Tag Archives: Oklahoma

Update on Turkey Mountain and Helmerich Park

There is a lot of news these days of interest to those in the Tulsa area interested in preserving green spaces and wilderness as wells as the financial health of our city.

Maybe the most exciting news is that two local powerhouses, QuikTrip and the George Kaiser Family Foundation have given the Tulsa River Parks Authority a loan for $5.6 million to purchase 150 acres of land on Turkey Mountain, presumably including the 50 acre tract that Simon Properties wanted to purchase to put in an Outlet Mall. That deal fell through in September when Simon announced that that the were going to put the mall in the suburb of Jenks. Money to purchase the 150 acres is expected to be in a bond issue to be submitted to the owners within the next year. Reported separately Friday, the Jenks Planning Commission appproved Simon Properties’ plans for the outlet mall.

The bridge loan is great news. Until the land was in the public’s hands, it was at risk of development. This puts it out of private hands and into the River Park Authorities control.

It is pretty rare in Oklahoma for people to fight city hall and win. City hall is not happy. Our mayor Dewey Bartlett got people riled up in November by pitching a proposal for a restaurant on the mountain. It didn’t go down very well.

Mayor Bartlett was probably a little sore at losing the sales tax revenue from Simon’s mall to Jenks. Cities in Oklahoma are financed primarily by sales taxes and with the downturn in the energy industry and the rise of internet sales, sales tax collections are struggling. Friday, the mayor announced a job freeze because of decreased sales tax collections. The city has been working hard at attracting national retail stores to Tulsa to increase sales tax collections. Some of us wonder if all we are doing is cannibalizing existing businesses but we are generally okay with smart development.

Helmerich Park, or not a park, just been used as a park.

So now we have a new controversy over green space, this time concerning land in a city park, Helmerich Park, on the Arkansas River that the city is wanting to sell to a developer for a shopping center. Not a mall, just a moderately bigger than average strip mall type facility as far as I can tell. The problem is that you can’t sell land in a city park without going through a process involving the city council. The outdoor equipment retailer REI is expected to be the anchor tenant. To its credit REI has announced that it is not coming to Tulsa until all legal questions over the legal status of the proposed site have been answered.

The volley ball courts at Helmerich Park. Note Turkey Mountain in the background.

So the city’s attorney has come up with this claim that the park is not really a park. It is just land that has been used as a park. So we are probably headed to court to settle this. It is very complicated because of claims that money was donated to the city to purchase the land to be used as a park in perpetuity.

Acccording the city, this is not a park

The city wants to move fast to keep the project on tract, and a bunch of citizens are wanting to slow down and figure out this whole thing about what it means to say that land is not a park but is being used as a park. Plus we are trying to make sure that once land elsewhere in the city, like Turkey Mountain, is preserved as a park that it won’t be “unpreserved” by some fancy legal footwork. And of course we are also concerned about the city getting enough money to pay for services and keep our police and fire departments staffed up and with the equipment they need to keep the city safe.

So now we are going to have another real life Quality of Life vs Development controversy in Tulsa.

Check out information from Smart Growth Tulsa Coalition. Among other things, they have a link to a video of our present Mayor Dewey Bartlett stating the land for the park will never be sold.

Facebook Group: Save Helmerich Park

Channel 6 Television story on the Bridge Loan

Channel 5 Television story on Tulsa deciding to sue for right to sell land in park

Tulsa World Newspaper story in 1991 announcing brand new Helmerich Park

Channel 2 Television story back in August where city announces they sold twelve acres out of the park

Skywatch Friday – Afternoon Walk Around the Pond

For Thanksgiving we spent with family western Oklahoma. It is truly the land of the big skies and the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, son Logan, brother Bob, and I went on a walk around a local pond. It was spectacular, not a cloud in the deep blue sky, the grass and brush were a golden color but the trees still had a lot of green on them. It was like a perfect moment that I will remember forever.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Lunchtime Geocaching – Walking in the Woods looking for Tupperware

A bare hint of a trail at West Highlands Park

Fall has definitely come to Tulsa and we are in a period of gorgeous days with sunshine and blue skies. And with the brush, bugs, and snakes gone I am back in the woods finding the larger geocaches. Once or twice a week I take off at lunch to go find one or two. Early in the week I went to west Tulsa’s West Highlands Park to find one hidden deep in the woods in an undeveloped area of the park. Previous finders had reported a lot of difficult bushwhacking. I’m lazy and I had my work clothes on and wasn’t interested in getting all tangled up in the brush, thorns, and mud so I spent a considerable amount of time looking for a trail headed to the cache. It wasn’t a regular park maintained trail. It is what land managers call a “social trail” and you are liable to find anything on such a thing. It is best to keep an eye on what is going on because it is possible to walk into something you don’t really want to walk into. Check out geocaching.com to learn more about geocaching or my link at the end of this post.

Sure enough about 100 feet into the woods I find a collection and porno mags and some whiskey bottles. Sometimes I wish I had a trash bag with me (and a really really good pair of gloves!). I’ve brought along trash bags and it works out well. You pick this crap up and and drop it into a trash bin at the park parking lot. I hate it when people leave trash in public areas.

A few hundred feet further and I came upon an old squatter’s camp that was no longer active. They had left a bright green Dollar store shopping cart. That puzzled me because you would basically have to carry that thing through the woods to their camp. I mean if you have that much energy why don’t you get a job, earn some money, and get an apartment?

Soon after, I left all signs of squatters and came upon signs of nature. Some busy little beaver got after this tree.

I found the cache, as a courtesy to the Cache Owner and the people looking for it I am not showing where I found it. If you want to go look for it, it is named “TAG CITO 2014 Commemorative Cache – West Highlands.” It was a fun one to find.

At lunch on Friday I drove out west to Keystone Dam to look for a couple of caches.

I wasn’t really familiar with the area and ended up on this old road on the south side of the Arkansas River downriver from the dam. A road like this demands to be driven to the very end and I did. So then I looped back and got to business at hand.

I saw an eagle take off from the top of these trees near the “Ground Zero” of the Bomb Squad Cache.

The first one I went after was close to the dam and was named Blue Blazes after the trail that goes by it. This is on Army Corps of Engineers managed land and there was no signs of squatters or porn parties. Just me, the trail, and the woods.

Then I went to the other side of the dam and took a short hike along the north bank of the river and found the Bomb Squad Cache so named because the cache owner originally placed the cache too close to a post office and the police bomb squad came in and looked at it. They didn’t go stupid though. They left a note asking him to move it somewhere else and he did deep in the woods, and I’m glad he did.

Anyways I love walking in the woods this time of year on a bright sunshiny days. What about you, have you ever been geocaching?

Geocaching 101

Skywatch Friday – Bear Fountain

Last week before the five or six days of rain at one of my favorite fountains and sculptures on Tulsa’s River Parks.

Linking with Skywatch Friday

Our World – My Favorite Street

Most mornings after I go to the gym I head up to the Panera on Cherry Street for a bagel, coffee, and the morning newspaper. Afterwards I drive past this street on my way to work. Friday I looped back around to take a pic. It was pretty bright with the morning sun on the autumn leaves. Me, being me, couldn’t leave well enough alone so I ran the photo through Topaz Impressions backed off about 60%. The photo quite a bit off level and after correcting it, I I undid the correction. I love all those tall trees right on the street.

So that was Friday, Saturday was cold and windy and I bet many of those leaves are down on the street now.

Linking with Our World

Geometry on a Rainy Day

Last week I was coming out the Subway on Denver Avenue when this bicyclist came riding by and I snapped the pic. Later on I realized how much I liked the geometry of the pic the stripes in the road, the curbs the cars lined up, the lines of the parking garage across the way with the rectangular openings. The trees even have geometry. The bottoms of the canopies are lined up and the tops of the canopies form a big wedge and the white Oxy Building with its lattice design. Against this we have the bicyclist with his green helmet, the bright red car, and if you look carefully, the gas lights across the road.

Have you ever liked a photograph but then had to figure out why?

Courthouse Shadows

Friday mid-afternoon I took a break from work by walking down past the courthouse. We are having a slow transition from Fall to Winter here in Tulsa and as part of that the sun keeps getting lower and lower which makes for more interesting shadows like these as I went walking by the Tulsa County Courthouse. I love those big trees but I know that theoretically they shouldn’t even by alive so at some point they are going to be cut down and replaced with something smaller. Until then, I’ll enjoy them.

I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday 2 today.

Shadow Shot Sunday – The Gardens of Philbrook

I spent part of my day off Friday roaming around the Philbrook Museum of Art Gardens there are lots of shadows there. One of my favorite trees is above. It has a very long branch that snakes horizontally and then splits. It makes for a great shadow.

There is a bridge across a creek that makes a great shadow also.

American Hippo by John Kearney

There is this car bumper sculpture of a hippo. For this I used the “In Camera HDR” function on my Nikon. I had an “aha moment” while working in the gardens on how it is supposed to work. This sculpture was kind of lost in the shadows and the HDR was able to pull it out so we can see it.

“Negative Tree” by Menashe Kadishman

This is one of my favorite sculptures in the Philbrook Gardens but it is a bear to photograph on the shady side which is what I wanted to do because I wanted to put a real tree inside the negative space. The HDR function has maybe five settings so what the heck, lets max it out and I did. Maybe next time I’ll back it off a little bit. Maybe not though. Moderation in all things is itself excessive is what I say. Plus I can honestly say that this is SOOC. I am not sure that means much in this day of super capable cameras.

Linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

My other Philbrook Posts over the years

Wordless Wednesday – The Anarchists of Anonymous

Guy Fawkes Day – Tulsa Oklahoma

Anonymous – “a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as “an internet gathering” with “a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives”.^[2] The group became known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts anddistributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites.” (quoted from Wikipedia)

Update: Anonymous has declared War on ISIS after the Paris attacks

The Pope Francis – Oklahoma Connection

Strangely enough, the photo of a banner of Pope Francis at Tulsa’s Holy Family Cathedral is the most popular by far of the 46,000+ photographs I have on Flickr.

NewsOn6.com – Tulsa, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports – KOTV.com |

We have been having a welcome break from the whole Donald Trump/ Hillary Clinton thing now days. Pope Francis has come to America and America likes it. His message of compassion seems to be touching a core to many of us Americans who are tired of the way things are. It seems to be an emotional experience for many of us, even us who are not Catholic. One of the things that interests me is that an Oklahoma Native American ballet company will be performing a small piece for the Pope Sunday in Philadelphia. The Osage Ballet Company based in the tiny little town of Oklahoma will be presenting a segment of Wahzhazhe a ballet made specially for them. The connection between the Catholic Church and the Osage tribe goes back to 1673 when Father Jacque Marquette evangelized the tribe.

#maria_tallchief #sculpture #ballerina #tulsahistorycenter

Part of the “Five Moons” installation at the Tulsa History Museum in honor of the give Oklahoma native American Ballerinas known as “Oklahoma Treasures”

The Osage tribe is no newcomer to Ballet. Two sisters, Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, both members of the Osage tribe were important dancers on the international dance scene. She was America’s first Prima Ballerina.

Maria Tallchief’s “Sugerplum Fairy” made the “The Nutcracker” America’s most popular ballet. Maria Tallchief passed away in 2013.

Marjorie Tallchief is Maria’s younger sister and also a great dancer. She was named “première danseuse étoile” of the Paris Opera Ballet. She is retired now.

Both Maria and Marjorie Tallchief are named “Oklahoma Treasures” as two of five Native American Ballerinas who became became famous internationally for their ballet dancing. The others are Yvonne Chouteau, Moscelyene Larkin, and Rosella Hightower. Collectively the five ballerinas are known as the “Five Moons.”

Anyways, I think the Pope is a little over-scheduled in his trip but I hope that he enjoys the brief performance by the Osage Ballet Theater during his time here in the USA.

YogisDen.us

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