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Are charter schools "state actors"?
The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board has authorized an explicitly Roman Catholic virtual charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, to begin operation in the 2024-2025 school year. Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a pretend-conservative and Biden for President donor who won the GOP nomination with the help...
Goodbye, Gilcrease
You have five more days (Wednesday, June 30, 2021, to Sunday, July 4, 2021) to visit Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum, before the museum, as you've known it for the last 57 years, goes away forever.
UK Elections 2019
The United Kingdom will hold a general election tomorrow, Thursday, December 12, 2019. All 650 seats in the House of Commons, the popularly-elected house of the national legislature, will be on the ballot. Voters cast a ballot only for their local Member of Parliament (MP), but the leader of the...
Even billionaires deserve scrutiny and skepticism from the media
There are those who worry about the influence of the wealthy on federal politics but are quite blasé about the influence of the wealthy on local politics. That slobbery, smooching sound you heard Saturday was Wayne Greene's column in the Saturday, December 31, 2016, Tulsa World, telling all of us...
"I Love a Sunburnt Country"
In 1908, just seven years after Australia's federation, a young woman named Dorothea Mackellar wrote a tribute to her homeland. The poem, "My Country," is sometimes called by the first line of its second verse, the beginning of the poem proper after a prefatory stanza. I love a sunburnt country,...
<em>You've Been Trumped</em>: Donald Trump bullies Scottish homeowners
Donald Trump's habit of using government to hound people from their homes to make way for his schemes isn't limited to the US. Ian Tuttle has documented Trump's efforts to make life miserable for neighbors of his grand Scottish golf resort -- a resort that has failed to live...
Scotland's independence referendum
Polls are now closed in Scotland, but it will be several hours until all the votes are counted in the referendum to decide whether its 307-year-old membership in the United Kingdom will be dissolved in favor of independence. The question on the ballot is simple: "Should Scotland be an independent...
Christian bakery faces discrimination charge over pro-"gay marriage" Bert & Ernie cake
Ashers Baking Co, a Christian-owned chain of bakeries in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, has been sent a letter from the Equality Commission for refusing an order to make a cake featuring a picture of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, the message "Support Gay Marriage," and the logo of an...
British history, county boundaries, and detached parts
Some links of interest to me and possibly no one else within a 500 mile radius: (Remember, "blog" is short for "weblog," a log of things found on the World Wide Web.) Some games for testing your knowledge of historic counties of Britain and Ireland: Historic Counties of Scotland: See...
Mr. Bean on "Blind Date"
It was June of 1994, and we were chilling out in our room at the bed and breakfast in Inveraray, Scotland, watching TV, and this came on. We had seen a Mr. Bean episode on the flight over, and here he was again, on "Blind Date," the British version of...
Happy St. David's Day
I had planned to post this first thing this morning, but computer problems prevented, and then grim news seemed more important. We all could use some music and laughter about now, I think. The four countries of the United Kingdom are of such great antiquity that they can't mark a...
What's on your family travel "bucket list"?
You've heard of a "bucket list" -- the list of places you want to visit, experiences you want to have, tasks you want to accomplish before you "kick the bucket." But there are deadlines other than death that deserve a list. On my recent extended business trips, I've made a...
"The Flickr community is invited to assist in the identification..."
Some time ago, I wrote a blog post urging the stewards of the Beryl Ford Collection to post the collection on Flickr, so as to invite public participation in collecting data about people, places, and times depicted in photos and ephemera from Tulsa history. A couple of months later, I...
Parliamentary deadlock
It was fascinating to watch the results roll in. Polls closed at 10 pm in Britain and it wasn't until early the next morning before the result was mathematically certain, confirming the exit polls from the night before: No party would have a majority of the 650 seats in the...
UK general election, May 6, 2010
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called a general election for Thursday, May 6, 2010, just a few weeks shy of the fifth anniversary of the previous election. This will be the first election in which Brown will carry the Labour Party's banner; Labour won the 1997, 2001, and 2005...
Wi-fi while traveling
A collection of links to the free wi-fi establishments I've visited while traveling, to be updated from time to time: Community Bakery, Little Rock, Arkansas Stardust Video and Coffee, Orlando, Florida Austin Coffee and Film, Orlando, Florida Boba Cafe and Deli, City Market, Savannah, Georgia Mosaics on Main, Belleville, Illinois...
Border run
Saturday and Sunday afternoon our family spent some time at the American Kennel Club Agility Nationals, held in the Ford Truck Barn at Expo Square. Admission was free, and the event drew big crowds. It was impressive to watch the dogs navigate a difficult course, but I was just as...
A great day for <em>all</em> the Irish
My wife and I both laughed out loud this morning when we heard 1170 KFAQ's Chris Medlock relate that when he was a kid his mother sent him to school on St. Patrick Day wearing orange to make a political statement. (And you wondered where his contrary streak comes from.)...
Notes on WiFi and other topics from a trip to the UK
My 10-year-old son and I got back home about 11 p.m. Wednesday night from a week in the United Kingdom with the Tulsa Boy Singers tour. It was his first trip out of the US, and my first trip overseas in eight years. We had a wonderful time, and I'll...
The definitive story of the Mastersingers, the Weather Forecast, and the Highway Code
Month after month, the Google searches that consistently bring visitors to this site have nothing to do with Tulsa or Oklahoma or Republican politics. This BatesLine entry is currently the number one result for any combination of two of the following four terms: "Master Singers," "Highway Code," "Weather Forecast," "Anglican...
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