You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

I just got an e-mail from someone who has been a member of our church since before I began attending there, and I’ve been going to the same church for 26 years.  Jerry Radar is a friend of mine, he’s in my Sunday School class. I went to church camp with his children and played in the praise band with his grandson.  Jerry Radar lost his first wife to cancer about five years ago, and remarried about two years ago.  He married someone he had known from his own Bible college days.  She happens to have a son who is physically disabled, possibly from cerebral palsy.  I’ve never asked.  All I know is that I watch his wife patiently work with her adult, disabled son every single Sunday.  And, I’ve heard Jerry’s voice shake with emotion just the tiniest bit when he talks about the extraordinary patience and love his wife has for her son.  These are good people, and this is why something is now “Grinding My Gears.”

Continue reading You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

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Meanwhile, Back at The Ranch: Happy Birthday to M.E.

Today is my birthday.  My husband tells me that I start celebrating it on the first of the month even though it’s actually on the last day of July.  This year I tried to narrow the celebration down to a three-day weekend.  No matter how long the party is, it is always going to involve friends, gifts, and flowers.

Friday was my last work-free day, so I invited a few teacher friends over to swim. Right after they arrived it started to rain.  No worries.  I had indoor activities planned: making homemade salsa from the vegetables in my garden and hulling purple hull peas.  At one point in the day, a friend told me she was going to start referring to me as “Mother Earth” or M.E. I’m not sure if this was before or after I cooked the purple hull peas we just hulled (flavored with a jalapeno pepper from my garden) for a little snack.

Garden Jewel
A gift for my garden: Beauty AND function.

My birthday celebration continued with a couple of gifts. Continue reading Meanwhile, Back at The Ranch: Happy Birthday to M.E.

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Narratives on Child Abuse and Neglect in Oklahoma

Two years ago, I had the privilege of attending the Interdisciplinary Training Program for Child Abuse and Neglect.  This two-semester program was sponsored and taught by the faculty at the University of Oklahoma Healthy Sciences Center for Child Abuse and Neglect within their Child Study Center.

Every Tuesday night, masters and doctoral students, faculty and community professionals, attorneys, people who had been abused as children, etc. would convene for a three hour class covering some detailed aspect over the topic of Child Abuse and Neglect (CAN).  Some evenings were fairly tough.  We watched videos; the footage had been taken from hidden cameras to catch adults abusing children and sometimes even infants. We listened to doctors as they showed us x-rays of spiral fractures and described why Shaken Baby Syndrome is so lethal.  We traveled to a prison to speak with child abuse offenders, went to children’s therapeutic, residential homes where abused children were going to school until they were returned to their families or aged out of the OKDHS system.  We sat through a Mock Trial for which we had prepared almost a semester, each of us playing our roles as a case to terminate the custodial rights of parents were reviewed by a real judge in a real courtroom.  And, we all completed a project.

My project was to examine Oklahoma’s contemporary narratives on CAN, to see if they have shifted over time, how people learn about CAN, and what it would take in order to continue reducing the rates in Oklahoma.  I traveled to the Ponca Tribe in Ponca City, interviewed a family from the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, a couple in southwest Oklahoma City, an individual in Yukon, a couple in Minco and an individual in northwest Oklahoma City.  The following video is a half-hour documentary, describing in some detail, what Oklahomans are saying about the CAN issue.

I invite you to watch it when you have time.  And, I invite you to share it as well.  It will be posted on our Oklahoma State University College of Human Sciences website this week, and it may run on a few local cable channels.  It is my hope that the data I gathered from this project, and the subsequent video you’ll see, are helpful in educating our public.  Please feel free to contact me through the RDC “Contact” page if you have follow up questions after watching. Final note – this video has content that might be disturbing to some. It is not for all audiences; my guess is that the content is generally a PG rating, with a possible PG-13 topic area in one scene.

Thank you, [kelly]

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The Red Dirt Chronicles: A Year in Review Plus Our Top 25 Most-Read Posts

Photo by pilgriminprogress on Flickr. Click photo for photographer's page.

Dear RDC community and occasional or first-time readers:

Monday, August 1st, will be our official “Red Dirt Chronicles” first birthday.  What began back in May of 2010 as a small individual project, was turned into a group contributor project just twelve months ago.  So much has happened since then; so much writing has taken place, decisions to grow or change the way we do things, and our second website is – at this very moment – getting its third set of upgrades.

A few of those upgrades you’ll notice immediately, but some of them will take a few weeks to work themselves out.  For example, if you read the RDC on your mobile phone, you might have noticed an RDC Mobile version available at our website.  That is…IF you have an iPhone, an Android, or a few other styles.  However, we’re still working on the Blackberry upgrade.  Technical details take patience and much debugging.  I truly appreciate our web developer, Maria Yuliana, for the work she does behind the scenes.

Another special announcement is that last night we surpassed the “100,000 reads” mark.  As editor, I was keeping my fingers crossed to reach that milestone before our first birthday.  And…we did it, with two whole days to spare!

Our contributors and our readers, and the connection and feedback between them is basically all that the RDC comprises.  Therefore, I want to first thank all our contributors who have labored, thought, written and thought some more over this past year.  In fact, Continue reading The Red Dirt Chronicles: A Year in Review Plus Our Top 25 Most-Read Posts

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Barbershop Theology – a lesson from a hot check

Barbershop Theology

I have attended college. I have attended four of them. I learned a lot at college. I have degrees that suggest, “Hey, this guy learned.” But I can never replace the lessons I learned as the shoe-shine boy in my dad’s barbershop.

Hundreds of people came through Caldwell’s Barber Shop over the years.  Between public school and the barber shop I received an education in Apache, Oklahoma. Here’s another story that has helped me understand a little more about the world, myself, and the truth to live by.

Salesmen and “Simpletons”

A unique sub-set of folks that came through Apache viewed us locals as rubes or hayseeds. I was always entertained when some of the locals would oblige the stereotype. They did it purposefully. Most of the people that visited our fair small town were gracious, winsome, and very kind. A few of them were condescending (a few salesmen) they “shore was high themselves.”

As a boy, I was maybe ten or eleven years old, I could be easily impressed by a smooth presentation and a new gizmo with an interesting name. The old timers who loitered in Dad’s barbershop weren’t so easily moved. My job was to observe from the sideline as the pitchman worked the crowd and then watch as one of the locals morphed into Gomer Pyle. Continue reading Barbershop Theology – a lesson from a hot check

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Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.