Search this site
Matching entries from BatesLine
Christopher Alexander: Finding patterns, and God, in urban design
From the BatesLine Bookshelf, a very occasional feature on authors and books that have influenced me: Christopher Alexander was an architect, but he might more appropriately have been called a philosopher of the built environment. He spent his career trying to describe and name the qualities that make a place...
Read the Psalms monthly in 2024
For your consideration during New Year's Resolution Season: A little over a year ago, I decided I needed to do a better job of feeding my mind and spirit. I notice that my bedtime habit of listening to old British radio comedies (particularly Hancock's Half Hour) to help me drift...
Gist gone
Happy news late this afternoon that Deborah Gist has resigned as superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools. Gist resigns as the state's largest school district faces a hearing on Thursday at the State Board of Education on the loss of its accreditation. The threat to pull accreditation stems from poor academic...
Oil in Oklahoma: Tulsa TV 50 years ago
I have finally gotten around to reading Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, in anticipation of the Martin Scorsese film to be released in October. I'm about halfway through, and I was skimming ahead. (It's OK. I already knew who the bad guys were.) I was surprised to...
Spurgeon on music in worship
An apt remark by P. Andrew Sandlin: Church leaders: if your praise band plays songs 90% of your congregation can't sing easily or enthusiastically, you don't have a church music program; you have a musical performance program. Let me urge you to start a church music program. prompted Noah Goedker...
Do all cultures share the same values?
A recent tweet from Jeremy Tate, founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test (CLT): Classical education is fundamental an educational [sic] it what it means to be fully human. It is not a politically conservative alternative to the already politically hijacked mainstream education. Instead, it is an education in...
Resources on believers' baptism
A rain-filled mikveh (ritual immersion pool) at Korazim National Park, Israel. Photo © 2023 by Michael D. Bates, all rights reserved. Here are a couple of useful resources that I recently encountered, one very old, one new, in support of the view that Christian baptism is for those only...
Sapulpa Route 66 Christmas Chute, Rhema Lights final nights
The Route 66 Christmas Chute on Dewey Avenue in downtown Sapulpa, Oklahoma, has just two more nights to run, but it continues to be a popular attraction two months after its opening on November 3, 2022. Ten overhanging steel structures decorated with a variety of themes stand in the...
Internet Archive lending library
In a column last week on the role ritual and prohibitions play in group identity for Christians, Rod Dreher recalled a passage in Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology by Mary Douglas about Irish resistance to the Roman Catholic Church's decision to abolish the Friday fast and allowing meat on Fridays....
<em>Ave atque vale, Magister</em>: Ronald Palma, RIP
Last week I received the sad news that Ron Palma, my high school Latin teacher, passed away on Monday, September 19, 2022, at the age of 75. He is survived by Fay, his college sweetheart and wife of 55 years, two daughters, and three grandchildren. His 38-year career at...
<em>Vale, Pia Regina</em>: Queen Elizabeth II, RIP
John Byron Kuhner pays tribute to Queen Elizabeth II as an exemplar of pietas -- not piety in the strictly religious sense, but dutifulness, after the fashion of Aeneas, hero of Vergil's Aeneid, the epic journey of the founder of Rome from the ashes of Troy. It is generally acknowledged...
Tulsa in the 1920 Official Automobile Blue Book
Before Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System, before state highway officials collaborated to create a national highway numbering system in 1926, motorists traveling cross-country followed turn-by-turn directions contained in the Official Automobile Blue Book. These books are a time capsule of transportation history, not only mentioning routes, but road conditions, locations of...
2022 Tulsa School Board general election: BatesLine ballot card
Published April 3, 2022, postdated to remain at the top of the page until the polls close on Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Tuesday, April 5, 2022, is general election day for K-12 school board seats in Oklahoma. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Seats on technology...
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"...
Tulsa City Council chairman attacks Sen. Tim Scott with racial slur
In a social media post last Wednesday, Tulsa City Council chairman Vanessa Hall Harper labeled U. S. Sen Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) with a racist slur. As of this writing, Hall Harper has yet to retract or apologize for the slur, which remains posted on her personal Facebook profile, accessible...
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...
Thanksgiving and the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's arrival
A happy Thanksgiving 2020 to all and sundry. Ours was immediate family only, with one away at school; our nearest extended family were elsewhere today, and many more of our extended family are of advanced age. So four of us did all the cooking, eating, and cleaning. We intended to...
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...
Cornhill Magazine and the Internet Archive's time machine
My trouble has always been that I find too many different things interesting. The vast collection of printed material in the public domain and available on the internet is like a time machine that beckons one to enter and explore. A Pocket article (originally from Narratively), advertised on a new...
Tulsa School Board Office 5: Scott Pendleton questionnaire response
Scott Pendleton, candidate for Tulsa Public Schools Office 5, responds to the BatesLine questionnaire.
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'great books'. [What is this?]
