Recently in Tulsa Category

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 which meets "Standard 101 of the National Fire Protection Code" called "Code for Life Safety from Fire in Buildings and Structures." He says the government is really getting tough about the fire regulations. Standard 101 is a book with 16 chapters.

The CIty Fire Marshal of Tulsa says he doubts any building in Tulsa can meet all the requirements of Standard 101. The Fire Marshall isn't saying downtown Tulsa is a fire trap -- he's indicating Standard 101 like so many government documents goes beyond the bounds of common sense and reason. To their credit the Corps of Engineers had asked for other locations but were turned down by GSA.

A lot of questions come to mind in this whole thing, beginning with why the one-fifth of the engineers' operations aren't over in the Federal Building with the other four-fifths where there is vacant space amounting to more than four and a half times as much space as they are moving into. If the Federal Building doesn't meet the rigorous requirements for fire safety laid down in Standard 101 why haven't the rest of the engineers been moved out? A spokesman for the Corps can only say it will be up to GSA to say when the building is no longers uitable for use by Federal employees. That answers another question. Standard 101 isn't a code that can be enforced on buildings in general. It's just a code for the protection of Federal government employees. Taxpayers can work and earn in less protected quarters. And just between us I'm sure with every bit as much safety as government employees are provided.

According to the Tulsa Tribune the shortcomings of the building the engineers are leaving consists of the following: one stairway is 4 inches too narrow, and there was some concern expressed about the distance to the rest rooms.

Don't feel guilty if you can't make sense out of what they're doing. Let me read a paragraph from a memo on another subject -- zero budgeting by the Office of Management and Budget. When you can understand this paragraph everything will become clear to you.

"Agencies may use whatever review and ranking techniques appropriate to their needs. However the minimum level for a decision unit is always ranked higher than any increment for the same unit, since it represents the level below which activities can no longer be conducted efficiently. However, the minimum level package for a give decision unit may be ranked so low in comparison to incremental levels of the decision units that the funding level for the agency may exclude that minimum funding level package."

See?

This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.

(Audible.com offers a downloadable five-hour collection of Reagan's radio commentaries for less than $20.)

I was at Tulsa Promenade with my family over the weekend and had taken the 12-year-old son to the food court for a late lunch, when I saw this ad for the Tulsa Zoo:

It's a spoof of the famous Che Guevara poster, depicting a lion as Che, wearing a beret, with the Tulsa Zoo logo in place of the Communist star.

Since when, I wondered, is it OK to use an image honoring a murderous, totalitarian thug to advertise a city-owned, family-oriented tourist attraction?

Perhaps I'm overreacting. Perhaps not. The surest way to tell is to substitute Communist imagery with that of a different totalitarian movement. Would the image below have been approved by Tulsa Zoo management for use in an ad?

The December 18-24, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly includes a feature story about Santa David Bates by managing editor Katie Sullivan. Some clips:

Bates is in his fourth year as one of Tulsa's many Santas that grace the city's holiday surroundings and events. After retiring four years ago from St. Francis hospital, Bates decided to kick off his boots, relax and let his hair down -- or, in this case, his beard grow out.

Bates' friends and family members then began to notice his strong resemblance to Santa Claus, and this compelled Bates to dress as Santa for Halloween one year. In his full garb on Halloween night, Bates thoroughly enjoyed each and every time he heard the doorbell ring. The neighborhood trick-or-treaters shared his joy. Their faces changed instantly when Bates opened the door. Some kids froze with astonished looks on their faces, wondering if Bates was crazy and had mistaken which holiday it was. Others immediately lit up and yelled, "Santa!" Naturally, Bates handed out candy canes, which he said "are extremely hard to find in October." It was in the reactions from the kids that Bates reveled. "Where's Rudolph? and "Why are you here?" were some of the children's inquiries.

After that night, Bates knew this would be one Halloween costume worth resurrecting. Shortly after, he heard Philbrook needed a replacement Santa to fill in for the season. "That's when I fell in love with doing it," Bates said. "I don't do malls or shopping centers. Those are too strenuous." He keeps his holiday season schedule full of small individual gatherings, private parties, nursing homes, museum and library trips and hospital visits....

The gentle giant mentality comes naturally to Bates, a loving father and grandfather who boasted of his own kids' and grandkids' achievements. "You couldn't do this job without having the joy and pleasure of children. That's the best part." Bates also likes to hand out a card to the children he sees that explains God's love for them and that the greatest gift of all was Jesus Christ. For Bates, the legacy and tradition hold the utmost value.

Tulsa Santa David Bates is on the web at santatulsa.com. I'm very proud of my dad and happy that he's found such a fun and rewarding role in his retirement.

If you're looking for out-of-the-ordinary Christmas gifts, here are a couple of special shopping opportunities around Tulsa for tomorrow, Saturday, December 13, 2008:

From 4 pm to 6 pm, Jack Frank will be signing his latest Tulsa Films DVD release, Tulsa Deco, as well as the two volumes of Fantastic Tulsa Films. The signing will be at the midtown Borders, 21st and the Broken Arrow Expressway. The hour-long Tulsa Deco show is a great gift for the longtime Tulsan with a love for local history and architecture or for the newcomer who's heard about Tulsa art deco and wonders what all the fuss is about.

And from 3 pm to 11 pm, Ida Red, at 3346 S. Peoria in Brookside, will be the site of the Handmade Holiday Market, featuring the work of The Knit Owl, Such Pretty Things, Blue Turtle Soap, Holly Rocks, and Clover Studios. There will be live music from Joy and Day, Fiawna Forté, and Erin Austin.

Both events are great opportunities to support local artists and artisans.

It happened on September 5, but only recently did it make the news.

Last Thursday, Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Sheldon Robinson was honored by the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority as Trooper of the Month for his quick thinking and action in subduing a man in who had come into the Burger King at 41st and Memorial in Tulsa with the apparent intent of shooting the place up.

On Sept. 5, Robinson dropped his wife and two children off at the Burger King restaurant at 41st Street and Memorial Drive and was pulling into an auto dealership across the street for an oil change when his cell phone rang.

"My spouse told me there was a man inside with a gun, saying he was going to kill everybody," said Robinson, an 11-year veteran of the highway patrol who is assigned to the Creek and Muskogee turnpikes.

Robinson turned around in time to see people fleeing the building, including his wife, who grabbed the couple's two children and hid in a nearby trash container area, closing the doors behind her.

Robinson went in, saw the man with a .40 caliber Glock and a box of ammo beside him, and blindsided him while the man's hand was off his gun, wrestling him to the ground to try to cuff him.

Pay close attention to this next sentence (emphasis added):

"It was one of those deals of being in the right place at the right time," Robinson said. "I believe he would have loaded up that gun and gone to town because he was praying for Allah to help him carry out his mission."

The man with the Glock was Jerome Norvell Denson, described in the jail population report as a 24-year-old black male, 5'11", 230 lbs. Court records give an address in the Normandy Apartments, a Section 8 complex just west of Sheridan on 36th St. He was booked into jail by Tulsa Police on Nov. 24 at 5:25 pm. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 24. He has been charged with planning, attempting, or conspiring to perform act of violence, and possession of a firearm while in the commission of a felony.

Given Trooper Robinson's report that Denson invoked Allah, it's worth mentioning for the benefit of non-Tulsans that Denson's place of residence is a little over a mile north from the Islamic Society of Tulsa mosque. The Burger King where the incident occurred is a half-mile south and a mile east of Denson's address.

So what happened between the incident on Sept. 5 and when he was booked into jail on Nov. 24? Court records show that he was originally charged with the two felony counts on Sept. 11.

There's an interesting note in the docket report for Oct. 6:

CARLOS CHAPPELLE: DEFENDANT PRESENT IN CUSTODY REPRESENTED BY CLAY IJAMS. STATE REPRESENTED BY KIM HALL .CASE CALLED FOR INTIAL APPEARANCE. STATE DECLINES DEFENDANT BASED ON CHARGES AND PAST HISTORY/DANGER TO COMMUNITY. DEFENDANT OBJECTS TO STATE'S DENIAL INTO PROGRAM. DEFENDANT DECLINED ; DEFENDANT SET FOR PRELIM 10/22/08 AT 9:00 AM ROOM 344. BOND TO REMAIN. DEFENDANT REMANDED TO CUSTODY .

I'm wondering what is meant here by "state declines" and "program."

The original charges were dismissed at the state's request on Oct. 29, and then he was charged again on November 7 and back in custody on the 24th. Here's the OCIS docket report on the new charges.

The only other time Jerome Denson shows up in court records is for failure to pay an ambulance bill four years ago. He doesn't turn up on Google, except in reference to this incident.

The incident didn't make the news when it happened in September. TPD public affairs office sends a daily e-mail update to the press with information on significant occurrences in the previous 24 hours. I don't seem to have received a Sept. 6th report, but there were numerous e-mails on Sept. 5, all pertaining to Neal Richard Sweeney, who had been shot the day before and had died that morning. That probably explains why TPD didn't mention Denson's arrest in their news releases: An actual murder trumps a prevented murder, although the situation at the Burger King was certainly dramatic enough.

We'll keep an eye on this case. I'd welcome any information you may have on Jerome Norvell Denson or this case.

(Via Jihad Watch.)

Two Tulsa teams competed tonight for the Class 6A football championship. Union beat Jenks 34-20 at Lewis* Field in Stillwater, their first time ever to beat Jenks twice in the same season. I was surprised they didn't play the championship at Skelly* Stadium, but I suppose they needed to get Skelly ready for tomorrow's Conference USA championship game between TU and East Carolina.

Tomorrow there will be three state championship games played in metropolitan Tulsa, all kicking off at 1:30: Carl Albert vs. Booker T. Washington in Sand Springs (5A), Glenpool vs. OKC Bishop McGuinness in Broken Arrow (4A), and Cascia Hall vs. Claremore Sequoyah in Bixby (3A). Tulsa's Lincoln Christian plays in Ponca City at the same time against Oklahoma City's Heritage Hall, as two private schools compete for a slot in the Class 2A final against either Chandler or Kingfisher.

(Carl Albert vs. Booker T. Washington is not a Pythonesque battle of historical re-enactors, but a football game between the high school of the Mid-Del school district -- Midwest City and Del City -- and one of Tulsa's high schools.)

And if all that isn't enough sports action for one Saturday, the TulsaNow Spontaneous Softball Invitational will take place on the future location of Driller Stadium -- near Archer and Greenwood downtown -- tomorrow morning at 10:30 am. This may be the first outdoor ballgame of any sort downtown since the days of McNulty Park. You're welcome to come and play, or just cheer the players on.

In last week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly, I urged making cultural heritage tourism the focus of Tulsa's efforts to attract visitors. Rather than marketing Tulsa as an "ocean of sophistication in a cultural desert," Tulsa should embrace its place in Oklahoma as "the capital of a region where visitors can experience the untamed, exuberant spirit of the American West in all its variety."

For whatever reason, the people we pay to promote Tulsa to the world -- the Tulsa Metro Chamber's Convention and Visitors Bureau -- seem uncomfortable promoting the unique aspects of our region. They position Tulsa as superior to and separate from the rest of Oklahoma, an oasis of sophistication in a cultural desert.

It's a distinctly Midtown Money Belt point of view, and it makes Tulsans seem like a bunch of insecure, provincial rubes, putting on airs -- the urban equivalent of Hyacinth Bucket.

While we should be proud of the cultural amenities that make Tulsa a great place to live, our tourism marketing should focus on what sets our region apart from the rest of the world.

A Milanese woman who lives a few miles from La Scala and the salons of Versace and Prada isn't likely to visit Oklahoma for the opera or Utica Square shopping, but she might come here to eat a chicken fried steak on Route 66, experience Oklahoma! in an open-air theater, or attend a powwow.

A resident of Berlin wouldn't cross the pond to see a Tulsa production of the plays of Bertolt Brecht, but he might travel here to two-step across Cain's curly maple dance floor, search out Ponyboy Curtis's hangouts, or attend the annual Kenneth Hagin Campmeeting -- depending on his particular passions.

Tulsa should position itself not as an enclave of Eastern sophistication but as the capital of a region where visitors can experience the untamed, exuberant spirit of the American West in all its variety.

Read the whole thing, and read more about how other cities and regions have successfully used their history as a tourist draw at culturalheritagetourism.org.

From alumni of the Pratt Institute, who visited Tulsa for the National Preservation Conference:

First of all, Art Deco. It's everywhere. This Deco boom town was nouveau riche ripe with OIL! when they built it. We walked some of the shiny, shapely and well loved lobbies on our tour of downtown.

Secondly, people from Tulsa are nice, and in a good way! Not annoying at all.

And finally, like everywhere else, Tulsa is what you make of it. They celebrated their centennial last year; it's a baby of a city and has toddler like tendencies. It's fun and ridiculous, but after a certain amount of time you want to hand it back to mom and return to the adult party.

Philbrook's Festival of Trees kicks off tomorrow (Saturday, November 22, 2008):

Philbrook's annual holiday gift to members features holiday treats, photos with Santa and special performances. Please take the opportunity to see and buy one-of-a-kind holiday creations by area artists, gingerbread houses and holiday trees. The 2008 Festival of Trees will be a memorable treat for the entire family. Guests are welcome for $5.00 per person.

The festival is about the Christmas trees, decorated by designers and available for sale, but the gingerbread houses, made by school children, are even more interesting and fun.

Tulsa Boy Singers will be performing, and you can get your picture taken with my dad, Santa. Santa will also be at Philbrook on Sunday and Saturday and Sunday of the next two weekends.

The 2008 National Preservation Conference is underway right here in Tulsa.

On Wednesday some conventioneers took buses to field sessions here in Tulsa and around northeastern Oklahoma, while others attended panel discussions and workshops on various topics related to historic preservation. Late in the afternoon was the opening plenary session, held at First Presbyterian Church.

Coming up today, tomorrow, and Saturday, there are some open-to-the-public opportunities worth your time and interest:

Thursday, 6 pm to 7 pm: The National Preservation Awards ceremony, at Will Rogers High School, 3909 E. 5th Pl., one of our somewhat hidden Art Deco treasures.

Friday, 5:45 to 6:45 pm: A lecture by Route 66 sherpa Michael Wallis on the "Romance of the Mother Road," at First United Methodist Church, 10th & Boulder, downtown.

Saturday, 10:30 am to noon: Closing plenary session, in the assembly hall of the Tulsa Convention Center, featuring talks by art historian Nell Irvin Painter and Anthony Tung, author of Preserving the World's Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis

The exhibit hall, at the Convention Center, is also free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. Exhibitors include universities with degree programs related to historic preservation, booksellers, companies that make building products used in restorations, government agencies, consulting firms, and non-profit groups.

Many of the exhibitors are from Tulsa and the surrounding region, so it's an opportunity to connect with others who are engaged in preserving our irreplaceable places. A partial list of local exhibitors:

Coalition of Historic Neighborhoods of Tulsa
The Coury Collection
Frankoma Pottery
Brown Mansion, Coffeyville, Kans.
Tulsa City-County Library System
Yellow Pad, Inc.
Saline Preservation Association, Pryor, Okla.
Oklahoma Route 66 Association
Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Dept.
Oklahoma Main Street Center
Loman Studios (stained glass)
MATRIX Architects Engineers Planners
Guthrie Chamber of Commerce
GH2 Architects
Cherokee Nation
Bryant Pecan Co.

I'll add links later. You can see a full list of exhibitors in the conference program, beginning on p. 54 (3 MB PDF).

Finally, there may still be some tickets available for purchase for some of Saturday's field sessions and events. Even if you're a lifelong Tulsan, you'll learn new things about your city on these tours.

I took the Tulsa Art Deco tour on Tuesday afternoon. The tour included an inside look at the fascinating house Bruce Goff designed for Adah Robinson at the corner of 11th Pl. and Owasso Ave., an all-too-brief stop at the Tulsa Historical Society (which has a fascinating exhibit on Tulsa in the 1920s), and a reception in the lobby of the ONG Building on the NW corner of 7th and Boston. The Hille Foundation owns the building and is exploring plans to convert the upper floors into condominium lofts, as a real estate investment for the foundation. The building is a beautiful example of late '20s zigzag deco, and it was exciting to get a look inside. This would be the first condominium conversion of a downtown office building.

Staffers with the National Trust for Historic Preservation have been blogging about their experiences in Tulsa on the Preservation Nation blog. Here's an account of the Sacred Spaces bus tour, which included a number of downtown churches, Temple Israel, and the Oral Roberts University campus.

MORE: Ron of Route 66 News has found much of interest at the conference, including a seminar on the preservation of neon signage.

Some recent finds worth telling you about:

Here are two fairly new "news around town" blogs devoted to Tulsa: Tulsa Loop and This Tulsa.

This Tulsa has a very cool logo (featuring the BOK Tower, the Mid-Continent Tower, and University Club Tower), and they encourage readers to submit links of local interest. (If you've missed Beef Baloney, the site has a video with Matt Zaller interviewing Bill Hader and talking about growing up in Tulsa.)

TulsaLoop aspires to be "Your Tulsa City Guide," offering a calendar of events, a list of attractions, and news about happenings around town.

I noticed Kick the Anthill when the blog weighed in on the CAIR-OK EEOC complaint against the Woodland Hills Abercrombie Kids store. The three bloggers cover a wide range of topics:

We're a small group of ants that got tired of getting kicked, so we decided to kick back. We're mad about movies, conservative politics and our Christian faith. Safe to say we're just mad in general. We also like to yak about Oklahoma (which, seemingly coincidentally, is just one gigantic anthill itself) and other completely random things. Thanks for joining us.

I've already been following Terra Extraneus, but I just noticed that blogger Terry Hull has a separate, personal blog, with entries that link to things I need to read, like this one about someone who makes more than $100,000 a year blogging, and this entry linking to Writer's Digest's 101 Best Websites for Writers.

I've come across a number of blogs devoted to real estate and development in Oklahoma: The Journal Record has a blog called Oklahoma per Square Foot, covering the commercial real estate industry in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Oklahoma City homebuilder Jeff Click writes Modern Land Run.

Blair Humphreys dreams about Oklahoma City's future on his blog imagiNATIVEamerica. Right now he's in living car-free in Boston, where he's studying planning and urban design. Here's a great post, illustrated with photos and maps, about what makes for pedestrian friendliness.

Nick Roberts is a fellow right-winger and urban advocate who has just started blogging at A Downtown ontheRange. He lives in Calgary, but considers Oklahoma City his adopted hometown:

Obviously OKC is a very special place to me, and I'd rather not be away from it at this point in my life, but I promise I will come back home better positioned to leave the kind of impressions that I would want to on my adopted hometown. Whether I settle down in OKC, or Galveston where I was born, remains up in the air, but the only thing certain at this point is that I am hardly finished with OKC. I want this blog to have the same kind of impact that Doug Dawg, Steve's OKC Central, and other blogs have had, in informing readers about the life of urban OKC, and perhaps Tulsa, too! And I will be making comparisons to beautiful Calgary whenever possible, just for the purpose of expanding you guys' horizons.

A couple of other bloggers are in Oklahoma but a long way from where they grew up:

Sarah, Brit Gal in the USA, moved here from the UK after falling for an Oklahoma man she met in an online backgammon room. Her blog helps you expand your transatlantic vocabulary with a "Brit Word of the Day" -- Wednesday's word was bollard.

Stuart Campbell, the Dusty Traveler, is from New Zealand, and he's been photographing scenic spots around Oklahoma, including the Wichita Mountains, Red Rock Canyon, Turner Falls, Maysville, and Natural Falls. He finds it a challenge to capture the grandeur of the Great Plains:

Big mountains are dramatic. A big lake is peaceful. A big city is bustling. The plains are just BIG. There is a lot of space with nothing going on and it is hard to capture nothing and make it look spectacular.

Some secrets I am discovering; color- go early or late but the middle part of the day dilute the color. The sky- watch what is happening above as the clouds are fascinating in themselves and can add to a wide open space. Find things to put in the picture -- whether it be natural or man made it can add character to a scene.

But capture it he does. Click that link and have a look at our photogenic home state.

I found many of these new blogs via the BlogOklahoma web ring -- a list of nearly 900 Oklahoma-based blogs, with brief descriptions for each. To give you an idea of how Oklahoma's blogosphere has exploded, BatesLine joined in March 2004 as blog number 39. The latest addition to the web ring -- yesterday -- is called I Don't Think I'm a Grown Up Yet -- number 861. And it's not an exhaustive list: The oldest Oklahoma-based blog of all isn't a member of BlogOklahoma (which is akin to Switzerland not joining the United Nations -- when you're Switzerland, you don't need to join the UN to prove yourself as a peace-loving nation-state).

As See-Dubya says, "Whom to root against?"

The worst reactionary impulses of the seventh century, or the engines of postmodern degradation? A pox on both their houses.

That's in reference to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint filed by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OK) on behalf of an 18-year-old Tulsa woman who was refused employment in the Abercrombie Kids store at Woodland Hills Mall because she, a Muslim, wears a hijab. The girl alleges that the store manager told her that the headscarf doesn't fit Abercrombie's image.

This ought to be laughed out of court. Of course a company ought to have the freedom to hire whom it pleases and to consider its public image in whom it hires to deal directly with the public. Freedom of association is a fundamental First Amendment right which is meaningless without the freedom not to associate.

Anyway, this is not about religion, it's about clothing and appearance. The hijab is not mandated by religion; it is mandated by culture, and its use and appearance varies from one Islamic country to another. The zTruth blog pointed out, regarding a CAIR hiring complaint against McDonald's in Dearborn, Michigastan:

Muslims insist this is a obligatory dress code, which I contend is not. I've only read in the Quran that women should dress modestly and cover their breasts. Nowhere have I read in the Quran that hair and/or the face is to be covered up but, perhaps, I missed it.

See-Dubya notes the strangeness of the situation:

This plaintiff is fighting to preserve her modesty while going to work for a company that's injected more soft porn into our cultural bloodstream than Cinemax?

I have to wonder if the choice of Abercrombie and Fitch was deliberate on CAIR-OK's part: Send a young Muslim woman in a hijab to apply for a job at a company that has been the subject of protests from conservative Christians for its skanky catalogs and advertising. Perhaps CAIR thought that they could build an alliance with conservative Christians by making A&F their target.

I won't defend A&F's "image," but that isn't what's under attack. It's the right any organization -- whether a Christian bookstore or a vintage clothing consignment shop or a church or a school -- should have to set dress standards in line with the organization's purpose.

Noting the Jamal Miftah case, See--Dubya says, "This is radical Islam asserting itself yet again in the heartland." Left-wing politicians in Oklahoma aren't offering any resistance. Gov. Brad Henry set up a special state commission to promote Muslim concerns, but disguised its purpose with the name "Governor's Ethnic American Advisory Council." The zTruth blog reported last November that State Sen. Andrew Rice, the Democratic nominee for U. S. Senate, was the main speaker at CAIR-OK's fundraising banquet in Tulsa, praising CAIR's work, despite the organization's connections with radical groups Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are keeping a close eye on the activities of groups connected with radical Islamist groups. On July 30, Sen. Tom Coburn joined Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl in writing Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to object to Federal funding of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA):

Earlier this year, it came to our attention that at least two State Department grantees were funding Muslim outreach programs operated by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an unindicted coconspirator in a recent terror financing trial, and a leader of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS). The Muslim Brotherhood, whose radical and violent agenda has been extensively documented, is an Islamist organization opposed to Western liberal democracy and considers both entities part of its U.S. network....

Despite the Muslim Brotherhood link to these entities, in December 2007, a grant of nearly $500,000 was awarded by the U.S. State Department to the University of Delaware which employs a leader of the AMSS, Muqtedar Khan, to manage the grant. The grant is meant to foster dialogue between the U.S. and clerics in Muslim countries.
In 2006 and 2007, the National Peace Foundation received State Department grants of $466,000 and $499,999 to conduct similar programs in partnership with ISNA.

Staff from the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Governmental lnformation, Federal Services, and International Security met with State Department officials from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs which manages these grants. When explaining the vetting procedures used for these grantees, your staff admitted that they do not vet the grantees used to implement these Muslim outreach programs. Instead, they rely on the grantees to vet themselves. Accordingly, the Slate Department is funding organizations without having a proper understanding of their membership, affiliation or whether they may be pursuing an agenda that is at odds with
U.S. policy -- to wage a war of ideas against the extremist ideology that inspires terrorism around the world, including here in the United States.

Even more troubling, the decision to award the grant managed by Mr. Khan of AMSS was based on a recommendation letter from the International Institute of Islamic Thought (lIIT), another unindicted coconspirator in the terror financing trial referenced above. Like ISNA and AMSS, the Muslim Brotherhood considers lIIT part of its U.S. network through which it wages a "civilization-jihadist process" to destroy Western civilization....

When Senator Coburn first learned that the State Department was funding Islamist entities, he requested a meeting with Goli Ameri who, at the time, was the nominee to become the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs and would manage the bureau that issues these grants. During the discussion of her nomination, Ms. Ameri promised Senator Coburn that the State Department would stop funding these entities once she was confirmed.

Unfortunately, sometime after Ms. Ameri was confirmed, ISNA announced new sub-grant funding from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to carry out a new Muslim outreach program. An ISNA press release stated that these federal funds paid for a U.S. delegation to meet with Dr. Ali Goma, the Mufti of Egypt. In 2003, Ali Goma was
quoted in Egypt's "AI-haqiqa" newspaper defending terrorist acts in Israel....

We are sure that you would agree that Americans should not have to fund their enemies in the form of misguided "outreach" efforts. To that end, please provide a response to the following questions by August 9, 2008:

(I) By what date will all funding to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations (including organizations identified in the attached Muslim Brotherhood memorandum) through grants, cooperative agreements. fellowships, contracts or any other funding vehicle, be curtailed?

(2) By what date will you establish Department-wide, standardized procedures to prevent funding from being provided to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations (including organizations identified in the attached Muslim Brotherhood memorandum)?

That memo was linked from the home page of Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism. Emerson testified recently to the House Terrorism Subcommittee about the State Department's misdirected outreach funding. Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs calls it the "State Department of Islam": "Frightening in its failure .............. deadly in its implications. The damn thing must be scrapped. Top to bottom, starting with Condhimmi."

(Read about Emerson's first encounter with radical Islamism, right here in the heartland, in Oklahoma City on Christmas Day 1992.)

ISNA is the owner of Tulsa's al-Salaam Mosque and is one of the defendants in Jamal Miftah's lawsuit against those who assaulted and defamed him as anti-Muslim for speaking out against terrorism in the name of Islam.

MORE:

zTruth, Islamization Watch, and Overlawyered are also following the Tulsa A&F story.

Rick Moore calls the lawsuit "one of those 'Iran-Iraq War' kinds of disputes in which you wish both sides could lose, but only after a long, bloody and costly serious of battles."

Sharp Right Turn notes this story and news of Tyson Foods' decision to cancel Labor Day as a paid holiday at its Shelbyville, Tenn., plant in favor of Eid al-Fitr.

Tod Robberson at the Dallas Morning News opinion blog challenges readers to justify the hijab as a religious matter:

Religious custom is not the equivalent of religious belief or religious doctrine. I contend that the headscarf has evolved as a custom and expectation in Islam, but it is by no means a requirement for women who adhere to Islam to wear it.

And in case you missed it, CAIR sued Mission Foods earlier this year for requiring its workers to wear pants:

Fatuma Hassan and five of her Muslim co-workers lost their jobs at Mission Foods tortilla factory last month after they said that wearing a new uniform with pants violated their Islamic beliefs.

''For me, wearing pants is the same as being naked,'' said Hassan, 22. ''My culture, my religious beliefs, are more important than a uniform.''...

The Mission Foods clash has also led to a lawsuit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, filed a religious discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Mission Foods had implemented the new dress code for factory workers and said the traditional Muslim clothing was too loose-fitting and posed a safety hazard near machines.

STILL MORE:

jedijson at Kick the Anthill is another conservative Christian (and a Tulsan, too, apparently) pulling for A&F in this situation:

No, I'm not hip on a company that puts out soft-porn pictures as their advertisements to entice my children into their stores, but still. Whenever a special-interest group tries to overstep a company's policies, it just rankles me to no end.

It's a long rant, but worth reading.

Back in May, I wrote about a store soon to open on Brookside called Ida Red:

Just across from the Coffee House pushcart, Jim and Alice Rodgers of Cain's Ballroom had a booth to promote their new Brookside venture, Ida Red, named in honor of the famous Bob Wills tune (which in turn inspired the Chuck Berry hit "Maybelline").

Ida Red, at 3346 S. Peoria, will be an outlet for Cain's concert tickets and merchandise, gifts, and CDs by local musicians. At the booth they had on display some of the 28 flavors (at least) of premium brands of soda pop they plan to offer at Ida Red, along with cupcakes and free wi-fi. (Hooray for free wi-fi!)

The Rodgers family has already achieved great things with the House that Bob Built on N. Main St. Cain's Ballroom has been beautifully restored, with its facilities modernized in a way that respects its rich history. It consistently ranks in the top 50 in ticket sales for club-sized venues worldwide.

Ida Red has its grand opening celebration tonight and tomorrow night with live "red" music both nights at 8 p.m. Tonight it's Red Alert. Saturday night it's the Red Dirt Rangers. Kids are welcome. As the song says,

Hurry up boys and don't fool around.
Grab your partner and truck on down.

For something to do after the party, get on your bike and ride to Circle Cinema. The midnight movie this week is Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, a classic 1985 cult comedy directed by Tim Burton.

MORE: Local artist Amby has custom totes and artwork for sale at Ida Red.

I can't let this entry go by without a performance of the song "Ida Red." Here's Elana James and the Continental Two -- that's Tulsa's own Whit Smith on guitar and Jake Erwin on upright bass.

I very nearly turned my column this week into a sociological study of the denizens of Tulsa's Money Belt and how their behavior is shaped by peer pressure and fear of ostracism. In connection with the Great Plains Airlines bailout, I was thinking about a friend who asked me if my life insurance was paid up and another friend who told me a qui tam taxpayers' demand would never succeed in a Tulsa County courtroom, because no judge would dare cross the powerful entities who were pushing for the City's taxpayers to pay $7.1 million that it did not owe.

I was also thinking of the many times someone would tell me how they opposed this or that initiative or would confirm some speculation of mine about skulduggery in local government. He would be happy to tell me all this privately, but wouldn't dare go on the record: "I have to make a living in this town."

It brought to mind a story by cartoonist Walt Kelly. In 1955, Kelly published the seventh collection of his strip Pogo and the third book which consisted of entirely new material. The Pogo Peek-A-Book included a story called "The Man from Suffern on the Steppes or 1984 and All That: A Russian Tale of Madisonav." In one comic story, Kelly managed to spoof suburban commuters, Madison Avenue, and the Soviet Union.

In the run-up to the Vision 2025 vote, I emailed a series of panels from the story to a fellow TulsaNow board member. I was frustrated by the reluctance of some TulsaNow board members to say publicly what they were saying privately about the flaws in the package that the County Commissioners were putting before the voters. About a draft statement from the board, I wrote, in a July 12, 2003, email:

I have a lengthy comment, in a separate message, about the second draft, but for now, I will let Pogo and Howland Owl speak on my behalf. This is from the Pogo Peek-a-Book (1955), from a story called "The Man from Suffern on the Steppes", about ad men in the USSR. The ad exec (Howland) is having a subversive conversation with the train stationmaster.

Translator's note -- "gummint" == "government"

Lately, a lot of things remind me of one Pogo comic strip or another.

Here is the excerpt:

The next day I sent the following email to the TulsaNow board:

NOTE: I wrote this last night, but network problems prevented sending it until now. Please forgive the length. Indirectly, it addresses some of what Jamie said in his recent message. This morning I had breakfast with someone I was meeting for the first time -- young, energetic, deeply engaged in the community, although a fairly recent arrival -- who, unprompted by me, made very similar observations.

I continue to prefer L___'s original draft, enhanced by specific enumeration of our principles. R___ and W___'s version reads too much like a "vote yes" pamphlet, even if that wasn't intended. Below (far below) is my attempt at a rewrite, which attempts to express the concerns that were voiced without taking sides. I think we ought to explicitly say that we are choosing not to endorse or oppose, rather than allowing people to read in what they like. I also think we should be explicit and honest about the problems we have with the process and its product.

To use the terms of the Pogo cartoon I sent earlier, let's speak our criticisms openly and plainly, not into a bag and disguised as praise. We don't live in the old USSR. We shouldn't be afraid to utter mild criticisms of Tulsa's politburo and nomenklatura. And yet fear is precisely what I detect beneath the surface: Fear of ostracism, fear of exclusion, fear of economic consequences.

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.

To those of you who fall in one of these categories (which is very nearly all of us): You have made a valuable contribution to TulsaNow and to the dialog thus far. I don't wish to discount your input regarding this statement, I don't doubt your sincerity, and I appreciate the desire to "make lemonade out of lemons," as J___ put it. But I know how this town works, and you may be feeling the pressure right now to make certain people happy. I ask you to consider that your situation may be leading you to swallow your disappointment and smile for the cameras, rather than speaking openly about both the pros and cons of this package.

The people pushing this package, particularly the sports arena, are bullies. They want what they want, and because they have money and power, they think they have a right to bulldoze anyone who stands in the way. (Why they don't use all that money to build an arena themselves, rather than taxing the food, medicine, and electricity of the working class for it, is an interesting question.) After the 1997 election, an opposition leader was fired from his job with a downtown company, solely because of his opposition. In 2000, the bullies used implicit and explicit threats to silence opposition to "Tulsa Time" and to shut off public debate. Although I am (I thank God) not dependent on local moguls for my income, as an opposition spokesman, I felt the effects as well -- They tried to sway me with a board appointment, there was an attempt to undermine the Midtown Coalition, and they got their revenge on Election Day 2002. (That wasn't just about "Tulsa Time"; it was also because of my support for a meaningful neighborhood role in planning and zoning, something else the bullies don't want. )

The bullying has already begun for 2003. The bullies threatened the Mayor that they would withhold "vote yes" campaign funds if the arena was excluded or made to stand alone on the ballot. They have sent subtly threatening letters to both the Democratic and Republican Party chairmen. Elected officials who opposed the package were afraid to vote their conscience, afraid to speak, afraid to stand alone. Elected officials, holding the power we have granted them, talked of their decision as if they were helpless victims. A university president told me he would have liked to split his project off from the arena, but he wasn't in a position to speak out. Citizens expressing legitimate concerns are labelled "grumps" and "whiners" by the monopoly daily newspaper. The bullies are sending signals that anyone who fails to endorse the package can have no role in deciding how the money will be spent, should it pass (even though it's public money). The image they wish to project is that no respectable person would say a word against this package, much less vote against it. It appears that they will again try to cut off debate -- the Mayor has already backed out of a scheduled joint appearance on OETA with me.

As important as walkable neighborhoods and lively urban centers are -- and I do believe they matter -- I don't believe our city can flourish until we are capable of having a mature public conversation about such an important issue, without threats and arm-twisting. As long as the bullies run the show, we will not have grassroots-based planning; we will not have land use policies that encourage walkable neighborhoods and enlightened development; we will not have a workable historic preservation system; we will not progress in any way, if it means that the bullies must yield control. As long as the bullies are in charge, every vision process will end the same way -- whatever the structure, whatever the process, they control the final decision.

How can we advance the dialog about our city's future, if we are afraid to speak freely?

How many visionary civic and business leaders, with bold ideas for Tulsa's future, have been beaten down and have given up? How many have been co-opted? How many have decided to take their energy and vision to a city where it will be nurtured and appreciated? Perhaps this is why Tulsa is in the doldrums and doesn't seem to be moving forward. These bullies won't lead, don't have any visionary ideas and don't want any, but they refuse to yield the levers of power. Perhaps the most important thing we can do for our city is to throw off this oppressive pall.

Giving a bully what he wants only encourages him. The only way to stop a bully is to stand up to him. Not violent confrontation, but a refusal to back down, to give in. It can be as simple as saying no: "No, I will not be mean to Susie just so I can be your friend." "No, I will not give you my lunch money." "No, I will not move to the back of the bus." "No, the emperor is not wearing a beautiful new suit of clothes." "No" is a powerful word, and it becomes more powerful as more people speak it together. It can stop a bully in his tracks.

Some of us have observed that Tulsa's power structure is teetering on the edge of collapse. The Chamber is falling apart. Once dominant companies have fallen on hard times. Perhaps a little resistance will be enough to demolish the whole rotten structure. I don't know that I care so much whether this tax wins or loses, but I want to see Tulsans stand up to the bullies and break their stranglehold on progress.

I'm not asking you to come out and oppose this package, unless you want to. I'm simply asking you to say publicly what you think about it, pro and con. If you think the process stunk to high heaven, but you still plan to vote for the package -- fine, but be willing to say both things. Don't spin it to appease the bullies. The city body politic isn't a draft horse, to be fitted with blinders and a bit, and steered to a destination. Tulsans should be treated like free men and women, grown-up enough to weigh pros and cons and come to a decision.

I'm also asking us, collectively, as TulsaNow, to call the bullies' bluff. Say what you think people need to hear. Insist on public, frequent, and fair debates. Expose underhanded pressure tactics. If you're told to shun people who take a different viewpoint, refuse. If you're threatened with ostracism, or worse, go public. Insist on treating everyone involved in the debate with respect. If we stick together and do this, it would represent a real step toward maturity as a region.

Michael Bates

The severe straight-line winds Sunday morning shook loose limbs that were damaged by December's ice storm. Along with 80,000 other PSO customers we lost power -- in our case, for about eight hours. An oak tree dropped a huge limb on our deck; the deck appears to be unhurt, but a lamppost next to it was snapped off at its base. Another large limb split off from a hackberry, resting on the roof until I could get some major branches lopped off and shove what was left off of the roof.

The oak lost some major branches during the ice storm, and the damage to the hackberry on Sunday was enough that both will likely have to come down. (Any suggestions for a good tree service?)

At least we won't have to pay to have the debris hauled off. The successful tree debris removal program that operated following the ice storm is being revived. Here are the details from the Mayor's office (emphasis added):

Tulsans who have tree limbs and other greenwaste to dispose of in the wake of this weekend's storms have three options for disposal.

They can take limbs and other yard-wastes to the City's greenwaste recycling site at 10401 E. 56th. Street North. The site is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. except on official City of Tulsa holidays. Tulsans can also pick up free wood-chip mulch there for landscaping and gardening use.

Anyone dropping off tree limbs, grass clippings or other yard wastes should have a recent City of Tulsa utility bill to show, or have a drivers license with an address within the city limits.

Residents can also tie tree trimmings into bundles no more than four feet long and weighing no more than 50 pounds and place the bundles by their trash containers for pick-up by refuse collection crews on regularly scheduled collection days.

A third option is waiting for a City crew to pick up limbs stacked by the curb. Citizens will have until June 15 to drag limbs to the curb. Beginning Monday, June 16, Public Works crews will make one sweep through the entire city looking for and collecting tree limbs at the curbs.

Citizens do not need to call the City to request pick-ups. Crews will make a pass down all streets to look for limbs placed properly near the curbs.

Limbs should not be stacked on top of or too close to utility meters, telephone or cable switch boxes, mail boxes or fences. They should be close to, but not in, the streets, so that crews can access the debris piles with mechanical grappling equipment.

You may have noticed an addition to the header. There's a subtitle -- "Tulsa straight ahead" -- and next to it, on the home page, is a little button. Press the button, and you'll hear Leon McAuliffe and His Cimarron Boys perform a tune of that title, written by one of McAuliffe's fiddlers, Jimmy Hall, on the band bus coming back from Wichita. (That's Hall on the vocal, too.)

Here are the lyrics:

There's a detour sign
o'er a road that winds
out on the broad highway.
But the place for me
is the sign I see:
T-U-L-S-A, straight ahead!

There's a railroad crossin'
and the bus a-rockin',
just takin me away.
Well, I'll pass the time
'till I see that sign,
T-U-L-S-A, straight ahead!

Gonna settle down
when I reach that city fair.
I'm homeward bound,
and I know I'll soon be there.

Where the tall corn grows
and the black oil flows
in old O-K-L-A
In the middle of it all,
I hear that call,
T-U-L-S-A, straight ahead!

Gonna settle down
when I reach that city fair.
I'm homeward bound,
and I know I'll soon be there.

Now there's no use talkin'
'cause I'll get there walkin'
if there's just no other way.
'Cause I read that sign
on the old state line,
T-U-L-S-A, straight ahead!

I've decided to adopt the song as BatesLine's theme song and the title as the site's motto. (I even asked to use the phrase as the name of my weekly column in Urban Tulsa Weekly, but they prefer the more generic "Opinion/Editorial.")

The phrase can have dual but complementary meanings. By itself it suggests our city progressing in the right direction. It can also refer (as it does in the song's lyrics) to Tulsa as a desirable destination, "that city fair," a great place to live.

While many people seem to think I'm all about opposing progress, my aim has always been to encourage genuine progress that improves our quality of life and helps us reclaim the title of America's most beautiful city. In that pursuit, I won't hesitate to oppose the detours, diversions, and dead ends that are often touted as the only way to move forward. It's my hope that this site and my writings elsewhere will help move Tulsa straight ahead.

Emily at Indie Tulsa is expanding that blog's coverage by inviting contributed reviews of independent businesses in the Tulsa area, the sorts of businesses that used to get ink in the recently-demised Community World sections of the Tulsa World. The first such contributed review is of D's Sweet Designs, a bakery in Owasso.

Route 66 News reports that one beloved indie Tulsa business is changing: Swinney's Hardware in Whittier Square is set to close this summer after 74 years in business and 67 years at the current location. Swinney's is the place to go for hard-to-find things, like plumbing parts that work with older fixtures. The two times I ran for City Council, I went to Swinney's to notarize my filing papers. I hope someone buys the place and manages to keep it open.

(Ron's got a nice photo of the Swinney's neon sign lit up at night. OKC neon enthusiast Dwayne has some good daytime photos of the Swinney sign and the sign and marquee of the neighboring Circle Cinema.)

From the Tulsa Police Department:

Homicide Detectives are requesting assistance from the public regarding the latest homicide. On March 11, 2008 at 11:23 p.m., officers were dispatched to 4019 S. 130th East Avenue Apartment #1605 in reference to a shooting. The victim, Jonathon Young - A.K.A. Jerrod Young, was shot outside of this apartment. Young was transported to St. Francis where he was pronounced dead.

Detectives have developed the following individuals as persons of interest.

1. White male, average height and weight, 21-25 yoa, short brown hair, wearing a red ball cap, blue jeans and a gray t-shirt. His first name is possibly "Jeff".

2. White male, average height and weight, 21-25 yoa, short brown hair with long side burns. He was wearing baggie clothes and was described as having a "skater" look.

3. Hispanic male, 21-25 yoa, small in size, long black hair in a pony tail that extended almost to his buttocks, wearing a do-rag on his head, a sweat shirt, and blue jeans. This subject also had a severe black eye.

4. White female, 5' tall, with long blonde hair, wearing a black sweat shirt or hoodie, jeans, and flip-flop shoes.

Anyone with information regarding this homicide is asked to call 596-COPS or 596-9222.

1170 KFAQ's Chris Medlock is taking a couple of days off and will be back on the air Friday. Filling in for him tomorrow and Thursday will be Pat Campbell, until recently morning host on WFLA 540 in Orlando.

I have absolutely no inside info on this, but it seems reasonable to assume that Pat's visit to Tulsa is the first in what may be a series of on-air tryouts to be KFAQ's morning show host, a position recently vacated by Gwen Freeman.

From his blog, Campbell looks like a solid conservative. In 2006 and 2007, Talkers Magazine named him one of the 250 most influential talk radio hosts in the country. I'm looking forward to getting a sense of his personality and style over the next two days, and I hope he enjoys his visit to Tulsa.

In reading up on Pat Campbell, I discovered that he met a similar fate to that of another conservative radio talk show host, my friend Kevin McCullough, late of WMCA 570 / WWDJ 970 in New York.

WFLA is one of the stations in Clear Channel's Orlando cluster. Clear Channel decided to change the format of a sister station, WQTM 740, from sports talk to "La Preciosa," Clear Channel's Mexican music format. (KIZS 101.5 is Clear Channel's La Preciosa station in Tulsa.) At the same time, they decided to move some of WQTM's sports talk programming to 570, bumping Campbell off the air. Campbell wasn't even allowed to say goodbye to his listeners on air. (To WFLA's credit, they left up Campbell's page on their website, with an explanation of his absence from the airwaves.)

In McCullough's case, his show was split between Salem Broadcasting's two New York City frequencies. Salem's stations in New York City had been about half local and national talk, carrying most of the Salem Radio Network lineup (e.g., Bill Bennett, Michael Medved), but they also carried a lot of paid programming from national Christian ministries -- e.g., Chuck Swindoll, James Dobson, Kenneth Hagin. In January, Salem made the decision to drop all local talk and almost all national talk, because of high demand from national ministries for air time in the #1 market. The only remaining talk on the cluster is two hours of Dr. Laura on WWDJ and 90 minutes of Janet Parshall on WMCA. McCullough, like Campbell, was on the air one day and gone the next, again with no opportunity to bid farewell to his listeners on the air. Thankfully, like Campbell, he could use his blog to let the listeners know what had happened. (Again, to Salem's credit, they've kept Kevin on their Townhall.com site as a columnist and blogger.)

(It's curious, though. Less than a month ago, I was able to use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to double-check my memory of the pre-2008 lineup on WMCA and WWDJ. Tonight I find that the website for the stations, nycradio.com, is blocking the Internet Archive. That situation always bugs me when I come across it.)

I hate to see local talk get squeezed out, and I'm thankful that Journal Broadcast Group remains committed to the idea, with over 24 hours of local talk shows each week on KFAQ.

MORE: This morning, KFAQ announced the addition of another local program. Joe Riddle brings his old-time radio show to the station, every Sunday night from 6 pm - 9 pm, sponsored by Humana.

I first met Joe almost 30 years ago, when he was a producer for KRMG's evening talk shows, Sports Line with Bob Carpenter and Night Line with David Stanford. I'd gone with a group of high school friends to visit KRMG's studios atop Liberty Towers at 15th and Boulder. Joe recorded one of our bunch doing his best David Stanford impression.

Joe's old-time radio show is fun listening, and I'm happy that KFAQ has picked it up. (Now if someone would only bring back Riders Radio Theater.)

It's fun to step back 70 years to the good old days of radio comedy and drama, although it'd be nice just to step back 30 years, to the days before cutthroat corporate control of the airwaves, back when local people like Mr. Swanson and Mr. Stuart owned stations.

Tulsa Master Gardeners, part of the OSU Extension office at Expo Square, has posted an ice storm recovery page with links to advice on whether a tree is likely to recover, how to prune trees to help a tree recover, and what trees to plant to replace those that were lost to the storm or to preventative removal by the utility companies.

There's a lot of information to digest. I'd like to find the right kind of tree to plant along our back fence, which is a utility easement. There's a three-foot wide strip planted with iris which used to be shaded by volunteer trees, but the trees were cleared out by PSO, and the sunlight allows weeds to thrive. The old trees also provided screening between our backyard and the neighbors' yard. It would be nice to find some trees that would grow to about 12' and provide partial shade below. Any suggestions?

Gwen Freeman, until recently host of KFAQ Mornings here in Tulsa, has rejoined Michael DelGiorno at WWTN (Supertalk 99.7 WTN) in Nashville. Starting tomorrow, you'll be able to hear her on DelGiorno's program from 9 am to 1 pm each weekday. (You can listen live to WTN by clicking here. Please note that the link works best in Internet Explorer.) The station will be easing her into the co-host position, so you probably won't hear much of her at first.

Gwen's departure is a loss for Tulsa radio, and I know from the many comments and questions I've received these past three weeks that her friends and listeners miss her dearly. I do, too. I'm hopeful that Nashville's larger market, there at the hub of the music industry, will give greater scope for her talents.

MORE: KFAQ is searching for a new morning show host. The qualifications -- a minimum of three to five years talk show experience, preferably morning show experience, plus:

A knowledge and understanding of issues important to a conservative talk show audience. Excellent verbal and written communications skills required; good voice quality that includes clear enunciation; ability to present your perspectives and insights in an entertaining and creative way; strong problem solving abilities; high work ethic; ability to meet deadlines and detail orientation; operate studio equipment; general knowledge of radio station operation; computer proficiency; an appreciation and understanding of the sales process.

In addition to hosting the morning show, the job requires "blogging and other web generated content tied to the morning show; public appearances; community/event involvement, and other duties as assigned by managers."

UPDATE: Tulsa Business Journal has a quote from WWTN management:

"Tulsa's loss is my gain," said John Mountz, WWTN vice president. "We have been looking forward to re-uniting them."

... since you last visited Indie Tulsa? Well, friend, that's too long.

Emily the Red Fork Hippie Chick has posted two new reviews: Evelyn's Restaurant and True to You Bra Salon.

Evelyn's is a southern soul food restaurant on 74th East Avenue south of the Port Road. More specifically, it's a little ways south of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, in the midst of the Sparks Aviation complex. I ate there following Mike Huckabee's appearance in Tulsa. The food is terrific -- I had the chicken fried steak -- and the service is friendly and attentive.

If you fondly remember Wanda J.'s restaurant, you'll find the same kind of food at Evelyn's. You'll find Wanda J. at Evelyn's, too, behind the cash register.

The only downside, as Emily noted, is that the hours are strictly breakfast and lunch on weekdays.

AT&T has announced a deal that with Starbucks that will, among other things, give AT&T broadband subscribers access to free Wi-Fi at the coffee chain's 7,000 company-owned US locations. That's in addition to AT&T basic Wi-Fi access already available at McDonald's and Barnes and Noble Bookstores. The switch-over from Starbucks' current provider will take the remainder of 2008. Having to pay for Wi-Fi is one of the reasons I avoid Starbucks in favor of locally-owned coffee houses. (Better coffee, later hours, a more interesting clientele, and not doing evil things like threatening a local coffee company over use of a generic term like Double Shot are other reasons I like local better.)

In order for an AT&T DSL subscriber to qualify for free basic AT&T Wi-Fi, you have to subscribe to at least the Express level of service (1.5 Mbps download). Check your bill: I started back when unlimited access to AT&T Wi-Fi (then called FreedomLink) was an extra $1.99 a month. They're still charging me for it, but they shouldn't, since I qualify for free access.

It'll be nice to have more Wi-Fi connections available in a pinch, but I expect I'll still make places like Coffee House on Cherry Street, Shades of Brown, Double Shot, and Cafe de El Salvador my caffeinated, wireless homes away from home.

The Tulsa World is reporting that the Sixty-Sixers, Tulsa's entry in the NBA Development League, may play next season at the new SpiritBank Events Center in Bixby. The SpiritBank center will seat 4,000 to 4,500 for basketball, not much smaller than the Expo Square Pavilion and plenty big for a team that draws about 2,000 fans a game. (See Dwayne Davis's cover story in the current issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly.)

I'm not surprised, and I wouldn't be surprised if either the Oilers or the Talons followed suit. Why not locate closer to families with children and more disposable income? Why not create a sense of excitement by playing in an arena you can come close to filling on a regular basis?

Tim Remy, the developer of the SpiritBank Events Center and Regal Plaza, the adjacent upscale shopping center, is showing that the private sector can build facilities for minor league sports and small conventions without a major public subsidy. True, the City of Bixby will give Remy a rebate of one cent of the sales taxes generated by the development over ten years, capped at $5.5 million. But the risk is all Remy's. He only gets the rebate if the development succeeds in generating new sales tax dollars.

I just learned that one of my favorite barbecue places has a sparkling new website. Big Daddy's All American BBQ has locations at 46th St N. & Lewis, 11th & Garnett, Main Street in Jenks, and Houston & Aspen in Broken Arrow. (Earlier this month, the 11th & Garnett location moved across Garnett to the old Dairy Queen / Lot-A-Burger location next to Mazzio's.)

The food is not only delicious, it's a great value. My favorite, the pulled pork sandwich special, is $4.95 all day. (There aren't too many barbecue places in Tulsa that serve pulled pork.) It's a big pile of pulled pork between two pieces of white bread, with a generous serving of the side order of your choice and a fountain drink. You'll need a fork: There's so much meat that the bread will either fall apart or the meat will spill out. It is tender, moist, and nicely flavored.

Big Daddy's has ribs, too, and the standard range of barbecue meats, plus cajun boudain sausage, turkey, and chicken. There are stuffed baked potatoes with your choice of meats. For dessert, they've always got sweet potato pie and a choice of other treats.

Go check out the website, then stop by and treat yourself to some delicious barbecue at Big Daddy's.

(I know this entry must read like amateurish ad copy, but I have not received any compensation or freebies for writing this review. I just really like Big Daddy's food, and I can't believe how much you get for what you pay.)

Monday morning on 1170 KFAQ, Gwen Freeman and I talked about top stories at the state and local level. These were my top 10 local stories, in no particular order:

1. Defeat of the proposed Tulsa County sales tax for Arkansas River projects
2. ORU: Professors' wrongful termination lawsuit and resignation of Richard Roberts
3. December ice storm
4. Tulsa Police Department: tenure of interim chief David Bostrom and rehiring of former chief Ron Palmer
5. Illegal immigration: Tulsa County Sheriff's Office qualifies under 287(g) to hold illegal immigrants for deportation; Tulsa City Council passes new policy for checking immigration status of people taken into custody for felonies and serious misdemeanors
6. City Hall move to One Technology Center
7. Centennial celebrations, including the Belvedere unearthing in June
8. City of Tulsa annexation of the Tulsa County Fairgrounds (will go into effect at the end of 2008
9. Arena: first city budget accounting for arena expenses, at the expense of police academy and golf courses; decision not to demolish convention center arena
10. Bell's removal and demolition

We didn't cover these, except to go through the AP's list, but on the state level, these were the stories I thought most notable, beyond those above:

1. Oklahoma's centennial
2. Passage of HB 1804 on immigration enforcement
3. Sidetracking of HB 1648 (competitive bidding for PPPs, killed by big construction lobby)
4. Former State Sen. Mike Mass pleads guilty, turns state's evidence
5. Indictment of TABOR petition leaders (the "Oklahoma Three")
6. Power-sharing in the Oklahoma State Senate

My list tends to be political, and I have probably overlooked sports, business, and human interest stories. What would you add to these lists of top local stories?

A commenter on a Tulsa World editorial says that any comparison of Tulsa's disaster-recovery to the problems in post-Katrina New Orleans completely misses the point:

Ok,

Somebody needs to do an intervention for the media types here in this city. First I got to listen to Joe Kelley rave about how well Tulsa did with its disaster compared to New Orleans residents. Now I get to read this tripe about tree pruning survivors. To hear these media types wail you would think that Tulsa survived the apocalypse instead of a moderate tree pruning. I personally blame the weathermen who about ten years ago began interrupting my TV programming to let me know 'it's sprinkling in Bixby" for this media tendency to make things seem worse than they actually are. So for you folks in the media who read about and write about the weather here are some signs that the city you are reporting about has not suffered a disaster.

Your city is not suffering a disaster if:

1. The strip clubs are all open for regular business hours.

2. You can go to Wal-Mart and buy the supplies you need instead of having to break into Wal-Mart and steal the supplies you need.

3. You don't have to swim to work.

4. The biggest portion of your insurance claim is that refrigerated goods spoilage check they sent you.

5. You spent the week crapping in your own bathroom and not in a porta-potty provided by the red cross.

6. You slept in your own bed and not in a cot at a shelter.

7. Your job is still here.

8. You could eat out at a restaurant every single day of the so called disaster.

9. You still had a car to get around in.

10. You could find an ATM machine that would process your request for funds.

11. You could still make and receive calls on your cell phones.

If you couldn't do any of the above then congratulations you are a victim. For thee rest of you well, you are just a bunch of whiners who need to get a little reality check.

(I fixed the commenter's typos for the sake of readability.)

Good points. It could have been much, much worse than it was.

We had a great time tonight at a performance of the oft-resurrected musical Forever Plaid, which brings back the era of close harmony pop quartets like the Crew Cuts, the Four Lads, the Four Aces, the Four Freshmen, and the Lettermen.

The play was presented by Tulsa Repertory Musicals at the historic Tulsa Little Theatre.

The Off-Off-Broadway play was first performed in Tulsa in 1995, and two members of the original Plaids are on stage this year: Mark Pryor as Frankie and Justin Boyd as Jinx. My wife, oldest son, and I have all had the pleasure of singing with Justin as part of Coventry Chorale, the schola cantorum for Trinity Episcopal Church's Epiphany Service, and this summer's Tulsa Boy Singers' tour of Britain. His performance tonight of the Four Lads' hit "Cry" was a show-stopper.

Tulsa Little Theatre, just south of 15th, turned 75 years old in 2007. After several years in which it was left to rot, Bryce and Sunshine Hill bought the theater and began restoration in 2004, reopening it in 2005. They've done a beautiful job, creating a very intimate venue for performances. The theater seats about 300 and is available for event rental.

Forever Plaid is worth the price of admission just for the chance to hear great old songs like "Three Coins in the Fountain" and "Catch a Falling Star." The laughter built into the well-timed choreography and the '60s nostalgia are icing on the cake. The three-minute condensed version of The Ed Sullivan Show is a sight to behold: In the time it takes to boil an egg they bring back Topo Gigio, Señor Wences, Bill Dana, and the Flying Wallendas, plus plate-spinners, dog acts, accordion players, and acrobats.

There's a matinee performance on Sunday which is sold out, but tickets are still available for the New Year's Eve show which begins at 9 p.m. Call 744-7340 to make arrangements to see the show.

Many churches in Tulsa are still without power and are reducing or cancelling services, but unlike schools they often don't have the procedures in place to get word out to all the appropriate media outlets, so you'll want to check each of the following if you think your church may be cancelling services.

KFAQ church and school closings
KOTV church closings
KTUL church closings
KJRH church closings

Power is still out at Christ Presbyterian Church, but with the help of the generator, there will be heat and worship, accompanied by guitar, in the youth room in the annex at 5120 S. Columbia Pl. at 9:15 and 10:45. No nursery, bring your own coffee, and dress warmly but as casually as you like.

On their website, PSO has a map showing the estimated date by which 95% of the customers in an area will be restored to power. Most outlying areas should be back on line today, north and east by tomorrow, north Tulsa and the mile or so around Southern Hills by Monday, and central Tulsa -- roughly the city's 1957 boundaries -- by Tuesday. Problems affecting individual customers or small clusters may not be solved by then. Some people have been told not to expect service until after Christmas.

For all the talk about trees, I am wondering how much of the ice storm damage is simply due to the effect of a 1/2 inch or more of ice on above-ground power lines. The main transmission lines are too high to be affected by trees; did we lose any of them? If no amount of tree trimming will spare us from this kind of situation, we need to weigh the cost of burying the lines against the costs -- loss of productivity, loss of perishable food, deaths and injuries. I would love to see an analysis showing how many customers were without power due to various causes -- downed line from ice, downed line from tree, blown transformer.

This morning on 1170 KFAQ, Mark Wayne Mullin of Mullin Plumbing addressed the next nasty challenge for those still without power. We are forecast to have a hard freeze -- 19 degrees -- Saturday night / early Sunday morning. The usual tactics of leaving your undersink cabinet doors open and leaving the faucets dripping only work when a house has heat. When the temps inside the house dip below freezing, you've got a problem.

Mullin urged homeowners in this situation to cut off the water at the meter. (Hopefully you've already got the special tool that makes this easy.) Then open all the taps, including the outside taps, for about 10 minutes to let any water drain out. Flush your toilets and plunge as much water out of the bowl as you can. If you have an electric water heater, drain it.

I didn't quite catch what he said about gas water heaters -- whether it made any difference that those would remain heated, or whether the heater would not be sufficient to combat temperatures in the teens. It's probably best to play it safe and drain a gas heater, too. (If someone heard the interview more clearly, please leave a comment.)

MORE: Here's some advice on coping with winter storm power outages from Northeast Utilities, where the weather is colder for longer. Keep in mind that heating oil-powered furnace boilers and radiated heat systems are rare in Oklahoma:

Keeping Your Pipes from Freezing

Shut off the valve that allows water to come into your home. Then, open any drain valves and all faucets and let them run until the pipes are empty (it's helpful to identify these valves in advance). Next, flush all toilets and pour denatured alcohol into toilets and sinks to prevent water in the traps from freezing. Do NOT use automotive antifreeze in case there's trouble with your water system; you don't want the antifreeze to contaminate your drinking water. You may, however, use nontoxic antifreeze that's made for winterizing motor homes.

Turn off the furnace emergency switch. Then drain your furnace boiler by opening the valve at the bottom (this looks like a garden faucet). Also, open all radiator vents. Be sure the boiler is filled with water again before it is restarted.

The tank of your electric water heater will keep water warm for the first few days after an outage. However, it can freeze after prolonged cold and should be drained after three days of below freezing temperatures.

Given that we're only going to have one or two nights of below freezing weather, it may be that gas and hot water heaters will survive without any problem.

Interesting stuff on the PSO website, where you can find a map of restoration progress and a map of metro area outages. I'm not sure about that restoration map: Are the blank areas those that never lost power, or areas that just aren't "in progress" yet?

They have photos, too, and this description:

PSO is staging a massive effort to restore power as quickly as possible to customers in Tulsa and across northeastern Oklahoma following the devastating December 9 and 10 ice storm. Approximately 1,500 line workers from PSO's sister utility companies in the AEP System and from other utilities and contractors are working with approximately 500 PSO line workers to restore power. The power restoration effort is supported by a force of 1,000 tree trimmers needed to clear the tangled forest of collapsed trees from PSO's equipment, so repairs can be made.

Although the Tulsa Police Department blog is mainly official department news releases and reprints of news stories about TPD, occasionally something more like a personal blog entry is posted. Officer Jay Chiarito-Mazzarella has an expressively written, humorous piece about how something always seems to get in the way of serving a search warrant:

That is, when you typically observe criminal activity someplace, there's likely to be a "Scarface"-sized mound of blow (cocaine), a griddle pan worth of crack, and enough meth to make half of Tulsa's teeth grind for weeks. There's also likely enough people with guns inside you'd think the gun show had been rescheduled. And there's also typically enough people parading around in and out of the place with their crack pipe held high like they were leading the parade with a band leader's baton. You're practically waiting for the Snoopy balloon to come out any second, like it was a Thanksgiving Day parade.

But all that changes the second you type up a search warrant, go before a judge, and have a signed, search warrant in hand. It's truly one of those superstitiously, coincidentally weird kind of things. Like when you want something to happen, you think about the opposite, to "outsmart" whatever unknown-but all seeing-being is defining your luck for you.

Read the whole thing.

Power is still out most places around midtown. We didn't lose power until 7:30 this morning. Coming home from an event last night, the traffic lights were already out at 36th & Peoria and 21st & Utica.

Happily, the lines immediately leading to our house are all intact, thanks to Asplundh's butchery. A line supplying a pole light came down, however.

At times I have longed for a tree to shade our driveway, like the one our neighbors have had. Not anymore.

I can't help but notice: The fact that a branch doesn't overhang a line doesn't mean that it can't fall on a line and bring it down.

We've probably lost all three of our Bradford pear trees, plus a couple of big oaks. The trees that held on to their leaves were harmed the most, because there was more surface area for the ice to cover, and therefore more weight on the limbs. The trees that dropped their leaves did just fine.

There's probably a spiritual lesson in there somewhere. If you're a pastor, feel free to adapt it as a sermon illustration.

At about 4 p.m. I traveled down 41st Street between Yale and Garnett. Promenade was open, as was Reasor's, the other shops at Southroads, and nearly all of that commercial district. The McDonald's was closed, but seemed to have power. Traffic lights were out at Sheridan and Mingo, but the rest were operating. Home Depot was open and packed. The gas station at 41st & Memorial was doing a brisk business. It appeared that everything around 41st & Garnett was up and running.

Cycledog has photos of the storm's impact in Owasso.

MORE: Charles G. Hill has a storm report from Oklahoma City and pictures with links to more.

Bowden McElroy made it to work in Tulsa, but felt guilty about leaving his family home without power. And wouldn't you know it?

My 8:00 a.m. client showed up. Every one but my 5:00 p.m. client has canceled. Isn't that the way it always goes, the first and last appointments showing up and everyone else canceling?

STILL MORE: Don Danz says hooray for the chop:

Oh, and I'd just like to quickly thank those individuals with large trees who bitch and moan, and do everything in their power to thwart the power companies from trimming back their trees which have grown too close to power lines...thank you...from everyone in Tulsa and across the state...thank you for caring so much about your precious trees. We can all certainly agree that your precious aesthetic sensibilities are far more important than a reliable power grid.

To be fair, an ice storm like this is a once-in-a-generation occurrence. I hope someone studies the effects of the PSO's trimming practices before and after protests over excessive trimming. Was more moderate pruning as effective as the earlier clear-cutting?

Those who've accused Councilor Roscoe Turner and north Tulsa residents of unjustifiable complaining about the closing of Albertson's at Pine and Peoria need to listen to the podcast of Saturday's Darryl Baskin show. The guest at the beginning of the show was Steve Whitaker of John 3:16 mission, and the topic was "food deserts."

Not desserts. Deserts.

There's a big one in Tulsa. Whitaker said a food desert is defined as an area where it's more than three miles to the nearest full-service grocery. Tulsa has a six-mile wide band without supermarkets that goes all the way across the city.

There are no full-service grocery stores in the City of Tulsa north of Admiral Place. There's a Piggly Wiggly on Admiral east of Harvard, a Warehouse Market at 3rd & Lewis, and another Warehouse Market at 66th & Peoria in Turley. Beyond that you have to go to Owasso to shop.

A food desert makes life harder for those already on the margins of poverty. There are no supermarkets within walking distance. There might be a convenience store, but prices are higher, and the store isn't likely to carry produce or much in the way of healthy food. Driving is getting more expensive as fuel costs rise. Public transit is rarely available when people are off work and can go shopping.

Whitaker and Baskin wondered why, since everyone has to buy food, no one has filled the vacuum left by Albertson's departure.

I read an explanation recently -- can't remember where -- that made a lot of sense. Even though everyone has to buy food, lower income people tend to buy basics and items on sale. In other words, they buy items with low markups. In supermarkets in middle class and upper income areas, shoppers buy more expensive, high-markup items which subsidize the basics. If everyone that shops at a particular grocery buys only the low-markup items, the grocery won't be able to afford to stay in business.

UPDATE 2007/11/30: I took a little drive up Peoria and back down Lewis to check on grocery locations. There are no supermarkets on N. Peoria until you are beyond Tulsa city limits and in unincorporated Turley, which has a Warehouse Market. There is a greengrocers called "Week's" at Apache and Lewis, but I don't know if it's open out of season. At Pine and Lewis, the old Safeway (the newer old Safeway on the northwest corner) is split between a RentQuik and a Save-A-Lot. Although the Save-A-Lot doesn't have a sign out front, banners in the store visible through the windows showed the name. There's a big Supermercado on Lewis just north of I-244. I didn't stop to investigate, so I don't know what hours these stores keep or how their prices and selection compare to stores in my neighborhood.

Tulsa Realtor Darryl Baskin reported back on November 4 that the owner of Cityplex Towers (née Oral Roberts' City of Faith) plans to develop the outparcels of the property nearest the 81st and Lewis intersection as a retail complex anchored by Whole Foods Market and Barnes and Noble Bookstore. This will be the first Whole Foods Market in the Tulsa area and the third B&N. I seem to recall that a B&N was mentioned as a possibility for the second phase of Jenks' Riverwalk Crossing.

If this comes to pass, it would seem to preclude a major chain bookseller for Riverwalk Crossing, with a B&N just two miles away and a Borders four miles away.

That item came from Neil Dailey's Tulsa Commercial Real Estate News blog. Dailey heads up commercial real estate for Baskin's team. I'll be keeping an eye on his blog for interesting tidbits. Some of the most important local news is found in real estate transactions, not down at City Hall or the County Courthouse.

While poking around darrylbaskin.com, I came across a listing for Jarrett Farm, a luxury bed and breakfast resort halfway between Tulsa and Bartlesville. The asking price for the 120-acre Jarrett Farm property is $2.95 million. The listing describes it as a "turnkey business," so I'd guess it's still in operation while a buyer is sought.

If you're interested in ways of reducing the cost and environmental impact of homes and businesses, there are three open houses this Saturday afternoon that you'll want to visit, all part of the Tulsa Solar Tour:

• Harvest Solar Energy office at 442 S. Utica, a converted bungalow that uses passive solar energy.
• The Geer/Palmieri residence at 1352 E. 43rd Pl., new construction in the Brooktowne subdivision (former home of the John Zink Plant) with concrete-and-Styrofoam insulation, geothermal climate control and water-heating, and other energy-efficient features
• The House of the Lifted Lorax, 4014 W. 42nd Place, home to Route 66 Ron and Emily, the Red Fork Hippie Chick: "West Tulsa cottage in the historic Red Fork neighborhood features a grid-tied solar power system, extensive use of simple techniques to reduce energy consumption, and several outdoor projects designed to reduce the homeowners' ecological footprint, including an organic garden, henhouse, and backyard apiary."

The homes are open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the event is part of the American Solar Energy Society's 12th annual National Solar Tour.

Emily has more info, including a PDF flyer with details and directions for the buildings on Tulsa's tour.

Ron and Emily have a blog devoted to their efforts to reduce their house's environmental footprint. Even if you aren't very Green, you have to admire a home with an electric meter that runs backwards.

Religion News Blog has set up a special category for stories relating to the lawsuit against Oral Roberts University by three former professors.

One of the more recent items is this overview of the ORU controversy that ran in Sunday's Oklahoman. The story provides an overview of the Oral Roberts-related entities, the various subsidiaries, compensation received by Richard and Lindsay Roberts, and key figures on the board of regents:

The Board of Regents at ORU is a mix of professionals from around the country. But the majority are heads of large ministries with a presence on either Trinity Broadcasting Network or Daystar Television Network.

Many, like Oral, Richard and Lindsay Roberts, are self-professed faith-healers and teach the Word of Faith or Prosperity Gospel.

The story mentions that four of the regents -- Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, John Hagee, and Creflo Dollar -- head ministries that have received "F" grades for transparency from ministrywatch.org.

Meanwhile, the ministrywatch.org home page features a 20/20 story from March about financial accountability. The group tracks over 500 ministries and provides detailed, balanced, and informative reports.

Two ORU professors and an adjunct professor who were fired late this summer have filed a lawsuit in District Court against Oral Roberts University, ORU President Richard Roberts, and several other university officials.

You can read the plaintiffs' petition here on the Fox 23 website (PDF format).

The suit alleges that Roberts directed Professor Tim Brooker to mobilize students and university resources to support the 2006 mayoral campaign of County Commissioner Randi Miller. Brooker says that he advised against involvement as a violation of the university's tax exempt status and as contrary to his personal policy for political science students getting practical campaign experience: "We don't do local politics because it turns neighbors into enemies." Roberts overruled his objections. The suit alleges that Roberts' order violated the school's articles of incorporation and the faculty and administrative handbook and policy statement.

When the IRS came calling a couple of months later, Brooker was told he was to be the fall guy (the suit alleges), to accept responsibility for the school's involvement in the Randi Miller campaign and to shield President Roberts and the school from any repercussions. He also would have to suffer disciplinary procedures for his violations of school policy, even though those violations were ordered by the administration.

Brooker later came into possession of an internal document -- a "compendium itemiz[ing] numerous and substantial acts of misconduct and improrpieties by Defendants ORU and ROBERTS." The lawsuit goes on to provide

a summary of the information contained in the draft of the internal Oral Roberts Ministry report developed by ORM Community and Governmental Liaision [sic], Stephanie Cantese [sic], sister-in-law of Richard ROBERTS. The report appears to be a confidential assessment of potential vulnerability for legal, moral, political and ethical problems of the ROBERTS family, Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.... Some of the more salacious entries -- of which the Defendant ORU, Defendant ROBERTS, and members of the Board of Regents are painfully aware -- have been omitted from this Petition to preserve, as much as possible, the remaining positive image of the University.

What follows is four pages of small print that paints a picture of people who are treating the funds and assets of ORU and ORM as their own personal property.

The attorneys for the plaintiffs are Gary Richardson, who ran as an independent for Governor in 2002, and Paul T. Boudreaux. There are a number of sloppy typos in the petition, which surprises me -- the spelling of Stephanie Cantees' name, time line issues (saying that Brooker was hired by ORU in 2007, obviously a typo). I assume these would be corrected in an amended petition.

Oral Roberts University is an important asset to our community. I daresay it has attracted more energetic and entrepreneurial people to Tulsa as students who then become long-term residents than a dam or a pedestrian bridge or an arena ever will. Whoever is responsible for the decision, getting the university involved in Randi Miller's campaign for Mayor was foolish politically, legally, and ethically. This is a sad day for Tulsa.

MORE: I wrote a couple of blog entries about ORU's apparent involvement in the Randi Miller mayoral campaign:

Oh, are you in for it now! (January 27, 2006)

ORU really in for it now! (February 2, 2006)

That second entry links to Steve Roemerman's entry which includes the January 16, 2006, e-mail purportedly from Tim Brooker recruiting student involvement in Randi Miller's campaign.

UPDATE 2007/10/03: A couple of interesting comments were posted to today's Tulsa World story on the lawsuit, and it stirred some recollections.

To untangle the references: Brandon Brooker is the son of Tim and Paulita Brooker, two of the parties to the lawsuit. Toby is Toby Huyssen, who was Randi Miller's campaign manager. The second commenter is referring to an encounter at The Fountains, following the Republican Men's Club luncheon, when I asked Brooker about the Miller campaign recruitment e-mail.

Toby Huyssen later took the blame for sending the Miller campaign recruitment e-mail under Brooker's name. I remember thinking, when the Tulsa World finally reported on the Brooker e-mail on February 27, 2006, that it was strange that Brooker seemed to defend the e-mail when I asked him about it on January 20. If he hadn't actually written it, why didn't he tell me that he hadn't written it and that they were trying to find out who had?

I also recall someone tipping me off to the departure of a couple of ORU students from LaFortune's campaign, something hinted at in the comments below. I seem to recall it was mentioned in the ORU student newspaper. If I remember more, I'll post it here.

1. 10/3/2007 2:16:50 AM, Anna , Dr.Roberts i have gotten 4 calls we are all signing papers to send to you. We saw Mrs. Broker write the e mail - she was mad after son left Lafortune's campaign brooker got Toby Brandon's job as campaign manager. Brandon is a skilled as a campaign manager amd thats why his blogs above Brandon I notice he is leaving off Brooker said he got a nice letter of reccommendation to take with him to Coburn when he left the campaign to get a full time job for Coburn. Toby had no experience running a campaign. We all knew Toby lived in an off campus apartment with your son Brandon.We went there to hear him play his guitar. The students are right you live in Silom Springs and drive every day, Toby's mom lives in Germany. Toby told 3 of us he agreed to take the hit about writting the email when it looked like Dr. Mrs. Brooker was going to get in trouble for sending it. Your husband came to him and reminded him about doctoring up his admission papers for him so he could live off campus with Brandon, Toby told us he felt obligated. We got scared that he might be kicked out of school, the computers are password protected and have all our grades and information and under firpa thats big- Brooker promised he could get Swales to go along with a slap on the wrist.

2. 10/3/2007 2:28:56 AM, current student, tulsa
Brooker being forced to do Miller's campaign absolute bogus. Brooker's roommate toby was fired by Mayor Lafortune's campaign and Brooker let everyone know how furious he was. Brooker and Dr. Mrs. Brooker his wife sent out a firey e mail "we have been challenged and we must defend our honor" and made a plea for us to join with her in Randi campaign as our honor has been challenged by Lafortune. Dr. Roberts was out of the country because my roommate went with him on medical missions. So how did Dr. Roberts force him? Before President Roberts ever came out for Randi Miller brooker was organizing the young republicans and getting the on board to seek revenge on LaFortune who he bleived treated his sons roommate bad. This is pure crap. Til now i went with the story Dr. Brooker but no more.

First you make Toby take the hit for your wife then you lie and say Toby sent it we had wittnesses who are you kidding. you talked bad about chris medlock because michale bates when we accompied you to the republican mens club forum michale challenged you all the way back you went after chris medlock and told us you are taking him on personally. This had nothing to do with President Roberts and I can give names of those who heard you say this. I worked for Kathy Taylor got credit and my roommate did MAyor Lafortune you said at the beginning of class we could work on any campaign for credit. Come on students if you were in his class that semester come out you know what he is saying. Dr. Brooker you resigned no one forced you out.. you did the same in 2006 when i was a first year student you told us you resigned. Many the got tired of it.

Let me try to parse that last paragraph:

First, you [Tim Brooker] make Toby [Huyssen] take the hit for your wife, then you lie and say Toby sent [the Miller campaign recruitment e-mail]. We had witnesses [to the contrary]. Who are you kidding? You talked bad about Chris Medlock, because Michael Bates, when we accompanied you to the Republican Men's Club forum, Michael challenged you. All the way back [from the luncheon to ORU], you went after Chris Medlock and told us you are taking him on personally.

TRACKBACK: Tyson Wynn has an excellent post looking at this lawsuit through the lens of financial accountability for religious institutions.

In much the same way that bad corporate citizens cost us all eventually, bad ministries cost all ministries eventually. No pastor I know would dare use God's coffers as his own personal piggy bank.... And the misery of it all is that because this has happened (if the allegations are true) to the big boys, there will be a regulatory response, placing more burden and regulation on all non-profits, from national and statewide ministries to the local church....

I currently serve on the Board of Directors for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. I have never seen a better run, more financially accountable and transparent organization. At our recent meeting, we learned that the BGCO has received an "unqualified good" rating from our external auditors again for 2006. If memory serves, the BGCO has had "unqualified good" ratings since the 1920s. Not only that, but all of our affiliates do, too.

The heart of the problem: Regents who won't rule, who are there as administration yes men, not a body holding the administration accountable for their stewardship.

Having worked in higher education, I can state that though woefully excessive in Roberts' case, university administration (especially presidents) are afforded great discretion and great potential for corruption in all institutions, private or public. What is needed are strong, independent Regents that are more committed to educational excellence, public accountability, and financial transparency than to the man or woman at the helm. Regent literally means a "ruler" or "one who rules." The more you deal with higher education, the less you see Regents as rulers and more as lobbyists and rubber stamps.

The list of ORU's regents, found in their 2005 IRS Form 990 filing (starting on page 18 of the PDF; kudos to the World for posting it), is a who's who of Word-Faith televangelists: Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Jerry Savelle, Benny Hinn, John Hagee, Marilyn Hickey, Jesse Duplantis.

There's a great letter in today's Whirled from someone named L. D. Young who is tired of the whiny expressions of boredom emanating from some young professional types:

At a recent meeting on the proposed river development plan, I was irritated by comments from the Young Tulsa Professionals that, "There's nothing to do in Tulsa."

Are they in the same Tulsa area as me? A town that offers the breadth of cultural and social opportunities as Tulsa can hardly be termed "nothing to do." Let me direct their short attention spans to a few things to do.

The writer goes on to list museums, festivals, theater groups, art galleries, nightclubs, live music venues, coffeehouses, and places to see and be seen and then concludes:

Filling the river bed with water will just be another short-term fix for the mini-me entitlement generation who visualize life as an episode of "Sex in the City." Sorry, but that is not the real world. Quit your whining and find something to do.

The funny thing is that none of what's proposed in the river tax plan is going to produce the kind of excitement that these TYpros types say they're after.

Any parent knows that you can't cure kid boredom with more stuff. If you cave in when they complain of boredom and give them something new, in less than a day they'll be bored once more. The better path is to reintroduce them to something cool that they've forgotten or overlooked.

And that's what the grownups ought to be doing in this situation. The Tulsa Metro Chamber ought to be introducing these discontented youngsters to all the opportunities for fun around town, all the excitement being generated by private enterprise, aka "commerce," a word that used to be in that organization's name.

Instead, those with a vested interest in relieving taxpayers of their money are cynically exploiting the ennui of these young adults by telling them that it's not their fault that they're bored. No, Tulsa voters are the scapegoats, and if only those selfish naysayers would pay higher taxes, Tulsa would be transformed into a young single adults' paradise. Just like Surf City there'd be "two girls for every boy," but also vice versa!

Four years ago we listened to the tax proponents tell us how lousy Tulsa was -- stagnant, boring, dying. They told us if we gave them half a billion dollars they'd make it all better. Voters bought what they were selling. So how can they keep claiming that Tulsa is stagnant, boring, dying? Isn't that an admission that the package they sold us in 2003 -- Vision 2025 -- didn't work as promised? Or wasn't even what we needed?

A few months ago I linked to this wonderful testimonial to the free and inexpensive fun that Tulsa offers, and how you can find out about it in the events pages of Urban Tulsa Weekly. Tasha Does Tulsa has the same theme.

It would be nice if what was once known as the Chamber of Commerce and their affiliated young professional group (TYpros) would do more to talk up Tulsa instead of running it down.

Tiger Woods has shot a 63 in today's second round of the PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club. He just missed a birdie putt on the 18th hole which looped around the rim and back out toward him. Had he made the putt, that would have been the lowest round ever in major championship history.

His seven under par gives him a combined 6 under after two rounds and puts him in first place, two strokes ahead of Scott Verplank.

You can see the complete PGA Championship leaderboard here.

UPDATE: John Daly's training regimen of casino slots, cigarettes, and Diet Coke didn't serve him as well today. (Reminds me of "Decathlon Champion" John Belushi's commercial for Little Chocolate Donuts.) He shot 3 over par, putting him at par after two rounds, dropping him from 2nd place to a seven-way tie for 8th place.

Today MSNBC had a very thorough front-page report on its website about Tulsa and illegal immigration. The story, "Tulsa in Turmoil: The Illegal Immigration Wreck," originated with an email from Rogers State University political science professor Gary Rutledge, an east Tulsa resident who wrote msnbc.com about a traffic accident involving an apparent illegal immigrant and about the massive changes in his part of town:

For Rutledge, a car accident personalized the issue. He and his wife were waiting in their pickup at a traffic light one evening when they were hit from behind by a vehicle traveling about 30 miles an hour. They were not badly hurt, only stunned.

More shocking, though, was what they heard from the police officer who responded to the accident: The other driver, a young Hispanic man, did not speak English, did not have a driver’s license or insurance. The officer suspected the man was an illegal immigrant, Rutledge said, but he did not check his immigration status because such inquiries weren’t allowed in misdemeanor cases.

Before taking the other driver to jail, Rutledge said, the officer told him he should just go home and forget about it.

“He said, ‘We do a lot of this kind of thing and we can tell you that there's not much to be done about it,’” Rutledge recalled.

It’s not clear what happened to the suspect after that. Tulsa police were not able to locate an accident report on the incident.

But officers said that the maximum penalty the man could have faced for driving without a license, a misdemeanor, would be 30 days in jail. Driving without insurance is only a ticketable offense.

Rutledge said he was floored by the experience. Not only would his own insurance company have to absorb the cost for repairing his truck, but the other driver was soon going to be back on the streets.

“It was … a feeling of helplessness,” he said. “There's no recourse, there's nothing to do.”

The MSNBC.com report also covers the passage of HB 1804, the application by the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office to participate in the Federal "287(g)" program allowing local law enforcement agencies to place immigration detainers on suspected illegals, the efforts of U. S. Rep. John Sullivan to boost immigration enforcement in Tulsa, and the City Council's resolution demanding immigration status checks on those arrested by Tulsa Police officers:

Sullivan, among the Republicans strongly opposed to President Bush’s immigration reform bill as too lenient, also was behind the city’s move to crack down on illegal immigrants.

At his urging, Tulsa’s City Council passed a resolution in May that requires police officers to determine immigration status of “all suspected illegal aliens'' encountered in the course of their regular duties — a significant hardening of the current policy under which only those arrested on felony charges are checked.

The police chief is opposed to the measure, as is Tulsa’s Democratic Mayor Kathy Taylor, who is engaged in a bitter political battle with Sullivan.

Sullivan charges that Tulsa has become a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants under Taylor’s watch because they are usually not reported to the federal immigration officials when they commit minor crimes.

He also argues that by getting police involved in reporting immigration violations, the city will be able to demonstrate the need for an ICE office in Tulsa....

Taylor has refused to sign the council’s resolution and instead issued a “policy clarification” stating that police need only ask about immigration status for felony cases or misdemeanors that result in a trip to jail.

By the way, the Sheriff's Office learned today that they have been accepted into the 287(g) program. Deputies and detention officers will be undergoing training beginning at the end of August. The program will be fully in place by the end of September.

Toward the end of the story, there was this about the Cinco de Mayo protests:

Already, when some 1,500 mostly Hispanic demonstrators marched in East Tulsa on May 5 to protest HB 1804, they encountered an unexpected counterdemonstration, including members of Outraged Patriots and the Tulsa Minuteman Project, one of four organizations in Oklahoma listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “nativist extremist" organizations that target immigrants with their anger, not just immigration policy.

Police were watching the march and counterdemonstration and managed to keep the two sides apart. Only epithets and few eggs were hurled.

The counterdemonstration was widely publicized, announced on radio, and press-released to local media. It was scheduled to begin four hours before and end one hour before the start of the the pro-illegal-immigration demonstration. This is the first I have heard about eggs being thrown by either side.

I've met several members of the Tulsa Minuteman Project and have been to one of their meetings. I haven't seen or heard anything nativist, anti-legal-immigrant, or anti-Hispanic. The only anger I heard -- very mild anger at that -- was directed at the public officials who refuse to enforce immigration laws.

For the second year in a row, the Memorial Veterans Association is holding an Independence Day barbecue for U. S. military veterans. Here is the invitation with all the details.

INVITATION

From: WW II veteran Bob Powell, President of Memorial Veterans Association

WHO: All Tulsa area veterans -- any service, any war -- ESPECIALLY Iraq, Afghanistan or other current conflict.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 4th, 10:00 AM

WHAT: Free Independence Day BARBECUE LUNCH. Menu: Choice of five (5) meats, coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans, rolls -- and Ice-Cold LEMONADE.

NO HARD LIQUOR, DRUGS, OR ROUGH STUFF. TPD will be present - EMSA will be there.

WHY: "WELCOME HOME" to veterans who have returned, or are scheduled to return from the Middle East conflicts. Tulsa's way to say "THANK YOU" for your Service -- to SALUTE YOU for a "JOB WELL DONE!"

WHERE: Chandler Park, 6500 West 21st Street, Shelter Area #2, west end.

HOW: Drive west on W. 21st Street to Avery Drive, turn short at the hillside sign: "CHANDLER PARK", drive up the steep hill and proceed to the gate -- just follow the signs.

Assembly starts at 1000 hours -- There will be a program with flag detail, firing squad and speaker -- entertainment -- then lunch is served at 1100 hours.

THIS IS A PICNIC, Troops -- so, bring your own chairs, plenty of nice green grass to sit on.

HANDICAPPED? Boy Scouts Troop #1 and #19 will be there to assist you.

As last year, Councilor John Eagleton and his barbecue team will be up all night tending the smoker. If you're a veteran and will be in town on July 4, you'll want to be here -- Eagleton Bros. Barbecue is a special treat.

Oops. KOTV's satellite truck tripped up its newscopter, while trying to capture dramatic footage for a promo:

The News On 6 helicopter, SKYNEWS 6, is damaged during an accident at Sand Springs' Pogue airport. Luckily, both of our colleagues onboard the aircraft walked away from the accident. The News On 6’s Ashli Sims reports both men are now home recuperating.

Police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances scrambled to the scene of the accident at Sand Springs' Pogue Airport Wednesday afternoon. Our crew had been shooting video of SKYNEWS 6 when it went down, with two employees on board....

SKYNEWS 6 was flying low over our satellite truck and clipped the satellite dish. The helicopter went down about 100 yards away, breaking into several pieces.

News on 6 was first on the scene, but not first with live helicopter footage:

Ranger 8 was over the scene shortly after it happened and you could see the chopper in three large pieces on the ground.

We're told the Bell 206B owned by KOTV owner Griffin Capital Corp. crashed on the south end of the runway. The helicopter was being used during a promotional shoot when the rotors struck the dish of the KOTV satellite truck, sending the helicopter spinning out of control and crashing to the ground.

Next time, use the optical zoom, maybe.

(Via Tulsa Now Forum.)

The Altarnet Film Society presents a monthly program of independent short-subject films at Agora coffee house in the Fontana Center at 51st & Memorial here in Tulsa. (Agora is northeast of the Center Fountain.) The films are presented in an environment that encourages discussion and interaction.

Here are the details and synopses of the films to be presented this Saturday night, June 23, starting at 7:30 p.m.:

"Wentworth," drama, 16:41, directed by R. Stephen Suettinger: How do you choose between the girl of your dreams and the girl in your dreams?

"She," experimental, 1:00, directed by Jimmy Calhoun: A 60 second monologue that tells how one man's love for a woman affects his spiritual journey.

"20 Minutes," drama, 20:00, directed by Monica Huntington. "Twenty Minutes" is an eternal love story with a super-natural twist. "Sometimes forever is just a few minutes."

"Mutual Love Life," comedy, 10:49, directed by Robert Peters. If only we could have breakup insurance that would help us recover from a crushed heart, we would have no fear of jumping into love.

Just another example of the opportunities Tulsa offers for intelligent and fun interaction.

I'm working on my column (early deadline this week) at one of my favorite places to work, the Coffee House on Cherry Street, listening to folk singer Terry Aziere. Terry has a very pleasant voice and guitar style, and although my writing doesn't allow me to give him my full attention, his clever lyrics catch my ear from time to time. It's nice to have coffee house music that you can choose to listen actively to or put in the background -- not so loud that it interferes with conversations. Terry is hear each Wednesday at noon and the 2nd and 4th Tuesday evenings.

Speaking of which, Natasha Ball recently wrote a nice tribute to Coffee House on Cherry Street and its "completely awesome" owner, Cheri Asher. (She is, you know.) Tasha links to a Journal Record story about what was involved in setting up the store and getting it ready to open.

MORE: Pilgrim Ramblings salutes CHCS:

Before I get into today’s material, I would just like to plug a special place here in Tulsa. Today, I am writing from The Coffee House on Cherry Street, probably my favorite place to hang out and write. There is always a great feel to the place, people conversing about whatever, using wi-fi, drinking their vanilla bullsh**s (as Larry David describes it). It’s a wonderful environment or aspiring writers, and for those who have writer’s block! I am currently eating the best cheesecake I have had in my life!

Mark your calendars. There are a couple of wonderful opportunities to hear beautiful music performed by some very talented young Tulsans.

This coming Thursday, May 24, at 6 p.m., is the spring concert for the Barthelmes Conservatory Music School. Students are admitted to the music school based on musical aptitude, and they receive twice-weekly one-on-one lessons on an instrument and attend twice-weekly classes in music theory. It is a very rigorous program, and this Thursday night is an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of the students' hard work, as selected students each play a short classical piece. The concert is in the Great Hall on the fourth floor of the Bernsen Center, northwest of 8th and Boston in downtown Tulsa.

Then next week, on Friday, June 1, and Saturday, June 2, at 7:30 p.m., the Tulsa Boy Singers will present their spring concert of sacred choral music at Trinity Episcopal Church, 5th and Cincinnati in downtown Tulsa. The concert is entitled "Journey through the Ages." The concert will feature many different styles of music including English Choral Music, spirituals, and contemporary hymn settings. Admission is free, and there will be refreshments following the concert. (Donations would be gratefully received and will help defray the costs of the choir's upcoming performance tour of Great Britain, TBS's first international tour in many years.)

Tulsa Boy Singers and some musicians from Barthelmes will also be performing at OK Mozart in Bartlesville on June 15.

From this morning's Tulsa Police Department activity report (emphasis added):

At 0543 hours on 05-17-07 an armed robbery occurred at the Kum N Go at 11268 E. 71st Street. A white male with a handgun and a black male entered the store and robbed the store attendant; they then fled with the cash. The suspects left in a brown older Chevrolet. Officer B. Disney spotted a vehicle matching that description heading west on 81st from Garnett.

A traffic stop was initiated at 6600 S. Mingo Rd. The driver was Reginald Simienand
and in the back seat was Allen Mcghe and Preston Williams. All three suspects were
taken into custody. On the back seat was all the cash from the robbery and on the
passenger floor was a handgun. Two of the suspects were positively identified as the
two individuals who entered the store. One suspect had a DOC monitor ankle bracelet
on, which should provide GPS location and time. All three suspects were booked for
Armed Robbery with a firearm.

A new blogger is out to debunk the old palindrome: "Tulsa night life: filth, gin, a slut."

Tasha Does Tulsa is a delightful new blog aimed at challenging Tulsans to stop whining about nothing to do, to get out of the house, and to discover all the fun this city has to offer.

The opening entry introduces Natasha and her co-bloggers Chester (a goldfish) and Party Brenda. Natasha describes herself as:

...a fifth-generation Tulsan, a new downtown resident, and a girl who is willing to pay out-of-pocket to prove Tulsa is more than the sum of its histories, the “there’s nothing to do here” rhetoric, and art deco architecture....

As to the future contents of the blog:

You folks have nothing to look forward to here except proof that there is tons to do in Tulsa.

The most recent post (the only other one so far, published today) is an essay on "How You, Too, Can Do Tulsa." Natasha has nine pieces of sage advice on how to discover what the city has to offer, including getting involved in community service, a church, and (if you're young and professional) one of the young professional groups. She recommends avoiding highways and just driving around. She links to local news outlets, including a merged feed of Tulsa blogs (which includes this one). Several times she recommends reading Urban Tulsa Weekly, which she says is "by far the most definitive source on cool stuff to do in Tulsa."

I especially liked what Natasha had to say about local news -- don't watch it. With all due respect to the good people at 2, 6, 8, and 23, she has a point:

I'm pretty sure the local evening news is tailored to shock and/or scare you out of doing anything in your town, ever. It’s not that they get their thrills from scaring you. If the local evening news couldn’t tell you anything shocking or scary about your city, how would you convince advertisers to buy into those broadcasts instead of The Simpson’s and Seinfeld re-runs?

For that matter, scaring the snot out of you about going downtown is more likely to make you want to curl up on the sofa and watch Simpsons and Seinfeld reruns.

Contrary to what the evening news has to tell you to get you to watch their stations enough to attract advertisers, downtown is not a heathen hide-away. Innocent people are not getting shot all over the place, and cops aren’t hiding out in the construction zones and neighborhoods to pull you over on camera.

Tulsa is a peaceful place. There are lots of fun things to do in safe places. Consult the Urban Tulsa. Live a little.

I'm looking forward to reading more of this blog. There's a place to focus on problems, but it's good to have blogs like Tasha Does Tulsa and (the slightly more established) Indie Tulsa to highlight the good and unique and interesting things that we might overlook.

I just came across a Tulsa blog that is nearly a year old. Haec Est Domus Domini is an account by Mike Malcom of the process of restoring downtown Tulsa's Holy Family Cathedral, the ninety-three-year-old seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Eastern Oklahoma. The blog features photos and videos of the restoration work, visibilium (carpets, walls, windows) et invisibilium (plumbing, wiring). It's a great use for the medium of the blog. (I found it via the blog God Spede ye Plough, which belongs to a newly arrived resident of Oklahoma.)

The blog title is from the words engraved above the east doors to the church, which translate to "This is the house of the Lord."

(Come to think of it, Holy Family has an odd orientation for a cathedral, with the altar at the west end. So when the priest is celebrating mass ad orientem, he's actually facing ad occidentalem.)

Although Someone keeps hurling lightning bolts at it, the cathedral is an important part of downtown's architectural fabric. In many cities, the oldest and largest churches have abandoned downtown for greener suburban pastures. Tulsa is blessed that our oldest and largest churches have stayed put and kept their facilities in excellent condition.

We'd be even more blessed if the downtown churches would work with business and government to find a parking solution that doesn't involve tearing down more buildings. And perhaps, after the cathedral is restored, the Diocese will fulfill a promise made when they purchased and demolished the Tulsa Apartments and Cathey's Furniture (8th to 9th on Main) in 1998. That won't be surface parking -- I was assured at the time -- we're going to build a diocesan chancery and a plaza there.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is a farewell salute to KFAQ's Michael DelGiorno, who wrapped up his 17 years in Tulsa media last Friday and is now holding court on Nashville's WWTN:

Many readers' brains may explode as they read the following sentence, but it's true nevertheless: Politics and public dialogue in Tulsa are better off for Michael DelGiorno's tenure here.

Here's a bit of newspaper trivia you may find interesting. Writers don't write the headlines or cutlines for their stories. Those tasks are performed by a copy editor. At times the copy editor also adds text to provide a smoother transition between paragraphs or to provide some explanation that he feels the reader may need. Deadlines being what they are, I don't get a chance to see those changes before I see them in the paper. Those kind of edits don't happen often, but there was one this week. Here's what I submitted:

There was a niche to be filled, and DelGiorno, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, persuaded Journal Broadcast Group to let him step in and fill it.

Here's what's in the paper:

Until DelGiorno began to exploit the obvious. Just like some transplanted Tulsans discover fertile, virgin soil in untapped treasures (much as coffee table book author Michael Wallis discovered as he began cultivating interest in Route 66 with his "Mother Road,") there was a niche to be filled, and DelGiorno, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, persuaded Journal Broadcast Group to let him step in and fill it.

The phrase "began to exploit the obvious" reminds me of Roger Clemens's record-breaking 20 strikeouts in a game against the Seattle Mariners. Some baseball fans dismissed the accomplishment because Clemens did it against the worst team in the American League. But every other pitcher on every other team had faced Seattle. If it was so easy, why hadn't anyone done it yet?

As for Michael Wallis, I'm a fan, and as someone who loves Route 66, I'm glad he traveled the road and gathered stories and photos when he did -- so many of the people and places are gone now.

MORE: Here are my earlier thoughts, and the comments of other bloggers, about the changes at KFAQ. And Tennessee political blogger Bill Hobbs has taken note of DelGiorno's arrival in Nashville. (Also, Hobbs is looking for center-right political bloggers in Oklahoma. Drop your recommendations in his comment box. I've already sent along my list.)

(Also, fixed the number of Clemens's strikeouts. 19 in a nine-inning game was the record he beat, held by Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, and Nolan Ryan.)

FOR NOW at least, you can still download the podcasts of Michael's farewell show, which included replays of many of the best radio cartoons from the show:

Preshow, Hour 1, Hour 2, and Hour 3

The song with which he ended the final broadcast, "Build It Anyway," by Martina McBride, was an appropriate and touching ending.

He made a very brief announcement at the end of Tuesday's show -- Friday will be Michael DelGiorno's last day on KFAQ. He's landed a job in Nashville, and Journal Broadcast Group, owners of KFAQ, let him out of his contract early to pursue it.

I'm happy for Michael. The change will do him good, and Nashville is a big step up in market size.

Details should be released during Wednesday's show, but it's my understanding that the mission and direction of KFAQ and its morning show will remain unchanged. That's good news for Tulsa.

A longer tribute will have to wait until I'm not worn out from finishing my taxes and fighting a cold, but I'll say this much now:

We're approaching the 5th anniversary of KFAQ's launch. The station's format started as Michael DelGiorno's vision, a vision that was embraced and implemented by Journal Broadcast Group.

When other stations were becoming more automated and homogenized, DelGiorno gave Tulsa talk radio about local issues. When other news-talk stations were cramming local content into ever tinier segments, DelGiorno provided time to cover an issue in depth.

DelGiorno provided a bypass around local media dominated by a few narrow interests. He gave politicians and activists the chance to get their side of the story out to the public.

Michael gave me a platform that I wouldn't otherwise have had. The exposure I got on his show brought more readers to this blog and ultimately led to the opportunity to write for Urban Tulsa Weekly.

DelGiorno brought concerned Tulsans, who otherwise wouldn't have met, together as allies. He helped them see the big picture, bigger than the specific problems that awakened their interest in local government.

Michael often expressed frustration that the same old issues kept recurring, and it seemed as if no progress was made. But as someone who has lived here most of my life and who has been involved politically for twenty years, I know that things are much different, and much better, for his work at KFAQ. Important issues that used to be under the radar are now front and center in the public dialogue.

We have a City Council that wasn't handpicked by the Tulsa Whirled. That wouldn't have happened before KFAQ.

Michael could be frustrating. He would let passion get ahead of precision. It could be tough at times to get a word in edgewise. He and I were never going to see eye-to-eye on the importance of a healthy urban core.

But it's been a blessing and a privilege to get to work with Michael these last three and a half years, and I am thankful for the difference he's made here. I wish him and his family all the best in their new city.

UPDATE: Michael spoke at length this morning, paying tribute to his listeners for taking what they heard on the show and acting on it and to Journal Broadcast Group management in Milwaukee and here in Tulsa for sticking with the station's vision and with Michael, despite a lot of pressure from advertisers and other influential folks to shut him down.

Through it all, GM Randy Bush and program manager Brian Gann embodied the spirit of their long-ago KVOO predecessor Bill Way. W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel had successfully intimidated managers at several stations in several cities to keep Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys off the air, but Way refused to cave in to O'Daniel's threats or enticements.

You can hear what Michael had to say in the 6:00 hour about the station management and the listeners here (MP3).

Gwen Freeman will move from the sidekick's seat into the host's chair, with Chris Medlock as her sidekick. Gwen is smart, talented, and has a voice I could listen to all day long, and I'm happy to see her coming into her own.

I'm happy for my friend Chris, too. It had to have been a challenge for him to stifle his laughter at the leaflet that was circulated at the Republican state convention on Saturday, claiming that DelGiorno had been fired and that Medlock's (and my) "public platform has been significantly reduced as of Monday April 16, 2007." Not quite.

(If you were wondering, that leaflet (PDF) is what Michael and I were discussing on Tuesday.)

UPDATE: Comments on DelGiorno's departure from Tyson Wynn and Dan Paden.

UPDATE(2): Michael will be taking the 9 am to 1 pm slot on WWTN in Nashville, which is the highest-rated news/talk station in the market. I saw the schedule on their website before they modified it today -- he is replacing G. Gordon Liddy's syndicated show and an hour of the Bill O'Reilly show. He'll yield 15 minutes each day to Paul Harvey's noon broadcast.

For his first two hours, Michael will be up against another local show, hosted by a conservative lawyer named Steve Gill. The second two hours he'll be head-to-head with Rush Limbaugh.

After reading the bios of the other two local talkers on the station, I think Michael will be right at home. The afternoon drive host on WWTN is Phil Valentine, who is legendary for leading the 2002 Tennessee taxpayer revolt. When a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor were about to institute a state income tax for the first time ever, Phil brought listeners to the State Capitol where they successfully turned enough votes to stop the tax from passing.

MORE: MeeCiteeWurkor testifies to DelGiorno's impact on his political involvement:

I started listening to MDG a couple of years ago when LaFortune was mayor. Before then, I didn’t even care for politics or anything remotely related to talk radio. MDG got me interested in the inner workings of Tulsa and surrounding communities.

A couple of years later, and having actually been on-air with MDG, I can say this for fact: No one has done more to create awareness about local issues in Tulsa than this man. I am thankful for that awareness and the fact that he’s the only local media outlet that ever organized rallies and gatherings of what was called the “Q” Nation. Can you think of anybody else that did that? I can’t.

In a day and age when the vast majority of radio programming is a satellite feed of national issues (which we do need), it was nice to turn on the radio and hear a local guy who cared about local issues talk about things we locals care about. It was nice to hear him broadcast from a vacant lot that somehow managed to vote in an election. It was nice to hear him rant and rave about things that, when we’re really honest with ourselves, make us all rant and rave, too. And I have heard many detractors over the last few year who hate MDG for various reasons. In one case in particuler, I know of one violently vociferous MDG critic who launched a series of anonymous online attacks against MDG simply because MDG refused to accept this person’s worldview and counsel. It was shameful and self-serving, but the safety and anonymity of online forums made him feel brave and unaccountable for his comments.

We had dinner tonight at Desi Wok, a wonderful Asian restaurant on Hudson, just north of 41st Street, specializing in dishes of the Indian Subcontinent. This time we were there with the whole family. We watched World Cup Cricket on the big screen TV while enjoying chicken tikka masala and a shrimp, garlic, and ginger dish. My older son had sweet and sour chicken, which featured a much subtler and tastier sauce than the usual fluorescent red stuff you see at Chinese takeaways. The six-year-old had a chicken nuggets kids meal and proclaimed it very tasty. She shared some with little brother, who also enjoyed the naan bread.

We were fascinated by the cricket match. I tried to remember what I could of the rules, and I think I got them mostly right. A young cricket fan sitting near us gently and politely corrected some of my mistakes. (My knowledge of cricket has its roots in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, in which cricket equipment plays a key role.)

He told us that the restaurant is showing all the World Cup matches. The manager heard him talking about the likely India vs. Pakistan match and said with a smile that she might have to divide the room down the middle. (To get a sense of the rivalry, imagine OU-Texas, if OU and Texas had nuclear weapons aimed at each other across the Red River.)

The match was in St. Kitts South Africa vs. the Netherlands, a 40-overs Group A match. (Here's the box score.)

The current round involves four groups of four teams. The top two in each group advance to the second round, a near-round-robin, except that a team won't play the other "Super 8" team from its own group. The top four in the standings at the end of the second round advance to a single-elimination bracket -- two semifinal matches and a final on April 28.

You can read about our first visit to Desi Wok here.

Nursing student "Bro," who has a new blog called Dubious Hubris, invited State Rep. Pam Peterson to speak to the Student Nurses Association and was pleased with the outcome:

She is on the Human Services committee and addressed student RNs on what they can do about health care legislation. I was impressed with her because she answered her phone calls the first time and responded to me promptly about her willingness to speak. She appeared honest when she talked about her desire to improve government.

Tom Gray, pastor of Kirk of the Hills, has a laugh at the claim by the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery of the PCUSA that he used intimidation to persuade members of the church to withdraw from the presbytery and the denomination, and he corrects the EOP's version of a 20-year-old story of a confrontation with a divisive elder which the EOP used to back up its characterization:

Let me tell you the story as it actually happened. It was in 1987 (not 2006 some might think with a casual reading of the report) and the Kirk was in crisis thanks to a couple of very serious problems. Tulsa’s economic crisis at the time meant that hundreds of our members had lost their jobs or were in danger of losing their jobs. On top of that, the Kirk was still reeling from the shock of the pastor previous to me leaving the Kirk over a serious moral failure.

In the midst of these crises, one elder began to be quite divisive in the Kirk. This person was (prepare for a big irony here) trying to talk people into having the Kirk leave the PCUSA. Additionally, he was advocating issues that, while possibly in line with the Kirk’s ethos, were presented in a divisive manner, setting member against member and members against the session.

The incident cited in the AC was not after a meeting, as they say. This elder walked into my office on a weekday and said, “This church isn’t big enough for the two of us—one of us has to go.” Obviously, he meant that I should be the one to go.

I’m surprised to this day by my own response, but am equally sure that it was the right one. I asked him what church he would rather be in. He didn’t, as the AC report asserts, say that things weren’t that bad. What he did say was that he was going to make sure that I would be the one to go. That’s when I reiterated my statement. He suddenly seemed deflated, and then gave me the name of another large church in Tulsa. That’s when I wrote the letter of transfer.

I agree that this situation was not typical. I’ve never experienced something like this before or since. I did not come out of that encounter feeling good. I was shaky, upset, and even fearful for my future. Thanks be to God, it was the right decision for me, the Kirk, and that elder.

Jeff Shaw has an interesting idea: a city market for the East Village, East End, whatever:

Actually its not my idea, its been around for a long time, but I think with the right mix of retail and food and grocery merchants, it could solve a number of problems in the downtown area, as well as being a boost to the downtown economy. The idea is a Tulsa City Market. No, not the tarps and tents visual you may have just gotten. A city market like the 100+ year old Indianapolis City Market....

The location would be the entire block that contains the Bill White Chevrolet Building. In fact, I was thinking that building could be retrofitted and expanded to cover the entire west half of the block on between 4th and 5th streets / Elgin & Detroit avenues.

The City Market I have in mind is a combination of local and regional food vendors, grocery and other retail, in a mix that would benefit not only tourists but local people as well.

Jeff has more in the way of maps and descriptions, and a video of the market in Indianapolis.

Dan Paden has too much good stuff to describe on No Blog of Significance, including an essential piece on liberty and the need to use politics and, sometimes, force, to defend that liberty. And here's another essential post: A reading list for the young voter.

David Schuttler wants to know when the city plans to do something about problem nightclubs, the venues that night after night require the attention of the police to deal with violence. For example, Fusion at 15th and Sheridan:

This is one of those clubs that if the City would have a nuisance policy on problem clubs would deserve the first closing. There is not a weekend that goes by that I don't hear calls going out for trouble at this club. Saturday earned two calls that I heard. The first was someone treatning people in the parking lot and that he had a gun and the next came in under 2 hours from the previous call. This last call was the result of a fight that as the caller put it, Involved almost everyone that was still at the club. EMSA treated multiple people, which could be seen as one person would exit the ambulance another would be helped in. One person was put on a stretcher and taken to the second ambulance that arrived a few minutes later.

Finally, as Paul Harvey says, "Wash your ears out with this." Emily, the Red Fork Hippie Chick, tells us of two Tulsa-area families with businesses on Route 66, forced by circumstances to throw a going away party for their dreams, yet unshaken in their faith in God's provision for all their needs:

They work hard, they go out of their way to support the community, and they deserve better than to have the rug jerked out from under them with an unexpected health crisis. But through her disappointment, Susan — like Bill — remains calm in the knowledge that God is taking care of her family and will continue to take care of them regardless of the fate of the restaurant. She’s taking all the practical human steps she can think of to make the situation manageable, but at the end of the day, she places her future squarely in God’s hands and trusts that His plan for her family is the right one, even if it doesn’t seem to make much sense at the moment.

Tune in to KFAQ 1170 tomorrow morning at 6:10. I'll be doing my usual Tuesday spot, with Gwen Freeman who'll be filling in for Michael DelGiorno, and Chris Medlock who will be filling in for Gwen.

The Cinnabar Companies, which encompassed Cinnabar Environmental Services and Cinnabar Service Company, are apparently no longer under common ownership and no longer under a common name.

Cinnabar Service Company, which handles property acquisition for government and which once was the contractor for the Tulsa International Airport's noise abatement program, is still under the same management team, including chairman Bill Bacon and president Bob Parmele. Bacon and Parmele are partners with homebuilder Howard Kelsey in Infrastructure Ventures, Inc., the company which had a sweetheart deal with Tulsa County and now has one with the City of Jenks for the franchise to a toll bridge across the Arkansas River at Yale Ave. Parmele is also a former member of the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority, better known as the Fair Board.

Cinnabar Environmental Services is now owned by Derek Blackshare and is now called Blackshare Environmental Solutions. BES should benefit from no longer carrying the luggage of the name Cinnabar, which is associated with shoddy and overpriced work on the noise abatement program and the insider deal to lease a governmental body's power of eminent domain in order to generate hundreds of millions in revenues by means of a toll bridge.

Dollar-Thrifty Automotive Group and Vanguard Car Rental, both Tulsa-based companies, are talking merger according to the New York Times:

A deal to combine four of the nation’s largest car rental brands — National, Alamo, Thrifty and Dollar — is being discussed as the industry continues to consolidate.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group is in early talks to merge with Vanguard Car Rental, of Tulsa, Okla., which owns National and Alamo, in a deal valued at more than $3 billion, according to people involved in the discussions.

The negotiations, which have been taking place on and off for several months, are at a particularly delicate stage, these people said, and may still collapse.

If completed, a deal would create the third-largest rental car company in the United States behind leaders Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Hertz Global Holdings, but outpacing Avis Budget Group in terms of revenue.

Both companies have ties to Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor and her husband, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, resident Bill Lobeck. Taylor and Lobeck met when both were working for DTAG. Lobeck later was involved in the deal to create Vanguard, which he heads. Vanguard is owned by Cerberus Capital Management, which also owns Albertsons LLC, the company that owns Albertson's stores in Oklahoma and most of the southwest.

The NYT story says digs some interesting information out of Vanguard's IPO filing:

A deal with Vanguard would most likely be a reverse merger, so that Vanguard would be the controlling shareholder.

Vanguard has tried to go public before. Last year it filed for an initial public offering, saying that it had earned $105.3 million in income from $2.89 billion in revenue in 2005. It said that it held a 20.5 percent market share in the top 125 airport markets where it operated, behind the Avis Budget Group, then controlled by Cendant, and Hertz. Vanguard paid a $122.6 million special dividend last June.

In that same filing, Vanguard said it had about 3,800 locations in 82 countries as of last June. Its fleet numbered about 300,000, the filing said. The company said it buys its fleet from General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, and had agreements with other manufacturers like Toyota and Kia.

Cerberus Capital Management acquired Vanguard out of bankruptcy for $240.1 million in cash when it was called the ANC Rental Corporation.

(Vanguard's initial S-1 and amended S-1 filings give a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a privately-held company, such as executive compensation and aircraft leasing.)

Emily, the Red Fork Hippie Chick, has recently launched a new blog called Indie Tulsa, featuring reports on locally-owned small businesses, some old, some new.

In her introductory post, she writes:

Through this site, I hope to make the public aware of some of the little guys, whose life’s work has helped give Tulsa some of the unique vibrance that prompted my husband and me to pack up our dogs and our computers, quit our jobs in Illinois, and move to Oklahoma almost three years ago. It’s a move we’ve never regretted, and we’re happier with our decision every time we wander into another quirky little business full of history, one-of-a-kind products, and helpful employees who don’t mind going and getting the widget you need instead of dismissing you with a vague wave in the direction of aisle 37.

We hope you’ll take the time to read our reviews, explore our city, and discover the fascinating finds tucked into out-of-the-way businesses all over Tulsa. If you’re not in Tulsa, we hope you’ll be inspired to venture into the mom-and-pop businesses in your own area, throw a few dollars their way, and perhaps even share your experiences with folks in your area.

The big guys are convenient, but it’s the little guys who keep life interesting.

So far, Emily has visited and reviewed Steve's Sundries and Books, Karlene's Dollhouses, the Union Street Cafe, Booster Feed Mill, Hank's Hamburgers, Under the Mooch, and S&S Market.

What a great idea.

Route 66 News is reporting that the Country Store, on the southside of 11th Street just west of Memorial (a site that was once on the very edge of town), may close soon:

Four decades of urban sprawl later, the Country Store’s location on historic Route 66 is considered part of midtown Tulsa. Farmers are an endangered species, and most of the city’s gardeners are out in the suburbs: Jenks, Bixby, Broken Arrow.

A perfect storm of big-box stores, urban sprawl, heavy debt, and crop-scorching drought is bearing down on the longtime Tulsa institution and its third-generation owner, Bill Sivadon, and barring any last-minute miracles, it looks as if the business may close for good.

If you aren't looking for the store, you may not notice it, as it sits up a rise and back a bit from the road, but it's been there for 40 years, selling plants, seeds, and animal feed.

There's a chance the business could be saved, but only if folks act now:

Sivadon and his wife, Kathey... reported Tuesday that the store is set to close any day. If they can sell off their remaining stock at retail prices, they may be able to raise enough to pay off their debt and save the business — but time is of the essence. Their creditors have been poised to pull the plug for the past week or so. Wait a day — or even a few hours — and it may be too late to buy one last souvenir and make one last effort to help keep a Route 66 institution alive.

My column in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly is about TulsaNow -- how it came into being and what it aims to accomplish. I describe the group as a kind of "See You at the Pole" -- a gathering point for people who might have wondered if anyone else cared about Tulsa's direction and future:

Perhaps you've felt lonely in your concerns about Tulsa. Doesn't anyone else care that we're turning downtown into a big parking lot? Isn't anyone worried about the impact of more ugly sprawling development on our city's livability? Shouldn't we be encouraging development of a more diverse assortment of businesses, instead of putting all our economic hopes in oil or aerospace or telecommunications?

There must be other Tulsans who share your concerns, but how do you find them? What's the equivalent of the flagpole for Tulsans concerned about our city's future growth and development?

It's an organization called TulsaNow, and instead of meeting around a pole, we'll be meeting around a pint next Monday, Jan. 29, at McNellie's Public House, 409 E. 1st St., from 6 to 8pm.

That's the annual meeting for TulsaNow. Here's the official announcement:

If you’d like to learn more about TulsaNow, or find out what you can do to get involved, don’t miss our annual meeting on Monday, January 29.

This year, we hope to engage our membership like never before, and we’ll be asking YOU to help us set our strategic priorities for ‘07. What’s important to you? What should TulsaNow focus on in the coming year? We know you’ve got opinions, and we want to hear your thoughts and ideas. See you there!

Read the linked article above, and if you share those concerns, come and join us tomorrow night.

... who believes the garbage truck is coming tomorrow morning. No one else has put out their trash cans.

School will be out again in and around Tulsa for the fourth day in a row, not counting the early dismissal Friday. Although the arterial streets in Tulsa have at least one clear lane, turn lanes and outside lines still have refrozen slush atop solid ice. I dared to take the Broken Arrow expressway this morning and found that what had been a clear lane for almost a mile suddenly wasn't, right on the bend just west of the I-44 interchange.

Side streets and parking lots are still nasty. There is no plowing through an inch of ice. Someone tried to use a front end loader to clear part of our lot on Tuesday, and the best they could do was scrape a bit off the top. They put some sand down, so it's not as much of an ice rink, but I still need my ice cleats to walk on it. (I thought they were silly when my wife bought them, but they sure have come in handy this week.) The traction control system and anti-lock braking system in our minivan has worked like a champ.

The kids have enjoyed their unexpected vacation and have spent some time sledding on the ice. They even tried to get on our goldfish pond, which is only partially frozen over, but Mom caught them before the ice began to crack. (And yes, I told them about the little girl that the fire department had to rescue because she walked out on the ice over a creek. Evidently the lesson didn't sink in.)

We had a short burst of flurries today, and more snow is expected over the weekend.

UPDATE in response to questions: My cleats are Weissenfels Snow Spikes, but it appears that Weissenfels no longer makes traction products for anything as small as a foot.

Congratulations to Cain's Ballroom, which is once again is one of the top ticket-selling concert venues in the world. According to Pollstar, Cain's was 38th in ticket sales among venues with a capacity under 3,000, selling 84,746 tickets in 2006.

The numbers tell me that Tulsans will get out and support live entertainment, and the people at Cain's are doing a great job of booking the wide variety of acts that Tulsans want to see. (Me, I'm looking forward to the Bob Wills Birthday Bash on March 2nd and 3rd, featuring Leon Rausch, Tommy Allsup and the Texas Playboys.)

To give you an idea of what kinds of places are included in this category, nine of the top 25 small venues are House of Blues outlets, including the flagship in Chicago. The Chicago House of Blues sold 219,083 tickets in '06. Cain's ranks just below The Avalon in Hollywood and just ahead of Metropolis in Montreal, Hard Rock Live in Orlando, and House of Blues in San Diego.

Cain's capacity is only about 1400, which means they must fill the place pretty often to generate those kinds of ticket sales.

Today I attended the funeral of Doris Oler, in the Rose Chapel at Boston Avenue Methodist Church. Doris passed away on Tuesday at the age of 76. Doris was an alto and a charter member of Coventry Chorale, and my wife and I sang with her in that group for many years. She always had a smile and a friendly word for us. Doris also sang in Boston Avenue's choir, taught vocal music in the Tulsa Public Schools, and was very active in Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity. (Here's a link to the obituary that appeared in the Tulsa World yesterday.)

The presiding minister, Bill Tankersley, shared a funny anecdote. Doris grew up in Inola in the '30s and '40s. She learned to play piano at an early age and was good enough that she wound up playing at a few of the churches in town. The churches staggered their service times so that she could play the opening hymns at one church, slip out the door, walk to the next church, play their opening hymns, and so on, until it was time to play the closing hymn at the first church and start over with the rotation.

As part of the service, we read the 23rd Psalm responsively, but sitting there with nine other members of Coventry Chorale, there to honor a departed member of the Chorale, it seemed wrong not to be singing Thomas Matthews' setting of the psalm. (To hear a lo-fi version of it, scroll down to the bottom of that page and click the link with the text "The Lord Is My Shepherd.") I'm sure the others felt the pull, too.

This is beside the point, but... the first hymn we sang was "Praise My Soul the King of Heaven." We sang out of the current edition of the Methodist Hymnal, and it was hard not to laugh out loud at the lengths to which the editors went to avoid any use of the masculine pronoun in this version of the hymn. Most of the time it was a simple substitution of "God" for "him" and "God's" for "his." But "to his feet thy tribute bring" becomes "to the throne thy tribute bring." "In his hand he gently bears us," becomes "Motherlike, God gently bears us," to balance out the word "Fatherlike" at the beginning of the third verse. (Here are Henry Lyte's original lyrics, and here is the inclusified version.) There was nothing on the page to indicate an alteration. I don't like it any better when the Trinity Hymnal editors monkey with the lyrics to eliminate a suspected Arminian overtone, and I will stubbornly sing the original lyrics anyway*, but at least they note when a verse was altered by the editors.

I tried to stick to the lyrics as printed, but I found myself singing the familiar original lyrics instead. Knowing Doris, I think she would have understood, and probably even approved.

* I don't do this when I'm leading singing, however.

KFAQ is now offering a podcast of the Michael DelGiorno show. You can download an hour at a time in MP3 format, and it looks like they plan to have several days' worth of show available for download.

The KFAQ Windows Media Player stream is still available as well, with a live feed of DelGiorno's show, repeating until the next show begins.

The podcast format will make it easier to grab a particular interview or segment. Thanks to Brian Gann and KFAQ for setting this up.

Six months after Brian Franklin's reply, Starbucks has backed off its threats of trademark litigation against Tulsa's DoubleShot Coffee Company:

I write to follow up on our prior communications concerning your client's use of the "Doubleshot" mark. It is Starbucks' understanding that your client uses this mark only as the name of his coffee shop and, specifically, not as the name of a prepared beverage or other ready-to-drink beverage. Based upon the foregoing, we will close our file on this matter.

As if Brian Franklin would ever serve a "ready-to-drink" beverage!

In fact, it appears that Franklin's quest for perfection has made it difficult to find baristas that meet his high standards, so he has cut hours to 7 am to 5 pm weekdays, 9 am to 3 pm weekends, and says he is working on increasing the wholesale and online retail side of the business. "If you buy a drink at my store," he said in an e-mail from last week, "it will have been sourced, roasted, blended, ground, and brewed by only me. No one knows my coffee better than I do."

Elsewhere on his blog, Franklin has an interesting take on a certain river development proposal:

Let's talk about the River for a minute. Economic development? That's what downtown is for. What? We've finally decided that buiding, constructing, changing, re-changing, re-zoning, re-positioning, re... we can't make downtown a viable economic center? So now we'll go try it on the River. I live on Riverside Drive. Down on the quiet part, where people slow down. I sit on my front porch and relax. I watch people jog by or ride their bikes or take a stroll. There are big, old trees and foxes at night. And sometimes I think about the "economic development" they want to start on the River. Is that improvement?...

But I imagine... they wouldn't cut down ALL the trees, just the ones that were in the way. We'd make parking lots and build an island (an island? I'm sorry, but that's retarded) so rich people could have their condos paid for by my tax dollars and we can move Utica Square out there in the middle of the Arkansas River. Maybe they'll make it a gated community. Or maybe because one group of jackasses can get taxpayer dollars to build their money-making project, someone else will decide they want an island too. And then we can just dam up the River altogether and make it into a waterpark. They'll build tall buildings where there used to be trees outside my window. And what we really need on the River is a Starbucks. This town won't even be put on the map until there's a Starbucks in the middle of the Arkansas River. Isn't that what they're talking about when they say "economic development?"

I have an idea. Let's let Jenks ruin the river. Tulsa can use downtown for businesses (what a novel idea) and keep the River for its natural resources.

As a fellow recipient of a "scary lawyer letter" (who has yet to see a retraction like the one linked above), I send hearty congratulations to Brian and DoubleShot Coffee Company.

TU communications professor John Coward has set up a blog called Tulsa Street Stories as an experimental journalism project for his news gathering course.

In the coming weeks, the site will publish reporting and personal journalism by members of the Fall 2006 News Gathering class at TU. These stories will provide glimspes into the lives of interesting people in and around Route 66 and give TU journalism students an opportunity to share their writing and reporting with others interested in this 'grassroots' journalism project.

His students began by writing about restaurants and other places around Tulsa -- Claud's Hamburgers, Mario's Pizzeria, Tie-Dyes of Tulsa, Greenwood Avenue, the Tulsa Rose Garden, and (alas) Starbucks.

The mood is unique at Starbucks—it can’t be compared to any other coffee shop that I have ever been to. I believe that every time I go to Starbucks I get the entire coffee shop experience. Maybe it’s just by watching the people that work there, or maybe it's watching the customers enjoy their time, or maybe it’s just the time I spend talking to the people that I with. No matter what the reason is, I always leave Starbucks satisfied and anticipating my next visit.

Someone get that young lady directions to Shades of Brown, stat!

The latest assignment is to write about a colorful character from Tulsa. Since many of the students are out-of-towners, it should be interesting to see what they learn about our city that we townies have overlooked.

Someone is calling Tulsa residents to solicit funds for a memorial for Tulsa Police Officer Jared Shoemaker, who was killed in Iraq while serving there with the U. S. Marine Corps. The Tulsa Police Department wants you to know that neither they nor the TPD's FOP lodge are making those calls:

We have received several calls asking about donations being solicited for a memorial in honor of Officer Jared Shoemaker. The Tulsa Police Department and the FOP does not solicit funds. The family has set up an endowment fund for a scholarship to a summer camp the Jared was involved with. This is the only fund endorsed by the family of Officer Shoemaker.

Here are more details about the camp fund that Shoemaker's family has designated as a memorial to him:

The Jared Shoemaker Memorial Fund
(Endowing local H.S. students to a Young Life summer camp)

It is the desire of Jared’s wife, parents and family to establish an ongoing fund to help send high schoolers to Young Life camp. Young Life is a ministry that pursues teenagers on their turf –“earning the right to be heard”. 100% of the money received will be placed in an endowment. Only the interest gained each year will be used for these scholarships.

If you wish to contribute make your check payable to:
Young Life
(please note in the memo field Jared Shoemaker Fund)
And mail to:
Young Life
Jared Shoemaker Fund
P.O. Box 33176
Tulsa, OK 74153

If you have any questions, please direct them to
Jay Robinson, 918-665-8525 JRobinson@ok22.younglife.org
or Brad Camp 918 693-9740 brad@hicorpinc.com

MeeCiteeWurkor has announced a number of improvements he has added to The Voice of Tulsa, an Internet discussion forum about our fair city which he established back in March.

I'm pleased to see a page where you can view the most recent 35 posts. And along with a feed for the whole site, he's offering an individual RSS feed for each thread, each category, and each forum, making it easy to keep track of what interests you.

Mostly he's offering a place where it's possible to hold a vigorous but respectful discussion on issues that matter. It is possible to disagree strongly with someone, even on something as contentious as politics, without being abusive or hostile. MeeCiteeWurkor is determined to uphold a high standard of conduct and keep the place friendly:

You should feel comfortable in this forum. The site admin and moderators will ensure that you feel comfortable at all times during your visit. If you ever feel uncomfortable at all, please email me immediately, and the issue will be addressed promptly and corrective action taken, if needed.

Never feel like you cannot express your opinion on matters. ESPECIALLY if it differs from another opinion. Your different take on issues will be allowed, and abuse from others because of your opinion will NOT be tolerated.

While I'll continue to post comments here, The Voice of Tulsa forum is better suited to an ongoing group discussion. I encourage you to click through, sign up, and join in.

Why is it that so many Tulsa parks don't have swings? What good is a park without swings?

Now this is what a city park should be. Swings, slides, and things that bounce and spin.

My correspondent who attended the Jenks City Council meeting also said that this item was on the agenda: "Request to approve Resolution No. 427 approving and adopting the second amended agreement creating the Indian Nations Council of Governments, providing for membership for the Cherokee, Creek and Osage Indian Nations."

When the agenda item came up, Councilor Vic Vreeland said that the tribes are spending so much money in the area they should have a seat at the table. Despite the name, the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG) is actually a regional council of city and county governments, created in response to the federal requirement for regional planning as a condition for federal transportation funding.

While I wouldn't reject the idea out of hand, the tribes, which are organized and governed directly under the federal law, are a different class of entity than cities and counties, which are creatures of the Oklahoma constitution and statutes. If anything, INCOG could be a focal point for cities and counties to lobby Congress about problems arising from tribal sovereignty laws.

It may surprise you to learn, as it surprised me, that most of the powers and rights that tribal governments have are not built into the treaties they signed with the United States, but are matters of federal law, laws that can be changed. Tribal commercial activities can have a significant effect on land use regulation (they're exempted from zoning), transportation planning, crime (the impact of casinos, cross-deputization issues), and sales tax revenues, an impact that will only grow as the tribes grow wealthier and take more land into trust. INCOG could be a forum for cities and counties to coordinate their response to these challenges.

Wednesday night it was just my wife, the baby, and I -- big brother was at choir camp, big sister was staying with Grandma -- so we decided to try dinner at Desi Wok, the Indian/Chinese restaurant on Hudson just north of 41st.

The food was very good. We had the chicken tikka masala and the shrimp Thai pepper stir fry.

The service was friendly, too. The baby got restless after a while in his high chair, so I took him out and tried to hold him on my lap while I continued eating while not letting him within grabbing reach of my plate. One of the waitress/order-takers, who had been flirting with him earlier, asked if she could hold him for a while. We said sure, and for the next 10 minutes or so, she or one of her coworkers held him behind the cash register. It was like being at a big family dinner and a cousin offers to hold the baby while you finish eating.

We wouldn't ordinarily pass our baby off to a stranger, but we were at the nearest table to the register, so I could (and did) keep a close eye, and there were enough people around that there would have been plenty of witnesses if anything bad had happened. And I think we felt more comfortable because it seemed to be a restaurant that, like a number of Asian places around town, was owned and operated by an extended family. At this sort of restaurant, it's not unusual to see aunts and cousins, older folks and small children around the restaurant, sometimes helping, sometimes just visiting.

Friendly place, good food, reasonable prices, and, as far as I know, the only place you can get Indian food around town without going to south Tulsa.

The big kids are with the grandparents tonight, so it's just me, my wife, and the baby. After dinner out, we enjoyed a romantic evening of...

...shopping the going-out-of-business sale at the 31st and Garnett Albertson's.

They close on July 31. The back half of the store is cleaned out and blocked with yellow tape. All the fresh stuff is gone, as are most of the cosmetics, toiletries, and over-the-counter meds. They have grocery items at 50% off, spices at 70% off, and general merchandise at 80% off.

Most of what was left was non-perishable. They had a lot of spices, condiments, ethnic food (e.g., curry mixes, flavored soy sauce), coffee and tea, exotic canned veggies like artichoke hearts and hearts of palm, some canned fruits and vegetables. There were some frozen goods -- ice cream, vegetables, seafood.

We filled a cart, and because we were buying unusual items, the "cost density" was higher than normal. It was a bit frightening to watch the "amount due" number on the screen climb and climb and climb, stopping at $493.51. When the cashier hit the subtotal button, the total started to drop as each item was individually discounted. It took a couple of minutes for all the discounts to be credited. The final total for the 124 items we bought was $199.20, including tax.

I'm just amazed we could get nearly $500 worth of merchandise in one standard-sized shopping cart.

The 21st and Memorial location is also going out of business, and I think there is one more, but I can't remember which one. If memory serves, these stores opened as Skaggs Alpha Beta some time around 1974.

We had dinner tonight at The Flying Roll restaurant near 51st and Memorial. We were driving past it on our way to a restaurant further south when I thought of it and remembered that the almost-10-year-old had been wanting to eat there.

Everyone enjoyed the food, the kids especially. You get all you care to eat of the side items -- green salad, mashed potatoes and cream gravy, green beans, creamed corn. It's all served family style. The main dish is the only thing that isn't served family style -- everyone picks their own from a list of eight or nine. We had catfish, smoked chicken, pot roast, and chicken tenders. During the meal they also brought by some fried okra and blackeyed peas.

As parents, we always appreciate it when our kids don't have to wait too long for their food. It reduces the chance that they'll fill up on crackers or milk and won't have any appetite left when their meal arrives. At The Flying Roll, they brought out a bowl of salad within a couple of minutes of our being seated; we started eating before we placed our orders.

The gimmick of the place is that they bring hot rolls fresh from the oven and toss them to the diners. The almost-10-year-old loved this concept; he was our designated roll fielder.

We brought some baby food with us, but it wasn't enough to keep the little one happy, so I gave him some of the mashed potatoes. He didn't love them, but he did eat them, and they stayed eaten. So he has now eaten his first non-baby-food.

Joe Momma's Pizza, that is, at 61st and US 169. The blog is a mixture of oddities around the web (funny videos, games) plus what's happening at the restaurant, like this strange little game the employees play. The earlier Blogger incarnation of Joe Momma's blog tells the story of Blake Ewing's pursuit of his dream to own a one-of-a-kind pizzeria downtown. Taking over and redoing an existing Simple Simon's pizza place is a step toward that dream.

A blog entry from a few months ago has some funny lines from the late comedian Mitch Hedberg:

I�m against picketing, but I don�t know how to show it.

I was walking down the street with my friend and he said "I hear music." As if there�s any other way to take it in.

I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shish kabobs.

(Found more Hedberg material on Wikiquote -- funny stuff, reminds me of Steven Wright, but Hedberg was rather free with gratuitous vulgarities. "A Lot of Death Metal bands have intense names like Rigor Mortis or Mortuary or Obituary. We weren't that intense. We just went with 'Injured.' And later we changed it to 'A Cappella'... as we were walkin' out of the pawn shop." "I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.")

Anyway, best wishes for future success to Joe Momma's Pizza. (Here's a link to Katherine Kelly's review from Urban Tulsa Weekly. She gave it high marks.)

This draft was started a couple of days after Father's Day, but I never got around to finishing it. In lieu of something more substantive tonight, here it is:

We celebrated Father's Day by taking my dad and mom to lunch at Mexicali Border Café at Main and Brady downtown. It's one of our favorite Mexican places; Mom and Dad had never been there. Great salsa (sort of halfway in texture and heat between Chimi's salsa fresca and salsa picante) and some delicious non-traditional Mexican dishes.

My wife and I had the Stuffed Carne Asada. At $13.95, it's one of the most expensive things on the menu, and we always consider getting something else (the Shrimp Acapulco is very tasty too), but we can't stand not to have this: "Fajita Steak stuffed with Melted Jack Cheese, Mushrooms, and Onions. Topped with Sautéed Pico de Gallo, Bacon and Mushrooms. Served with Rice, Borracho Beans and Saut�ed Vegetables." It's big enough and rich enough we always have enough to bring home for another meal. The sautéed vegetables (carrots, yellow squash, and zucchini) were nicely spicy and just crisp enough.

The waitress, Heather, deserves special praise. She managed to be both attentive and inobtrusive. Instead of interrupting conversation every five minutes to ask, "Everything OK?" she passed by regularly, noticed if anything needed refilling, and just took care of it. When she noticed one of us dabbing at a bit of salsa that had landed on a shirt, she brought out some club soda and some extra napkins.

I gave my dad a new sports shirt and a Johnny Cash CD. My Mother's Hymnbook is a collection of traditional hymns and gospel songs, sung with only a guitar for accompaniment. Cash recorded it in the few months between his wife's death and his own. I had come across it in the CD return shelf in the library, checked it out, and loved it. These are songs that we sang in the little Southern Baptist church I grew up in, but don't hear much in our PCA congregation: I'm Bound For The Promised Land, Softly and Tenderly, Just As I Am, When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.

(I've found all sorts of gems on the library's CD return shelf, things I probably wouldn't have sought out on purpose: Spike Jones' Greatest Hits; Sam Cooke: The Man Who Invented Soul, a four-disc set; a two-disc set of everything Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded together.)

The kids gave me a Louis Armstrong CD, a Patsy Cline CD, and the original version of Asleep at the Wheel's first Bob Wills tribute CD, along with a new clock radio that synchronizes itself to the atomic clock via shortwave.

I already had a version of this disc -- the "dance remix", which has a black cover. I bought it as motivation/reward when I refinished the kids' wood floors last summer, and I liked it, but some of the tracks (five of them, to be precise) seemed unnecessarily tarted up -- as if some producer didn't think classic Western Swing was good enough to get people out on the dance floor. On "Big Ball's in Cowtown," the dance version is almost double the length of the original, padded out with backup singers singing "Cowtown, Cowtown, we're all goin' to Cowtown" over and over and over again. Then there's the bizarre addition of the same two measures of "Yearning," digitally transposed into three different keys for the intro to the song -- somehow that made it a dance version. Similar weirdness is inflicted upon "Hubbin' It," "Corrine, Corrina," and "Old Fashioned Love." At least they left 13 of the songs alone.

I had heard the unadulterated versions of a couple of the tracks from the white-covered original edition, and put it on my wish list, a wish my wife and kids were kind enough to fulfill.

The album features famous modern country artists (e.g., George Strait, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks -- Huey Lewis, too) singing or playing Bob Wills tunes alongside Asleep at the Wheel and some of the original Texas Playboys -- Eldon Shamblin, Johnny Gimble, and Herb Remington.

"Yearning," sung on this album by Vince Gill, has become a favorite of mine. It was a Tin Pan Alley tune, published in 1925 by Benny Davis and Joe Burke. (Davis and Burke also wrote "Carolina Moon." Burke also wrote "Tiptoe through the Tulips" and "Rambling Rose." Davis also wrote "Baby Face.") Somehow this sweet little tune found its way into both the standards and Western Swing repertoires -- Nat King Cole, Tommy Dorsey, and Frank Sinatra, Spade Cooley and Bob Wills all recorded it. Merle Haggard sang it on the final album with Bob Wills (For the Last Time), but I like Gill's version a little better, if only because it includes both verses.

The songbird yearns to sing a love song.
The roses yearn just for the dew.
The whole world's yearning for the sunshine.
I have a yearning too.

Yearning just for you,
That's all I do, my dear.
Learning why I'm blue,
I wish that you were here.
Smiles have turned to tears,
Days have turned to years.
Yearning just for you,
I hope that you yearn, too.

When shadows fall and stars are beaming,
'Tis then I miss you most of all.
I fall asleep and start a-dreaming.
It seems I hear you call:

Yearning just for you,
That's all I do, my dear.
Learning why I'm blue,
I wish that you were here.
Smiles have turned to tears,
Days have turned to years.
Yearning just for you,
I hope that you yearn, too.

I've enjoyed the gifts from my children, but the greatest Father's Day gifts of all are the children themselves.

About 250 veterans, veterans' widows, and friends and supporters attended today's Memorial Veterans Association barbecue in honor of those who have served our country in the military. It was a good day for it -- sunny, but not too hot. The tall oak trees of Memorial High School's picnic area kept the guests cool as they enjoyed heaping plates of smoked meat and listened to a band playing '60s favorites.

After everyone ate, Col. Bob Powell (USAF Ret.) led us in the pledge, the National Anthem was sung, and Col. Powell made a few remarks. He said that veterans are well-cared for on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but they ought to be acknowledged on Independence Day, as they all fought for our nation's freedom.

The Memorial Veterans Association maintains an exhibit of military memorabilia in a conference room at the high school, but they hope someday to build a free-standing museum nearby. They also have plans to erect a bronze statue in front of the school. The bronze by Talala sculptor Sandra Van Zandt shows an old soldier passing the flag to a young soldier. A limited edition of small replicas of the sculpture are being sold to raise money to build the real thing.

At the heart of the effort is the desire to make Memorial High School the memorial it was intended to be when it was dedicated in 1962. When Mason High School closed its doors, the victim of the Baby Bust, there was talk of attaching the name of the long-time Tulsa superintendent to Memorial High School, making it Mason Memorial High School. The idea was quickly shot down -- for one thing, Charles Mason was still living, making a memorial premature. More importantly, the school was already dedicated as a memorial to thousands of Tulsans:

Memorial Senior High School

Dedicated to Tulsa students and teachers who served in World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts

I am dedicated in memory of all Tulsa students and teachers who, in complete devotion, determined that those ideals which built our republic shall remain forever secure.

My high purpose is to teach an abiding love for America which shall serve her at all times -- and, should destiny so determine, a love which will courageously serve her to "the last full measure of devotion" that the dignity of man may be always held in high esteem.

I am a perpetual light to all who cherish freedom.

As long as youth shall devote themselves to serious endeavour in my classrooms and fill my corridors with laughter, I stand as a living symbol of all who seek a better life through education.

My small part in all this was as a member of the Eagleton Brothers' Barbecue team. There were five of us who gathered at Councilor John Eagleton's home at 4 a.m. this morning to load the meat, tools, and supplies on the truck. (Dave Webster, Larry Benzel, Steve Overturf, John, and myself.) By 4:30 the smoker was in place and the fire was lit.

John puts on several barbecues each year for his neighborhood, his church, the local chapter of his college fraternity, the Tulsa County Republican Party. I've been a crew member on four or five of the feeds over the last few years; I'm still a relative novice.

The process involves bursts of intense activity as each kind of meat is seasoned and loaded into the smoker, interspersed with waiting while the smoke does its work. During one of those waiting periods, Col. Powell gave several early arrivers a guided tour of the museum. (That's County Assessor Ken Yazel in the back right of this photo. Ken came early to offer his help.) Col. Powell was a glider pilot in World War II.

We started serving at 11. The BBQ team was reinforced by several politicians. I worked one of the cutting stations, handling hot links and ribs. Mayor Kathy Taylor stood to my left, cutting racks of ribs. Clay Bird, former City Councilor and Deputy Mayor and candidate for County Commission, stood to my right, cutting up chickens and slicing bologna. There were the three of us, all armed with very sharp knives, and despite our differences, no mayhem ensued. Mayor Taylor earned a lot of respect for pitching in and staying with the task until nearly everyone was through the line, which was continuous for over an hour. DA Tim Harris, State Sen. Brian Crain, and County Assessor Ken Yazel helped carry and fill plates for veterans who were using walkers or wheelchairs.

By the time cleanup was done and all the equipment was offloaded at John's house, I was sunburned and overheated. I made it home by about 2 -- 10 hours after I started. It was a privilege to do my little bit in honor of those who endured so much more in the defense of our liberty.

BONUS LINK: The title of this entry comes from the seldom-sung final stanza of the National Anthem. In 1991, prolific sci-fi novelist Isaac Asimov wrote a tribute to "The Star-Spangled Banner," explaining why he's "crazy about it" and all four of its stanzas.

If you're a Tulsa area military veteran, you're invited to an Independence Day barbecue at Memorial High School, 5840 S. Hudson, 11:30a.m.-1:00 p.m. The event is sponsored by VFW Post 577, Memorial Veterans Association, Inc., American Legion Post 308, Military Vehicles Club, 8th Air Force Association Tulsa RSVP, Air Force Association, MHS JROTC, Air Force Sergeants Assoc., Spirit Bank, Albertsons, Walmart, Fadlers Market, Port-A-Johns, Ryan�s Family Restaurant, Cimarron Tires, Ehrles Party Supply, and Publishing Resources, Inc., and by City Councilor John Eagleton, who is donating 400 lbs. of meat and his barbecuing skills.

One more thing -- my usual weekly slot on KFAQ has been postponed until Wednesday because of the holiday.

City Councilor John Eagleton is putting on a free Independence Day veterans barbecue lunch at Memorial High School: "All Tulsa area veterans, any Service, any War, any Theater of Operation." Visit his website for details. I plan to be there to help cook and serve. If you're a veteran, you won't want to miss this event in your honor.

Jane Jacobs, the urban observer who helped blow away the cobwebs of urban planning dogma so that we could see what really makes a city work, passed away in April. My Urban Tulsa Weekly column last week was a salute to Jane Jacobs, highlighting three lessons from her landmark 1960 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of my favorite books.

Also of note last week: Jamie Pierson's first column for UTW, in which she recalls a suburban Tulsa upbringing, gives thanks for her midtown-based young adulthood, and gives a tongue-in-cheek call for deannexing everything south of I-44.

At the end of last September, Tulsa's Casa Bonita closed its doors, but only because the space was to be leased to the founder of Casa Bonita, Bill Waugh, for a new Casa Viva restaurant. Same concept, same decor, and the original ownership.

The restaurant reopened this Monday, and tonight, as a belated end-of-the-school-year treat, our family had dinner there.

Everything had a bright new coat of paint, but otherwise it is the same place, with the same basic menu. The system is slightly different; you pay when order, as you come in, which makes putting a tip on a credit card, a bit awkward, and makes it impossible to add something later (e.g. deciding you want a soda in mid-meal).

They are still working out some kinks with the system. They forgot to put guacamole on my all-you-can-eat dinner. There was some confusion at the order pickup window. We got hold of some sticky silverware, which was promptly replaced. When there were problems the staff were prompt and polite in fixing them. Everyone enjoyed their food.

After dinner, we walked around to look at the other rooms. It looks like they may have reopened some eating areas that had been closed, including the old jail. Here are my two big kids in front of the Treasure Room.

We played some arcade games, then went back to the old cantina for the magic show. We finished up at the arcade. My five-year-old liked the alligator-slapping game and the dragon-stomping game. (I helped on the alligator game, and we set the high score.) The nine-year-old played the Star Wars podracer game a couple of times. I played Centipede, and my wife had a try at Skee-Ball.

All told, we were there about two-and-a-half hours, and it was a fun evening for the whole family.

A friend of mine seems to be a magnet for political survey calls, and she makes a point of e-mailing me when a new one comes in. This one is fascinating. Here's her verbatim account of the call:

Call early this evening, which I cut short after 15 minutes, and told we were only half-way through. He said he wasn't allowed to tell from where he was calling (I asked), yet chuckled somewhat knowingly to some answers. But then, maybe he called other KFAQ listeners...

First 3 questions dealt with approval or not of 1-City Council 2-County Commission 3-mayor

Next several dealt with city heading in right direction, view of city (small regional like Wichita, Springfield, etc.), large regional (KC, San Antonio, JAX !!!), large national (Dallas, NYC, Seattle), international (Paris, etc.) Unbelievable...Then asked if Tulsa was any of the aforementioned in its glorious past.

Should Tulsa be known for something i.e.. energy rather than oil OR something like an Eiffel Tower, St. Louis arch, Golden Gate Bridge (I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!)

Then it got into pushing the need for younger residents, higher-paying jobs, downtown dev. to fight crime, things to do in Tulsa, city center more imp. than the burbs, utilizing the river...

RIVER-the main point of the call-need for development to combat all the problems of the city.

Vision of restaurants, parks, recreation...making a lake with an island in the middle with housing for 10k residents, sailing, concerts. A very large canopy (LANDMARK LIKE THE EIFFEL TOWER-NOT MAKING THIS UP!!) Great detail on the canopy over the island which would keep temp to 80 in the summer, warm in the winter, put Tulsa on the tourist map...

TAXES-how much would I be willing to pay? Another penny on the salestax or $140 (not sure may have been $114) on each 100k of assessed value of property.

At this point he lost me & I was late leaving, so thanked him and said good-bye. Hope someone tapes the whole interview for you. There were voices in the background going over the same questions.

Caller ID: out of area

So -- whoever is behind the call was testing the water for higher taxes to pay for doing something dramatic with the river.

Here's an idea -- stop work on the arena, use that money to pay for river development infrastructure (low water dams, bank stabilization, etc.), and leave the skeleton of the arena as a monument to politicians and special interests who pushed their own vision and pushed the people's vision off into the distant future.

(By the way, if ever you get a survey call on political subjects, write down all the details you can and e-mail them to me at blog at batesline dot com. It's a good way to get an early warning of the trends that are headed our way.)

About a week ago, it caught my eye as I was headed east on 11th, just east of Harvard: A portable sign with just three words on it: BEEF ON WECK. It was in front of The Right Wing, a restaurant that specializes in Buffalo-style hot wings.

Those three words won't mean much to most Tulsans, but I took a number of lengthy trips to Erie County, New York, a couple of years ago, where beef on weck is the true local specialty, more so than spicy chicken wings.

Beef on weck is thin-sliced roast beef, served on a kummelweck roll -- a bun encrusted with coarse salt and caraway seeds, with a bit of a glaze to it -- with a bit of juice either on the sandwich or on the side. In a fine Buffalo-area tavern (like the Bar-Bill Tavern in East Aurora) you'll find a pot of prepared horseradish at the table for your sandwich.

I had seen beef on weck on only one other Tulsa menu: that of the ultra-elegant, whiter-than-white Table Ten in Brookside. It was $10, if I recall correctly. (It no longer seems to be on the menu.)

This Monday I saw the doctor for the bronchitis that had been dogging me for several days. His office was near 11th and Utica, just a couple of miles from The Right Wing. It was a perfect opportunity and a perfect reason to have my first beef on weck in two long years -- nothing like a sandwich piled high with horseradish to cut through all the gunk.

It took a while, but it was worth the wait. My only complaint -- I was given a very small cup of horseradish -- nowhere near enough to get some with every bite. I'll remember to ask for more next time.

There is something about the blending of the flavors and textures. I think that coarse salt on the bun is the key.

Here's a recipe for converting kaiser rolls to kummelweck. And here's a paean I wrote to beef on weck back in February '04.

Starbucks' frivolous claim of trademark infringement against Tulsa's DoubleShot Coffee Company is getting attention around the blogosphere.

See-Dubya, blogging at Patterico's Pontifications:

I bring this up both to tweak Starbucks for being humorless pronks and also to point out that lawyers sometimes sit around with nothing to do and decide to make trouble to prove that they�re worth the salaries they pull down. With intellectual property stuff like this, they have a semi-legitimate concern that they could lose the exclusive rights to their property if they don�t enforce it (this is assuming that they actually owned it in the first place, which in this case I�m pretty sure they didn�t.) But in any big company, Legal ought to always sit down with Marketing and explain exactly what they�re going to do and why they want to do it. Hopefully some of the Creative types could have explained to them that their suit was counterproductive and would tend to make the Corporation look like bullies, and just invite more infringement along with the ridicule.

At Overlawyered:

A Tulsa, Oklahoma, coffeeshop, Doubleshot Coffee, however, has received a scary-lawyer letter from Starbucks, claiming that Starbucks has an exclusive right to use the term "double shot" in relation to coffee.

I like the phrase "scary-lawyer letter."

At blogcritics:

Wal-Mart started as a small mom and pop; Kmart and Starbucks did, too.

But when these companies grow and start to use their strength to crush competition and threaten the very institution of small business that drives this country, then something has to be done.

Stores like Wal-Mart threaten small business through their ultra-low prices and selection, but Starbucks is a great example of a true corporate bully. The way many people view Starbucks as a bully is through it's use of litigation or threat of litigation against its competition....

Fortunately for Star Bock, HaidaBucks, and Charbucks, Starbucks did not win. But that did not stop them from incurring legal fees that nearly bankrupted them.

A small privately owned company with half a dozen employees does not have the money that a company like Starbucks has at its disposal for legal and court costs. Sometimes just the threat of a lawsuit can wield results.

From Begging to Differ:

Common sense dictates Starbucks should not be able to monopolize use of a name that is commonly used in an industry to describe a product or service. That would sort of defeat the purpose of trademark law. Starbucks should not be able to do that. But what they can do is throw their legal firepower and resources at smaller regional shops to drain the resources of the smaller shops. That's exactly what they are doing.

In this instance I�m not sure how successful Starbucks�s efforts have been. It seems (from looking at DoubleShot�s blog) that DoubleShot is enjoying the attention generated by this dispute. Especially with a company like Starbucks, alternatives are likely to be started by and patronized by people with anti chain (and �anti corporate�) streaks. Not the type of people likely to back down. Maybe even the type of people who come up with creative ways to fight the battle.

From Stay Free! Daily, the blog of a Brooklyn-based magazine:

This isn't the first time Starbucks has tried to trademark a common phrase and bully smaller members of the industry out of using it. For example, Starbucks didn't invent Christmas but they attempted to stop the monks of the All-Merciful Savior Monastery from selling a Christmas blend of their Monastery Blend Coffee. I'm glad to see that the DoubleShot folks intend to fight back; I hope it doesn't cost them too much money.

Meanwhile, our doughty entrepreneur has some serious thinking to do:

Time is drawing short and some critical decisions need to be made. Many people have recommended that I just submit to Starbucks and change the name of my business. They have too much money and could squeeze me out of business, right? Maybe I'm an idealist, but in my mind this isn't just about a little caf� in Tulsa Oklahoma. This is about what is right and wrong. This is about a corporation trying to live above the rules, and lay claim to words that have been in the coffee industry for a century. I'm not the kind of guy to lay down and let the schoolyard bully push me around.

The response to the attorneys will happen this week. Should I press the issue and take a chance of being sued? If I am sued, where will I get the money for a lawyer? Will someone trustworthy of this case work pro bono? If I cannot find a lawyer, can I stand up for myself in court? I know I am right; and I know that I can clearly state the case. If I must have a lawyer for a lawsuit and do not have one, should I play it safe and negotiate backward? There is much to consider.

As someone who was threatened with an intellectual property lawsuit, I can empathize with Brian Franklin, proprietor of Tulsa's DoubleShot Coffee Company:

I sense there has been some confusion. At least, that's what the letter says that I received from Starbucks' attorneys.

It's true. I received a letter last week informing me that I am infringing on a trademark that Starbucks has had since 2001, "Starbuck's Doubleshot." The lawyers advised me to cease using the DoubleShot Coffee Company name, to shut down my website (http://www.DoubleShotCoffee.com), and to destroy everything I have which bears the "DoubleShot" name. Come read the letter yourself-- it's framed and hanging on the wall, over the garbage can.

At first I frowned, then I smiled, then I laughed, then I experienced a little anger and fear, and then I went back to vengeance and irritable laughter. As you know, I don't take kindly to people telling me what to do. After briefly discussing the matter with my lawyer, and a gaggle of other lawyers who regularly patronize DoubleShot (my DoubleShot, not the can at the gas station), I don't think Starbucks has a leg to stand on. Doubleshot is a generic industry term for two shots of espresso. They have no exclusive rights to it. But they will try to scare me and lawyer me out of business if we give them the opportunity.

So today, as a legal clarification, I would like everyone to know that we are not Starbuck's Doubleshot. If we tricked you into coming in here, thinking you could get a can of Starbuck's DoubleShot here, please let me know.

And if you thought that $2 Tuesday was a sale on Starbuck's Doubleshot, I vehemently apologize for the confusion and ask you to please not come in here anymore because stupid people annoy me.

On the other hand, if you are brilliant enough to seek out a pound of fresh-roasted DoubleShot coffee, you will be rewarded today. Come in anytime today for $2 Tuesday, and receive a $2 discount on every pound of oh-so-tasty-coffee you purchase.

We don't have any cans of Starbuck's Doubleshot here, but we do have the freshest coffee on the planet!

Please tell as many people as you can about this outrageous Starbucks chicanery. We figure that the more publicity and public indignation we stir up, the better chance we will have at standing up against this evil corporate empire.

Find out more information about this on the latest episode of AA Cafe (and learn how to get a 15% discount on web orders):
http://www.DoubleShotCoffee.com/aacafe or on iTunes (search for "AA Cafe" in the music store).

I'd be interested to know what Ron Coleman, IP attorney and blawger extraordinaire, thinks about this. Actually, based on this recent item about Marvel and DC Comics trying to trademark the word "super-hero," I can guess. (As general counsel for the Media Bloggers Association, Ron responded on my behalf to the Tulsa World's legal threats.)

I'd think the Swinging Medallions would have a better infringement claim than Starbucks.

If you're a blogger, help spread the word about Starbucks' bullying. If you're a coffee drinker, stop by DoubleShot at 18th and Boston and buy a cup of great coffee to show your support. And stay tuned to DoubleShot's brand new blog for updates on the situation.

This is going to be a departure from BatesLine's usual content, the sort of thing that Mister Snitch calls a long-tail post. Google seems to treat this blog pretty favorably, so I'm hopeful that this entry will be found by Cowsills fans as they search the net.

In the linkblog a few days ago, I made mention of the woes that have recently befallen The Cowsills, a the late '60s pop band that also happened to be a family. The band consisted of four brothers, their mom, and their little sister Susan.

(Hollywood saw the TV potential of the group, but after the fashion of the time that potential was translated into a situation comedy based on their story, featuring professional actors miming to music. Nowadays, the Cowsills would have been made the stars of their own reality series.)

The Cowsill family has lost a lot in the last few months, starting with Hurricane Katrina. Barry Cowsill, in New Orleans when the storm hit, was missing until January, when his body was identified.

Susan Cowsill and her husband made it out of New Orleans in time, but with nothing but their pets and the clothes on their back. Their priceless family archives were lost to the storm.

Then, a week ago, as family and friends gathered in the family's hometown of Newport, R.I., to remember Barry, they learned that oldest brother Billy had died at his home in Calgary.

Susan Cowsill has a connection to Tulsa. Susan sang backup and harmony vocals with Dwight Twilley's band, going back to the '80s, and she lived in Tulsa for a time. She was here last August performing with Twilley, not long before Katrina hit.

(YouTube has a music video, "Some Good Years," a song the regrouped Cowsills recorded in the early '90s. The video was part of a tribute to Barry, and it features clips from the Cowsills' American Dairy Association commercial, a 1967 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, and TV appearances with Dean Martin, Johnny Cash, Buddy Ebsen, and Mike Douglas. Even if you aren't a fan, if you fondly remember variety shows of the era, you'll enjoy the trip down Memory Lane. Hat tip to the Dawn Patrol.)

Susan Cowsill could use your help in a couple of ways. She and her husband lost everything to Katrina. Back in September Dwight and Jan Twilley began collecting funds to help with basic needs, and in an e-mail a couple of days ago, Jan Twilley confirmed to me that there is still a need and they are still accepting donations. You can send donations to:

Susan Cowsill
c/o Jan Twilley
4306 S. Peoria Suite 642
Tulsa, OK. 74105-3924

The Cowsill family also hopes to replace some of the memorabilia that was lost to the storm. Through the Cowsills Archive Project, the family is asking for fans to share their Cowsills memorabilia by uploading photos and scans. They would also welcome any memorabilia you can bear to part with to help rebuild the family's collection.

I only learned about The Cowsills in the last year or so, so I can't claim to be a longtime fan, but I was touched by this story of loss upon loss -- and its contrast to the happy innocence you'll see in that video -- and I wanted to let people know how they can help. I'm hopeful that Cowsills fans will come across this entry, spread the word, and help in any way they can.

According to La Semana del Sur, Casa Laredo is closing its long-time location at 41st and Peoria. From other sources I've heard the move is to make way for the expansion of Wild Oats Market. The cool news is that they plan to build a new location next to the Hotel Savoy near 6th and Peoria (recently redubbed the Pearl District), near the Village at Central Park. It's a real vote of confidence for the 6th Street corridor and could encourage more new businesses to spring up in the area. (I seem to recall that Chimi's original location on 15th Street -- where Kilkenny's is now -- was a catalyst for new business activity on Cherry Street in the early '90s.)

One of my Urban Tulsa Weekly columns was about the idea of the new downtown sports arena as an "icon", and what it means for a building to be iconic:

An icon is a symbol. In the computer world, it�s a small image that has enough detail to help you remember what program that will be launched when you click on it. In religious terms, it�s an image of a saint, depicting details of the saint�s ministry or martyrdom which identify the saint and remind the viewer of his or her story. For both meanings of the word, an icon is supposed to bring to mind the thing or person being iconified.

When you see an �iconic� structure, you immediately know its location. Think of the U. S. Capitol; the domes of the Kremlin; Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament; the Colosseum; the Parthenon; the Statue of Liberty; the Eiffel Tower; the Gateway Arch; the Leaning Tower; the Pyramids.

Television shows and movies use iconic structures to set the scene without a single word. An iconic structure works because it is distinctive and it connects with a famous location. The less famous the place, the more distinctive the structure needs to be to work as an icon. Like it or not, Tulsa�s most iconic structure is the Golden Driller. It works because people still associate Tulsa with oil. The American, if it�s ever built, could be an icon for our state because people associate Oklahoma with American Indians.

Proving my point unintentionally, the Tulsa Whirled's website has been running an online poll, asking readers to pick their top four Tulsa scenes out of 16. The winning scene will be used on the box of a Monopoly-type game called Tulsa on Board, which is being developed by Leadership Tulsa. The text of the poll reads:

As a sponsor, the Tulsa World will provide artwork, but we need your help. The box should visually reflect what it means to live in Tulsa; and we thought who would know better than Tulsans themselves?

As I write this, the top vote-getter among the photos is the Golden Driller (816 votes), followed by the Cain's Ballroom (673 votes), an aerial photo of downtown, with the refineries, the river, and the setting sun in the background (619 votes), and Art Deco (529 votes -- the photo is of the Boston Avenue Church tower). The "iconic" arena is in 6th place, but well back of the leaders, with only 341 votes. (The Philtower was 5th, with 445 votes.)

Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune has mentioned this paper time and time again, and here it is on the web: the 2006 Oklahoma Economic Outlook for the Tulsa MSA, by Ed Price, Associate Professor of Economics.

The paper states that the Tulsa metro area is "poised to regain much of what it has lost and to have a significant, positive impact on the state's economy." It projects a 2.9% growth of the gross metropolitan output in real terms, the "best real growth in a decade." Scattered throughout the three pages of text are specific percentages for projected growth for different sectors of the metro area economy.

What isn't there is any statement of the basis for the projected 2006 numbers, what forces are at work in the Tulsa metro area or the broader national and global economy to produce a specific level of job growth here. Assumptions had to be made to generate these numbers, but the reader is not given the opportunity to examine and evaluate those assumptions.

This was very interesting: The last page of the report shows historic employment data overall and in various categories, with real numbers from 1999 through 2004, an estimate for 2005, and a projection for 2006. Note the "Information" category -- between 2001 and 2004 information technology employment in the Tulsa metro area dropped by 23%, and is nowhere near recovering. Employment in Natural Resources and Mining, which I assume would include the oil industry, is projected to continue to drop, although not as steeply.

Something to keep in mind, as you consider this report in light of local politics: The report covers the entire Tulsa MSA, which includes all of Tulsa County, not just the City of Tulsa, plus Creek, Okmulgee, Osage, Pawnee, Rogers, and Wagoner Counties.

You'll find links to the economic outlook for the entire state and the OKC metro area here.

A couple of good recent meals out:

My wife and I ate tonight at the Golden Saddle Barbecue and Steakhouse, on Admiral east of Sheridan. My wife had the filet, I had a three-meat BBQ plate -- pork ribs, pork loin, and pulled pork. It was all very good, but the pulled pork was especially good. You can tell good barbecue when it's tender and flavorful enough to eat without sauce. Good coleslaw and tabouli, too. The owner and the waitstaff were very attentive and very concerned to make sure we enjoyed our meal. The prices were very good for the quantity and quality of the food, and the restaurant was clean and bright. We'll visit again.

For lunch, I tried a little Indian restaurant just south of the Taco Bueno at 61st and Garnett. They had a small but tasty buffet for $5.99 for lunch, but the best part of lunch was watching part of a Bollywood comedy/melodrama/tragedy/musical called "Ishq", in Hindi with English subtitles. Rich boy loves poor girl, poor boy loves rich girl, wealthy dads try to interfere. Way too many musical "stings" to add drama. The actors playing the dads were both good at eye-popping, vein-bulging rage. No one said "Curses! Foiled again!" but it wouldn't have been amiss. A musical number featuring the four young lovers includes an attack by a bumbling assassin; the song and dance continues without missing a beat. Another killer for hire looks quite menacing, but when he speaks, the subtitles have him saying, "You will bling a vely high plice," followed by the young people repeating the phrase and mocking the thug's accent. (Reminds me of the translation of Lysistrata which had the Spartans speaking like the Joads, to correspond to the less-sophisticated manner of speaking ascribed to the Spartans in the original Greek.) It was all wonderfully and unintentionally over the top, at least for American sensibilities.

Jim Heskett, a blogger now residing in Boulder, Colo., recently came back to Tulsa and elsewhere in Oklahoma for a visit and is posting photos. You'll find them in his October and November archives. I especially liked the shot of the River Parks fountain in this entry -- you will, too.

Bobby of Tulsa Topics also runs his neighborhood's blog -- Lewis Crest News -- and he's got some good news up about the I-44 widening. After worries that 51st Street between Lewis and Harvard would be turned into an eastbound-only service road, ODOT's latest plan, unveiled at a public meeting to night, has 51st remaining as two-way street, but with an additional turn lane. Good news for the homeowners and businesses on the south side of 51st. Businesses on the north side of 51st will still be wiped out when I-44 is widened, and there's still no timeline for when that will happen.

Bobby promises video and more details from the meeting later on Tulsa Topics.

I understand the desire to complete six-laning this stretch of road, but I don't understand why it should take priority over an even more heavily-loaded, dangerous stretch of I-44 -- the four miles in east Tulsa between the junction with I-244 west of 145th East Ave and the junction with Oklahoma 66 east of 193rd East Ave. Through traffic can easily bypass the section of I-44 in midtown Tulsa by taking I-244, which is wider, newer by about 20 years, and much less heavily loaded. But the east Tulsa segment, the most heavily traveled highway segment in Oklahoma, is almost unavoidable. (The Creek Turnpike is an alternate route, albeit a circuitous and expensive one.) Six lanes of westbound traffic from OK 66, I-44, and US 412 funnel down to two. From the other direction, four lanes from I-44 and I-244 merge into two. A traffic accident can paralyze the road for hours. Traffic coming from the west on I-244 can't spot a backup until it's too late to exit

If it were up to me, I'd make an upgrade of the east Tulsa segment top priority, and swap signs between I-44 and I-244. Make the newer, wider, better road the designated route for through traffic.

Did you know you can hail a pedicab in Jenks? Golzern Pedicabs will take you from the Jenks Riverwalk to nearby Jenks locations -- you name the price. How do they make money? Apparently from special events and selling advertising on the attention-getting vehicle. (Found via Tulsa Indy Gazetteer.)

The newly reborn and expanded Mayo Meadow Neighborhood Association -- bounded by 21st Street, Pittsburg, the Broken Arrow Expressway, and Yale -- now has an online presence at tulsamayomeadow.blogspot.com. It's a blog, as you might have guessed from the URL, and that's a quick way to establish a web presence and begin to build content. David Hamby did a great job of getting it up and running.

The most recent entry is about the association's next general meeting on November 15.

Speaking of great food in out of the way places, roadfood.com's Michael Stern was in Tulsa earlier this week and stopped in at the White River Fish Market at 1708 N. Sheridan in Tulsa. Here's his review.

The gumbo there is a favorite of ours. My wife and I first had it at the store's booth at the Tulsa State Fair years ago. It was especially chilly and damp that day, their booth was outside on the midway then, and a big cup of gumbo really warmed us up. The restaurant is just a mile west and a few blocks south of the Tulsa International Airport terminal, so it's a convenient place for a good meal going to or from the airport. (Take Virgin St. from the airport to Sheridan, and keep an eye out for J. Paul Getty's little house on the south side of the street as you get close to Sheridan.)

White River is the 12th Oklahoma restaurant reviewed by the Sterns, and the first one in Tulsa.

Oh, and fish from White River were used on "Wheel of Fish," one of the innovative local programs in Weird Al's movie "UHF".

First up is a blog that isn't new, but is new to me. Eddie Huff, whom I know from the Executive Committee of the Tulsa County Republican Party, has a blog of political commentary called New Black Thought, which has been up and running for about a year. His latest entry takes aim at critics of President Bush's nomination of Harriett Miers to the U. S. Supreme Court. Eddie is also part of a group blog called the New Underground Railroad, with the slogan, "Leading Blacks to freedom from the bondage of psychological slavery."

Brian C. Biggs, son of Tulsa Beacon publisher Charlie Biggs, has a shiny new WordPress blog.

Ramblings from a Born and Bred Okie is another newly-minted blog. Blogger Michelle had some nice things to say about this site and some thoughts on local politics.

And via Steve Roemerman, I've learned about a two-day old blog devoted to capturing Tulsa's distinctive signage -- Signs of Tulsa. If you love classic neon signs (calling Dwayne!) you'll find this site exciting.

Visit these bloggers, and give them some encouragement.

Ron W., a frequent commenter here, has now started his own blog: Route 66 News, which he describes as a "clearinghouse of news and events pertaining to historic Route 66, the Mother Road." He's been up less than a week, but already has a lot of great content, including a list of links to 239 Route 66 attractions and websites.

There's an important breaking news item: Western Swing band Cow Bop will be performing at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame Thursday at 7.

If you like good barbecue, you can try some of the best I've ever had and help a good cause this afternoon.

It's a fundraiser for the Tulsa County Republican Party at Brush Creek Farm, 10900 S. Louisville Ave., in Tulsa. The event is from 2 pm to 6 pm. The cost is $25 per family, or $10 per adult, $5 per child, six and under free.

The food alone -- Eagleton Bros. Barbecue -- will be worth the price of admission. John Eagleton, who is running for City Council District 7, is an excellent barbecue chef. I'll be one of several honorary Eagleton Bros. for the day, assisting John at the smoker.

Besides great food, you'll have the chance to meet many Republican elected officials and lots of rank-and-file Republicans who share a passion for politics.

Come join us, and if you see me, be sure to come up and introduce yourself.

I'm down at Shades of Brown, working on my Urban Tulsa Weekly column, and from the next table I'm hearing a lot about nuns assimilating, but by the context they're not talking about the acculturation of immigrant Catholic religious women. It's a couple of ORU grad students trying to get their brains around Hebrew orthography.

Shades has a full house tonight, and it's gratifying to see a lot of the patrons perusing the latest issue of UTW as they sip their coffee.

In that new UTW issue, you'll find my latest column, on infill development in Brookside, and some encouraging steps toward accommodating new development without sacrificing the neighborhood's character. G. W. Schulz has the cover story -- it's about the challenges faced by EMSA, Tulsa's ambulance service. As a former Austin resident, G. W.'s also a part of a symposium on the OU-Texas rivalry. The discussion goes beyond football to the differences in attitude between north and south of the Red River. Way down Texas way, they don't mind rowdy politicians:

When Tulsa City Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino began raising hell at City Hall, the city recoiled with shame and horror as if someone had farted at a funeral. We're generally timid and quiet; we don't like anyone making too much noise.

But Mautino and Medlock's antics hardly would have made the pages of the Austin American-Statesman. The only time Texans blink is when someone isn't screaming and yelling at the capitol building.

Pick up a copy and read the whole thing.

I spotted a sign on a CITGO station today: "Celebrating our 40th Anniversary." 40 years ago? I knew Cities Service Oil Co. was much older than that, going back to the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Co in the first years of the 20th century. CITGO as an independent entity was much younger than that -- mid '80s, following the takeover of Cities Service by Occidental Petroleum.

40 years ago, on May 16th, 1965, was when Cities Service began to market its gasoline under the CITGO brand, featuring the equilateral triangle, colored in three shades of red for a three-dimensional appearance.

It was right about that time, plus or minus a few weeks, that our family moved from Lawrence, Kansas, to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, for Dad to start work for Cities Service. Whether or not the brand rollout made an impression on the general public, it made a deep impression on my 18-month-old brain, or so I'm told, and though I didn't say much else at that age, I could say, "Cities Service is CITGO NOW!" We could see the Cities Service sign atop their downtown building from the little house on Delaware that we rented from the company.

Cities Service didn't stay in Bartlesville much longer. Bartlesville belonged to Phillips Petroleum. As the rhyme went:

Cities Service makes me nervous. Phillips gives you better service.

In 1968, Cities Service announced it would locate its HQ in Tulsa, consolidating offices from New York, Philadelphia, Bartlesville, and elsewhere. We moved in the summer of 1969.

Cities Service followed me to college -- a $3,000 a year National Merit scholarship. (It helped MIT, but didn't help me -- at the time, MIT simply deducted outside scholarships from their grant amount.) And there was that CITGO sign over Kenmore Square -- it was restored and relit about halfway through my time there.

It was right about that time that T. Boone Pickens tried and failed to take over Cities Service, Armand Hammer (the old Commie) succeeded, CITGO was spun off and sold to the 7-Eleven people. And it was about that time that Dad got his 20-year watch and a few months later, his pink slip. Funny that Dad's career with the company corresponds so closely to the span from the birth of CITGO as a marketing name to the birth of CITGO as a separate entity.

Funny, too, that 20 years after Dad faced life apart from the company he'd served for nearly his entire adult life to that point, I'm facing my own career crossroads.

Anyway, click here if you want to see what a Cities Service station looked like before the switch to CITGO.

Rita is fizzling out in southern Arkansas, but another hurricane, a Golden Hurricane, hit Tulsa's Skelly Stadium tonight. The University of Tulsa won their first game in Conference USA over the Memphis Tigers, 37-31, in overtime. Despite a 200-yard, three touchdown performance by Memphis star running back DeAngelo Williams, TU led at half-time and through most of the game.

It was homecoming, and the crowd -- about 25,000 is my guess -- was into the game, interfering with Memphis' no huddle offense. The loud crowd seemed to be responsible for Memphis' false start on 4th and 3 during their overtime possession. Williams was run out of bounds for a gain of seven on the subsequent 4th and 8 final play of the game.

My son and I were there with a group of friends. It was his first TU game ever, my first in over 10 years. It was an exciting game, and we had a great time.

UPDATE (9/26/2005): I was amazed at how much my nine-year-old absorbed. He wasn't saying much during the game, although he was smiling a lot, and someone in our group asked what I had him on that he was so well behaved. Sunday afternoon over lunch, he was giving his mom highlights of the game in great detail -- the missed PAT, the PAT that hit the scissor lift and the one that bounced onto the bus, the fluffed handoff. Of course, one of the highlights for him was sliding down the south end zone slope on a piece of cardboard after the game.

Our group was greatly amused every time the referee announced a call. The ref had a rasp to his voice that reminded us of City Council Chairman Roscoe Turner. I half-expected him to begin each penalty call with, "I have a problem with that."

The Tulsa Free WiFi website now has a Google map showing all the hotspots in its directory. Click on a point and get a popup showing the name and phone number of the location, plus a link to a review, if there is one.

In increasing numbers, people are making decisions about where to have lunch, get a cup of coffee, or get new tires based on whether there's a free WiFi connection. I am, anyway. Recently I was scheduled to attend a meeting at Espresso Milano on Cherry Street. I was in the area an hour or so before the meeting, so I thought I'd get there early, get something to drink, and get caught up on e-mail. Before I placed my order, I asked the barista if they had free WiFi. He admitted, in an apologetic tone, that they did not. I thanked him politely then walked over to WiFi-enabled Cafe Cubana and got my coffee there.

Somewhat related: Tulsa TV Memories has a page about Tulsa coffee houses, past and present. There's a recently updated and hotlinked list of current coffee houses, followed by reminiscences about Tulsa coffee houses and the folk music scene of the '60s and '70s. On the list of today's coffee houses, I see two listed as having free WiFi that I hadn't heard about before: Tulsa Sips at 3701 S Peoria and Sumatra at 4244 S Peoria.

Just in case you hadn't heard, there's a hurricane headed Tulsa's way. Rita is expected to reach southeastern Oklahoma by early Monday morning, and has the potential to reach Tulsa. It will be a tropical depression by then, but we could still be in for an incredible amount of rain and stormy weather. Keep an eye on it at the National Hurricane Center's website.

Traditionally, economic development aid in the Third World has involved western banks lending massive sums of money to Third World governments for massive public works projects. That approach has been very effective at lining the Swiss bank accounts of despots and putting these countries deep into debt, but it hasn't been very effective at raising the standard of living.

The idea seemed to be: Western nations have dams and airports and factories and towering buildings and they are prosperous. If we build dams and airports and factories and towering buildings we will become prosperous, too. It's a classic case of post hoc, propter hoc reasoning, and it makes about as much sense as, say, seeing a vibrant downtown with a new arena and thinking that if we build a new arena our downtown will be vibrant, too.

It's come to be understood that there are factors in the wealth of nations which aren't as noticeable as factories or dams or arenas, but which are essential to prosperity. This social capital evolved over millenia in the West, but they haven't had as long to take root elsewhere.

One of these factors is a system of banking accessible to everyone -- the ability for someone to take out a small loan, at a reasonable rate of interest, to start a business. Think about it: Western economies didn't begin with people going down to the unemployment office looking for someone else to hire them. Individuals found something they could make or do which was valuable enough to exchange for food, clothing, or shelter.

It may not take much to get started in a small venture that could provide for one's family, but sometimes that "not much" is far more than one has hope of acquiring. It's a bootstrapping problem, and I apprecia