Satellites and Sculpture in the Gardens of the Philbrook Museum of Art

The Philbrook Museum of Art is one Tulsa’s great treasures. It not only has fine art inside the building but very nice gardens with a wide variety of sculpture outside.

They have recently added something that now makes the museum perfect. They have their own geocache. Geocaching is fully described here. Basically, you try and find a hidden container given its coordinates. The Philbrook geocache is named “muse” and its geocache page is here. It is a mystery cache which means that the coordinates given are not the actual coordinates. To get the actual coordinates you have to solve a series of puzzles which involve collecting clues from the various sculptures in the gardens at the museum. It is fun.

So I used my lunch hour to go find it one pretty day last week. What a treat.

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“Prayer” by Alan Houser, a native American artist. You know, four months I had never heard of him, now I see his work all over the place, including our Oklahoma license plates.

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The Tempietto on the grounds. I like that word. I hope to use it playing Scrabble one day. That would be worth a lot of points.

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They had two satyrs, this one and a male. I like the female satyrs best for some reason.

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This was my most startling find. I came up on it and I thought, “The leaves are huge, and they haven’t fallen.” It’s actually a sculpture. There are four “trees” in all in the piece, you can see two more up the hill to the right. You can barely see the fourth at the top of the hill.” The leaves are glass attached to the steel “tree.” I loved this. It is titled “Oklahoma Autumn” by Eric Baker.

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This piece is called “Negative Tree” by Menashe Kadishman.

Other various images from that noon hour.

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Did I find the cache?

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Of course I did, but the fun was in the looking, the finding was just a bonus.

My wonderful MIL, Nana, got me a one year membership to the museum for Christmas. I’ll be spending a lot of time there. Outside with my camera when the weather is nice.

For other views of our world please check out “That’s My World“

Titus 3:3-5

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The cross above looms over Interstate 35 north of Oklahoma City. It was erected several years ago by a church. I remember that it was kind of controversial at the time but I think everybody is used to it by now. I mean it sits on private property and doesn’t have neon lights or anything on it so, what does it hurt.

In my own mind I’ve turned it into a memorial for a good friend of mine who was hit by a car and died while jogging on a freeway frontage road a few miles away. He was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known. A devoted family man and a much loved friend and colleague by almost everybody that knew him. He died over a decade ago and I still cannot believe he is gone and miss him very much.

One thing I know is that one day I, and many of his other friends and certainly his family, will see him again.

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared,
he saved us,
not because of righteous things we had done,
but because of his mercy.

Titus 3:3-5 (NIV)

For other pairings check out That’s Baloney

New Car Part Tres

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Well, we cut a deal last Saturday and we got Sweetie a new Honda Pilot and we picked it up Monday. Joe the Salesman and I negotiated all day by phone on the price. Much better than negotiating in person. Gives you space. When always needs space when negotiating. We are pretty happy with the deal we got. Joe’s boss told me that I was an excellent negotiator. I told him, “I bet you guys were yelling KA-Chinng, and doing back flips you made so much money off of us.” Never give an inch is my motto. I’m sure they made a nice profit.

Anyway, when we picked it they had the gas tank topped off and the car was detailed. They didn’t have to do that. I’ve driven more than one car off a lot on fumes.

If you need a Honda I would recommend Don Carlton Honda here in Tulsa without reservation. Ask for Joe, he’s the guy in the picture. He is very low key and doesn’t play your typical car dealer games. If you try them and they don’t treat you right let me know. I haven’t awarded a “Burn in Hell” award in a while. They burn me, I’ll burn them.

The Great Backyard Bird Count of 2010

Hey I thought I had the perfect idea for a family event last weekend. The Great Backyard Bird Count of 2010. Hey all we had to do was count the number of various species of birds that were in our backyard over a minimum 15 minute period last weekend. How hard could that be? I thought it would be our first step to greenness. I am thinking that birdwatching would be a great companion to my hobby of geocaching. I’m out in the woods a lot so might as well multi-task when I’m there.

We started the bird count Sunday afternoon with our two helpers.

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I’ll give them this, they were focused.

We didn’t have a whole lot in the 30 minutes or so that we watched. I counted about 12 sparrows. A couple of these:

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I think it is a common grackle starling, based on comments by several readers I went and checked my resources again and I think because of the pale spots the bird is a starling. And that was it for the count.

Earlier in the week, and thus not in our “official count” we had a couple of these,

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Which I think is a male cardinal, along with a sparrow.

And one of these,

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Which I think is a female cardinal, and was my favorite.

So, we and the cats had some fun and I learned a few things. One thing I’ve learned about the internet is that there are all sorts of knowledegable people out there and I’m depending on them to let me know if I misidentified the birds.

Check out Camera Critters for more photographs of critters from all over.

Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler

This book is a novel about Liam Pennywell who studied philosophy but ended up getting laid off from a job teaching fifth grade at a second rate private school. He is at the age where he decides to downsize and moves to a newer, smaller apartment in a different area of town. He goes to bed in his new apartment on his first night and then wakes up in the hospital and has no idea how he got there.

He is very troubled about this gap in memory and sets out trying to find out what happened. And he finds something else.

Liam is a guy who lived his whole life without really engaging with it. I know people like that, do you? This book is about them.

I thought it was very good.  I give it it three stars out of four.

Photograph of a Moron at the Mayo Hotel

 I work in a building adjacent to the  newly refurbished Mayo Hotel. The Hotel features a very nice penthouse that apparently has access to the rootop. This afternoon we noticed the young man you see above standing on the ledge. He has a buddy, that you can see to the through the pilasters taking his picture. Yesterday, fellow blogger Tulsa Gentleman had a post with a photograph about the penthouse.

I called the front desk of the hotel and told them what was happening. They said they would check into it.

I’m just glad the dummy didn’t fall. At least I don’t think he did.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief

Saturday night the Yogi’s and SuperPizzaBoy’s buddy Nicholas loaded up and we went to see The Lightening Thief. I was dreading it. Kids movie, ugh. Turned out I was wrong. It was pretty decent. So it was a kids movie that is tolerable for adults.

It brought back lots of memories. All the Greek Mythology brought back memories of my World Lit class in High School. One of the characters even looked a little like her.

Hey I was one of the few dweebs who loved World Lit. Especially Greek Mythology. I have forgotten almost all of it though. Along with everyone else.

The Greek Fury that in the movie reminded me of Mrs. Randall my first grade teacher in Payson, Arizona.

Oh yeah, I can deal with mean looks. I can’t tell you how many times Mrs. Randall slapped me out of my chair. I was lucky enough to get her in the 48th year of a distinguished 56 year teaching career. She was definitely old school. Dealing with a Fury’s dirty looks would be a breeze.

This is the only G rates fury image I could find. The furies are major hot!! Except Mrs. Randall, she was not!!

So enough with the trip down memory lane and back to the movie. I give it three stars out of four.

The movie has a web site but it is a yawner. Not much fun there. They need to step up. Most movie web sites these days have lots of information, games, and photographs.