11/11/11 I Hate War

This is a re-do.  I submitted basically the same piece for Memorial Day.   

When I was young, I cut my teeth on WWII movies where war was glorified.  John Wayne in The Green Berets made me zealous for militarism.

On 11/11/11  I remember — again — the day I learned that war was not the glorified world of the movies.  The very first funeral I ever attended was for a son of Apache, Oklahoma.  PFC James McClure was killed on May 2, 1967, the day before my 11th birthday. He was 19.

Once again I reflect. I recall the message I delivered to an over-flow crowd of mourners in the early spring of 2008.  The governor of Oklahoma sat on the front row, along with a  young widow and her toddler son, Gage.  As I stood before the men and women gathered at that funeral, I found myself confronted with the very real issues of honor, duty, courage, and sacrifice that Veterans Day represents.

The following is the text from that day’s message. Continue reading 11/11/11 I Hate War

On the Horizon: A Marine’s Love Story

My experience with doing stories with war veterans is those who have seen the most, talk the least. I think there are some memories they had just rather forget.

Put Charles Migliorino in that category. It was only by chance I heard his story. He was interviewing for an associate district judge appointment, and I was a member of the Judicial Nominating Commission interviewing him. It was after the interview was over, he added, almost as epilogue, the thing he was most proud of in life was letting a sister hear her dead brother’s voice for the first time in 40 years.

I was fascinated, as I think you will be in this week’s video blog, with this Marine’s Love Story.

Rob McClendon

Red Dirt Kelly Says: “Top Ten Reasons Why I Love Oklahoma”

Number Ten: Spotting a real, live princess in an autumn Oklahoma pumpkin patch is a frequent occurrence. Photo by Rachel Apple.

Number 9: The spacious skies, amber waves of grain, purple mountains majesty AND the fruited plain can all be found within our boundaries. Continue reading Red Dirt Kelly Says: “Top Ten Reasons Why I Love Oklahoma”

The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 44

#44 of 52 : MAXWELL PHINEAS QUALLS & SCRAPS
Imaginary Family Project - Week 44

External Photo Clues:
None

Imagine:
 As a school assignment, we were asked to write about someone in our life that influenced us greatly. My teacher, Mrs. Fletcher, said that it needed to be someone other than our immediate family. Most of my classmates struggled to come up with someone, because people in rural Oklahoma seldom had meaningful contact with people outside their immediate family. I was one of the fortunate ones. I had known a man of unbelievable depth and character that came to teach me things that would make a far greater human being. The man in the photo above was, and still is, the most influential man I ever met.

It was a hot August day when Maxwell Phineas Qualls, MP for short, came walking up the dirt road that was our driveway. He was accompanied by his dog Scraps. I was on the front porch peeling potatoes for my mother. Continue reading The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 44

It’s that time of year…

by Michael Mitchell

What time is that you say?

It’s that time of year where I like to remind myself every day of all the things I’m thankful for.

Today I’m thankful for this woman:

Obviously she’s lovely and talented, but there’s so much more to her than those two words that I use so often.

She’s my best friend. An awesome wife. A great mother. A natural-birthing-16-hour-laboring-with-no-drugs-birth-giving machine. She can cook like nobody’s bidness. She sings with the voice of an angel. She dominates at NERTS. She calls me funny nicknames and answers when I call her equally funny ones. She is a dedicated Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She values family. She invests in relationships with her friends. She flirts with me. She balances our check book. She’s a Proverbs 31 wife. A hot mamasita. A couponing fiend. An organization junky. She cries when she’s happy, she cries when she’s sad, and she cries at Hallmark commercials. She’s smart. She’s a reader. She plays the piano. She lets me keep our house really cold at night. She knows the difference between an onside kick and being offsides. If I yell, “BOOMER!” she yells, “SOONER!” She loves God, she loves me, she loves our daughter, she loves our family, and she loves our friends.

And I’ve been thankful for her since the fall of 1998.

[michael]

On the Horizon: If you build it, they will come

Many rural communities around Oklahoma are building tech parks in the hopes of attracting big business and in Pryor, that gamble is paying off. Google announced in 2007 that it would build a data center right here in Oklahoma. All because of availability of land, electrical infrastructure, a very high quality excellent workforce, and a business climate that was really conducive to making things fast and simple; which is what many rural communities have to offer.

Now because of the recession, it’s taken quite a while to get up and running but just recently, they held the grand opening of their newest Google data center. In this week’s video blog, see the connections going on in Pryor, Oklahoma.

Alisa Hines

When I Am An Old Man (Repost: Top 25 of Year One)

Photo used by permission: from Avi Revivo {http://revivo.co.il/blog}

by Michael Mitchell

As we get started here again at the beginning of another new year, a lot of folks I know have made New Year’s resolutions. I have a few things on my list of goals for the year, but technically none of them really qualify as resolutions. In order to help me feel better about my general lack of New Year’s resolutions, I offer the following list of Old Man resolutions; things I would like to be, say, or do when I am an old man. For the purposes of this post, I am defining an old man as someone in his mid to late 80’s.

Without any further ado, when I’m an old man:

  • I will carry candy in my pockets to give to kids at the grocery store and at church. Who knows what society will be like by the time I’m an old man… maybe I’ll need to stick to doing this at church.
  • I will wear bib overalls with nothing under them a large majority of the time. Obviously when special occasions call for it, such as the ones listed above, I will change my attire. However, I’ve always thought there’d be something really freeing about spending my days wearing a pair of bib overalls with nothing under them. Unfortunately this is a luxury of the old… but I’m willing to wait.
  • I will be really nice to some people and really mean to others. I will be extremely inconsistent with this one and make a sport out of trying to be obnoxiously rude and overly kind to the same people multiple times each day. I know this will throw people off, but I will get a good kick out of watching how they react. This would never fly today, but when I’m an old man, people will probably just take it and think to themselves, “Bless his heart.” or “He comes from a different time.” This too is a luxury of the old. Continue reading When I Am An Old Man (Repost: Top 25 of Year One)

Barbershop Theology: Ritual of Preparation

Spectacular achievements come from unspectacular preparation.”  Roger Staubach

I looked at the clock and mercifully it read, 5:35. Dad would end his day by putting away his scissors, resting his clippers, counting the cash in the drawer, and writing something in his ledger. But he would do that no earlier than 6pm.

I knew I could make closing much faster if I would begin the Barbershop Closing Ritual. That meant all the dirty towels had to be placed in a hamper, the floor had to be swept, ash trays cleaned, lather dispenser filled, and magazines organized. It meant being alert to any signals from Dad pointing me to a detail I had missed, (a nod, a glance, or a subtle point with a comb).

The final act of the day was watching Dad slightly open the door to the back of the shop, reach behind the wall and turn off the lights. Turning the Open/Closed sign was a quick trick and I hustled to jump into his pick-up truck parked just around the corner. If we hurried I could catch the last episode of the Flintstones or maybe shoot some baskets before dark. Continue reading Barbershop Theology: Ritual of Preparation

Pen or Computer?

Irony number one: My favorite way to write is with a pen, and…I’m writing you this information with a computer.

Irony number two: The image with which I chose to illustrate this post is my romantic ideal of what writing with a pen would be…IF I happened to have a Schaeffer fountain pen handy at the appropriate times.  What I usually write with is a plastic ink pen I find strewn about on the hall floor of the university where I teach.  If I’m lucky, the casing only has a few cracks caused by the pressure of who knows how many students shoes.  We’re a land grant university…it could also have traces of cow manure.

But regardless of the two ironies accompanying this line of thought, there are distinct differences in my psyche between pen and computer that will keep my feet firmly on PEN every time.

When I write with a computer, I push all my words out of my fingers, channeled from my brain and generally sent out for the public-at-large to do with them what they will.  As the word-stream rushes from my brain, down my spine, through my arms and out my fingers, I backtrack. I re-read.  I change, rethink, change and possibly go back.

The path toward the destination of my last line, if traced, would look like a dung-beetle trail in a sandy lot.  Circle-y. Hesitant. Changing.  Smudged; sometimes happenstance.

But when I write with a pen, the words leave my brain, they pass through my heart, and they come out the tip of my pen in a focused stream of consciousness that is more sure.  Solid. Pure. Heady. Confident.

With a keyboard, I outline throughout the process pushing with my fingers.  With a pen, I think first, write second.  And, I always write TO a person.  If it is a journal, I write TO History.  If it is a letter, I write TO the full essence of that Person I hold dear enough to spend my time for them.  If it is toward a purpose, then I write TO that future Hope.

In other words, I write words for others from my computer. But in other-other words, I write my only real words with a pen.

Irony number three: I don’t like this essay because I wrote it on a computer.  I’m going out to my hall to look for a pen on the floor. And then I’m going to write something…pure.

****

Post Illustration Photo by TMAB2003

 

The Violin

Photo by D K Bear of Denmark

I am the internship coordinator for the undergraduate “Child and Family Services” majors in our department.  Every semester, the student interns enrolled in my course submit journals, time logs and assignments.  They also respond to a discussion question I post every week in our online classroom.  One week, I posted this prompt:

“You are currently utilizing knowledge from your studies, information you learned while being trained for that position and your own set of skills and personality.  You collected these “unique” skills along life as you grew to this particular point.  Write about one special skill you have unique to you, that helps you find creative ways to do your job.”

A student who was serving her internship at Judith Karmen Hospice wrote this:

“I make weekly visits to an older gentleman who is dying. He has no family in the area, and most of his friends are already dead.  He’s in lot of pain.  One day, I walked into his house and heard him listening to classical music on a small radio.  It happened to be a violin solo that I knew.  I’ve been playing the violin since I was five.  So the next week, I brought my violin with me and asked him if he would like me to play.  He nodded, and I played for him.  I played every week for the next five.  I played him right up to death’s door.  My music helped him deal with his pain, and it accompanied him as he died. So, is that what you mean by your question?”

Well, yes.  That’s what I meant.

This is why I teach, and why I think I usually learn more than my students.

Thursday Morning Shout Out: The Talimena Drive and Those Who Takes Us Along With Their Eyes

(Note – this is a reprint from last year, retitled.  We hear that NOW is the time to be in the mountains if you want to see the foliage this year.  What do YOU hear?)

Good morning, Red Dirt Country.  We haven’t had a “Friday Morning Shout Out” in a few weeks, so I thought I would provide you with a little treat.  I’m going to take you back, back, back…all the way to November 13th of this year. Was that just one month ago?

It was a beautiful day, and a few members of the Tulsa Digital Photography Group were winding around the hills of Oklahoma’s famous Talimena Drive.  Sometimes they’d wind all the way over to Mena, Arkansas. But, then they would hop right back into our great state once again…shooting the autumn beauty in “God’s Country” all the while.

The borders of Oklahoma and Arkansas get a little fuzzy when there is so much beauty in one place.  And, photographers like Brian Favell did their best to capture all of what the perfect drive for Fall had to offer.  It seems that every year is different; who knows what 2011 has in store for the beholder?  But for this year, and for that day, and for this Shout Out, we’re going to share with you what Brian found – through his eyes, on his journey down the beautiful, twisty, turvy, upsy and downsy Talimena Drive of Eastern Oklahoma.

Thanks Brian, for the tour…and thanks, Oklahoma mountains, for once again showing us what you’ve got!

Continue reading Thursday Morning Shout Out: The Talimena Drive and Those Who Takes Us Along With Their Eyes

The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 43

#43 of 52 : ANN & DEBBIE
Imaginary Family Project - Week 43

External Photo Clues:
None

Imagine:
Harry stepped forward, then back, to the right and then to the left. He wanted to frame the photo just right. “This is the first day of the rest of your life!” he said to Debbie.

Ann and Harry had been married for almost 2 years when Debbie was born.  Harry doted on Debbie. He named her after his mother. Debbie came early and was sickly. Harry took his job as her father, her protector seriously. Ann didn’t know what to do, but she did her best to take care of her.

Debbie was allergic to almost everything it seemed. Continue reading The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 43

On the Horizon: Financially Strong

The U.S. economy is on the minds of many Americans and is it is not a positive thought to most. From unemployment to a failing stock market, people are unsure of their future. What lies ahead? What about my children? What about my retirement?

For those living in Oklahoma there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is a bright one. The market crash did not hit the state nearly as hard as the rest of the nation and jobs are springing up all over. In this week’s video blog see how from aerospace and energy to small business the economy in Oklahoma is on the up and up.

~Andy Barth