source Faith Phillips is an author who resides in Proctor, Oklahoma. An attorney by profession, she left her job and metropolitan life to return home and craft her first novel: Ezekiel’s Wheels (2012).
https://thebarefootbeat.com/about-me-2/ Faith occasionally pens her thoughts on Facebook and I felt they should be shared with more than her social network.
Lorazepam Buy Online So there we were, see, one night in a cabin deep in the woods somewhere between Miami and Wyandotte, OK, sitting in the living room recording her anecdotes while the rest of our Every Point team was enjoying the cool night air on the porch. In the middle of our recording session, a whippoorwill got so close we captured its call and added those haunting sounds to her introduction.
enter All told, there are about thirty recorded musings and we look forward to hearing them on public radio very soon…or perhaps here too.
https://oregonsurgicalwellness.com/bras-for-cause/ There’s just something about a Little League ballpark filled with players in their earliest years. Innocence, mixed with invested family members, mixed with the sounds of 200 voices having at least 100 different conversations…carried by the wind on a warm day across the grass, sand and past the concession stands. Being there made my muscles relax. I began craving Sour Punch Straws.
Pregabalin 300mg Buy Online Tee ball is the epitome of cool. And so was the family we met at the Bethel Acres ball park on our “Highway 9” Every Point run.
follow link We met Cody Laughlin, his wife and their two boys on the bleachers waiting for their turn to take the field and warm up. They were watching a cousin, “right there – number five…,” finish her softball game as they spoke with us.
go site The Laughlin family’s life revolves around baseball.
follow url Cody served as the spokesperson for the family and as the coach for the team on which his two sons played. His wife also served as coach, and several times throughout our conversation he relegated his own role and validated her.
https://nerdexp.com/resogun/ She helps…she makes sure who’s up, make sure they have their bats, gloves, it’s the biggest part. If they get out of order, they’re out…and I can’t coach.
Buy Clonazepam Without Prescription Is she an assistant coach? No, she’s more than that – She’s probably the most important coach – I can tell them to run all day, but if I didn’t have her in there, I – we couldn’t play baseball.
enter site And if they “couldn’t play baseball,” there might be a fairly large space in their lives. Cody played for Dale High School, his team garnering several championships. His father also played for Dale High school, also bringing home State.
https://hsprental.com/request-a-quote/ And his two sons? He coaches because he wants them to learn to play the right way. To learn the life lessons that come along with the game. He described his high school coach as tough, scary, a stickler for excellence. But he wants his children to enjoy the game, perhaps with a better balance.
go to link I played too much – I’d play a baseball tournament, come home, get a horse, and go to a rodeo. I did too much as a kid – I don’t want them to have that. I just want them to be a kid.
When talking with Laughlin you can tell this “let a child be a child” philosophy is deeply ingrained. We asked him what he wished people understood about children and baseball.
Different kids have different abilities. You shouldn’t PUSH a kid to play a sport – if they’re not good at it, let them try something else. It’s like the parents try to live through the kid. Let them be a kid; live their own life.
[Parents] don’t understand athletic abilities are different in different kids…there are kids out there that are unhappy, they don’t want to be there.
Cody didn’t mince words. It might have been the first conversation I talked more than our participant. I asked him if he could share a “funny tee ball” story. He said,
I have a kid that’s four on my team, and he will go out there in the outfield, sit down and pick flowers.
Who’s he give them to?
He throws them in the air…
Do you have a favorite ump?
I don’t like any of them.
While we were still laughing at his umpire stories and all the tee ball rules issues, their field cleared and they began to pack their things.
As we took a different position to watch his team play catch I noticed Cody’s wife quietly set up the dugout. Under the bench she placed a plastic container with each player’s name. Inside was their equipment, perhaps a snack, and other items. By the time we headed to the car the dugout was more organized than my kitchen and ready for the game to begin.
I’m not sure if Cody’s two boys will continue the legacy of another State Championship run at their own school, but I am sure of one thing: their parents will support them, regardless if they like baseball or choose another path.
****
Field notes – We’re picking up Rachel’s first set of 4×5 large format processed negatives and scans from a shop in Norman next week. Can’t wait to see them. April is living and breathing wedding season videos right now. And Kelly is celebrating the formation of a non-profit corporation…she has hopes of eventually spreading the expenses of this project around to a few other places than just her own checking account.
Kelly Roberts, April Kirby and Rachel Apple (l to r) relax in the Oklahoma Talking Co studio prior to taping an OKC Show podcast. Instagram Photo by Jason Baffrey.
Just before Independence Day, our Every Point on the Map team headed to Midwest City for a visit with Jason Baffrey on The OKC Show. The Oklahoma Talking Co. studio was stocked with bottled water and creative people, doing their part to build interesting content for those interested in learning more about Oklahoma-based projects.
Thanks, Jason and Nathan, for being such gracious hosts. And best wishes to your company as you follow your own creative passions!
Lowell Caneday is a Regents Professor for Leisure Studies at Oklahoma State University. But during our conversation, he was a prophet. He delivered his personal oracle of The Great Outdoors Education, People and Their Connection to Places over a “Wake Up Breakfast” at Granny’s Kitchen in Stillwater.
The only difference between Caneday (pronounced: can-uh-day) and his wife’s order was the meat: he ordered sausage, she preferred bacon. The atmosphere was so over-the-top American Diner we had trouble with our audio that day. Just when our discussants got to a point they were making, the waitress kindly asked to fill our coffee cups, dishes clanked, or the clatter of flatware against stoneware covered their response.
But the breakfast noise pollution didn’t dampen our conversation. Caneday and his wife Diane were in their element. Granny’s Kitchen was a comfort zone, so much so that when friends or former students come to town, this was where they are taken to catch up.
The Canedays were so kind, it felt like WE were catching up…and we had just met them. Discussion flowed freely. And one of Caneday’s most comfortable topics was the science of recreation, parks and how people learn in natural environments.
We didn’t know it at the time because Stillwater was the first stop on our route, but the subject of “how people learn in their natural environments” set the stage for every subsequent location on our “Dam Run” in one way or another.
In Pryor Creek, we learned that Google “came to town” because of the abundant water supply and their local school system has received a windfall because of that change. Larry in Adair reminisced about the disappearing wildlife while our Strang family set the stage for their own “sense of place” by watching the sunsets from a local bridge. The Grand River Dam Authority has a full staff helping assist families in their trek to enjoy the lake, while Russell in Disney rails against the establishment for the right of Oklahoma taxpayers to have access to their State Park lands. And of course, the view from Sonny’s back porch in Spavinaw looking across the lakes and streams completed our education.
At one point, Caneday mentioned something else we later witnessed: the Great Outdoors levels the playing field for people of all cultures and races.
He told a story of how he and his wife met, sharing the intersection of outdoor leisure education and the need for integration “back in the day”:
I had moved from Minnesota to Texas to go to school; I knew all of her friends, she knew my friends. I didn’t like her friends, she didn’t like my friends. I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me.
My senior project from college was development planning in the Department of Recreation for the city (of Longview). Their idea of recreation was – boys played sports. Girls were cheerleaders. So I had proposed a very different kind of recreation program for the city – an interracial program. This was two years after the civil rights act was passed. [My proposal] was interracial and inter-gender [focused], boys, girls, it didn’t matter. The city bought the idea. And, I needed to hire a staff.
I was rooming with one of the guys [Diane] knew – because her best friend was dating him. He suggested getting together, so I said ‘Bring her over, I’ll cook dinner.’ We spent that evening together, but that morning I discovered she had applied for one of these staff positions.
I ended up doing exactly what I’m not supposed to do. I ended up dating an employee – – that’s probably as good as indication…how joy happens little by litte. I end up telling my students, ‘I violated most federal laws, because you end up dating your own employee – is that harassment? Is it a power play?’ But, in fact, it worked out very very well. She supervised one of the parks in that program – – they still have that program.
The summer that we were dating they had a bus bombing, because they were going to be busing the kids.
The city of Longview had a swimming pool – – but it was Whites only. When an African American could swim in that pool, the whites quit coming. So they built a pool north of highway 80 that became the whites pool – [and then African Americans needed a pool] so they built another one by Martin Luther King street – so the “mixed pool” was never used.
I was a kid from Minnesota – – I was like “what’s the deal?”
There was a great deal of information wrapped up in that small illustration. Preconceived notions of race, gender and class were broken down by offering opportunities through outdoor, recreational settings by working and playing together. It’s funny, but because the work was so valuable and enriching, Caneday justified dating an employee he hired – because of love…and love of the outdoors. And it makes perfect sense to me.
Trees don’t discriminate. People can hike, swim, fish, our play outdoors because the birds and grass have their own beautiful diversity. And in his lifetime, Caneday has mentored approximately 60 doctoral students through their PhD process, each of them studying some element of outdoor and recreational life. It’s clear he loves his students. Breakfast was filled with illustrations of students stopping at their home when visiting Stillwater.
It’s also clear he loves his wife.
Caneday married someone he met while doing his work. Someone who has struggled with Multiple Sclerosis, who survived an auto accident involving a semi-truck. And who fills in on the phone when Caneday isn’t around to give advice to former students:
Jeff Ziger – Chicago, Jewish, semi-religious – married a German Lutheran. When he was about to make a major decision he would call [me] and say, “Okay, you’re closer to God than I am…help me with this decision.”
“So, one day I wasn’t there, and Diane answered the phone, and Jeff said, well Lowell wouldn’t have married somebody who didn’t have a conduit to God…” so they talked it out.
And at the end of breakfast, it was also clear that – although Lowell Caneday wasn’t born in Oklahoma – he had found his own sense of place here in our state.
Every place has its unique characteristics. Ecologists say, “Oklahoma is the most diverse state in the nation – from a geologic and ecosystems perspective.” “We say – this land is your land – we know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand.”
There’s something about being comfortable in the land. Yeah – you learn. You learn about what’s out there in these parks…the tremendous diversity – from a Beavers Bend to a Black Mesa …but it IS a place to learn.
He gave an example when I asked, “If all the parks could be the professors, what would they teach us?”
I’ll give you one example that was in the news – – Foss Lake Oklahoma. Right about this time last year, a gentleman was out walking and came upon some exposed bones. Turns out it’s a mammoth. So, inside the park OU began a dig.
Sometime in February, park staff was doing something using sonar – getting a sense of the lake depths. They found two objects…they were cars that had been lost in the 1960s.
At that point, Caneday paused and got a far away look in his eyes.
When we began this project, we created a Kickstarter project to fund a small start up. One of the levels we offered was that if a person donated a fairly substantial amount, they could choose a person in one town in Oklahoma with whom we would document our discussion. Michael Bradley from Eastern Kentucky University saw our note on Twitter, donated to our project, and identified Lowell Caneday as the person he wanted us to speak with. Caneday was his major professor at OSU…he was giving back, in a sense, from some of what he had received in his education.
Bradley also asked that if we would consider him suggesting a second person, to speak with Terry Aylward in Pryor Creek. He had attended Boy Scouts with Aylward’s son.
It’s clear from this information that Michael Bradley learned enough during outdoors recreation that he wanted to pass those lessons along with us, our readers, and the students he teaches now that he’s the professor. Take care, Michael…we enjoyed exploring your turf during our Dam Run series. ~ The EPOTM Team
Downtown Stillwater during another time and another place.Rachel, our photographer, sitting on a stump by a historical home just down the street from our breakfast stop.Me. I guess we thought that stump was pretty cool. At this point, I’m wondering where April was. This was her first stop with us, and it’s likely she was wondering the same thing: Why is this stump important?Out takes…
I’ve purchased three maps of Oklahoma since we started our project last year.
The first was my inspiration map. Resting on a rack in a 39th Expressway 7-11 minding its own business, I picked it up, counted the towns, and officially committed to the premise of what we now call “Every Point on the Map.” I was going to have a meaningful conversation with at least one person in each of Oklahoma’s 594 town or city.