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Little Orphan Annie's blunked-out eyeballs
Tonight I attended Augustine Christian Academy's middle-school production of Annie (Jr.). As is always the case at ACA, the production was characterized by excellence and a lot of heart. It hit me that no one involved in the production (except the director) would have any awareness of the comic strip...
9/11: Twenty-one years
Today is the 21st anniversary of the Islamist attacks on America. We pause to remember the husbands and wives, sons and daughters who died that day and in the years since in the pursuit of the evil movement that perpetrated the attacks. Please take a moment to remember Jayesh Shah,...
Remember and Rise cancelled over survivors' reparations demands
Stage for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission's cancelled "Remember & Rise" commemorative event, set up in the middle of ONEOK Field. May 28, 2021. Copyright 2021 Michael D. Bates. All rights reserved. Omar Villafranca of CBS News reports this morning that the cancellation of Monday's "Remember and Rise"...
No on SQ802: Arkansas warning
Before Oklahomans foolishly enshrine a new, unfunded and unlimited entitlement into our state constitution (SQ802), we ought to heed the experience of our neighbors to the east. On May 13, 2020, when the Oklahoma legislature was debating a Medicaid expansion bill, Arkansas State Representative Josh Miller, a Republican, wrote a...
Where are Tulsa's candidates?
I've made this plea repeatedly on social media, on Pat Campbell's show on 1170 KFAQ, and here on this blog. And yet I look at the list of candidates after two of the three days of the filing period, and I am amazed to see so many unopposed candidates. Four...
Bob Gregory: A tribute from his son
After I posted my tribute in memory of Bob Gregory, I received an email from his son, Jason Pitcock, who included a copy of the eulogy he wrote for his dad and delivered at his service. What an amazing life he led! Like Bob Gregory's work, Jason's tribute to his...
Charles G. Hill, Doyen of Dustbury, RIP
A memorial tribute to Charles G. Hill, Oklahoma's best-loved and most-enduring blogger, who died in September 8, 2019.
Will Boris's Brexit deal pass? Should it?
Just two weeks ahead of the October 31, 2019, date of the UK's departure from the European Union, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come back from Brussels with a new treaty that removes indefinite EU control over UK regulations and customs, eliminates fears of a hard border between the UK...
Did a stolen Rubens masterpiece hang in a Tulsa art store in 1921?
While looking for something else in the Oklahoma Historical Society's online newspaper database, I came across this startling headline atop the April 17, 1921, edition of the Tulsa Sunday World: PRICELESS PAINTING RECOVERED HERE Beligum Reclaims Ancient Million-Dollar Work of Old Master Bristow Tool Dresser Had Ruebens' Work, 'Descent From...
Fundamentalists, Modernists, and media bias at the 1928 Presbyterian General Assembly in Tulsa
Searching through archives, I found this item that I drafted on 3/15/2007, but never finished. Since 2007, Time has placed its archives behind a paywall; the links are all still valid, but unless you pay for a pass, you'll only see an excerpt. But I was also able to find...
Covington Catholic and the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
Mollie Z. Hemingway asks, regarding the unraveling of the mainstream media narrative about activist Nathan Phillips and his confrontation last weekend with the young men of Covington Catholic School: The thing I keep thinking about: if many media types are dishonest about reporting contradicted and shown to be dangerously false...
Billy Graham at MIT
In April 1982, during my second semester at MIT, Billy Graham came to speak at the invitation of the evangelical Christian groups on campus, including Campus Crusade for Christ, United Christian Fellowship (the MIT affiliate of Intervarsity), the Chinese Bible Study, and the MIT Seekers, affiliated with Park Street Church....
Sen. Nathan Dahm: "Where are the reforms?"
In a Facebook post, Sen. Nathan Dahm has explained his reasons for opposing a massive tax increase to meet the current Oklahoma state budget shortfall. This week I voted no one of the largest tax increases in state history. Why? Because I don't believe the answer to our state's budget...
Heaven on earth?
During a recent long drive, I tuned in, via the miracle of the internet, to ABC radio in Australia, and listened to the "Overnights" show. In this particular hour, the host was playing songs with "heaven" in the title. Gospel songs about the eternal state of the blessed like "When...
Luther at the Movies: "Here I sit!"
About 10 years ago, an intelligently entertaining (and often spiritually edifying) pop culture blog went on permanent hiatus. It's worth revisiting, in this year of the 500th anniversary of its pseudepigraphous author's great historical moment. The premise of Luther at the Movies: The Great Reformer, famed for his blunt speech,...
9/11, 15 years on
Time flies. The five-year-old boy I took to the zoo -- and kept away from the TV and the radio -- the day the terrorists flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center is on his way back to college after a short visit home. Sonia Shah was...
<em>The Man Who Was Thursday</em>, read by Geoffrey Palmer
"Are you the new recruit?" asked a heavy voice. And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to...
Jack Davis and Marni Nixon, RIP
Two important but behind-the-scenes contributors to popular culture in mid-century America died this week. Jack Davis was 91. Marni Nixon was 86. Jack Davis was a prolific illustrator and caricaturist. He was a regular contributor to Mad magazine, alternating with Mort Drucker to illustrate TV and movie parodies. He had...
Miss Jackson's closes its doors after 105 years
Miss Jackson's, one of Tulsa's oldest continuously operating businesses, closed its doors today. The boutique, which catered to wealthy women, was founded in downtown Tulsa in 1910, was located from 1928 to 1965 in the Philtower at 5th and Boston, and relocated to Utica Square in 1965, on a...
Fred Thompson, RIP
Tribute image posted on Facebook by National Review I was sad to hear of the passing, on Sunday, of actor, lawyer, and former U. S. Senator Fred Thompson, who was felled by lymphoma at the age of 73. My condolences to his family and friends, with my thanks for...
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