Memorial Day

Memorial Day Prayer*

In the quiet sanctuaries of our own hearts,
let each of us name and call on the One whose power over us
is great and gentle, firm and forgiving, holy and healing…

You who created us,
who sustain us,
who call us to live in peace,
hear our prayer this day.

Hear our prayer for all who have died,
whose hearts and hopes are known to you alone…

Hear our prayer for those who put the welfare of others
ahead of their own
and give us hearts as generous as theirs…

Hear our prayer for those who gave their lives
in the service of others,
and accept the gift of their sacrifice…

Help us to shape and make a world
where we will lay down the arms of war
and turn our swords into ploughshares
for a harvest of justice and peace…

Comfort those who grieve the loss of their loved ones
and let your healing be the hope in our hearts...

Hear our prayer this day
and in your mercy answer us
in the name of all that is holy.

Amen.

* by Austin Fleming, Priest of the Archdiocese of Boston.
A Concord Pastor

61 Hours by Lee Child

I just finished reading 61 hours on my Kindle. 61 Hours is another novel by Lee Child featuring Jack Reacher,  the 6'5" ex Military Police Officer ascetic who is rough and tough with quick one-liners. Reacher travels around the country carrying only an ATM card and the clothes on his back. He buys new clothes every three days. Typically he travels from place to place by walking.

This time though things are different. I mean some things are the same. He has a real mean bad dude named Plato to deal with. Plato is mean. He is also only 4' 11" tall. One 6' guy called him a midget. That dummy woke up in a hospital downsized to 4' 10". Yeah, who's a midget now, midget?

But this book is different. It is set in South Dakota in the winter in 30 degrees below zero weather. Not only that Reacher isn't walking he bummed a ride on a tour bus. Uh, a tour bus full of old people? Oh Jack, what are you doing? Then the tour bus crashes and Jack finds himself stuck in this small town for several days, about 61 hours. He has to protect people and go after bad guys but its like he's different. The cold bothers him, he even shivers. He gets all moony with a lady who has his old MP job back east. Jack Reacher has turned into a weenie. I mean even I have been in minus 30 degree weather. Big deal.

I don't like this new Jack Reacher one bit. This is supposed to be brain candy for guys, not moping self reflection. I attribute the change in Jack to his wearing panties with too much rayon in them. Somebody told me that too much rayon in cold weather is bad for guys wearing panties. It binds them up too tight or something. I don't know.

Whatever the cause is I didn't much care for this Jack Reacher. No taunts or wise cracks or anything. He doesn't say one witty thing in the whole novel. I give this novel about 2.5 stars out of 4. Its OK but not up to par.

Come on Lee Child, Jack Reacher needs to man up!

Two Week Underwear??? Why???

Just in case anybody is interested. Science has advanced to the point where there is now underwear that can be worn for two weeks.



If you are interested please let me know so that I can make it a point to avoid you.

My question for this product is why do we need it? Personally I like to wear clean clothes every day.

If you want to order here is their web site.

They have a little gender disparity going on with their web site. Here is the is the closeup shot for their women's wear.

In contrast, the closeup of the men's boxers is

So what's the deal? Men are clearly disadvantaged. Women can see how the underwear would fit and men can't. This is just another example of how men are exploited in this culture.

Happy Birthday SuperPizzaBoy!!

Our son is 12 today. Who can believe it?

He was a cute little bugger.




His first year together he and I got to see Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire hit bunches of home runs.


He is very affectionate


Especially with his Mom



The only thing he likes better than pizza is hamburgers with milkshakes


He loves pranks


He is a hit with the girls


He loves his Nana


He is a huge reader


and a coffee house singer


Sometimes he gets a little carried away


Don't ask him about the girl that just hugged him


Happy Birthday Son, we love you very much.

Skywatch Friday - Stormy

Its been a wild and wooly in Oklahoma this Spring but lately the weather has been much more mild.

Check out Skywatch Friday for other views of the sky from everywhere

Watery Wednesday - Bears

Fountain and sculpture of native Oklahoma black bear and her cubs at BOK Plaza on the River Parks in Tulsa.

Check out Watery Wednesday for other water photographs from all over the world.

Hey Kid, is School Out for the Summer?

SuperPizzaBoy says "Yippi, School is Out". This is what he plans on doing this Summer. Sweetie and I are still discussing the rest of it.

The Real Housewives of Oklahoma have their Monday meme going on. And I'm posting it on Tuesday because ... well because that's the way it worked out. Go check them out, they are fun.

My World - Road Trip

Friday was my day off, I was really off, Sweetie had some stuff that she needed to do, SuperPizzaBoy was in school so I had a day to myself. So off I took SPB to school, said bye-bye, pushed him out the door, and headed off to Osage County northwest of Tulsa to do some geocaching and sightseeing.

I found 20 geocaches during some very lonely geocaching. Which is the best kind. I did make some new friends though. First up was this guy:



He was lollygagging across the road so I helped him on across.

Then this guy:



He wasn't too talkative. He wouldn't say a word or even show his face and he wouldn't get off the road either. This country folks are plum ornery sometimes. So I had to move him off myself. (I guess that it is a him.)

On my 19th cache attempt I met this fellow cacher:



I never know what the proper geocaching etiquette is. Most geocachers I know want to find the cache on their own and don't want somebody showing up and saying "here it is." But how long do you wait for them? I mean, come on dude, crap or get off the pot! I have no idea what kind of snake this is but it is beautifully colored and blended in well with his surroundings. I bet somebody out there in My World land knows exactly what it is. I finally plugged and abandoned the cache, as us oilfield trash say, and moved on to the next one.

Well I found 19 caches out of a 38 cache "power trail." (Plus I found one other cache later) I had time to do them all but I had other stuff I wanted to do. I drove up to the Nature Conservancy's Tallgrass Praire Preserve near Pawhuska.



They bought a huge ranch several years ago and started managing the land using controlled praire fires. They also reintroduced Bison. The project has been a success. I found 5 groups of bison in my brief time there.



They are beautiful animals.



There were also birds and wildflowers





And of course, my favorite on a beautiful Spring Oklahoma day, huge skies.



They have a visitor center and lots to see but I want Sweetie and SPB along when I do that so we can discover it together. I just went for a taste you see.

So, next stop is Woolaroc. Woolaroc was Frank Phillip's ranch, the founder of Phillip's Petroleum. Woolaroc has a museum and a wildlife preserve. I went there because I wanted to see more critters.



I saw some white tail deer, some with their fawns:







Time, to head home. Tired but satisfied.

For other views of world from all around the globe, check out "That's My World."

This is My Father's World - Osage County

"This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought."

From "This is My Father's World" by Maltie B. Babcock, 1901

Check out That's Baloney for other pairings.

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I'm loving my new Kindle. Not only is it fun to read books on it but Amazon has a bunch of free books, including Alice in Wonderland. I'm not sure that I've read "Alice" so I decided to give it a go.

It is a really good book. The action starts on the very first page when Alice falls asleep and follows the rabbit down the hole. It is a fast paced book with all sorts of twists and turns.

After I got into it I realized that I had read it or had it read to me a long time ago because I remember a lot of stuff that bothered me. How Alice grows and shrinks. She grows so much at one point that she has to put an arm out the window of a cottage and her foot up the chimney. I found that very very claustrophobic and disturbing as a kid and it still weirds me out.

The other thing that bothered me as a kid was the nonsense spoke by the King and Queen and the judge and many of the other characters. That bothered me also. But hey, after years of listening to Hillary and Bill Clinton, George Bush, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck I am much better at dealing with nonsensical language than what I was as a child.

What really struck me about the book is Alice progressing from being a victim where she just lets stuff happen to her to where at the last she is controlling events in Wonderland. She learns how to control just how big or small she needs to be by eating on the left or right side of the mushroom and she goes from taking everybody's crap to where she tells everybody off. I thought that is very cool.

I give the book three and a half stars out of four.

Way Back When - Faversham, Kent UK

In 1985 while living in Dallas, pre-Sweetie and pre-SuperPizzaBoy I bought a round trip ticket to London and a two week rail pass and took off. No hotel reservations, just me and what I could carry. It was my two week adventure and I had lots and lots of fun and saw all sorts of stuff.

In the morning I would go to the train station of whatever town I was in and see where the trains were going. I'd hop on one that seemed likely and then get off when the Spirit led me and just hoped that I would find a place to stay. I always did. I went all over England and Scotland. The people were great. All I had to do was ask and I would get whatever directions, advice, and aid that I needed. Back then the television show "Dallas" was big, even in England and when folks found out I was from Dallas, some would almost swoon. I found the English people to be very nice and polite and very talkative if you got them started.

I stopped in Faversham briefly to get something to eat and look around a bit. A couple of policeman stopped and chatted with me and told me where to go eat and what to go see. They were the friendliest cops I have ever met.



I didn't take very many pictures. Remember when you had to worry about film? Poor old Al Gore was feverishly working on creating the internet so we could post all sorts of pictures to show each other.

Anyway, everything worked out great. The cops sent me an Italian restaurant where I had a great meal. I walked around and looked at a few places, talked with a few more people, took a few pictures, and got back on the train and went on to London that night.



Anyways I liked Faversham the best of all the places I visited. It didn't have big cathedrals or museums and I had never heard of it before but it had the nicest people I met on my trip.

Skywatch Friday - Before All Hell Broke Loose

I usually go run on Wednesday evenings. Weather was coming in and I decided to put in a few miles on the Arkansas River trails. I thought it was just going to rain. Once I started running it got very overcast and dark so I cut my run short so as not to get caught in a storm.

Before I made the 20 minute drive home the tornado sirens came on. We had several storm systems blow through the area. I don't think any tornadoes touchded down but my wife had our safe room cleared out and put the kid and the dogs and cats in it. We had a fun two hours waiting for all the weather to clear.

Check out Skywatch Friday for visions of the sky from all over the world.

Wordless Wednesday - Impenetrable

Son and I planted a geocache near downtown Tulsa a few weeks ago. Everything was cool until I got an email from a couple of intrepid explorers who said that they couldn't find the cache because of the impenetrable grass.

Worldless Wednsday

Ruby Tuesday

Downtown Oklahoma City Construction

Check out Ruby Tuesday for visions of Red from everywhere.

RHOK Monday - The Future

The Real Housewives of Oklahoma have their Mclinky Monday Meme going on. This week's "theme of the meme" is:

"Look into the future. You've spent your life taking care of everyone else, but now the kids are gone and it's just you and your spouse. What do you do now?"



Retirement is not an option any time soon. We have a 12 year old with autism, SuperPizzaBoy, and how independent he will be is a very open question and weighs heavily on our minds.  So I can see me working for another ten years. However, I'm in the energy business and its just best to not count on longevity. It is a commodity based business and its fortunes wax and wane with a million different factors. (Just like any other industry!)

But anyway, lets just say we get our son educated and lets say I can retire.  I can't see moving anywhere out of Tulsa. Tulsa has its problems but I just cannot see turning our back on our life here and moving somewhere else. Also, my wife Sweetie is very plugged into the community here via her volunteer work and is younger than me and she may not want to move and start all over somewhere else.

I am going to stay up a little later every night and sleep in a little later. No more getting up at 5:15 every morning. Does anybody really think I like that?

I plan on having lunch with Sweetie a lot at a lot of different places.

I am going to travel more. I am going to visit my family more and go see stuff that I always wanted to go see and do things that I always wanted to do. I want to go see Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater for example and I want to take a float trip down the Grand Canyon. I want to see some broadway plays on Broadway.

I'm going to have a job. I plan on being a volunteer advocate for families with special needs who are trying to get the services their children need from their school districts. It kills me the way school district administrations screw over families  while avoiding their legal responsibilities to provide an appropriate education to their children. I think that I have a lot of skills that can brought to bear to help families deal with that. I am a professional negotiator by trade. I think I'm pretty good at it. I am not a yeller and screamer, I'm a problem solver.

Cirque Dreams Illumination

Saturday afternon we left SuperPizzaBoy in the hands of a capable sitter and Sweetie and I ventured downtown to the Performing Arts Center to see Cirque Dreams Illumination.

It was amazing. The things I saw I didn't know people are capable of doing. If I hadn't seen it live I would think it was done on a computer.

(Photo from their website)

Their own website best describes the production:

"CIRQUE DREAMS ILLUMINATION blends world renowned imagination, critically acclaimed theatrical innovation and breathtaking presentation into a story that illuminates a city of everyday people, workers and pedestrians into feats of disbelief. Marvel as 27 world-class artists illuminate objects, balance on wires, leap structures and redefine flight with entertaining variety, comedy and extraordinary occurrences that reinvent everyday life. Urban acrobatics, dazzling choreography and brilliant illusions are ignited by special effects performed to a stylish original score of jazz, salsa, ballroom, pop and trendy beats from the streets."

I hate to be such a shill but they are telling the truth. We saw some unbelievable things yesterday done in a very stylish and entertaining manner. Today is its last day in Tulsa.



I give it four stars out of four.

The Wolf: How One German Raider Terrorized the Allies in the Most Epic Voyage of WWI

This non-fiction book by Richard Gulliatt and Peter Hohnen is just amazing. It is about a German merchant ship converted over to a disguised warship during World War I. It left Germany loaded with heavy guns, torpedos, and mines in order to prey upon merchant ships and mine harbors.

It was wildly successful. It sunk either by direct action or its mines almost 30 ships. It would come upon ships at sea and force them to surrender, transfer the crew and passengers and anything worth taking off the captured vessel and then sink it. Since it was a merchant ship it lots of room for prisoners. The ship never released any prisoners because they were afraid the prisoners would spill the beans about the ship.

One reason the ship was so successful was because its very existence embarrassed the allies so they kept it a secret. So no merchant ships were ever warned about its presence nor were they warned that many of the harbors of the world were mined by the ship.

The ship was at sea for over a year and made a triumphant return to Germany with over 700 prisoners in its hold.

A side story is just how gentlemanly naval war was back then. When a ship was captured the Wolf's captain would come over and introduce himself to the captain of the captured ship. A big meal was ordered up for everybody and afterward the prisoners were transferred over to the Wolf and it would take several days to transfer the coal, cargo, food and such and then everybody would gather up on deck to watch the captured ship be blown up.

The captured officers would be provided an orderly and would be given the run of the ship. After the war many of the former prisoners went to Germany to look up the old buddies, the crewmen of the Wolf.

Contrast that with World War II where Germany again had Commerce Raiders as these ships were called but their captains would open fire on unarmed passenger ships and leave everybody, men, women, and children, in the sea as the raider steamed off.

This is a great read. I give it four stars out of four.