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Re-elect Governor Kevin Stitt
Oklahoma hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2006. Since 2004, every county in Oklahoma has given a plurality of its vote in every presidential election to the Republican nominee. Voter registration, a lagging indicator, continues to trend toward the GOP across the state, most strongly in southeastern Oklahoma,...
Charles Spurgeon resources
Recently I've returned to the habit of reading a book before bedtime and when eating on my own, leaving aside the digital device and focusing my attention on the printed page. In the past few weeks I've finished Calvin Coolidge's autobiography, Arnold Dallimore's biography of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a short...
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...
Tulsa's library CEO is an overpaid, left-wing twit
Tulsa Library CEO Gary Shaffer is an overpaid, left-wing twit. This is admittedly a snap judgement, but when I saw Shaffer's rationale for a change to the summer reading program that halved participation over the previous year (33,194 down to 16,013) I felt confident in making it. The summer reading...
Oklahoma City bombing: The fence, the memorial, the people
Some interesting observations about the people of Oklahoma City and the memorial they created and maintain, from NYU media, culture, and communication professor Marita Sturken in her 2007 Duke University Press book Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. One of the primary ways...
The critiqued, not the critic, should feel embarrassed
An anecdote from an obituary of art and music critic Hilton Kramer, founder of The New Criterion: It did not please Hilton Kramer to make enemies. But he knew that the job of a cultural critic was to tell the truth and that the truth is often unpalatable. He loved...
Paglia: "What kids need is facts"
It's rare that you will find me quoting, with approval, a lesbian, atheist, leftist East Coast professor, but Camille Paglia's love of Western Civilization and her critique of what passes for education in America warms my heart. Paglia's recent interview with Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail reads like...
Grace & Truth Books
One message you've been hearing a lot this year is to shop locally. Shopping in your own town keeps money circulating in the community, which keeps your friends and neighbors employed, and generates sales tax to help fund local government. The Tulsa area has many unique local businesses that can...
Christmas 2008
Christmas 2008 so far: On the way to work the morning of the 24th, I spotted water flowing out from our street onto the nearest arterial. I doubled back and saw that the source a couple of springs emerging from cracks in the concrete. I called my wife, who called...
Taking the Englishness out of the English language
There's no place for "plaice" in this dictionary. Words about Christianity (vicar, sin, parish), Christmas (carol, mistletoe), the monarchy (coronation, duke, monarch), seafood (lobster, mussel), pets (corgi, goldfish, hamster), fairy tales (elf, goblin), woodland flora (tulip, sycamore, pasture), and fauna (doe, starling, terrapin) are gone, too, from a popular children's...
Lessons from Mom and Dad
An edited version of this column appeared in the May 28, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted online November 18, 2014. Philip Larkin wrote, in a poem with an unforgettable and unprintable first line, that parents "fill you up with the...
"The good times never end when you're in Busytown"
A few days ago, Jon Swerens posted an entry at The Good City called "Politics can't save urbanism." Jon's point, in a nutshell, was that we can't use legislation and regulation to impose high-density urban living on a populace that believes it to be undesirable. The culture has to change....
<em>Potter</em> thoughts
Last night I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final installment of the seven-book series. Wow. All I will say at this point is that I am very impressed with the way J. K. Rowling tied everything together. There's a depth here that I've never seen in...
<em>Accio book!</em>
I'm live blogging from the 41st and Yale Barnes and Noble, where about an hour ago my son won first place in the Harry Potter costume contest, entitling him to be one of the first seven in line to buy a book when the clock strikes twelve. He was...
A gay time at Central Library
MeeCiteeWurkor visited Tulsa's Central Library today and was amazed and appalled to find that the main display area, just opposite the children's section, was given over to a "Gay Pride" display. He has posted descriptions, photos, videos, and PDFs of what he saw. He was especially disturbed by the display...
Friesen in my tracks
Also seen in that Nebraska truck stop, on a rack of Christian books: The 25th anniversary edition of Decision Making and the Will of God, by Garry Friesen and Robin Maxson. I first read this book about 10 years ago and about 15 years too late for me -- after...
Twisted kid lit
Some comic relief for a Saturday -- two galleries of Children's literature, Part I and Part II. Hat tip to Random Mentality....
In honor of Saint Patrick
St. Patrick is said to have beaten a drum hard and fast, and the din drove all the snakes of Ireland into the sea. In honor of his feast day... ... let's help Councilors Jack Henderson, Jim Mautino, Chris Medlock, and Roscoe Turner drive the snakes out of Tulsa's City...
Kicks, some missed, on 66
We made it to the International Route 66 Festival Friday night for a couple of hours, and again this afternoon from 1 to about 8. Here are some of the highlights: The street music was consistently good, and the organizers were wise to alternate stages and not allow simultaneous concerts....
This is how you say it in English
Apropos of ASL, our three-year-old is interested in the notion of different languages and is aware of two -- Spanish and sign language, which she calls English. Any spoken language that isn't what we speak around the house she considers Spanish. We have a few bilingual and foreign-language children's books...
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