I felt like flying the other day so I took my drone to the west side of the Aransas River and flew a little bit. The video above looks like kind of hurried but when I was making it, thought I was going very slow. Part of the learning process.
And I took a photo of the running and bicycle trails.
A view on the east side of the river looking upstream to the northwest.
And then almost a 180 turn, looking toward downtown Tulsa.
And here’s the pilot, a retired slacker. You can tell by the untucked shirt.
And of course Tulsa, like lots of other communities across the country, and the world, had protests over the George Floyd murder. They are not only of course protesting the murder but protesting how people of color are treated by the police in general. I didn’t attend any of the protests which by all accounts lively and peaceful. The events were marred by vandalism and looting by a small number of people generally after dark.
The protests came at a poignant time for Tulsa. May 31 was the 99th Anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre where a white mob descended on the black area called Greenwood north of downtown and burned it to the ground. Several dozen people were documented killed and suspicion lingers that there were far more. The Tulsa History Center has a web site dedicated to the event. Nobody was ever charged with any of the crimes and there was never any reparations. The survivors just had to suck it up and survive. Here is a link to a post I wrote on the subject.
It’s a scar that still affects life in Tulsa today. Of course many people think we should ignore it but personally I think it needs to see the full light of day, otherwise we will not have learned anything.
