Dyrinda Tyson-Jones, Mustang News

It's never good news when Westboro Baptist Church rolls into town — but you don't need me to tell you that. Westboro members link the misery in the world to what they consider America's casual acceptance of homosexuality.
To make that point, they take their dog and- pony show across the country, brandishing signs that might make the princes of high taste on "Jackass" turn away and wince.
Westboro Baptist Church feeds on grief and publicity, seeking out stages large and small to sate their collective appetite.
They gathered outside the memorial service for TV's Mr. Rogers in 2003, a ripped American flag underfoot. They picketed at Elizabeth Edwards' funeral last year, siding firmly with the cancer that killed her. And earlier this year the idea of the Westboro clown car pulling up to the funeral for a little girl killed in a Tucson shooting spree sent Arizona lawmakers into overdrive. They managed to craft, pass and sign into law a bill creating a "funeral protection law" banning protests within 300 yards of a service — all in record time, all with nary squawk about First Amendment rights. Emotion may have trumped constitutionality for the day.
And military funerals. They love military funerals.
Members exercise their constitutionally protected right to free speech — reaffirmed by a Supreme Court ruling in March — by waving their usual signs and thanking God for dead troops, dealing a double blow to families already struggling with grief and pain.
How do you face such hate?
You do what people here did Monday. As the family and friends of Sgt. Mycal Prince gathered at the Bridge AG to say one last, long, sad goodbye, crowds lined both sides of state Highway 152 near the church. Some came with signs, some with flags and some with simple respect.
Prince, a Minco police officer in civilian life, died Sept. 15 in Afghanistan during his third tour of duty. Many of the people who lined the street Monday also turned out last week as Prince's journey across the world neared its end in a motorcade bearing his casket through town. And some of the faces along the way that day reflected genuine pain.
Lives snatched away too soon are never easy to contemplate. "God's will" just can't encompass it.
Americans disagree on so much right now, including just whose god is in the driver's seat, but we all seem to come together when it comes to Westboro Baptist Church. That may be their sole redeeming quality — they unite Americans in disgust.
Westboro's message is ugly, their penchant for self-promotion far outstrips any biblical concepts they might espouse, and they find no friends as they go from town to town. They elicited no love here either, with less-than-cordial sentiments bellowed back and forth Monday as law enforcement struggled to keep both sides contained.
But that scene was dwarfed by the larger crowd swelling along state Highway 152, watching and waiting, flags and signs in hand. Most of us probably didn't know Mycal Prince personally, but we all respect and mourn the sacrifice his family has to bear. And we all understand one thing, beautifully and simply expressed in a sign a woman held up out there Monday: GOD LOVES ALL.
That's how you face the hate. You smother it in love.

Ted Streuli, The Journal Record

Two pit bull puppies in Sheila Ingram's care injured a neighbor, who complained to Oklahoma City officials. No one disputes that, but the extent of the injury and aggressiveness of the puppies remains a topic of debate. A municipal court judge will get a second chance to sort it out next week.
The more important part of Ingram's story is that she had the fortitude to challenge a flawed systern. And she won.
Ingram received a form that said she should turn up in Oklahoma City Municipal Court at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 30, 2009. There was no mention that the city intended to try her at that time. Tried she was, though, found guilty, and fined $1,000. The puppies were to be euthanized.
Ingram thought that was unfair. She appeared as directed, but was not ready to defend herself in a trial. The Court of Criminal Appeals didn't think it was fair, either. The justices overturned the conviction and sent the matter back to the trial court for another go.
It's a rare resident who will invest the time and money to challenge such a system, especially when a family pet is being held at an animal shelter while the case drags on. It's much easier to just pay the fine.
It's also tough to fight the city when the judge refuses to hear you out, and clearly Ingram wasn't heard. Instead, she was tossed out of the courtroom. We wanted to ask municipal judge Fred Austin about that, but he refused to take our call. We were told he's only willing to talk to attorneys, a pretty haughty position for a jurist trying the lowest- level cases, and perhaps that's another flaw in this particular systern. Not even our state Supreme Court justices have such conversational limitations.
Sometimes the right thing comes in a big, flashy package, such as a death-row inmate being exonerated through DNA after years of legal wrangling. And sometimes it turns up as micro-justice, wrapped up in a middle-age woman who cares more about the fairness of the process than the penalty assessed.
Ingram may be found guilty again, but her willingness to fight over process will push the city to change its notification procedure, which will prevent others from landing in a courtroom patently unprepared for a trial.
Good for you, Sheila Ingram.

JOHN M. WYLIE III, The Oologah Lake Leader

Directors of Rural Water District No. 4 may vote as early as 2 p.m. Friday, during a rescheduled regular meting, on the Seven Ready Plan from OTEMS ambulance district.
The plan, already being implemented for OTEMS district residents served by Verdigris Valley Electric Cooperative, would allow residents of the ambulance district who are not members of VVEC to be billed for the $7 monthly fee on their water bill.
As in the VVEC program, any RWD4 tap holder who wants to opt out of the program could do so.
Those who decide to participate will be guaranteed to have no out-of pocket expenses for ambulance calls in the district. The $7 monthly fee will provide the district with financial stability.
We hope most of our readers will choose to remain in the program through VVEC, and that the water board will approve the program Friday. There is no downside.
Those who for whatever reasons don’t want to participate can simply opt out.
Those who do participate will be giving themselves and their families the peace of mind of knowing that there will be a paramedic ambulance available quickly if they need it, and that they won't face a financial shock from insurance co-pay if they use it.
The alternative, discussed at a public forum Tuesday night, is bleak. Because of antiquated ambulance financing laws, OTEMS' property tax millage is capped at 3 mills under an article of the state constitution approved by voters in 1976 and never changed since.
Costs of ambulance service have soared since then while insurance, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have declined. The state has lost at least 50 ambulance services in the past decade and OTEMS is now on the list of nine at-risk services.
It is using a $150,000 line of credit in between property tax payments and the bank has expressed reservations about renewing the one that expires in July 2012.
It has no way to replace aging ambulance that should be retired this year.
It can't give employees raises.
The problem is not of OTEMS' making.
It isn't because it provides poor patient care. Patient care is excellent.
It isn't because it does non-emergency patient transfers. Those generate cash flow.
It isn't because of bad employees. OTEMS has lost just two full time employees in recent years, one to medical school and one to the Tulsa Fire Department. (That one has come back on a part-time basis).
It is simply because you can't run a quality ambulance service on a beans and rice budget.
If the plan isn't implemented, OTEMS faces the very real risk of being shrunk to a shell of itself or even shut down.
Despite coverage by two newspapers, two television stations and a half dozen web sites, only 15 average citizens attended Tuesday night's meeting. (Another 15 were public officials of one kind or another.)
Most either opposed the plan or had questions, but 15 out of around 2,800 affected is a very small group.
Jack Bogart, the VVEC trustee serving most of the OTEMS district, said he'd received just three phone calls about the plan. He said the other two trustees with OTEMS residents in their district, had received zero.
After two months of study, we hope the water board is ready to act Friday. It would be a great Christmas gift for our community.

BRIAN BLANSETT, The Shawnee News-Star

Ho, ho, ho everyone.
I'll probably be back home by the time you read this, but I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed my trip to the Shawnee area this year.
And — let me clear this up right away — I'm so very sorry about Blitzen's little accident as we were flying across I-4o. Talk about a Christmas memory for the family in that white Ford.
Sometimes, I swear, I don't know what comes over those reindeer. Anyway, I left something extra under the tree for that family. I hope it makes us even.
All in all, the kids in the Shawnee area did ok in 2011. There was a strong surge in Niceness in November and early December and Nice finished up 17 percent on the Naughty/Nice index compared to last year.
Consequently, it took a lot of overtime for the elves to finish all the requests for iPhones and Xboxes and now their union wants to renegotiate their contract in January.
I don't know how that will go, but we'll need to have it worked out by March. That's when we're planning a garage sale to liquidate some inventory. You'd be surprised how much stuff we've accumulated.
Back in the '5os, we way over-produced on Davy Crockett coonskin caps and I couldn't begin to tell you how many Furbies were left after Y2K. So, if you were naughty as a kid, there's a good chance we still have some of the items in stock that you wanted but couldn't get back then. Stop by the North Pole and we'll make you a deal.
And a special shoutout: Payton, thank you for leaving the chocolate chip cookies for me. I was really needing a snack by the time I got to your house. How did you know they're my favorites?
They were really good and I'm putting you at the top of the Nice list for next year. I ho-ho-hope you like the bicycle. Make sure you wear a helmet when you ride it.
Remember, everyone, be good and I'll see you next year.

ANN McDONALD, The Countywide and Sun

Last week we experienced the worst behavior imaginable from the sports world as well as the some good stuff from others involved in athletics.
We can't ignore the horrible situation at Penn State University. It's everywhere, on the sports page to the news to the internet to the local coffee shop. No question that more is yet to come out. What we do know is that a man has been arrested for molesting several young boys. And because there seemed to be a cover-up, several high profile men lost their jobs.
Love him or hate him, Joe Paterno has been implicated as part of the mess if for no other reason than the alleged criminal was a friend and employee. The story of this man who had coached at the same school for 46 years has polarized the country, even among those who have no interest in college football. Even if he's ultimately exonerated from any sort of serious involvement, the man has lost his "legend" status and will likely only be remembered by some for this event.
It's about rules, and it appears many were broken along the way. The boys who were involved are robbed of their innocence. The assistant coaches as well as the athletic director, college officials all the way up to the school's president, the president of what was probably a fine youth organization, and possibly even some lawmakers and a judge, are taking serious hits. Yet the man who allegedly broke these rules of common decency denied earlier this week that he was as bad as he was being made out to be. Another one of those "I made some bad choices" excuses.
There's another case about rules being broken. This one's closer to home. A couple of weeks ago it was announced that Guthrie High School was found to have used an ineligible player and was being forced to forfeit all the games the boy had played in. For many schools across the state that might not mean much, but the Blue Jays were undefeated and picked by many to win the Class 5A state championship.
The rule this boy broke declared that if a student moves from one district to another, certain papers have to be filled out stating it was a legal move, not something just to facilitate the youngster's moving into a better athletic opportunity.
Years ago that was a real problem. Many boys I knew suddenly showed up in a new school and not only enhanced their new teams but their chances at college scholarships. But it was abused and it wasn't fair, so the OSSAA began implementing rules about transfers and moves.
The mother of this boy was a teacher at one of the Guthrie schools and the family decided to move there from Prague. They bought a house, put their old one up for sale last winter and this fall he went out for football. Trouble was, their old house never sold and they let an older brother live in it while he worked in Shawnee. That makes it appear "legally" that they were maintaining two residences. That's against the rules.
The player and his team were devastated. Nobody had intended to break the rules.
The OSSAA met last week and said the ruling had to stand, that they had to enforce the rules. Then they met again to listen to the Blue Jays' longtime coach. He said it was all his fault, that he simply hadn't taken care of the proper paperwork. He begged the governing body to punish him and not the players.
The OSSAA listened, considered, re-voted and agreed with the coach. The rule breaker should be punished and not the innocent. So Guthrie got to play in the playoffs (and won big time!) while their coach sat in the stands. He must have been very proud of his players for "sucking it up" as they say, and playing through the adversity. The players must have been very proud of their coach for taking the responsibility. And the OSSAA board members must be sleeping well for doing the right thing.
Doesn't it make you wish everybody would take responsibility for their actions?

Ted Streuli, The Journal Record

The Oklahoma Supreme Court justices will soon decide whether to further restrict access to public information. We understand the court's concerns, but the proposed rule needs extensive work. As it now reads, it is much too broad and could create a mudslide of unanticipated consequences.
The proposed rule would keep some personal information out of the public domain. Sensitive information, such as Social Security and driver's license numbers, would be represented only by their final four digits in court filings. The names of minors would also be disguised.
Those ideas would protect people without creating a tsunami of new problems.
But the rule changes as proposed would also shorten birth dates to just the year and addresses to the city of residence. Those pieces of information are critical to avoiding confusion regarding the identity of the person involved in a civil or criminal proceeding. While those limitations may protect one person from identity theft, the ambiguity created would just as readily instigate severe problems for someone who has the misfortune to share a name and birth year. There is more than one John Smith in Oklahoma City who was born in 1965, for example. If one were to be charged with rape, it would be impossible to know whether it was the John Smith who lives next door or the one who lives across town. It would also be difficult to determine if the John Smith trying to get you to invest in a new venture is the same John Smith being sued by a host of creditors.
The proposal suggests that litigants could file two versions of their pleadings, a full copy for the court and a redacted copy for the public. That system is rife with potential for errors and abuse. Further, the proposed rule change would allow anyone filing a document to ask that it be sealed.
The wording on that point is vague and does not address the new circumstances under which a judge would grant such a request, leaving the interpretation open to the argument that all such requests must be granted. Pulling a curtain around our justice system is contrary to America's principles; we have an open, public format for excellent reasons, primarily because it protects the innocent.
We empathize with those worried about identity theft, but the proposal before the court would be killing a fly with a bazooka

David Burgess, Vinita Daily Journal

Harold Camping says the world is going to end Friday - probably.
That could be worrisome, if he hadn't already been wrong twice before.
Camping predicted doom in 1994, but somehow the world survived.
Then he predicted doom May 21 of this year, but the world again dodged the bullet. Camping later blamed the world surviving on some faulty calculations on his part, some miserable math. You know, two and two equals four and a half.
But Camping says he's got his math down right this time. The world is toast Friday.
Maybe.
Maybe?
You've got to do better than that, Harold. You've got to give me something I can work with.
Because my wife said last weekend the lawn needs mowing and I said Friday. But, of course, that was before I heard that the world was going to end Friday. That puts a whole new spin on things.
Because if the world is going to end Friday, I'd be pretty stupid to waste my time mowing the lawn. After all, who's going to care if I've got a nice-looking lawn when the world is going down the tubes?
And another thing: Our dryer died Sunday. Just up and died after only 17 years of service. My wife says she's found the perfect replacement for - a drumroll, please - only $950. It's a Maytag and it could last 30 years.
Sounds good. But we were going to buy it you guessed it - on Friday. And if the world is going to end Friday, we not only won't get 30 years out of it, we'll be lucky if we get 30 minutes out of it before we're history.
Now, this is probably of small concern to Harold Camping, who runs a little outfit called the Family Radio ministry in California. Well, actually it's not so little anymore.
According to the latest tax returns, it now has assets of more than $104 million. That's a lot of money. But the odd thing is, that's $30 million more than Family Radio had in the collection plate a year earlier.
In other words, Harold Camping's off-the-wall, end of-the-world prediction for May 21 turned out to be a gold mine - even though it was wrong, bad math or no.
Which makes me wonder: If a prophet of doom can be wrong and still have millions of dollars thrown his way, why not be wrong a lot? Say, every five or six months or so.
It could be very, very profitable. A wise man, Jake, of Jake Says fame in the Journal, says don't ever let anybody tell you that you can't take it with you. Because they might try to take yours with them.
Which is apparently how Family Radio came up with the extra $30 million this year. Some people believed Camping's doomsday forecast and thought, "If the world's going to end, why do we need this money? We'll give it to Harold and the boys."
But the world didn't end. And Harold and the boys still have the money, minus what they spent on billboards and such advertising the end of the world.
The Bible covered this thousands of years ago: Despite what some men may say - and it's always men saying it; no woman ever predicts the end of the world - nobody knows when the world is going to go belly up.
So when it comes to my lawn, it comes down to this, to paraphrase Hamlet: To mow or not to mow? That is the question.
And here's the way I've got it figured: I can listen to Harold Camping and let the lawn go Friday, with his assurance that the crack of doom is coming any minute. But he's been wrong twice and I don't have to live with him.
Or I can listen to my wife, saddle up and start mowing. I do have to live with her.
Hmmm. That's a tough one.
A real tough one.
"Honey, where's the gas can? And don't buy the $950 washer that'll only last 30 years. Buy the $1,250 one that'll last 40 years."
That will take us through at least a couple dozen more end-of-the-world predictions.

Mike McCormick, Shawnee News-Star

THE ISSUE: City commission board retreat
OUR OPINION: They should stay in Shawnee
Shawnee city commissioners may be making a huge mistake. They will be in Stillwater tonight and most of Monday for what is being billed as a Board of City Commissioners' retreat.
Ostensibly, they are getting away from Shawnee so they can discuss the capital improvement projects, figuring few if any of their constituents will travel to Stillwater to attend the meeting which begins at 9 a.m. Monday in the Joullian Room at the Atherton Hotel there. So much for their campaign of "Shop Shawnee" while they talk about the public's business basically among themselves.
The public is leery enough of elected officials at most every level of government. Going away to a community more than 5o miles north of here during daytime hours on a workday will limit who can attend. That will do nothing but create even more suspicion.
Even though the Sunday evening portion calls for dining and visiting, and indicates there is no anticipation of business to be discussed or considered during dinner or afterward, a quorum (at least four) is expected.
It's foolish for the public not to think discussion of city business will be discussed at least informally during dinner. This venue provides the commissioners an opportunity to talk about capital improvements or anything else away from the public.
Monday morning's agenda states "Discuss projects previously recommended by Subcommittee, projects that arise in community discussions and projects previously submitted by staff in budget discussion, including whether projects should be submitted to voters or funded in some other way, and, if submitted, in what amounts and how to fund them. No formal action will be taken at this meeting."
What the commission is doing is completely legal. If it weren't, City Attorney Mary Ann Karns would have advised the commissioners they couldn't do it.
The appearance of this stinks, though. The commission, rather than holding this retreat here in Shawnee, wants away from the public the commissioners represent in order to hash out the projects, discuss how they want to fund them and amongst them, without taking formal action, really make the decisions which could impact local residents.
Shawnee's citizenry has the right to hear that discussion without having to travel to another community to do so.
The public's business should be discussed in Shawnee, not in Stillwater on the OSU campus.
And, it should be done at a time when it is much more convenient to afford the opportunity for citizens to attend than 9 a.m. on Monday.
Also, so much for the city emphasizing the need for citizens to spend their money in Shawnee when city officials and commissioners don't seem to have any qualms of going out of town themselves.
That's a little strange, though, considering the city's sales tax receipts have declined the past two months and sales tax revenue is nearly $200,000 off budget for this fiscal year.

Ted Streuli, The Journal Record

Two pit bull puppies in Sheila Ingram's care injured a neighbor, who complained to Oklahoma City officials. No one disputes that, but the extent of the injury and aggressiveness of the puppies remains a topic of debate. A municipal court judge will get a second chance to sort it out next week.
The more important part of Ingram's story is that she had the fortitude to challenge a flawed systern. And she won.
Ingram received a form that said she should turn up in Oklahoma City Municipal Court at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 30, 2009. There was no mention that the city intended to try her at that time. Tried she was, though, found guilty, and fined $1,000. The puppies were to be euthanized.
Ingram thought that was unfair. She appeared as directed, but was not ready to defend herself in a trial. The Court of Criminal Appeals didn't think it was fair, either. The justices overturned the conviction and sent the matter back to the trial court for another go.
It's a rare resident who will invest the time and money to challenge such a system, especially when a family pet is being held at an animal shelter while the case drags on. It's much easier to just pay the fine.
It's also tough to fight the city when the judge refuses to hear you out, and clearly Ingram wasn't heard. Instead, she was tossed out of the courtroom. We wanted to ask municipal judge Fred Austin about that, but he refused to take our call. We were told he's only willing to talk to attorneys, a pretty haughty position for a jurist trying the lowest- level cases, and perhaps that's another flaw in this particular systern. Not even our state Supreme Court justices have such conversational limitations.
Sometimes the right thing comes in a big, flashy package, such as a death-row inmate being exonerated through DNA after years of legal wrangling. And sometimes it turns up as micro-justice, wrapped up in a middle-age woman who cares more about the fairness of the process than the penalty assessed.
Ingram may be found guilty again, but her willingness to fight over process will push the city to change its notification procedure, which will prevent others from landing in a courtroom patently unprepared for a trial.
Good for you, Sheila Ingram.

Dyrinda Tyson-Jones, Mustang News

It's never good news when Westboro Baptist Church rolls into town — but you don't need me to tell you that. Westboro members link the misery in the world to what they consider America's casual acceptance of homosexuality.
To make that point, they take their dog and- pony show across the country, brandishing signs that might make the princes of high taste on "Jackass" turn away and wince.
Westboro Baptist Church feeds on grief and publicity, seeking out stages large and small to sate their collective appetite.
They gathered outside the memorial service for TV's Mr. Rogers in 2003, a ripped American flag underfoot. They picketed at Elizabeth Edwards' funeral last year, siding firmly with the cancer that killed her. And earlier this year the idea of the Westboro clown car pulling up to the funeral for a little girl killed in a Tucson shooting spree sent Arizona lawmakers into overdrive. They managed to craft, pass and sign into law a bill creating a "funeral protection law" banning protests within 300 yards of a service — all in record time, all with nary squawk about First Amendment rights. Emotion may have trumped constitutionality for the day.
And military funerals. They love military funerals.
Members exercise their constitutionally protected right to free speech — reaffirmed by a Supreme Court ruling in March — by waving their usual signs and thanking God for dead troops, dealing a double blow to families already struggling with grief and pain.
How do you face such hate?
You do what people here did Monday. As the family and friends of Sgt. Mycal Prince gathered at the Bridge AG to say one last, long, sad goodbye, crowds lined both sides of state Highway 152 near the church. Some came with signs, some with flags and some with simple respect.
Prince, a Minco police officer in civilian life, died Sept. 15 in Afghanistan during his third tour of duty. Many of the people who lined the street Monday also turned out last week as Prince's journey across the world neared its end in a motorcade bearing his casket through town. And some of the faces along the way that day reflected genuine pain.
Lives snatched away too soon are never easy to contemplate. "God's will" just can't encompass it.
Americans disagree on so much right now, including just whose god is in the driver's seat, but we all seem to come together when it comes to Westboro Baptist Church. That may be their sole redeeming quality — they unite Americans in disgust.
Westboro's message is ugly, their penchant for self-promotion far outstrips any biblical concepts they might espouse, and they find no friends as they go from town to town. They elicited no love here either, with less-than-cordial sentiments bellowed back and forth Monday as law enforcement struggled to keep both sides contained.
But that scene was dwarfed by the larger crowd swelling along state Highway 152, watching and waiting, flags and signs in hand. Most of us probably didn't know Mycal Prince personally, but we all respect and mourn the sacrifice his family has to bear. And we all understand one thing, beautifully and simply expressed in a sign a woman held up out there Monday: GOD LOVES ALL.
That's how you face the hate. You smother it in love.

Kendall Brown, The Norman Transcript

Everyone is afforded in life those few moments, those ‘flashbulb memories,’ where you meet someone truly inspiring, someone who in an instant changes your life forever. Something they do, something they say or maybe just something they simply are touches something inside of you, and you’re better for it.
Tom Lee did that for me.
I was a freshman in college, a scared, timid little Northwest Oklahoma transplant that was unsure of where I was headed in life. All I knew were two things: first, I needed a job and second, I thought I might like to take pictures. Not enough to commit to changing my major, mind you, as the thought of telling my parents I’d become the dreaded ‘art student’ was too much to bear, but just enough to toy with the idea of the mysterious, glamorous idea of a future as a ‘photojournalist.’
That’s when I saw it: a listing in the classified section of the student paper stating, simply, ‘Local photographer looking for an assistant.’ Well, that was it, I was sold. I immediately applied for the job and, without ever having actually spoken with this local photographer over the phone, set up an interview. I was nervous, I was ecstatic, I was convinced that this job was going to set me on my way.
When I walked into Tom Lee’s studio later that week I was both shocked and shocking.
You see, what I did not know until I walked in that afternoon was that this local photographer, this Tom Lee, was a quadriplegic. I was shocked, of course, but he looked just as surprised as I was. My name, Kendall Brown, is an admittedly androgynous one, and he had apparently expected a bulking young man to walk through the door, not barely 5 feet and 120 pounds of small blonde girl.
Once the shock wore off for both of us, we settled in for our conversation. I can’t call it an interview, because that’s simply wasn’t what it was. Tom was looking for someone to not only help with his photography, but also daily needs, something I wasn’t strong enough to do. Many people would have probably simply said ‘thanks’ and shown me to the door. Tom invited me to sit down and asked why I wanted the job in the first place.
I explained to him that I thought that being his photo assistant would help me decide whether I wanted to be a photographer. I wanted to know for sure before I committed even so much as a semester of college to the new course of classes. Tom, to be quite honest, looked absolutely bemused at my stupidity.
“Why would being my assistant teach you if you want to be a photographer?” he asked, staring at me with a half-smile on his face. “Go be a photographer. That will teach you if you want to be a photographer.”
That was the last time I saw Tom Lee. He called me the next day and left me a very kind voicemail informing me of what I already knew, that I wasn’t right for the job, but that I was welcome to come by his studio any time to talk shop. I was too intimidated by the man and his talent to even return his call.
But I did what he said. I went and I became a photographer. I changed my major to photography and began spending countless hours in the basement of the art school, wrists deep in photo chemicals learning the alchemist magic that is traditional photography. Many late nights in the darkroom, as I would tire of being there, tired of printing the same image over and over again, looking for that perfect print, I would think of Tom. I would be near to giving up, to putting my prints up to dry and returning back to my apartment for just a few hours of precious sleep when I would think about what I saw that one afternoon in Tom Lee’s studio, how his work made me feel. I wanted my work to inspire. So I kept going.
Tom passed away in the last year, and it will always be one of my deepest regrets that I never stopped by his studio to ‘talk shop.’ But I am so glad for his influence that led me to becoming a photographer, and, eventually, to being editor of POP. I hope that many in the community will join me tonight for IAO’s retrospective of his work. Tom spent much of his life quietly producing amazing work in Norman, and now it’s time for us to loudly celebrate it.

Kim Benedict, The Ardmoreite

Most of us know that life is a work in progress.
We leverage our strengths, identify and work to improve our weaknesses.
And, for the most part, have control over what we do.
However, one of our most vulnerable populations is our children, and they have little to no control over their life circumstances.
So how sad is it that our state, once again, ranks in the bottom 10 nationally in child well being? We are number 43, out of 50 states, in the 2011 Kids Count Data book released annually. We moved up one spot, from 44th, in 2010.
And that's just not good enough. We improved in one indicator and worsened in six.
Our lowest rankings were in child death (47th), in teen birthrate (46th) and infant mortality (45th).
One of the largest increases was a 16 percent gain in the number of children living in poverty. Oklahoma ranks 35th in the category with 22 percent of children living in poverty (income below $21,756 for a family of two adults and two children).
We are the state of Oklahoma and we control the well being of our children. And, we're not doing a good job.
Absolutely there are great parents out there and thousands of children who are thriving and poised for success. But there's a like number who don't know how, or have the means, to climb out of situations that are uncaring at best, abusive at worst.
We improved by one ranking year over year. That's progress, but do today's children really have a decade for our state to crawl out of the bottom of the rankings?
We don't think so. We encourage state and family service agencies, along with parents, grandparents, educators and other concerned citizens to coordinate efforts, pick a category and make it their mission to move the number in a significant way.
Let's show the states in the bottom ten, starting with Mississippi at 50, then Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Kentucky that Oklahoma is the new model for moving the dial in caring for our children in a positive way.
There's no time to waste.

Gloria Trotter, Countywide & Sun

Two heat-related deaths have been reported at 412 S.Ninth St., Tecumseh.
Pronounced finally, completely and irretrievably dead were a mature rubber tree plant and a juvenile hydrangea bush.
Homeowner Gloria Trotter admitted that the rubber tree's demise is at least partially her fault. Due to a very busy spring schedule and the resulting exhaustion, she was derelict in regularly watering the poor plant even before moving it to the front porch once the frost danger was past.
That, combined with an unjustified faith in the inevitability of spring rains, obviously weakened the tropical plant to the point where it could not survive this summer's scorching heat.
"Honest, I watered it every couple of days after moving it outside," she said. "But I guess it was just too late."
The plant was a treasured member of the family, she said, since it was originally a gift from close friends when Wayne's mother died in 2003. After Wayne's father moved into an assisted living center a few years later, the Trotters brought the plant home with them, where it had resided in relatively good health since.
"I just didn't want to admit it was gone," Gloria said. "For weeks, it remained green and seemed fine. But in the past week or so, the poor thing began to droop alarmingly. Finally, it just gave up."
While the hydrangea bush did not have the sentimental history of the rubber tree, its loss is just as painful, she said.
"I've always wanted a hydrangea in the yard," she said. "But spring is always so busy, I just never got around to getting one. This year, when I went to get my annual batch of geraniums, the hydrangeas called out to me. I picked one out and proudly planted it in front of the house.
"And I did not neglect this one. I watered it virtually every day. It hung on bravely for weeks, but the last couple of weeks were just too much. It's completely brown and shriveled. It's gone."
Trotter said she is consoled by the fact that her two pots of mother-in-law tongue, which once belonged to her mother, seem to be doing fine. So are the hens and chickens (plants all), also a legacy of her mother, and the irises. Two-thirds of the geraniums are struggling but so far surviving, while those in a third planter have mysteriously succumbed to whatever.
Since the plants mentioned above are the extent of her gardening (not counting long-established trees and shrubs that flourish with no attention at all), Trotter's reputation as a black thumb is intact.
"Guess I should have mulched that hydrangea like the instructions directed," she admitted. "But, really, I blame the heat and lack of rain."
No effort will be made to replace the lost plants this year or any year until the weather gets back to normal — if it ever does.

Jeff Mullin, Enid News & Eagle

Planned joint-use hangar at airport will help protect both military, civilian aircraft
It is a spring evening, and a group of training aircraft from Vance Air Force Base are on the tarmac at Enid Woodring Regional Airport, where they will spend the night.
But the skies are darkening and radar shows a thunderstorm heading for the airport, bringing with it high winds and large hail, along with heavy rain, thunder and lightning.
Presently there isn't hangar space available to protect many of the Vance planes, much less any visiting civilian aircraft that might be taking shelter at the airport overnight.
Vance aircraft routinely use Woodring for training, visual flight rule, instrument and weekend training, as well as aircraft diversions, so their presence at the civil airport is not unusual. Neither, unfortunately, is wild weather in northwest Oklahoma.
If a storm damages a Vance T-1 or T-6, it could be grounded for days, if not weeks, thus putting a crimp in the base's training schedule. Any disruption in the training pipeline ultimately could have an impact on our nation's air defenses. Not to mention the fact repairing a military aircraft damaged by a storm is costly, and replacing one is even more expensive. A new T-1 or T-6 will cost upwards of $4 million.
The planned new joint-use hangar at Woodring will help mitigate this problem. The 120-foot-by-120-foot structure, which will stand 32 feet high, will be big enough to shelter nine T-6s or at least five T-ls at one time should the need arise. In addition it routinely could be used to house visiting civilian aircraft for a fee, of course.
Thanks to the Oklahoma Strategic Military Planning Commission, the city won't even have to pay half the cost of building the hangar.
During the past two fiscal years the OSMPC has allotted $330,000 for the city to use for construction of the hangar. The total cost of the hangar, to be built by Henson Construction Inc., will be $561,050. That means the city only has to fork over some 41 percent of the cost.
This is just another prime example of the cooperation among the city, the state and the Air Force when it comes to protecting and enhancing the mission at Vance, as well as Enid's aviation community.
The hangar will be a welcome addition at Woodring that will benefit not only the airport, but Vance, as well. We applaud the city, the Vance Development Authority and the OSMPC for working together to make this much-needed project a reality.
The $228,050 the city will contribute to the project is not chicken feed, of course, but we think it will prove to be money well spent.

Melissa Choate, The Hennessey Clipper

My dog's name is Murphy, and he's the cutest little white Shih Tzu. Unfortunately, he is more often than not the bane of my existence.
That pooch has been arrested four times, gotten into the grocery store more times than I know about, and has been puppynapped twice.
He waltzes across the street and waits for some poor unsuspecting person to allow him entrance into 4-T's, then runs through the aisles. As far as I know, there have been no casualties due to his hunger, yet I always get my weekly call to retrieve him.
He has been delivered to me at my job at Taggart's with a police escort.
I've had to have others place Facebook ads, and have put up posters around stores myself to find him after a night of his gallivanting.
I've now resorted to locking him in and taking him on many potty walks.
He also has a shiny new collar and tag so that the poor, unknowing people who might get taken in by his big brown eyes, can return him.
You might be asking why I try so hard to find him and continue to put myself through the aggravation. I could say that it's due to the love that my children lavish upon him, but that's only partially the reason.
Throughout Murphy's great escapes,I've discovered that my husband and I are more worried than our children. That little poochhas become another child to us, and we can't sleep unless we knowthat all our babies are safe.
My husband has gotten a new fence so maybe that will keep the neighborhood pet in the safety of his own backyard. I'm sure that it will only be a temporary fix because he's such a crafty fur ball.
Be on the lookout for Murphy- LP the-Menace, a wanted fugitive. He stands about 12 inches tall, has brown eyes, and is wearing a white coat.

Regina Smith, Poteau Daily News

Gloria Trotter, Countywide & Sun

What an amazing week it has been, as we all heard the news of Osama Bin Laden's death and the details of the operation that led to it.
As a journalist, it's fascinating to watch how the story's been covered in this day of electronic media. Like most of you, I heard the news on television — and stayed glued to it well past my bedtime.
Monday's newspaper, in my case The Oklahoman, delivered more details, despite the short of amount of time they had to assemble it. And of course more pieces of the story have fallen into place in the days since.
But there are dangers in trying to report a story like that — a story of a secret mission and high security. The TV networks were the first casualties. The initial reports on Fox News said that the operation had happened six days prior to Sunday's announcement. That, of course, was not true.
I'm sure they thought it was true when they got the information from what they considered a reliable source. But at that point, how many people really knew what had happened? Not many, I expect.
Newspapers fall victim to that from time to time as well; I have myself. But for the most part, they have more time to triple-check sources and tie up the loose ends. Broadcast is immediate, and the temptation to get it out there first can prove dangerous.
And then there's Facebook and the like. Naturally, Facebook was frantic with posts about the big story. For a while, the tone was celebratory and patriotic. Then it started to deteriorate into political rhetoric in too many cases. I made one my rare posts late Sunday (or was it early Monday?) to say that no matter who you had voted for in the Presidential race, or who you might vote for in the next one, it was a great day for the nation.
And, I said, the President gave an excellent speech.
That's all that should have mattered. I'm not the President's biggest fan, but that does not dull the shine of a successful mission carried out under his direction. He struck just the right tone in that speech. It's too bad everyone couldn't have done the same — and I'm talking the left side AND the right side.
How about another "casualty" of all this? My son posted a link to an article by Megan McArdle, the business and economics editor for The Atlantic. She wrote about seeing "a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. fly across my Twitter feed: 'I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.'
I saw that posted on Facebook, as I'm sure many thousands of people did, and didn't think much about it. But McArdle discovered, with some digging, that it was inaccurate.
"Had I seen the quote on Facebook, rather than Twitter, I might have guessed at the truth," she wrote. "On the other hand, had I seen it on Facebook, I might not have realized it was fake, because it was appended to a long string of genuine speeches from MLK Jr. Here's the quote as most people on Facebook saw it:
"'I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.'
"Everything except the first sentence is found in King's book, Strength to Love, and seems to have been said originally in a 1957 sermon he gave on loving your enemies," said McArdle. "Unlike the first quotation, it does sound like King, and it was easy to assume that the whole thing came from him.
"So how did they get mixed together?"
It seems that Jessica Dovey, a Facebook user, "posted a very timely and moving thought on her Facebook status, and then followed it up with the Martin Luther King Jr. quote." It read:
I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." MLK Jr.
Apparently, someone afterward, reposting the message, removed the quotation marks. It was reposted and tweeted to more than a million people in the incorrect form. The Twitter version, with its 140-character limit, was stripped down even more. And when McArdle blogged about the situation, it resulted in a new firestorm so complex I don't have room to tell you about it. Suffice it to say that a lot of people certainly got completely off the subject that started the whole thing and fell to fighting.
Good grief. It makes you wonder — when will today's communication become too much communication?

Mike McCormick, Shawnee News-Star

THE ISSUE: Jim Thorpe Stadium project
OUR STANCE: Schools patrons deserved better

Finally, it looks like construction on the new high school track at Jim Thorpe Stadium will resume immediately, barring unforeseen, bad weather.
Maybe, just maybe, by the time the Shawnee Wolves take the field for the initial football contest of the 2011 season, the Jim Thorpe Stadium project will be completely done.
Sadly, the seniors who will walk across the stage at Raley Chapel tonight during commencement and received their diplomas will not have had the opportunity to enjoy the new track nor all the other renovations. The positive side, though, is those graduating a year from now should be able to utilize the facilities during their senior year.
Clearly, the patrons of the Shawnee School District have waited far too long for this project to be completed. By the time the track is finally done, it will be nearly six years since voters approved a $22.1 million bond issue and funding for a new track was included among the projects.
Something which continues to concern and disturb us, too, is the refusal by school board officials and the board's attorneys to release to the public a report which obviously had some bearing on the agreed settlement between the general contractor and the school district. This report has to be a public document because the findings were submitted to the school district in February of this year.
The public has a right to know what is contained in that report. This is another blatant attempt to prevent the school patrons of this district knowing what is the public's business.
Last fall, Shawnee's Board of Education the retained the law firm of Stuart, Clover, Duran, Thomas and Vorndran, LLP to review the ongoing dispute between the school district and the general contractor.
The law firm retained Dr. Chunhua Han, Ph.D., of Minneapolis, Minn., to analyze the construction of the track. It's Dr. Han's findings, for whatever reason, are not being released or made public, despite several requests from the News-Star. Also, details regarding the agreement have remained unanswered.
There seems to be a lot of mystery behind the report and the final agreement.
Haskell-Lemon Construction Co., according to information released by the law firm, has been hired by Homeland General Contractors to perform necessary repairs to the running track and to complete installation of the asphalt portions of the track.
The running surface will be installed by ATG Sports Industries, Inc. The repairs and installations will be performed at no additional cost to the local district, just as it should be.
The biggest positive to surface out of this is that the construction will resume, the district will have a new track and the Jim Stadium project finally will be completed.
It's been a long time coming, and in the future Shawnee school patrons deserve better. They've waited long enough

Faith Wylie, Oologah Lake Leader

April showers?
Not here. April brings violent storms and heart-breaking memories.
Traveling back in time to the Oologah tornado has been a bumpy journey.
Stories of strength and perseverance have reminded us of the courage and character of our community. But the stories have also raised twinges of the pain of those days.
News reports also remind us of the Branch Davidian tragedy at Waco 18 years ago, and the Murrah bombing in Oklahoma City 16 years ago.
As we are pelted by hail, we recall the sounds of the Oologah tornado and the horrible 2007 ice storm.
It’s all just too personal. It makes us dread April.
Most adults here know people who lost their homes on April 26, 1991 and someone who lost a loved one on April 19, 1995.
For me, there is a personal loss. I was finishing billing so I could visit my father one last time. The tornado disrupted my plans. I did not make it in time. Those 24 hours were the worst in my life.
But it was worse for others.
At least the Oologah tornado, unlike the Murrah bombing, was an act of nature.
As we confronted nature at its worst, we saw human nature at its best.
I am reminded of the people who donated time, meals, money, cars and campers for the storm survivors.
Who can forget our tough families who lived in campers beside their demolished homes and washed their hair with a garden hose?
The telephone company installed jacks on outside poles so families could have a phone at their home site. The phone rang in the yard. (Cell phones were not common 20 years ago.)
The post office held mail until rural boxes could be replaced. Carriers kept track of those living with family and neighbors so they could get their mail.
We were stretched to our limit. We did not break.

Ted Streuli, The Journal Record

Oklahoma's Legislature should stop fixing imaginary problems and find solutions to the issues that face the state, primarily a substantial budget deficit.

This week's nonproblem was affirmative action. A proposal by state Sen. Rob Johnson, R-Kingfisher, and state Rep. Leslie Osborn, R-Tuttle, would prohibit special treatment based on race or sex in public employment, education or contracts. But no such preference is available when competing for state contracts, state employment or admission to a state university. The only real effect the law would have would be to make a small number of race-based college scholarships illegal.
Opponents suggest that the GOP-driven effort to put the question on the 2012 ballot is a gimmick to pull conservative voters to the polls.
The most recent U.S. Census data showed a clear trend: There are far fewer white babies being born and a lot more minority babies making arrivals. The big white glut, the baby boomers, are nearly aged out of child bearing, so the percentages are shifting. Oklahoma's business community belabors the point that the state needs a well-educated, well-prepared workforce to foster economic development. That workforce will soon include even more of the racial and ethnic groups we now consider minorities.
It is in Oklahoma's best economic interest to provide those students, who continue to have fewer opportunities than their Caucasian counterparts, every bit of encouragement and assistance we can muster.
The bill has already passed in the Senate; if it gets through the House, Gov. Mary Fallin should have a veto at the ready. Cutting off minority scholarships would be foolish, and that's the only effect the law would have.

John M. Wylie II, Oologah Lake Leader

When Oklahoma humorist Will Rogers died in 1935, the people of Oklahoma, of America, and around the world mourned.
The people of Claremore and Oologah like to claim Will Rogers, but Will was bigger than those two communities.
His weekly and daily newspaper columns were carried in 600 newspapers and reached 40 million readers.
His top-rated Sunday evening radio show was carried across the country.
He starred in 71 movies and was Hollywood's top paid actor.
He embraced new-fangled ideas like talking movies, radio and aviation. With his down home style, he helped ordinary people adjust to a rapidly changing world.
He spoke for and to the people. The State of Oklahoma vied with California and the nation for the honor of being the final resting place of Oklahoma's Will Rogers. Despite the Great Depression, the Oklahoma legislature scraped together $200,000 to finance the main building. The east wing was added in 1982, also with state money.
Following Rogers' untimely death, his widow and children donated the 20 acres in Oklahoma that Will and Betty had purchased for their retirement home, along with much of the collection. They could have sold the prime land and artifacts, but instead they gave them to the people of Oklahoma who had been so important to Will Rogers.
The State of Oklahoma lovingly accepted responsibility for the final resting place of America's ambassador to the world and his collection.
For 75 years, Oklahoma has carried out this mission: to collect, preserve, and share the life, wisdom, and humor of Will Rogers for all generations.
The priceless archives draw scholars from around the world. Will Rogers still represents Oklahoma's common- sense, compassionate values to the rest of the nation and world.
Has the current generation of Oklahomans forgotten our responsibility to Will Rogers?
The state faces a budget crisis. Gov. Mary Fallin calls for cuts of three to five percent for most state agencies. But she singles out Will Rogers for an almost 25% budget cut.
Legislator Leslie Osborn has an even more drastic idea. She suggests cutting funding 15% a year, eventually reaching a 90% cut.
Why should the Will Rogers Memorial Museum be any different than any of the other 500-plus museums across the state that depends mostly on local and private funds, she asks.
Why? Because the people of Oklahoma asked for this special gift and responsibility. Because Will was of the people. It was the will of the people of Oklahoma to remember and honor their favorite son.
But perhaps Oklahoma no longer cares about meeting its obligations, or preserving the graves of its heroes. Maybe it's all about dollars and cents now.
Just five months ago, the Governor's Commission on Tourism named the Will Rogers Memorial Museum as the outstanding tourist attraction in the state. In 2009 visitors came from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and 30 foreign countries. In an average month, according to the director, the Memorial welcomed guests from 44 states and 12 nations. Only about one-third came from Oklahoma.
According to the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department, the economic impact of visitors to the Memorial Museum in 2009 was $17,696,250.
The legislature provided $803,217 dollars for fiscal year 2010 (which runs July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010).
That's a 2,203 percent return on investment. That sounds like a good investment to us. We'd take a 2,000 percent return on our IRAs.
The legislature cut Will Rogers' funding to $744,984 for fiscal year 2011. Working with less, the museum still increased attendance 11.8 percent in 2010 and an additional 24 percent so far this year.
Gov. Fallin would cut that to $570,089 for fiscal year 2012.
Why would Oklahoma cut an investment that returns 2,000 percent? It makes no sense.
Will Rogers said, "Remember, write to your Congressman. Even if he can't read, write to him."
What can we do to uphold our obligation to Will Rogers and get a 2,000 percent return on investment?
Write to State Rep. Osborn and Gov. Mary Fallin. They're both smart women who know how to read.
Perhaps they will listen to the will of the people.
Contact State Rep. Leslie Osborn at 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd. Room 303-B, Oklahoma City, OK 73105 or leslie.osborn@ okhouse.gov.
Contact Gov. Mary Fallin at Oklahoma State Capitol, 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Room 212, Oklahoma City, OK 73105.

Mike McCormick, Shawnee News-Star

When city of Shawnee voters approved making the third penny sales tax permanent more than 12 years ago, little did they envision probably a regional park with a price tag estimated at between $19 to $20 million. With city commissioners last Monday night approving the master plan for the park, it could happen.
Commissioners have a monumental task though ahead of them. First, they have to determine how they want to fund construction of the park, which will necessarily include some type of tax increase. Second, they will have to convince citizens of the need for the scope of a project this size to secure the votes to approve funding.
All this of course is part of the capital improvements plan the city commission adopted earlier this year, which includes 81 different projects totaling an estimated $114 million.
It appears the city most likely will ask citizens to either raise the city sales tax, or possibly increase their ad valorem taxes, or a combination of both. At least that is what we are getting from discussions with some of the commissioners, some of whom seem undecided on which method to use.
Some community leaders are questioning the price tag of the regional park. They also question the scope of the project because of its cost relevant to other priorities the city has indicated toward the top of its list.
Included in the top 11 listed projects, totaling $30,648,310, are three dealing with parking lot improvements for the Expo Center; two for parks, one being the regional park; one for neighborhood revitalization; one on technology; and four having to do with streets.
The largest single cost of any of the 81 projects is the regional park.
Even the initial phase of the regional park carries an estimated price tag of between $12.5 and $14.5 million, according to the information presented by planners during last Monday night's commission meeting.
Several community leaders are asking why Shawnee's regional park carries such a hefty price tag compared to some of the other communities. Chickasha's for instance, which is on 95 acres, cost $9.5 million, It also requires $500,000 annually for operation and maintenance.
That is the same price for operation and maintenance city commissioners were given Monday night, although the city's park contains nearly twice the acreage. We realize there is a lake and there will be trails as well.
Commissioners seem to be firm in their plan to move ahead with this size of park, despite the hefty price tag.
We do question why the city didn't scale it down considerably, so some of the fields could be have been constructed quicker and our young people could begin playing on them. That's another question, too, which keeps coming up, are these fields for our kids or more for bringing people from outside Shawnee or a combination of both?
As commissioners continue their pursuit in the weeks and months ahead they must closely examine what projects are the most important to improving the quality of life in Shawnee that the city can afford and put those on the table first. It might be they see scaling down the regional park is necessary to convince citizens to buy in to their plan.

Barb Walter, Hennessey Clipper

She was a good-looking woman. Even at 82, Lou Ledbetter looked good, and her eyes would light up when I'd compliment her appearance.
It was just a few weeks ago when I'd last told her she was lookin' good. Our printer was having press problems that week, so she'd come into the office wanting her Clipper.
"I need my Clipper," she said. "How long will it be?"
"Any minute or an hour. We just don't know."
"I need my Clipper before I can go home," she said and left the office.
She was back in about 10 minutes and the papers still weren't here yet.
She was anxious.
Getting a Clipper was part of her Wednesday ritual and Lou wasn't giving up easily.
She came in one more time and later called to see if they were at 4-T's yet because she needed to go to the store too. She wanted to make sure she bought the paper from one of our racks so we'd get the whole 50-cents.
We lost Lou this week on Valentine's Day.
In addition to being one of our loyal supporters, she was also a sweetheart, and a mother figure and grandma (Nanny) figure to many of us.
Lou was one of a kind. And as she'd say, "I'm serious as a heart attack."
She grew up in Maud and had all sorts of sayings that I'd never heard of before.
She also had some strange habits.
When her youngest daughter was in the hospital in Oklahoma City, we stayed in the waiting room the night before Janice's early morning surgery.
Lou chided her older daughter and me for wearing our jewelry.
"Someone will come by here while you're sleeping and cut your fingers off to get those diamond rings," she said.
Our rings paled in comparison to her diamonds, which were safely in her purse that evening.
Right next to her "protection."
She flashed her protection — an ice pick — to show us that she'd take care of any intruder.
That was Lou.
But her ever-present purse wasn't the only thing she carried with her on over-night trips.
There was always her makeup case.
She carried it with her religiously, and we never saw her without makeup and her hair perfectly coifed.
Her children, nieces and nephews always wanted to see what was in that magic case, but Lou wasn't telling.
She would tell you, however, that you'd better wipe your feet on the rug before you went into her well-kept home.
If you stood outside her door after saying your good-byes, you could always hear her firing up The Hoover and sweeping the carpeting.
Lou loved her vacuum cleaner and family always joked and told her they'd have a Hoover mounted on her tombstone.
I doubt that, but then you never know.

J. Leland Gourley, OKC Friday

Community leaders across Oklahoma are campaigning to get Oklahoma's liquor laws amended to allow at least wine and strong beer to be sold in grocery stores and possibly convenience stores.
Current law restricts the sale of these beverages to holders of liquor licenses that give them the legal right to sell alcoholic beverages. And no person, or other entity, who has a license can have more than one store. No chain stores.
Grocery stores can sell so-called "weak" beer because the State Supreme Court has ruled 3.2 beer is not "intoxicating."
We are for the change because it would be more convenient to the public, and it probably would increase tax income to the state (especially in sales to out of staters such as tourists and convention delegates).
And it would make us more like other states, instead of having industry recruiting prospects actually asking us why we are a "backward" state, unlike all the other states.
Beside that, I am a long-time board member of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, which has strongly endorsed changing the law. I voted for the Chamber to do that.
Having said all this, I still cringe when I hear our own residents referring to our liquor laws as "archaic" and "out of step."
I have heard folks wonder why we have such "backward" laws when everywhere else you can buy a bottle of wine when your wife asks you to pick up a loaf of bread on the way home.
Since I am maybe the only one left who was a member of the team that engineered the state's first legalization of liquor, it's my duty to refresh your state history. Only Mississippi was left as a dry state, along with us.
It started when I became a volunteer campaign leader for J. Howard Edmondson whom I had previously endorsed for Governor, and after his election I was his Chief of Staff. Howard promised the voters he would call for an election in the first 90 days of his term, to "end bootleg control of law enforcement."
Remember this, the most powerful political block in the state at this time was the "United Drys" Oklahoma had had two previous elections on legalizing liquor and the Drys soundly won both of them. No legal booze for us.
Every Sheriff and most County Attorneys in the state were in the pay of the local bootlegger, or people thought they were. Imagine, Law enforcers were working for criminals. The public may have thought the corruption was worse than Demon Rum but it was a lost cause, so let's go ahead and drink bootleg whisky.
Howard had also told the voters he would support a Merit System, so employees could give state service instead of political service. And he had promised to install Central Purchasing so vendors could get the business on the basis of lowest price and best performance, instead of the favor of its local Senator.
These programs, and other reforms, were passed or moving in that direction. And the State Senate, by a close margin, had approved a state referendum on repealing prohibition.
But it was the 90th day of the Edmondson administration and the House still had not passed the call for a vote. Our hand-picked Speaker Clint Livingston shook his head and said "I don't have the votes."
The Governor told me to rally the staff. I ordered them all to stay at work and do the best they could in persuading their home county House Member to vote for having an election.
The afternoon dragged on. It got dark and Clint still didn't' have the votes. The Governor was in the Speaker's office. At 10:30, Clint got a phone call in his office. He hung up and told the Governor, "I think we have the votes."
He went into the Chamber and the roll call started. The Referendum bill passed at 11:30 p.m on the 90th Day of the Edmondson Administration. (It cost at least three yes voters their jobs at the next general election.)
The voters also voted in favor of repeal at the Referendum election. This brought new taxes from a source that was never taxed before. And we were able to give school teachers their biggest raise in history up to that time.
I can tell you one thing. If we had proposed putting liquor in all the grocery stores, in that era, the bill would have been DOA.

Kim Poindexter, Tahlequah Daily Press

We were at my in-laws' home near Los Angeles just after Christmas, and I had with me the latest edition of Biblical Archaeology Review. There, in one of the scholarly articles about digs in the Holy Land, I spotted something that made me hoot with laughter: The writer quoted a seriously sheep-skinned person named "Sharon A. Bong."
I showed this to my in-laws, who seemed more puzzled than amused. Maybe it’s a generational thing: I came of age in the disco years of the late ‘70s; my in-laws, considerably earlier (she’s 76; he’ll be 81 in May). Yet I figured anyone who reads the crime news regularly ought to know what a “bong” is, even without the benefit of having smoked one.
I’m no stranger to the pitfalls of odd names. Many times in the past, when I’ve introduced myself, the new acquaintances will say, “You’re kidding!” and burst out laughing. Even if they don’t explain themselves, I know they’re thinking about that geeky kid in the “Felix the Cat” cartoon, or maybe one of the characters in the movie “Revenge of the Nerds.” I’m often called ‘PONdexter’ or “POINTdexter.” And because of my apparent predisposition to nag, I was called “Mrs. Poinpecker in seventh grade by one of my classmates, Jim Harris. (For anyone who’s interested, Poindexter is a French name that translates into something like “right hand” or “right fist,” which is depicted in the family crest. Anyone who knows my dad would opt for the latter interpretation.)
My husband is also afflicted. More than once I’ve placed a phone call and said my last name was “Cisternino,” only to have the person on the other end confuse me with a nun.
I’ve seen moniker meldings that are real doozies, begging the question of whether the parents were — well, smoking a bong? — when they named their hapless offspring. Why don’t they think before the ink is dry on the birth certificate? I’ve had this discussion with a funeral home director and an area educator with names that could lend themselves to dangerous liaisons, and both insist they’d never do that to a kid. But others would — including a great-great-aunt of mine, who named her daughter Ada Bean.
When I was a freshman at OU, a guy named Leon Brown claimed his 6-year-old brothers, “Oops” and “Uh-oh,” were so dubbed because his parents thought they had closed the canon on their family before the twins made the scene. (He proved the point by brandishing a school yearbook, but I always suspected those were nicknames rather than birth names.)
Later, when I first came to work at the Press, I remember the names Ice Scraper and Pearl E. White cropping up in news copy. We’ve had area folks who are good-natured about their distinct designations, like Rabbit Hare, Fonda Gritts, Rusty Nail, Pete Moss, Dusty Rhodes, Brick Wall, Sunny Ray and Holly Berry. Other zingers that have elicited snickers are Kitty Box, Kitty Calico, Sandy Butts, Bee Hinds, Penny Wise, Shelly Turtle and Ray Coon — all of which we’ve printed at one time or another, and most of which we’ve been accused or making up. Despite widespread allegations, we certainly did not concoct the surname “Cries-for-Ribs,” a Ponca City family that produced athletes good enough to attract notice on our sports pages.
Marriage can cause further problems, when women stubbornly insist on using hyphens to staple married names to maiden names. Back in the 80s and early 90s, a spokeswoman for a certain agency, Sylvia Long, married a fellow with the surname “Weiner,” and she wore the hyphen like a badge. I once had an occasion to kid her about it, and she said: “Oh, that’s nothing. My husband has a cousin who’s engaged to a guy named Eric Swallow. She plans to use a hyphen, too.” I’ve also known a Sally Coke-Huffer and a Carmen Wilton-Rose.
Surnames can lend themselves to comical nicknames. My husband’s grandfather was 'Shorty’ Grant, and his stature was granted by a higher power. A fellow named Capps came in the office once and told us to call him “Papa; his cackle implied he thought it hilarious. Most of the nicknames from which we’ve recoiled in horror have appeared among the survivors in obituaries; the worst I can recall were a “Porky” in the Pigg family, a “Flip” in the Bird family, and a “Hooter” in the Smoke family.
Occasionally a name will bemuse me more than amuse. The oddest surname I’ve seen printed in the paper was (so I was told) of Middle Eastern extraction: “Nahstidudi.” I’ll leave the pronunciation to the reader’s imagination.

Jeff Kaley, The Duncan Banner

0bviously, budget cutting is a key factor in continuing to get a handle on the economic mess in the USofA, and paring down has to happen at the federal, state and local levels.
At the local level, what’s sad and frustrating — even counterproductive — is part of the budget-cutting in public education will come from slicing the arts from school curriculums. It’s already happening in school districts around Oklahoma, in part because there’s a public mindset the arts aren’t really essential to the education experience.
That’s why every time there’s an economic meltdown that requires school budget cuts, one of the first things whittled down is funding for band and vocal music courses, art classes and drama clubs. Over the past two decades, many state school districts simply stopped offering those courses or extracurricular activities.
Our kids need those outlets and conduits for self-expression. And think about it a moment: If we are to strengthen the economy, find ways to avoid riding a financial rollercoaster in the future and make progress in society at many levels, we need creative ideas from people who can think outside the box.
Since ancient humans fashioned flutes from hollow reeds and discovered their vocal cords could produce a pleasant tone that soothed their emotions and stimulated thought, the arts have nourished creativity.
As funding is sliced in public education and in the public square, here’s the conundrum: At a time we most need creative stimulation, we’re going to cut back on the arts.
It seems self-defeating. It also seems shortsighted that, in the past week, 165 conservative members of the U.S. Congress — predominantly Republicans — called for the termination of the National Endowment for the Arts and key arts education programs at the U.S. Department of Education.
The National Endowment for the Arts has been a target of conservatives for years. A reason for that, I think, is conservative culture warriors can’t get past what I call the “Serrano Hang-up.”
In the late 1980s, Andres Serrano triggered a public furor. The National Endowment helped finance a show by the artist that included pieces many found objectionable, including a photo of a crucifix in urine.
Serrano’s photo became the poster child of depravity to folks offended by such art or who oppose government subsidies for the arts, even though “government” was underwriting the arts long before the Medicis and other politically-powerful families funded The Renaissance.
However, those with an ideological objection to the National Endowment conveniently ignore the fact only a small percentage of NEA funds go to the Serranos and Robert Mapplethorpes of the arts world.
A preponderance of NEA funding goes to partnering with community arts councils, youth arts projects and education, cultural events that bind communities together, museums and galleries and subsidizing artisans whose work doesn’t offend most reasonable folks.
Sure, there are times I’ve questioned the NEA’s decision-making; wondered about the artistic value of some funded projects. And it does seem the NEA has supported some projects that make you think, “Why this?”
But the arts should take us to some extremes, challenge us and present eclectic viewpoints. By their nature, the arts involve free expression, and free expression —even if it’s tasteless — sustains a free society.
And in the overall picture, the Serranos and Mapplethorpes are the exceptions in NEA funding, not the rule.
Something else conservatives ignore while waging culture war on the National Endowment for the Arts: Although tax payers help foot the bill, the NEA gives back to the economy,.
Bob Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, says the arts support around 5.7 million jobs in the United States, and those jobs generate about $30 billion in taxes. Nearly $13 billion of that tax money goes back into the federal government.
For every $1 the NEA seems to use frivolously by funding the Serranos and Mapplethorpes, there’s $1,000 spent on arts programs most would agree benefit our culture and economy.
You’d think conservative capitalists would consider that type of return a good investment.