Category Archives: My Corner of the World

My Corner of the World – Hiking Oxley Nature Center

One day late in October it was very windy. Windy days I like to go to Oxley Nature Center, especially their Sierra Club Trail. You can hear the wind howling in the treetops but it is calm down on the ground.

And I hardly ever see anybody. This trip I encountered only one person. A guy headed towards me looking kind of angry and upset. I had my spidey senses going but he passed me without looking up. I could hear him walking past in the leaves, crunch, crunch, crunch. Any change in the pattern and I would have looked around. But nothing happened. I’m not going to begrudge anybody needing a little solace in the woods.

I took a small garbage bag and my grabbers with me. The places I go hike there is hardly ever any trash. This day I found just a few cans and wrappers and that was it. Put the trash in the trashcan at the trailhead at the end of my hike.

It was a feast of Oklahoma style fall color. We don’t have a whole lot of color in the fall besides some yellows and browns. I’m okay with it.

Here’s a little reddish color for you. My Merlin ID app was going crazy with all the birds in the area. I was going crazy with inability to see such birds, except as small specs when they took off. I saw lots of squirrels and a glimpse of a deer. Kind of a zero day for photographing animals.

And a short video of the wind in the treetops.

And at the end, I see where a city surveyor had set up shot. I hope that they are not putting a new freeway in!!

A little shy of 3 miles, a nice walk in the woods is what I thought.

I’m linking with My Corner of the World.

2024 Tulsa Veterans Day Parade

6 Replies

Monday was Veterans Day so I went to downtown Tulsa to see their annual Veterans Day Parade.

The Tulsa Police Department opened it up with their motorcycles and right behind them was a Junior ROTC Marine Color Guard looking sharp in their uniforms.

And then dignitaries in vintage military vehicles.

And then the floats. This one was done by my former employer. ONEOK (pronounced One Oak) always shows up big for the Veterans Day Parade.

And then a bunch of ONEOK employees followed the float. Other companies had floats as well.

And then another JROTC color guard.

The Booker T Washington High School Marching band shows up for the parade looking snappy in the uniforms.

And the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Department shows up with one of their armored vehicles.

And if you know tornado belt culture you know that Storm Trackers are celebrities. When they are not working they go to events and will sign autographs for you. Here is Van Castor’s pickup truck. These guys follow the storms and tornadoes as they develop. Here in Oklahoma we don’t run for shelter when the tornadoes come, we run outside to take a look at them.

One veteran didn’t make the parade. Here is my brother Bob.

Twenty years in the Navy and more afterwards as a civilian employee. This is his door wreath put together by our sister Ellen.

He is in assisted living here and living life. Left to right, Irv (Career Army Vet), his wife (and sister to Bob and I) Ellen, son to Heather and I, Logan, and kneeling my wife Heather.

A photo I took of Bob several years ago when he turned 66.

Here he is in Tulsa several years ago. He used to visit and run in our local half marathon. He’s run over a hundred half marathons and over fifty full marathons. He doesn’t run any longer but he gives life everything he has.

I’m linking with My Corner of the World

The Colors, Reflections and Refractions of Autumn at Philbrook Gardens

Last week I posted about an special art exhibition at Philbrook Museum of Art here in Tulsa. My last line was that I was going to the gardens. The gardens at Philbrook are every bit as special as the art inside the building.

The signature feature of the gardens is the tempietto overlooking the reflecting pond. Philbrook started out life as a mansion for a rich oilman back in the day. The reflecting pool was the swimming pool and the change rooms were underneath the tempietto.

I love all the views and reflections that are possible in the pond.

_DSC0537_DAP_Aquarelle_Noveau Philbrook Gardens

This is a highly edited (can you tell?) photo of the main building at Philbrook (Villa Philbrook) from the steps of the tempietto. Sorry I couldn’t resist.

There is always something blooming in the gardens.

I revived my glass sphere and brought along a point and shoot camera that has a macro setting. I got this thing years ago and used it a lot and it ended up in the back end of my Subaru. I saved it. I still love the photos that one can get out of it. It took me a while to figure out how to do that. I also learned how to hold it. If you hold it in your hand in bright sunlight it’ll burn a hole in your hand. It acts like a magnifying glass. So I hold it off to the side or from the top. Technically I think this is refraction and not reflection.

This is a shot of some of the pumpkins on display. The sphere gives you an upside down view of the scene so I feel free to cheat and turn the whole photo upside down if I have to.

Blooms in the water.

I always feel chill after just a little time in the gardens.

I am linking with My Corner of the World.

Philbrook Museum’s “American Artists, American Stories” from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art has this exhibit going on currently of American paintings from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. We are members of the museum so I went and took a look at it. They had tons and tons of art. The following were my favorite works.

This work by Charles Willson Peale “The Artist in His Museum” is a perfect opener for an exhibit.

I loved the exuberance of Maxfield Parrish’s “Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree”

I loved Young Woman by Isabel Bishop. It was painted in 1937 but it looks very contemporary to me.

Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos by John Vanderlyn. Such a dreamy scene.

Some still life’s bore me, others like this Still Life with Fruit by Severin Roesen I find very exciting.

And this by Philip Leslie Hale, “The Crimson Rambler” is very beautiful. I also find it intriguing because according to the accompanying card, Hale made a protest against woman’s suffrage.

The scene looks like right out of a film noir movie. “The Soda Fountain” by William J. Glackens.

So we are hearing about how humanity is threatened by AI and that we are going to be inundated by images and videos generated by AI that have no base in reality. You know that has happened before. This is “Penn’s Treaty with the Indians” by Benjamin West showing William Penn and a Native American Chief, Tamanend in a peaceful transaction where the Indians get goods and the white people get land. Cool! right? Wrong! The land was taken from the Native Americans and this painting of an event that never happened was commissioned by Penn’s son to bolster his family’s image. This led to people thinking it is historically accurate. I find it fascinating how art is harnessed to propaganda.

And I loved this, “De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi” by Peter Frederick Rothermel. The European explorers were a brave lot I think. Not just in exploring the North American continent but in things like planting a cross and declaring some sovereign in Europe now owns a couple gazillion acres just because.

And how about this hidden Thomas Moran work, “Two Women in the Woods” If you are like me, it was like, what two women? Oh there, and such a beautiful scene, with the two women hidden in the shadows. Not quite as dramatic as some of Moran’s other works but still a great painting.

As part of the exhibition, many of the works were displayed on a “gallery wall” similar to exhibits in the 19th century. It was interesting. To help study it they had a couple of couches and some binoculars available to patrons to inspect the works. They also invited patrons to try and find insights or ideas on why the works were arranged the way they were. It was kind of fun to sit there and just think about the works on the wall and how adjacent works were alike or different.

So after this exhibit I checked out the gardens but that is a subject for another post.

I am linking with My Corner of the World.

Skywatch Friday – New Perspectives!

I went out to the Tulsa History Center to check on the revamped installation of the Oklahoma’s Five Moons. The installation had been damaged by some dummy who stole one of the metal sculptures and then tried to sell it at a metal recycling place. To their credit the recyclers called the police and the guy was apprehended. The sculpture took some time to be repaired and the History redesigned the installation.

Left to Right: Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief, Yvonne Chouteau (in front), Moscelyne Larkin, Rosella Hightower.

The Five Moons are five Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma who achieved worldwide fame in the late 1940’s and 1950’s. After their performing days were over they became instructors and promoters of their art. Here is a good summary of their careers.

I brought along my drone this day. I have many photos of the ballerinas but they are all on stands and up in the air so I thought that with the drone would provide a new perspective. And I think it worked pretty well.

It was a windy day and my little featherweight drone was struggling to stay in one place but I made it happen.

The lady in the background in the photo above showed up in the middle of my flight and asked what I was doing in a friendly manner. We got to talking and turns out that she is an Urban Sketcher. Which I have come to find out means to sketch on location. So kind of like being an instagrammer except on paper. I thought it was very interesting. You can find out more about Urban Sketching here. She is on instagram as well so we followed each other. We also talked about the Five Moons. We both agreed that not five Oklahoman’s out of hundred know who the Five Moons are. Which is a shame.

So buoyed by my experience with the Five Moons I headed over to nearby Woodward Park and launched the drone on the “Appeals to the Great Spirit” Sculpture. It is really tall.

I think the overhead shot adds to the effect of the sculpture here as well.

It just goes to show that you don’t have to fly way high to use a drone effectively.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World.

Here is a previous post on the Five Moons

Return of the Big Boy

This past midmorning Monday my friend, Tom, and I ventured up to nearby Claremore, Oklahoma to see Union Pacific’s “Big Boy” steam powered locomotive roll into town on the homebound leg of the “Heartland of America” tour where it went through 23 states. Tom and I saw it in Vinita, Oklahoma three years ago and we wanted to watch it again.

This is the train entering town. I was taking video with my cell phone and had my “good camera” in the other hand. I wished I had stuck with the video a little longer but oh well.

They are massive machines. The drive wheels are 58 inches in diameter. The engine and it’s tender weigh 1.2 million pounds and stretches 132 feet long. It’s so long the engine is articulated because it can’t negotiate some of the track curves otherwise.

Union Pacific ordered twenty five of these monsters in 1941 for service between Logan, Utah and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Big Boy, engine number 2014 was delivered in 1941 and was retired in 1961. UP reacquired it from a museum in 2013 and refurbished it and it re-entered service in 2019 in time to celebrate UP’s 150’th anniversary. It is the only engine of its type still in service. Seven others are on view at museums around the country. Get the deets here. Presently the Big Boy is the biggest Steam Locomotive in the world.

The engine is on its way back to Cheyenne, Wyoming on October 23, and will be available for viewing at several spots, including Denver. Check out the schedule here.

Fore some reason I didn’t think there would be that many people interested. Boy was I wrong. We had to park and walk a long ways. The designated viewing was kind of cramped so we were kind of crammed into a small space and it was hard to get a view without a lot of people.

This makes it look like the train is tearing through a bunch of Okies, but it wasn’t. UP had a ton of their Railroad Police going up and down the track telling people “Get off the tracks, there is a train coming.” Lots of people put coins down on the track and when the train stopped, they asked the RR Cops if they could reach under the train to retrieve their coins and were asked if their lives were worth a penny.

But hey, almost everyone had big smiles on their faces. Something about a monster locomotive makes people happy.

Tom and I decided to leave cuz it didn’t seem that the train crew was in any hurry.

Here is my post from seeing Big Boy in 2021.

I’m linking with My Corner of the World.

A Midmorning Paddle on Zink Lake

Last Monday, I finished my morning reading tutoring at an elementary school here in Tulsa and decided by gum I was going to go kayaking.

So I ventured to the Arkansas River, upstream of Zink Lake Dam and rented a kayak for a couple of hours from the vendor there. I helped her carry it down to the new kayak launch that the city of Tulsa had installed. It was pretty cool. You put your kayak in slot where it is partly in the water and then you push against the handrails and you are launched!! No wading in the murk to get going.

I’ve been kind of in a funk lately. One knee is giving me problems and I got a steroid injection a month ago. It worked great for a week or so and then it started aching again. So think I do too much but then I don’t do anything which is not good. Well Kayaking is very knee friendly!!

I cruised past some redone murals on the river shore.

I thought the kayaking was cool. I’ve been running, walking, and bicycling both banks of the Arkansas River and Zink Lake for over 30 years. Now I was in the water and seeing things I’ve never seen before. A completely different perspective.

I love this view. It is cathedral like. A cathedral with graffiti.

There was hardly a breeze, the temperature was slightly on the cool side and the sky is beautiful.

The new Williams Crossing pedestrian bridge.

Headed back north with a view of downtown Tulsa where I worked for 30 years. I was waving at my former coworkers.

The very beginning of the vegetation changing color.

One of the two boat ramps on the west side of the lake (or river.)

Headed back under the 21st street bridge.

Checking out the RiverWest Festival Park. RiverParks is having their annual Oktoberfest soon.

And now back to the Kayak dock. I had a great time!!

I’m linking with My Corner of the World

My Corner of the World – 2024 Chalk It Up Festival

The Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow had their 2024 edition of the “Chalk It Up Art Festival” on their Main Street last weekend. Artists who entered got a designated space on the blocked-in street to create a work of art with chalk. We try and go every year. Lots of people enter and they are quite talented. The theme this year was “In My Own Back Yard” The following were my favorites.

Lots of entries featured pets.

Some had kind of a fantasy thing going.

This reminded us of our dear departed Rascal. He was such a good dog.

As a kid who couldn’t stay inside the lines on my grade school art projects, I appreciate people who bend the rules a little bit.

And I loved this. Who doesn’t love blowing dandelion seeds in the wind.

I think this won the “People’s Choice” award.

I think this had best in show. I love the deep rich colors of the work.

Another dog, Mango has his own swimming pool.

I think there were over fifty entries including those from children to adult artists. A talented group of artists for sure. They have Chalk It Up on the weekend of the September every year.

Sad thing is that the artists can’t dig up their huge pieces of pavement and take them home. Late Saturday afternoon, the police take up the barricades blocking traffic and people waste no time driving on this art. Oh well, that the nature of it.

I am linking with My Corner of the World

Tulsa’s Williams Crossing Bridge at Night

Last night I ventured out to the Arkansas River to check out the new Williams Crossing Bridge’s lights.

I was impressed. They are LED’s and have lots of colors possible.

The bridge has only been open a month. It is 1440 feet long. It is high enough over the water to keep it clear of a 500 year flood event.

It connects Tulsa’s Gathering Place on the east side of the Arkansas River to the RiverParks Trails on the West side of the river. It is 18 feet wide and has separate lanes for pedestrians and cyclists. It is the first “Steel Plate Arch Bridge” built in the United States. (See below what a steel plate arch bridge is)

I think it is gorgeous. I am planning to be there at sunset in the near future to get some Skywatch Photos.

I am linking with My Corner of the World

References

Black Wall Street Times

City of Tulsa

The Architects Newspaper

Architectual Record

I asked CoPilot AI what a Steel Plate Arch Bridge is and the following was the answer.

A steel plate arch bridge is a type of bridge that uses steel plates to form an arch structure. Here are some key features:

Structural Design: The arch is created using steel plates that are often bolted together. This design allows the bridge to handle significant loads by distributing weight efficiently through the arch shape ¹.
Compression Forces: The arch primarily works in compression, meaning the forces push inward along the curve of the arch, which helps in maintaining the structural integrity ¹.
Versatility: These bridges can be tailored to various site requirements and are often used for overpasses, pedestrian walkways, and small to medium-span crossings ².
Durability: Steel plate arch bridges are known for their strength and longevity. The use of galvanized steel plates helps in resisting corrosion, making them suitable for various environmental conditions ³.
Ease of Installation: The modular nature of steel plates allows for easier transportation and assembly on-site, often using local crews and equipment ².

Skywatch Friday – To the Moon and back to Earth

Wednesday night was the Full Harvest Moon in Tulsa. Fortunately we had clear skies in Tulsa.

A friend in Arizona asked me if we had a lunar eclipse going on and I said, not as far as I know. Right after that the local news came on with a shot of eclipse so I grabbed my camera and went out and got my own shot.

Went on a bike ride again earlier this week. My knee held up pretty well and I was kind of babying it a little anyway. Anyway, I took another photo of our brand new dam and pedestrian bridge across the Arkansas River here in Tulsa. This is a view from the southwest side.

And this is a view from the northeast side. The river sure looks good with water in it.

And I rode back to my car down the east side of the river. Stopped for this photo. The hill on the other bank is the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area.

Sunday night I was taking our refuse and recycling carts to the curb for weekly pickup and I noticed this reflection of the sunset. Photographers are always droning on about leading lines. So after nearly 70 years of picture taking I finally got a leading line. So proud of myself.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World.

YogisDen.us

Welcome to my world