The sunrise is almost straight parallel with our backyard fence these days and it makes for some strange reflections on the fence like this shepherds crook and suet cake holder shadow I captured the other day.
I hope everyone in the USA experiencing cold weather stays warm and is keeping their pets inside.
I’ve got tons of photos of squirrels from my backyard trailcam. This is the only one I have where the squirrel seems to have spotted the camera. I’ve seen other critters, rabbits and raccoons look at the camera on night photos but never a squirrel. Anyway I like this guy bending his flexible neck to check the camera out.
Here in the USA we have an almost nationwide deep freeze going on. Stay warm and bring your pets inside folks.
I’m linking to Saturday’s Critters this morning.
On our recent trip to Colorado to see family after Christmas we took a southern route through the Oklahoma panhandle and New Mexico to avoid some snowy weather. Tell you what the panhandle has some big skies and great vistas. Heather took over the driving for a while so I took some pics with my phone.
Sorry for the internal reflections!!
We drove by this train in the late afternoon. I loved the late afternoon light on the boxcars. The line was at least a mile long.
And a little bit later we got a good sunset.
And a great reverse sunset looking east via the mirror.
I just love it when Heather drives. I get to take photos and I also regale here with fascinating (to me) information via Wikipedia on all the small towns we go through. I don’t know why but she always turns up the volume on the radio when I am trying to give her a good tidbit of information. She keeps saying stuff like “I don’t care.” Oh well. Not much she can do about it since she is driving, right?
I’m linking with Skywatch Friday.
I have a hobby called geocaching which involves finding objects hidden in various places by other people. Sometimes searching for the geocaches takes me to very interesting places and that happened recently when I was looking for a geocache in rural Oklahoma just east of the town of Broken Arrow. It was a cemetery.
It was a small place called the Thomas Smith Cemetery. The sign also said that it was started in 1902 by Mr. Smith from his allotment of 160 acres and that he was a Creek Freedman and also a Muskogee Creek Nation Citizen. The sign also said Muskogee Creek Indian Freedman Band. So I had a lot of questions like what is a Creek Freedman? What does it mean to be a Muskogee Creek Nation Citizen and who is the Muskogee Creek Indian Freedman Band.
So I turned to my friend, the internet and found out that a Creek Freedman was a black person, who was probably also a slave owned by a Creek Nation Citizen. These slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and according to a treaty with the United States soon thereafter, the Creek Nation agreed that the freedmen were to be members of the nation.
Later when the United States took away communal tribal land in Oklahoma, they allocated it to tribal members via the Dawes Commission. Things were rocked along until 1979 when the Muskogee Nation adopted a new constitution that among other things ejected the Freedman from the Muscogee Nation. Thus the Muscogee Creek Indian Freedmen Band was formed in order to advance the interests of the Creek Freedmen and regain citizenship with the Creek Nation. I got all this information from their excellent website. I hope I didn’t make too much of a hash of the information. Further I read that in September 2023 a Creek Nation Judge ruled that Freedman must be admitted as citizens of the Nation. I find the whole matter fascinating. The Nation is appealing the ruling.
I also found a 2021 press release from the Muscogee Creek Indian Freedmen Band announcing their acquisition of the Thomas Smith Cemetery. It provides a lot of historical information and discusses some of the people interred there.
The one I was most intrigued with was William Lacy, a one time slave who fought for the Union during the Civil War with the USCI which I found out was the “United States Colored Infantry.” There were also grave stones for people who fought in both world wars and the Vietnam War. Also interred there are people who who were affected by the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Who’d of thought that a very small country cemetery out in the middle of nowhere would have so much history packed into it including issues that are ongoing today?
Linking with My Corner of the World
Four years ago the Philbrook Museum of Art here in Tulsa hosted an exhibition of shadow art, called Shadow of Time, by Anila Quayyum Agha. Part of the exhibit was this huge decorated cube hung from the ceiling with a powerful light inside that projected very sharp shadows on the walls, floors, and ceilings. This and the other installations in the exhibition were stunning.
I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday, now hosted by Lisa’s Garden Adventure.
As posted recently the family did a New Year’s Day Hike this year. I took along my telephoto lens and didn’t find much to point and shoot out at. Toward the end we came across a pond that had some ducks of some sort so I reached out with my camera and the results were not that good but hey this is the only thing I got that day. Highly cropped.
A few days later we were home and I got wondering what bird was singing so I went out in the backyard and there were three robins high up in a tree just singing their heart out.
I had to use the manual focus because of so many big and small branches in the way and again, these are highly cropped.
And so this is my humble contribution to Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out, Eileen has GOOD photographs posted by bloggers there.
After our recent post Christmas trip to Colorado Springs to see family, we felt the need to get outside and walk a little bit so we ventured up to the North Woods segment of the Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center to get a couple miles of fresh air and sunshine.
It was a great day. Cool, sunny, and very little wind. The North Woods loop is very pedestrian friendly, flat, no rocks, and no bicycles allowed. We did encounter a couple of friendly bikers. I wasn’t even irritated. The ground was solid so they were not messing up the trail and they were good natured and there were only two of them.
I brought my “good” camera with the 300 mm lens hoping I would see some birds or other critters. I saw flashes of birds and birds way up high, and birds in very thick underbrush. I saw a group of four or five deer running parallel to us about a 100 yards away, but no, no photos on the trail. I got some grainy duck photos of waterfowl on a pond. I will post them tomorrow on my Saturday’s Critters post.
Very rarely do we I see anybody on this particular trail but we saw four or five groups on our outing. That was okay. Lots of room for everybody still.
Captured some fungi images! They are easy, they don’t hide.
A good time was had by all!!
I am linking up with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World.
Christmas and the end of the year buzzed by really quickly this year. Sorry I have been incommunicado all the sudden but hey, I’m back. So I’ll bring you up to speed.
A few days before Christmas we joined another couple for a Christmas music show at historic Cain’s Ballroom featuring several very talented local singers and musicians.
Isaac Hanson, of Hanson, showed up and played a couple of songs. Heather and I remember when he was just a little boy and played for free at local events with his brothers. He’s all growns up now and has a whole bunch of kids of his own.
Heather made her traditional gingerbread cookies. They are always a hit.
They go fast.
We made a visit to my brother Bob at his residence.
And gathered around the tree.
On Christmas Day we went to my MIL’s house and we opened gifts and had steak and baked potatoes for Christmas dinner. Bad blogger me, didn’t get any family photos.
A couple days later Heather, son Logan, Kodi, and I drove a roundabout route to Colorado Springs. My sister and BIL were hosting their family for Christmas. We hadn’t seen them for years so they graciously assented to our presence.
They are an active and fun loving bunch. If you are going to hang with them you better get up early and be prepared to stay late. They were very welcoming to us crashing the party.
Here is Logan with my sister and BIL’s dogs. The little dog is Maisey and is very sweet the big dog is Aspen. Aspen kept trying to play with our little dog, Kodi but Kodi was intimidated.
Sister and her husband treated us all to the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs. It was great. There are lots of things to look at and videos of past performances and artifacts like the costume above worn by Peggy Flemming who won the Gold Medal in figure skating at the 1968 Winter Olympics. I always thought she was classy and elegant.
Back at my sister’s house, Kodi went for a walk and got to meet Jasper the horse and get sniffed and inspected really good by the horse. I think our city dog thinks he doesn’t want become a ranch dog.
On the drive back to Tulsa Kodi found an earth cache. A specialized form of a geocache. So now I call him Kodi the Geodog.
I also got a shadow photo of Kodi so I guess he is a shadow dog as well.
So anyway, that was our whirlwind trip!!
I am linking with Skywatch Friday, Saturday’s Critters, Shadow Shot Sunday 2, and My Corner of the World
A Christmas garland casts shadows in downtown Tulsa.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
I went on a hike the other day and encountered some deer. I love seeing deer. They are so beautiful and graceful. They are not hunted on Turkey Mountain and so are not skittish at all.
I went geocaching at a local park and saw some ducks paddling around on a pond.
Kodi and I were playing in the backyard and he decided to take a little rest break in the leaves.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!!
I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters.