Monthly Archives: October 2024

Family Fun at the Tulsa Botanic Garden

A couple weeks ago or so we loaded up the family and headed up to the Tulsa Botanic Garden. They always have good stuff to see in the Fall.

We checked out the scarecrows and decided it was a down year for them. These were my favorites.

A stiff breeze was flying and our flag was flying proudly. It reminds me for my fellow US Citizens. Vote on November 5th, unless you have already done so.

The garden had opened up something new. An arboretum with a pergola at the top. The pergola had rocking chairs so the other two appropriated those.

The cover of the pergola was cool! All these leaves in it. Made a great pattern on the ground.

And the beams on the side, reflections, projections and shadows. I love little details like this. Costs a lot of money but hey that is what rich donors are for, right?

When the water is running I always take a short video of the water running down the terraces.

We went for hike on their trail. It is a cool trail than meanders through the woods and prairie sections.

One immediately sees that they have had a controlled burn fairly recently. I love good controlled burns. It clears out the undergrowth, kills invasive species and opens up the forests for a more natural and healthy effect.

I was sure glad to see it.

And then we went to the Childrens Garden section. I guess I am wondering if the parents threaten to feed their kids to the monster there if they don’t behave?

We had a great time!!

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

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.

Shadow Shot Sunday – Last Sunday in October Edition

In my previous post I wrote about my new action camera and tested it on our pets. A day or two later I put it on my bike and went for a ride. I set it to take a photo every ten seconds so I end up deleting almost all of the images. Here I am at a stop, off my bike. You can see the action camera mounted on the bike and me. If the weather is good I carry along my superzoom camera.

Here is another rest stop with a shadow and my fingers.

This is a phone shot at a local park. I love all the various shadow patterns.

One day I loaded up my drone and took it the Thomas Gilcrease House here in Tulsa. A one time oil baron who bequeathed the Gilcrease Museum to the City of Tulsa. His house has formal garden with a fountain so you can see the shadow of the fountain.

Here is what the fountain looks like.

I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

Saturday’s Critters – Squadron, Scoop, or Brief, your Choice

I have a new toy. An action camera. Not a GoPro but a knockoff that costs literally one tenth of what a GoPro does but is only 60% as good. It’s my second of this type and it is really good. I experimented on Kodi with it. He couldn’t figure out if it was a toy to play with or food to eat. It is pretty tiny.

So I also experimented on Lizzy the Cat with it. I think that people who experiment on pets are terrible, don’t you.

I went on a bike ride the other day. I stopped for a rest break at the Turkey Mountain lower parking lot. I saw this dinosaur skeleton off in the woods on a trail meant for children.

Later in my bike ride I happened on this “pouch” of American White Pelicans on a sandbar in the Arkansas River. I love all the various collective nouns for birds. My favorite is a murder of crows. Other terms for a group of pelicans are “squadron”, “pod”, “pouch” or “scoop”. You can always call them a flock, other terms are “brief”, “raft” or “rookery.” I love it.

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters

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

Botanic Garden Shadow

We went on a family outing to the Tulsa Botanic Garden. Lots of cool things to look at including this shadow featuring a handrail and other elements of steps in the garden.

I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

Saturday’s Critters – In and Out Edition

Here’s a sculptural critter, some sort of heron I think at the Linnaeus Demonstration Gardens.

And another artistic critter. This little girl on the back of a turtle at the Tulsa Botanic Garden.

I hardly ever use my drone for critter photography and this is “Appeal to the Great Spirit” at Woodward Park. I used my drone to get a different perspective on this sculpture.

In the backyard I got this squirrel getting his photo taken.

And a bunny out past 3 am.

And this leaping squirrel.

And some birds buzzing the backyard on a high speed low altitude run.

And these guys going for suet feeder.

And a Canadian Goose at Woodward Park contemplating the pros and cons of staying vs migrating.

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters

Skywatch Friday – In the Neighborhood

Here’s a sunrise one morning from our driveway

And a sunset from the same driveway on a different day

And some trees changing color at Pepsi Lake on Turkey Mountain.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

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.

Shadow Shot Sunday – Shadow Selfies, Big and Small

I went hiking the other day and took a couple of shadow selfies. Here’s a fuzzy one. Do you see little old me? I think it is fuzzy because the image focused on the bridge I was standing on. That is coming in clear.