out, but worth a mention for future events:

Thursday, April 22, 2010: Blogger meetup at Siegi's Sausage Factory: Wish I could be there because the food's on my diet and the speaker is my good friend Erin Conrad. Watch TashaDoesTulsa.com to learn about future blogger meetups.

Friday, April 23, 2010, Saturday, April 24, 2010, Sunday, April 25, 2010: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at Augustine Christian Academy, 30th Street west of Sheridan. This little classical Christian school does a big musical every spring. Performances sold out, but they have a waiting list for tickets. Call 832-4600 to put your name on the list. (My wife and oldest son will be playing fiddle music at a pre-show buffet Saturday. )

The "Money Belt" made an appearance, under a different name, in an article in the Sunday paper about the different sections of Tulsa and where the dividing lines are. It came in an observation from southeast Tulsa resident and downtown Tulsa worker Brice Bogle:

A math lover, Bogle tried to teach us about the golden rectangle, which is supposedly the "perfect rectangle," he said. Citing Wikipedia for part of the definition, "many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the form of the golden rectangle, which has been considered aesthetically pleasing."

Midtown is like Tulsa's golden rectangle, he said, an area he defines as from the northwest corner of the Inner Dispersal Loop to Skelly Drive in the south, and Harvard Avenue on the east.

"When the leaders of Tulsa talk about doing things for the benefit of Tulsa, it seldom means an area outside of the golden rectangle," Bogle said. "To many outside of the rectangular area, it often seems that those inside the area do not think of Tulsa really being anything beyond it."

I would adjust his boundaries slightly -- shave off the less prosperous parts of southern and western Brookside and northeast of the Broken Arrow Expressway -- to come up with what I call the "Money Belt," but the attitude Bogle describes is spot on, and it manifests itself in election results, mayoral appointments, council-packing schemes, survey results, even water usage. That's not to say that all Money Belt denizens are afflicted with this insular attitude, or that those who are are bad people -- they just need to broaden their horizons. To them, the rest of Tulsa is something you drive through to get to Grand Lake or the airport.

But Money Belt blindness to the needs and concerns of the rest of Tulsa has real consequences. It's why it's important to provide some geographic balance on the city's boards and commissions, rather than drawing most appointees from this golden rectangle. It's why it's important for city councilors to advocate forcefully for their district's concerns; no one else in a position of power will. I applaud the councilors who rejected yet another golden rectangle resident for appointment to the planning commission and are pushing for representation on the commission from other parts of the city. (Oklahoma City's planning commission has a member from each city council district.)

(P.S. No, I don't think the Money Belt is a conspiracy. It's a demographic phenomenon, a mindset, a subculture. What makes it especially interesting is that it's a subculture that wields a good deal of political and economic power.)

TPD Update: "Our missing child has been located at 9600 S. Riverside Drive. The child was cold but otherwise will be ok. Thank you for your assistance."

A bulletin from the Tulsa Police Department, March 4, 2010, 8:06 p.m.:

On March 4 at about 4:30 PM, officers were notified of a nine year old low functioning special needs child that had walked away from his home in the 9200 block of South Lakewood Ave. The victim was last seen in the 4700 block of east 101st st. The child was last seen wearing a long sleeved lime green shirt with khaki stripes, khaki pants and black New Balance shoes. The victim is 4'09 with light brown hair. With temperatures expected below freezing it is extremely important that the child be located. Please call 911 if you see this child!

Tulsa Police Media Relations
www.tulsapolice.org
tpdnews@cityoftulsa.org

David Schuttler has posted some pretty pictures of Tulsa's January 2010 ice and snow storm.

As the weather gets worse, it's less likely I'll be able to post here at BatesLine, but as long as I have a cellphone connection, I can post brief updates on Twitter. You can follow my "tweets" (Twitter updates) by clicking this link: @BatesLine.

By consensus, tweets about the Oklahoma ice storm will be marked with "#okice". To see the latest tweets with this tag, click this link: #okice.

Several Oklahoma bloggers have set up a "crowdsourced" Google map at okicemap.com to show Oklahoma weather, road, and power conditions. Follow @okicemap on Twitter. (The moderator could use some help in keeping the map up to date. If you have time and some experience working with Google Maps, click the link and drop him a line.)

For northeastern Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas, visit the website of the National Weather Service in Tulsa. For central and western Oklahoma, visit the website of the National Weather Service in Norman.

MORE: Because this is a complex weather system, and the amounts and types of precipitation are hard to predect, The National Weather Service in Tulsa would like you to submit precipitation reports via their website.

I realize there are other things in the news tonight -- the FOP turning down the City of Tulsa's alternative to layoffs, the State of the Union show -- but my mind has been focused on getting my family ready for what could be a week or so without power.

In 2007, many homes lost their connection to the grid, and the need for electricians to make repairs delayed restoration of power for many Tulsans for more than a week. Even without that kind of damage at our house, we were without power for half a week. Thankfully, we've had plenty of warning, and there are reports that PSO is already mobilizing repair crews in preparation for storm damage.

We've stocked up on food, particularly calorie-dense, non-perishable stuff. We've almost finished getting all the laundry done. (Thanks, Tasha, for that excellent suggestion.) We're about done arranging the living room as sleeping quarters, close to the gas fireplace. One thing I didn't find that would be useful -- D batteries. Every store I was in today was completely out of them.

The latest (as of about 10 pm) ice forecast from the National Weather Service office in Tulsa is looking a little better -- still about a half-inch of ice, but wind speeds are projected to be about half what was previously forecast. Tulsa County is still in the 3 to 4 range for the SPIA Index -- likely power outages lasting anywhere from 1 to 10 days.

The Tulsa National Weather Service office website has a very helpful feature -- the Decision Support Page. There's a grid showing at a glance what kinds of hazardous weather are projected over the next seven days, and what the projected intensity is. Click on a button in the grid and it will take you to a page with more detail. The Decision Support Page also has a link to the latest multimedia briefing from the NWS. (As far as I could find, the Norman NWS website didn't have anything quite like this.)

Here are the latest ice accumulation maps from the NWS:

The latest update from the NWS has the freezing rain zone shifted northward, with Tulsa County in the 4 and 5 zone. Nearly everything north of I-40 would be either SPIA 4 or 5, with little to no ice south of I-40.

The latest forecast also drops the forecast snowfall for Tulsa from nearly a foot down to 4".

It would be really nice if either the cold front or the Pacific Ocean storm would get here well ahead of the other. It's their simultaneous arrival that threatens to mess things up badly.

The National Weather Service office in Tulsa posted another informative ice storm forecast briefing at 5 pm on Tuesday. This one is twice as long, shows the two weather systems that are on course to collide right over Oklahoma, explains some of the uncertainties in the timing of the storm, and goes into detail of the forecast timing of the arrival of rain, then freezing rain, then sleet, then snow around our region.

The local NWS office deserves praise for putting together an in-depth presentation in such a useful format. It's basically a Powerpoint slideshow with audio narration, using a software product called Articulate Presenter 6.0.1. You can easily skip back and forth between slides -- you don't have to sit through the entire 16 minutes to get the info you need.

(If you're clicking that link on Wednesday mid-morning or later, the briefing will have been replaced by an updated forecast.) (I enjoy using the future perfect tense when I have the opportunity.)

If the latest forecast holds, it's good news for Tulsa, terrible news for southern Okmulgee, Okfuskee, and Muskogee counties.

The black zones are level 5 on the 5 point Sperry Piltz Ice Accumulation index:

"Catastrophic damage to entire exposed utility systems, including both distribution and transmission networks. Outages could last several weeks in some areas. Shelters needed."

The latest briefing made the point repeatedly that the line between minimal ice and catastrophic ice could easily move a couple of counties north or south. It all depends on the movement of the storm, still off the California coast, and the timing of the arrival of the cold front.

GET READY: To help with your preparations, Tasha Does Tulsa has a list of what to have on hand during an Oklahoma ice storm. Tasha links to all the official sources and the standard lists (water, batteries, candles, non-perishable food) and adds several excellent suggestions drawn from her experience during Tulsa's last major ice storm in December 2007.

It's gonna be bad. Ice -- enough, with the forecast wind speeds, to cause significant power outages of the sort we had in December 2007 -- followed by lots of snow and single-digit temperatures. At least, that's what our local weatherfolk are predicting.

Click the link to view a 7-minute weather briefing from the National Weather Service Tulsa office, from this morning (Jan 26, 2010) at 9 a.m.

Here's that ice accumulation map from the briefing.

The storm that is expected to cause this mess is still over the Pacific Ocean, and how it moves once it hits land, and the timing of its arrival with respect to the timing of a cold front, will determine how bad the results are. This morning's National Weather Service briefing predicts about a half inch of ice and 7.5" of snow for Tulsa. The worst of the ice (but not as much snow) will be further southeast, following a line cutting through the heart of Okfuskee and Okmulgee Counties, northwestern Muskogee County, southern and eastern Wagoner County, western and northern Cherokee County, northern Adair County, and Arkansas' Washington County. Winds throughout the region are forecast to be about 25 MPH.

The ice and wind would combine to result in a Sperry-Piltz Ice Accumulation Index of 3 or more for all of northeastern Oklahoma (except for northern Osage, northern Washington, Nowata, Craig, Ottawa, Pushmataha, and LeFlore counties). That value is defined as, "Numerous utility interruptions with some damage to main feeder lines and equipment expected. Tree limb damage is excessive. Outages lasting 1-5 days."

For the band of the worst ice I mentioned above, their SPIA index is 4: "Prolonged & widespread utility interruptions awith extensive damage to main distribution feeder lines & some high voltage transmission lines/structures. Outages lasting 5-10 days."

Here's a map showing SPIA index values projected for Thursday/Thursday night:

Alan Crone of KOTV News on 6 explains the storm and its likely impact.

Crone says right now the ice and sleet portion of the storm will most likely occur south of the I-44 corridor.

Freezing rain will eventually transition into sleet Thursday afternoon and then to snow Thursday afternoon and evening before ending Friday morning.

Crone says there are areas of northern Oklahoma which could see 12+ inches of snow. Snowfall near Tulsa could be from 8 inches to more than a foot.

Areas south and east of Tulsa will have lesser amounts of snow.

Other forecasts vary.

Weather Channel forecast for Tulsa shows an overnight low of 34 on Wednesday night / Thursday morning, but the temp dropping to 32 by 9 a.m. Thursday with rain becoming freezing rain.

Accuweather expects freezing rain off and on between noon and 6 pm Thursday, followed by snow -- possibly 9".

Here's what Intellicast says:

Details for Thursday, January 28: Mix of rain and freezing rain. Highs in the mid 30s and lows in the low 20s.
Details for Friday, January 29: Cloudy. Highs in the low 30s and lows in the upper single digits.

Will this be worse than 2007? Last time around, when our power went out, I sent my wife and kids off to the in-laws in Arkansas, where they never lost power. My recollection is that the roads were not that bad; it was just that the ice and wind were bad enough to take down powerlines. I hunkered down at home in front of the gas fireplace and took hot showers by battery-powered lantern. My office had power, and so did many stores and restaurants, so there were places to escape during the day. When my sister got power, I stayed one night (Wednesday) with them and planned to stay a second, but the power came on as I was stopping back by the house to pick up a couple of things. As bad as it was, it could have been worse. Hopefully it won't be that bad this time around.

But given that Tulsa is in that meteorological sweet spot between cold northern air and warm, moist southern air, and thus prone to ice storms, shouldn't we be thinking harder about burying those power lines?

On GetRightOK, Jason Carini reports on a bill from Sapulpa State Sen. Brian Bingman to authorize a toll road connecting I-44 near 49th West Ave to the L. L. Tisdale Expressway. The bill is SB 1764, and it adds the incomplete Gilcrease Expressway route, first sketched in 1956 (and then known as the Sequoyah Loop), to the list, in Title 69, Section 1705, of 34 routes and exits which the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority is authorized to build. The OTA is required to fund any new routes or exits from its own funds, generated by the tolls it charges.

Of those 34 projects, most have already been built, some are duplicates, and others are unlikely to be feasible anytime soon. OTA wouldn't exercise its authority to build a new turnpike unless sufficient revenues would be generated to pay back the bonds and maintain its bond rating.

I suspect the main purpose of this bill it to permit the use of tolls to finance the most expensive part of completing the Gilcrease route, the bridge over the Arkansas River. Most of the Gilcrease route west of the airport has been funded by Tulsa citizens through the 3rd Penny sales tax.

The route is designated Oklahoma Highway 11 from I-244 near Memorial west to US 75, where it joins 75 north to 36th St. North, then jogs west to Peoria Ave. on its way to Sperry and Skiatook. (Long term, I think the intention was to route Highway 11 on the Gilcrease to the L. L. Tisdale (née;e Osage) Expressway, and then north on that route to Skiatook. I'm not aware of plans to give the unfinished western segment of the loop a highway number. I suspect the city would create a sign for the road similar to that used for the L. L. Tisdale Expressway. (But if the OTA funds it, they'd probably follow the pattern of the barely-legible-at-highway-speeds signs used on the Creek, Muskogee, and Kirkpatrick Turnpikes.)

A young couple, friends of ours from church, decided to mark their fifth anniversary* in an unusual way. Feeling the need for more exercise but not wanting to pay for a gym membership, they took the batteries out of their cars and began a 30-day experiment in getting everywhere by bike.

[Planetizen] sent me an article titled "The Absurdity of Stationary Bikes." It was making fun of all those people with gym memberships who drive around the parking lot four times to find the closest spot to the gym and then go in and ride on a stationary bike....

...I asked my wife if she would be up for taking the batteries out of our cars and learning how to get by without the car for 30 days starting on January 8th - the day of our fifth anniversary. She said okay but that she would be much more agreeable to the idea if it were in April.

January and February are probably Tulsa's worst months to be biking outside. They are Tulsa's coldest months when ice storms and snow are expected

That is why January 8 was so appealing to me. Is it possible for a couple to have no car during the worst months of the year in Tulsa without totally changing their lifestyle? If it is possible, what do you have to give up in order to do it? What are the challenges and obstacles to living life without the car in Tulsa? What are the benefits?

Nathan works downtown, Kristin works near Utica Square, and they live in Brady Heights, so the daily commute is manageable, but they're brave souls to try this in the middle of winter. The two are writing about their experiences and the practicalities of commuting by bike on a blog called Carless in Tulsa.

The month-long experiment began on January 9. They've made it to work each day, even in the sleet and cold temps of last Tuesday morning. They've even made a couple of small grocery trips, bringing home a dozen eggs from Blue Jackalope without breaking a single one. The one lapse (if you can call it that) was hitching a ride with neighbors instead of riding seven miles to church last Sunday in the bitter cold and wind.

It will be interesting to see what other obstacles they encounter and how they overcome them. Tulsa has a great collection of bike trails, but the layout is designed for recreation, not getting where you have to go. By the end of the month, Nathan and Kristin should have some interesting insights on what can be done to make the bicycle a practical means of transportation for more Tulsans.

(*What's especially stunning to me about Nathan and Kristin celebrating their fifth anniversary -- my daughter was a flower girl at their wedding when she was a wee four year old. Her age has doubled since then.)

Alumni of American Airlines' Sabre reservation system will gather Friday, January 22, 2010, at Mulligan's, in the Radisson Hotel on 41st St, between US 169 and Garnett Rd.

Here's the text of the invitation that's going around by e-mail:

The latest episode of Goodbye Tulsa is an unusual one: Gary Richardson talks about meeting with Oral Roberts, in which Roberts asked Richardson to explain the legal problems of fellow televangelist Robert Tilton. At the end of the meeting, Richardson, in turn, asked Roberts for the opportunity to talk to one person who had been unable to walk but was healed instantly after Roberts or one of his colleagues prayed for him. Roberts' answer is interesting.

It's been too long since I've done this, and here I'm going to try to do it on three hours sleep. My day is just about to end as yours is getting started. Here are some posts of interest from blogs in Tulsa and around Oklahoma:

Tasha Does Tulsa has a list of things to do around town now that your kids are off school because of the bitterly cold temperatures for Thursday and Friday. I'm intrigued by the Sand Springs Museum's exhibit of classic toys.

Mad Okie wonders about the "mother" depicted in a frequently-seen internet ad.

Mike McCarville has the latest on Army Lt. Michael Behenna of Edmond, who was sentenced to 20 years for killing an al-Qaeda operative in Iraq. Behenna is seeking clemency and also appealing the verdict on the grounds that the prosecution withheld expert testimony that would have exonerated Behenna.

Pollster extraordinaire Chris Wilson links to news that portable electronic signature gathering equipment is being developed by a Silicon Valley firm called Verafirma. The idea is to make it easier to solicit signatures using social media and gather signatures using smartphone apps. Wilson asks, "Are we ready for this?"

At Choice Remarks, Brandon Dutcher links to a quote from Lt. Gov. Jari Askins about the fiscal wisdom of the HOPE initiative, on the ballot in November, given the current economic realities. The initiative would peg Oklahoma education expenditures to those of surrounding states. According to a story in the Edmond Sun, a study by the Oklahoma House of Representatives indicates HOPE's passage would require a 40% tax increase or a 20% across-the-board cut of non-educational spending.

On his personal blog, Brandon says his daughter's avid interest in Sports Illustrated is "another reason to come courtin'."

Laurel Kane, owner of the Route 66 landmark Afton Station, traveled down Admiral Pl. in Tulsa, a Route 66 alignment from 1926-1932, looking for roadside history and snapped a few photos in the process. (Admiral was also the alignment for State Highway 33 and -- at various times -- US 75 and US 169, so it continued to attract roadside development long after 66 was shifted to 11th St.)

Emily, the Red Fork Hippie Chick, is looking for activist songs as part of a unit for her class. She knows a lot of left-leaning songs, but she wants to be balanced, so she's looking for songs from a conservative perspective (and not just -- Irritated Tulsa will be pleased to know -- "Toby Keith bleat[ing] about putting a boot up somebody's arse"). She's also looking for items people are willing to loan to create a hippie decor for her classroom.

Speaking of Irritated Tulsan, he has a list of Tulsa's top 10 places not to wake up dead. And his weekly Tulsa Tuesday post at The Lost Ogle reports "Downtown YMCA Moves, Creates Really-Homeless People."

Tyson Wynn gloats about the Corporation Commission's decision to use an overlay instead of a split to handle the 918's lack of available phone numbers. (My friend Dana Murphy was the only commissioner to vote the sensible way -- for a split. Area codes should indicate area.)

Lots of interesting articles on all manner of topics by Lynn Sislo over at Violins and Starships and by Charles G. Hill at Dustbury. But you knew that already, or should have. Lynn has a list of 12 things that every woman needs, including a "lifetime supply of drama repellent." Charles reports that he has written over 2 million words, and that's just since the start of his second decade of blogging.

Straight Shooter shares her two New Year's resolutions.

Yogi, lucky fellow, got to hear Hot Club of Cowtown at Cain's Ballroom last Saturday night.

Finally, The Pioneer Woman turns 41 today and has posted a gallery of old photos (with old hairstyles) to mark the occasion.

Congratulations to my friend Erin Conrad, who will be holding a photography open house at Joe Momma's Pizza, 1st & Elgin, downtown Tulsa, this coming Wednesday, January 6, 2010, from 5 to 8 pm. The Rock Bottom Ramblers will be performing. The open house will mark the launch of a month-long exhibition of Erin's work at Joe Momma's. Erin writes:

I'm working on my show this entire week. And it is FUN! So you should definitely come see me on January 6th at Joe Momma's, downtown Tulsa. I mean come on, a band, a little wine tasting, some cheesecake tasting and I definitely have something for you to take home with you if you come. Yep. It's true. It will be the best time you have in 2010. At least to that point ;)

Erin does some wonderful portrait photography. You can see samples of her work at her blog, http://erinconrad.blogspot.com.

'Tis the season for retrospectives.

You won't want to miss Dave Barry's 2009 month-by-month review.

John Hawkins at Right Wing News has put together a bunch of best-of lists for 2009, covering national politics from a conservative perspective:

• The 40 Best Political Quotes Of 2009
• The Top 40 Conservative Blogs For 2009 (Version 4.0)
• The Top 10 Conservatives of 2009
• The 25 Best Videos Of 2009 -- most of these are non-political

The Daily Telegraph offers its list of the top 10 conservative movies of the decade:

This is a list of the ten best films of the last decade that have advanced a conservative message, ranging from strong support for the military and love for country to the defence of capitalism and the free market. These are all brilliant movies that conservatives can be inspired by, and which are guaranteed to offend left-wing sensibilities in one way or another.

This is not intended as a list of films made only by conservative filmmakers, who are, it has to be said, few in number. Ironically, some of the best films of all time that have projected conservative values have been made by directors who are apolitical or even politically liberal. Steven Spielberg's magnificent Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, Cy Enfield's Zulu, and Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields, are cases in point.

Closer to home, Irritated Tulsan offers several countdown posts:

• The Top 20 Posts of 2009 -- that is, most popular
• The 10 Worst Posts of 2009 -- least popular
• Awkward 2009 Moments

And he wants you to cast your vote for Tulsan of The Year 2009.

And following tradition, Urban Tulsa Weekly has its list of 2009's best and worst.

If you've found an interesting best-of-2009 post, leave a note in the comments below.

One message you've been hearing a lot this year is to shop locally. Shopping in your own town keeps money circulating in the community, which keeps your friends and neighbors employed, and generates sales tax to help fund local government.

The Tulsa area has many unique local businesses that can help you stuff your Christmas stockings as you help the local economy. One of those businesses is Grace & Truth Books, based in Sand Springs:

Grace and Truth Books is a Christ-centered Christian book publisher and Christian book distributor that provides character building children's books and books for fathers and Christian women's books to help develop family devotion in the home. Many Christian book sellers carry and promote what "sells" and not what is spiritually profitable to build Christian charcter and strong godly families. At Grace and Truth, our focal point and goal has always been to bring the great, character-building books of past centuries to the attention of this generation of families! At Grace & Truth Books you'll find a great selection of Christ-honoring Christian Books for the whole family.

Grace & Truth Books is owned and operated by the Gundersen family, the realization of a long-held dream. They began selling classic 19th century books on character building from a small specialty publisher, became that publisher's biggest distributor, then acquired the publisher and began developing their own catalog of books.

You'll find contemporary books and classic books in Grace & Truth's catalog. The list of December specials includes

• Christian in Complete Armour, the (3 volume set) by William Gurnall
• A Simple Christmas: 12 Stories that Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit by Mike Huckabee (autographed-by-author copies)
• Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching, and Appreciating Boysby Hal & Melanie Young
• Before You Meet Prince Charming - A Guide to Radiant Purity by Sarah Mally
• For You They Signed: Character Studies from the Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence by Marilyn Boyer
• Morning by Morning: TruTone Leather, ESV edition by Charles H. Spurgeon
• The Person I Marry ~ Things I'll Think About Long Before Saying "I Do" by Gary Bower, featuring the oil paintings of Jan Bower

There's also a special collection of 19th-century children's books -- 11 titles, 900 pages total, on sale in December for $39.

Continued on sale for December! One of the best Christmas gifts you could ever give a child: the renowned, classic 19th century Children's Character Building Collection, in the highest-quality edition ever printed, as all 11 titles have beautiful new hand-painted covers! This is our all-time favorite set of children's stories from last century, and all with fresh artwork that captures the era!

Each of these delightful volumes are full of Biblical truth, presented in the most winsome possible stories, sure to warm the heart and teach the mind of every family member. The reading level for this set is said to be 4th - 5th grade, but we find children of all ages enjoy them, and even adults often tell us they find them delightful to read....

Filled with rich, Christ-centered (not merely moralistic) content, these reprints from the best of the American Tract Society's children's selections of the 1800's will be valued by any family who desire your children to be saturated in God's truth, as portrayed in fascinating stories.

Not on special this month, but if you're looking for books that will help history come alive for your children, they have G. A. Henty's historical novels.

According to Dennis's Facebook page, "Still taking Saturday book orders - and we can get them to you by Christmas."

There's an exciting article in the latest Urban Tulsa Weekly about an effort by my friends Justin and Leah Pickard to establish a small neighborhood grocery in the Brady Heights neighborhood in a 1920s building on Latimer between Cheyenne and Denver Aves. (So strictly speaking, it's not on a corner.)

Pickard described herself and her husband as community activists and Christians who are interested in a number of social issues, including the inaccessibility of affordable, healthy food for many north Tulsans and the lack of affordable home ownership options for those in low-income areas. The opportunity to open a corner market offering fresh, nutritious food was one they simply couldn't pass up, she said.

Pickard said she and her husband were educated about many of the problems facing north Tulsa by neighborhood activist Demalda Newsome of the North Tulsa Farmers Market. She said they are opening the market to help resolve some of those issues and not because they consider it a good economic opportunity.

"Oh, definitely--we're keeping our day jobs," she said. "I'm actually a stay-at-home mom most of the time, and (the store) is right around the corner from our house, so it'll be easy to get over there. But we'll be hiring people to work there because we wanted to create jobs. We wanted to have the opportunity to create employment."...

"We're going to offer healthy food, lots of organic food and lots of local stuff," Pickard said. "We're going to stay away from unhealthy food. If a (convenience store) carries it, we won't. In fact, there's one at Pine and Cincinnati near here. If people want junk food, they can go there."

Pickard said the building has two storefronts, and they will be leasing space to a neighbor who wants to open a coffeehouse on one side.

"She's ready to go," she said.

Pickard said she and her husband also are working with NTEDI to establish a distribution warehouse available to small, independent markets, so the owners can band together and place their orders from wholesalers in bulk, passing the savings along to customers. That will help make fresh, wholesome food affordable to all, she believes.

Justin's brother and sister-in-law, Nathan and Kristin Pickard, are also very active residents of Brady Heights. Nathan recently served as president of the neighborhood association, both Nathan and Kristin serve on the board, and they host occasional house concerts for musicians passing through Tulsa.

The Pickards are a wonderful family, and I know they will put a lot of sweat equity and a lot of love into this project, as they already have in the Brady Heights neighborhood. It will be exciting to see this project come to fruition.

Santa Claus returns to Tulsa's Philbrook Art Museum for the 25th anniversary of the Festival of Trees. Today (November 21, 2009) is the members' opening of the Festival; the Festival opens to the public on Sunday.

Santa will be at Philbrook each weekend of the festival (including the Friday after Thanksgiving) to meet children of all ages and for professional photos. Visit SantaTulsa.com to see Santa's schedule of appearances at this year's festival.

Later on Saturday afternoon, at 3 p.m., Philbrook will host children's illustrator Lane Smith, whose works include The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and Hooray for Diffendoofer Day. Reservations are required, and tickets are $15 for non-members.

(Full disclosure: Philbrook's Santa Claus is my dad.)

I've noticed a surge of interest among Tulsa's young adults in arts and crafts. You'll find their creations on sale at local boutiques and coffeehouses and at special events like last month's Indie Emporium, which featured handmade knitwear, jewelry, clothing, accessories, toys, art prints, photographs, greeting cards, and much, much more. Buying locally made, handcrafted gifts is a great way to encourage local artists, to keep money circulating in the local economy, and to find one-of-a-kind gifts for your loved ones.

Lindsay Neal and Erin Fore, two young Tulsa entrepreneurs, are holding an open house this Friday and Saturday to display their collection of beautiful handmade necklaces, bracelets, and earrings:

Lindsey Neal and Erin Fore have collaborated to create necklaces, bracelets and earrings from turquoise, amethyst, lava rocks, copper, sterling silver and other yummy materials.

We're holding a holiday open house for anyone who wants to buy locally hand-crafted jewelry for loved ones in a cozy, relaxing atmosphere. Please stop by and take a look. Bring your friends/folks/siblings. All are welcome.

Avoid mall/retail madness! Support Tulsa artists!

Prices range from $15-$80. Plus, you can create customized pieces and they'll be ready by mid-December. Heck, we'll take care of your whole shopping list!

The specifics:

When:

Friday, November 20, 2009, 9 am - 1 pm, and
Saturday, November 21, 2009, 2 pm - 6 pm.

Where:

1630 E. 35th Street

Click the picture above to see a larger image of one of their necklaces, or click this link to go to the Facebook page for the event and see many more creations by Lindsay and Erin.

A note from Joe Kelley, KRMG Morning Show host and chairman of Oklahoma's Make-A-Wish Foundation:

My Friends,

Six weeks ago, I accepted the call to become Chairman of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oklahoma. As a two-time childhood cancer survivor, the mission of the Make-A-Wish Foundation is very personal to me.

With three small, beautiful children in my home, I am very sensitive to the painful reality that all our children are potentially one doctor's appointment away from having their worlds turned upside down in a dizzying array of hospital visits, needle-sticks and surgeries.

During a family's darkest hour, the Make-A-Wish Foundation provides a shining beacon of light; a chance to escape the bonds of sickness, if even for just a moment.

Yet, these are extraordinary times.

Kids don't understand the economics of a recession. Their cancers don't share our sense of bad timing. While some charities can scale back their non-essential services, MAWFO has no non-essential services. We don't have multiple functions and departments. We only do one thing: We grant wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses.

The average Wish costs $7000 and at this moment, there are 94 Oklahoma children waiting to have their Wishes granted. Many of these children don't have the luxury of patience.

Please take a moment of your time right now and help make Wishes come true with a donation to Oklahoma's Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Please call 5 friends and ask them to do the same. Forward this email. Pass a hat at your office. Call a generous friend or relative. Clean out coins from your car and home. Take a tax deduction. Call 918-492-WISH.

Donate online right now at: http://bit.ly/OSdWW

Or, come see me in person November 17th, 18th, or 19th at LaFortune Park in Tulsa as KRMG hosts our 4th Annual Stories of Light broadcast to benefit Make-A-Wish. All money raised goes to Oklahoma children suffering from life-threatening illnesses.

To put my money where my 'ask' is, I'm personally committing $1,000 to the Stories of Light campaign this year (which is only $83/month or less than $3/day).

Thank you very kindly for your generosity,

Joe Kelley

Make-A-Wish Foundation "grants wishes to children who have been diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions to enhance the human experience with hope, strength and joy." You can hear stories about Oklahoma's wish kids on the KRMG Morning Show tomorrow and Thursday. Stories about some of the children who benefited from last year's Stories of Light online at KRMG.com. You can also read stories about wish kids on the Oklahoma Make-A-Wish Foundation website.

A few links to tide you over:

Tulsa Gal has a photo-filled post on the history of the Tulsa State Fair. The aerial shots showing the evolution of the fairgrounds are fascinating.

Tulsa TV Memories has a page devoted to the Tulsa State Fair, including the classic1965 radio jingle that inspired Tulsa Gal's blog entry title. The page includes memories of TV news remotes from the fairgrounds.

The cover story in last week's Urban Tulsa Weekly has more on Tulsa State Fair history and its 2009 incarnation.

Here's the Tulsa State Fair homepage, with links to schedules and info on exhibits, entertainment, and parking. There's a lot you can do for free, once you pay to get in the gate. For example, the Oklahoma State Fiddle Championship is on Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm, and the Mandolin, Finger-style, and Flatpicking Guitar Championships are on Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm, both on the Coke Stage, southeast corner of the QuikTrip Center (aka the IPE Building).

Natasha Ball is having an identity crisis and thinks -- thinks -- she needs a makeover to fix it. You can help her reach her goal -- or if you prefer, you can help Holly Wall reach her goal. And don't miss Tasha's weekly list of what to do in Tulsa this weekend, which hints at a gut-wrenching Tulsa State Fair experience from her childhood. (To this dad, who can't stomach twirly rides, it sort of sounds like just desserts.)

Mad Okie, Steven Roemerman, and Man of the West each have some thoughts on the place of party loyalty in a city election. More from Mad Okie on the topic here.

Man of the West was inspired by a recent trip to Barnsdall to take some photos and muse about his vision of the local church as the heart of its neighborhood. I enjoyed his photos of Victory Baptist Church, which is housed in a lovely two-story school house which once was home to Pershing School. (Maybe next time he visits, he can get a closeup of the cornerstone of that building.)

In case you missed it from early last month, Jason Kearney has a post on the accident that killed bicyclist Barbara Duffield and why the immigration status of the driver who killed her matters.

MORE: Irritated Tulsan has 25 Warning Signs the State Fair Is in Town.

My friend Kathryn Atwood will be walking next month in the Greater Los Angeles Walk to Defeat ALS. This is the third year that she's done this walk, the third year since ALS claimed the life of her father, Dr. Roger M. Atwood, a Tulsa physician. Kathryn's walk team, "Remembering Roger," has a goal to raise $5,000.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease after its most famous victim, has no cure or treatment. The ALS Association is raising money to fund research toward a cure and to provide practical helps to those who suffer from it. Kathryn writes:

During his fight, we discovered the power of the "sock pull" and a little gadget that helped him put on his shirts by himself. All the little things, not to mention the wheelchair and ultimately the Bi-Pap oxygen mask, enabled my dad to maintain his dignity, to feel still a bit self-sufficient even as his muscles stopped working and the disease took firmer hold on his and all of our lives. The money raised from this walk goes directly to helping families cope in a very real, literal way with this disease. It will go toward supplying those important tools like sock pulls and wheel chairs, to those suffering from ALS. It will also go towards spreading awareness of the urgency to find treatments and a cure.

If you were a patient or colleague of Dr. Atwood's, if you're a friend of the family, or if you just want to see a cure found for ALS, please join me in supporting Kathryn's walk in memory of her father.

Today (August 8, 2009) there's a celebration in honor of the centennial of Tulsa's purchase of its oldest park. Owen Park, southeast of W. Edison St. and N. Quanah Ave., was acquired by the City of Tulsa in August 1909.

The highlight of the day's festivities is the construction of a new playground for the park. Here's the city press release:

Join us Saturday, August 8 as we celebrate the 100th birthday of Tulsa's very first park. This action-packed day will feature a morning fishing tournament, day-long playground construction, trolley tours, climbing wall, stage acts, and more.

The history of Owen Park neighborhood can be traced back to early territorial days and businessman Chauncey Owen. His wife, Martha, received an allotment of 160 acres from the Creek Nation. The land encompassed what is now known as Owen Park and the surrounding neighborhood. These lands were often used for public events even before the park was given its official designation. Owen wanted to divide and sell the land, and offered more than 20 acres to the city. In March of 1909 the city held its first Park Commission meeting and by August 18, 1909 had decided to purchase the land from Owen. The park known as Owen Park officially opened June 8, 1910.

The festivities to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Owen Park will kick off early that day with a fishing tournament. The tourney, for fishers 15 years and younger, begins at 7 a.m. and ends at noon (bring your own bait).

The day officially kicks off at 8 a.m. on the Main Stage. The construction of the Kaboom Playground will begin, and a variety of acts will entertain the crowd throughout the day. The QT Mobile Kitchen will be on site, as well as displays and booths from Neighborhood Associations, and the Tulsa Fire Department.

A climbing wall will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the former Tennis court area. A Kids Parade will take place at 4 p.m. and be led by the winner of the fishing tournament. Then at 5 p.m., Mayor Kathy Taylor will read a proclamation commemorating the Tulsa Parks' centennial and the event will conclude with the 6 p.m. unveiling of the Kaboom Playground.

The fishing tourney is already underway, but there's still time to get out and enjoy.

And don't forget -- today is also the rescheduled Red Fork "Down on Main Street" festival, from 10 to 2.

NOTE: The Down on Main Street festival was originally scheduled for May but was rained out, and it's been rescheduled for this Saturday.

This coming Saturday (August 8, 2009) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., old downtown Red Fork will be home to a "Down on Main Street" festival. Red Fork was a separate town once upon a time, annexed into the City of Tulsa circa 1927. It's now home to the first "Main Street" program within the City of Tulsa.

Oklahoma has had an active and successful Main Street program for many years, encouraging restoration of historic buildings and the commercial revitalization of dozens of small-town downtowns across the state.

The Main Street program is not just for small towns. Oklahoma City has four active Main Street programs: Stockyards City, Capitol Hill, Plaza District, and Eastside Capitol Gateway; Automobile Alley used to be on the list, too. When I asked City of Tulsa officials back in the late '90s about starting it up here, the responses were oddly reluctant, as if such a thing might get in the way of tearing buildings down.

At long last, two years ago, Red Fork became the first Main Street program in the city, with hopes of bringing Southwest Blvd -- old Route 66 -- back to life. The Down on Main Street festival is part of the program to promote the area and bring the community together. From the festival flier, here are the events planned:

• Pie contest
• Ollie's Restaurant's Blue Plate Special
• Live music
• Global Garden's Kids' Zone
• Art show
• Farmers market with a Westside charm

The festival will take place along Southwest Blvd. near 41st St. Parking and Shuttles will be available at Webster High School, 1919 West 40th Street., and OSU Women's Center, 2345 Southwest Blvd.

The deadline to enter the pie contest is TODAY (August 3, 2009). You must have your entry form and a $5 fee to the Red Fork Main Street office, 3708 Southwest Blvd, by 5 p.m. Click here for a form and more details.

Here's hoping for good weather for Saturday's Down on Main Street festival.

There's an effort underway to try to land a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) franchise for Tulsa. The president of the league is in Tulsa today for a reception to which BOK Center premium seat holders have been invited, with a message from Mayor Kathy Taylor urging them to turn out and support this "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our city."

The e-mail has the over-the-top language we expect to hear from Taylor: "Bringing the WNBA to Tulsa is a civic investment that will add to the quality of life and benefit the growth and revitalization of downtown. It will provide positive encouragement and influence to young women, men and aspiring athletes."

Tulsa World Sports Editor Mike Strain has his doubts about a Tulsa WNBA team's chances:

The league has been unstable, with seven teams either folding, suspending operations or relocating since 2002.

And investors in this venture face a question: Is there demand for women's professional basketball in Tulsa?

That's a tough one to answer, but some evidence doesn't look good. Women's college games draw poorly in Tulsa. And the Tulsa 66ers' men's professional basketball team -- albeit a minor league club -- also has attendance that routinely falls under 2,000.

He quotes several reader comments, including this one:

DrewTU: This will have lower attendance than 10 AM movies on a Tuesday.

If private investors want to bring a team as one entertainment option among many for Tulsans, let it succeed or fail based on whether Tulsans want to spend their money to see the games. But this doesn't warrant the attention of elected officials or the waving of the "civic pride" flag to manipulate people into attending the games or sponsoring the team. We've already given them a $200 million subsidy for a place to play. They will qualify for the same Quality Jobs Act incentives that the Oklahoma City Thunder receives. That should be enough.

Some quick links to local bloggers and other local news:

Tulsa Boy Singers will hold tryouts for new singers this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at Trinity Episcopal Church, 6th & Cincinnati in downtown Tulsa. Boys from 8 to 18, in all vocal ranges, are welcome to try out. Just come prepared to sing a simple song like "Happy Birthday" or "My Country 'Tis of Thee."

(Somewhat related news: Mark Evanier links to a fascinating obituary for Bob Mitchell. Mitchell, who died at the age of 96, founded a boys choir in 1934 which he oversaw for 66 years. The Robert Mitchell Boys Choir performed in Hollywood hits like Going My Way and The Bishop's Wife. "Alumni include members of the Lettermen, the Modernaires and the Sandpipers...." Mitchell was an organist who played for silent movies in his teens and was organist at Dodger Stadium from 1962 to 1965. He began playing for silent films once again at age 79.)

Erin Fore has a cover story about "unschooling" in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly, in which she talks to parents and children in several Tulsa families that take an unstructured but highly motivated approach to home-based learning.

Steven Roemerman has a couple of new posts:

• Funny: Steven is paid a visit from his future self, who reports that government cheese is legal tender in Obama's sixth term as president.
• Serious: Steven responds to my post on Congressman Sullivan, stating that I Timothy 3 should serve as the standard not only for ecclesiastical leaders but for political leaders as well.

The Tulsa Police Department warns of a phony phone campaign soliciting funds in the name of Chief Ron Palmer. TPD Blog reminds readers never to give out your credit card number, bank account info, or any other personal information to an unsolicited caller.

Irritated Tulsan has some ideas on how to deal with the people holding those big "Shame on _____" banners around town on behalf of the carpenters' union.

Lynn Sislo reports great satisfaction using Tulsa's Apertures Photo for a digital photo enlargement:

Remember this? [A photo of a fawn.] I like it so well I got an (approximately 16″ X 20″) enlargement of it. This was a real "I LOVE modern technology" moment. I emailed the digital photo to Apertures Photo in Tulsa and a few days later the print was delivered to my house. It turned out fantastic and I didn't have to drive to Tulsa to get it. Besides the convenience it is a much higher quality enlargement than anything I ever got with film. Even the 5″ X 7″ enlargements I got from 35mm negatives were unacceptably poor but I have this huge print made from a digital image and it looks absolutely professional.

Jeff Shaw supplies some timely quotes from the Founding Fathers on the importance of honesty and virtue in government. Jeff has also posted a slide show of recent photos taken with 15-year-old Kodak 35mm film and an interesting entry on the April 1932 issue of the Etude Music Magazine. This particular issue featured interviews with Sergei Rachmaninoff and John Philip Sousa. The issue also contained sheet music, and the front cover is a Rockwellesque painting by Charles O. Golden of a boy conducting his friends in a little band, imagining that he is conducting a symphony orchestra. (More about Etude here.)

Dave the Oklahomilist has been blogging about a variety of important national issues, including Justice Ginsburg's comments about Roe v. Wade and "growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of" and the provisions in the Cap and Trade bill (Waxman-Markey) that will require intrusive energy efficiency inspections of your home.

Wendell Cox at New Geography blog remembers the original Dust Bowl and takes note of its reversal, as Californians move to Oklahoma for affordable housing and "hassle-free commuting."

Several videos of the mishap at Tulsa's July 4, 2009, fireworks show have been uploaded to YouTube; I've posted three of them after the jump. Here's KOTV's story on what happened:

"What happened was a mortar that went off - exploded either really close to its container, or inside its container, and caused a fire on the trailer, burning over into another trailer nearby," said Captain Michael Baker of the Tulsa Fire Department.

The blaze melted the electronics needed to control the fireworks show. No one was injured as a result of the explosion.

An entire trailer devoted to the grand finale, filled with 1,000 shells, had to be dismantled.

(Here's a link to Irritated Tulsan's incisive analysis of the fiasco and his "mommy-blog quality" photos of the sunset earlier that evening.)

Click through to see those videos.

The morning began with the patter of a steady drizzle on the roof as I snoozed in bed. It was a good soaking rain, much appreciated by my lawn.

As tempting as it was to stay in bed listening to the rain, I decided to bestir myself and head out to the taxpayers' "tea party" at Haikey Creek Park. I arrived about half way through the festivities. The rain continued, off and on, but there was a good crowd (300 is my guess), I saw a lot of familiar faces, listened to a few speeches, and had a Nathan's hot dog.

Shortly after I got home, the power went out, affecting several blocks, including the grocery store. It came back on, but I didn't trust it to stay on, so instead of working on the computer, I left it off and worked on laundry and housecleaning. There was another short outage about 3. I took a nap while the clothes were drying.

The power seemed stable, so I went back to work on my computer project -- upgrading the hard drive on the kitchen computer. My attempt to do a direct disk-to-disk transfer using Clonezilla Live had failed once the night before, so I tried it again, and again it failed. (It failed on the final fsync call.)

About 8 I decided to go try to see some fireworks. My family was visiting my in-laws in Arkansas, and I didn't have an invite anywhere, so I drove around to see what was open (Blue Dome district was completely shut down), wound up at 16th and Boston, and started walking towards the 21st Street bridge. As I got close to the bridge, someone called my name. It was Maria Barnes, the once and possibly future District 4 councilor. She waved me over, and I sat down to chat with Maria and her family as we waited for the show to begin.

The fireworks began at 9, before the sky had turned completely dark. Word was that the early start was to try to beat the storms that were on the way. About 15 minutes later, we saw a whole bunch of fireworks go off near the deck of the bridge and more shoot up and explode. End of show. Maria's husband James said he saw a fire truck headed toward the launch site. Turns out a mortar misfired and the electronics for the remaining fireworks were destroyed.

Heading back to the house, I saw thousands of people in lawn chairs in the parking lots on the east side of Yale between 15th and 21st, as if they were expecting a fireworks show. But the Drillers were out of town and Bell's, which always had a great display, has been gone for three years. As I walked down to the store to pick up a few items, I saw a few rogue rockets here and there, accompanied by lightning in the clouds, but no show.

I brought back a free Red Box video rental (thanks 918 Coupon Queen!) -- Gran Torino, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood -- and watched it as I folded laundry and Clonezilla did its work. It's a wonderfully multifaceted story. You can read it as a meditation on the meaning of manhood. We're presented with several models to consider: Walt Kowalski (the main character, a Korean war vet and retired auto worker), his sons, the Hmong, Latino, and black gang members, the young priest, and the young Hmong man that Kowalski reluctantly takes under his wing. There's another angle dealing with the clash of cultures. The corrosive spread of gangbanger culture beyond its ghetto roots is another recurring theme. I think at some point I need to watch Gran Torino with my oldest son, followed by a long discussion. (The language is a deterrent to doing that anytime soon.) The movie reinforces my growing conviction that enculturation -- attachment to a healthy culture -- is more important than education in preventing crime and poverty.

Elsewhere in the Oklahoma blogosphere:

Nothing worked out quite as David Schuttler had hoped, but he did catch video of the final barrage of the River Parks fireworks display.

Irritated Tulsan has posted a collection of memories of Bell's Amusement Park. Shadow6's first date story is my favorite.

Tasha Does Tulsa took advantage of the long weekend to catch up on her blog-stalking. (And many thanks for the kind words, Natasha.)

Laurel Kane had plenty of visitors at Afton Station, despite the rain, and she made it down to Tulsa to see a parade of Gold Wing motorcycles on their way to watch fireworks at the river.

Brandon Dutcher links to a paper by Neil McCluskey of the Cato Institute. Far from being the bedrock of American liberty, public education often been used to oppress local autonomy and individual freedom:

Today, following decades of district consolidation, the imposition of statewide curricula, and threats of national standards, all religious, ideological, and ethnic groups are forced to fight, unable to escape even into the relative peace of truly local districts. The result is seemingly constant warfare over issues such as intelligent design, abstinence education, multiculturalism, school prayer, offensive library books, and so on. When diverse people are forced to support a single system of public schools, they don't come together, they fight to make theirs the values that are taught.

We attended Tuesday night's free Starlight Concert at the River West Festival Park to hear a concert by the U. S. Air Force Band of the West, performing alongside the Air National Guard Band of the Gulf Coast. It was well-attended and well worth the time to go.

I think it must have been about 1970 when I first attended one of these concerts. They've been going for 63 years. Back then, they were held in Skelly Stadium, with a bandstand built over the lower west side stands and concert-goers sitting in the upper deck (which no longer exists). The programs were staffed by local union musicians -- I suspect it was a way to keep them busy during the slow season -- and featured light classical pops, big band hits, standards, Sousa marches, selections from Broadway musicals and movie sound tracks, and even a few recent pop tunes. It was a pleasant thing to watch the stars come out, to feel the air cool off, and to hear melodies floating on the breeze.

Back to 2009: For some reason the amphitheater wasn't used, so the crowd spread out on the goose-poop-covered festival ground to the south. (We forgot chairs, but had some beach towels in the van.) The lack of a proper bandshell made it hard to hear the music too far from the tent-covered concrete pad that served as a stage. But we found a place to the side, behind the percussion section, that allowed us to hear the whole band and to watch the percussionists work the chimes, bells, gongs, and drums.

We all enjoyed the concert. It began, as you might expect, with the National Anthem (the audience was invited to sing along). One of the highlights was a medley of themes from spy and detective movies and TV shows, including the James Bond films, the Pink Panther movies, Get Smart, Dragnet, and a few specific Bond movies (e.g. Goldfinger, Live and Let Die).

There were three featured vocalists, including Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Lane McCray, Jr. He sang "A Foggy Day in London Town" and Michael W. Smith's "There She Stands." The MC informed us that McCray was an international recording star, selling over 10 million records. You've probably never heard of him -- I hadn't -- but that just illustrates the disconnect between the American and European music scene. McCray had been on active duty in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, but left to pursue a career in music. McCray began singing as part of a "Eurodance" duo called La Bouche. Their first album shipped double platinum. According to the official website, "La Bouche sind Erotik und heiße Preformance mit Ohrwurmcharakter." (I don't know what that means, but I love German compound nouns.)

The concert ended with a medley of the official songs of the five branches of the Armed Forces, winding up as the band took to their feet to sing and play "Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder" (MP3 link). I was disappointed not to see "Stars and Stripes Forever" on the program, but they played it as an encore as the crowd clapped to the beat.

The Band of the West / ANG Band of the Gulf Coast goes on to Weatherford, Texas, for a Thursday night appearance, the final date of their week-long tour through Oklahoma and north Texas.

There are three more Starlight Concerts this summer, with the Starlight Concert Band under the direction of Dale Barnett, formerly the championship-winning band director at Union and Catoosa High Schools. Barnett has been directing the band for six years, but he started with the band as a trombonist and euphonium player in 1971. Each concert has a different theme:

July 7 - A Tribute To Super Heroes
July 14 - Movie Night
July 21 - Swingin' Under the Stars & Silent Auction

Each concert begins at 8. Tonight's show ended about 9:45. There are concession booths, but you can also bring your own refreshments.

The Starlight Concert Band will also play a concert in Kiefer this Friday night, July 3, at 8 pm in the municipal park.

It's a great (and free) Tulsa tradition. Bring the family, bring a picnic, and enjoy beautiful music under the stars.

A browser crash took out a bunch of edits to a post about my recent trip to southern California, and I'm in no mood to recreate all that now.

So crack open a Mulo and visit Irritated Tulsan and his collection of vintage ads from summers past, including one for the Kip's Big Boy at 11th and Trenton. He's got some pretty neon photos, too, and he wants your favorite memories of Bell's Amusement Park.

Modern Tulsa has a photographic recap of the "Living in Hi-Fi Tour" of Lortondale's mid-century modern homes.

Holly Wall has a guest post up at Tasha Does Tulsa reporting on Thirsty Thursday at Drillers Stadium.

A fascinating new blog, Tulsa Gal, focuses on Tulsa history. Nancy is a researcher and volunteer for the Tulsa Historical Society.

Finally, make your blood boil with the Infrastructurist's then-and-now photos of beautiful train stations that met the wrecking ball.

Twice this week I have been driving west on 7th St. downtown (which is the only direction you're supposed to drive on 7th St. downtown) and have encountered another driver headed east.

A couple of days ago, at about 6 pm, I was in the left-hand lane on 7th approaching Elgin and another car was between Detroit and Elgin headed toward me in the same lane. The car stopped when it got to Elgin, I honked and proceeded through slowly, driving around the disoriented car, shouting, "It's a one-way street!"

Today was worse. At about 4:50 I took the 7th St. exit from US 75 northbound. Just past the top of the flyover curve, there was a woman in a VW convertible, and the car was almost sideways as she attempted to make a K turn to head back the right way.

The curve of the narrow overpass, the high side barriers, the fact that the car's top was down, and the car's white color all made it hard to spot. Thank the Lord I didn't blink, sneeze, or yawn at the wrong moment, or I'd have plowed right into her.

It doesn't speak well for the vitality of downtown (at least of that part of downtown) that the traffic is so sparse you could be headed down the wrong way on a one-way street or exit ramp and never know it.

Looking at the Google Maps image of the off-ramp, it's easy to see how the driver might have been confused. The off-ramp from southbound US 75 is separated from the northbound US 75 off-ramp by a concrete median. DO NOT ENTER signs look like they apply only to the left side, as if you were on a two-way divided road. There's a WRONG WAY sign, but not until you're pretty on to the off-ramp.

Some big DO NOT ENTER signs just west of Elgin, on both the north and south sides of the street, might help.

MORE: Reader Paul Uttinger provides photographic evidence (from the Beryl Ford Collection) that 7th was not always one-way. This is looking east along 7th from the alley between Detroit and Elgin.

The three-story building visible behind the policeman's face is the only thing in that photo that's still standing. Everything else was gone by the last Sanborn Map update in 1962.

Barthelmes Conservatory will celebrate its fifth anniversary with a special concert this coming Tuesday night, May 19, 2009, at 6 p.m., in the Bernsen Center, 708 S. Boston in downtown Tulsa, in the Grand Hall on the 4th floor. Admission is free. About two dozen students will perform short pieces.

For a story in the latest Urban Tulsa Weekly, Holly Wall spoke with Aida Aydinyan, executive director of the conservatory about the school's history and mission:

"All (of Barthelmes') 63 scholarship students are unique and have fascinating personal stories," said Aydinyan. "However, two of them ... are the first two students to be graduating from the Conservatory Music School program but also that these very first graduating students have been accepted to higher education institutions because of the Conservatory. These amazing and significant happenings deserve to be recorded and achieved.

"It is an incredible feeling to realize that we have invested in the future of these scholarship students and the pride derived from the fact that we indeed prepared them for success in college and performing arts field," she said.

I'm proud to say that my daughter (shown above) was selected to perform a short solo piano piece and my son will perform as part of an ensemble. Another ensemble piece will be performed by Bo Willis and Kiersten Morales on violin, Drew Crane on piano, Emma Hardin on cello, and Zac Hardin on bass. (Emma and Zac play bluegrass cello and bass for Rockin' Acoustic Circus, so Tuesday is a chance to hear their classical side.) I heard this quintet's performance at a studio concert last week -- marvelous. Bo Willis is graduating from the Barthelmes Music School program and will attend the University of Tulsa on a full scholarship.

The theory, as I understand it, is that cities with some combination of great public amenities, natural beauty, and a vibrant cultural scene will attract the Creative Class. Bright young people now pick a place to live, whether or not they have a job waiting for them. The presence of these creative young people will attract employers who need intelligent and creative employees and who will pay them well. The creative young people themselves, as they mix and mingle around town, will create new ventures that will attract new dollars into the local economy.

The recession may be giving us a chance to see how that theory plays out in the real world. Via See-Dubya, I learned of a May 16, 2009, Wall Street Journal story headlined "'Youth Magnet' Cities Hit Midlife Crisis: Few Jobs in Places Like Portland and Austin, but the Hipsters Just Keep on Coming":

This drizzly city along the Willamette River has for years been among the most popular urban magnets for college graduates looking to start their careers in a small city of like-minded folks. Now the jobs are drying up, but the people are still coming. The influx of new residents is part of the reason the unemployment rate in the Portland metropolitan area has more than doubled to 11.8% over the past year, and is now above the national average of 8.9%.

Some new arrivals are burning through their savings as they hunt for jobs that no longer exist. Some are returning home. Others are settling for low-paying jobs they are overqualified for....

The worst recession in a generation is disrupting migration patterns and overturning lives across the country. Yet, cities like Portland, along with Austin, Texas, Seattle and others, continue to be draws for the young, educated workers that communities and employers covet. What these cities share is a hard-to-quantify blend of climate, natural beauty, universities and -- more than anything else -- a reputation as a cool place to live. For now, an excess of young workers is adding to the ranks of the unemployed. But holding on to these people through the downturn will help cities turn around once the economy recovers.

Portland has attracted college-educated, single people between the ages of 25 and 39 at a higher rate than most other cities in the country. Between 1995 and 2000, the city added 268 people in that demographic group for every 1,000 of the same group living there in 1995, according to the Census Bureau. Only four other metropolitan areas had a higher ratio. The author of the Census report on these "youth magnet" cities, Rachel Franklin, now deputy director the Association of American Geographers, says the Portland area's critical mass of young professionals means it has a "sustained attractiveness" for other young people looking for a place to settle down.

One of the Portland migrants actually had a job on arrival, but lost it:

Tyler Carney, a 29-year-old computer programmer, moved here from Tulsa, Okla. in September when the Internet-security company he was working for relocated to downtown Portland. He was laid off two months later, and today is living off the $417 in weekly unemployment checks. He has trimmed expenses, such as cutting out restaurant meals, ending cable and switching to slower Internet service. Mr. Carney is spending most of his days job-hunting, but has no plans to go back to Tulsa anytime soon. "Portland is a little more progressive than Tulsa was, as far as the culture goes," he says. "This town is awesome. Tulsa tended to roll up the streets at night."

The company, not named in the WSJ story, appears to be Vidoop. Vidoop, which specializes in the user authentication aspect of computer security, was founded in Tulsa. In February 2008, they hired Scott Kveton of the OpenID Foundation as "VP of Open Platforms and the Director of the company's new West Coast office in Portland." In June, they announced that they would move the entire company to Portland. The reasons for the move seem to fit the Creative Class theory of economic development:

"The food was the kicker," [co-founder Joel] Norvell joked. Portland's restaurant scene helped sell them on the Rose City, but it's the city's community of software developers that hooked them. Although Vidoop's tools are proprietary, they interface with an open source login standard called OpenID. Vidoop hopes to tap into the collaborative spirit behind open source software that's prevalent in Oregon's developer community. "We need a certain kind of developer with a certain kind of expertise, and that just did not exist in Oklahoma," [co-founder Luke] Sontag said.

In September, a group of employees moved by caravan from Tulsa to Portland, a trip involving "forty-two people, eight pets, five U-HAUL(R) trucks, four RVs, two trailers, two cars, one camera crew and one blueberry bush."

In November, Vidoop announced a layoff. Last week, there was another layoff.

MORE: Vidoop not only moved the company to Portland, they moved the band Black Swan (now known as No Kind of Rider) as well, but the band seemed more than content with the Tulsa scene:

Any of you who know any of us will know that over the two years of our existence, there's one topic that we talk about the most:

the Tulsa scene.

It is the fans who come out to show after show (even in the same week), when we have nothing to put in their hands and the bands who support each other, share and trade shows, verbally abuse each other during Halo and generally push each other to be better.

It is the venues and the record store that incubated us when we had no equipment, 4 songs and even fewer fans at the show -- that invite us back even after we blow the speakers on their sound system.

It is the coffee shops and bars you can visit any night and see all these people and not even talk about music, but about everything else in the world in a real way. Its that we have journalists in our local papers who actually give a damn about GOOD music, who will both promote AND show up at a show.

(Found via Oklahoma Rock.)

One of Vidoop's programmers was Black Swan's lead singer, Sam Alexander, so the company president offered to move the whole band to Portland if the programmer would stay with the company. In Gary Hizer's profile of Black Swan in the Feb. 27, 2008, Urban Tulsa Weekly, band members talk affectionately of the Tulsa music scene.

This coming Saturday (May 2, 2009) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., old downtown Red Fork will be home to a "Down on Main Street" festival. Red Fork was a separate town once upon a time, annexed into the City of Tulsa circa 1927. It's now home to the first "Main Street" program within the City of Tulsa.

Oklahoma has had an active and successful Main Street program for many years, encouraging restoration of historic buildings and the commercial revitalization of dozens of small-town downtowns across the state.

The Main Street program is not just for small towns. Oklahoma City has four active Main Street programs: Stockyards City, Capitol Hill, Plaza District, and Eastside Capitol Gateway; Automobile Alley used to be on the list, too. When I asked City of Tulsa officials back in the late '90s about starting it up here, the responses were oddly reluctant, as if such a thing might get in the way of tearing buildings down.

At long last, two years ago, Red Fork became the first Main Street program in the city, with hopes of bringing Southwest Blvd -- old Route 66 -- back to life. The Down on Main Street festival is part of the program to promote the area and bring the community together. From the festival flier, here are the events planned:

• Pie contest
• Ollie's Restaurant's Blue Plate Special
• Live music
• Global Garden's Kids' Zone
• Art show
• Farmers market with a Westside charm

The festival will take place along Southwest Blvd. near 41st St.

The deadline to enter the pie contest is TODAY (April 27, 2009). You must have your entry form and a $5 fee to the Red Fork Main Street office, 3708 Southwest Blvd, by 5 p.m. Click here for a form and more details.

Here's hoping for good weather for Saturday's Down on Main Street festival.

The Oklahoma House voted Tuesday to prohibit state government funding for the destruction of embryos for the purpose of stem cell research in the state. (The legislation does nothing to hinder the many other forms of stem cell research -- marrow, cord blood, various forms of adult tissue -- which do not require the destruction of a human life.)

SB 315 passed by a wide bipartisan majority of 85-13. The version passed by the House now goes back to the Senate for final approval. If a business is involved in "nontherapeutic research that destroys a human embryo or subjects a human embryo to substantial risk of injury or death," that business does not qualify for any Oklahoma income tax credits or incentive payments. The bill prevents tax dollars from directly or indirectly funding the destruction of human life.

The 13 naysayers were Auffet, Brown, Cox, Hoskin, Kiesel, McAffrey, McDaniel (Jeannie), Nations, Renegar, Roan, Scott, Shelton, and Smithson. Christian, McPeak, and Morrissette were excused from the vote. Everyone else voted yes.

The Tulsa Metro Chamber and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce have been lobbying Gov. Brad Henry to veto any such legislation when it reaches him. In response, pro-life legislators boycotted a legislative event hosted by the two chambers.

State Rep. Pam Peterson (R-Tulsa) said today, "The idea that Oklahoma should condone the destruction of innocent human life in the name of 'economic development' is indefensible. Our law clearly states that human life begins at conception. Now the chambers are advocating the destruction of a legally recognized life in exchange for research dollars, saying the state should determine the best use of a person's life for the state's purposes. That's a huge paradigm shift that runs contrary to the basic values of our nation."

I'm happy that pro-life legislators are voicing their objections to the Chambers' crass and callous stand on this issue.

But if you're a Chamber member, and you oppose the destruction of innocent human life for the sake of economic development, you need to take a stand, too. You need to e-mail Gov. Henry, tell him to sign the bill, and tell him that your Chamber of Commerce doesn't speak for you on this issue.

Then you need to make some calls and do some legwork to find out who authorized your Chamber to speak on this issue. Find out when the board voted on it, which board members voted which way, then make your displeasure known to the executive director (Mike Neal here in Tulsa) and the pro-killing members of the board.

Finally, the pro-life majority on the Tulsa City Council should refuse to continue to give millions in city tax dollars to an organization that advocates using tax dollars to kill people for profit. The Council has the power to end the City's exclusive deal with the Tulsa Metro Chamber for economic development and convention and tourism promotion. Put the contract up for bids in a full and open competition and use our City hotel tax dollars to hire a more competent outfit -- that needed to happen anyway.

Here is the full statement from Rep. Pam Peterson (R-Tulsa):

OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma City and Tulsa chambers of commerce support for embryonic stem cell research, which requires the killing of human embryos, will damage Oklahoma 's reputation as a state that values life, state Rep. Pam Peterson said today.

"The chambers' support of embryonic stem cell research as an 'economic growth' tool is a shocking violation of the public trust and basic moral values," said Peterson, R-Tulsa. "The chamber is effectively advocating the worst kind of discrimination based on age, size and place of residence."

In the past week, both chambers have urged Gov. Brad Henry to veto legislation that would make embryonic stem cell research illegal in Oklahoma . Both groups argue the ban will hinder economic development, be an embarrassment for the state and make it hard to attract "researchers."

"The idea that Oklahoma should condone the destruction of innocent human life in the name of 'economic development' is indefensible," Peterson said. "Our law clearly states that human life begins at conception. Now the chambers are advocating the destruction of a legally recognized life in exchange for research dollars, saying the state should determine the best use of a person's life for the state's purposes. That's a huge paradigm shift that runs contrary to the basic values of our nation."

The ban was supported by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both the state House and Senate.

Even as they have worked to outlaw embryonic stem cell research, state lawmakers have also voted to provide millions for adult stem cell research. Unlike embryonic stem cell research, adult stem cell research does not require the destruction of human embryos.

Adult stem cell research also has a proven track record of results - there are more than 70 research treatments that use adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cell research has been plagued with failure.

"If the chambers were serious about economic development and growing Oklahoma 's biotech industries, they would only support research with a proven track record requiring no moral compromise - our adult stem cell plan," Peterson said. "It's clear that these organizations care more about catering favor from radical groups than improving our economy."

As a result of the chamber's call for vetoing the embryonic stem cell ban, Peterson and other pro-life lawmakers will not attend a legislative event tonight jointly hosted by the Oklahoma City and Tulsa chambers.

MORE: HB 1326, which has similar language, was passed by large majorities in both houses last week (82-6 in the House, 38-9 in the Senate) and is on the governor's desk. This morning, State Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-Owasso) called on pro-life business owners to express their support of this legislation:

State Senator Randy Brogdon called on the Pro-Life members of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce to join with him in support of HB 1326, which outlaws embryonic stem cell research.

"It's simple," said Brogdon. "HB 1326 says that we won't let Oklahoma businesses profit from the destruction of human life."

Brogdon, a co-author of HB 1326, continued, "And it's a travesty that the Oklahoma City and Tulsa Chamber leadership are more concerned about profit than the protection of human life."

"And I'm sure if the Pro-Life members of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City Chamber knew what HB 1326 entailed, they would not be happy knowing that their leadership was lobbying for Governor Henry to veto this bill," said Brogdon.

"That's why I am calling on the Pro-Life business owners of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce to join with me in support of this bill and call on their leadership to halt their lobbying against this Pro-Life legislation," said Brogdon.

Relocate-America.com has named Tulsa the best place to live in America for 2009.

Throughout the calendar year, we accept nominations for cities & towns throughout the country to be considered as a "top place to live". The nominating parties must include their own reasons why they feel their city should make the list. The nominations, along with key data regarding education, employment, economy, crime, parks, recreation and housing are reviewed, rated & judged by our editorial team. Special consideration is taken on the Top 10 Cities as they are listed in a ranked order of America's Top 10 Places to Live.

The top 10:

1. Tulsa, OK
2. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
3. Pittsburgh, PA
4. Raleigh-Durham, NC
5. Huntsville, AL
6. Houston, TX
7. Albuquerque, NM
8. Lexington, KY
9. Little Rock, AR
10. Oklahoma City, OK

Jenks also made the top 100 -- a specific ranking wasn't provided.

This honor is a good excuse to publish the following. My dad received an e-mail from a fellow Santa containing a Tulsa TV jingle from the 1980s:

There's a feeling in the air that you can't get anywhere except in Tulsa.
I'll taste a thousand yesterdays and I love the magic ways of Tulsa.
From the green countryside, we share the glowing pride
Each time we touch the sky.
From where the rivers flow, where all good feelings grow
With all good neighbors passing by.

Makes no difference where I go,
You're the best hometown I know.
Hello, Tulsa.
Hello, Tulsa! TV 2 loves you......

(Turns out the "Hello News" package, written by prolific jingle composer Frank Gari, has been used in 36 markets in the U.S, and in Australia, Canada, and Latin America, with local references built in for each. More about the Tulsa and Dallas deployments of the theme on Tulsa TV Memories. Gari is also responsible for two recruitment jingles: "Be All That You Can Be" and "Be A Pepper.")

918, the area code for Tulsa and most of Oklahoma's Green Country, will run out of phone numbers by the end of 2011, and Oklahoma will need a fourth area code. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates telephone utilities in the state, has information and a survey on the two alternatives for handling "number exhaust" in the 918.

The choices are to split the area code geographically into two regions, with one region keeping 918 and the other being assigned a new area code, or to overlay a new area code for the same area. In an overlay, all existing 918 numbers would keep the same area code, but newly assigned numbers would receive the new area code.

In a split, each area code would continue to have seven-digit local dialing. In an overlay, all calls would require dialing ten digits.

The typical pattern in a split is for the urban area to keep the old area code and the outlying rural areas to get the new code. One of the questions in the OCC survey is whether, in a split, metro Tulsa would get 918 or the new area code. The "inner circle" covers nearly all of Tulsa, Wagoner, Rogers, Okmulgee, and Creek Counties, the southeastern half of Osage County, the eastern half of Pawnee County, and Washington County south of, but not including, Bartlesville. It corresponds to the toll free dialing area around Tulsa. The proposed split leaves an awkward shape for the outer area -- not a tidy, contiguous outer ring.

To my mind, an overlay makes sense in a metro area like DFW or New York where people are already using ten digits for many of their local phone calls -- calling from Dallas to Arlington or Brooklyn to Manhattan -- or where the area code that needs splitting is already a small area and there are no clean breaks between exchanges. Those conditions don't obtain here in Oklahoma. It makes sense to do to the 918 what was done many years ago to 405 -- keep the existing code for the urbanized area and assign a new code to the outer area.

The Corporation Commission wants your opinion on 918 number exhaust. Read all the facts and make your voice heard.

UPDATE: Charles G. Hill has a lead on the likely candidates for Oklahoma's new area code.

According to the NANPA 2008 annual report (59-page PDF), 580 and 405 are forecast to hit "number exhaust" by the end of 2013 and 2015 respectively.

Beginning tomorrow, April 17, Coffee House on Cherry Street (15th & Rockford in Tulsa) will host an exhibition of the photography of Jason Sales. Sales is best known for his vivid images of rock performances. You can see more of his work on his Flickr photostream.

The opening reception will be held tomorrow night, Friday, April 17, at 8 p.m., at the Coffee House on Cherry Street. Nashville singer Tayla Lynn (she's Loretta Lynn's granddaughter) will be performing starting at 8:30 along with Tulsa songwriter and guitarist Jesse Aycock.

Of recent note in local blogs:

At Choice Remarks, Brandon Dutcher salutes State Rep. Jabar Shumate (D-Tulsa) for his efforts to expand school choice with a bill that will allow tribal governments to sponsor charter schools.

Tulsa Chigger has posted a 1934 Chicago Tribune cartoon lampooning the New Deal, headlined "Planned Economy or Planned Destruction." In the corner of the cartoon, a Trotsky-esque fellow writes a placard: "Spend! Spend! Spend under the guise of recovery -- bust the government -- blame the capitalists for the failure -- junk the constitution and declare a dictatorship." Chigger writes, "Strangely similar to our situation now, isn't it?"

Chris Medlock writes about State Sen. Randy Brogdon's upcoming announcement as a candidate for governor and the impact of a Scott Pruitt candidacy on the race.

Owasso blogger James Parsons wonders about the conservative credentials of another GOP gubernatorial possibility, former Congressman J. C. Watts, who has spent the last seven years as a corporate lobbyist.

Yogi gets quote of the week honors: "I love little 'creases' in time and space." Me, too. He's referring to unexpected places like an Italian mining community in southeastern Oklahoma named Krebs that boasts legendary Italian food. Yogi recounts a recent visit to Pete's Place -- it's been too long since my last meal there.

OKDad is working on a mystery: A statue of a farmer, erected for the American Bicentennial in 1976 and currently under restoration, turns out not to be a bronze after all, but "some sort of hardened concrete-plaster hybrid." "He was planned as a bronze. Molds of him were made in preparation for a bronze. Funds were apparently raised for him to be cast in bronze. The papers from July 4, 1976 (the day he was dedicated and unveiled) clearly state he is a statue of bronze stature. So, where's the bronze?" The mystery is still unsolved, but here's the latest development.

Rod Dreher has posted an 1999 article by Russell Hittinger about how a Benedictine monastery came to be established in Cherokee County. (Driving directions on the monastery website include prayers to St. Jude and St. Benedict in the event of high water. Irritated Tulsan might advise prayers if you decide to follow the restaurant recommendation on the same page -- I've eaten at said restaurant three times and never had a problem.)

Irritated Tulsan's Tulsa Tuesday post last week on The Lost Ogle: Tulsa's Worst Remodels, including a Pizza Hut turned adult novelty and lingerie shop, a Wal-Mart-to-church conversion and a KFC (complete with bucket on the sign) turned chiropractor's office. (I wonder if you can still get a chicken wing there -- either the food kind or the wrestling kind.)

Down the turnpike:

Steve Lackmeyer has posted a series of videos featuring urban planner Jeff Speck's comments on downtown Oklahoma City. The latest segment hits a harsh reality in Speck's comments: When you optimize a street for moving cars at high speeds, you inherently make it hazardous for pedestrians. Here are the three earlier entries in the series:

Jeff Speck Video No. 1 on urban parking
Jeff Speck Video No. 2 on giving people what they want
Jeff Speck Video No. 3 -- outlook for downtown

JenX67 has a gorgeous photo of nightfall in OKC's Plaza District.

Nick Roberts has an interesting chart showing Oklahoma City's population by decade since its founding. Noting the massive growth the city experienced in the 1920s and 1950s, he wonders whether, despite great rankings in a variety of categories, OKC will ever again be a place to which people flock.

Finally, congrats to Blair Humphreys and the MIT design team for their victory in the 2009 Urban Land Institute design competition. The design is for a transit-oriented development to replace big-box and strip-mall retail in Denver.

A couple of nice accolades:

Forbes named Tulsa the 5th most livable city in America, just ahead of Oklahoma City in 6th.

The top 10:

1. Portland, Me.
2. Bethesda, Md.
3. Des Moines, Ia.
4. Bridgeport/Stamford, Conn.
5. Tulsa, Okla.
6. Oklahoma City, Okla.
7. Cambridge, Mass.
8. Baltimore, Md.
9. Worcester, Mass.
10. Pittsburgh, Pa.

The criteria:

To form our list, we looked at quality of life measures in the nation's largest continental U.S. metropolitan statistical areas--geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics. We eliminated areas with populations smaller than 500,000 and assigned points to the remaining metro regions across five data sets: Five-year income growth per household and cost of living from Moody's Economy.com, crime data and leisure index from Sperling's Best Places, and annual unemployment statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Tulsa's best stats were in income growth (50th out of 379 metro areas) and unemployment (21st). We may have been helped by timing -- mid-2003 is when we began climbing back up after the bursting of the tech bubble. Our worst stat -- the only measure that had us below the median was crime: 4,462 per 100,000 population, ranking 250th.

40 miles to the north, Bartlesville made American Cowboy magazine's list of the top 20 places to live in the West. (Via proud Bartian Brandon Dutcher.)

If you have an elderly relative in the Tulsa area who'd like to continue living at home, but you need assistance in order to make that possible, I have a recommendation for you.

Mike Littrell, a good friend of mine who has been working as a home caregiver for the elderly for the last several years, is available to provide help for your loved one. It's not often that he's available -- his last two caregiver jobs have lasted 24 months and 18 months respectively.

Mike started in this line of work after caring for his mother during the last several years of her life. Since then he's been providing the same sort of care for other families. I've known Mike for almost 30 years, and I know him to be reliable and a man of his word.

Mike prefers to work the overnight shift but is available to help any time, day or night. You can reach him at 918-834-1870. His references are available upon request, and he encourages you to give them a call.

I hadn't planned to post again today, but I've received several e-mails from people who tuned into the Chris Medlock show on 1170 KFAQ this afternoon and were surprised to hear the Laura Ingraham show two hours early instead of Chris.

Chris was laid off this morning. The new schedule has Laura Ingraham from 2 to 5, an hour-long call-in show from 5 to 6, hosted by Elvis Polo, followed by Mark Levin from 6 to 8.

Although I'm told that Chris's ratings have been good -- the best for his timeslot since Tony Snow was on mid-afternoons several years ago -- parent company Journal Communications is suffering. In June 2007, the stock neared $14 a share; it was at $5 as recently as last September; yesterday it closed at 39 cents. (It ticked up today, back to 50 cents.) According to the transcript of the company's 2008 4Q earnings teleconference, Journal had a net loss of $223 million for that period. Journal Communications' flagship is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper:

At the daily newspaper, total revenue of $50 million was down almost 13%. The major revenue category of advertising was down 18.6%, while circulation revenue was essentially flat and our other revenue category was up nearly 12%.

Other revenue includes using the presses in off-hours to do commercial printing. Read the report for specifics.

I'm not in a position to criticize the move as a business decision, but I'm disappointed to lose a knowledgeable voice on local issues from the airwaves, and I'm disappointed with the way the layoff was handled. If it were my station, I'd have given Chris a chance to say "so long for now" to his listeners.

I would not have tossed his webpage, his blog, and his podcasts straight down the "memory hole" -- deleted from the website without any acknowledgment of what had happened. (I wasn't surprised, however, because that was done when Michael DelGiorno left in 2007 and again when Gwen Freeman left in 2008.) Something I appreciate about the the Urban Tulsa Weekly, Tulsa World, and some of the TV stations is that they see their archives as more than just ephemera; it's a part of the contemporaneous record of Tulsa's history, so they don't purge articles by former staffers. Chris's commentary and that of the newsmakers who spoke on his show ought to be a part of that record as well. (Ditto for KFAQ's other hosts, both past and present.)

I wish Chris all the best and hope that he'll continue to be a part of Tulsa's civic dialogue. I hope, too, that KFAQ continues to engage local issues in some form, but it will be harder to do without Chris Medlock's contributions.

MORE: Steven Roemerman is not happy with the cancellation of Chris's show or with the way it was handled, and he wrote KFAQ management to complain. He received a response from Brian Gann, Operations Manager for Journal's Tulsa stations, which read in part:

The economy has forced many businesses to make choices. With our move at KFAQ, we've had to make a difficult choice to stop working with someone we really care about by canceling the Chris Medlock Show. It was not an easy decision. We do hope to be able to call on Chris' expertise in the future.

Some notes from around the Tulsa blogosphere:

Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton has updated his website. On his City Council News page, he's posting city government documents. Recent entries include an update on the Public Works contracts put on hold because of Federal bribery indictments and a spreadsheet from the Tulsa Police Department with two years of crime statistics. On his blog, he has links to articles and editorials of interest, on such topics as the economy, law, and national defense.

I'm happy to see MeeCiteeWurkor back online. His latest entry is about plans to unionize the City of Tulsa's Information Technology department.

Steven Roemerman was on KTUL last night commenting on his earlier story about Taco Bueno outsourcing its drive-thru order-taking.

The story reveals that old media is still struggling with new-media terminology: "Roemerman even wrote a local blog about his experience." Actually, Roemerman is a local blogger who has a local blog and who wrote an entry on that local blog about his experience.

Irritated Tulsan is celebrating the first anniversary of his blog, and this week he's been blogging like it's 1979. An entry about Forgotten Tulsa Stories from the 1970s remembers the Tulsa Babes women's pro football team. Today, Mr. M (with the munching mouth) is visiting downtown.

The Babes mention had me struggling to recall the name of the Glenn Dobbs-coached semi-pro team that played Skelly Stadium in 1979. It was the Tulsa Mustangs. The Football entry in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture says that the Mustangs played five games of a 15-game season, then folded. This webpage says the team played in 1979, which sounds about right to me.

Continuing on in stream-of-consciousness fashion about short-lived pro sports teams of the 1970s, here's a 1978 People story about Bobby Delvecchio, a 21-year-old from the Bronx who was the bull-riding star of the Tulsa Twisters major league rodeo team.

Going further back to the '60s, Yogi, the Crusty Gas Guy, has an interesting post on Brutalism right here in Tulsa (not brutality, but the architectural style of the '60s and '70s that seeks to be brutally honest and unadorned about its materials). Yogi points to the Civic Center Plaza as an example of the style, which spawns some good discussion in the comments, including a defense from fans of modern architecture, including Shane Hood. I like SandyCarlson's comment: "True to its material seems like a weird idea. Like asking the cake you baked to be obvious about its flour. Why?"

DoubleShot Coffee Company is celebrating an anniversary, too. It's five years old, and they'll be throwing a birthday party on Saturday, March 14, from 7 p.m. to "whenever."

A few weeks ago I received a note from Eseta Sherman. Eseta is originally from New Zealand, now lives in Alaska, but spent the 1980-81 school year at Tulsa's Memorial High School as an AFS exchange student. She remembers Tulsa, her teachers, her classmates and fellow AFSers, and her church fondly, and she gave me permission to share her memories with you:

I was an AFS student from New Zealand, lucky to have lived in Tulas, Oklahoma, from 1980-81. I attended Tulsa Memorial High School and lived with two generous families, the Cornetts and the Harpers. I was googling for two great teachers from my past, art instructor Dennis Rutledge and US history teacher Frank Markham - and I stumbled on your batesline!

I really enjoy reading your blog - especially when the cold here in King Salmon, Alaska, can deter any thoughts of wandering outside.

Thank you for the wonderful collection of news. I miss Tulsa. I saw my first pop concert there - Elton John. I also went to my first live football game and sang something about "Boomer Sooners." Good memories.

In my reply I asked her if she knew Jenny Sunnex, another New Zealand AFS student who attended Catoosa High School that same year and lived with the family of our church's pastor:

I bet you I knew Jenny. Did she have longish blonde hair? There was a Jenny from New Zealand that hung out with a Garth Mahood from Ireland. I can't remember the name of his high school, but I think his host father was a pastor. The Tulsa Memorial chargers played against their basketball.

I remember Catoosa High; I can't remember if the AFS chapter had a meeting there, but we did travel around to different high schools to promote AFS. I think I might have attended a prom at Catoosa. I think it was either Catoosa or Claremore. I went to my own with a friend named Mike. And then I went to his - I wore a matching tux. I think I surprised him - not to mention my poor host family. But we had a blast.

Our AFS group also appeared on a morning show and sang a song, while an AFS student from Japan played the guitar. His name was Yohei Eto and wrote a take off on "Oklahoma." I can't remember if he sang "Yokahama" to the tune of "Oklahoma" on air, but this kid had a great talent.

My year in Tulsa was an incredible year of growth for me. This city has a special place in my heart because of the kindness and the generosity of so many people towards me and my fellow AFSers. We traveled through other parts of the United States, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, California, I even fished for bass at about four in the morning in a humongous lake called Texoma! Ate the best doughnuts on that trip.

The first family I stayed with in Tulsa attended Asbury Methodist church, which had an active youth group. But later, when I had moved to another family, I felt a need to be baptized (even though I had been christened as a baby and confirmed at about twelve, I think) so a high school friend's father, who happened to be a pastor, agreed to baptize me in another friend's swimming pool. My Korean friend, Doug Kim, and his parents, who owned the pool, plus my second host family, Bob and Linda Harper, and Billy Cuthberts and his dad were all part of my baptism. This is another reason why Tulsa means a lot to me....

I owe Dennis Rutledge and Frank Markham a lot. They were wonderful human beings and inspirational teachers. Dennis Rutledge was an enthusiastic art teacher and compassionate friend, and Frank Markham was one of the few teachers I had in school that made history really fun. (He literally wore many hats in the course of my time in US History. He even made us sit though slide shows of his family vacations if we failed to do a homework reading - and it actually worked. We made sure we read our assigned readings the next time. One could only handle so many slide shows of the Grand Canyon or whatever climbing expedition he and his family went on!)

Many thanks to Eseta for getting in touch. If you remember her from her stay in Tulsa and would like to get in touch with her, you can reach her at sherman@bristolbay.com.

I was sad to learn tonight of the passing of legendary radio broadcaster and Tulsa native Paul Harvey at the age of 90.

Harvey grew up at 1014 E. 5th Pl. -- the house is still there -- went to Longfellow School at 6th and Peoria, and then Central High School, starting his radio career at KVOO when he was still in high school. (They were all within walking distance of each other back in the '30s -- KVOO was in the Philtower.) A few years ago he reported receiving a letter from a more recent resident of that house, who had found a wood-shop project in the attic with his name on it -- bookends, I think it was.

I started listening to Paul Harvey's broadcasts in the mid-1970s, at a time when he wasn't carried by any Tulsa station, at least none that I could find. I listened to him on KGGF 690 out of Coffeyville, Kansas. Eventually -- sometime in the late '70s, I think -- KRMG picked him up.

When I started working in Tulsa after college, I often ate my lunch in the car at a nearby park, listening to his noontime broadcast. If I missed him on KRMG at noon, I could catch him on KGGF at 12:40.

It could be hard to listen to Paul Harvey's broadcasts over the last few years, as time finally took its toll on his vocal cords, but it was still the same interesting variety of news, still the same distinctive speech pattern.

See-Dubya has a fitting remembrance over at Michelle Malkin's blog:

Paul Harvey put news out there that no other outlet touched. His Paul Harvey News and Comment scoured the wires for random stuff-and ideologically inconvenient stuff- you just didn't hear on the Big Three mainstream TV news, and crammed it all in to crisp five minute chunks, complete with terse commentary and the occasional wry thwack of sarcasm-and he still had time for the inevitable personalized pitches for Buicks and the Bose Acoustic Wave Radio. Here's what he had to say about his advertisers:

"I can't look down on the commercial sponsors of these broadcasts," he told CBS in 1988. "Too often they have very, very important messages to put across. Without advertising in this country, my goodness, we'd still be in this country what Russia mostly still is: a nation of bearded cyclists with b.o."

Zing. He was always like that. Paul Harvey invented blogging; he just did his blogging on the radio....

His radio show wasn't particularly ideological-you could tell he leaned right but it was mainly through the choice of stories and headlines he picked out. He also had a syndicated column back in the day that my state paper carried, and he was a rock-ribbed Middle American (Tulsa native, in fact) social and fiscal conservative with a heart of gold, a deep love of country, and no illusions about the stakes of foreign policy. He was a Reaganesque thinker, as well as a Reaganesque communicator.

(See-Dubya notes: "I kind of trace the groundswell of interest in [Fred] Thompson back to his time broadcasting from Paul Harvey's chair, and likewise the deflation of the Thompson bubble to the time he left it." Hearing Fred in that setting certainly sparked my interest,)

THE REST OF THE STORY:

You can hear Paul Harvey in full voice in this clip on Lileks.com from 1968.

This page about Tulsa radio on Tulsa TV Memories notes that he was a student of Miss Isabelle Ronan at Central High School, and includes a Real Media clip of Paul Harvey speaking on the Larry King Show about his education, his career, and his optimism.

Here's Paul Harvey's entry in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.

AND THERE'S THIS:

WGN radio, his Chicago home base, has audio clips from Paul Harvey's broadcasts and speeches and the ABC News radio special on the life and career of Paul Harvey which was heard this morning on KRMG.

KOTV has a story that includes video from his 1994 speech at a Tulsa fundraiser for the Salvation Army.

Route 66 News remembers Paul Harvey's support for a couple of Missouri Route 66 businesses.

Washington Post obituary: "Broadcaster Delivered 'The Rest of the Story'" (It's by Joe Holley. Wonder if he's any relation to the southpaw fiddler.)

Paul Harvey, 90, a Chicago-based radio broadcaster whose authoritative baritone voice and distinctive staccato delivery attracted millions of daily listeners for more than half a century, died Feb. 28 in Phoenix.

A spokesman for ABC Radio Networks told the Associated Press that Mr. Harvey died at his winter home, surrounded by family. No cause of death was immediately available.

Mr. Harvey was the voice of the American heartland, offering to millions his trademark greeting: "Hello Americans! This is Paul Harvey. Stand by! For news!"

For millions, Paul Harvey in the morning or at noon was as much a part of daily routine as morning coffee.

HERE IS A STRANGE:

Aaron Barnhart gives a couple of examples of Paul Harvey's impact -- one coming from Keith Olbermann. Keith Olbermann?

"I was his official fill-in from 2001-03 and I was overwhelmed by the thought that went in to the selection and flow of stories. Even when he was off, his rules were in place: each segment began with hard news, moved on to commentary, ended with celebrity and then something light or silly. Then a commercial. Then repeat. Then another commercial, etc.

"I stole it almost entirely for 'Countdown.'"

Bathtub Boy's interpretation of Harvey's demand that ABC replace him as his heir apparent seems a little off:

And though he liked my work, and consented to let ABC groom me to succeed him, when an executive flew to Chicago to get his consent to the network giving away free a Sunday version of his show, done by me, he immediately told them not only would he not agree, but if they did not find a different back-up and write it into a new contract, he would not go on the air the next day. Probably the most job-secure, most irreplacable man in broadcasting, without whom the franchise would sink to 10% of its value, and yet he was convinced he was about to be shown the door. The mind reels.

I don't think Paul Harvey was afraid of losing his job. I think he was afraid of the franchise he had built over 50 years being handed over to a nutter like Olbermann.

But wash your ears out with this, from Barnhart's closing paragraphs:

Finally, a word about Paul Harvey's non-verbal communication. No one in radio got away with the silences that he did. His pauses weren't just pregnant, they were Nadya Suleman pregnant. They were amazingly long, by radio standards. They challenged the listener's assumption that an interruption to the flow of continuous noise meant something was wrong. Nothing was wrong; Paul Harvey just wanted the listener's attention back, in case it had drifted. The great communicator was speaking to his invisible audience with invisible words. And they listened.

So now, as you finish this, don't just observe a moment of silence for Paul Harvey. Listen to the silence.

AND MORE:

Kimmswick, Mo., home of his Reveille Ranch, remembers Paul Harvey

Some childhood details from the New York Times obit:

He was born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa, Okla., on Sept. 4, 1918, the son of Harrison Aurandt, a police officer, and Anna Dagmar Christian Aurandt. His father was killed in a gun battle when he was 3, and his mother rented out rooms to make ends meet. He was raised a Baptist, and it influenced his views.

As a boy he was fascinated with radio and built a receiver out of a cigar box. As a teenager, he had a strong resonant voice, and in 1933 a teacher at Tulsa Central High School escorted him to local station KVOO-AM and told the manager: "This boy needs to be on the radio."

He was taken on as an unpaid errand boy, but soon was allowed to deliver commercials, play a guitar and read the news on the air; two years later, he got his first paycheck.

Christopher Orlet remembers the broad appeal of Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story":

I remember crawling in from college football practice at 5:30 p.m. -- this was the early 1980s -- and collapsing on a locker room bench while over the loudspeaker came The Voice halfway through his evening broadcast, which wasn't news at all, but a feature story where some famous person's identity was revealed in a surprise, twist ending....

Talk about a surreal scene: fifty exhausted college football players from all across the country lying all over a locker room floor in silence waiting for Paul Harvey to reveal the identity of today's subject. "And now you know...the rest of the story...Paul Harvey...Good Day!" Only then would we hit the showers.

Columnist Bob Greene remembers the many times he sat in the studio for a performance of Paul Harvey News and Comment:

He would make these warm-up noises -- voice exercises, silly-sounding tweets and yodels, strange little un-Paul-Harvey-like sounds -- and he showed no self-consciousness about doing it in front of someone else, because would a National Football League linebacker be self-conscious about someone seeing him stretch before a game, would a National Basketball Association forward be worried about someone seeing him leap up and down before tipoff? This was Paul Harvey's arena, and he would get the voice ready, loosening it, easing it up to the starting line.

And then the signal from the booth, and. . .

"Hello, Americans! This is Paul Harvey! Stand by. . . for news!"

And he would look down at those words that had come out of his typewriter minutes before -- some of them underlined to remind him to punch them hard -- and they became something grander than ink on paper, they became the song, the Paul Harvey symphony. He would allow me to sit right with him in the little room -- he never made me watch from behind the glass -- and there were moments, when his phrases, his word choices, were so perfect -- flawlessly written, flawlessly delivered -- that I just wanted to stand up and cheer.

But of course I never did any such thing -- in Paul Harvey's studio, if you felt a tickle in your throat you would begin to panic, because you knew that if you so much as coughed it would go out over the air into cities and towns all across the continent -- so there were never any cheers. The impulse was always there, though -- when he would drop one of those famous Paul Harvey pauses into the middle of a sentence, letting it linger, proving once again the power of pure silence, the tease of anticipation, you just wanted to applaud for his mastery of his life's work.

He probably wouldn't have thought of himself this way, but he was the ultimate singer-songwriter. He wrote the lyrics. And then he went onto his stage and performed them. The cadences that came out of his fingertips at the typewriter were designed to be translated by one voice -- his voice -- and he did it every working day for more than half a century: did it so well that he became a part of the very atmosphere, an element of the American air.

Venerable Tulsa technology guru Don Singleton has relaunched Tulsa High Tech, this time as a strictly online presence. (If you really want the dead-tree version -- to give to a less-tech-savvy relative, for example -- you can download a PDF and print it.)

The scope of Tulsa High Tech is wide-ranging, but there's a definite bent toward helping computer users at all levels connect with the resources they need to learn new skills. Don writes in this issue's intro:

The purpose of Tulsa High Tech is to provide a clearing house for what is happening in the area of High Technology in the Tulsa Area, including education, seminars and workshops, blogging, exhibits, manufacturing, and anything else we can think of. In addition to providing access to class schedules, listings of various groups, and product reviews we intend to cover the human interest side of IT. We will feature profiles of instructors, community service projects, etc. If you are involved in any way with High Technology in the greater Tulsa Area, and would like to have your organization included, email me.

As computers have become ubiquitous, general computer user groups have lost their prominence. While experts may turn to specialized online forums, there's still a need to help beginners get started with a technology, even if the beginner is an expert in some other realm of software and hardware. Don hopes to create a central clearinghouse for Tulsans interested in technology, where even tech gurus can learn something new.

In the Feb. 2009 issue of Tulsa High Tech, you'll find tips on using the Google Maps API and Dreamweaver CS Pro, internet safety resources for kids and parents, a beginners' corner item on attaching photos to e-mail messages, an alert about bank "phishing" scams. You'll also learn about Tulsa Technology Center's campuses in Second Life. (Really.) There's also a nice little piece about this blog.

Go check it out.

Partly personal, but this news is reason for a bit of local pride, a bit of reflection on the reach of products built right here in northeastern Oklahoma.

Today, Prince William of Wales began an 18-month search-and-rescue training course at the Defence Helicopter Flying School (DHFS) at RAF Shawbury, in Shropshire near England's border with Wales. According to the Times, Flight Lieutenant Wales, as he is known in the Royal Air Force, "will train on Squirrels and Griffins before moving on to the workhorse of the SAR, the Sea King."

Squirrel, Griffin, and Sea King are RAF nicknames for military variants of the Eurocopter AS3 50BB, the Bell 412EP, and Sikorsky S-61, respectively.

FlightSafety Simulation Systems, based in Broken Arrow, builds helicopter simulators as well as training devices for fixed-wing aircraft, and over the years they've done a number of simulators for Bell 412 variants, most of which are based at FlightSafety's Fort Worth Learning Center, just across the airfield from Bell Helicopter Textron's Hurst, Texas, factory.

In the late '90s, FlightSafety Simulation also built a Bell 412-based simulator to be used at DHFS to train Griffin pilots. In 1999, I was assigned to rewrite the communications link software that allowed the main simulation computer to send commands to the image generator that produced the out-the-window picture seen by the pilots in training. A brand new Evans and Sutherland Harmony image generator didn't have all the bugs worked out, so they were going to try an older-generation model. The older model used a different communication method than the new one, so I had to change the main simulation computer software so it could talk to the older image generator. (It used raw Ethernet packets over a point-to-point crossover cable.)

So in late May of '99, I traveled to RAF Shawbury, and spent hours in the very loud and very air conditioned computer room of DHFS's new simulator building. Mornings I marked up source code listings at the Albrighton Hall hotel over a full English fry-up or in my room, a much more comfortable place to work. I finished my work in five days and had a spare day to drive through the countryside of north Wales, take a ride on the narrow-gauge Talyllyn Railway, and pay a visit to Portmeirion, setting for the '60s spy series The Prisoner. Earlier in the week, I'd managed a quick evening visit to Hay-on-Wye, the famed town of second-hand bookshops; most other evenings I made it in to historic Shrewsbury for a meal and a walk around. Our visual software expert, Jim Narrin, arrived a couple of days before my departure to modify the software that formatted commands to the image generator to work with the older generation E&S.

Within a couple of years, the Harmony IG was deemed ready for use and the older IG was replaced. The IG communication code I developed was no longer needed (although there's still some general purpose code on the simulator that I wrote).

But I was just one of dozens of Tulsa-area engineers and technicians who had a part in bringing that simulator to life (not to mention all the support staff in human resources, accounting, travel, program management, etc.). This simulator brought millions of dollars to the Tulsa area in payroll for high-tech jobs.

And now this Broken Arrow-built simulator will almost certainly be part of the search-and-rescue training program for the future ruler of the United Kingdom. I'm not a royalty enthusiast, but I was still somewhat excited and proud to come across this bit of news today.

Here's a description of the DHFS course from the website of FB Heliservices, Ltd., the contractor that runs the program, and here's a bit about the simulator itself. More here at the BBC News website.

Looking for some information relating to my next column (dealing with the requirement to add sprinklers to older apartment and condo buildings), I found the text of one of Ronald Reagan's radio commentaries from the summer of 1977 that had to do with Tulsa and part of the local Army Corps of Engineers office moving into more expensive digs because of Federal fire prevention rules. It's found on pp. 178-9 of Reagan's Path to Victory, but with Reagan's edits and abbreviations. I've retyped it to read as he would have read it for broadcast.

Government Cost
July 6, 1977

Every once in awhile another example pops up to illustrate why government costs so much. Since it's your money, I figure you should know about it. I'll be right back.

Over in Tulsa, Okla., the Army Corps of Engineers is moving about a fifth of its operation out of its present quarters and into a new office building at roughly four times the rent NOW being paid. The figures are really interesting. The engineers are leaving almost 21,000 sq. ft. of office space for which they pay $2.89 a sq. ft. to move into only16,000 sq. ft. of office space for which they'll pay (make that, we'll pay) $11.88 a sq. ft.

The operation that is moving represents only about 22% of the Corps' Tulsa headquarters. The other almost four-fifths of their offices are located in the old Federal building which has 75,000 sq. ft. of vacant space and which was remodeled 10 years ago at a cost of $700,000 for use by the engineers.

Apparently none of this is the doing of the engineers. The Business Service Center of the General Services Administration is in charge of this move. According to the chief of GSA the new more costly office building is the only building in Tulsa