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Bobby Koefer, steel guitar wizard, RIP
Steel guitarist Bobby Koefer, one of the last surviving members of the Texas Playboys who recorded and toured with Bob Wills, has died at the age of 95. Here is Bobby's obituary, written by western swing historian Buddy McPeters for publication here at BatesLine: John Robert 'Bobby' Koefer, passed away...
Farewell KC-10
Pilots and boom operators are sad to contemplate the September 2024 retirement of the KC-10, the aerial refueling tanker based on the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 airframe. Though the Air Force operates only 59 KC-10s compared to 396 KC-135s and a planned 128 KC-46s, each of the Extenders packs a punch....
2022: The McGirt election
During the recent U. S. Senate debate on KOTV/KWTV, there wasn't much distance between the four participating candidates on economic matters and social issues. There were a few differences on how the U. S. should respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the wisdom of unrestricted aid to...
V-E Day 75th anniversary
The German war is therefore at an end. After years of intense preparation, Germany hurled herself on Poland at the beginning of September, 1939; and, in pursuance of our guarantee to Poland and in agreement with the French Republic, Great Britain, the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations, declared war...
Spanish Flu in Oklahoma, 1918: Avoid osculation
The earliest reference to Spanish flu or influenza in the Oklahoma Historical Society's Digital Newspapers Collection is from page 4 of the August 31, 1918, edition of the Daily Ardmoreite. The flu is still a far-off thing, but near enough to be worthy of some advice: INFLUENZA AND OSCULATION If...
The Israel Bible
A little break from the political: I was intrigued a couple of months ago to receive an email announcing a new study edition of the Scriptures with notes highlighting the relationship between the land and people of Israel. The Israel Bible, published by Israel365 and Menorah Books (an imprint...
Rand McNally on the Internet Archive
On the Map Scans Facebook group, someone posted a link to the Internet Archive's copy of the 1980 State Farm Road Atlas, which was a rebranded Rand McNally Road Atlas. That got me wondering about finding earlier editions, and I did a search for items published by Rand McNally. The...
Lukács, the Frankfurt School, cultural terrorism
As we look ahead to launching another child into higher education, I am thinking that the Ivy League schools have ceased to offer an education worthy of the price tag, much less their long and honorable heritage. Case in point: This center-left Yale student's complaint that his Shakespeare course had...
David Rollo, RIP; memorial service Saturday, June 24, 2017
David Marshall Rollo, a leader in Tulsa choral music for over a half-century, a friend and mentor to many, passed away on April 25, 2017, at the age of 74, of complications from pneumonia. I was blessed to know David for 40 years as his student at Holland Hall, as...
Oklahoma Bar Association subsidizes repressive Communist regime
The Oklahoma Bar Association, the leftist monopoly guild that has an effective veto over judicial appointments in our state, will be funneling money to the totalitarian Communist Castro regime with the organization's "President's Cruise" to Cuba this summer. Linda Thomas, mentioned in the flyer, is the current OBA president. At...
GOP electors ought to pick someone besides Trump, but they won't
Republican presidential electors have been deluged with pleas to vote for someone other than Donald Trump. Donald Trump is still unfit to be President of the United States (as is Hillary Clinton, as is Gary Johnson, each in their own way). I wish that, when the Electoral College meets tomorrow...
Oklahoma SQ 790: The First Amendment, not Oklahoma's special version
Oklahoma State Question 790 is a legislative referendum which would remove a discriminatory and inconsistently applied provision in the Constitution of Oklahoma that deals with the relationship of religion and government. Its passage would allow the People of Oklahoma through our elected representatives to weigh and balance a variety of...
Ted Cruz returns to Tulsa
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz returned to Tulsa today for his third visit of the 2016 presidential campaign. Despite the short notice and the early starting time -- 12:30pm, barely after most churches end their Sunday services -- Cruz drew a crowd of about 3,000 to Tulsa's Central Park Hall....
"Missing Hancocks" returning for second series
In 2014, the British Broadcasting Corporation re-created five missing episodes of the groundbreaking and ever-popular radio sitcom Hancock's Half Hour, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the show. Of the 102 episodes broadcast over six series from 1954 to 1959, 20 episodes are missing from the archives. In...
100 years ago: Ottoman Muslims begin purge of Christians
Yet another grim commemoration. Stella Morabito, granddaughter of survivors, writes in The Federalist: What You Should Know about the Armenian Genocide. April 24 marks the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, a massive tragedy that brutally snuffed out the lives of up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians in the Ottoman Empire....
Readings on jihad and crusades
ADDED at the top because of its valuable info: Thomas F. Madden reviews The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam by Jonathan Riley-Smith On September 11, 2001, there were only a few professional historians of the Crusades in America. I was the one who was not retired. As a result, my phone...
Election day 2014 in Florida -- and the aftermath
It was a good day, a better day that anyone expected, a real wave election. The reaction of my local liberal friends on Facebook reveal their contempt for the state where they live, their bigoted opinions of conservatives, and their disconnect from political reality. One wrote a very apt "chin-up"...
Washington: "Vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature"
If you are an engineer, you understand the forces of nature so that you can exploit them in your designs. There's no point in complaining about gravity. If you wish them away or pretend they don't exist, your designs will fail. If you are organizing people, you had better understand...
Sid Caesar, RIP
I'm struck by one detail in the obituaries for comedic actor Sid Caesar. He got married in 1943 to Florence Levy, and he stayed married to her until her death in 2010 -- 67 years on their way to together forever, as Paul Harvey used to say. Not a whiff...
Purging Tulsa's map of doers and enablers of evil
FINAL UPDATE! Council votes 7-to-Patrick to change the name within the IDL to M. B. Brady Street in honor of the Civil War era photographer, thus preserving the street name while clarifying that we don't wish to honor W. Tate Brady. Not sure if I should applaud the finesse of...
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