I got sidelined for a few days with a sore knee. I finally went to the bone doctor and he gave me a range of treatment options from continue using OTC Ibuprofen to getting a steroid injected in the knee to a “surgical solution.” I opted the steroid in the knee. And it helped but I’m not 100% yet. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
I’ve been out and about. My wife and I had our 35th anniversary the other day and so we went to the zoo and 16,000 steps later my knee was calling my name!!! It felt great at first.
One of the things Heather and I did during out stay in Santa Fe last month was go to The Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. We’ve seen a lot of O’Keefe’s art over the years but they had a lot of things that were different from what we were used to. (And check the link, they have over 1000 works of art by O’Keefe, over 800 photographs, and other pieces of art from people inside O’Keefe’s circle.)
Black Cross with Red Sky
In the Patio, VIII
Red Hills and Sky
Turns out that O’Keefe was a photographer as well. From what I understand she used a camera to help her remember scenes that she was going to paint later. She was quite prolific artist.
I loved this photo of her cooking, she looks very open and friendly. She didn’t show this side of herself much.
I highly recommend the museum if you happen to be in town.
Last Tuesday I loaded up my bike and went for a ride on the RiverParks trails here in Tulsa mainly to check on the brand spanking new pedestrian bridge and dam across the Arkansas River. I purposely missed the “Big Dam Party” that RiverParks put on for the opening over the Labor Day weekend.
So here is the new bridge, 1000 feet long from bank to bank. The dam is just on the other side of the bridge.
After big crowds during the party, I had the bridge to myself.
Down below the dam I saw this Great Blue Heron.
And a great egret.
And at one spot there were a bunch of egrets and blue herons together.
And three cats resting on the riverbank. Actually one cat and two Komatsu’s.
And a human critter jogging.
And two other human critters walking their dog.
And some oil and oil product storage tanks for the nearby refinery. A human critter on the bridge asked another human critter what they were for and the person said that President Biden outlawed oil storage in city limits and they were pretty sure that the City of Tulsa took them over to store water in case of a drought. Okay then. (Not true by the way).
From a week or so ago. Part of a series of photographs showing that it was raining all around us except where we live.
And a cheerful morning sunrise
And an optimistic Labor Day. I fly my flag right side up!!
And a long last, the new Dam and Bridge across the Arkansas is done. They had a whole multi day party to celebrate over the Labor Day weekend called the “Big Dam Party.” I missed it all. I got out there Tuesday morning and checked it out myself. I had my own dam party.
Last weekend, the family went to the theater to see Twisters. A movie set in Oklahoma about tornadoes and Oklahoma’s family of Storm Chasers. It was a movie of course but hey it was pretty good. Here’s a trailer.
I won’t go into the plot. Nobody cares about the plot right! It’s got some great storm scenes, romance, a villain, heroes and great ending where everything is all wrapped up.
The big tornado in the movie hit the town of El Reno which is west of Oklahoma City a half hour or so. It turns out that El Reno was close to a real tornado (the El Reno-Piedmont Tornado) in May 2011 that had the highest winds ever recorded on the planet at about 210 miles per hour. It was so powerful it knocked down a drilling rig of one of my employers customers.
(not my photo, from Wikipedia Commons)
Believe it or not but drilling companies have safety protocols for drilling rigs. For one thing that put as much drill pipe in the hole as they can. This rig had 200,000 pounds of drillpipe. That helps hold down the rig. The drilling rig weighed 2 million pounds and is tied down by guy wires at four corners. The storm toppled the rig and turned it over several times. The contraption you see sticking out of the ground is the blow out preventer which is attached to the casing of the well. It is very stout and is still at a 30 degree angle or so.
The workers were sheltered in the “dog house” or changing room. Part of the safety protocol is the dog house is held down by four large helical anchors drilled into the ground. The anchors held but the structure suffered some damage but none of the workers sheltering in it were seriously hurt.
My employer at the time elected to add underground tornado shelters at many of their surface facilities including this one at a compressor station in the El Reno area.
In the movie, the main tornado is shown going through a refinery. That didn’t happen in the real El Reno tornado but it did go through a large natural gas processing plant owned by one of my employers competitor/customers and put it out of commission for months. My employer was neighborly and had some spare capacity so we (and other companies in the area) helped tide them over until they get things going again.
I happened by the area about a month later and too a couple of photos.
Trees were debarked, wheat fields were stripped bare of the wheat.
It was kind of eerie. I didn’t take any photos of destroyed houses or businesses. I stayed away from those areas. The residents don’t appreciate snooping like that. Nine people died as a result of the tornado including several who were caught in their vehicles while driving on Interstate 40.
I’ve never seen an actual tornado but we have had to retreat to our “safe space” a bunch of times of the years. And of course we take our critters with us.
They don’t like it much.
One thing about the movie that is true is the storm chasers. They are folk heroes in Oklahoma and here is a page where you can track them when they are active.
The storm trackers are celebrities. Here is Brandon Wells of Tulsa’s Channel 6 in last year’s Veterans Day Parade. I think he is on facebook.
Anyway, see the movie. It’s fun. I give five stars out of five.
On our New Mexico vacation I finally got to go see something I had never seen before inside the Loretto Chapel. The chapel, built in the Gothic Revival style, was constructed between 1873 to 1878 and was part of Catholic girls school, the Loretto Academy, that went out of business in the 1960’s. The diocese sold it to a private company in 1968 and the girls school was demolished.
Inside the chapel is this famous miraculous staircase. It is a two full turn spiral staircase ascending to the choir loft at the back of the church. It is a beautiful and impressive sight but I’m pretty sure it is not miraculous. I tell the amazing part to me is that it didn’t have handrails when it was first constructed.
The chapel is now an event space and a kind of museum. There is a small fee for entering and you can take all the non-commercial photos you desire. It is in excellent shape. The altar above is impeccable. If you want you can book your wedding there!!
I love this statue of Jesus. One can go to the gift store to buy candles to burn here.
I’m guessing this is Mary. Again exquisite. I’m a lifelong protestant and their art is all abstract. The art in Catholic churches, chapels, and hospitals, is very emotional and colorful and engaging. (In my opinion.)
The stained glass is gorgeous.
They even had a confessional booth. I asked son Logan if he had anything he wanted to tell me. He said no.
So I’ve been looking at photos of that staircase for decades and finally go to see it!! Check!
This sight greeted me the other morning. A red shouldered hawk squatting on my trailcam in our backyard. I think he was looking for a mouse. We have bird feeders in the backyard which attracts a few birds and a whole bunch of squirrels and a few mice.
The trailcam captured this cat in our backyard a while back. I’m thinking he might be carrying a mouse in his mouth.
I went to Philbrook Museum of Art the other day. I saw this squirrel resting for the intense midday heat.
And this big ole hippo sculpture made out of car bumpers.
I rode my bike on the Arkansas River the other day and found this egret fishing in the Arkansas River.
And this group of geese hanging out.
And this cross species collection of egrets and great blue herons sharing their fishing grounds.
After years of construction Tulsa is opening up the new pedestrian bridge and putting the new Zink Lake Dam into service this weekend. I’m going to wait until the hubbub has died down a little bit before I go check it out.
On our recent New Mexico vacation we spend just one full day in Santa Fe before returning home. But we saw and did a lot in that one afternoon, and one full day afterward.
The monsoon was going on so every afternoon it would cloud up and rain. Usually just a little bit but on our final evening we had to call the hotel for help so they sent their shuttle. Saved us from getting soaking wet.
Santa Fe is a mixture of the old and the new. I remember as a little kid living in Coyote and mom would take us shopping in Santa Fe. Those art galleries and fancy shops that are there now? They used to be Woolworths, JC Penney’s, Western Auto. Lots of tourists back then as well but Santa Fe was a town where regular people lived.
It’s got some great museums. This is the courtyard at the New Mexico Museum of Art.
And food. I forget just how much I like New Mexican food until I go back. How about some chicken enchiladas with green chili sauce for lunch?
And history? Ancient history and modern history. I saw this little plaque at the back of a store. 109 East Palace was the address where everybody who worked at Los Alamos during the World War I first reported to duty. I read a book about the goings on, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant I love reading about the makings of the Atomic Bomb way back when. It was a huge nationwide effort and involved lots of people. My mother worked as a secretary at the Hanford Nuclear Works in Washington which used a reactor to produce plutonium and chemical processing to enrich it. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the first atomic explosion in New Mexico at the Trinity site.
