Yesterday it was 104F but later in the day clouds started forming up and about a half hour before sunset they were looking dramatic. So I got the drone ready and synched it with my phone and went outside about the time a huge gust of wind came through. I’m glad I didn’t have my little lightweight drone in the air cuz it would have been headed to the land of Oz.
So I brought it back inside and took a photo of the clouds from the ground and yep they looked great.
Rain to the West
A little while later the winds subsided some so I launched the drone from my back yard. I could only get about 30 meters in the air before it started barking at me to lower it or I would lose it. So most of these shots are at about 25 to 27 meters off the ground.
Rain to the North
There were several rain fronts that moved the area last night. We got no rain at the house.
Rain to the East.
But hey I got to take some photos. We had some drizzly rain Wednesday most of the day. That’s fine with me. A little bit of drizzly rain seems to be better than hours of running of running the sprinkler sysetem.
My friend, and former coworker, Josh, sent me this photo from the Bakken Field of North Dakota of a drilling rig set up in a corn field. Yep, they are still drilling up there. See all the trailers and such. There are all sorts of people involved in drilling a well. Most of the time they will drill at least four wells from one location.
That’s it for this week. I’m linking with Skywatch Friday, go check it out!
About a month ago I checked out the Greenwood Rising Museum in the Greenwood District of Tulsa just north of downtown.
The museum opened to visitors in August 2021 a little over a 100 years after the Greenwood Massacre in the same area.
The museum has a lot to about the massacre but the emphasis is on the Greenwood community. It also has a lot about the forces of repression against people of color that has been occurring from the early days of Oklahoma right up to the present.
This isn’t the type of museum that has a lot of relics or art to look at. It’s more of a story telling museum using photographs, videos, and displays.
Greenwood was known as the “Black Wall Street” because of its prosperity. Cut off from the white part of town, Greenwood prospered and that was a problem for many in the white community.
The massacre itself lasted less than 24 hours from May 31 to June 1, 1921. A white mob attacked the district and killed several hundred people and burned much of the area to the ground.
No white person was ever brought to justice. The blame was placed squarely on the residents. Although many had insurance nothing was paid under the provisions of riots exemptions.
Afterwards as the community struggled to rebuild, the City of Tulsa responded by requiring brick homes and other things meant to encourage the residents to sell out to white people.
Eventually, the community rebuilt itself and then faced another destructive force. Urban Renewal led to the demolition of many homes and businesses and the construction of a freeway running right through the neighborhood. The white areas south of downtown got below grade freeways to minimze the impact the effect of the highway on the residents. The Greenwood area did not get the same consideration. To this day, there are vast areas just west of Greenwood that are still barren.
The community is resilient and is thriving.
The museum is about a lot more than the massacre.
There is still a fight going on. The Oklahoma legislature has passed laws making it hader to register and vote, aimed squarely at minority voters. The fragile white legislature have also passed laws that inhibit the teaching of the injustices of the past. It might be illegal to bring students to this museum.
I went through the museum, and I did not feel that white people are attacked or disparaged at all. The facility is telling a story in an even handed manner. They are telling the story of their community in a factual manner.
https://flic.kr/p/2nzAQ8Q
I highly recommend visiting Greenwood Rising. It is well done.
Note that they are closed for the month of August as they refresh the facility. They announced an interesting thing, you can get a preview of the museum for free on the smartphone app “Bloomberg Connects.” I downloaded it and it is a great app. You can tour lots of museums all across the world not just Greenwood Rising.
So, I recommend check Greenwood Rising out if you happen to be in the Tulsa area. Check the link for hours and other info.
The heat is down just a slight bit nowadays so I took a walk around Lafortune Park. I’ve taken around a thousand pictures of the pond with the trees in the background. The water was clear and still and there were some clouds and some decent reflections.
I’ve been launching the drone again from the backyard. This is looking west.
And on another day looking north.
The software on my drone is a bit of a nag and very bossy. Like when our previous president flew into town for his rally the drone wouldn’t even get off the ground. Good thing to as the guy had Air Force One make a slow and low pass over south Tulsa before landing at the airport. I bring it because one recent evening it was pretty dark out but still some color in the sky and the drone wasn’t really in the mood. Said it was too dark so I had to affirm that I was flying at my own risk before it let me send it up. I liked the result.
And on another day it fussed at me again but I still sent it up and got another decent shot.
And this is not my photo. It is a jigsaw puzzle that I put together on my ipad. It took me weeks to complete. About drove me crazy. What I love though is that there is a tipping point in a puzzle where you have enough pieces down that the remaining pieces go very quickly. My next puzzle is going to be of the Mouton Barn at Grand Teton National Park.
Anyway that’s it for this week! I’m linking with Skywatch Friday – come join the fun!
Last Saturday I got up bright and early and headed out to Turkey Mountain to run the Tess 5K Trail Run sponsored by the Tristesse Grief Center here in Tulsa.
I decided to go ahead and do a video of the start. After I was done videoing I had to loop around the timer’s truck and across the starting line myself.
A treat for me on this race is that most of it was done on the brand new sustainable trails constructed in the last year. Especially nice was the new trail from the lower parking lot up to the upper level of Turkey Mountain. Those old trails have gotten worse and worse over the years. It got so bad that I hadn’t used them in a long time.
The new trails are like a super highway through the woods. Another benefit is the chances of getting ticks and chiggers from the grass is way less. Also it is easier to pass other people and there is lots of room for both bicyclists and hikers/runners on the trail.
Pretty soon I had passed a small bunch of people and was way behind the pack. That’s alright, I was looking for a great hike through the woods. My running days are over. I do admit though on the smooth slightly downhill stretches I did trot a bit. Probably not over three or four hundred yards total.
And here we split off from the superhighway headed to the left and headed right to one of the legacy trails.
And up the rock garden after we turned south. I got an impromptu invite to a private geological tour of Turkey Mountain last week. I learned that the trail above is caused by alternating layers of shale and sandstone. As the shale layers dissolve and wash away the brittle sandstone breaks and falls down forming a kind of steps. Yep, the steps are ankle breakers!!
I also learned the top of Turkey Mountain is 300 million years old and has been submerged and re-emerged under a huge inland sea five times by a combination of tectonic and weathering forces. The guy showed us rocks that used to be sand on a beach and lots of little fossilized shellfish embedded in the rocks. It was amazing.
Enough geology for now. We made the loop and headed down the superhighway to the finish. All I can say is that I finished vertically. I didn’t place in my age group. Last year I finished first in my age group. Oh well I finished.
It was a great race, it was easy to register and they had lots of volunteers helping out. Timing was by Tatur, the best in the business in my opinion. They had lots of snacks and water for the participants and I think everybody left happy I know I did.
They didn’t have beer this year so I had one at home later on. In fact I might have had more than one, I’m not sure. They had tshirts but they are mailing me mine as I registered a little too late to actually get a tshirt at the event.
I’ll be back next year, here is my post from the 2021 Tess Trail Run.
A big thank to the Tristesse Grief Center, their staff and volunteers who helped, Tatur Racing, and my fellow racers.
We have tried for two years to attract hummingbirds to our backyard. We get occasional visits but no repeats. After several months this summer, my wife finally took the feeder down, cleaned it out, and left it sitting on a table on our patio. Then I was looking out the window and saw a hummingbird to trying to use the feeder. It was persistent so we prepared some more nectar and hung it up.
And now they are coming back. In two days my trailcam picked up twenty-nine photos and videos of the tiny little birds. Don’t worry I’m not posting all twenty -today.
I was geocaching at a clinic’s gardens in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma when I came upon this sculpture. I thought, “interesting” and snapped the pic and moved on with my task.
I found what I was looking for and noticed the walkway circling the sculpture and saw roman numeral numbers, then the light went on in my head! The sculpture is a giant sundial and is keeping almost perfect time. Eureka. I love figuring out stuff like that.
Last week after walking the new trails at Bales Park in west Tulsa, I drove ovder to nearby Lubell Park to check out their new trails. Their trails new to me but they had the grand opening on the new trails in October 2021. Before that they were hand cut trails by volunteers. The new trails were put in by the professionals at Rogue Trails out of Arkansas. The same people working on the Bales Park Trails.
I’ve only been to Lubell one time before to find a geocache. What Lubell was mainly known for up until the new trails was the number and aggressiveness of their ticks.
Ticks no more on these big wide, sustainable, cool trails. At least I didn’t get any (I use tick spray whenever I am in the woods.)
The trails are pretty cool. The project was sponsored by a local bicycle club and so the trails kind of cater to mountain bikes but they are perfectly hikable. These are the only mountain bike trails that I have seen in Tulsa that I think I would be okay with riding my bike on. Smooth, no steeps ups and downs, and doable turns. The new trails at Turkey Mountain and Bales are pretty cool but I don’t have the skillz necessary to ride them successfully. At my age, gravity is not friend! Can I get an Amen?
And they have some interesting features such as this shelter.
These look like thrones to me. Lubeell is integrated into the surrounding neighborhood such that some people have gates in the fences that open into the park. That is where I found these.
And they had several cairns or stacked rocks. I used to think they were cool but they don’t really go with a leave no trace vibe. They are not much of a problem in Oklahoma but some parts of the country are getting overrun with these and are technically illegal in National Parks.
The east boundary fence appears to be a deer proof fence. I noticed a deer feeder on the other side. Notice the greenery. It is lespedeza, a noxious plant introduced to the United States from Asia in the 1890 and was widely used as a cover on non-productive soils. The problem is that it takes over and deer and livestock won’t eat it. I hate the stuff.
Moving on, near the end of the trail there are some nice obstacles mainly for bikes. I walked the little maze above.
More fun for bicycles.
And Tulsa has these things all over town. They are tornado sirens and many of them seem to be too big for the wooden pole that supports it and they are bending over at ever increasing angles. They send out three types of alarms. Tornados and chemical releases get a three minute monotone. Then there is a three minute wavering tone used only for nuclear attacks. So if you happen to be in Tulsa and those goes off, best just to kiss yourself goodbye. I remember in grade school in the early 1960’s we were told to get under out desks in case of nuclear attack. The third signal is a three minute high low tone. That is a flooding alert.
Sorry I digress, again. Here is a short video showing my hike at Lubell.
I received an advanced readers copy of the paperback version of Badlands, by C.J. Box. Ironically, I was reading a hardback copy from the library of the same novel.
This book features Cassie Dewell, a brand new Deputy Sheriff in Grimstad, North Dakota. Right in the middle of the Bakken Field, one of the biggest oil plays in history. Grimstad is a boom town. Housing is short, Walmart doesn’t have time to shelve their goods, they just put boxes in the middle of the aisle and let the customers paw through them for what they need.
Grimstad is an oilfield town with drillers and pipeliners working long days. It is also a town where a gang from California wants in on the local drug business and they are ruthlessly getting rid of the competition. Cassie’s job is find out what is going on.
Grimstad is also home to young Kyle Westergaard. A “slow” boy who delivers papers to help his mom out. During one of his paper runs early in the morning Kyle witnesses something he shouldn’t have and takes something that gets him in trouble as the gang is after him now. Cassie Dewell has to fight the Sheriff’s Department and the gangs to save Kyle and his mother.
I loved this book. It came out in 2015 when the Bakken was at its peak in oil activity and the cities and towns did not have the infrastructure and it was kind of a zoo. Box doesn’t exaggerate the burden the activity put on the town and portrays accurately the crews who did the well drilling, fracking, and laid pipelines. I strongly recommend this book.
I got Covid the first day of this month. Bummer but I am quadruple vaccinated and in good health so I just stayed home and isolated during my recovery.
Our cat Lizzie would sneak upstairs from time to time to say hello. She is not a cat that likes to be held but she likes being petted.
So she would come and say hello and I’d give a few scratches and pets and then off she would go until the next day or so.
It’s one reason we like to have our critters with us.
And I’m doing fine. I didn’t have a severe case but I still have the old covid cough but have got my energy bike and am hiking and riding my bicycle.
I think we have more cottontails kits in the backyard. Mom has been hanging out under the bench and doesn’t leave when we approach.
It has been very hot so I haven’t felt like mowing the yard. They sometimes stash their kits in holes dug in the grass. I’ve run over them a few times in the past. Never injured them but I can’t imagine the trauma from having a noisy lawnmower blade just an inch or so from your head. So now the grass is really tall. I’ll have to face the music soon and mow it, and I dread it.
We continue to have midnight visitors.
I’m linking up with all the animal lovers at Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out.
